prologue

My father loved Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan. So here I am, Jane. But I’m nothing like Tarzan’s Jane. The thought of appearing in public in an animal skin sarong is so unappealing it actually makes me smile. He can’t have known that his baby girl would be a plain Jane.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bitter. I may have been upset by this as a girl, but now, in my 40s, it’s become an absolute asset in my new profession. Some private eyes need coats and glasses to become unmemorable. I don’t.

But this story isn’t really about me, it’s about another Jane and she, well, she was an artist, she was art. I’m not even sure she was beautiful, but she projected herself into the world with the allure of an Egyptian feline. She wrapped herself in animal skins and companioned herself with noble beasts, and her partner, Dick, I’d swear, was as much animal as man. She WAS Jane.

Her story became my fascination and my salvation, and now, my fate. It is still a fabric full of holes, stitched together from the shreds of her carefully camouflaged existence: bits that still cling to those people, things, and places she touched, remnants of stories captured in rare interviews, insights recorded by writers more perceptive than myself. I’m recording it here—what I’ve discovered, what I suspect—despite how crazy it seems.

I spent a good part of my life avoiding crises, imagining that I was living when I was really just waiting and watching. I existed in a self-imposed limbo, like an enormous mouthful of air held too long, and when I finally let it go I almost lost myself and the person I cared most about, was gone. I’m still repenting those years. No, I’m not talking about Jane, she’s not the one I lost. That’s another story. But Jane is part of it and I don’t want to lose any more parts. I’ve learned to follow my instincts. No more waiting. I am knitting myself into the picture of life, changing the pattern, adding a layer or two of my own.

I remember a lecture Jane once gave on synchronicity “there’s a larger body of existence, an ocean, that is both synchronous and timeless, if you can just run your hand overtop, you’ll be surprised what comes to the surface. Nothing really dies, it’s just lost in the layers. Open your eyes,” she laughed gently, like she’d just made an inside joke.

I can hear her voice now, that seductive, raspy, southern lilt of hers. She spoke, turned away from her audience. Standing alone on a dark stage, just her hallmark platinum wig, glowing, disembodied, above her audience. People who had never heard her speak made fun of Jane’s vanity, sure that her desire for anonymity was nothing more than a publicity stunt, building her mystique. I know the reasons now, I get the joke. I didn’t know exactly what she meant at the time, but her words brought me out of the depression that threatened to swallow me whole after my partner disappeared. I determined to run my hand over the surface and see what came up. Jane gave me a life. The least I can do now is write down what I’ve learned about hers.

Three Bears

Chapter I

Coming out of sleep, Jane tugged back at the tendrils of her dream as they fell away into her subconscious. The dream had been vivid. Passing through a dark forest, she road afloat a boat, incarnadine as the blood on MacBeth’s hands. Beacons of lurid green light cast liquid beams across her path, beckoning her to some distant shore. She felt no dread, just a sense of relief, as she saw three brightly coloured polar bears sniff at the edges of something that looked like a body bag. None of it seemed the least bit real, as if she was stepping through a collage of life—a magazine cut-and-paste replica. She rode along, Goldilocks, unmoved, as if immune to time: more the river than the rider, disengaged, both from the dream of life and the threat of its ending. The image of life completely separate from the “I” of life. Jane grabbed the notebook from next to her bed, sketching with broad strokes, but the colours, over-saturated and acidic, were lost to the pencil’s dull leaden transcription.

She began writing instead. A diary seemed like a good idea. Having lost her memory once she wasn’t planning to let that happen again.

“I’m on a fishing boat somewhere in the pacific. My companions speak almost no English or French. Our conversations look more like a game of pantomime. I gather that they pulled me out of the ocean somewhere off the coast of California. This boat is small, but still, they’ve given me a bed – tried to make me feel at home. People like to say fishermen are simple, but they seem like a smart bunch to me. I’m pretty sure they’re Chinese, and I’m pretty sure they’re fishing where they shouldn’t be. Their boat is a bottom trawler. I remember – funny what I do and don’t remember – some treaty in 2006 that put a stop to bottom trawling. Maybe I was an environmentalist or something, but I doubt it. Sure my saviours are unscrupulous, but they did save my life, so who am I to judge.

