Floating Island
In the middle of the lake, our dock floats. Every morning, I check the buoy and boats sewn onto the dock’s railings. Sometimes the wind or rain storms tear the rope and strings of plastic that keep the island together. My mother is also awake during this time, usually boiling water, killing flies, and preparing breakfast. When I start my chores, my father is usually asleep, so I am quiet. When we speak, we do so in whispers, eyes, and lips. My family has always been in the habit of pointing with them.
It was harder to whisper as a baby. My mother told me I would cry over anything and only wanted the freshest food. I look over to her now. She wipes down the window. The glass is from a picture frame my father cut and placed into our home. The frame is coated in gold paint, molded to the wall. She moves further into the background until I can only see her ear. As a child, I listened closely to my parents. Now, I can’t help myself. I see cracks in their logic and faults in their actions. Usually, I feel stronger after I state these observations out loud.
Okay, okay. You’re the perfect one, my mother would say often. Magaling is the word she uses. After she scolds me, I would feel some sort of guilt or shame. They tell me this frustration is temporary. It comes with this age. After, they promise, my mind will mature and everything will seem less intense. It is a difficult habit to break. I suppose this is why they repeat the same lessons back to me.
I have always been lazy. It is the routine that stops me from laying in my cot all day to nap and read, but my parents are restless with their work. They are under the idea that we are in a streak of rain and that sunny days will come. This is the kind of backward thinking that hangs around them. It is not the weather that is the problem, but rather the irreparable climate. I say, we enjoy ourselves under this gray sky while we have the time. There is more to life than checking cords and standing guard at home.
Every time we met someone else, we were in danger. In the olden days, it was easier to meet people. You did not worry about how much more they had from you, or if they were planning to kill you and take all of your things. My mother often warns me of men who take a lot more. Men who take women. She would always describe her interactions with them. I know the stories as if they were my own. Last year, she told me a really bad one. Years before that, she told me of Little Riding Hood. I suppose with less people it is easier to feel control over the way of things. Sometimes, they talk of the world as it was, how it should be and leave out the reasonings of now. There were systems in place and people to help. Paperwork to be sorted, filled, forgotten about, and reminded of. On the topic of men taking women, my mom wished their temptations were something to be controlled with medicine and put down. My father only shakes his head in agreement. My parents know of the world, of its pieces. It is their game, among themselves, to move the pieces around. I can only imagine and nod along with my father. Later this year, she will tell me the worst of her stories.
In my mother’s backpack, there is a plastic satchel with a zipper. Inside, there is a sheet of the softest paper protected in a folder. It is so delicate. I am afraid it might melt into my hands. She tells me this is her birth certificate. She was born in a hospital in the Philippines. In Angono, she says. The paper details her birth date, birth time, weight, and parents. She was like me, with a mom and dad. Beneath the folder’s flap is her green passport and her blue one. I open the green one, the color of the lake, and see a younger version of my mother with shorter hair and a smoother face. I compare it with the blue one, a face I am more familiar with. I touch the heavy papers, the leather, the pressing of the letters. I breathe in the booklet’s pages. It is a clean and pure scent that smells nothing like our island. When I turn her younger face against sunlight, rainbows shimmer out. I ask her what they’re for. In case of emergencies. On the other side of the folder, my father’s birth certificate pokes out. I do not bother. I know my mother’s intention. I see it in how she tidies the bed after she wakes up. I see it in how the island is painted green toward the bottom and blue and white on top. How she never lets dust settle. I thumb through the passports. It sounds like beetle wings fluttering.
My mother teases my short height. I am the smallest in the family for now. Little does she know, every night I sleep curving my back at an angle to stretch my spine. I have grown two inches or so this spring and summer. I will be taller than her, because I have worked day and night for it. Every meal, I eat my entire plate. Sometimes, I ask for seconds or snacks. I want to be big. Bigger than my father. I want them to see how strong I am, how my body is under my whim, how I am ready.
