Body of Stars by Laura Walter (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📕

with the loose change in my pocket. When I returned home, Miles was angry. He said the point of the yard sale was to make money, not spend it, but I told him the book had only cost twenty cents, which was basically nothing. Plus it was mine, first the money and then the book, which I placed in a prominent position on my bookshelf. It remained there still, its red spine setting it apart from all my other books.

After school that day, I slid Cassandra’s party invitation on the kitchen counter and went to my room. I headed straight for my bookcase, resolved to stop worrying about how Miles might pay for his interpretation classes. He’d find a way—he always did for what he most wanted. It was time to direct my attention to my own interests instead.

I pulled down Principles of the Mind from its place on the shelf among the other psychology books I’d collected: old textbooks I’d found in the used-book store, the remaindered copies of lesser-known professionals touting some theory or another, the biographies of the greats. They were mostly written by men, with the author’s photo printed across the full back cover. Gray hair, beards, suits, shiny knotted ties. It all meant nothing to me, not just the authors but the books themselves. Even Dr. Kisterboch’s Principles of the Mind, which I’d devoted the most time to studying, only made sense in flashes. The material was too advanced for me, impenetrable, and I waited to grow older and have it all make sense. I thought life was like that: reach a certain milestone and poof—complete understanding.

For a while I sat on the floor flipping through Principles of the Mind, reading snatches of Dr. Kisterboch’s dryly balanced analysis of the human psyche. Before long, I found myself thinking of Miles instead. I thought of the game we played in the basement, how he could look me full in the face and withhold the truth about something so grave. I worried what else he might conceal, what secrets were yet to come between us.

I abandoned my books on the floor and snuck into Miles’s room. It was a tradition for me to hunt through his things when he wasn’t home. I picked my way over the clothes and books strewn across the floor to reach his desk, where an envelope caught my eye. It was addressed in my brother’s handwriting to the Office of the Future, and when I picked it up, the paper seemed to slip out and unfold in my hands as if of its own accord. That was how snooping worked for me: it was an out-of-body experience, something for which I believed I bore no blame.

I was holding a Petition for Addendum form. I skimmed its contents, expecting to read a mundane technical request, but soon I felt blood rush to my cheeks. My brother was petitioning the Office of the Future to create special interpretation training programs for men. The interpretation field was female-dominated, my brother argued, only because it was considered women’s work, which caused men to dismiss it out of hand. As a result, the strict gender line held, potentially robbing the world of men’s talents.

“Just as our government forbids explicit discrimination against women in the workplace, men should receive rights equal to women in pursuing the profession of interpretation,” he’d written. “To discourage men from this line of work reinforces outdated gender politics, and it unnecessarily restricts gifted men from making valuable contributions in the field.” He went on to suggest that to alleviate fears of men taking advantage of girls, each male interpreter could be accompanied by a female assistant during readings. Like a chaperone, or like the nurses who stayed in the room while male doctors examined women and girls.

I lowered the letter but didn’t let go of it. It struck me as a hopeless thing. The Mapping the Future authors and editors were exclusively male, but that didn’t mean they would be sympathetic to my brother’s request. The editorial panel was notoriously conservative, and they made updates to Mapping the Future only rarely. The latest addendum, which purported to focus on gender and sexuality, barely acknowledged the reality of same-sex attraction and relationships. Miles was asking the authors to take too great a leap. He was also being unreasonable, in my view. Girls could never truly be comfortable with male interpreters. It was just common sense.

Back then, my teenage self did not understand the distinction between official channels and the underground, the place where real progress was born. A Mapping the Future addendum would eventually be published, yes, but not for what Miles had originally petitioned. In the years to come, I’d buy the revised edition not for myself but for all the girls who had a different sort of future—one I could hardly begin to imagine back then.

*   *   *

I was still holding that form when Miles returned home, when he bounded up the stairs toward me. He took one step into his room and stopped when he saw me.

I held up his letter. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m trying to change the system.” He came forward and snapped the paper from my hand. “It’s a waste to keep good men out of the profession.”

“You know what Mapping the Future says about male interpreters.” I walked over to his bookcase to locate our family copy of the text. I plucked it down and paged through until I came to the section “On Men and Interpretation.”

“‘A woman is marked by nature, but a man is naked, unreadable,’” I read out loud. “‘For this reason, men are dissuaded from pursuing interpretation professionally. No man is as gifted as a woman in the interpretive arts, and he should harbor no illusions concerning the scope of his abilities. A man’s role is to guide society, set laws, and accept responsibility for the larger arc of the future. The realm of the domestic and individual, meanwhile, falls to women.’”

“I know