Waldenbooks
I used to steal books. It wasn't my idea.
In high school I worked at the Waldenbooks in the Exton Square Mall. I had my interview for the job in the food court, near the Orange Julius and the Panda Express. "What's something you think you'd contribute to Waldenbooks as an employee?" the manager asked. She had curly hair and a plain name (Laura?). She once told me she was twenty seven, which at the time seemed impossible to me, that anyone could be so old. I chewed on my finger nail and answered the question how I thought she wanted me to answer the question: that I loved books and reading, that I liked helping people. She smiled, then asked if I had any weaknesses when it came to a work environment. "Workaholism," I answered. It was a word I'd heard, something I guess applied to me, a National Honors Society student who was taking two English classes her senior year, directing the annual Shakespeare play, participating in karate, color guard, ceramics, the Amnesty International club.
Laura raised her eyebrows when I said workaholism. She smiled. The next day I got the job.
I worked at that Waldenbooks twenty hours a week, on weekends and some weeknights. My parents ferried me back and forth from the mall, or sometimes I got a ride from one of my coworkers: the blonde preppy girl who was younger than me and went to a different high school. The Australian teen with pimples and an accent, hopelessly alone in America while his parents worked and traveled and left him in a McMansion with his own car, an endless supply of Diet Coke, enough allowance that he always had cartons of Marlboro Reds and new CDs but still worked with us at Waldenbooks. And then there was the college student I'll call Ruth. Dark hair. Aspiring playwright. Had lived in New York City for a time. I worshiped Ruth. After a few weeks of working at Waldenbooks, she was giving me a ride home and opened her trunk to reveal stacks of trade paperbacks, Maeve Binchy mass markets (why?), a compilation of Dylan Thomas poems, Intro to Screenwriting, even a hardcover of the latest John Grisham novel. I recognized the books from the store, the ones on the end caps, the ones in repeating rows on display in the window. I gaped at them. Ruth shrugged, motioning for me to take a seat.
"What," she said. "I take books. Don't you?"
It sounded some much better that way: take books. The first one I stole was a paperback of She's Come Undone. I waited until a quiet moment one Sunday to casually bring a copy into the stock room in the back, pause near the employee lockers, then tuck the book into my purple Jansport. When we filed out at the end of the night, under the half closed gate before the keyholder locked up, they were supposed to check our bags. Laura always made a show of doing this, peering in to people's purses, guys' knapsacks, with great interest. Terry, the older woman who worked there full time, would half hearted glance when you opened your bag for her. I'd waited until a Terry night to take my first book. She glanced, turned to the Australian teen, who was bag-less, then wished us each a good night. I practically ran to the parking lot, where my mother was waiting, tired, unsuspecting.
Soon, there were stacks of new books on the bookshelf in my teenage bedroom. Some I kept on my nightstand. Some I hid. I once was so bold that I special ordered a book for myself (Eileen Myles' Chelsea Girls) and then stole it. There was such a clear record of who was responsible for the book, but still, no one said anything. I stole books because I could. I stole books because I wanted them. Later, Terry would be lead out of the store in handcuffs one Tuesday afternoon, after it was discovered that she'd been stealing. She had a system of running a return for a book that was actually in the story then pocketing the cash. Laura held a meeting about it, sharing this information gravely. We stopped taking a books for awhile, but soon we were at it again.
I could've gone forever without giving this much thought (teenagers steal, teenagers are dumb, corporations are terrible) except for recently, when some spiritual work I've been doing tasked me with making financial amends. If I wanted to have an abundant relationship to money, then shouldn't I be clear on places where I lived by the rules of scarcity?
The friend talking me through these things asked if there were any institutions, any places, that I stole from. I'd nearly forgotten. "I stole books from a Waldenbooks in high school," I laughed. I hoped this admission would be enough. How could one make an amends to Waldenbooks? They didn't even exist anymore! I crossed my fingers that this one would slide. But the suggestion was otherwise. I made a list of the books I stole, or at least the ones I could remember stealing. There are hundreds of books in me and Emily's apartment, but like a sense memory, I could find the ones that I'd carried with me all these years, from Waldenbooks to New York, from apartment to apartment. They were often tucked behind other books, dusty without use, but there they were. A copy of James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room. White Oleander. A Tori Amos song book. An Anne Sexton collection. The worn copy of Chelsea Girls that I'd read so many times, story fragments penciled in the margins, inside the back cover. It was a snapshot of myself coming of age. We decided that I'd buy copies of these titles and donate them to an organization that needed books. That seemed straightforward enough. Then my friend had a second part of the amends. "I want you to buy yourself a book," she said. "A luxurious, expensive book. Something you wouldn't normally buy. And I want you to share with others what you've bought."
"Oh," I said. I could feel myself bending away from this suggestion. The crux of the matter was my relationship to what I believed I deserved, what I believed I could afford. I stole books because I didn't think I deserved them, or that I could spend hard earned money on them. I had to save the money for some future disaster. I was supposed to hoard, to scheme, to fear. When she asked me to think of some luxurious books I wanted, my mind went blank. My whole world revolved around books, but this task seemed too much. Honestly I haven't taken the action yet. I share it here now as a portrait of what spiritual growth can look like. I try to picture myself as a teenager who buys the books she wants, who purchases Eileen Myles and James Baldwin out right, and I know that the story is layered with shame, with confusion, with both wanting to and not wanting to be seen. I'm trying to undo those layers, the ones that have shaded my relationship to abundance. It's an easy word to say and a harder word to practice.
I think about Laura from Waldenbooks sometimes. She knew I was a writer, and before I left for college, made me promise that when I published my first book, I'd come back to that Waldenbooks, sandwiched between an Aeropostale and an Auntie Anne's, and do a signing. I remember being so embarrassed when she asked me to promise that - the store never did signings, and more so, she couldn't possibly believe I was really going to write a book. Could she? I blushed. I laughed. I avoided the Waldenbooks and the mall the few times I came home during college. But I remembered that she'd made me promise to return, with book, for her. It was a small brick in the foundation of people who believed that I would write.
I'm doing this work to get out of my own way. I'm taking abundant actions in a kind of act-as-if kind of way. I'm trying to look at abundance not just in transactions (the problem with changing my relationship to money is wrestling with capitalism, if it can ever tangle with spiritual growth), but in my behavior, my thinking. Walk with my head up. Make it to my writing desk in the morning after the alarm goes off. Receive books in my life not with scarcity but with promise. Get out of my own way.
xoxo,
c
P.S.
* Save the date! I'm thrilled for the release of my friend July Westhale's debut poetry collection Trailer Trash, which won the 2016 Kore Press First Book Prize and was selected by Robin Coste Lewis (!). What's even better is that we'll be hosting a reading and celebration on the book's birthday, March 16, at WORD Brooklyn. I'll have more details soon, but save the date!