My clothes seem wrong, not what you’d expect for someone on a boating expedition of any sort, not sporty, definitely not cruise-wear. Leopard skin tights, black sweater, my hair is white and cropped short. I have a feeling that I should have a wig on… whatever boat they pulled me out of, sank with any evidence it might have had of who I was, or where I was going. I still can’t remember my name.

I look myself over, playing Sherlock, what can I tell about myself. Age, I’d guess 30ish, but somehow I feel older: there’s too much experience in my hands. I’m trim, I have a decent body, my heart feels strong. There’s something terribly wrong with my knees. There’s been surgery, but it looks well healed. I have a good tan, not tan lines – well I guess I’m not shy. I don’t have a manicure. my clothes aren’t home made and they’re not designer so I guess I’m middle class. how disappointing. The labels are English and French, my top says Made in Canada / Fabriqué au Canada. Apparently I read both, but when I talk I’d swear the accent is a bit Southern US. My teeth are good but stained. Maybe I used to smoke, but I have no cravings when the men are smoking so I must have given that up a long time ago though I have to say, the smoke helps cover the smell of fish, for which I’m very grateful. I think my toenails were painted so I’m guessing I’m a little vain. Correction, I think I’m very vain, because, though I can’t really see any reason for it, I have a sense that I’m incredibly important and I get the feeling that my Chinese friends feel the same way about me, they’re practically deferential…

I’m not the least bit seasick despite the waves that often roll to frightening heights and spill across the deck with frightful sprays. The sea makes me feel alive, enervated. I adore the sound of the gulls screeching above us, ecstatic as the men throw the offal of freshly cleaned fish over the side, the sharp salt sting in the wind and the snap of my hair (which has been growing, thick and silky blond) against my cheeks. Above decks I don’t feel the oppression of my own empty head, the missing pieces pressing against the sides of my skull, begging for release. I’m uncomfortable with the boat’s interior, the relentless thrumming of the engine is maddening at times, and everything is a bit low for me. I’m fairly tall, 5 foot 10 or so, which makes me effectively useless in the galley where I’d imagined being helpful. I found myself at a complete loss there, unfamiliar with both the types of food I found on the shelves and the utensils hanging from the low ceiling, the labels were no help either. After a week or so I could heat up soup, use the rice cooker and brew and excellent tea, but that was all. Hardly enough to compensate for my mongo presence in this tiny and crucial space.

On an extremely petty note, I’m also uncomfortable with the boat’s interior design and feel compelled to do something about it, so maybe I’m an interior designer living in Canada but born in the Southern US – no, that’s not right. there’s a bump on my head, they’ve given me something foul to drink for the pain. The truth is swimming just outside my consciousness, I feel it, dark, slick, flicking in and out of site, a barracuda waiting for its chance. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I’d swear I have the head of a large, pensive rodent. must be that bump.

I Arrive in Town

Chapter II

My tires swerved across the muddy roads, rain coursing across my windshield, I thought bitterly of the low flow shower at my hotel. I was always a bad driver. Here, now, in this storm, on these miserably twisted mountain roads I was so tense my fingers shone white where I gripped the wheel, bone working its way to the surface. Lightening blazed again. Nothing! No road signs. Great shadowy cedars and spiky, unhealthy looking pines that leaned across each other like overcrowded prisoners of war, lined the sides of the road. The wind was picking up the brittle branches of this anorexic forest and tossing them across my windshield. I couldn’t help feeling a little unwelcome.

Another fantastic flash. Lit like a rat caught in a crawl space stood the most outrageous creature I’d ever seen. She was amazing, definitely a she, the size of a starving polar bear, she looked like the unholy offspring of a super model from the seventies and a Sasquatch. Her eyes glowed unnaturally in my headlights, impossible dolly blue, soulful and inhuman they seemed to reflect back every misplaced hope and every disappointed love I’d ever known or imagined. Before I could break she had bounded across the road and perched, delicately angled, on the pitched roof of an old shed.

