The Music of Dolphins

by Karen Hesse

  The old ones, they can tell when the orca is hungry, when it is not. They know the blow of a whale, miles at sea, and the beat of a ship cutting through the open waves. They know the sound of the sun rising out of the sea and setting again back into it.

  The sea is a living music, it is the whisper of fish, the roar of wind, the chatter of stones and sand, of weeds and reefs in the wave-churned surf. It is all music.

  My cousins call to each other and run over the waves, curving out, dropping back, a fast and springing dance. They rise, gleaming, the sun leaping off their shining skin, and they stand on their tails, all together, moving with one mind, with one song, with one motion. At night, from the rocks, I watch them at their feeding. I watch them at their play. They are lit by a shining glow, everything washed in green light against the dark. My dolphin family in their night-fire clothes, their mouths glowing as they open into the shining tide. All the time talking inside each other, outside each other.

  I understand, though I cannot say all; still, I understand everything when I look in their eyes, when I feel the stroke of their ripe skin against mine. I understand in their speed or their slowness, in their leaping or their diving, in their roughness or their calm.

  I cannot swim as fast, I cannot swim as smooth. My cousins know I am different. The water knows I am different. Always the water asks if I would like to come deep and deeper. But once I went too deep, and it hurt in my ears and my eyes and my nose, and my throat shut and my chest burst and my skin broke with needles of pain while my head exploded. And my dolphin mother knew that if I lived, I must not go deep again, and so I run beside her, or atop her or between her and an aunt. I ride with a cousin or a sister and I am never left behind. This is how my dolphin family cares for me. If they are eating, if they are playing, they look inside each other and know what is needed and together what they must do.

  Things float by. Things from the human world. Bottles and jars and plastic jugs. Sometimes a cousin swallows a glass ball or gets tied up in line. And then there is sadness and the dolphin mothers carry the young ones, holding their soft gray bodies up to the air to blow. Sometimes with my fingers I can do what must be done and pull the ball from the throat of my cousin so he can eat again or untangle the line from his tail so he can swim, and then my cousin lives. But sometimes he dies, and we wait for the mother to let go, to give her baby to the deep, where it drifts down into the blue below and drops away forever.

  The old ones do not eat such dangerous things, but young ones do not know. I have eaten fish dead too long, fish dying, filled with poison, sick fish slow enough to be caught by me.

  On the cays, too, I have eaten things that made my stomach wild with pain, I have eaten things that come leaping back up, rushing past my burning throat, out through my open mouth. When I do this, I am not strong enough to swim, and my dolphin mother and my dolphin aunt carry me. The sea makes a soft bed to rest my hurting stomach in, but sometimes the smallest movement makes me sick and I am too weak even to be in the sea, and then my mother and my aunt and my cousins and the old ones wait for me.

  Sometimes on the big cay, men come. They have machines. They have guns. They frighten me. My dolphin family stays far from shore when men are there, and I sleep on a different cay where no plane can land and no man can find a place of comfort.

  The men who come to the big cay sometimes leave food and water and things I like. But I stay there only when the men are away. Once the cay was quiet and I came on the land, but one man was left. He slept in a pool of his own blood and did not breathe and it frightened me. I ran back into the sea and we swam to the north and I slept on the rocks and we did not go back to the big cay for a very long time. Instead I stayed on the bits of land too small for a man to camp and sleep but bursting with life and big enough for me.

  We travel from cay to cay. And on each I find a different comfort. On one is a trickle of fresh water flowing, on another are pools in the pockets of rocks; a third has grasses and roots sweet and filling, and pools of salt water, with food left by the tide.

  Some times are quiet. We leave the group, old ones come, some aunts and cousins. The pace is slower, calmer. But sometimes our group joins with other groups, and then there is great leaping, squeaking, clicking, tail dancing, wave driving, bubble churning, mounds of us, different colors, different sizes, different shapes, but all one family in the big sea, the big sea big enough for all the chirping, laughing, fast, and humming dolphins. Then it is so good to watch, to feel the strong singing inside me.

  When the dolphin groups gather, there are stories, there is joy. We jump the waves, and race, and chase the darting fish. And sometimes the boys fight or chase a girl and then the sea churns and inside my stomach twists like a tight net biting into the tender parts of me, but the next day all is good again and the dolphins are friends, and if that cannot be, then the angry ones go and the rest play on.

  There is never a time when my ears want for song or sound, when inside or out, along my skin, or inside my bones, I want for anything. And although I cannot stand on my tail or jump the waves, although I cannot catch the fish or slide in silence through the sea, although I cannot understand the fast voice or the deep stories, I am a part of the long song. I sing my own funny clicking, chirping, squeaking story, and the story is good.

  A television is another world where everything is small and everyone and everything is trapped behind a wall of glass. The people of the television world cannot come in the world with us. They live behind a wall you can see through, like the glass in my door. I think sometimes they will come through like when dolphins jump from the water. But they never do. Maybe it is dangerous for them to come into our world because they are so small.

