I had recently given birth to my first child when I started looking into the history of Wages for Housework, the feminist campaign demanding compensation for women’s work in the home. I was wild with new currents rushing around my veins, spilling messily beyond the container of my body. There was a bird that often perched on the tree in front of my house whose song was the same pitch as my baby’s cry, and sometimes, in a moment of mind-body confusion, I would step onto the porch, hear the bird call, and milk would burst out of my breasts. Shuffling my obliterated postpartum abdomen around the block, I felt aware of my physical vulnerability for the first time in my adult life. Usually a fast walker with a tendency to be oblivious to my surroundings, I started deliberately making eye contact with people on the street to gauge their intentions, aware that all they had to do was give me a gentle push and I would be helpless, like a beetle on its back. Then there was the work.…