After I check the boats and dock, I ask my mother about breakfast. Today, it is fried fish and rice. My favorite. I eat with my hands. I tear a piece from the belly, crispy from the hot oil, and dip it into a mixture of diced tomato and onion, fish sauce, and a bit of water. It is my favorite thing. I clump up the rice and fish, and I push the food into my mouth with my thumb. I do it over and over again.
I help my mother clean up. My father sweeps the dust from our house onto the lake. The water swirls it around. A fish pops up to investigate. Slowly, I lower my hand to the water’s surface, but the fish sees me, flips its slippery tail, and dives deep into the darkness of the lake. I’ve always wondered what lurks below. I have seen alligators and a frog, once. Even a fish with whiskers. In other parts of the world, there are dolphins and hippos. Things bigger than me, my father, and even the house.
My father tells me fish-ing is the catching of fish and not the act of being one. I am disappointed, and I disappoint him in return. I don’t want to fish. That is his job, not mine. He doesn’t understand. Since he is a man, he cannot understand and never understand what it means to be a teenage girl. I know enough of the reasoning behind his actions. He fishes, because he wants to feed his family. He is frustrated at me, because I don’t want to fish, yet he cannot see past that point. He does not understand why I play pretend, how I pretend. He does not understand how serious it is to feel pretty even. Pretending is like reading a book and discovering new feelings, new ideas. I have tried to explain these things to him. When I do, he calls me childish or thinks nothing of it. In thinking it is nothing or childish would be to not understand. If he cannot even get to this confusion, then he is hopeless. I’ve tried to help him. I loaned him The Hobbit, for Christ’s sake! He thinks of my ideas as unimportant as cricket noise.
My parents prepare to leave. They have done so for months now. They tell me they’re working on a project, just further up the river. There is a big boat that needs fuel and mechanical surgery. My father has been reading its manual and has become something of an expert, which makes him even more annoying. I have tried to read it, but without the boat in front of me, I cannot do much to stop him from belittling my mom who tries her best to help him. Like how my brain works differently from his, hers works differently from ours. She can see more, feel more, and anticipate more. Again, he doesn’t understand and places himself, his wit above ours.
It is not enough to be bigger than him– I must defeat him– but until then, I just stay at home, and watch the house with a shotgun as big as myself. I look over the lake and marsh to the east. It is late summertime. I imagine the air is filled with spiderwebs catching dew. With every movement, we tangle in its silk, grow heavy under the water, and become its prey. I use my mom’s old hand fan to wave fresh cool air down my neck and forehead. Eventually, the shotgun sticks to the side of my leg. I set it down on the table.
There is usually nobody. My parents have told me, even in the before times, there were rarely people. Most of my afternoons and early evenings have been me alone, shaping shadows into figures. It is times like this where my mind drifts to Middle Earth. Perhaps the orcs are beyond the tree line. Is that Gandalf’s hat? Will he come to save us? It would be awfully convenient. He could take us far from here, to Hobbiton, where we’d eat 10 meals a day.
By the time my imagination slows down and snack time approaches, it is three o’clock. I leave my post to cut a peach. It is furry and pink. Rather a cute fruit that I like to feel in my hand and appreciate in the sun. I take my sliced fruit bowl to the windows.
There is a figure treading water, heading straight for me. I quickly chew my peach slice, take my gun, and head to the porch. I hide behind a wall of apple boxes. I go inside and slide the gun into the cubby. I shoot. My warning shot forces him to stand in the water, where it reaches his neck.
I deepen my voice, “Back the fuck off!” He raises his pink hands. He has a brown beard, raccoon eye bags, and greasy dark blond hair. He must have a weapon. I prepare for the worst.
“Please, I’m hungry,” he shudders, “I won’t hurt you. All I want is some food.” I tell myself it is an act.
“I said what I said,” I say, my voice less deep. My own act crumbles before me.
He dives into the water. I cannot see him now. I quickly go inside the house. I grab the box of bullets. My mother’s folder. I shove them in my pockets and the folder to my pants. I climb up the boxes and go on the roof, kicking the boxes into the water and onto the porch. My heart is racing. My fingers shake.
