Human Sister (20 page)

“What do you mean?”

“If what Aunt Lynh tells your mother is true, Elio enjoys making love with young men. I don’t know what he feels about young women.”

Instantly, my chest felt heavy and tight, and a tingling nibbled at my arms and legs. “What does he do with those boys, exactly?”

For a moment, Grandpa appeared stunned. “I don’t know what he does. That’s his business, not ours.”

I gave Grandpa his own silent-waiting-for-more treatment.

Finally, he sighed and said, “Okay, what do you want to know?”

“I told you. I want to know what he does when he makes love with those boys.”

Enduring my repeated interruptions to find out
exactly
what certain named acts entailed, Grandpa proceeded to tell me what he said were activities men typically enjoyed doing when they made love with other men.

It seemed odd to me that people could get pleasure out of doing such things, but I believed Grandpa implicitly, all the more so upon considering Lily. She moaned with pleasure whenever I rubbed her tummy or scratched behind her ears, and that seemed a bit odd, too, because when I rubbed my tummy or scratched behind my ears, I wasn’t transported to moans of pleasure. So, if Elio liked to have his penis massaged… well, I figured I’d enjoy doing that for him just as much as I enjoyed scratching Lily’s ears.

That autumn, I woke one morning on a sticky bloodied sheet. I didn’t want to frighten Michael, so I pulled the sheet off the bed, bunched it up, and took it out through Gatekeeper. My ovaries had dropped their first egg—like a furled seedpod from one of the locust trees, Grandma said.

Sara

T
wo summers later, Elio lifted his chin off the top of my head and asked, “Would you like to go to a club tonight?”

We were sitting in early afternoon shade on the steps of his apartment building, watching children play in the park. He was sixteen, tall, and handsome in his short-sleeved pink shirt and tight-fitting blue jeans. He sat on the step above me, his arms over my shoulders, hugging me, his legs pressing against my sides. Never had I felt so much a part of him, never so calm, so yielding, yet so awakened and full of joy.

“What kind of club?” I asked.

“A place to dance, talk with friends.”

“Okay. I’d love to go.” I tried to sound more excited than I was. I’d never been to a club. I didn’t even know what a club was, or how to dance. Would I appear awkward and embarrass Elio? Would his friends be there, his boyfriends?

“Well, if we’re going,” Elio said, “you’ve got to get some new clothes, something other than those old farmer-boy clothes you always wear.”

He had me stand in front of his Vidtel to record images of me that he entered into a shopping program. Over the next hour, he seemed to take pleasure dressing my likeness in many wild, colorful clothes from designers all over the world. But we finally settled on shopping at a local discount store because we needed the clothes for that evening. He picked out a white camisole, a ruby-colored cotton long-sleeved shirt, and a pair of black slacks. I felt self-consciously feminine in the silky-smooth camisole—the first I’d ever worn.

Later, after dinner and before Elio and I left to go to the club, Aunt Lynh made us promise to be home by midnight. Though her request—“Elio, I want you to promise me that you’ll have your sister home by midnight”—didn’t seem significant to me at the time, events of a year later would revive in me a distinct memory of her words, her stern tone, and Elio’s subsequent funk.

After taking a bus to an area near the University of Amsterdam, Elio and I walked several blocks before turning into a narrow alley lined with old red-brick buildings. About halfway down the alley was a small yellow sign, and on it, the image of a red dog.

Under the sign was a black metal door with a brass knocker that squeaked when Elio raised it to knock. The door opened part way, letting out a blast of music. A huge man with the biggest muscles I’d ever seen scanned Elio’s membership card, then looked at me in an unfriendly manner and grunted something. Though I’d picked up only a few Dutch words during prior visits, “no card” I understood, and “little chicken.” It was clear that the huge fellow wasn’t going to let me in. But when Elio handed him several bills, the man stuffed them into his pants pocket, and the door was opened to us.

I followed Elio into a room filled with smoke, flashing lights, and oppressively loud music. In the center of the room was a circular dance floor on which moved a sea of strobe-lit dancers. Some women were topless; some men wore only underpants. Several of the dancers had holographic partners. Around the circumference of the dance floor were columns of flashing lights that extended from the floor to the ceiling three stories above. Hundreds of people watched from a second-story balcony.

Elio took my hand and led me through the crowd to an area in which there were tables and a bar. I recognized his best friend, Luuk, who was waving to us from one of the tables near the back. He, Elio, and I had played football and video games together in prior summers.

“Good to see you again,” Luuk said. “You’ve matured a lot since last summer.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m happy to see you, too.” I had hoped Elio would have noticed—at least would notice now that Luuk had said it—that in certain places I’d begun to curve and swell like fruit nearing harvest.

“This is my girlfriend, Melissa,” Luuk continued. “And this is Liesbeth and her boyfriend Peer.”

Melissa shook my hand, saying, “We’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

“Ja,” Liesbeth said, pulling an empty chair close to hers. “Sit here and tell us about California.”

About a half-hour of small talk and two rounds of drinks later, Melissa and Luuk got up to dance. Liesbeth asked me to dance. I told her I didn’t know how, but she took my hand and led me onto the dance floor, where, in the blare of music, people danced like trees frenzied by wind. I looked back. Elio was watching us.

