On the drive home, we are missing our carpool companions thanks to the relentless militarism of their middle school, and I take advantage of this moment to hop skip and jump just shy of downtown.

Me: “We all need books. This is the only library in the city that has Spanish ones.”

I: “I’m only reading this one.”

R: “That’s MY book borrowed from MY teacher that YOU stole.”

Me: “There are 100,000 books here. Can’t you choose a different one?”

Both: “Not until she gives me that one.”

I give up. I take four escalators to the top floor of the library in the center of the city, the epicenter of the Latino world, where I stare down four shelves of outdated, bindings-falling-off Spanish books, trying to find one that is 1) at my level 2) not a hundred years old 3) interesting. What a bunch of bullshit this is. ¡No me jodas!

We ride home in silence. Semi-silence. They read. I listen to La Busca de Felicydad while R groans about my Spanish audiobooks. We sit in traffic and I miss the turn because I’m listening to how a small fatherless black boy has to witness his stepfather beating the shit out of his poor mother whose education was denied by her father so her brother could go to school and I am thinking about how fucking entitled my white children are and how unentitled my refugee students are who learn the new vocabulary phrase, “take it off” and all the girls write, for their “demonstration of knowledge” sentence, “As soon as I get home, I take off my hijab.” Like it’s a burden, a weight, a freedom they wait all day to release, and my own kids are fighting over a damn book.

But bless them all the same. For loving to read. For fighting over a damn book.

And this is America, I think, as we drive past the wealthiest mall with its block of Christmas-lit trees. As R settles into her hopeful view of the book I will leave for her. As I will rise and teach tomorrow, perhaps a new phrase such as, “What gives us hope?” And they will post pictures of their childhood in the refugee camp and my girls will ask me to read them a story (because they’re never too old) and I will drive the carpool home and hope for a better America. One without militarism. Without fear.

With books and love. Books and love. Where we can all learn what it means to “take it off.”

To find a Spanish book on the fourth floor of the library. To read. To give in to sisterly needs. To remember that we are all refugees.

That we all seek shelter. In a book. A drive. A removal of a hijab.

In each other’s arms.