Page 1 of It’s Me They Follow

O nce upon a time but not long ago, there was a shopkeeper in Philadelphia who did not like to be touched.

Ever since she’d been a little girl, the wrong tap, nudge, jab, or pinch shocked her and put her straight to sleep.

Which is why, while everyone else in Philadelphia (aka The City of Brotherly Love) celebrated this New Year’s Eve with hugs and high fives, she sat alone in a window of her almost-but-not-quite-open bookshop and declared this her year to conquer fear. She would finally open her doors.

She realized it would be impossible to open a bookshop—and become a real shopkeeper—without being touched. Yet the thought of that someone’s touch made her toes curl. Just the thought made her want to run back Down South to play small in the town where she had grown up.

As the clock ticked closer to midnight, The Shopkeeper rushed to the bookshop’s newly painted crisp white bathroom, to begin her New Year’s Eve ritual. Usually, she did this alone at home, but this year she had a shop to keep.

Just as she had seen her grandmother do, she washed her face with marigolds and Florida Water, then jotted down a wish on torn paper that she set on fire using a small metal lighter.

As she ran to the front door to blow her ashes into the street, the clock struck midnight and fireworks burst in the sky.

She declared out the door, “Now I am a bookshop keeper.” With each shout, louder than the blasts, she declared again, “Now I am a bookshop keeper!” Her grandmother used to say, You have to speak things that aren’t as though they were, yes, but the magic was in yelling it very loud.

So, she shouted once more, with all the strength possible, “NOW I AM A BOOKSHOP KEEPER!”

“Oh, shut up!” her neighbor across the street yelled back. “We heard you the first time.”

The Shopkeeper rolled her big, nearsighted eyes and thought no one was going to tell her what to do, but anyway, she was finished.

She couldn’t see far without her glasses, so it was as though her neighbor wasn’t there—just a disembodied voice that she could close her door on.

Back inside, she did just that. Maneuvering around the shop’s messy piles of brown packing paper, she ignored thoughts about her neighbor and continued her conversation with herself.

“Today, I banish this forty-year fear of being touched. Today, I answer the call.”

For years she’d felt “called” to OPEN a bookshop—apparently a select few hear this call at some point in their lives, and even fewer answer it.

Up until this New Year’s Eve, her call had only been an occasional whisper, like an ancient drumbeat over a distant dream.

Yes, the call had been there, but it had been so faint that she could barely hear it, and that’s how she’d liked it—soft, quiet, and demure.

She’d never opened anything before. She was an interior designer who collected books, not a shopkeeper who sold them.

But just then, as she continued to make excuses, she thought she saw a woman fly past the window like a phantom, or a sign, or a haint.

She couldn’t believe it. The Shopkeeper searched around for her thick-rimmed, thick-lensed glasses and put them on.

As she put them on, she peeked outside, not knowing what to expect.

As she held her breath and looked both ways, she giggled to herself because, yet again, she had been fooled by her own overly writerly imagination.

It wasn’t a haint, she realized. “The sign” was the very real and vivacious urban cowgirl who taught almost everyone in Philadelphia horseback riding.

“This is a tradition passed down from Ms. Harriett Tubman,” the urban cowgirl had explained to The Shopkeeper about her night rides through the city.

“Ms. Harriett summoned a horse to escape enslavement. She didn’t walk, she didn’t run—she flew to freedom.

She found that freedom in Philadelphia. Right there where you’re standing. ”

As the urban cowgirl disappeared into the night, The Shopkeeper believed she was in fact being given a message from her guide, Ms. Harriett.

They were both a touch touched, she remembered thinking as a little girl when she had read about Ms. Harriett.

If Ms. Harriett could free herself, anyone could.

All we had to do was follow her instructions.

“‘I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had the right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other,’” The Shopkeeper quoted Ms. Harriett aloud. “‘Liberty or death!’”

“Oh, would you stop it?” her neighbor screamed out again.

“No, you stop it!” The Shopkeeper shouted back and shut her door. She loved Philly even when it didn’t love her back. Invigorated, she stepped inside her not-quite-open bookshop so she could love on her books some more.

