Song: “Fairy Tales” by Anita Baker

Poem: “The Stranger in Her Feminine Sign” by Dunya Mikhail

We didn’t always have food in the house and couldn’t always pay the rent, but we had libraries—at home, and in the neighborhood. My mother kept books on health and popular thrillers stacked on the shelves, lightly used Robert Ludlum hardcovers and Dean Koontz paperbacks bought sometimes for a quarter at public library sidewalk sales. She didn’t like to answer the door for strangers, but the man who knocke...