You can drip one drop of blood into a glass of clear water, and it will still appear to be clear water.

        — Rebecca Solnit, Reflections of My Nonexistence

At the follow-up exam after my son’s C-section, naked on the table, I am scooting forward, setting my feet in the stirrups, remembering an interview with a gynecologist who said that women spend too much time making sure their vaginas are clean when actually they should focus on their feet, which are right up by the doctor’s face during the exam.

“Sorry,” I say. “My feet are a little dirty.”

“It’s ok,” my doctor says. Standing over me, his hand grazing my pubic hair, he mumbles, “you’re a dirty woman.”

I am walking up and down the hills of West Virginia University after my first day as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. I have on a black scarf my sister knit for me, a long-sleeve tee from the Gap I bought for three dollars on clearance, a pencil skirt from Goodwill, and knee-length boots. I almost wore a silk, polka dot scarf but I chose the black one because I believe in wearing small trinkets from my family on important days.

A car drives by and a man leans out the passenger side window, yelling, “You look like a slut!”

My daughter is crying at the part in her book where the teacher tells Mae Jemison she should be a nurse, not an astronaut. Like me, she is soft. Sensitive. Her name is also Mae. One of the reasons I chose it is because I think it is the most beautiful word in the English language. I can hear the artistry in her voice and the way her mind works. She calls the dead pine needles on the sidewalk orange hay.

She is four years old. I am terrified that she will be beautiful.

I am out at a restaurant with my roommates. The server comes to our table to take our drink order.

“Can I have a Pepsi?” I ask.

“Yes,” he answers, writing it down, and then, looking up at me. “Diet?”

“I wanted to have all sons,” my mother is announcing one night in the kitchen while we’re getting dinner ready. I am in high school. She doesn’t look up when she says it, instead keeps her gaze down, focused on the pizza she is making. She had one son, her first, and then four daughters. I don’t say anything in response, but then again, I’m not that surprised.

I am lounging on a boat in a river, drinking beer with my roommates on a gleaming summer day. I am the only one that has never been on a boat before. I also am not a very good swimmer. When we stop the boat to swim around for a while, I watch everyone else for cues. They dive in like they are half-mermaid, leaving me with the guy who owns the boat.

“It’s ok,” he says. “I’ll show you how to dive.”

Grateful that someone is there to show me what to do, I stand on the side of the boat and wait for his instructions.

“Bend down,” he says, standing behind me.

I crouch a little and bend my knees, like I imagine I have seen swimmers do when they are about to leap from a platform.

“More,” he says. “Keep bending over.”

I bend down more, even though it seems unstable.

“More,” he says. “Touch your toes.”

I do precisely what he says, trusting his knowledge and age.

“Okay,” he continues, still behind me. “Now get your balance. You don’t have to dive right away.”

I am standing in line with Mae at Walmart on a busy Saturday night. She holds my hand and waits silently next to me while the man in front of us details a wide-ranging story about how he hates it when people stare at him. He pauses, and I tighten my grip on Mae’s hand.

“Your daughter,” he says, looking at her. “She’s so good. You’ve done a good job with her.”

I am in New York City with my Girl Scout troop. Even though I am in high school, it is the first time I have flown on a plane. A headline in the Times could have read Ohio Farm Girl Is Agape In Manhattan. We see Les Miserable and trounce up the Statue of Liberty. We go to FAO Schwarz and tour television studios. Every morning I order a croissant and chocolate milk at the hotel restaurant, eating in front of a window that opens onto a sun-filled street. On the plane ride home, I map out how I will tell my mother about the trip. I decide to start with my breakfast.

“That sounds fattening,” she says.

I am working a summer job at a bar outside of Cleveland, keeping my head down while the cooks discuss which female bartenders they like the best due to the type of shorts they wear. When I got hired, the general manager looked at my driver’s license and told me it wasn’t valid because I never took my husband’s name. One day, the assistant manager pulls me away from the lunch rush and asks me to prepare him a plate of food.

