The Return

A moment in time, as one woman travels to a place from her past to find a new beginning.

Denpasar Airport, Bali. The last time Luna was here she was ten. She had been excited to go back to Australia and show off her new braids to the girls at school. She loved how the pink beads had made clicking noises as she moved, loved that it was her turn to come back from the holiday break with a story to tell. When her hair got smelly and the braids had to be untangled, she kept the beads in a jewellery box for years. They were a marker of the calm before the shit-storm that followed.

That was seventeen years ago. This time, her brown hair was cut short. A post-break-up decision. She was getting used to not having a ponytail. Getting used to the lack of attention. As she walked through the strum of waiting taxi drivers outside the terminal, she felt hundreds of eyes turn to her. She looked down at her white singlet top, splashed purple with shitty fifteen-dollar plane shiraz. She looked down at her stomach, her eating-her-feelings paunch. Then she gazed from man to man until her eyes locked with a bored looking guy in his early thirties. She chose the driver who wouldn’t fight for her.

He walked ahead, leading her to a black cab. She was on a mission. Go to the seaside hotel that she had been to as a child. She slid into the backseat of the car, its radio humming Bahasa pop songs, a good luck charm dangling from the mirror, a packet of clove cigarettes and a book of Rumi’s poetry on the dashboard. She toyed with the pendant on her neck, the last gift her mother had ever given her.

‘Lovina. Singaraja,’ she said.

His name was Ari, but the woman didn’t think to ask. It was midnight and he was tired. He’d been sleeping in his car in short naps to save money in the holiday rush before he had to go back to teaching at the university in Jakarta.

‘A million rupiah.’

She shrugged, too tired to haggle. Fuck it.

‘Yep. Let’s go.’