I knew it was a wolf hound but what was she doing here at this end of nowhere, middle of nothing much, place with her obvious breeding. I pulled to the side of the road and put my GPS back on, listening to the comforting inanity of the computer voice assuring me that I was a mere kilometer and a half from my destination.

I’d travelled through a lot of small towns, worked a lot of different cases. But I felt like things were going to be different this time. The air here felt different, it crackled with energy. Despite the hour, despite the rain, my instincts were telling me I needed to follow the great dog. I looked around, trying to find her in the rain and the mist that rose up from the warm pavement but she was lost in the wildly undulating shadows.

I made a note of my location. I’d try and come back tomorrow. Could this have anything to do with my case? Doubtful, but there it was. How could I ignore a sign that obvious.

The rain was starting to let up, thank god, but I was feeling shaky. I needed a shot of practicality to get me back on track. I pulled an energy bar and a bottle of water out of my bag and read a little of one of Sue Grafton’s excellent procedurals. I’d learned more than I cared to admit from her minutely detailed descriptions of detective life. Granted, she seemed to function in a world before computers which I couldn’t quite see working for me. But I liked the plodding rhythm she maintained, unshakeable, humane, and filled with common sense and comfortingly dull mundanities. Everything I aspired to and pretty much failed to maintain.

I seem to run on a different fuel, connections happened in bursts. I go into a situation and pull as much information together as I can. But where I should be following a series of logical steps, one leading to the other, my information generally wallows in a morass of confusion until suddenly, it doesn’t.

I’d tried keeping diaries of conversations, religiously recording my thoughts and observations at the end of the day. I guess I’m too much of an agnostic to be religious about anything. Atheist is too extreme. I never count anything out. After all, most of my cases have come together in dreams.

In the beginning, every time I’d take a case, I felt like a fraud because I didn’t really have a vision for how I’d get to the other end. I just did, somehow. I’ve come to accept that, like it or not, I function best on a subconscious level. I imagine myself tapping into the Jungian world-mind, part of a tangle of threads interconnected through time and space, riding on gravitational waves as they warp their way through dark matter—a place where nothing—no thing, no thought, no sensation, or emotion—is ever lost. Whether or not anyone ever finds a WIMP, the world is grounded in symmetrical terms: we see it, hear it, feel it, live it and when it fails to manifest, I can’t help but wonder and investigate… Every connection is already out there. I pull a string in one direction, and an answer comes rushing at me from the other. I’ve learned not to ignore my instincts or dismiss coincidence. The great hound I’d just seen was no accident.

Here, in this place, in this storm, I felt the strings already pulling at me and I hadn’t even begun. There’s something strong here, something that wants my attention and wants it badly.

I pulled back onto the road, still munching what would probably be my dinner. “Jane, what have you gotten yourself into…”

M in Hong Kong

Chapter III

M arrived in Hong Kong – the airport express – a short, fast ride into town. The technology was unbelievable, their confidence was boosted. The doctors here would be able to deliver on the promises they’d given them (until it was done ‘he AND she’, is how they thought of themself). They gripped the thick sheaf of correspondence-the labour of 13 long, tortured months of interviews, blood tests, more tests, counseling, psychological evaluation and hormone therapy. They were lucky, they were healthy, young, they only needed a little surgery, they were slim, fine boned and didn’t grow much body hair even before the hormones. Cosmetic surgery would be minimal, just a little breast enhancement. They were nervous about the bottom. It would hurt, they knew it, but they weren’t shy of pain. Other things were so much worse. They ran a hand over their hair, pleased with its smooth length, red for now, red for change. Self-consciously, M crossed their legs and smoothed their skirt again. They knew their makeup was perfect. The effect was stunning. They looked the part of a Hitchcock heroine. Internally they sighed. Soon it wouldn’t be a lie, it would be real and everything would feel right and all the things they’d done to be here at this moment would be justified – or at least, worth it. Canada was far away, their past, here they could begin again, a renewed person in a renewed world, beautiful, right. The flight had left them fatigued, brown and dull as a sparrow, but as they thought of their future and felt the tang of this ultra-modern, fast-paced city, their confidence expanded, the peacock spread its tail, colours shimmered again.

