Page 32 of It’s Me They Follow

Their grandmother stormed into the room with her pipe in one hand and a stack of encyclopedias in the other.

She stubbed her toe. “Fuck,” she said out loud, then laughed, which made them all laugh, including their grandfather.

Then she remembered the blue marker all over the walls and called her granddaughter everything but a child of God while she made The Shopkeeper stand in a corner, holding the copies of encyclopedias to the sky.

Later, when their grandmother checked on her, she was reading—she’d been in the corner for hours and never went to bed.

And their grandmother had a change of heart and compromised.

“We’ll paint her entire room blue instead. ”

The smell of reefer always took The Shopkeeper back to being punished in her childhood.

Maybe she’d inhaled too much of their grandmother’s smoke as a kid, she thought to herself.

Being punished by their grandmother had always felt like an opportunity to open her mind. It never hurt, even when she was harsh.

Now the walls in the house were peeling and browning from smoke. What a lesson this is , she thought. In searching for what you already have. There were more books than she’d ever seen.

“I told you what to do when we got here,” Elle reminded The Shopkeeper with a clap in front of her face to snap her out of the make pretending. “Blankets, towels, sheets.”

Elle was not shocked. She was unbothered by the mess, almost reveling in it, even though it extended to the high ceilings.

She saw it as a legacy and a way to feel close to their grandfather and his stuff.

The Shopkeeper couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to have a home birth in a home like this.

“Let it be,” her sister whispered, and waddled to the sunroom to fill up the pool like she’d planned.

The Shopkeeper couldn’t move; her feet were planted on the floor.

Clutter made her crazy, like it was touching her.

Stacks of clothes and magazines and dead plants and half-burnt candles and old photos and broken china were mixed in with the books.

Piles and piles of books and more books were everywhere, and she knew they needed rescuing before it was too late.

But then their grandmother’s rotary phone rang. Brrerrrnnnng.

“Don’t touch that,” their grandmother hollered as The Shopkeeper was about to pick up.

She pulled her hand back. It was enough to snap her out of it, and she ran upstairs to get the towels and blankets from her old bedroom as she’d been instructed.

She stepped over piles of magazines and newspapers and hats and toys and shoes—it was a museum of mishmash.

“Damn bill collectors,” their grandmother called up as the phone continued to ring. Brrerrrnnnng.

“This time of morning?” The Shopkeeper called back in disbelief.

“No home training!” their grandmother exclaimed from downstairs in the sunroom.

Finally at the top of the stairs, The Shopkeeper opened the door to her childhood bedroom, and while everything else in the old house was deteriorating and dirty and in disarray, this one room stood still.

The phone rang, but it was distanced and muffled like it was underwater. Brrerrrnnnng.

Her bedroom walls were still painted electric blue to match her bedspread and what she imagined as the ocean floor.

Their grandmother hadn’t touched her perfectly made-up bed; even her pillows were how she’d left them—two pillows on each side of her full-sized bed.

Her stuffed mermaid was still in its place between the pillows.

Colorful and iridescent mermaids were everywhere she looked—statues, paintings, books, art.

Their grandfather had managed to find her mermaid everything, including the light fixture, rug, drapes, and night-light.

Mermaids had helped her feel safe when they’d first come to live with them, so he gave her mermaids every day.

Brrerrrnnnng. The phone rang again, but even more distant now.

Her desk and bookshelf were painted blue and covered with posters of Sonia Sanchez quotes and August Wilson photos.

They didn’t make posters for playwrights, so their grandfather had paid to get them made for her.

She had a Walkman with a Jill Scott CD beside it.

It was like seeing herself grow over time but also remain the same.

Reading The Adventures of Fathead, Smallhead, and Squarehead in the closet in the late eighties.

Writing letters to herself in the early nineties.

Homework on her beanbag in the late nineties.

Never sleeping in her bed in 2000. Instead, she’d started to make a bed on the floor of her closet so she could read and write at night by candlelight without being caught.

Her grandmother had ordered her a box set of sixteen thick leather journals and her own quill and ink pad.

