CHAPTER 2

The First Innate Truth

Nearing her early twenties, Leda had become obsessed with being linear. Latitude and longitude had formerly been ascribed to maps and a vague notion of Christopher Columbus she stored on the dwindling shelf of third-grade history in the back of her mind. To be linear was to be lines of thinness from her head to her feet. Lines and thinness. Thinness like her legs lifted over her head as she lay on the beach watching her legs, stinging sand in her eyes, blue everywhere. Lying down she could get away with it, but standing it was undeniable to her that she was not nearly linear enough. “Latitude Is Attitude,” she saw on a T-shirt once and never understood. Even as she was now so concerned with linearity and the latitude of herself, that T-shirt was still a confused lake in her mind. The girl who wore it had large breasts. And that was all she really remembered. I do not want to live in the horizontal of my stomach. I do not want to be my thighs. I want to be linear. This compulsion to be linear began at age twelve and would persist until her death. It was very important, VERY IMPORTANT not to be fat. This was the first innate truth of her womanhood.