Page 1 of It's Me They Follow
Chapter 1
DECEMBER 31, 2019
11:50 P.M.
Once 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—apparentlya 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, TheShopkeeper 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 inLike the Singing Coming off the Drums, a 1998 first edition, first printing, Sonia Sanchez–autographed copy,iwake 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.
