Ezra’s early memories of magical creature, Dolphin Girl

When I first saw Mi Chau, she was a frightened, inward little lump of a girl, but in the first few hours at our family Thanksgiving, G.O. transformed her like a shaman driving out evil spirits. He snatched her out of her chair and rushed her out to the barn in his arm. Supposedly, showing her the animals brought life into her eyes, but I thought it was some magic he had, and I wanted it.

She ran into the room, happy, full of energy, and whispered in her mom’s ear. I know G.O. used magic on Cal and me when we moved there as kids, but even though it happened to me, I still don’t understand it.

I studied that little girl. When I heard about her disappearing from Bon’s protective arms in the night, I was more entranced. She would show up frozen under Barnaby’s hooves or up the brook—once with bare footprints in a light snow—and this was otherworldly.

When Mom first took Mi to the swimming hole, she was afraid of the water. Not of getting into it but what was under it. She waded in, leaned over so her face was submerged, and looked from side to side. Mom asked her what she was doing, and she said drowning with the others.

Mom taught her to hold her breath and open her eyes underwater and how to float. Mi Chau said she already knew those things, but when she floated, she didn’t move, she sank partway under and Mom lifted her out. She taught her to take a deep breath and hold it to do the Dead Man’s Float. Mi said there were dead people underwater.

“Where?” Mom asked, and Mi Chau gestured over the whole pond. In minutes she was swimming underwater, that first day just for a short distance, and Mom yelled to Ella and me to stay with her and hold her up.

The next hot day we went to the Mud Hole, Mi Chau knew how to swim underwater, longer and longer distances. She would see things underwater, shadowy bodies, she said. Ella and I would go under to see them, but we just saw normal shadows of clouds or mud on the bottom.

“No. Dead people,” Mi said with a certainty that shook me. She was mysterious and often lived in another world that contained murderous Pirates and drowning children and an old man watching her, watching her.

I couldn’t keep up with her swimming or how long she could hold her breath underwater. I discovered that when she swam underwater, her legs would become a powerful tail that would drive her all over the bottom of the pond. She would pop up like a loon in a totally unexpected spot. I would duck my head underwater with my eyes open to observe when her tail appeared, but there was such a flurry of bubbles and swirl that I was never sure.

I still have drawings I made of her leaping out of the water like a dolphin with her tail showing, though she never did that actually. Mom was constantly worried Mi was drowning and urged Ella and me to find her or make sure she came up. Mom’s fear for Mi’s life was one of many small details that made me protective, in awe, and slightly afraid or wary of MiMi.

I believed that the Pirates would come for her, because she believed that so certainly. I made weapons to fight them, and I hid them in various places in their house and barn and up the brook. I intended to fight them to my death, and at eight or nine, I had no illusions that I would overpower them.

Ella and I shared Mi’s utter belief in her ghost brother, Thiwar or Thi Hoa. We had considerable proof: strange things that would happen to her or Mikey or Bon; hearing him walking nearby in the woods when we were up the brook or in the woodlot. Everything told me that MiMi was fragile and in danger, and I had to protect her.

Another example of the mystery surrounding her was how she learned or knew things that to my awareness, she had never been taught. Mom would ask her, How did you know the author of that poem I just read you for the first time, and Mi would shake her head very quickly as if she had no idea and didn’t think it surprising. It was a very unusual, brief head shake, like someone who feels a fly land in their hair.

When Mi arrived, she barely spoke a few words of English and had never been to school. She didn’t know how to read, write, or feel safe in any situation. I know my Mom is an amazing teacher, but I’ve never seen anyone learn as rapidly as Mi Chau. She had a fierce urge to know as much or more than Ella and me. In months she was almost our equal in reading and math. In a year she often surpassed us in vocabulary, writing ability, understanding of arithmetic, and academic knowledge. She could read a book faster than us and remember more of it even months or years later.

The Pirate game Mi taught us up the brook at the big pool was eerie. On the surface it felt like a fun game, and we learned our lines, played our parts, and cooled off when we were thrown into the water by the Pirate. While we were doing it, I felt we were in a bubble inside an area of about twenty feet diameter, and outside the bubble, the woods and brook were almost not there.

Sometimes I would lie in my bed, awake in the dark, and I would be playing the game with Ella and Mi in my mind, and some kind of shift would take place. Outside the safe bubble of the three of us having fun together, other things would be happening just out of sight, shadowy horrible things. Brutal, horrid movements and shouts and people floundering in water and sinking.

I’m sure I must have heard a little of Bon and Mi’s experience when the Pirates attacked their boat and drowned people, and my nightmare mind was trying to understand it within that just-out-of-sight blur. Later, I learned that Ella experienced slightly different eerie things and felt as passionately protective of Mi as I did.

I always wanted to produce the transformation that G.O. did in minutes that first day. I wanted to hold Mi in my arms and have her feel safe and happy, smiling and full of energy. But I didn’t have the magic, and I didn’t want to blunder and make her see me as a Pirate.

As a kid, I didn’t have the emotional and mental capacity to understand Mi on a psychological level, how her experience changed her and made her strangely wonderful. Ella and I wanted to spend all our time with Mi. We’d bike over to the Farm almost every day of the summer, and we’d do school and athletic activities together all year long with Mom as our teacher.

I am writing about some of my early impressions and experiences with Mi. Altogether, they made me see her as a magical princess or goddess sent to us for protection. The bond that Mi, Ella, and I share is also fiercely passionate, protective, and forever. If Mi had never joined our family, Ella and I would have a powerful bond, but I believe that Mi’s addition increased it tenfold.

In spite of that love and connection I feel with Ella and Mi Chau, I also feel a longing with each of them to be ever more welcomed into their unique worlds. This was not a sexual longing, though that is always my deep secret with every female I meet or care about. It was a longing to merge into them, to be so intimate that I became each of them and felt them welcome me into them. And I would welcome them into my inadequate male self and show them around. Again, not in a sexual way.

I adore Ella and Mi Chau.