We always said it would only take the two of us and the moon. It took more than that.
That night, the meat-hooked stars tittered in the sky, all shimmer and deceit. The wind curdled into our skin, winded our hair into coils. Our overlaid hands were the only spot of warmth in the crisp night. That night we wore our favorite stripes, but our muddied cotton did little to protect us from the sea’s sharp gales. As we waited for the moon to rise up and up and up we sunk into the sand, as if that was our destination. Every now but never then, when our eyes met, pupils stretched in the night desperate to take each other in. Our tongues quaked, unable to shape the words we feared. We were not afraid, not really, this was our promise. Between the silence, for the first time, it felt like we were strangers. If anyone else saw us that night on the beach maybe they thought that too. But we knew.
We’ve known since Mama’s first licked words scraped our names together in a holler. From bible school the river of light that just missed our seats in the corner of the room, to birthdays and birthday parties without cake, to welted leather belts, and Bazooka bubble gum. And how we loved to gnash Bazooka between our teeth. With all that lip smacking it’s no wonder we were never very good at listening. Remember how pink plaster dazzled in our long locks? Mama must’ve found it too bright when she took the red handled scissors. The scissors clacked and chopped until the pink was plucked and our hair hung in haggard shards. Afterwards, Mama cried as we swept our wine locks away. She decided it was time to separate us.
She borrowed the neighbor’s robin-egg truck and came home with a new walnut bed, shimmering with polish. It came complete with new white sheets striped with lanky olive lines, nothing like the dewy blue ones we liked. We knew as we wailed, hot tears cascading down and dropping off our chins, soaking the collars of our cotton shirts as she tried to build a wall between us. After a few hours, it crumbled as she caved, she couldn’t take our screams and Mama let us shove the beds back into the same old room. When we laid in those beds with mismatched headboards pushed together under the single paned window. Wrapped in the sound of night we wordlessly counted off the stars, tracing their shapes on the palms of our open hands. The moon would share its faint light on our fingertips, and on the bad nights, like that one had been, its voice like sugared ice tea would whir in our ears. Crickets outside disguised the stray whisper as part of their croon. When the sun clawed across the sky, revealing a gash of pinks, rooster Ralph woke the world. And our moon, whatever whisper still remained, would fade into the day.
We always said it would only take the two of us and the moon. It took more than that.
That night, the gelid sand clung to our toes trying to soothe our blisters. Was that motherly care? Tender and soft, a cool hand on a fever forehead. Mama never did that. She was never soft, no, her hands were cracked and calloused and never meant to care. We never needed her hands anyways, we were always each other’s hands. That night, our knuckles were ivory, as we began to walk. Our legs shook, reeds caught in unrelenting wind, the shore called for us and the moon laid a path. Who were we to refuse? A flutter of voices curled into the seashell conch of our ears. We pulled each other forward, hands woven, like the basket left out. It was time to go home. It was time for the moon to make good on his promise. He said it wouldn’t take much.
They say it was the calmest day Darby had ever seen. The day we came. That Mama, before she was a Mama, was making dinner for her love when she heard the thud and the wails. When she opened the door there we were bundled in one blanket, in a willow basket without a handle. The town called us Molly’s Miracles, after Mama’s name. They were never very creative. Mama pulled us inside, stove still on, radio crackling as voices jubilated, table set with two of everything. We never met Pa though, he is about as real as any folk story. The neighbors always reminded us that we were Molly’s Miracle, God’s gift to a woman who deserved better. Mama was a God fearing woman, still sometimes, when she thought we couldn’t see her, we could see the way her bulging knuckles gripped the thinning silver cross that never left her neck. We could hear the way her voice dipped to a whisper as if in prayer, asking how God would do this to her. Not that we could blame her. She didn’t ask for us, as much as we didn’t ask for her. When we left, we only left a crinkled note in pencil on the table she once set, we told her that we loved her and we were sorry. That was a lie, but at least the neighbors would know that Molly’s Miracles only wanted the best for her.
Then it was almost two days of trudging through forests, of berry-stained teeth, of our feet bare on dirt since we liked things better that way, of us slowly turning to grime, of following the promises the moon left us. We took nothing except ourselves. Now our stomachs growled with the sea. We stepped in as one. The sea licked up our legs, dribbling foam up on our knees as he slicked his seaweed tongue. And our moon passed no judgment. He choked us down as we waded, demanding more with each crash, dragging us into his belly. He toyed with our ankles, testing the pull of his tide. And we trusted our moon. Numb in the cold, all we could feel was the weight of our hands as we filled our lungs with the salty midnight air. When the water bobbed nipping along our ears it was time. Before we dipped under, to a silent count of three we took each other in as we were. Eyes rising and falling into silhouettes. Maybe there was something, but memory is not perfect, so, maybe there wasn’t. The water took us under and our hair swayed above our heads in the faint yellow glow of the moon. The moon, our moon, had chosen us. But the sea, he didn’t.
We always said it would only take the two of us and the moon. It took more than that.
Remember the first time we went to the ocean? It was nothing like that night. That year the crop did so well that Mama took us on a trip, only a few hours drive to the coast. We borrowed the neighbor’s robin-egg truck and packed our matching pinstriped swimsuits. We had never been beyond Moravian Falls, but that trip saw the way farmland folded into the forest and unfolded into rows of houses and back into rolling hills. Eventually, we could hear the cry of seabirds and could taste salt in the air, heavy on our tongues. Each night we would escape the tent and run out to the ocean. The summer night wrapped us in her arms and carried us to her greatest sights: the cliffs Mama specifically told us to run away from ragged and daunting, the caves slick with salt sweat and perfect for climbing and the little shells that rested in there. When we did finally make it back to the tent, chests heaving, we would stick our heads out so that we could fall asleep with the moon blushing against our eyelids. And the moon would tell us more secrets in our dreams. Stories about the craters and the way he loved the sea, but could never satisfy his hunger. The Moon told us things one shouldn’t tell children, yet he did anyway. On the last night Mama caught us trying to escape and wouldn’t let us even poke our heads out to see our dearest friend. She never understood our quiet giggles at breakfast the way we talked about our dreams. She looked at us the way one spies a honeybee as it bumbles around the picnic blanket. The last night, the night she caught us, we stared up at the fading taupe of the tent and sleep finally captured us. For the first time, the moon made us promises.
That night, I clasped your hand as you cried out. Your eyes glossed over like the smooth shells we’d hunt on the beach. Bubbles filled the space between us and you shuddered, jerking in the water. Your nails dug half crescents under my knuckles and my other hand raced to reach yours, but you began sinking. It wasn’t until after I realized I mirrored your shout but I breathed fine. It wasn’t until after I realized that along my neck were three deep cuts, as if someone dragged Mama’s garden fork across my neck, twice. I caught you before you fell deeper in the water. I wrapped my arms under your shoulder and dragged you up. When we reached the surface you were so pale. Your lips were like the moon and I couldn’t breathe. As I dipped back beneath the surface you slipped from my grasp, the sea, he pulled you into the inky black and I couldn’t follow where you went. And the moon, never our moon, the coward he was, dipped behind the clouds.
We always said it would only take the two of us and the moon. It took more than that.
