All the World Is Waiting for You
When I was five, I got a pair of Wonder Woman Underoos, stars on blue bottoms, a golden eagle on the camisole, which my dad called a wife-beater. I blasted around the yard, kicking Nazis, saving drippy Steve Trevor. The world had clean edges. I was a goddess, a force. Wham! Pow! Look out bad guys. My mom called me inside; I was just in my underwear, and what would the neighbors think.
In high school, some college guy with Steve-Trevor shoulders asked me out on a date. I talked him up to my friends like he was proof I was cool. On our date, he tried to get me drunk, said things like: you seem like a girl who can handle herself, who knows what’s what. I nodded along, wanting him to think I was worldly or worthy or whatever. I had no idea. His hands pawed at my camisole, lightly at first, then with force. That night, I sat in a friend’s bathroom, staring out at a starless sky, my underwear drippy with blood and cum in her sink, wondering why this had to be the thing that made me a woman.
A decade later, I went to law school, fantasizing I would kick all the bad guys straight to jail where they could rot like Nazis. I imagined myself shining in navy blue suits, wowing the jury, winning over the judge. Except, I didn’t do any of that. All my friends chased big corporate jobs with big corporate salaries, and I wanted to be big too. We would say things like, everyone deserves a good lawyer, even billionaires. Corporate life was a wonder-less world. My daily was some douchebag with Steve-Trevor hair talking over me while we argued about which of our stupid-rich clients owed the other money. During the day, I stress-sweat through my camisole. At night, I dreamed my teeth fell out or I showed up at the office dressed only in my underwear.
I gave birth to a girl. Everyone said I could have it all: work, home, marriage, friends, baby—but I was exhausted. Other women managed. I was apparently less. My mom was delighted when I announced I was staying home, her smile audible when she called to say how relieved she was. It’s not giving up, she insisted, even though I was literally doing that. She said, you're finally free to become the woman you were always meant to be. I could have kicked the phone off the wall. A domestic goddess? Mom, that is so messed up. I wanted to shout—I am so much more—but I was already sobbing. Just another bleary-eyed, thirty-something with spit-up down her camisole pjs.
My youngest daughter doesn’t give a crap about Wonder Woman. Drippy polaroids of me in my Underoos don’t convey inherent awesomeness. She doesn’t want to be a goddess or impress some Steve Trevor. She wants to be a water-bender who is also a Pokémon trainer who is also a donut-selling librarian. She runs around our front yard yelling to her Mareep or her Charmander. I have no idea. The sky will fall before I call her inside. I stand at the window, eagle-eyed, listening to NPR. Supremacists have forced their way into the Capitol. No one tries to stop them. Outside, my daughter zips like a star.
-D.E. Hardy
D.E. Hardy's work has appeared in New World Writing, Clockhouse Magazine (Pushcart Nomination), and Sixfold, among others. She is an MFA student at Antioch University and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.