  The people in the television have music all around them. I like the music. The music helps them to live behind the wall, but maybe they do not always hear the music. They are like Shay. The music is in their ears, but it does not touch them. I feel sad that they cannot get out, that they cannot escape.

  The television has fast words, very fast, faster than the radio. I have trouble to understand everything I see and hear.

  In that television I see a girl with long, long hair. She is not wearing clothes. She is on a beach. I am interested to see a girl on the beach. I watch. Then she is not on the beach. She is in a new place, wrapped in a blanket. A hand offers the girl a drink. The girl sees the water in a cup, but she is not certain what to do. First her finger dips in the water. Then her finger goes to her mouth. The girl decides the water is good to drink, and she makes a cup with her hands. She does not know to drink from the paper cup. She drinks water poured from the cup into her hands. The girl is very short. Her ears are very big.

  Then I see Doctor Beck and Sandy inside the television. They are with the little big-ear girl. They are trapped in the television with her.

  I run to the television to help Sandy and Doctor Beck get out. I beat the television with my shoulder. I cannot make the wall to come down. I take my chair. I throw my chair at the television. Lights flash everywhere. I jump away. Little lights snapping and popping. Then the lights are gone. But Doctor Beck and Sandy are gone too.

  I run. I run everywhere in the big house, asking help! Help!

  A door opens. Doctor Beck is there, and she is big again. She is in a room next to the television room. She is there with the other doctors. They sit in a room I could never see before. I run my hands over Doctor Beck, so happy she is free, that she is safe. I stroke her arms and her face and her hair.

  Where is Sandy?

  Doctor Beck says, Sandy is right here.

  I see Sandy. She is big again too. She sits apart from the others. Her back is turned to me.

  Sandy is crying. I know how the inside feels when there is crying. I run to Sandy. I am so happy she is not trapped in the world of the television anymore.

  Doctor Troy says, She did not recognize herself.

  They look at me like I am stupid like a shark.

  Why do they l
ook at me this way?

  I do not sleep. I watch out the window. I think about what Doctor Troy said.

  She did not recognize herself.

  I know he talked about me.

  I remember the girl on the television. I remember each place she went. It is like remembering the notes of a song. I cannot forget that big-ear girl, the girl with Sandy and Doctor Beck. I look at my reflection in the mirror. There is a thin face, brown skin, short hair.

  Doctor Troy said, She did not recognize herself. He must be wrong. I was not in the television. I could not be in that little life behind the glass and this big life all at the same time. Unless the life behind the glass is a remembering. Can they reach inside me and take a remembering? When I first came here, Doctor Beck put many wires on my head and told me to sleep. Did she take my rememberings then? I am so confused. The girl behind the glass, the girl with long hair, the place where she stood made me think of the rocks where I drank the freshwater, the cay where I ate from the tide pools.

  I think about the girl, naked. Her hair so long and black. Her skin gray and white with streaks of salt. And her little circle scars.

  I look in the mirror again. There are the big ears, the big, big ears. There are the little scars.

  Doctor Troy said, She did not recognize herself.

  The girl was me! Mila.

  I am afraid. I saw the girl with no clothes. I thought, This is a bad girl. She has no clothes. I saw her long wild hair. I thought, This girl is ugly with her long wild hair. I saw the girl with her eyes showing white. I thought, This girl has fear. I thought, I am happy not to be that girl.

  But I am that girl.

  That is what Doctor Troy meant.

  The remembering of my capture is taken out of my head and put behind the glass of the television. If they have that, do they have all my other rememberings too? But how could they take my rememberings when I still have them? My head feels like it is caught in the claw of a crab.

  I need to know. I need someone to help me understand. Shay cannot help.

  Who can help me?

  There is a man who works in the house to make it clean. He has a face of lines. There are long thin eels under the skin of his hands. They move as he works.

  The man comes up the steps at night when we are to sleep. He cleans the classroom and the offices, he washes the bathrooms and the floors and walls. His sound is different from the others in the house. I like to watch him. The man is quiet. Like the little diggers that tunnel into the sand. So, so quiet.

  The man does not look through my window. He looks at the floor when he cleans in front of my room. Only the floor.

  Why does the man not look at me?

  In the quiet night, he carries his mop past my room and the handle hits my door. I am making a little song on my recorder. The mop sounds like knocking. I put my recorder down. I think maybe the man wants to play with me. I want to play all the time. But Doctor Beck and Sandy and Shay and the others, they are all sleeping at night in their rooms. This man has with him water. He uses it to make all the floor shining like the wet skin of my dolphin mother.

  When I come to the door, the man looks up for only a moment. His head is down, his shoulders down, but he lifts his eyes to me. There is something in his eyes that hurts inside me. He turns away from my door and suddenly he is falling over his bucket, making it spill on the floor. He makes a sound like the dolphin in trouble.

  I try to open the door to go to the man. To help him. The door will not open. I am trapped inside the glass of the door. It is like the television. I cannot come out. I beat my hands on the glass. I beat my hands on the locked door. I beat my hands until my blood comes.

