Only the Moon Comes Back

by Elizabeth Erbeznik

His name meant “life” but everyone called him Marcel. His smile got into my eyes and I blinked back light when he appeared at my door with gifts that fit in the palm of his hand: a mango, three lychees, a single egg that hurt me, finally, to crack. He made my breath flutter inside my chest like scattered birds, but I left anyway because my future seemed endless and every path open.

It is true that I have a history of falling in love with strangers while passing through their lives. This is just one story. Amsterdam is another. London doesn’t count. I wasn’t in love.

***

It started with a blood-soaked uniform. The story came to me as a rumor: a girl in pain, a stain on the bench she sat on. A miscarriage, the teachers whispered. Witchcraft, my students said. Then a neighbor’s cow died and people said it was cursed. There were protective rituals I had to learn. Burning my hair was one. Long strands freed from my brush curled, then smoked, when held to a flame. Some losses were small—hair, skin, half-moons of nail—but they needed to be contained. My house had new locks, but I couldn’t sleep. The smell of burnt hair lingered for days.

It took five hours to get to the nearest city, but only if the bus didn’t break. I wouldn’t say that the people I met with there were friends. But we still jostled each other in front of mirrors as we put on mascara and blush. We danced until the nightclubs closed, then stumbled back to our hotel. Our only light was the moon and our feet always hurt. But the city was far, and the roads were bad, so I didn’t go there often.

What I’m saying is that I was lonely.

***

It didn’t help to want things I couldn’t have. Certain tasks made me nervous, like buying food in the market. I didn’t know how to move through the baskets of rice, the mounds of greens wilting in the heat. The strings of fish scared me. Vendors shouted, women laughed, and I never knew how much to pay. There were some displays, some sellers, I liked more than others. What I didn’t like was having to choose. I wanted to bring home bright fish on a string, but bought tinned tuna from a shop instead.

There were only two seasons: wet or dry. And it was always hot. When the air in my house was too heavy to read, too stuffy to sleep, I sat on my porch and waited for something to happen. My neighbors named every danger, then delivered strangers to my front door. I had to learn to let people in. When he knocked, Marcel walked into my house like he already knew me. He had seven brothers, but I only ever saw him alone. I poured coffee into two tin mugs, but he didn’t wait for his to cool. I watched his lips, and my own mouth burned.

Wanting and waiting. There wasn’t much else to do.

***

Cows were a form of currency. My pockets, my fists, were full of torn and faded bills, coins rubbed smooth by many palms. I spent my money freely. How many cows, my students asked, does your father think you’re worth? I had to learn to count, to number the visits, the days, the small pills I kept locked in a metal trunk. Marcel came to my house with fish, white string, wrapped around his hand. He told me stories while a single fan, too small for the room, swept stale air across the bed. A closed door told neighbors that I wasn’t home. Outside we heard the thud of hooves on packed dirt as boys drove cows home for the night.

I had freedom, but no privacy. My trash was picked through before it was burned and I found it easy to brush off shame. There were names I wasn’t supposed to say in the dark, but I kept mixing up the words for “witch” and “teacher.” On cloudless nights, I liked to stand in the empty dirt road with nothing between me and a canopy of stars. I felt the weight of them above me as Marcel lifted the hair off my neck. His mouth made words on my skin that my ears couldn’t hear. The moon cannot help that it disappears. That is not an answer, Marcel whispered back.

I think we both knew that I was never not leaving.

***

There once was a man who died like the moon. Marcel told stories to keep us awake, but he didn’t ask me to believe them. The man had a wife and she buried him, twice. Like the moon, he always came back. This wasn’t so much a story as a warning. Some things are supposed to end.

I waited for blood and it came. And then I packed my bags. I wanted to take everything with me: the cows, the stars, the fish on white string. There were things I was afraid to forget. My bags were already full.

This is just one story. I wanted to learn to seize what came next. And all I had to do was look. Each day would end with things that soar, falling back to earth. Bats. Mosquitoes. Sometimes rain. Once, a cloud of termites, briefly winged.

Elizabeth Erbeznik is an educator with a PhD in Comparative Literature. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2020, Split Lip Magazine, EcoTheo Review, Fiction Southeast, and Two Hawks Quarterly. Originally from Northern California, she lives with her family in Austin, TX.