The Different Girl

bird.
    With May it was more difficult to make observations because May never wanted to make them and, instead of making them, wanted to talk. We wanted to talk, too, but we also wanted to please Irene, so walking with May became like my visit to the dock, where I had two tasks and no rules to choose between them except my own.
    Part of me—like a coconut sent rolling down a hill—had been thinking about this problem ever since Robbert had made a point of asking me why . I knew that I hadn’t known there were two tasks—the second task, my own desire, had just appeared, and somehow I had made it more important. I could be surprised by thoughts I didn’t expect, because the world was more than school. May was proof enough of that—or, even more, proof that our real school was the world.
    • • •
    I stood in the woods with Isobel and May. Isobel and I were comparing the stiff plates of palm bark with the spiny leaves, needle-tipped and edged with tiny teeth. May wasn’t interested at all. While we squatted, she glanced back at Irene.
    “What is she doing?”
    Irene was studying another palm trunk with Caroline and Eleanor.
    “With Robbert ,” May said, interrupting me before I could say.
    “Robbert isn’t here,” said Isobel.
    May blew air through her nose. “You said there was a plane crash. Where did the plane come from? Where was it going? Who else was there?”
    “Our parents,” I said.
    “Who were your parents?” asked May.
    “Mothers and fathers who loved us,” said Isobel. May shook her head impatiently.
    “What kind of people ? What did they swear to? Where did they live? Why were they leaving? Who has a plane? There isn’t any place for a plane to land on this island. How did you get here ?”
    Isobel and I both stood. I tried to remember what Robbert and Irene had told us.
    “Where they came from it rained all the time,” I said. “And it was cold, and they wanted to live with the sun shining, where it was dry.”
    “What is ‘swear to’?” asked Isobel.
    May pursed her lips. “That’s everything .”
    “Our parents are the kind of people who speak just like us,” Isobel told May. “You speak differently.”
    “So do you,” May replied.
    “We don’t.”
    “Well you sound different.”
    “Did Uncle Will and Cat speak like you?” asked Isobel. “Did they say ‘ black sand’ or ‘ blok tsand’ ?”
    May frowned at how perfectly Isobel had imitated her sounds. Then she shook her head and laughed, but it was a short laugh and she crossed both arms over her chest. She nodded at Irene.
    “They don’t talk like anyone I’ve ever met,” she said.
    “You don’t talk like anyone we’ve met either,” I told her.
    “But I talk like more people than you,” May said.
    “What people?” asked Isobel.
    “Everyone.”
    “But you don’t know everyone. You lived on a boat. You didn’t go to any school.”
    Irene called for us to join them. We each took May’s hand on the way, careful not to pinch. “I didn’t is right,” she whispered. “And that’s why I know .”
    • • •
    Robbert would be waiting in the kitchen when we returned, and all during lunch he and Irene would ask us questions. At first May would answer with us, even though her answers were as if she had taken a different walk than the rest of us. Soon May stopped answering and just watched from the corner.
    We were also back to taking naps. After lunch Irene would put the four of us down for a nap. There wasn’t a cot for May, so she went back to the classroom; we would wave good-bye as Robbert took her down the steps. When we woke up there would be more class and then another walk, depending on how long the nap had been. May wasn’t there when we woke up, but she would join us on the walk, except for the third day of our new routine.
    We had gone to the dock with Robbert, but he hadn’t assigned any question in particular. Instead we all just stood at the end of the path, looking out. Then he asked, “Okay now, what do you see?”
    Everyone saw lots of things. We all began to answer and he held up his hands. “No— stop —what do you see now ? What do you see that you didn’t ?”
    This was more of a puzzle, and so we looked around very intently. Little by little our observations drew us onto the dock itself, though we kept to the middle. I remembered about light going through water. I crouched and pressed my face to a gap between two planks, lengthwise so both eyes could see. I could