“I want twenty celery sticks,” he says, “but I just want you to pick out the ones that are really white.”

In a month, I will move to Oklahoma to teach English at another university. By the time the leaves fall, I will be pregnant with my daughter. I do not know this yet, but something in my body does.

I plunge both hands into the ice-cold celery bin and grab a pile to dump on his plate without looking.

I am about to leave my house to go on a hike, but first I drop a knife in my pocket. I am standing in front of the pepper spray display at the store, wondering if I would have the capacity to use it the right way if I ever needed to. I am power walking through dark parking garages. I am staring at my nine-pound Shih-tzu, wishing I owned a larger, more intimidating dog for when my husband left on business trips. I am reading another article in the newspaper about a woman, and a man, and the children they had together, and the way the man decided to punish all of them. I am kneeling in front of my daughter with my hands on her shoulders and telling her to be smart. I am telling my son that I love him so much, that he is my bright, big boy, but it’s not okay to hit mommy. I am telling you: don’t tell me not to be afraid. Because everyday we ask women to do the impossible, which is to live in a world full of monsters.

I am folded over in child’s pose, waiting for my yoga class to start at the YMCA in downtown St. Joseph, Missouri. Jomo, as the locals call it. The only man in the class walks in and spreads out his mat directly behind me.

“There’s plenty of room up here,” the instructor calls to him.

“It’s fine,” he says, and pauses for a beat before continuing. “I’m really enjoying the view from back here.”

I am an intern for Cleveland’s newspaper, The Plain Dealer, walking around an upper-class neighborhood for a story about urban gardens. It is my first real job, one where I wear a blazer, and knock on the doors of homes I have never been to. I walk slowly along the sidewalk, staring at the low hills of mulch, decorated with the same type of large rocks my sisters and I used to have to dig out of the fields before my dad would plant corn in them. On the other side of the street, a man calls out that I should let him take me to dinner. I look in his direction, and even though I don’t say anything, there is a shift in the way I walk, a pause just long enough that might make it seem like I am contemplating saying yes to him, so he asks me again. And again. And again.

I am trying on my Homecoming dress. I bought it at JCPenney. It is the first dress I have worn since kindergarten. I have black clogs to go with it, and I love them for the extra inch they provide. I walk out to show my mother.

“You should have gotten a bigger size,” she says.

I am at my boyfriend’s apartment in Morgantown, West Virginia. We are dating because we are the only single people in the English department. This is something I will realize when I move to Missouri next year for a teaching job, not now, a dreamy-eyed poet, so confident, or so oblivious, depending on how you look at it. I once walked out of a bar after drinking all night and perfectly backed my Chevy Cavalier out of a parking space while a police officer leaned against his car, gazing at me.

Sitting in my boyfriend’s kitchen eating fried eggs with American cheese, our conversation veers toward beauty. I was complaining about how I always have to doctor up my thrift store pants because I am so short. I can see myself, drinking coffee at his table, and the way I must have looked to him. That is what I thought about for years: the way I looked to him, not to myself.

“Short women are cute,” he says. “Tall women are sexy.”

I am somewhere in Missouri. In my mind, there are a lot of people, though I am still by myself. We are outside, by a river, in the brightness of an afternoon. I am moving with the crowd, wandering, the way I often do, silently, when I feel a man looking at me. Hey sunshine. Hey. Hey sunshine. Hey sunshine!

I said hey sunshine!

Look at me sunshine.

Look at me.

I am in Oklahoma, trying to renew my driver’s license.

“You still have your maiden name,” the clerk says. “When do you plan on changing it?”

“Never.”

After a grueling ride along the Missouri River, I am walking my bike up the hill to my apartment. The ride is grueling mostly because my bike, bought for $25 off the street, doesn’t have brakes. I pause at an intersection, a truck idling next to me.

“How much?” the driver asks, leaning out the window. “How much?”