The closer she came, the more she heard other people talking, not even the lawn mowers and leaf blowers could drown them out. More had come than she’d expected. Ayanna had thought there would somehow be little interest. This had felt so particularly hers. By the time she had been born, the church had maybe two hundred parishioners who were treated by the locals as annoying weirdos. Car after car on the roadside, parked precariously near deep ditches and streams and blocking people’s long driveways. A few houses had signs, offering parking for twenty dollars cash or best offer; thirty dollars for adult bathroom privileges, five dollars for children. There were a few familiar faces, an older woman who hugged her and couldn’t stop talking about how she had watched Ayanna grow up. It was clear the woman wanted to ask about Ayanna’s father, and Ayanna let the crowd pull them away from each other. There were people selling waters, paper fans, and fruit. When people balked at the prices, Ayanna heard the salespeople saying, “Well, we take Venmo.”

There were some cops trying to maintain order. A man saying instructions through a bullhorn, but his voice was hard to understand. People were knocking into one another. Shoulder after shoulder clanked and crashed against one another. The procession forward was hot and unsafe. Ayanna moved to the side, until she was mostly out of the crowd, and forced herself to slowly drink water until she calmed down. All the signs this was not going to be just her or this would be an uncomfortable experience had been there, Ayanna realized. She remembered how expensive gas was, how high hotel room rates were, the feeling that so many cars were on the road, but she had been so inside herself as to not infer what these things could have meant on her drive. People loved spectacles.

She was unsure of what to do next. The safer, saner thing would be to go back to the car. Maybe use her savings, stay in a hotel for a week, then drive back here. But what if the door left? Yet Ayanna felt the heat, the number of people, anxious police officers, the way there was no discernible order, made everything feel too volatile. Then she saw her mother walk past and move into the crowd.