The Pearl Diver (2 page)

This brought roars from the others; she, too, couldn’t help but laugh. One woman sucked on her arm real loud, adding to the giddiness.

“I hit it during a dive,” she repeated, seared with uneasiness, then went on eating, trying to think of something to say that would move the conversation in a different direction. Miyako, the elder diver, rescued her, as she had done many times.

“In twenty years, your body will be a museum of scars,” Miyako said, tossing an oyster shell. “You can charge for tours.”

She was surrounded by that truth. There wasn’t a diver among them who didn’t wear the history of their work on her body. Scarred, thick-bodied women all of them.

She sometimes had to laugh when she thought of her mother and sister, frail and gentle, nothing like a single one of the divers. She dreaded those days when she had to dress up, never feeling comfortable in those sandals, which forced her short, wide feet into a pigeon-toed walk—shuffle, more like it. When her hair was plaited and pulled so tightly into a bun, scrunched together by a lacquer comb, she had a headache the entire day, feeling as if the hair would be uprooted. The sash was so tight, it cut off her breath. But even worse than having to wear the kimono was when she was fitted for a new sash, the woman measuring her; she felt her mother’s scouring shame at the thickness, the roughness of her daughter.

But as she sat among the divers, she thought of none of that, only when she made her way home each afternoon did those thoughts creep back into and stay with her until the next morning when she left for the sea.

Miyako talked in a loud voice, although she was sitting no more than five feet from any of them. When Miyako spoke, her tanned, leathery skin glistened. But only on her face, feet, hands—a permanent mask, gloves, socks. Underneath that heavy woolen blanket, Miyako’s skin was as white as that pearl Yoko had found. Her more than forty years of diving had brought her lots of money, a beautiful house on the hillside, the gold teeth, respect. She walked away each afternoon, a nice bulge of money tucked between her breasts from her day’s catch. Between her mother-of-pearl breasts.

All the divers called Miyako “Grandma” and meant it respectfully. Miyako guided the divers, but it didn’t feel as if she were guiding. Like the time when, as a novice, she had asked one of the divers what was the easiest way to loosen an abalone from a rock and Miyako had stepped in and taken her aside.

“We never share secrets of our work or technique. It is okay to be friendly—many of them I love like sisters, daughters—but remember, we are competing against one another. If you don’t get that oyster with the giant pearl in it, I will. And I won’t be feeling guilty about it. You must develop your own secrets of the trade. Take them to the grave with you.”

Miyako, who had rescued her from all the talk about the mark on her arm, now held out some dried kelp. They were all close enough to smell it on her breath, something that she almost constantly chewed when out of the water.

“Want some?” she asked, holding it out. A few took some and Miyako threw an extra piece at Yuki.

“Here, give this to that husband of yours. Good for the hair, thickens and toughens it up.”

“He should be eating buckets of the stuff,” one diver shouted.

“What’s that?” Miyako cupped a hand over her ear, leaned a bit closer.

“I said he should be eating buckets of kelp,” the woman said, raising her voice.

“He should be wearing the stuff,” another shouted back.

Now, she thought, she could relax a little; the focus had been wrestled away from her. But she knew that, like the cramps, it could return at any time.

She Walked the mile and a half home. Not with the same energy with which she had gone to the sea that morning. Tired, but she was always tired on her trips home, not only from the diving or from having to go up the not so steep hill, but tired because she was going away from the sea. And the next day was Sunday, no diving, making the walk even more arduous.

In her bamboo shoulder basket she carried seven oysters and the small mackerel that Kenichi had given her. She passed limestone boulders; even they weren’t the same on the way home. In the mornings, there was a little more color to their paleness. She was warmer, much more so than a few hours earlier, and although the late-afternoon sun was still hot, she, at times, was jolted by a sudden chill, sending a shiver runneling through her body.

