She watched her parents to learn how to grow up, how

to hold a fork and a book, how to fold her arms beneath her blanket at night to stay warm and safe. She watched her little brother to remember where she had been. She watched out for him, toddling in all directions, and when her sister arrived, she watched her sleep, moonlight-striped by crib bars like a zebra. She watched their dog duck her head beneath the hand of whoever needed her most. She watched the dishes pile and the dishwasher clear, the cabinets fill and unfill. She watched her first-grade classmates make jokes, and she wondered why they wasted time instead of paying attention. She watched the teacher write words on the chalkboard—archaeopteryx, pteranodon—and she memorized them; she did not fail to spell the words correctly on her tests. She watched the giant birdhouse above the altar in her church until one day it became simply a large speaker. She watched the paper between her fingers burn too quickly for her to light a candle for any of her intentions. She watched the neighbor girls invent a club and eventually crack open the door for her to join as “snack manager,” and she hurried to perform her duties, bringing offerings to the older girls. She watched her mother check the price tag first but still purchase the cropped gray T-shirt screen-printed with “L’Universite de Paris,” and she wore it to school, watching to see if her friend would be jealous, but her friend was not watching. She watched a boy climb to the top of the rope, touching the gymnasium ceiling, but when it was her turn, she jumped and only held her weight until the teacher said she could stop.

She watched her father climb through a tunnel at a theme park, but she could not bring herself to follow, even as he held out a hand to her, because she did not want to be enclosed in something with an end she could not see.

She watched everyone, mimicking what she thought she could get away with, trying to understand how to be a girl on the cusp, a girl whose hand a boy would want to grasp. But she did not learn. Instead, she watched a computer screen and the way it would haltingly reveal an inbox with the number of new messages in bold at the top, and then—only then—would she see if one was from the boy. She watched his emails grow longer as he responded to every topic she brought up, and she watched his language for signs that he was watching her. She watched his eyes that night in her best friend’s parents’ computer room when she was sitting on the couch and he walked in to find her; she saw that he did not take his eyes off her and so she watched herself stand up, muttering I’m just going to do this as she kissed him. She watched him because she did not know she was supposed to close her eyes, but neither did he. She watched herself make excuses to get off phone calls with her best friend on Monday and Wednesday nights in case the boy called. She had watched the poetry burn when she abandoned an earlier crush, but she would never watch the poetry about this boy burn because she knew she would want it for her archives. She watched their communications grow for fifteen years, long after the spare seven-and-a-half months she and the boy had watched each other. Even after it stopped and she began to date again, she still watched him, digitally, from a distance.

She watched herself try on a cap and gown, watched herself and her classmates grow kinder to each other in the final month, and she wondered why she’d never tried to befriend them before. She watched her family drive away from her dorm and she cried, and then she went to dinner. She watched her roommate make conversation at the bar with a man who looked old, watched her touch his arm, and when he walked away to buy her roommate a drink, her roommate informed her sometimes you have to act like you like them. She watched her roommate lie on the floor of their room that night, holding their shared phone to her ear as she slept, the long-distance minutes clicking up their cents, her roommate’s fiancé back home on the other end of the line.

She watched a boy touch her toes, and she let him.

She watched him for signs that he would want to marry her because she wanted to marry him. She did not watch herself. She watched him. She watched him lying beside her, holding hands as they drifted off; watched him bend his mouth over her breasts before looking up with desire and awe, and she watched him watch himself as he touched her. She watched the years tick by, the syllabi discarded, senioritis pulsating as the two of them watched the horizon for a sign. She watched his father bring her parents’ old couch down the steps to their basement apartment, and she watched his parents leave before she turned to the boy to confirm what they had done. She watched him for six months until he did it.

She watched the aisle for faces she could recognize as she walked to meet her husband, but she was not wearing her glasses; she wanted her photos to look classic. She watched the second line turn pink within days after their first anniversary, and she brought it to him, knowing he would watch her expression first. She watched her belly distend and her ankles swell, and she stood on the sidewalk, watching men traipse up and down the apartment stairs, carrying out her heavy hope chest stuffed with blankets and frames.

She did not watch her daughter emerge from between her legs, but her husband did. She watched herself as a mother, propping her daughter against her chest and leaning back against the pillows for the early morning feedings, a body against a body, her body requiring her body. She watched herself diaper and snuggle and read and repeat, and she liked how she did it. She liked her competence. She watched her mother in a different way after she became a mother herself, watching her mother move now without the burden of daily care. That life was a long ways away for her. She watched months blur into each other; another set of lines turn pink, another daughter emerge from her body; the months careening so fast they nearly blinded her; a third set of lines turning pink, a third daughter emerging from her body. She watched her daughters for the features she feared she had passed on to them, the futures she feared she had passed on by always watching. And sometimes, when everyone was still, one daughter absorbed in a book and one daughter drawing shapes with a crayon and one daughter smiling at the zebra dangling above her playmat, she saw them.