When The Shopkeeper really loved a book, she would:

Turn on Jill Scott—the first album. Let’s take a long walk around the park after dark....

Take off her shoes.

Remove the protective jacket from the hardcover.

Massage its inner spine with her thumbs.

Smooth its outer spine with her fingernails.

Open it.

Nestle her nose into the crack of its pages.

Take a deep breath in.

And let that breath out with an “ahhhhh.”

This was what she was doing at a little after midnight—face deep in Like the Singing Coming off the Drums , a 1998 first edition, first printing, Sonia Sanchez–autographed copy, i wake up in the nite / tasting you on my breath —when a tallish, bearded man with a subtle yet contagious smile bopped into her dimly lit shop.

She thought about running behind her desk for her machete when she noticed he was carrying only a leather-bound notebook and a blue fountain pen.

No need to pull a machete out on a man with a fountain pen.

She couldn’t tell if he was ancient or thirtyish until he respectfully took off his scully to reveal a shiny bald head and a lineless baby face.

Definitely thirtyish, maybe even twentyish , she thought, shaking her head at his being half her age while looking twice as wise.

And then, without lingering too much on “hello,” he proceeded to browse as if he didn’t notice it was after midnight.

The bookshop was in complete disarray, with cardboard boxes piled up everywhere, but he didn’t seem to mind; it was almost as if he preferred it that way.

He, his bald head, his slight grin, and his high cheekbones whiffed past The Shopkeeper, smelling of sweet nothings—like herbs and spices, dessert and cologne, incense and deer hide, wet soil and Egyptian musk.

He must be a writer , she thought. What type, she couldn’t decide.

But only a writer would smell that sweet after working all day , she concluded.

“I deserve sweetness,” she reminded herself out loud. An affirmation her grandmother used to recite every time she’d encountered something sweet. “I deserve sweetness,” she said a second time, not realizing the words had squeaked out of her in a high pitch .

“What was that?” he asked as he plopped himself down on top of a cardboard box right beside her. He pulled his pen out from behind his ear, as though he were going to begin writing.

“We are not quite open yet,” she responded to him, cutting a box open loudly just so he would know she had a razor blade.

She flashed him a kind-but-not-too-kind customer-service smile and shifted away.

It was still after midnight in The Land of Fishtown—even though people just called it Fishtown nowadays.

“You should come back in... about a month. February first will be the grand opening of Harriett’s Bookshop.

” It was her first time declaring this aloud.

Speaking it made it feel real and easy. Until she realized that, for no reason at all, she’d only given herself one month until her opening day.

“I’ll definitely be back,” he said as he got up, smiling.

She backed away, thinking he might try to congratulate her with a pat on the shoulder or even a warm hug.

Her bangled arms jutted out from beneath her denim duster, the one she always wore atop her oversized denim overalls to hide the giant hole in the seat of her pants.

She tightened her grip around the blade, as the bearded man beelined past her, heading toward her desk, where he began sorting through the books in her to-be-read pile.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked. There, mixed in the huge pile, he found the one book in the whole soon-to-be-bookshop with The Shopkeeper’s face on the cover— Conversations with Harriett .

“What is this about?” he questioned as he pointed to a three-foot-tall painting of Ms. Harriett tilted against the wall and a shelf of books about her.

The Shopkeeper was moved by his inquisitiveness—she loved someone who simply wanted to know things.

He was odd but harmless, she decided. Letting her shoulders drop, The Shopkeeper softened.

“Ms. Harriett is my...” She paused as she searched for the right word—not “mother,” not “idol,” not “auntie,” not “friend.” “She’s my guide.”

“That’s funny. Mine too,” he said nonchalantly as he settled into the armchair behind her desk, flipping through her book.

“But, my friend,” she interrupted, “we are not quite...” She started confident, then trailed off, hesitated, and wondered how much of her book loving he’d caught earlier and if maybe he was a reporter-type writer working on a salacious story for the local newspaper.

“Quirky, blade-yielding middle-ager with wild hair and oversized overalls caught sniffing... books in Fishtown.” She could see the headline going viral, and it frightened her.

But she quickly reminded herself that this was her bookshop, these were her books, loving books was not a crime, he could write whatever sensationalism he wanted.