Body and Soul: Short Story Read Online Free PDF

tips of her fingers she dabs herself, making what strike Aunt Bea as oddly haphazard leaps from cheekbone to jawbone to eyebrow, nose, mouth and then to the other side of her face—her cheek—where she halts for a moment.
    She begins to smooth the skin there—she is testing if the birthmark wipes off. “You know what?” she says.
    “What?”
    “I love purple,” she says wistfully.
    “So do I!” Aunt Bea exclaims.
    “But I thought purple would be green,” Terry says. She turns her head as if her eyes were in danger of falling out. Her eyes look completely different since the operation. They seem smaller … and older—they have the vague intensity that reminds Aunt Bea of old people listening to something difficult and new.
    “Would you like to see more purple?” Aunt Bea asks.
    Terry’s eyes fix on Aunt Bea’s left hand. “Do you know what?” she says. “I thought veins would be red.”
    On the bus ride home, behind oversized sunglasses toeliminate glare, Terry had studied the veins in Aunt Bea’s hands. Every few minutes she carefully lifted her head to look at the other passengers and at the ads above the windows, but she didn’t look
out
the windows, although once or twice she caught sight of her dim reflection, she recognized the movement of her own head, and the first time this happened she said, alarmed, “That’s a mirror!”
    Between these investigations, she had returned to her real interest—examining the back of Aunt Bea’s hand. As they were walking from the bus Aunt Bea showed her how when she held her hand up for a few moments all the veins disappeared, then when she brought it back down they re-emerged and made it seem as if she were ageing fifty years in five seconds. Terry loved that. “Again,” she said. “Again.”
    As soon as they entered the apartment, however, she impatiently pushed away Aunt Bea’s hand, looked down the hall and said, “The mirror over the sink, that’s a real one, isn’t it?”
    “Yes,” Aunt Bea said warily. In the hospital, despite asking where her face was, Terry had closed her eyes every time the doctor had tried to get her to look in a mirror. “Yes,” Aunt Bea said, “that’s a real mirror.”
    “Will you hold these?” Terry asked, taking off her sunglasses. Then she made her way down to the bathroom.
    Now she comes out into the hall, stops and shuts her eyes. This is how she walks—stopping every five or six steps to close her eyes and assume an expression of beseeching concentration. Aunt Bea tries to get her to put the sunglasses back on, but she says they should turn off the lights. Everywhere she sees lights. In the benjamina plant, in Aunt Bea’s hair, strips of light on a vase, squares and spills of light that take Aunt Bea a moment and some wilful hallucinating to discern.
    Terry switches on the television. There is a face not unlike the doctor’s. It upsets her when Aunt Bea says it’s not him. Every time the picture changes she cries, “What’s that?”although she usually figures it out before Aunt Bea answers. After about a quarter of an hour she switches the tv off, saying, “It’s too crowded.” She wants to see Julie, who is being walked home from school by a neighbour.
    “She’ll be home at four o’clock,” Aunt Bea says.
    So she wants to see the kitchen clock. Aunt Bea removes it from the wall and lets her hold it. “But where’s the time?” she cries, distressed.
    It’s the same with the Bible. “But I can’t see what it says,” she cries. They are sitting on Aunt Bea’s bed, the Bible opened on Terry’s lap to a page of all-red words, which is Jesus speaking.
    Aunt Bea says, “Of course you can’t, honey.”
    Terry closes the Bible. With an air of respectful but absolute dismissal she sets it on the bedside table. She looks down at Aunt Bea’s hands. “Show me your veins,” she says.
    They are still in the bedroom when the apartment door opens. “In here!” Aunt Bea calls, and suddenly Julie