9 p.m. in Muisne
9 p.m. in Muisne, an island off the northern coast of Ecuador, is jellyfish bubbling from the sand on a dark beach. I watch my step because their poison is a life force even in death, and one tentacle has already whipped around my calf, leaving a crimson spiral. I wade into the warm surf and swim out until my feet can’t touch the bottom. When I bob up, my skin swirls with galaxies of bioluminescent plankton.
Floating in the black sea, I look back at the beach. Just a row of shacks made of rough wooden planks, glowing from inside with dangling bulbs. Coconut palms bow over thatched roofs, dropping heavy green fruit. One shack is a restaurant that stays open until the Swiss chef, Pepe, decides to close. Maybe that’s his name, maybe it’s not. Ask how he got here and why he stays and you get the same answer I give: by boat, and I can’t seem to catch the same boat back. It motors out past the breakwaters just once a day, at 8 o’clock in the morning, packed with passengers who pull a thick plastic tarp over their heads to brace for the waves.
Like Pepe, I can’t seem to leave this place. Evenings, I can’t untangle myself from the hammock on his porch. I promise myself: tomorrow. Mornings, I can’t untangle myself from the single sheet on my bed in time for the boat. I’m 19, and Muisne keeps me safe from doubt. Another semester of college is waiting for me in Portland, where the damp soaks my bones, where I brood over my future on the trundle bed in my dorm, wondering who I should become. An international aid worker? An actress? The young girl once crammed with confidence has suddenly grown fearful of failure. Here, in Muisne, I don’t have to try. I have only the shimmer of plankton on night swims, my legs scissoring in the deep to stir them up.
In the warm, dark sea, treading water, I know I have to break the spell. I have bright plans to move on, but the mornings here begin with salty wind, with the scent of the sour grapefruits that plop on the gravel road into town, with the cup of instant coffee on Pepe’s porch, with the slice of tangy white cheese I stuff into a fresh roll. I want to move on, but I don’t know if I can smother the ache to stay. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll catch that morning boat. Or maybe the next 9 p.m. will find me once again in the dark warm ocean, plankton shimmering on my shoulders as I come up for air.
About the Author
Kristin Gourlay is a Chicago-based writer and journalist. Her work has appeared on NPR, in McSweeney’s, The Rumpus and Catapult. She earned an MS in journalism from Columbia University. She loves to sing the lush vocal music of the Balkans and Georgia and play the ukulele, which is the happiest instrument in the world.
Illustration by Jane Demarest.
Edited by Aube Rey Lescure.
