We didn’t know we were living on an island. We had been up north, to our aunt’s house, and we had been south, to our cousin’s, but we’d never seen water. We must have been living somewhere in the middle. 

The woman was wearing a long skirt like our mother, but she was yellow-haired and freckled. Her hair was short and tied back in a tiny sprout. She said she was from Manitoba. We asked her where that was. Canada, she said, which is very far north. Near our aunt’s house? my sister asked. Farther, the woman said. Much, much farther. A plane ride, she said. Actually, three plane rides. Three plane rides, we said. We had seen a plane once, up in the air, spreading something over its crop. I imagined this woman on that plane, three of those planes, going very far. It seemed ridiculous. 

That’s when she told us we were living on an island. We only knew the name of our town and our aunt’s town and our cousin’s town. We didn't believe her so she laid out a map and pointed to a dot not quite in the center, just a little south of center, which was where we were. The land was very large, as we’d imagined. There was blue all around, but the blue was in the corners, at the edges. 

Manitoba is an island, too, my sister said. No, said the woman. Manitoba is a part of the continent of North America. Every place is an island, my sister said, just some are bigger and some are smaller. The woman thought about it and said she supposed this was true. I don’t know where my sister got that. She was two years older and the smartest person I knew. Whenever I forgot something, I asked her. She remembered things for both of us. You don’t like that, she’d say, and I’d remember that I didn’t. Whenever I hid something and forgot where I'd hidden it, she would find it for me.