Where is he?
The house moans, leaning on one side. I hang onto the roof and grip my feet on the metal ridges. He’s on the island now. He’s tall like he could come up and take me. I shoot. It hits the side of his arm and he runs into my house. Like under the water, he could be anywhere. Doing anything.
I am silent. I hear him eating my sliced peaches. Something heavy grows inside me. Everything I have ever known is suddenly at risk to be someone else’s. My mother was right. My mother. I hope they heard the gunshot.
“Lovely place you have here.” His voice was like Smaug, greedy and slithering, but slightly strained. Likely tired from swimming in the water. “Home-making is a tough thing, especially nowadays. It’s more than rare.” I hear him sit on my seat, a creaky wooden chair that I like to lean forward and backward on. He talks strangely, unlike the rest of my family and me. Every word so far has been seeped in double meanings. I am used to straightforwardness. This way of talking has been fictional to me until now.
“Do you know what’s out there?” He’s checking the cabinets now. I hear the metal spoons clink against one another. I shouldn’t have been afraid. I should have killed him. If he touches my books or my bed, I will be furious, destroyed. What does it take to stop a stranger, to stop a bandit? I vibrate with anger and fear.
“Things are worse than me… I guess you might know a thing or two about that. At least a shadow of what’s out there.” He started coughing, eating the peaches too fast. Does he know to avoid the pit? I hope he chokes on it. He drinks the cup of water I left out. “I come from a city. The rumors are true. The world is gone.”
“What city?” I couldn’t help myself. Above my cot, I pasted a poster of the world map as it was before. Every morning I would look at it and attempt to remember a new part of the world. Yesterday, it was Australia. My mom told me it is upside down over there. It was an extra hot day, and I dreamt of winter. Right now, it feels a bit like that. There’s a chill on my spine and goosebumps all over. My arm hair stands up like grass. I cannot get over his different way of speaking. I am a child and he talks to me like a child, but there is a dressing to his words.
“Atlanta,” he grunts out. I find it in my memory. Only two states away. “I had an apartment the size of this place. Poured half my paycheck into it.”
“So did we,” I said. He coughs like thunder, laughing then wincing. I always wondered what it would be like to talk to strangers. I’m finding it similar to talking to my parents, but then again, I am not so nice to them. There is no kindness for intruders. I only have meanness to give.
“You did quite a number on me.” He is silent for a while. I listen carefully, inching my ear to the roof. He tears a cloth and wraps it around himself. He grumbles. I look to the left, then all around. No sight of my parents anywhere. I check the gun then my pockets. Four bullets left.
Should I swim for it? I only know the direction my parents travel to and not the exact path. I would be lost, vulnerable, and might even drown. There are also the child-eating gators my mother warned me about. The island is safer. It is about this time they would travel back anyway. Will I be able to protect them? The man is weaker now, but what if he kills my mom? I would be left with my dad for the rest of my life. A man who doesn’t even pack his own paperwork.
The heavy pit in my stomach grows deeper as fear seizes me. Before my parents discovered the big boat, before they would leave every day instead of every other day, I felt so alone at home. More than alone. It was the closest to mourning, to death, I’ve gotten. When you have your mom and dad and then you don’t have your mom and dad, you begin to imagine the latter as the rest of your life. At least with a father, he could do most of the work. On my own, right now, is the closest I’ve felt to losing it all. Death. Fear of it, at least, and how it can take.
He hits the ceiling with something. I jump, still trembling. I grip the shotgun. My fingers begin to numb and slip from my sweat. It rained last night. In my struggle, the spider web dew pools around me. I take short, choppy breaths from my mouth instead of my nose. I gulp, tasting a metallic flavor. I adjust my footing, making sure the floor beneath me can actually hold.
He slams the ceiling again. I grit my teeth, holding on. The island is swaying now.
“There’s nothing for me. Except this,” he says, strangely calm. Glasses clinking. The burner is ticking. Water bubbling, filling the teapot. “I’m sorry. I’ll be gone soon. I’ll try to clean up before then.”
