Read Online Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss - Free Book Online

would you go?” I asked, careful to keep the rising panic from my voice.
    “Anywhere. Everywhere. Travel expands the mind.” This she said carefully—quoting, it seemed clear, something she had recently read. “I’ve been thinking maybe the Amazon. It’s supposed to be marvelous down there. The natives believe the earth is carried around on the back of an animal. Isn’t that the most marvelous thing you’ve ever heard? A lion, I think it is, or a turtle. Actual living flesh, is the point, creeping around with the weight of the world on its shoulders.”
    “I think that’s blasphemy,” I said uneasily.
    “But the best thing I read about the Amazon is what happens when you get into the jungle,” she went on, ignoring me. “Deep, I mean, at the absolute center. There’s a tribe of women who rule the place. They hunt and kill all their own food. Do everything men do. Men aren’t even allowed. Or maybe,” she frowned, “once a year or something. They must let in a few to mate every now and then. Point being, they otherwise do without. And you want to know the best part?” She raised her hand to the right side of her chest and slowly, seriously, made the shape of an X . “They cut it off.”
    “It?”
    “The right one. It gets in the way of the bow.” She leaned in close. “They slice right through. No medicine or anything. Imagine—they’ve probably never done it on a white woman. All that blood would be shocking as hell against skin like ours.”
    I felt a pang in the right side of my chest, where I was still flat as a board. “But it’s only these natives who do it,” I said worriedly. “Isn’t it?”
    She sighed. “That’s really not the point, Rebecca.”
    Perhaps I felt she’d just shared something with me and I wanted to do the same. Or maybe I felt a shiver of excitement at the danger in what she’d said, or I heard her disappointment at my question and wanted to prove myself to her once and for all. I don’t know. All I know is that I took her hand as she started to turn away—grabbed it, with an urgency I believe surprised us both.
    “Look.” I pointed to the pale blue V of veins along the underside of her wrist. “Do you have any idea what these do?”
    “I’m cold,” she said, frowning.
    “This’ll just take a minute.” I traced the veins up to where they disappeared, an inch or two below the rolled cuff of her blouse. “I was reading about it the other day. There are three big veins that run through your arm—the brachial, the basilic, and the cephalic.”
    She peered down. “I don’t see anything.”
    “You can’t see them, exactly. You have to know how to look.”
    “So what—now you’re God?”
    “I think it’s interesting, that’s all,” I said, faltering. “It’s like Mr. Percy said, remember? The best parts are all around us. Everywhere you look. For instance, our hearts.” I held up my fists. “Did you know? They’re only that big.”
    “Good for them,” she said, turning away again, bored. But instead of going inside, she stood there a moment, her hand resting on the doorknob. “I wouldn’t be scared,” she said finally, her back still to me. “In case you were wondering.” She half-turned then and made that slicing gesture across the front of her chest again. “I wouldn’t mind a bit.”
    I fiddled with the hem of my skirt, the material sopping. “ I would.”
    “I know, Rebecca,” she said, her voice heavy with something I didn’t recognize, and then she pulled the door open and went inside.

Chapter 7
    BUT I said I lost her twice: The second time was Bertrand Lowell. It was May of our junior year at the U when he called for Alex, her voice as she told us she’d said yes unusually husky. I remember thinking it sounded as though she’d been crying. We all circled around her where she sat by the hallway phone, tilting her head back to exhale a thin stream of smoke. “Why the hell not,” she said. “I’ve been living like a