Page 47 of It's Me They Follow
The creaking screen door was hanging off the top hinge. Elle pulled it open and knocked the secret family door knock,dedededudedudududu. It took longer than usual for their grandmother to answer. The Shopkeeper imagined their grandmother inside, alone and dead, and having to deliver the baby on this dusty porch, and then she shook the image out of her overactive mind. Her sister did the secret knock again, a bit louder this time.
“Maybe her hearing is going,” The Shopkeeper whispered, kicking dry leaves off the porch just in case.
“It’s not my hearing,” their grandmother fussed from inside the house. “It’s my knees.”
The less their grandmother could see over the years, the more she could hear, but her knees were another story. Those eighty-nine-year-old knees had been stiffening for as long as The Shopkeeper could remember.
While they waited, The Shopkeeper smiled at the thought of their grandmother all dressed up and ME inside, visiting her childhood home. Having mint tea as though the two were old friends. She thought for a second that he’d conspired with her family to finally get her back Down South. She was in a family of storytellers. But that was just her mind playing tricks on her. ME was not behind a weeping willow. He was not at the kitchen table. He was not going to show up with calendulas for her sister’s kiddie-pool birth. ME was somewhere being a monk in training,whatever that meant. One thing was for sure: He was not coming over for tea and honey with their grandmother while Elle birthed a sweet baby boy in a blow-up pool.
“I deserve sweetness,” she said to herself in a whisper to ease the anxiety.
“Yes, you do,” their grandmother agreed as she opened the door in her faded red headscarf and flower-print robe. Her eyes were a cloudier blue, and for the first time, The Shopkeeper realized their grandmother, the boldest woman she’d ever met, could be something other than strong. She’d never seen their grandmother standing with the assistance of a cane. No matter how intricately carved or beaded, it was a cane.
Their grandmother had used to be a loud woman, a thick-thighed woman, fast and busty, with a quick wit and quotations. But now she was shorter and thinner and balder than ever before—shorter and thinner and balder, plus she had no teeth. She was still loud, though—maybe louder. Their grandmother’s scarf was on, but barely on. It was uneven, so it showed hints of her shiny bald head.
“It’s about damn time.” Their grandmother straightened her scarf and puffed on the pipe that she balanced on her lower lip. “If you took any longer, I’d be gone.” The pungent smell of their grandmother’s homegrown reefer filled the air. The elder woman hugged her younger granddaughter first, and then she started rubbing the big-dropped bellylike it was a lucky charm. “Old folks used to say that every baby is a story we send to a time we will not see.
“I dreamed of fishes,” their grandmother confirmed as she placed a crawfish necklace around her granddaughter’s neck. “For protection.” Their grandmother cackled and coughed and cackled again. “Welcome home, my sweethearts.”
Their grandmother stood back. Got quiet. Got still. Balanced herself against the wall and stared at her oldest granddaughter. She knew better than to hug The Shopkeeper. She didn’t even come close. She looked her older granddaughter up and down instead and said, “Ain’t seen you in a month of Sundays.”Ironic, since she can’t see, thought The Shopkeeper. “You smell sweet, though,” their grandmother continued. “Like sugar and spices, incense and deer hide, wet soil and”—she took a deep breath in—“Egyptian musk.” The Shopkeeper grinned at their grandmother’s precision as she added, “You smell sweet, like a writer.” She winked.
Their grandmother had always had a way with words.
The Shopkeeper had forgotten but quickly remembered that when they were small, while their grandfather served on the men’s choir and usher board, took Communion, and attended church every Sunday, his wife—their grandmother—was at home cursing like a sailor, puffing a pipe, reciting poetry, and growing reefer in her own sanctuary, in the acres of her backyard.
“Oh shit.”Their grandmother took her pipe out of her mouth and covered her gums. “Better put my teeth back in fore I scare the bejeezus outta somebody.” She shuffled away as fast as she could, which wasn’t fast at all and definitely not as fast as it used to be. The Shopkeeper stood in the foyer, looking around at the house in shock as their grandmother turned the corner.
