Yes. Yes, that. That is what it felt like when he saw me.
I was standing on the shore, waiting for one more day to arrive, the day that everyone would leave and the island would be mine. The bamboo-like rushes were rotting underfoot, and the juniper behind me scented the wind with its spicy notes. Grebes flew overhead, too smart to stay near me. I could feel the eagerness of the boats, wanting to get away and dock for the winter, to be safe. I knew my father paced inside our home. Anxious to leave me alone. Frightened to leave me alone.
Standing on the shore, I let the icy lake water seep into my shoes, weighing me down. I watched the passenger boat pass by, the last one that would bring anyone onto the island. And I thought, Soon. Soon, you’ll all go far away. You don’t want to be here when November comes.
But this boy saw me.
No one ever sees me.
Run, Anda.
I listened to her voice and ran away, terrified.
...
The next day, I sit on the floor of our small cottage, cradling the cracked weather radio in my lap. I’m impatient, fumbling with the tuning knob. Words stutter and struggle for clarity between bouts of static. Finally, I hear the automated woman’s voice from the NOAA station consistently, a beacon from the battered machine.
Southwest winds ten to fifteen knots
Cloudy with a 90 percent chance of rain after midnight
I close my eyes and listen to the drumming of the truth. The rain is coming. I feel it beneath my skin and on the tip of my tongue, like a word ready to be spoken. No matter what time of the day, the words from NOAA are a comfort. They may be robotic recordings, but they’re slaves to the wind and temperature, just as I am. With the radio on, I am not alone.
Areas of fog in the morning
Waves two to three feet
“Anda. You know where the spare batteries are, don’t you?” My father’s heavy steps creak the oak floorboards. He’s pushing aside a pile of driftwood I’ve left in the middle of the kitchen floor, trying to open the cabinet by the stove. He shakes the box of batteries at me, and when I don’t respond, he puts them back with a sigh.
I say nothing, because the weather service is buzzing in my head, and there’s a warning laced in there.
Pressure is dropping rapidly
“Anda. My boat leaves soon.” He strides over to where I’m sitting by the fireplace. He wishes he could come closer, but he won’t. It’s October. He’s sensed the seasonal change that already sank its claws into me when the fall temperature fell. I push a lock of hair out of my face, and static crackles the ends of my strands. I’ll have to cut it again soon.
My legs are crossed, and I’m still in my nightgown. His boots stand a precise three feet away. If I looked closer, I’d see the worn leather become jean-covered legs, then a thin and carved-out torso, as if a stiff wind had permanently bent his back years ago. He’d be unshaven and his white hair mixed with brown and occasional copper, like the agate I found broken on the lakeshore only days ago.
“Anda.” There’s a slight strain in his voice. Perhaps he’s getting pharyngitis. “It’s time for me to go.” He seems to be waiting for something.
The voice on the radio fades into static again. I fiddle with the antennae, but the radio is telling me it’s tired of talking, that I need to go. My father takes his coat down from the wall peg. A suitcase and backpack sit by the door, ready to flee the cottage. If the door were open, I imagine they’d tumble down the gravel road just to get away from me.
The air inside the cabin has grown stifling. The cabin’s telling me to get out, too. I get up and put on my rain parka, then shove my bare feet into a pair of duck boots. Father stares at my eyelet nightgown, coat, and boots with bare ankles above, hair still messy from a restless night. Asleep, I’d seen brown skin and knowing brown eyes from a face on the ferry staring me down all night. I only escaped when I woke up.
Father picks up the suitcase and opens the door. I grab his backpack. There is a tag printed with a name, SELKIRK, in permanent ink that’s smudged nevertheless. I study it for a moment, and then my eyebrows rise. Oh. Selkirk. That is our name, isn’t it? I slip my arms through the straps and wear it backward so my arms can support the bulk of it. He watches me waddle down the stone steps and shakes his head but says nothing.
He doesn’t need to tell me that there are civilized ways to dress, or to say good-bye to your father. Before he leaves you, secretly, on an island so inhospitable that everyone abandons it when autumn hits, an uppercut that won’t be dodged. We have been through this before. Arguments don’t work when one side is a tidal force that has no basis in rational thought.
I can’t remember the last time I lost an argument. He knows what happens when I don’t get my way.
My nature upsets him. No, “upset” is the wrong word. Fracture, rend. That is what happens to Father. So when November arrives, when the strength of the weather resonates with my need more than any other time, that is when he leaves. I am more dulcet the rest of the year, but it is not easy. Birth and growth are sweet to him and everyone else, but not for me. I do what I can to draw from what death occurs in the broad summer, but it’s scant. I’ve given up on explaining it all to Father, and instead, I wait for November for my time to renew myself.
Not everyone is happy with this arrangement.
It’s a mile-long walk to the dock. Since there are no roads on the island, we take a wooded hiking trail through ghostly paper birch trees and balsam fir that lend their spice to the air. Any tourists have long since left, and we pass a campground that’s quiet but for a few seagulls pecking about the footprints of the departed.
As we crunch along the path, my father polishes his glasses and rattles off a list of things he must tell me. “There’s enough fuel for the kerosene heater if you keep it on low. I’ve left food in the pantry to last until I come back in early December. There’s a pot of that homemade strawberry jam that you like so much.”
“I like strawberry jam?” I ask him.
Father stops walking. His sorrowful eyebrows sag above his eyes. And then I realize, I’ve already forgotten, haven’t I? Parts of me—the human slices of what I am—are already fading. They have been fading more than ever these last few years. This saddens him.
“Yes. You like—you used to like it.” He clears his throat. “Anyway, Jimmy will drive me over in his boat in December. The first aid kit is fully stocked. Try to be frugal about the batteries, if you can…”