Since it was Saturday, she altered her route a little, turning right into the field of olive trees owned by their distant neighbors the Nakamuras. She went to the fifth row and the twelfth tree in it. The same as her birthday—the twelfth day of the fifth month. Without removing the shoulder basket, she dug up the hole, placed a coin with the others inside the small sack, tightened the string, and planted it back into the ground. She evened the soil, patted it down, left the field, whispering a see you next week. Must be nearly five dozen in there now, she thought—one a week each Saturday during the diving season. Saving them for what, she wasn’t certain, but for something that would reveal itself in time.

Back on the dirt road, a half a mile from home, the point where the sound of the Inland Sea vanished, but from where she could get a clear view of Honshu, the main island, seven miles away. Sallow pine needle–thin noodles hung drying in the sun.
When the sun hit them from behind, they glowed almost like the tiny blue veins against the skin of a baby—thousands and thousands of thin white veins, she thought.

She increased her pace; her father would be finished shortly and she had to help her mother get things ready for dinner.
The house was over the knoll. Sometimes she passed her family working in the rice field; sometimes she could get by without them noticing her. If not, she’d have to help out.
The best time to sneak by was late in the summer, when the rice rose high enough that she could barely make out her father’s hat when he was hunched over in the field.

She cleared the knoll, and her father had his shirtless back to her, the rice nearly at his knees. He stood there smoking, striking his familiar pose, hands behind his back, head up to the sky as if he were gazing at stars. It was the last of the three smoking breaks that he took each day. She walked faster, but as quietly as possible, hoping that he had just begun his break. He had, and she made it all the way to the house without him seeing her. She slid the door open.

“I’m home.” She set the basket of oysters and the mackerel at the entrance of the house. Her mother was in the kitchen, preparing miso soup, using the small clams that she had brought home the day before.

“Did you help your father?”

“No, he’s about finished.”

“What takes you so long getting home?”

“It’s Saturday and we have to clean things up.”

“We could use the help here, as well.”

“I’m busy, too, Mother.”

“You dive for a couple of hours. You’re not even twenty, too young to be tired.”

“It’s hard work, Mother. You should try it sometime.”

“Why are you always talking so loud? You’re right next to me, not way out in the rice field.”

“All the divers talk loud. It’s a habit.”

“Stop the habit when you’re in the house. I don’t want you acting like those crude people.”

“They’re not crude. We work around fishermen all day and we talk loud because of all the noise of the sea. I tell you this nearly every day, Mother.”

“You’re shouting again.”

“Maybe the diving is damaging my ears, like all the other divers.”

“And you’re getting to be like all of them. The body and toughness of a man. We’re working on finding your sister a husband, and you’re going to be next. What kind of man wants a woman who’s tough and loud-talking?”

“I brought home some oysters and a mackerel. Should I go and clean them up for dinner?”

“Yes. We’ll be eating early; it’s Saturday.”

She went to the front, slid the door shut, saw that her father had finished his final break of the day and was, once again, over the rows of rice. She opened the basket, imagining that she was deep in the sea, the pick in hand, chipping at one of the oysters.
That thought didn’t stay with her for long because she knew that very soon her father would be home and she would be serving him tea and dinner and
sake,
and the next day was Sunday, the longest day of the week, a day without the sea.

The exact moment. Her eleventh dive, August 27, 1948, wedged upside down between two boulders. A calm sea. Struggling with a large abalone, which had its suction cups pasted to a rock. Not thinking about time, but always aware of it. Nearing her limit in her lungs, that rush of excitement on the edge of pain, fear. Daring herself not to let go, for if she did, she knew from hard lessons learned that the abalone would escape between the rocks and she’d never get it. Pulling, prying, using the bar as a wedge. Pulling when she lost her grip on the mother-of-pearl shell and cracked her left forearm off a rock, nearly causing her to breathe a deadly breath. The abalone slithered deeper between the rocks, forever away from her.

Working her way back up, keeping her pace, no matter how much her lungs screamed, urged her to hurry. Knowing that she was bleeding, those rocks, volcaniclike rocks, sharp as razors, but strangely she didn’t feel anything. She surfaced, empty-handed. She took hold of her tub with her right arm, dragged it along the water to the boat. Trailing her, a red blood line. She saw it but didn’t even feel the warmth of the blood.