Her heart was broken, but it was she who had stayed away. Their house had once been pristine. The most beautiful one for miles. She remembered their grandfather scrubbing the baseboards, shining the windows, mowing the lawn. He’d cared for the house in a way that bordered on obsession. But now the house, left to their grandmother and old age, was in an unconscionable state of disrepair. Old, feeble, and blind, their grandmother knew the mess in her house by heart and navigated it faster than The Shopkeeper ever could. But their grandmother had been abandoned. The Shopkeeper didn’t know where to begin.
As she stood there, surrounded by memories, The Shopkeeper saw a blue marker roll by and remembered when she’d first learned to write. At five years old, she’d found an electric blue marker in their grandfather’s bottom drawer. She was always snooping and looking for something to explore. She hid the blue marker in her back pocket for a full day, waiting for the right time to use it. That night, she couldn’t sleep because she had a dolphin tale that she needed to tell their grandfather before it wastoo late. About the mermaids and the dolphins and the spirit people at the bottom of the ocean. When she could not hold the story in any longer, she wrote it in huge letters and pictures on the wall by her bed.
When their grandfather came into the room the next morning to wake the girls up for school, she was still writing. He silently backed out of the room, not sure what to do. While he wanted to nurture her creativity, he knew their grandmother would not embrace creativity in this form. He went to find soapy water and rags. He tried to convince his granddaughter to scrub it off, but she tantrummed at losing her first story before she could finish it.
Her grandfather warned her not to wake Elle, but she didn’t listen. He told The Shopkeeper that she’d never hear the end of it if their grandmother found out what she’d done. As he predicted, Elle woke up and, as always, shouted, “I’m tellin’!” as she ran to tell their grandmother right away what had been done.
Their grandmother stormed into the room with her pipe in one hand and a stack of encyclopedias in the other. She stubbed her toe. “Fuck,” she said out loud, then laughed, which made them all laugh, including their grandfather. Then she remembered the blue marker all over the walls and called her granddaughter everything but a child of God while she made The Shopkeeper stand in a corner, holding the copies of encyclopedias to the sky. Later, when their grandmother checked on her, she was reading—she’d beenin the corner for hours and never went to bed. And their grandmother had a change of heart and compromised. “We’ll paint her entire room blue instead.”
The smell of reefer always took The Shopkeeper back to being punished in her childhood. Maybe she’d inhaled too much of their grandmother’s smoke as a kid, she thought to herself. Being punished by their grandmother had always felt like an opportunity to open her mind. It never hurt, even when she was harsh.
Now the walls in the house were peeling and browning from smoke.What a lesson this is, she thought.In searching for what you already have.There were more books than she’d ever seen.
“I told you what to do when we got here,” Elle reminded The Shopkeeper with a clap in front of her face to snap her out of the make pretending. “Blankets, towels, sheets.”
Elle was not shocked. She was unbothered by the mess, almost reveling in it, even though it extended to the high ceilings. She saw it as a legacy and a way to feel close to their grandfather and his stuff. The Shopkeeper couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to have a home birth in a home like this. “Let it be,” her sister whispered, and waddled to the sunroom to fill up the pool like she’d planned.
The Shopkeeper couldn’t move; her feet were planted on the floor. Clutter made her crazy, like it was touching her. Stacks of clothes and magazines and dead plants and half-burnt candles and old photos and broken china were mixedin with the books. Piles and piles of books and more books were everywhere, and she knew they needed rescuing before it was too late.
But then their grandmother’s rotary phone rang.Brrerrrnnnng.
“Don’t touch that,” their grandmother hollered as The Shopkeeper was about to pick up. She pulled her hand back. It was enough to snap her out of it, and she ran upstairs to get the towels and blankets from her old bedroom as she’d been instructed. She stepped over piles of magazines and newspapers and hats and toys and shoes—it was a museum of mishmash.
“Damn bill collectors,” their grandmother called up as the phone continued to ring.Brrerrrnnnng.
“This time of morning?” The Shopkeeper called back in disbelief.
“No home training!” their grandmother exclaimed from downstairs in the sunroom.
Finally at the top of the stairs, The Shopkeeper opened the door to her childhood bedroom, and while everything else in the old house was deteriorating and dirty and in disarray, this one room stood still.
