Page 5 of It's Me They Follow
The Shopkeeper continued:
Awning
Cash register
Shelves and chairs
“Okay, we have time for three people to share. Don’t all jump up at once. This is a quick write, so keep it quick.”
Books!
First to raise her hand to share was Rose. It was always Rose, a woman in her early sixties from Germantown who wore a rose in her hair that matched the rose on her pen. Every week, she changed the color of the rose to match her outfit, her purse, her shoes, her socks, her notebook. Today’s color was yellow. Rose sat to the right of The Shopkeeper, beaming bright.
“Okay, Rose,” The Good Doctor said. “In this writing group, there are no apologies, excuses, or prefaces. When it’s time to read...”
“Just read,” the class said in unison.
“Okay.” Rose’s hands trembled at first—but she was faking. Rose was not scared to read. It was a part of her storytelling. “When I was fourteen”—she looked around at the class, then back down at her page like she was telling a deep, dark secret—“I started freshman year at Central High. Central was founded 184 years ago, in 1836. It was an all-male public school until 1975, meaning only boys were allowed. That was my year. 1975. We were the first coed class in the history of the school, and we were called so many goddamn names by people who thought we girls wanted to attend an all-boys school because we were fast little fresh pot hussieswho wanted to be felt up by the football team. I never even liked jocks—” Rose interrupted her own story and looked at The Good Doctor. The Good Doctor nodded her head in approval and pointed at the clock.
Rose held her paper steady. Her back got tall, and her pace even faster. “But there was this one boy, Charles Handley Jr., and one day, when he walked behind my desk in chemistry class, he slipped something into my book bag. I didn’t want to look at what it was; I thought it was more bullying and that I was gonna have to put someone in their grave, if you feel me. ’Cause if there was a rotten tomato or something in my bag, I was gonna smash it right in his face during lunch. That entire class period, I planned it. What if it was a dead rat? A beheaded bird or a detached human thumb? After class, I ran to the bathroom to see, and to my surprise, it was not a bloody rat or a broken thumb or a rotten tomato, but a book—a copy of a play,Uh Huh: But How Do It Free Us?I’d never heard of it, so I thought that maybe it was still some sort of threat. But when I opened it, on the title page he’d written, ‘Dear Rose, I bet you’ll like this play so much that when you finish it, you will kiss me.’ He drew a little yellow rose beneath that and signed, ‘Sincerely, Charlie Jr.’
“Well, of course, I started reading it right there in the bathroom stall and ended up missing half of geometry, reading more at lunch, reading it the whole way down Broad Street home. My ma thought I was sick when I skipped meat loaf. Her meat loaf is another story. Anyway,I stayed up with a flashlight under my covers until the sun came up. The next day in chemistry class, when the bell rang and everyone was leaving, it was just Charlie Jr. and me left in the room. I stepped up to him, yawned, and shoved that book back into his hands. I stared at him like a drill sergeant, right in the eyes, until he looked down at his shoes. Then, when he was about to walk out the door, I called his name. I said, ‘Charlie Jr.’ He turned around, and I smacked him right on the lips with a kiss... even snuck him some tongue. ‘Thank you,’ I told him. He was right about Sister Sonia. How could a teenage boy be so in touch? Charlie and I were thirty-six-years married until he passed away a few years ago.” Rose paused. “He gave me all the books by Sister Sonia—every time one came out. There’s a new one coming soon, an anthology. Maybe you go get it from your local shopkeeper over there.” Rose nodded at The Shopkeeper. The Shopkeeper gave Rose praying hands. It was their shared respect for Sister Sonia that made them friends.
Then Rose placed her yellow notebook on the table and curtsied. She let out a fake sigh of relief when the class snapped, clapped, and whistled in praise. “Go ahead, Big Charlie,” someone said, cheering. The Shopkeeper couldn’t clap—the piece was just okay, she’d heard better from Rose. The piece wasn’t clap-worthy—so she nodded and continued chewing on the tip of The Good Doctor’s pen.
“Well, all right, Charlie Jr.,” The Good Doctor said. Rosesat down and sprayed herself with what must have been her husband’s cologne. “That’s the same one I wear,” The Good Doctor said, smiling. “Rose, your story gives us a great teachable moment. The question is: Why do humans kiss?”
“ ’Cause it’s fun?” the six-foot-six stoned kid with the cliché tie-dyed bandana said. He barely ever said more than a few words. He mostly wrote and spoke in haikus.
“Yes, kissing can be quite fun. Run your lips along the skin on the inside of your arm lightly.” The room of writers tried it. “This is an anxiety reducer. Now apply pressure. Notice that the skin on your lips is extremely sensitive. The average person will spend about twenty thousand minutes of their lives kissing because, like you said, it’s fun. And it’s good for us. We burn two to three calories every kiss. It makes our hearts beat faster, and it even cleans the cholesterol out of our veins. The earliest reference to kissing is from a Sanskrit text dating back to 1500 BC. Not to say that was the first kiss—just the earliest someone wrote about it. We should all be kissing as much as possible and writing about it too.” The Good Doctor spit facts that no one would ever remember. “Did you know that the dopamine released during a kiss can stimulate the same area of the brain activated by cocaine? Perhaps people are addicted to drugs because they aren’t kissing.”
“What about weed?” asked the stoned kid. “ ’Cause I’m not sniffing anything in Philly.”
“Anyone else care to share?” The Good Doctor rolled hereyes and ignored the stoned kid. She always ignored him. She pointed her walking stick around the room. “Anyone else? Nobody? Nobody?”She must not like his writing, The Shopkeeper thought. She did not love it, but every once in a while he surprised her with something short and profound.
It was always like this. Rose volunteered first, and then for the rest of the session, everyone froze and had to be called on to read. “Ray? You look like you were touched by that prompt. Anything?” said The Good Doctor.
The Shopkeeper enjoyed it when Ray read. He was the most honest writer in the room.
“I didn’t want to read today, Prof,” Ray said.
“I can see that, Ray. But sometimes the best time to share is when you least want to. Stand up and try us. You are among writers, the most humane humans on the planet.”
“Okay,” Ray agreed with reluctance.
The Good Doctor set the stage like she did for every single writer every single time. “In this class, there are no apologies, excuses, or prefaces. When it’s time to read...” She pointed her stick at her students.
“Just read,” they said in unison.
“I think of this like stand-up. So here’s my first joke: My mother had me in prison,” Ray started. “I made it out. She did not.” He cracked himself up.
What a hook.The Shopkeeper finger snapped in her head. Rose closed her eyes. The Good Doctor took a seat. No one laughed.
“My mother’s name is Maribel Casentas Rodriguez Jones. You have to say her whole name. Even I have to call her by her full name. She added the ‘Jones’ part herself.” Ray pointed at the group. They laughed on cue like a live studio audience. “She had me when she was only twelve years old.” But with that line, his voice shook. “Her father was my father.” He laugh-cry quivered.
Now this is what I’m talking about, The Shopkeeper thought.This is writing! Make us feel something, Ray! Make me feel it.A knot formed in her throat.
Ray continued, “I’m sure, if I were a girl, my grandfather would have gotten me pregnant too. But I was a boy. His boy. His only boy, he called me.” Ray cry-laughed.