It hadn’t mattered so much as a child. M’s tastes and interests weren’t too out of the ordinary. They’d liked dolls a little too much for his father’s taste.

“Myron, don’t play with those things, people will think you’re a sissy.”

M flinched reflexively, remembering their father towering over them, eyes ablaze with anger and hurt, hand ready to fly out. But his mother insisted it would make Myron a better father one day. The dolls stayed and father was mollified by Myron’s ‘appropriate’ curiosity in trains and geography. Things were OK until female classmates began to develop breasts and they could have cared less.

When the first hairs appeared above their lips and under their chin it was as if some disease had taken hold and in the privacy of their bedroom they plucked and tortured away the evidence of their gender. They’d begun to practice in their room, taking their mother’s make up. Goth was an easy 1st step. The parents didn’t like it, but they didn’t worry, it was a NORMAL rebellion. They didn’t like their changing their name to M either. That was harder to take, but again, they figured they would realize their mistake once they had to find a job in the “REAL WORLD.” They’d watched old movies: Lana Turner, Lauren Bacall, Olivia de Havilland were their heroes, but Jane Wyman was their model. They wanted to be Jane, beautiful, strong, confident, everything they weren’t. They taught themselves to emulate her: hair, makeup, looks and mannerisms.

They kept their secret for a long time, but the mannerisms they emulated became second nature. They started to slip up. The doctor visits started, first the GP, then the clinical psychologist, special summer camps with themes designed to make a MAN out of them: hiking, shooting, survival skills. Then there were the drugs: testosterone, lithium, Ritalin – anything the doctors and parents could think of.

One day it slipped, they caught their parents talking when they thought they were out.

“I don’t blame you, not totally, some of it must come from his DNA”

“what do you mean?”

“you remember what Sister Agathe said, twins should really be together, he had a sister. I read a paper on twins, it’s not like regular siblings, they’re connected in a way we can’t imagine, even if you raise them apart, they’re still, sort of, the same.”

“I thought that was just identical twins?”

“we don’t know, maybe they were?”

“no way, boy and girl, it’s not possible”

“I looked that up too, its really rare, but it’s possible. something with the chromosomes after the egg splits”
“you think we should have taken them both” “no, no, we did the right thing, it would just have been twice the trouble, beside, she’s probably dead. She was so sickly. At least Myron never knew her, never had to loose her.”

“well it’s too late now, it doesn’t matter anymore, we have enough to worry about”

“enough, yes, enough”

“a cup of tea?”

“yes, before he gets home, we need to calm down, Myron shouldn’t see us like this.”

“You mean M, he wants us to call him M now, remember.

“Not even his name is good enough for him any more.”

M never asked them about it. They loved their mother, she’d always stood up for them. Even their dad, they really tried to help them. They just didn’t get them. Things made sense now, sort of, it was a relief. Of course they didn’t understand them. They weren’t their real parents. Memories started coming back, dreams first, then flashes during the day. The other “I” in their life, their inseparable other, they felt the hole on the other side of their heart, touching their flat chest and missing, as always what they were sure should be there, that softness, that other. Their twin. And now they knew, they should have been a girl, like her.

They got smart, learned to pretend. They just needed to wait till they could get away from their parents, get a job, their own place. Their first university art class was a revelation. The weirder the better – in the midst of manic depressives, ego-maniacs, rebels, and just plain free thinkers – they were home. Not particularly ambitious, they fell easily into the role of assistant, a technical wiz. Their years with electric trains and model making, learning make-up, hair and costume, it was all paying off. Artists had great ideas, but it was rare they actually had the skills to pull them off. They added photography and computer graphics to their list of skills and pretty soon they had all the work they could handle, their own apartment, and a list of clients they could pick-and-choose from. Still, they weren’t exactly happy. Then along came Jane and everything got better, clearer, cleaner. At first, it had been great. They’d loved working for Jane. When Jane offered them a full time position, working and living at the studio in Val-David, they were ecstatic.

