Page 44 of It's Me They Follow
Their grandfather was an Up North man. Their grandmother a Down South woman. It was a good combo. Their grandparents took them back and forth countless times on trips through the never-ending tunnel, but this was the first time the two sisters were taking the journey without them.
Some people moved through the tunnel quickly, plopping through onto the other side without so much as a push. But others, like The Shopkeeper and her grandfather and many more before them, moved through the tunnel with intention.
The Shopkeeper was sure she smelled her grandfather as she gripped the leather steering wheel like he used to do. He’d been an unflinching man who’d work on a railroad all week long, then lead the men’s choir on Sundays. He woke up before the sun, and so did she. He liked his mint tea unbearably hot, and so did she. She drove like him because he’d taught her how. Even though he’d taught her the right way, they both drove the wrong way—one hand on the steering wheel, one hand on a hip. He couldn’t read very well. “I had to teach myself,” he often explained. When he was barely in junior high school, his father died, leaving him to help his mother raise his other six siblings. He dropped out of school and began working, but even then, he said he’d “never been too good with reading anything but the room.” He told the best stories. Stories had fueled their car rides and conversations. “Once upon a time...” he’d begin, because every good story starts that way, “there was a family of dolphins, but they loved to argue.”
She sat up straight in the driver’s seat now, thinking about her grandfather as the low hum of new cars zoomed by. She pretended to hear dolphins arguing, just like the stories her grandfather used to tell.
“What are they arguing about now, Grandfather?” she’d ask.
“You didn’t hear it?” He picked on her. “They’re saying there’s a calf coming.” He spoke like his grandfather before him. “They’re trying to decide where to have it and what to name it.” He pretended he knew things that only dolphins knew.
Her grandparents always played make pretend with her and gave her stories that made her eyes widen and her mouth hang wide open. “Close your mouth before you catch flies. That ain’t even the good part yet,” he’d say. She’d cover her face with both hands when stories got too real. And he’d say, “Open your eyes, look at your life, and face yourself.” She’d try.
The moral of his stories was always love. “Love is the most powerful force.” He joked that he’d loved their grandmother since the day he was born and that was why he was so strong. “Most people don’t fall in love till their teenage years, but not me and your grandmother—we were born in love. A match made in heaven.”
They’d been born only one month apart, but he teased that The Shopkeeper’s grandmother was much older than him. “A lot can happen in a month,” he’d say with a wink. His mother had been in labor for twenty-six hours. Her grandmother had been in the room when her grandfather was born. She was an infant. Everyone cried tears of joy when he finally arrived safely through the tunnel from the other side. “Lots of babies didn’tmake it back then, but we did.” He passed down the stories told to him so The Shopkeeper and her sister could pass them down as well. Stories are what hold their family together. Her grandparents had had the same midwife. She came with a small medical bag—towels, tongs, herbs, roots, scissors, and songs. She hummed “I’m gonna lay down my burden / Down by the riverside” as a freedom song that babies followed through the canal like a calling until they were born. The midwife was the keeper of birth stories, secrets, names, and songs. Her presence made the room feel light and warm. She was the family’s book of life, and she took the tradition seriously. “Back in our day, babies were born right at home. Just like dolphins, entire families welcomed new calves into the fold.” It was their families who decided the two babies were betrothed from birth, and even her rebellious grandmother never rebelled against love. It was a gift never having to look for someone, because they always had each other. That was what The Shopkeeper wanted—someone who understood the power of a good love story. “Me and your grandmother had our first kiss before we could walk and our first dance before we could talk, and we’ve been kissing and dancing ever since.” At forty years old, The Shopkeeper felt behind. She had never been kissed. “You’ll get to your next chapter. Some of us just read slower than others, that’s all,” her grandfather used to say.
But he showed them what love could look like. Wheneverhis wife walked into a room, his face brightened; hers did too. People called them the Bobbsey Twins. You never saw one without the other. They’d been together so long that they’d started looking alike—same facial expressions, same stories, same taste. He recited her love poems on their road trips. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” and he’d name way after way for hours. “The way you love our girls” was always one of his ways. They sometimes held hands when he drove, her left hand on his right thigh. They kissed and danced well into their old age, even as her knees stiffened and his hair turned varying shades of gray. The Shopkeeper feared love like this didn’t happen anymore. Maybe she’d become a modern-day matchmaking midwife.