  I beat against the glass, against the wall, against the window.

  Justin comes. He yells through the door at me to stop.

  I look at my hands that held the fin of my dolphin mother. My hands bleed.

  Doctor Beck comes and opens the door. She looks at me. She says, What were you thinking?

  I don’t know. I don’t know what I am thinking. But I am alone. I am trapped in the net of the room. In the net of humans. I think maybe I am drowning in the net of humans.

  I sit in my room. Doctor Beck examines my hands. She says words. She pours a thousand words on me.

  The man who makes the floor clean has fear of me. Do they all have fear of me? They lock me in a room and do not let me free.

  In my dolphin family I was free. Now I have a locked door.

  I do not understand why they lock me in. I am not like the orca who goes after the dolphin, who runs the dolphin down and eats the dolphin. I am not like a net to trap the dolphin and hold the dolphin down so she cannot breathe. I am happy to play. I am happy to swim in the little pool. I am happy to talk their talk, to make their music. I do not know why they lock me in.

  I try to learn the language of humans. I try to think the way of humans. Each day I have more words to say my thoughts. But I do not have enough words for what I feel now.

  Sandy stands at the edge of my room. She does not look at me. She looks at Doctor Beck. She looks at Doctor Beck a long time with no words.

  I think of the sea and my other life. I remember my body sliding through the silk of the sea, riding between the silk body of my mother and the silk body of my aunt. I think of playing with my dolphin cousins, of the sea singing and singing.

  I want to go there. I need to go there.

  Please let me go there.

  Doctor Beck looks away.

  Sandy says, What have we done?

  Sandy comes to my room. She touches the bandages on my hands. She is all sadness, in her eyes, in her walk.

  Why do you keep me in a locked room?

  Sandy says, Your room has been locked for a long time. Since the night you went swimming in the Charles River, Mila.

  I did not know this. I did not know.

  I tell her, I will not go in the river again. I promise. Please unlock the door.

  Sandy says, We can’t.

  I ask, Why? Why do you have to lock me in?

  Sandy says, When the government learned about your swim in the Charles, they were very angry with Doctor Beck. They wanted to know how she could let you get out. The government told Doctor Beck to keep you locked in or you would be given to someone else.

  I ask, Why does the government talk this way about me?

  Sandy says, They think they own you, Mila.

  Sandy says, Remember when we walked along the Charles and you heard music and wanted to go in the house and we talked about territory and property? Mila, you are government property.

  No, I am Mila.

  Sandy says, The government doesn’t think of you as Mila. It thinks of you as an investment. It is paying your way, Mila. It wants to be sure no harm comes to you, no one hurts you. That you are protected.

  Why is the government afraid harm will come to me? Does one human hurt the other?

  Sandy says, When people don’t understand a thing, it frightens them. There are some people so interested in you, they would take you away from us. There are other people who are just plain frightened of you. People who don’t know you. The man who cleans the floor, Mr. Aradondo, and people outside, in the big world. They do not understand a girl who lived with dolphins. You are different, Mila. You look different, you sound different. But it isn’t just the way you talk or walk. It isn’t just the way you look. Your thinking is different. Mila, you think like a dolphin.

  Sandy says, Humans see things only the human way. We look at the dolphin and we think it does not look human, it does not talk human, it does not act human. It must not be as good as human. Humans think they are the best, that they know the only right way.

  I am confused. I know only this thing. I must have the door unlocked.

  Sandy says, Someday the door will be unlocked. When you know the language, when you know the rules, the door will be unlocked.

  When I know the language, when I know the rules, when they unlock the door, I can run
back to the warm sea. I can leave my human clothes on the beach. I can leave my human thought on the beach. I will go home.

  I have decided to work very hard at being human so they will let me go free. My hands still hurt. I have a difficult time with my computer, but I try. I turn the volume off. I do not want to hear the computer talk. The sound is ugly. Like my voice.

  There are spots on the walls from my blood. I cannot play the recorder with my hands wrapped. I am sorry I did this to my hands. Hands are gifts. I want to play the recorder. I can hear the music in my head. If I do not listen to Doctor Beck and Sandy and the others, I can hear the music. It is simple music. Five notes, seven notes. I want to make this little music. I try to use my fingers, but when I move them the blood starts again, and so I wait for my hands to heal.

  Doctor Beck is happy to see me come to class this morning. She asks, “Mila, would you like to play a new game?”

  I play her games. I make progress. When I make progress, she is happy. She can give a good report to the government. And I can be free. When I know enough human, then I can return to the warm ocean, to my dolphin home.

  I ask to see the movie of myself that begins when the Coast Guard picked me up on the island. Now I recognize myself. I can feel the sand under my feet. I can feel the soft breath of winter sun on my skin. I can feel the thirst. My lips are cracked. My tongue is swollen. I do not miss the thirst.

  I look at the girl on the island with her black hair. She looks like Shay … I look like Shay.

  Doctor Beck shows me all the games we played when I first came. I remember how hard I tried to know what she wanted.

  All the games are easy now. I can do them all.