She told The Shopkeeper to “write the future, write until you feel healed.” When she opened her closet, it was just as she’d left it all those years ago.

She sat down cross-legged on her makeshift bed of sheets and blankets.

She lit the altar candle with her favorite metal lighter, which still lay beside it.

Their grandfather had built hidden shelves into the closet walls.

In them were rows and rows of her journals.

She’d started writing the future as a little girl when they first came to live with their grandparents.

It was the only way she could deal with the present.

She picked through herself over the years.

Love letters and heartbreaks, crushes and friends, dreams and aspirations.

MEET SONIA SANCHEZ

MEET SONIA SANCHEZ

MEET SONIA SANCHEZ

One notebook said repeatedly for pages.

That was how she’d ended up moving to Philly.

When I grow up, I want to open a bookshop in Philly .

When I grow up, I want to write a book .

When I grow up, I want to be in love. When I grow up, I want to love ME.

When I grow up, I want to be a matchmaker .

She picked a journal up and put it down as she traveled back in time on her own memory lane, one journal at a time.

One notebook was spread open and face down on her makeshift bed.

It still had a blue pen tucked into the spine. She picked it up.

The phone ringing was light but still there. Brrerrrnnnng.

Welcome home , the journal read in her own handwriting.

It gave her chills, and she put it back down for a second.

It was as though she’d left herself a note.

She picked it up again.

We aren’t here to judge you; sometimes it takes us longer than expected to find our way back home. I know you’re looking for ME, who is also looking for you. You will find each other in due time.

Today you get a chance to choose how soon.

Choose wisely.

Signed,

Yourself!

PS: Take these sheets and blankets down to your sister, or she will kill you. She’s about to have a baby.

Brrerrrnnnng. The ring returned, louder and more demanding. But thankfully, it snapped her out of it. She put the journal back, face down, in its spot. And even though she didn’t want to leave her things behind, she grabbed the sheets and blankets and towels and ran downstairs.

Brrerrrnnnng. She ran past the phone, hopping over their grandmother’s mess.

She caught a quick glimpse of a photo; it was the same picture of a group of grandmothers that ME’s aunt had with the same group of women all dressed alike—her literary society.

A mustard-colored teapot sat atop the worn and dirty stove.

Heaps of dried food were caked along the surface of the walls.

Oil splatter decorated every empty wall space.

The cluttered kitchen was a maze of dirty dishes, broken plates, old newspapers, and other shrines to their grandfather.

Boxes of the books he’d collected for The Shopkeeper over the years were piled high upon one another.

The sunroom door was dilapidated and creaky, but the sun was still rising and filling the room with pinkish blue light.

The Shopkeeper took deep breaths to let the fresh Down South air fill her lungs.

Their grandmother’s rocking chair moved back and forth in the middle of the room beside their grandfather’s empty recliner.

It still made her heart sink. His cup was filled with hot tea.

Under their grandmother’s chair was an axe to “‘cut’ the pains of birth.” Their grandmother rocked in the chair, rubbing her stiff knees.

“And that’s why we burn the chicken feathers,” their grandmother spoke out loud to herself.

She was barefoot. Her feet were covered with life and scars, corns and calluses, bunions and bruises.

She was ending a story and staring out at the forest past the clothesline with longing in her eyes as she started another story.

“Now, one time I was delivering, and the baby came out fully born but in a bag, like they were never born at all.” The elder woman cackled and rocked like she was talking to her husband.

She paid no mind to Elle’s contractions coming every three minutes.

“We call them mermaids. This one was born that way.” She pointed at The Shopkeeper, who had never heard that story about her birth before.

“They say those babies have second sight.”

Brrerrrnnnng , the phone rang. It was driving The Shopkeeper a bit crazier each time it rang, but no one else seemed bothered. She couldn’t shake the thought that it was ME calling and she was missing him because their grandmother wouldn’t let her answer his call.

“Can I take it off the hook, then?” she asked their grandmother, annoyed.

“You”—their grandmother clapped along with her words—“have a job.”