The men had their backs toward Nola. When one turned to lift a rope, she smiled, but it was too dark for him to notice. She kept still, attempting to decipher the night sounds for a clue as to what they were waiting for. The sloshing lapping of the waves at the sides of the boat and the caress of the wind on the water, caused small ripples. A gull shrieked, then another. The fog had lifted, and the moon hung low, no longer bright, more like a painting of a pockmarked, flat, whitish disk. Emboldened by the moon’s weakness, the stars repeated themselves on the surface of the water. Nola touched the spot where the reflection of lights broke. An image of her father floated by, then vanished, then returned. He had been unable to protect her even when she was a child. He had died at thirty-four. She was now merely three years younger than he had been then, and she missed him. Her stomach tightened with pain.

Time. Flight. Cormorants and sea gulls. The end of the world. She had been sucked up by a cyclone and dropped from the sky into a fishing boat in the South China Sea. Who was she? The woman whose Chinese name, Bashful Fire, had been splashed all over Beijing and Shanghai must have been someone else, someone she barely knew.

Lulu's little moan gave her a partial answer. Lulu's mom. But there was more. Forever she would be that child in her cave by the Long Island Sound. Losses and separations were the material that made her. She could never twist away from that pain. Loss was the most profound human experience. Our greatest feeling we shared wasn’t love after all.

A gull’s shrill call sounded again. The fishermen put away their pipes. The shore was a distance away, yet they gestured to Nola to get up. She fumbled with Lulu's clothing, reached under the diaper and gently inserted the suppository. She tried to stand up, but her body ached from hours of brutal travel conditions and her mind was hazy from a missed night of sleep. Her stomach cramped. Her legs wobbled with the boat, and she plopped back down, falling sideways as she managed to miss Lulu.

One of the men grabbed her arm to help her up, while his friend stood knee-deep in the water. Only then did she understand that he meant to carry her on his back.

At what point would she regret this hasty trip? Carefully, she lifted Lulu's basket. The man heaved it on his back and looped his arms in its handles. She lowered herself onto the other man’s back and straddled him, feeling the strain of his muscles and smelling his unwashed, sour sweat as he trudged through the water to the island.