Page 26 of It’s Me They Follow

“I can agree to that, as long as you can agree... to play the question game... without any arguing.” They’d been playing the question game as long as she could remember, but it had almost always turned into arguing when they were little.

It was a simple game, childlike. But it had gotten more intense as they’d gotten older.

Be curious, not annoying. Probe, but don’t be invasive.

Ask “who,” “what,” “where,” “why” questions and listen.

Deep listen. Let it get personal; that was the point.

“Love the question game. I made it up.”

“You did not make it up,” The Shopkeeper teased.

“I sure did. Back of the library. I wrote down, ‘Let’s play a game,’ and you wrote back, ‘Okay. What are the rules?’ I wrote, ‘Let’s ask each other questions.’ And you said, ‘No yes-or-no answers.’ I wrote one last rule for this road trip. Ready?”

“Another rule?” The Shopkeeper was growing impatient, and they hadn’t even pulled off yet. She’d be respectful yet march to the beat of her own drum. None of this was necessary. No matter what, The Shopkeeper would do what she thought was right.

“The last rule is simple, but it’s not easy: TRUST.”

The Shopkeeper felt a tinge of guilt in her gut as the word “trust” heated fire in her belly and her throat.

She had a hard time thinking about trust without thinking about betrayal.

She’d lost trust in their parents early in life.

She’d lost trust in friends and lovers, clients and mentors.

It had affected everything. Elle had been her best friend since she was born.

They were almost twins. If The Shopkeeper could trust anyone, it should be her, but even that was a struggle for The Shopkeeper for no good reason.

“Our grandmother used to say, ‘Lean not...’”

“‘On your own understanding.’” Her sister finished the sentence, mimicking their grandmother with a waving finger. “Exactly. So, when you can’t do it, believe there’s something stronger than you that can.”

Trust was like driving through a long, slippery tunnel without a guide.

It took guts and stupidity and obsession.

If you were ever stuck in a tunnel and lived to talk about it, you might never want to take another tunnel again.

But then you’d be stuck forever. That is how some people manage to trust over and over and over again. And others do not.

“You look like you’ve been VERY trusting lately,” The Shopkeeper joked.

“Oh, I have been soooooooo trusting.” Elle laughed. “Really, really, really, very, very.”

The Shopkeeper closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths in and out as she settled into the passenger seat. Waves of anxiety flowed through her when she thought about a trip Down South. She breathed out with a sigh.

What if something happens to the bookshop while I’m gone?

Inhale. Exhale. Sigh.

What about The Doctor and ME and my class?

She breathed them out too.

What if I get home and I can’t go back in the house?

Inhale. Exhale. Sigh.

What if something happens to my sister?

Inhale. Exhale. Sigh.

“I deserve sweetness,” she told herself on repeat until she calmed the thoughts down completely.

When she opened her eyes, Elle was staring at her like she’d grown an extra head.

“One more thing,” Elle added, “because that just reminded me. And I mean this one, from the bottom of my heart...”

“You can’t learn anything when you’re talking,” The Shopkeeper said, like Rocky Balboa. “That’s a fact of life. As long as you’re talking, you’re not listening.” She laughed at her own bad impression.

“I mean it. NO MAKE PRETEND. No Houdini hoodoo funny business. This is the real world. This is not a movie. This is not a book. We are here and now. Feet on the ground. Head out the clouds, no flying.”

“That’s like telling me to cut off my wings.”

They sat in silence for a minute, thinking about how painful it must be to have your wings clipped.

I could turn back now , The Shopkeeper thought.

Hop out of this car, forget her sister’s rule book, and head Down South on her own.

Maybe in a few years, when she felt more ready.

She didn’t need a chaperone. And she didn’t need the added pressure of a baby, who she couldn’t love properly or teach to trust because she couldn’t give them hugs or hold their hand when she walked them to the park.

Her sister added their childhood address to the GPS.

“118 Mountain Peak Drive.” The robotic voice confirmed their five-hour trip to Hampton, Virginia.

“Okay, okay. You’re right. ‘Nobody wants a bird with clipped wings,’” her sister conceded. “But I am not playing make pretend WITH you.”

“That’s your choice. No biggie.”

Make pretend was another coping mechanism they’d invented as children.

It allowed them to see through walls and walk on water and move things with their minds.

It was how The Shopkeeper explained her issues and her gifts; it was how she navigated life.

How she overcame hurdles. She made things up.

She loved to see the awe in other people’s faces when they listened to her fantastical yet true stories.

It was how she learned the power of imagination.

Of having a vision and bringing it to life.

And now Elle wanted to control that too.

“Okay, you had three rules for me; I have just one for you.” The Shopkeeper pointed at her sister’s belly. “For both of you.”

“Hmmm.”

“Not today.” She laughed.

“Promise,” her sister said as she merged onto the highway.

“Anyway, switching topics.” She fumbled with the radio.

“If You Don’t Know Me by Now” was on. They both sang their father’s favorite—“You will never, never, never know me...”—in falsetto, like their daddy used to sing it.

“Okay, what exactly did your boyfriend say in this letter? He told you he knew where we lived?” Her sister had always been a much better driver than her and a much better discerner of people.

