Page 40 of It's Me They Follow
“I do.”
“And it’s a boy?”
“I think so.”
The Shopkeeper took a hefty chug of moonshine, as she thought about them weeping in a hospital room a year ago.
“Now, this is cornbread!” Elle chef’s kissed her fingers to the sky. And as she ate the last bite, the skillet was snatched away, and the thickest candied yams were dropped in its place.
“How’s it feel carrying a human inside you?” The Shopkeeper asked with another swig. “That thing is touching your insides every second of every day. It feels what you feel.It eats what you eat. You’re a host for the seed of an alien invader.”
“It feels like I have a superpower.”
“A supermodel?” The music was getting louder and faster. More people were dancing, and her sister was talking with her mouth full of yams.
“No. Like a SUPERPOWER,” her sister screamed. “This is a baby who has asked to be here with me, and I’m honored to host.”
“But you know what must be hard?” The Shopkeeper was dancing in her seat. She blamed the moonshine. “What do you read to him? Sanchez? Hurston? Walker? Baraka?”
“I read him a poem almost every night, and he just stops all that kicking and settles in. Unless I read him Sanchez, and in that case, he never stops kicking and trying to punch through me.”
“Okay, another question: What makes a good parent?”
Elle looked at her sister as though it were a trick question. “Endurance,” she replied, stacking their plates. “You done?”
“Do you have that endurance?” The Shopkeeper saw the subtle shake in her sister’s otherwise steady hand. They held each other’s eye contact like two lionesses.
“Ribs?” The big-hipped woman placed a stack of ribs on the table.
“I’m certain the endurance is in me.” Her sister grabbed a rib and bit down into the fatty side.
“And if it’s not?” The Shopkeeper probed.
“Order in the court,” her sister said, banging her rib bone like a gavel on the table.
On the crowded dance floor, a couple began to have words.
“Don’t you ever touch me like that again,” a lady called out.
“Fried peaches,” the big-hipped woman interrupted Elle, placing before them warm peaches in small bowls. “My mama grew these,” the wide-hipped woman added with a grin.
“Thank you. They taste like... someone’s mama grew them,” The Shopkeeper said, chewing and grooving and turning back to Elle. “Was Mom a good mother?”
“She was the mother we had,” Elle said.
“If you could choose, would you have chosen someone different?”
“I would have chosen different circumstances.”
The Shopkeeper was getting full.
“Do you think you can be a better mother than she was?”
“I do.”
“And Dad?”
The Shopkeeper knew better than to bring up their dad. He was her sister’s sensitive subject. She didn’t respond. The Shopkeeper drank the last of her moonshine and raised her glass to the big-hipped woman for another.