But the problem with being in love your whole life is that you become one. Her grandparents had been one, and then one day, one of them just didn’t wake up. No warning. No cause. No sickness. No disease. Her grandfather went to take a nap, and he simply floated away reading a children’s bedtime story to himself. The Shopkeeper had wished she could touch his hand or lay her head on his chest as he slept, stiff, in the coffin, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Their grandmother never spoke or cried at the funeral. She pulled a blanket over his legs, sprinkled rosemary—a symbol of everlasting love—on his face. She let out one holler that shook them all, and then turned around and said to the family, “It is finished,” as she hobbled away.
Her grandmother pretended she was okay without him,but without him, she declined. She stopped leaving the house. She mostly sat in her rocking chair in the weatherworn sunroom, talking to his empty leather chair and listening intently, as if he were chatting back. His teacup stayed in its place, and her grandmother refreshed it with new herbs and piping hot water daily. It seemed as though he sipped it as the water evaporated away. Her grandmother hummed his favorite song: “I’m gonna lay down my burden / Down by the riverside.” The Shopkeeper couldn’t understand it, but this was what love looked like. It existed even when the lover was gone.
The dolphins and the memories and the faint aroma of rosemary mixed with her grandfather’s cologne gave The Shopkeeper ease as she drove. The bright lights of the tunnel were no longer blinding; they were just lighting the way. Her shoulders dropped. Her fingers loosened.
“Isn’t this like being born?” The Shopkeeper used to ask her grandfather as they drove slower and slower through the never-ending tunnel.
“Or reborn?” he replied. “You’re not born once; you are reborn as many times as you choose.”
He always spoke in riddles that she couldn’t understand.
“The new self needs air, so the old self must drown.”
“Nobody wants to drown,” she’d tell her grandfather, covering her face at the thought.
“Yeah, but the dolphins help the old self. They stay with the old self until it fully passes away.”
“Aren’t you too old to be reborn?” she’d asked him once.
“Never too old to die. I had to be reborn the second your parents passed away.”
The tunnel had no windows, no doors, no escape hatch, no way back—just bright light and a bunch of people following. It was the only time he’d ever mentioned her parents.
“One knows there’s freedom on the other side of the never-ending tunnel, but it could take an endless amount of time to get there,” her grandfather said. “Took me twenty-six hours once. But being reborn takes as long as it takes.”
Driving through the light and low hum with him (and without him) felt surreal, like cold water splashing her as she bobbed up and down for air—refreshing and exhausting. She was hoping to be reborn in time for the opening of the bookshop, which meant she only had a few days, but she was still scared of drowning.
“You know, there are babies who get stuck,” Elle said, waking up from a deep sleep, as though she could hear The Shopkeeper’s thoughts. Elle leaned her passenger-side seat all the way back and put her swollen feet up on the dashboard. Her legs were wide open, her silk muumuu bunched at both sides. She looked relaxed. Gentle. She was calm like a newborn baby, ready to give birth to a newborn baby. She rubbed the pressure point between her thumb and her pointer finger in circles like their grandfather had shown them to do whenever they were in pain. “My first one got stuck in the canal, which put pressure on her head, herneck, her chest, and her cord. Being stuck in the tunnel cuts off oxygen, and eventually...”
The Shopkeeper wanted to put her hands over her eyes, but she was driving.I deserve sweetness, she thought, searching for any sweet thought. It wasn’t fear that made The Shopkeeper drive slow. Yes, a baby was on its way. Yes, a few dozen cars were honking behind her, flashing their lights, and giving her the finger, but she imagined veering too far to the left or right and running into the side of the tunnel, puncturing it (or them), and water rushing in, simply because she was going faster than necessary to get to an inevitable place—the other side. She was going to hold on tight and move at her own speed, even if it was slow. She’d rather be safe than sorry, like her grandfather used to say.
“‘Time brought us here, and time gone take us away,’” Elle said, speaking a gibberish Rocky line as she drifted back to sleep. It crossed both of their minds that they might run out of time and end up having to deliver the baby in the never-ending tunnel, because of course it was never-ending, but there was no safe place to pull over. They couldn’t stop. At ten miles per hour, they couldn’t go any slower.
At least I wouldn’t have to catch it, The Shopkeeper thought, and asked herself if that was why she was going so slow, to avoid having to touch the baby—running down the clock so it would slip out on its own.That’s not good.
“This baby must like drama like her mama,” The Shopkeeper teased.
“Her? No, it’s a boy,” Elle retorted, though half-asleep. “And you’re a turtle. Great. We are all ancient creatures. So what? Just drive.” Elle made no sense. The pain had gone to her head.
