Girl was reading a book in the sunshine, leaning back against the wall of the cabin while Father steered. Brother was reading too, on the other side of the cockpit, but he was reading a Star Wars book and hers was about John Paul Jones and old sea battles. The wind carried a whiff of ammonia.
“We must be near a sea lion island,” Girl said.
“I think it’s that rock,” Father said, pointing to a tiny speck out in the distance. Father was farsighted and decades of scanning the waves had honed his vision to be considerably sharper than Girl’s.
“How far away are they?”
“A few miles, I expect,” Father said.
Pretty soon the wind brought the baritone barks of the animals to the Ghost, though they were still too far away to visually differentiate from the rock they occupied.
As they approached the island, Girl climbed around the sail to the foredeck. The stench of ammonia and animal feces was overpowering, but Girl liked sea lions anyway. They looked like big, huggable dogs. The creatures lay shoulder to shoulder, squirming on top of each other like a writhing heap of worms, but loud, barking worms that shat on each other with undignified abandon. Their rank smell made her glad when their island receded into the distance.
One night the waves broke hard against the sides of the Ghost, clouds thick and angry enough to block the light from the skies. Alaska summers were never dark, but Girl didn’t notice the significance at the time. Girl lived most of the year in the predictable light patterns of New York, so she had forgotten than night didn’t render you blind here. Years later, Girl realized that the darkness of the storm meant that it had been a big one.
Brother was below deck, sleeping, or trying to, even though Father had said they needed to alternate standing watch with him all night. They had a brass bosun’s clock that chimed off the day into four-hour watches, but they had never used it to run shifts. Instead, they took turns at the helm based on tiredness or boredom. Now, though, Father said that they needed to stand watches all night through the storm. They were the only crew he had, and it didn’t matter how young they were. He had trained the children from the kids who cried in frustration trying to fight down the sails into small, hardened sailors who could scuttle around the deck like a pirate’s trained monkeys. They would rise to the challenge. Brother and Girl didn’t like the idea of staying up all night, but Father said it was too rough to anchor and not safe for one person to pilot the boat all alone. Girl either volunteered to take the first shift or was ordered to. Father had softer expectations for Brother and he was always allowed to choose first when they divvied up chores or dinner. Father had been raised in a house of women with a domineering mother and two older sisters. His father had been off fighting in World War II for much of his childhood, leaving Father the only male. Father had sired four children, but Brother was the boy he had longed for his whole life. It didn’t matter that Girl was braver, or faster with the right answer, or willing to eat dog biscuits to amuse him. No matter how hard Girl tried, Girl could never be his second son. She didn’t see then that Brother spent most of the year in a house with two lesbian parents and a competitive, bossy sister, and that maybe he needed to be cherished just for being who he was—a boy. Maybe Father was trying to save Brother from growing up just like he had. All Girl knew back then was that there was never enough time and attention from any of their parents to go around, and with her father Girl could never be good enough to merit his full affection, just because she was born female.
Taking first shift in the storm gave her Father’s undivided attention, though, so Girl didn’t mind. Girl sat curled up in the cockpit watching Father pilot the boat in his black survival suit, worn in case he went overboard into the glacier-filled sea. Girl wanted a suit of her own, but Father said they only came in grown-up sizes, and it wasn’t like Girl was ever in danger of going overboard. The detachable autopilot was overwhelmed by the power of the storm, so he couldn’t let go of the tiller even for a minute. Girl wore the lifejacket Father had apologetically handed her. They both knew Girl