The teapot hisses and whistles. I smell coffee soon after that. He slurps it up. Sighing after his sips. Perhaps in his blood loss daze or because of the teapot’s song, he did not hear the rumbling of the boat heading our way. The big boat slows down with enough speed and strength to cut through the deck.
I look up. The shadow of my mom unspooling a rope down to me. There is a loop.
“Sit!” my mother says, ready to pull me up.
Like putting on a shirt, I lift my hands and fit the rope around me. I hold on. The stranger is on the porch now or what is left of it. His skin is pale like an orc. He begins to climb up to the roof. My mom struggles to lift me. I see my father’s shadow running over to her.
I ready the shotgun. He is on the roof, about 5 feet away. He towers over me like a tree. The man is skinny. His arms are the same size as my calves. His clothes are torn, still wet from his swim. He lifts his arms, palms white. No color, not even color one might get from the sun.
“You’re just a girl.” He states, plainly. When he speaks, he is faint. Every word shakes like an echo. We stare at each other like this for what feels like forever. His eyes are a light color, a green-blue. I didn’t even know eyes could be that bright. The color of a blue sky. He falls to the floor, his knees cracking like sticks. He is still as a rock.
I don’t lower the gun. I hear my mom and dad arguing about the rope above. They pull the rope, one big lurch up at a time. I loop the rope around my wrist. The hemp fibers rub against my skin.
He looks up at me. Instead of a clear sky, his eyes are a rainstorm. He stretches his mouth wide as if discovering it for the first time. They pull me up one more time. He cries loudly like a hawk and runs toward me. His slack jaw reminds me of the alligators, except his mouth is the color of a bruise. He jumps and grabs the heel of my foot, but he only takes my shoe as I lift my legs even further from his reach.
I stare into the clouds, searching for the blue, and cannot find any. The blood on his arm is only now clotting. I was quite a distance away when I shot him. The bullets are still inside, I bet, and will be for the rest of his cursed life. He is no man anymore. I steady my right hand under the barrel, eyes set on his matted hair, and I pull the trigger. Pink and red bleed into the gray. He is nothing. The rest of his body thuds to the ground, slides down the roof, and falls into the lake.
The last of my home, the island I grew up on, fades away in the distance. My mother hugs me, checking for infection and finding nothing except the folder with her passports. She looks at me, tearing up, and hugs me tighter. I try to shake out of the second hug. The air is too sticky between us.
For a while, all I would know was the ocean, the salty air, and the plentiful provisions my mom packed for the months my father fixed the boat. The dark blue sea glows to a clear turquoise as we reach the Philippine Islands. My father plants the anchor and we swim the rest of the way. It is empty. There is a house on the closest island. A bahay kubo. I recognize it from the lullaby my mother used to sing to put me to sleep. I asked her once what it looked like, and she drew it for me on a pad of yellow paper. A wooden house on stilts. It is the same as the drawing. I smile at the new house built into the hill that is half as tall as the canopy. The spiderwebs collect their dew here as well. It is a familiar feeling. It is not long before I am put to work. My mother yells for me, excited she found a fruit tree to collect from. I walk to her, unimpressed and tired from our swim. The fruit has curves like the crescent moon. She cuts it in half, slices its flesh, and presses the fruit’s skin out. She holds out the golden knobs of mango. I take a bite… then I do it over and over again.
2024 Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction Prize Semifinalist, The North American Review
2024 Iridescence Award Semifinalist, Kinsman Avenue Publishing
Behind the Scenes
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Behind the Scenes 〰️
This idea began with an image of a woman and her baby in a canoe. In a zombie apocalypse. The idea shifted gradually toward a more personal narrative. How would immigrants act in a zombie apocalypse? For a lot of immigrants of color, society — as it stands — is plenty dystopian already.
Filipinos were the first Asian immigrants to land in America, and they landed in Louisiana — the setting for this story. At the end of “Floating Island”, the family is in the Philippines. The teenage daughter has arrived for the first time. I wanted to acknowledge this history and explore the significance of people wanting to repatriate back to their home country.
