65 pages • 2 hours read
What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
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Story 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 2 Summary: “‘Sorry’ Doesn’t Sweeten Her Tea”
A young man named Anton narrates the story from a first-person perspective. His friend Chedorlaomer, a famous singer in their home country, lives in a big house called the House of Locks; its doors don’t stay closed unless they’re locked. Chedorlaomer asks Anton to feed his fish when he returns to Iran for mandatory military service.
Anton works at his aunt’s “Swiss-Style Weight Loss Clinic” (61), which is a place that puts clients to sleep until they lose weight. Tyche Shaw also works there; she is a beautiful young woman who is only a part-timer, doing “invocations” on the side. Anton believes Tyche would be a good match for Chedorlaomer, whom he worries about because of how long he has been single.
Anton lives with his boyfriend, Noor, who has two daughters from a previous marriage. The older daughter, Dayang, is 16 and dating a boy whom Anton calls “Face-Shifting Boyfriend” because he looks different each time he comes over. The younger daughter, Aisha, is obsessed with a singer named Matyas Füst, who is popular with fans around the world but who Chedorlaomer says isn’t a good person. Aisha is distraught when an unhoused woman posts a YouTube video accusing Matyas of assaulting her after a sexual encounter. Dayang tries to support Aisha through the revelation, while Anton and Noor struggle with how to discuss this situation with their daughters.
While Aisha tries to convince online fans that Matyas’s actions were heinous, Anton discusses his concern for Aisha with Tyche, who offers to speak with her. Noor worries that Aisha has lost her faith not only in her favorite pop star but also in her two fathers, who couldn’t find the right words: “What worries Noor is that three of Aisha’s graven images fell off their pedestals at once: him, me, and Matyas Füst” (79).
Matyas continues to promise an official apology, and the woman from YouTube continues to say that she is looking forward to it, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his fans are mostly not on her side. Chedorlaomer jokes to Anton over the phone that Matyas will probably release an apology song with a ridiculous title. He reveals that he’s been talking to a woman who sometimes answers the phone at the House of Locks; though he doesn’t know who she is, he enjoys talking to her.
Matyas releases an apology song and music video called “Dress Made of Needles,” just as Chedorlaomer predicted. The family watches the music video and is stunned by it. Aisha tries to rationalize it as a piece of conceptual art but then bursts into tears. As Matyas goes on his redemption tour, Aisha secretly enters a charity contest, bidding 10,000 pounds from Anton’s savings on a private concert. She begs Anton not to be angry when her bid wins, saying she needs to look into Matyas’s eyes and confront him for his actions. Anton calmly tells her that it’s okay and then cancels the payment. Noor’s ex-wife comes over and tells them about her concern for Aisha’s mental health; the young girl ordered 96% sulfuric acid online, apparently to use on Matyas.
Tyche talks to Aisha, and they decide to ask the goddess Hecate to help. Soon after, an ad appears in the newspaper that reads:
R.I.P. MATYAS FÜST,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MATYAS FÜST
AND GOOD LUCK.
YOUR REBIRTH WILL BE A DIFFICULT ONE (91).
Soon after, Matyas calls one of the national radio stations and apologizes for his apology music video, which “had come from his head more than his heart” (91). Later, he stops a performance of his song, telling the audience that an unseen “they” has been hounding him and pricking him invisibly with needles. Matyas’s family moves in with him to look after him, but he escapes and goes missing for six months. After sleeping outdoors all winter, he is found, and he gives an interview to a paranormal publication. He explains that three women, one who could take his pain away and two others who could return it, kept him alive all winter so that he could figure out his actual mistake and give a true apology. He plans to release a book called An Outcast’s Apology. Aisha, believing that he is getting closer to identifying his mistake, looks forward to reading his book.
Story 2 Analysis
Anton narrates the story, but the plot focuses on young Aisha on the cusp of her coming-of-age and her experience coping with her disappointment in Matyas. Matyas is an analog for the many real-life celebrities who have harmed women and faced few consequences for their crimes. The YouTube woman, a marginalized individual who is both unhoused and implied to be an immigrant, indicates the vulnerability of people without access to the power of wealth and fame. Oyeyemi suggests that her lower social status contributes to Matyas’s ability to harm her without consequence; Matyas’s fans dismiss her as a sex worker who uses drugs and fail to hold their idol accountable for harming another human being.
The story never depicts Matyas directly, though his actions set the story in motion and serve as the main conflict for both Aisha and Anton, who struggles with how to address the issue as a parent. Matyas appears frequently but indirectly in news reports, his own statements, the statements of the YouTube woman, and other people’s remarks about him. This indirect portrayal reflects the book’s interest in how deeply it is possible to know another person—particularly a public figure, whose identity is refracted through various media and often conflicting perspectives. The intense identification that fans can nevertheless feel with such a figure also finds echoes in the relationship between reader and character, or between reader and author.
The opening image of Chedorlaomer’s house uses the motif of locks and doors to develop these ideas. On the one hand, the doors that open of their own volition suggest that the “truth” of someone—in this case, Matyas’s crime—will eventually come out. However, the nature of the doors means that in practice they are kept locked, barring people more completely than if they were simply closed. In the context of Ched’s isolation—Anton describes him as a loner—the image suggests a refusal to bare oneself to other people.
Tyche helps Aisha by introducing her to a kind of spiritual practice akin to witchcraft. They call on the goddess Hecate, who is the Greek goddess of crossroads and witchcraft. Hecate torments Matyas, which is what ultimately convinces him to apologize. Matyas describes Hecate as “they,” as if she is three women. In mythology, Hecate is often depicted as having three faces or even being three women in one. She embodies the “Maiden, Mother, Crone” archetype, although she also features as the “crone” in a triad with Persephone and Demeter, who fill the “maiden” and “mother” roles, respectively.
Aisha’s experience of losing her idol and then learning how to work with Hecate through Tyche is her coming-of-age experience. She grows from a girl to a young woman and does not lose herself in the process. Oyeyemi’s framing of this story through the perspective of Anton, who worries how his stepdaughter will react to the disappointing cruelty of the adult world and frets over his friend’s loneliness, emphasizes the theme of Love in Its Many Stages. Anton’s love for both his stepdaughter and his friend takes the paternalistic form of concern as the people he loves must learn to navigate their feelings in new ways.
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