The train came to a screeching halt. It was a short taxi ride to the TGR, the Transgender Resource Center in Hong Kong—a short taxi ride, but a long journey. Long before California, M had confessed their desire for gender reassignment to Dick. He was so sympathetic, so encouraging: he’d helped them realize how positive it would be to have gender confirming surgery rather than continue a life lived in confusion, their own and others. Jane was so busy and seemed further and further away, but Dick really understood them, really appreciated them, who they were, their art, their work. Jane didn’t know how lucky she was to have Dick. Dick helped them get ready for medical management and psychiatric assessment, coordinating with WPATH (they liked to think of it as the WarPath) to get their paperwork together, covering for them with Jane when they needed to make an appointment or had to pick up medication for hormone therapy.

M hadn’t been comfortable with the Human Sexuality Unit at the Montréal General. The name alone was so generic and insensitive. After California, Dick pointed out that in Hong Kong, M would be in the perfect place take up where Jane had left off, to complete her plan for “Jane in China.” He’d paid for everything. M had no idea where all that money came from. Didn’t want to know, really. He’d filled in paperwork, found the right doctors, he’d even taken M shopping for a whole new wardrobe. M loved the fact that their transition period would take place among people who didn’t know them. When they returned to Canada, they would be someone new. There would be no connection between M and the new Jane. Gripping a bulky folder with all the documentation they needed, including their new name, Miss Jane Peacock, they walked with a new found assurance, high heels clicking a happy beat on the pavement.

A crow perched just above the door, peering down with knowing eyes. They stumbled. How could they have forgotten, it must have been the flight, the fatigue, Jane, what had they done, how COULD they have. No no, it was an accident, Dick SAID it was an accident. They pushed the darkness down and took another determined step forward. After everything they’d been through, they deserved to be happy! They’d make it right. They’d become Jane, finish what Jane had begun. They just knew that’s what Jane would have wanted. And they could make Dick happy too. They felt a flush of longing. He’d been so great. So supportive, they’d never known a feeling like that before. They knew it must be love, Dick must love them so much, to wait for them. For just a moment they closed their eyes, seeing Dick, standing in the garden like a great brown bear, a broad smile on hi face, his arms spread wide in welcome. A cloud passed over, the daydream darkened and M, reopening their eyes, stepped across the threshold into a new existence.

Bed & Breakfast

Chapter IV

The morning began, full of promise. I woke to the unfamiliar sound of birds and the air was fresh. I don’t mean the canned fresh of laundry detergent or the country fresh of cow dung. Fresh, as only the air of living a forest can be-with air newly exhaled and still tasting of chlorophyl. The room was cold. I pulled an inadequate blanket as close to me as I could. Maybe I’d skip a shower this morning. I decided to spend some time in bed rewinding the events of the previous day.

The storm had come to a sudden stop around midnight as I pulled up the drive of a little B & B I’d found online. Norman Bates would have been right at home. At least there were no ruffles or complimentary crocheted hangers. I’d been on the road for days, working a case that had gone suddenly cold when I reached the unlikely town of St-Jerome, Québec. It was a simple case, “find my biological mother,” the kind of case I only take when I’ve run out of cash. The poor bastard was desperate, one of those people sure that biology would explain every damn thing that had gone wrong in their life – as if it wasn’t their own decisions that put them where they are. I was sure he’d keep paying.

I’d followed the trail from St. Jerome to Val-David, a sweet little resort town full of artists, smart self-reliant people who wanted to live well despite their minimal incomes. I was sitting in a coffee shop—even the little dives here have good coffee—considering my options. Go home and tell the client his case was a dead end or just keep going.

