January 29, 2021 - “Don’t Tell me how it Ends” - Elizabeth Lerman.
I get my love of film from my father. Television too. We both exist under the belief that you can be anywhere in the world and feel at home with a familiar story. Characters become friends and narratives become well-traveled paths that you can speak and smile along with.
When I went to visit my father in Cambodia, he presented me with his DVD collection, hundreds of them, stacked in tall piles on a bookshelf. He bought them from the woman who sells bootlegs in the market. He talks to the woman everyday, he tells me, she even texts him when something he has been waiting for comes in. He tells me that she is the first friend he made in Siem Reap because the DVD shop in the market was one of the first places he went. He tells me how some of the movies make him cry but how others make him laugh so hard the dog starts barking. He takes me to meet the woman the morning after I arrive.
“This is my daughter,” he says, presenting me proudly to the smiling young woman who takes my hands in hers and tells me how funny my father is. She shows me what’s new in the shop, checking the quality as she goes to make sure the discs are unscathed. I tell her I will come back very soon for more. She nods and waves, her warm goodbye following me down the narrow path of the market. And I do go back. The next morning I am there, my crisp Cambodian riel tucked securely in my wallet, a small clutch made from rice bags featuring a signature elephant as its logo. It is the kind of wallet you buy for the people back home who will want a tangible piece of this foreign place. I have already bought three for myself.
When I reach the DVD shop my friend is speaking to two tourists who remark on the delightfully low prices. She waves to me and motions me in. As I browse I can hear a small, whining echo coming from the side room, which is separated from the shop by a thin hanging curtain. I peer noisily around the curtain and see a remarkably sweet face. The baby is only a few months old, but plump and gurgling, lying on his back, entertaining himself with a small mobile. I smile at him and he looks at me with a startled look that makes me laugh out loud. “Yours?” I ask the woman when she comes around beside me, “yes,” she says smiling then holds up her hand to tell me he is five months old. She goes to him on the floor and I squat down beside them, letting the baby grip my finger in his tiny palm. “Strong,” I say to the woman, wriggling my finger out of his grasp as she laughs and nods.
I go back the next day and sit with the baby. This becomes a habit and I begin to consider myself his voluntary babysitter. His mother can help more customers in the store if I am there, holding the baby, bouncing him down the aisles of the market before tucking him back in a crib behind the curtain. And suddenly, in the small room behind the thin curtain I am very aware of where I am and who I am with and I find it oddly incredible, this path that has formed in front of me. And in this small shop with its rows and shelves of stories, I am very conscious of my own. It is one of few that I do not know the ending of.
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Elizabeth Lerman is a creative writer based in New York City. A graduate from the University of Vermont, where she earned her B.A in Film Studies and English Literature, Elizabeth is passionate about forging strong female voices and diverse narratives. In her writing she focuses on the significance of small moments and the space they hold in both her thoughts and those of her characters. Elizabeth currently lives in Brooklyn where she is working, slowly but surely, on her first novel.
