As a girl I discovered the elegant efficiency of mathematical logic. Take the comparison property of real numbers: If x = y + z and z > 0, then x > y. They could have said, “If, to become a thing, you must add to your current state something else, something significant, then the thing you might become is greater than what you are.” See what I mean?
***
Our pre-calculus teacher called us the “Loquacious Lilies” — bright-eyed and giggling at girlhood’s perimeter. When I began menstruating, my parents gave me a monogrammed ring, along with the pronouncement that I was a woman. Their reasoning, I thought, was weak.
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The puberty book had a sketched lineup of nude females — baby on left, old lady on right, normal progressive steps between. I traced my finger along the dual crescents whispering to one another across the grown woman’s heart. I stood shirtless at the mirror and saw one subtle shadow but never its confidante.
***
Grunge-style baggy t-shirts were in. Racing swimsuits offered ample squeeze to render any chest inscrutable. Strategic positioning shielded one side from view.
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I was surprised to receive the award “Nicest Personality” by popular student vote. I also got “Worst Body” by the anonymous judge of the Real Senior Superlatives, a set of unsavory titles announced on flyers distributed in the school parking lot. It didn’t matter, I said. I was above it. I was not less than spiritually or intellectually. Only on a cellular level.
***
In the dorms, I drew back from female rituals — tweezing, blow-drying, makeup. Wary, like an imposter. Told people I’d stopped using soap, for the environment. Friends recalled later that I accumulated admirers. But subtle cues of affection vaporized before contact, like meteors entering an atmosphere. Overt interest I mocked as creepy. I safely crushed on men who were gay, in relationships, or one of my TAs.
***
My best girlfriend observed that I was “the most asexual person” with not a furrowed brow but a wrinkled nose, as if it were a choice. A distasteful one. She disclosed to our friends that I was a virgin. This I discovered after becoming sexually intimate with a man whose goodness and persistence persuaded me that a flat chest didn’t disqualify me from giving and receiving pleasure. I married that man and let the girlfriend go.
***
During a bridesmaid dress fitting, the tailor refused to pin the top tighter. I spent the wedding rigidly upright, not fully exhaling, to keep my nipples concealed. Fled early without hugging the bride, a Loquacious Lily, and never told her why. Bras, bathing suits, dresses, shirts. It’s geometry, I told my husband. If a transversal crosses two parallel lines, the corresponding angles are congruent. But if the lines diverge, the angles are incongruent. My shape would never match the cuts.
***
Then I studied yoga, despite the threat of exposure while bending. I ran my fingertips along the new contours of my triceps, firm muscle under soft skin. I got pregnant and observed my body swell like the women in the books. I gave birth and knew for damn sure that I was a mammalian mother. My infant suckled blithely at the breast I had never treated with the kindness it deserved.
***
Eventually, a doctor explained: pectus excavatum. Vaguely familiar from my childhood medical records. The breast was there, tucked into a cave near my heart. Surgery brought it out of hiding, filled the space behind. The fundamental theorem of calculus shows that integration and antidifferentiation are just different ways to find the same area under a curve.
***
The other day an attractive stranger stopped and swept his gaze over my body. He exhaled, “Wow,” and I looked him in the eye and smiled.
***
I recently bought an elegant crystal nail file — durable, for the environment. At the mirror, I remembered my mother working her emery board, commanding the angles and rhythm, defining femininity. I began to move, and the keratin yielded to my desire: smooth, resilient curves.
***
A complex number is a combination of a real number and an imaginary number. When you multiply by a complex number, the graph shows a rotation in the infinite complex plane. The heart conspires with logic. Imagination heals the mind. And the body whispers joy in pirouettes that twist across the plot.
Ali Tarbox Saperstein grew up searching for blueberries under eastern white pines, but her face now turns up to the mist falling on the Cedar-Sammamish Watershed of the Pacific Northwest. Her writing has appeared in Watershed Review, Ruminate Magazine, and elsewhere.
Image Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/backonthebus
