Liars

by Sarah Manguso

Without meaning to, I began to restrict the material in my diary. I had become unable to articulate certain feelings. And so my body became their cultivation dish.

All the mothers I knew were in awe of how little we were able to do, after all our education, after having been told that we’d be able to do anything, after having children in America.

Why are you so angry? My husband frequently asked me why I was so much angrier than other women. It always made me smile. I was exactly as angry as every other woman I knew. It wasn’t that we’d been born angry; we’d become women and ended up angry.

I had infinite patience with my one-year-old, whom I held to the behavioral standards of a two-year-old, and almost no patience with my husband, whom I held to the behavioral standards of a mother.

Once the child was down for a nap I didn’t know what to do other than clean the house. There was no self left.

It wasn’t happiness; it was the temporary cessation of pain.

The child looked at a drawing of a happy sun that, upside down, was a sad sun. When he saw the sad sun, he said knowingly, The sun wants his mom.

He thought it was a hilarious personal quirk that I could only shit at night by then, after the child was in bed and the chores were done. He didn’t realize that I didn’t have time to shit during the day. He still shitted like a bachelor, whenever and for however long he liked.

But qualified women aren’t likable; likable women aren’t qualified. The only way to get the job is to be ten times better than the best man and likable, which means willing to absorb any amount of misogyny in any form from anyone with a smile on your face, forever. You must be attractive but not too attractive; men don’t want to look at an unattractive woman all day long, but they won’t feel comfortable working with a woman much more attractive than their own wives. If you marry a man or have children you will automatically be perceived as not committed enough to the job, while married men with children will be perceived as even more committed, with the assumption that their wives will manage all domestic responsibilities, including child-rearing. Finally, assume no allies, since the other women are competing with you for the few token positions available, and once you get the job, men will be free to harass and assault you with no risk of reprisal. Living on this knife edge will ruin your health, and once that happens they’ll be able to fire you and hire a man to do the job you couldn’t quite manage.

You could survive the apocalypse, wrote Hannah. It made me sad. I didn’t want to have to survive that.

John was an incorrigible jaywalker. Maybe he thought his handsomeness kept him safe. Every time he walked away from me and across a street, it had felt like a slap, but I’d told myself he was just forgetful. Whenever I’d told him he had to walk as if we were together, he’d said that it was my job to keep up with him.

Calling a woman crazy is a man’s last resort when he’s failed to control her.