“Looks like you got yourself a nice cut,” said Kenichi.

“It’s okay. Doesn’t even hurt.”

Kenichi gave her one of those faces that said he didn’t believe a word of it. But it didn’t hurt. Looked bad, though. A deep but clean gash in the center of the red spot that she had first noticed a couple of months before.
The spot one of the divers had called a “lover’s bite.” But as she was helped into the motorboat, she thought it must be adrenaline.

Thirteen oysters, three sea urchins. It was only the second time that she had come back early. The first, the day of the surrender.

Only a few more weeks left in the diving season, she thought, watching the foamy tail left behind by the motorboat. Kenichi had bought the boat that spring. She liked the rowboat much better. She wanted to cover her face now against the smell of the burning oil, but she was holding the towel against her arm, red seeping into it. She anticipated, waited for the pain to match the ugliness of the wound. Knew that it should hurt, knew this from past falls, past pains. And even before reaching the shore, she was readying her mind for the next day, when she would have to dive through the pain.

But the pain
never came. Traces of it near her wrist and up by the bicep, still that mysterious numbness on her forearm. She skipped the next two days of diving, fearing an infection, went to the sea on her bicycle, her older sister’s really, but she had awakened before her and taken it. Trouble when she returned home, but at that moment, the breeze from the sea off her face, through her short hair, grazing her underarms, the future, or the past, wasn’t in her thoughts.

When she arrived, she felt left out, not because they weren’t talking and laughing with her, but because they were all getting ready and the days of the diving season were few. Autumn was near; she could feel it in the air that morning. For her, the most difficult time was the first couple of weeks after diving season. No sea. Only out in the fields with her family, harvesting rice. Then winter. The sea too cold for even a visit. Six agonizing months. She hated winter—but despised autumn, for it preceded it, and she felt the harshness of December long before it ever got to her.

A lingering wasp from the remnants of summer. Her only company in that abandoned warehouse. Still some time before the knock at the door and the food was left outside. Sometimes a little note, sometimes only the thought of one; several times there had been a newspaper.

At first, she wasn’t sure whom she was hiding from— her family, the doctor, herself? Then, sometime in her first week there, she received a note from Miyako telling her that the police had been to see her. In those early days of hiding, she used to peek through the crack between the metal doors, watching, listening. Sometimes for hours. And when she would see Miyako coming, she’d place her palms against the door, waiting for the knock, and she would keep them there, clinging to the very last pulse that it left behind. Miyako would set the food on the ground, scurry off, not too fast so as to call attention to herself, not once glancing back at the warehouse, although she had imagined, knowing her, that it tortured Miyako not to do so.

Miyako began leaving the food in paper bags, not in a plastic lunch box like she had that first day. She was again at the door, peeking through the crack, when Miyako returned the second day. She stared in disbelief at the fear on the face of the strongest woman she knew, disbelief as she saw her go find a metal pipe and then use it to push the empty plastic lunch box away, pushing and pushing until she could no longer see her through the crack in the door. It was the only time that she allowed herself to cry, to feel some self-pity. After that, when she had finished eating, she rolled up the paper bags and tossed them into the corner of the warehouse.

Dear, sweet MiyaKo. She knew the day the doctor told her the news that if there was anyone she could tell, it was Miyako.

More than a month had passed since she had cut her arm; diving season had finished, a week into October. Then, the second spot on her lower back—that one, too, had no feeling. And the constant stuffy nose. She left her family to the rice harvesting and went the three miles into town to the doctor’s.

She had heard about the disease, how you should stay away from those people, how they were a burden to the country during the war. Filthy. Cursed. Should she fear herself? No, only that she had to tell her family. That, she didn’t even let herself think of, didn’t stop thinking of it. She didn’t know where to go. Her family still had most of that afternoon left in the fields. She had promised to be home to help. But what were promises at that time?