Procrastinating, I picked up a local paper. Flipping through the pages, my own name caught my attention. Like walking past my own grave stone, there it was “Jane’s body found at the bottom of Val-David construction site.” Something twigged. Could it be the same Jane? I remembered. It had been a couple of years ago. I’d been in Carolina, visiting my mother.

Read the Story of Jane’s Death in Newspaper >

She knew how down I was and reminded me how much I used to get out of my art classes, “there’s a show on at the Contemporary” the artist’s name is Jane too (as if that mattered), why not go see it. Don’t sit around here, you’re making me nervous…”

So I went, and it was amazing, SHE was amazing. Her lecture on her Spirit Figures series for the 1980s and the impact of the art of the Otomi and Chichimec people on her early work was fascinating. She spoke about transformation, the Otomi’s shamanistic belief in Nagualism—the ability of some to transform in to animals and back again, treading between planes of reality, assisting change. “Don’t dismiss these beliefs too lightly,” she said intently as if remembering something far away. I knew better, seeing the theatrics of it all, but still, it sent a shiver down my spine. I wandered around the gallery after that, a retrospective of her work, which seemed weird considering how young she was.

Where did she find the time for all this, how had she made all this work, wandered around Canada and France with Riopelle, painted murals and been a beauty queen in Forano, Italy, written an autobiography, fostered and attended political rallies, married, divorced and married again, lived with the shamans of the Otomi people, started her own printing studio, helped to found Atelier de L’ile, and still found time to teach and nurture a generation of students, and have passels of beloved freinds and colleagues, all in the time it had taken me to go from desultory wife to grieving widow without finding a single satisfactory avocation, never mind a fulfilling vocation. Even if she just LOOKED young, it seemed like more than anyone could pack into a lifetime.

But it was her work that really got to me. Her work was life affirming, mysterious, connected to a bigger picture I wanted to be part of, wanted to understand. The little red boat, the same colour as the one I’d failed to get on, the one my husband had carefully painted my name on, before he tipped over into madness. It was as if it was me, riding in that boat, a second chance. Like life was just a big question waiting for an answer. It was a sign to get on with my life. It changed things for me, set me on my present course. P.I. a real Dick. I liked that, Jane the Dick. Yah, I know. Maybe you had to have grown up learning to read from the Dick and Jane readers to get the joke. Or maybe my sense of humour, like my singing voice, isn’t as great as I think it is.
But now I can’t get this story out of my mind.

First, there’s the dog! it has to be the same one.

I googled the body’s location, but all I can see is pixelated trees, it’s not exactly a hotspot, I couldn’t even tell if there was a construction site or a pit of any kind, but just at the edge of the map I notice the word “atelier.” I drag and shift and sure enough I’ve found my way to what was once Jane’s studio, Atelier Scarabée. Standing at the front of the building now is a great menacing sculpture—metal, moss, and bark—of a bear and an enormous dog. My dog, the one from the other night.

She’s supposed to have been killed by some sort of doppelgänger making a living off “interpretations” of her work in China. How could anyone pull that off. Then it began to make sense. Jane had worked so hard at her anonymity, it WOULD be incredibly difficult to to know if you were dealing with the real Jane or not. Identity theft happened all the time, hell, even I have a clause in my house insurance for it.

Still, not only would they have to look like her, they’d have to know her work and be able to reproduce it, have all her connections and what about the money end of things.

I’d seen some of her China series. It was good, at first it seemed a little out of character—the other series had been all about identity: where she came from—and this was China and what did it have to do with anything. But then I’d realized, once you’ve covered your past, where is there to go but forward. I thought it was a great commentary on the creation of identity as a western artist, the impact of Orientalism and effects of traveling on artistic style. It didn’t have the power of the earlier series, it just wasn’t personal enough. But still, I loved it, it was beautiful, and mysterious. There was something different about the way things were shot, more symmetrical, more static. Again, I’d assumed it was intentional. I imagined she was emphasizing her own incongruity with the landscape. Now I wondered if there wasn’t a bit of shame in the head that was turned away. If I was looking for suspects, I would be looking close to Jane’s home, real close.