She was using her turn signals and keeping her eyes on the road and trying to piece together a narrative on my new guy. She concentrated intensely.

“The letter said to find ME, go home.”

“And you think he knows where we grew up? Is he some sorta stalker? I hope he’s nothing like youknowwho. What’s he planning to do? Stand outside with a bouquet of roses and wait for you like on The Bachelor ?”

The Shopkeeper hadn’t thought that part through. She wasn’t exactly sure what he’d meant in the letter. She’d spent several days trying to make sense of it and finally gave up when she couldn’t.

“There are only a few things holding me back from opening the bookshop, but the biggest hurdle is BOOKS. I left everything when I left Down South. I know it’s been a long time.

I know I’m scared, and my doctor just died, and I haven’t seen our grandmother for almost twenty years.

But I left my books, my notebooks, my sketches, my furniture, my recipes, my photos, my art, and I am returning like the sankofa bird to go get it.

And for the hundredth time, he’s not my boyfriend.

He’s a monk—a monk in training, whatever that means.

“And I don’t know if this has anything to do with him per se, but his letter made me want to go home, so I am going. I’m ready.”

Her sister adjusted her seat belt around her belly. Cars aren’t made for pregnant women to drive long distances.

“I’m glad you’re ready. I am proud of you. It’s been too long. But be honest: Aren’t you secretly going home because you want to be with your happily ever after?” Her sister was serious. “You always want to know the end of a story before it’s over.”

Sometimes the question game veered into interrogation.

“Leading question. Badgering the witness,” The Shopkeeper mocked Law it was the sense that he listened.

He listened to the words in her book more closely than she did.

He made her Conversations with Harriett make sense.

He took the instructions and immediately followed directions without the back-and-forth of fear and wavering.

“You want HIM to listen to that call in his life because, what...?”

“Because things are so much better when we do. And so much worse when we don’t.”

“You mean so much better when YOU do, and so much worse when YOU don’t. No need to put that on him. What is it about him specifically that YOU want?”

“I want time.” The Shopkeeper didn’t hesitate.

“Time?”

“Yeah, time. I told you, when we looked in each other’s eyes, time stopped. I want that feeling of time stopping.”

“How do you know his calling is not to be the love of YOUR life, your time stopper?”

The Shopkeeper paused. “If so, we’d be together, and right now, we are not. So it can’t be. At least not yet. But this isn’t the end of the story.” Good answer , she thought.

Elle paused. She was processing. They both were. Then she asked, “And you’d be okay with being together but never ever touching ever, never ever, for the rest of your lives? Y’all would just talk and read books and eat and take walks and look in each other’s eyes?” She laughed.

“I’d be open to it.” The Shopkeeper searched in her bag for nothing at all. She found an apple. She wanted to see herself as the kind of person who could sacrifice the superficial for the truth, but she knew she wanted to know what the muscles in his forearms felt like. If not his, then someone’s.

“Stars?!” her sister asked. “Stars” was the term they’d used when they were little to promise they were telling the truth.

“Stars,” The Shopkeeper agreed.

“Well, that’s good. And you know, you don’t have to try to be the bigger person.”

She understood that in theory, but it got lost in practice.

“Like, I am not your morality police. Okay, I have another question. What if you do all this work to get over your issue—will you still want him in the end? A lover who can’t touch you or kiss you or hold you at night? Would you distract him from his purpose just to look him in the eyes?”

The Shopkeeper didn’t know if she would like his touch or kiss, but she was willing to find out. But what if he wasn’t? She’d spent a lifetime wondering about being held in someone’s arms. She wasn’t comfortable with the question, but her sister was right for asking. “I guess not.”

“You guess not?”

“Was that a question?” The Shopkeeper retorted. She was getting defensive. It was one of the questions running around in The Shopkeeper’s head as well. “I want everything,” she said softly, “but I will settle for something.”

Jazmine Sullivan sang about lions and tigers and bears.

“I love this song,” Elle sang. “You can tell me the truth, you know,” she pushed gently between her favorite lines.

“Don’t you always say that a writer’s job is to tell the truth?

Tell it. It’s only me and you and the baby listening.

Do you want EVERYTHING or SOMETHING or NOTHING? ”

Sometimes the question game got testy. It required silence and space.

“I want everything,” The Shopkeeper whispered. “But I don’t wanna want everything.”

“ ’Cause you can’t handle the truth,” her sister mocked.

They both laughed. “Maybe, just maybe, you deserve someone for who you’re becoming, not who you’ve been,” Elle said.

That wasn’t a question , The Shopkeeper thought. But it was a damn good sentence. “I can admit that I deserve sweetness.” The Shopkeeper bit into her apple. “I deserve sweetness,” she repeated.

“You truly do,” her sister agreed. Her sister turned up Patti LaBelle’s “New Attitude” on the radio.

“Okay.”

If she was this open with Elle already, she couldn’t imagine how deep they’d be in conversation five hours from now. The Shopkeeper pulled out her journal. She wrote so hard and so fast, she thought she might break her pen.

“That’s smart to write it down,” Elle said. “Even when you can’t tell others the truth, at least you can tell it to yourself.”