“Hold both of my hands,” Liesbeth shouted just inches from my ear. “Feel the music. Just feel it and let yourself go. Don’t think about anything.”

At first I was annoyed by the loudness of the music and by the people who kept bumping into me, but I tried to concentrate on doing what Liesbeth said. After a couple of minutes, she came closer to me and shouted, “That’s good, but try just to
feel
it.”

I half-closed my eyes, trying to eliminate the mass of dancers freeze-framing in my vision. I relaxed, let myself go, and soon a feeling came, as if the music were speaking a language my body understood, rousing it from a deep, childhood sleep and filling it with the wonderfully primal desire to pulse, to dance, with the rhythmic power of the music.

“Ja!” Liesbeth screamed, throwing loose my hands. “You’ve got it!”

I felt like a musical instrument resonating in an ocean of sound, and wondered how Michael would respond to being in this club. He’ll never be able to leave his room, I thought, never get a chance. He’ll only be able to experience this in my memories.

Pushing that negative thought out of my mind, I continued to dance until Liesbeth again took my hands and shouted, "I have to rest a bit."

“She learns fast!” Liesbeth announced when we returned to our table.

“It’s the teacher,” Peer said.

She playfully slapped Peer’s arm, then said, “Elio, you should dance with her. She’s very good.”

Elio smiled and began to get up, but Peer said, “Hey, it’s my turn!”

Elio sat back down. “Sure, go ahead.” His speech was slurred.

On the way to the dance floor, I put my mouth close to Peer’s ear and asked, “Does Elio drink a lot?”

“No. I’ve only seen him get drunk once before. But tonight he’s slamming ’em down. He’s moody or something. Probably had another fight with his ma. Or with one of his friends.”

Peer and I danced a song. He bumped his hips against me a few times, and his butt. I’d enjoyed dancing with Liesbeth more. He asked me to dance another song, but I said I wanted to go back to the table. What I really wanted was to dance with Elio.

When I returned to the table, however, and asked Elio to dance, he said he was too drunk. The talking and drinking continued for about a half-hour more before Elio complained of feeling sick. Luuk and Peer helped him to the bathroom.

When they returned, Elio slumped in the chair beside me. He leaned over and wrapped his arms around me but didn’t say a word.

“We promised his mother we’d leave by midnight,” I said to Luuk. “But how can I get him home? I don’t think he can walk to the bus.”

“Peer’s got a car,” Luuk said. “We’ll take you home.”

When Elio and I finally got to his apartment door, I propped him up against the wall and quietly opened the door. With my arm around him, we stumbled across the living room and into his bedroom. I pulled back the covers and sheet of his bed.

“Do you need to go to the bathroom?” I asked.

He shook his head no.

“Try to stand still. I’ll take off your shirt and pants; then you can sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

I took off his shirt, then unbuckled and unzipped his pants. I was shocked to see that he wasn’t wearing underpants. I hadn’t seen him naked for three years. His penis had grown larger, and it was surrounded by a thick, tangled mass of black pubic hair. Above it, a wispy tendril of fur had crept up toward his navel.

I felt happy and strangely excited by this sight of his genitals, by their musky scent, and by new stirrings deep down in my belly. I smiled up at him and asked him to sit on the bed so I could remove his pants and socks; then I asked him to lie down so I could cover him. As I pulled up the covers he grabbed my arm and said, “Don’t go. Sleep with me.”

I quickly took off my clothes. I hesitated at my underpants but decided it would be okay to take them off since he was naked, and then I crawled in beside him. He rolled over, placed his arm across my chest, his head on my shoulder, his leg over my legs. I got goose bumps from the warm, silky feel of his skin. I half-expected to hear him say I was still the best teddy bear in the world, but he quickly fell asleep.

A few hours later, I woke. It was beginning to get light outside. Elio seemed not to have moved. His breath, always before warm and moist on my chest, now smelled of vomit and beer; and his erection, which pressed against my thigh, was much larger than it had been years before when we’d slept together.

I had thoughts about how nice it would feel to hold Elio’s penis in my hands and kiss it, but Grandpa’s admonition to respect Elio’s privacy kept interrupting my fantasies, so I lay still, feeling happy in Elio’s embrace, and waited for sleep to return.

Sometime later, I was again wakened, this time by movement as Elio lifted his arm and leg off me and began to sit up.

“Hi,” I said, stroking his back with my fingers.

“I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” he replied as he got up unsteadily.

When he returned from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, I pulled the covers back to let him in, but he stopped by the side of the bed. “I don’t feel good,” he said. “Could you go and sleep in your own bed?”

I wanted to say: Crawl in. I’ll hold you and make you feel better.

But obviously that was not what he wanted.

“Does it tickle a little?” Michael asked a few minutes ago, turning his specimen brush inside me.

“No. Just a bit cold. Like everything down here,” I answered.

My long underwear and two pair of pants had been removed. My legs were spread, as if in love with the cold, damp air of this hideaway far under the sea.