Her neighbors comments were weird too. Why would the doppelgänger stay in Jane’s Montreal apartment where people might recognize her, and give PARTIES. That really was odd. I’d have to talk to them myself (dutifully I jotted down in my notebook -Visit Jane’s Montreal apartment). I wanted to see the files from Sureté Québec (VISIT POLICE), whom did they think this doppelgänger was, how’d they come up with a theory like that? (TIMELINE) That’s when I realized I’d taken on a new case.

Jane on the Ocean

Chapter V

I began to find a rhythm on the boat. The men seem to like me. I’m a good listener even though, or maybe because, I only understand one word in 20. During the first days, after I woke up I was in a daze. My body ached, my head hurt. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t find a core “me.” The water helped I think. I didn’t suffer any kind of sea sickness, just a sort of mental nausea. The sea itself was calming. Looking over the waves, completely without reference, I heard a soft furry voice singing to me “…my Bonnie lies over the ocean.” I had no idea whose voice it was, but it was amazingly comforting.

Certain things about my hosts were becoming clear. They weren’t exactly fishing where they should be. They avoided other boats. In the days just after I came aboard there were many low-toned conversations and glances in my direction. Not everything they were carrying was their own catch either. The holds were filled with lobster, shark fin, and a few boxes they kept carefully nailed shut. Sometimes other boats would come alongside and exchanges were made at which time I was hustled quickly out of site. Clearly they were trying to figure out what to do with me. I’m pretty sure the one I think of as half-brow was in favour of throwing me overboard. But after a while, when it was clear I really didn’t know who I was and they started to bring in boat-fulls of spiny red-brown lobster, I got the impression they were beginning to think of me as a some sort of good luck angel.

We started to communicate with pictures. I discovered I was better than good at drawing. The men made a game of it in the evenings. I’d draw and they’d tell me the word in Chinese and write the name beside the picture. At this point I’d practically created an encyclopedia. They didn’t exactly have a lot of materials on board but they did keep good accounts of their hauls. Though the lobster were their main haul. They took wonderful prints off the fish they caught to create accurate tallies of the types they hauled in. I gathered that at least some of these men were illiterate. I began to fit in. Wanting to be useful, I took over the printing and counting, freeing them to haul and gut and freeze. It all felt strangely familiar. I found the galley and tried my hand at cooking. I wasn’t great but I could prep and that too was appreciated.

I learned the names of the men or at least, their nick-names. Though they seemed to trust me I think it was just policy not to use real names on a pirate boat. At first they called me Yùnqì (pronounced Yunchi) which I think meant something like, the saved one, but when the lobster started coming in, it switched to Tianshi (which means angel but I liked it because it sounded like tea-and-shoe which always made me laugh). Anyway, it felt good to have a name. Early on they’d given me a notebook so I could at least draw what I needed to communicate. I had started a calendar for myself, 4 months passed quickly. Maybe I was a quick study. Maybe my brain was so vacant that there was plenty of room for learning. but it took very little time for me to be able to understand quite a bit of what was said to me. Finally I could ask the big questions. Where had they found me? Where were we going? How much longer before we went home? where was home?

Oddly, I wasn’t particularly eager to get “home.” I enjoyed this pirate life. I was learning, absorbing a new reality. I enjoyed my companions. I felt no pressure. In fact, I had an odd sense of relief, as if I’d left something terrible behind. I felt a great synchronicity with myself, the constant movement of the boat, the air and the simple joy of physical labour. The bump on my head was long gone. Daifu (which I think was an equivalent of doctor), an older man with kind eyes and a gentle touch who did all the ship’s first aid, was amazed at how quickly I healed. The scars on my legs had faded too. It was as if someone had rebooted my program. I was getting younger, not older, on this boat. the phrase “sea air” kept popping up, but for the life of me I couldn’t put a finger on where it was from.