I was four­teen years old when a man grabbed me by the pussy.

We were in the check­out line of our Pacif­ic North­west town’s Pay­less drug­store. It was ear­ly evening, one week before Valentine’s Day, and I was buy­ing a cas­sette tape as a gift for my best friend. (The Thel­ma & Louise sound­track. Seri­ous­ly.) My par­ents were wait­ing in the car. I’d stepped up to the cashier when a hand squeezed my ass.

I was not raised to fight for myself or oth­ers. My fam­i­ly con­sist­ed of three iso­lat­ed peo­ple who neat­ly side­stepped not only con­flict but engage­ment of any kind. I knew nei­ther fight nor flight; I knew only to cringe into my body like a pota­to bug. To make myself disappear.

The man cir­cled me. He cupped the front of my jeans, slid his fin­gers against my vul­va, and squeezed. We were alone in the check­out lines – alone with the two women work­ing the cash reg­is­ters, alone with my frozen feet and pound­ing heart. No one spoke. I remained par­a­lyzed. He released his hold on his own time, saun­ter­ing out of the store on his own terms. Change broke the silence. Coins clat­tered against the counter as I paid for the tape, nev­er mak­ing eye con­tact with the cashier. I forced numb legs to step through the slid­ing doors, into the dark­ness where he might be wait­ing, and slid silent­ly into the back­seat of the Dat­sun. I didn’t say any­thing to my parents.

At four­teen, my ugly duck­ling child­hood was bare­ly a year behind me. The tran­si­tion hap­pened so unex­pect­ed­ly and with­out warn­ing, I didn’t yet under­stand the dis­tinc­tion between attrac­tion and abuse. I didn’t under­stand unwant­ed advances weren’t about me, but pow­er and pre­da­tion – the flex­ing of rape culture’s mus­cle. I thought it was my fault that grown men sud­den­ly eval­u­at­ed me in a way they hadn’t before, open­ly, as their right. Some I’d known as fam­i­ly friends: the elder fish­er­man hav­ing cof­fee with my mom on our boat, who, when I described hav­ing “worked my ass off,” was quick to cor­rect me, “It’s still there – I noticed!” Oth­ers, like the man in the drug­store, were strangers.

Sev­er­al weeks lat­er, my mom reeled back when I came down­stairs one morn­ing. “What hap­pened to you?” she gasped, grab­bing my chin and forc­ing my face up. “Who did this to you?”

I didn’t want to tell her. To acknowl­edge the long red wounds where I’d dug my fin­ger­nails into flesh and pulled, as if in open­ing skin I could open a door to step back in time, back to a time when I hadn’t felt men’s roam­ing eyes and hands… That was an exchange too inti­mate for our fam­i­ly. But she per­sist­ed. Final­ly I con­fessed, “I didn’t want to be pret­ty anymore.”

Twen­ty-five years lat­er, I still see her face crum­pling, falling under the weight of grief she didn’t have words for, out­rage she’d nev­er been allowed to express.

My mom.

My mom and I exist at arm’s length. We sub­sist on three-minute phone calls and occa­sion­al vis­its where stilt­ed con­ver­sa­tion clings to such banal top­ics as the weath­er and her friends’ health woes. Avoid­ance of any­thing more sub­stan­tial is by mutu­al, unspo­ken agree­ment. I broke that agree­ment only once, when, exas­per­at­ed, I named the ten­sion between us, say­ing the time we spent togeth­er couldn’t be fun for her.

“This is fun for me,” she insist­ed. She just want­ed to show me her gar­dens and have tea togeth­er, she said. “I’m not going to talk to you about pol­i­tics or sex or reli­gion! You don’t have any idea who I am.”

She wasn’t wrong. But she wasn’t entire­ly right, either. I know pieces of my mom, pieces I car­ry like coins in my pocket.

Born in 1942, she was her par­ents’ first child. When her broth­er was born four years lat­er, her moth­er told her how relieved she was to have had a son. Boys were bet­ter than girls, she explained.

While all boys were bet­ter than any girl, my mom learned over the course of her child­hood that indi­vid­ual girls mer­it­ed vary­ing degrees of val­ue. She learned that she, a stu­dious, qui­et type, was the wrong kind of girl. Her moth­er told her so, won­der­ing aloud why she couldn’t be more like the pret­ty, viva­cious girl next door.

My mom didn’t pass that cru­el mea­sur­ing stick on to her only child. Instead my inher­i­tance con­sists of sto­ries and obser­va­tions jan­gling against each oth­er. She was one of three women in her vet­eri­nary pro­gram at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty. One of few female skip­pers in South­east Alaska’s com­mer­cial salmon fish­ery, and the only one with a teenaged daugh­ter as her crew. She spent her six­ties as the only woman on her team at an oil refin­ery. Though she refused to apply a fem­i­nist frame to her achieve­ments, that was how I viewed her. My pock­ets sag with gold, a coin for every pow­er­ful memory.

