Chapter 2 To Stand on Dry Land….

I did return to the world but it felt like I was halfway through a boxing match and losing badly. Someone was pounding my chest and another was kissing me, how weird was that! The next thing was that I was rolled onto my side just as I heaved up everything in my stomach as well as a lot of water out of my lungs.

I drew in great gasps of air and then I passed out again. When I did come to I was in a bunk, wrapped in blankets and not feeling very good at all. After a while someone came and looked at me and said “Oh! Thank goodness you are awake, Haley. You gave us all quite a worrying time. For a while we thought we had lost you and would be just taking a body back to port.” The guy spoke a type of Spanish but with a strange lilt to it. I just smiled and he asked me how many fingers he was holding up and then said “There was nothing we could salvage from your craft, lass, that whale took it down with it when it went under again. We nearly missed seeing you when you bobbed up but it must have taken you down as well.”

I just nodded and he helped me sit up and got me some broth to sip. It was wonderful having something hot pass my lips, even if it was a fish stew. I then lapsed into a fitful slumber again. The next time I woke I was a lot better and he came back, helping me out of the blankets and holding me up as he led me to the head. I was wearing some kind of long tee shirt and my underpants. I needed to sit to pee, being so dizzy, and when I did I saw that my penis was now very small, almost like a big clit. My balls had withdrawn into my body so I looked like a vagina-less girl down there. This was so weird and got weirder when I felt my breasts move under the tee. When I had finished and washed my hands he helped me through to a small galley where I was fed more broth.

That was when I found out that my passport had been sucked out of my pocket and the only identification I had when they pulled me out of the water was the bill-fold with Haley Garcia on it and the credit card with H. Garcia. I was not sure how to tell them that I was a guy but then realised that everything about me screamed girl. I had breasts, a slim waist, thin arm and legs and the water I had breathed in must have done something to my larynx as when I spoke it was with a high pitch squeak.

Never mind, I thought, I would work this out when I got to whatever port they hailed from. In the meantime they loaned me some guys underpants, a shirt and trousers and a deck-hands waterproof outfit. I helped out where I could while they continued fishing and slowly found out where I would be heading when we went back to port. They hailed from Rawson, in Patagonia, and I found that I had been drifting for several months as it was now into November. When we did get back to port I was taken to a boarding house, owned by a cousin of one of the crew, and was given a wonderful bath. My loaned clothes were taken away and the landlady said that she had some cast-offs from her eldest which would fit me like a glove.

After I had dried I found out that the glove referred to was a lady’s one as all the clothes laid out for me on the bed were for girls. I could not upset the kind people around me so managed to put it all on, from the bra and panties to the blouse and skirt and cardigan. The bra did actually fit me and held my new appendages. There were even some old sneakers and pink socks to finish me off. I was not sure about the pink nightie.

I offered the little money I had for the clothes but I was told that everything would be sent to the orphanage if I didn’t need it so it was all mine now. My landlady took me into the town and it was really strange to have buildings and people around me. I did find out about the odd lilt to their speaking when she told me that the town was originally a Welsh settlement and the vocal oddity had remained over the years. One thing that I did notice was that I was much calmer in myself, maybe the trip did work after all. At the bank I tried to use my credit card but the teller took it and cut it in half before I could complain, telling me that the account had been closed and that if I tried that sort of thing again he would call the police.

The next place we went to was a little salon where the landlady spun a tale of the shipwrecked lass who needed to be brought back into the real world. They agreed to work on me if they could take a before and after picture as I looked like a wreck. They got me to strip to my pants and bra and put a cloak over me and started by washing my hair. It was so soothing that I fell asleep and, when I woke, I was being given a pedicure. The girl working on me was full of sympathy at what she had been told I had been through and, when I got dressed again I found that I was hairless all over my body, my eyebrows had a new shape, my hair was now curled and bouncy and I sported long red fingernails. I looked in the mirror and thought that no-one would think I was a guy, now. They then gave me a quick make-up session and I was given a small bag with the samples that they had used.

I thanked everyone and then went to find the library where I may get onto a computer and find out what was cooking back home. When I did get into the newspaper website I found out that, as far as everyone at home was concerned, I no longer existed. I read the report of my radio silence after a huge storm and that no sign of me was discovered since then. I had been looked for by aircraft flying to and from South America but I was nowhere near the original route so they never had a chance of seeing me. Around the end of September they had decided that I could not have survived as my food and water would have run out so they held a memorial service for me and a small casket was buried. There was a picture of my parents looking stoic. No wonder my bank account was closed.

So here I was, in Patagonia, a new person without a past, or even a future yet. I was sat in the library, in girls clothes, looking at the reports of my demise. The next thing that I thought of was why I had changed so much and, after much clicking and typing, I found a website that told me some of what I wanted to know. It seemed that the ship that had sunk with all the flax and soy on board was my catalyst to woman-hood. It had been found that the estrogen in these sorts of seeds would, if eaten by fish, actually change their gender. I had eaten a lot of raw fish over the past six months that may have eaten a lot of flax that was drifting in the same current I was caught in..

I went back to the boarding house and, over the next week, I helped out around the place to pay my way. Then the landlady said that her brother was going to go to Mar del Plata the next day and had offered to take me. She said that he had a daughter a little older than me and she had offered to give me some of her cast-offs to expand my wardrobe. When they turned up the girl brought in a bag of things and when we left I was in a good set of underwear, a nice blouse and a straight skirt that I had to think very carefully about before I went anywhere. I dragged up all the memories of all the girls I had ever known and tried to emulate their movements. It must have worked as the brother, Emilio, gave me a kiss on the cheek when he saw me and told me that I must be one very brave young lady to have survived the shipwreck.

On the journey north we chatted and they asked me if I was from Argentina or Brazil with my darkish skin and Moorish face. I told them that I was from Brazil as it was unlikely they would ever go there looking for me in future. I found out that Emilio, Gabriella and Sofia, the younger sister, were going to Mar del Plata in Argentina proper for their usual summer holiday and that I was welcome to join them few a few days while I found my feet.

The distance was over twelve hundred kilometres so we were in for a long drive and had plenty of time to chat, seeing that for much of our first day driving was across an endless grassy plain; the Pampas. Asked about my own recent experience I told them that I had been testing a cross-ocean rowing boat out of Salvador and had been swept south by the current after a big storm had rolled me over. They were far enough away that there would be no mention of a lost rower in their news so I thought I was pretty safe. Emilio had been a fisherman who had a bad accident on a voyage and had retired, taking over a business that supplied the fishing boats and had done very well with it.

Gabriella worked with him in his office and was well on her way to spinsterhood, while Sofia was a bright and pretty eighteen year old who was still wondering about what she would like to do in life, as long as it wasn’t working with her sister. Their mother was not mentioned and I didn’t ask.

We stopped overnight in a little cottage just north of Villalonga and the next day was a much better trip as the roads were not converted cart tracks but proper roads to suit the bigger population. A bit before six in the afternoon we were in Mar del Plata and parked outside a dinky little house that looked as if it was lifted from an English village. Emilio saw me look at it in wonder and explained that the single storey chalet was a fashion that had developed to house the huge number of visitors to the seaside destination. It certainly looked lovely with its stone façade and the tiled, gable roof and the porch. We took the easy way out for dinner as Sofia had insisted that she wanted something different to fish so we unpacked and got into the car again and ate at a place called Don Joe that sold pizza.

Marianne G 2021