A Country You Can Leave

by Asale Angel-Ajani

Once I know this, I understand that what my mother seeks from books isn’t what I seek. I want to be lifted up, carried away. She wants to be anchored. The exact opposite of what each of us wants from our real life.

Love is always labor. No one can ever tell you if it’s worth it. She underlined always twice.

My mother gives me a look that tells me I owe her, like it was my idea to be born.

It strikes me then that poor people are always told to wait. Time was our only currency and it keeps plummeting in value.

“Wife and kid?” Yevgenia snorts, skeptical. “Have you seen him? Never trust a man who puts gel in his hair. And he wears undershirts. If that doesn’t scream creep, then you know nothing about life. I’m telling you, he’s up to no good.” Again, a collection of my mother’s many decrees.

AND LIKE ALL the other moments between us, this too gets lost in the inevitable ways we disappoint each other.

These are white people who hang art from Africa, discuss Japanese graffiti artists, wear Bedouin jewelry, travel to India. Their world is unapologetically global. Here, any culture or dress or religion or food is fair game. These are not white people I have any understanding of, nor have I read enough Marx to theorize them.

My mother teaches me that stories have value and only the owner can determine their worth. It’s the only thing they have.

A book will always be your best friend and your lover. There are intimacies that live in them that cannot be replicated between people.