They aren’t all gold. Oth­er mem­o­ries are pen­nies, pit­ted and green with corrosion.

One. We stand side-by-side, inspect­ing make-up in a drug­store. It’s the same Pay­less that will soon teach me the dan­gers of my female­ness, but today’s only les­son is a 50-year old woman turn­ing to her 13-year old daugh­ter, ask­ing if a par­tic­u­lar shade of eye shad­ow will help her look pretty.

Two. I am work­ing at a truck shop across from her house. I am the only female on the shop floor, oth­er than those spread-eagled across the walls. When I come home bro­ken from a par­tic­u­lar­ly hard day – when the n‑word is used to describe Dr. King; when a staff meet­ing includes blast­ing a left-lean­ing local woman as an anti-war cunt; when my boss ges­tures to one of the posters and says he’d like to see me in that lit­tle black num­ber – she waves a hand in dis­com­fi­ture. “Oh, well…” She changes the subject.

Three. I perch on the edge of a chair at her din­ing room table. She’s urged me to come for din­ner – “Won’t that be fun?” I’m watch­ing her offer to cut a man’s steak. He’s had a seat at her table for the past twen­ty years, when­ev­er the mood suits him, and is accus­tomed to being the cen­ter of her atten­tion. Tonight he makes loud obser­va­tions about the slice of cake on her plate and which parts of her body the calo­ries will set­tle upon. I counter that she’s an adult and can eat what­ev­er she choos­es, but the defense is lost beneath the sound of my mom laugh­ing at his “joke,” the sound of my mom agree­ing, “I know, Bud, you’re right.”

Four, five, six. I watch my first and most defin­ing female role mod­el, the most capa­ble and strongest woman I’ve known, bow to men unwor­thy of her, unavail­able and with­hold­ing. I watch her opin­ions take on the shape of those of the men around her. I watch her make pieces of her­self disappear.

This Sep­tem­ber, I returned from five months at sea. My mom was eager for me to vis­it, to see the improve­ments she’d made around her place. “I think you’ll be real­ly pleased!” She yearns for my approval. In this way, I have been no bet­ter than the men she’s sur­round­ed her­self with: unable or unwill­ing to give what she seeks.

Dri­ving into her rur­al neigh­bor­hood, I wasn’t sur­prised to see my old employ­er had erect­ed a Trump sign in front of the truck shop, just rolled my eyes. But the mir­ror image reflect­ed across the street stunned me. I’d nev­er known my mom to reveal her polit­i­cal pref­er­ences; she avoids at all cost con­ver­sa­tion that might be controversial.

Star­ing at the sign jabbed in my mom’s yard, I felt the way I imag­ine she once did, see­ing her four­teen-year old daughter’s self-hate etched into her skin. Hor­ri­fied, help­less. Heart­bro­ken. Both of us so far beyond each other’s reach.

What hap­pened to you? Who did this to you?

If I could, this is what I would do. I would pull out my pock­ets, gath­er those gold coins and melt them down. One woman’s val­ue: absolute, unmis­tak­able. I’d draw back a fist to hurl the cor­rod­ed pen­nies away – down a wish­ing well, maybe, drown­ing those images of sub­ju­ga­tion – but would stay my hand at the last sec­ond, under­stand­ing just in time that pain is its own kind of pro­tec­tion. Into the flames the pen­nies would go.

After the smoke cleared, I’d place a breath­tak­ing swirl of met­al, a shield of unique stur­di­ness and heft, into my mom’s hands. No one would ever reduce it to “pret­ty.” With that shield I would give her anger and grief, the cer­tain­ty to refute anyone’s assess­ments of her body, her mind, her self-worth. I’d give her emo­tions we have nev­er known how to exchange – con­fi­dence, joy. Trust. I would pass on to her every sur­vival tool she wasn’t able to give me. I’d give her every­thing she nev­er received herself.

But that’s a kind of change I don’t know how to make.

So I draw upon what I have: my vote. I vote as if my bal­lot might take back every time we laughed at our own expense, held our­selves respon­si­ble for a man’s behav­ior, blamed our bod­ies as the offend­er, changed the sub­ject rather than the nar­ra­tive. Every time we made our­selves small. My mom and I may nev­er learn how to be whole and vis­i­ble to each oth­er. Still, even if we just can­cel each oth­er out, I vote as if we might yet share a safer, more equi­table world.

[Grat­i­tude to Dawn Quyle Lan­dau for orig­i­nal­ly pub­lish­ing this essay as a guest post on her blog, Tales From the Moth­er­land, on Novem­ber 6, 2016. It bears re-post­ing here, today, as an oath to refuse to nor­mal­ize what is decid­ed­ly not. I’ll see you in the streets tomor­row, dear ones, and over the days to fol­low. May we resist and rise together.)