Page 43 of It's Me They Follow
Elle shook her head yes sometimes and no sometimes and blew out puffs of breath without opening her eyes as the contraction intensified. It was as though it would last forever. “As soon as it’s over, you’re going to drive us right there onto the side of the road.”
This contraction was endless. The Shopkeeper stared at the glowing moon. The contraction continued. She stared at the swaying trees. It wouldn’t stop. She looked behind them for oncoming cars. She wondered if the brooding clouds signaled rain. She was calm on the outside, terrified on the inside. “‘What makes this path most important are the footsteps that follow.’” A still, small voice whispered in her left ear.
“Did you hear that?” she asked Elle.
“Don’t even,” Elle replied, shaking her head no.
The Shopkeeper remembered having to ride on the back of Elle’s bike when they were kids. Friends laughed as her teeny-tiny sister rode them both to school one morning in the pouring-down rain. There was only one bike between them, and Elle would not leave her sister behind in a storm. Elle stand-pedaled the whole way to school with The Shopkeeper gripping her seat tighter and tighter, legs out by her sides, eyes shut and afraid as the wind and rain smacked them around.
“Put your arm around my waist,” Elle had pleaded. It would help them balance. And though The Shopkeeper had wished she could, as usual she had been too afraid to hold on to anyone—including her own sister.
“Okay,” Elle said now, loosening her grip on the steering wheel and snapping The Shopkeeper back to their present reality. “Got it.”
“Got what?”
“Another thirty.” Elle turned off the hazard lights, turned on an audiobook about microeconomics, and began to drive as if nothing had happened.
“Microeconomics in the middle of nowhere... Doesn’t get better than this,” The Shopkeeper mocked.
Right then, she realized why her sister was so adamant about not letting her drive. Everything she had, she’d gotten on her own. Alone. She worked so hard that she was scared to lose the slightest thing, thinking it would set off a domino effect that would make her lose it all.
“You do realize you’re in LABOR?! Active labor. I think whatever is going on with me is a whole lot simpler than what is going on with you. I can drive; I just have to remember how. It’s like riding a bike; it all comes back. Shift. Gear. Clutch. Shift. Gear. Clutch.” The Shopkeeper knew she could do it.
Elle’s eyes welled up and widened. She was afraid. “Sister...” she cried. The year before, the two had been in a hospital room together, with a doctor telling them her sister’s baby wouldn’t make it. “Promise you won’t make me go back.” It was the cold, isolated emergency room. The rude doctor. The incompetent nurse. The beeping and prodding. She remembered how poorly Elle had been treated, left alone to watch her infant take its last breath, and agreed. “I promise, no hospitals.”
Here they were again, and this time, The Shopkeeper wasdetermined to give her sister what the doctor couldn’t—a healthy baby. She’d make it right.
“It’s okay to let me drive for once.” Maybe it wasn’t her own fear that made The Shopkeeper ride in the passenger seat of life when she knew she could steer; maybe it was others’ fears. She’d convinced herself it was easier for others when she played small because they could play tall.It was all make pretend, she rationalized. “Trust,” she told Elle, pointing to the air around them—that had been the agreement. “If you can’t trust me, trust that. Trust them.” She always ignored what Elle said about make pretend. “Make pretend you can trust.”
Her sister didn’t respond. She was going faster and faster when they both felt the first drop of rain.
The Shopkeeper looked at the time. “Twenty more minutes. How long till it pours?”
“I got this.” Elle pressed the gas. Another few drops of rain fell from the opening sky. Rain was The Shopkeeper’s favorite.
“What do you do in a convertible when it rains?” The Shopkeeper asked, as if it were a knock-knock joke.
Elle stared at the road. “Park.” She smiled gently. “Surrender.”
Then, as if timed perfectly, they arrived at a Wawa. They turned into the gas station’s parking lot and rolled up the drop-top. The rain began to pour so hard that they could not see.
“Exactly.” TheShopkeeper hoped the rain would wash away a lifetime of tension. They ran into Wawa, laughing and wet and searching for water before the next contraction.
“I’m thirsty,” The Shopkeeper said.
“Me too,” Elle conceded. “Me too.”
For the first time in years, the two sisters agreed.
Chapter 25
JANUARY 23, 2020
3:33 A.M.
The last leg of the trip Down South sent the sisters on a journey through a blindingly bright and interminably tight tunnel. Like the birth canal, the narrow passage was designed to bridge the gap between Up North and Down South. It was an underwater roller coaster that ran for miles in both directions.
The sisters had called it the never-ending tunnel as children because they could fall asleep three times inside it, faces stuck to the cracked leather armrests in the back of their grandfather’s big-bodied Benz, wake up to the smell of his woodsy cologne, and still be in the same Chesapeake Bay tunnel for what felt like days.
