Human Sister

conditioning, becoming a team player, an infatuated lover, a dedicated parent, a devout whatever, and so on.
    “What is important for you to become aware of is the pattern this reprogramming takes and the power it can have over you. During adolescence, there are biologic impulses to distance oneself from one’s parents and family, and one often encounters the disturbing experience of having one’s closest friends acquire new interests and new friends, usually of the opposite sex. Adolescents often feel isolated when they discover old friends disavowing, perhaps even claiming to abhor, the pleasures and allegiances of youth.
    “Then, to top it all off, comes a flood of neurohormones released in conjunction with early sexual activity. These neurohormones were evolutionarily selected to break down established synaptic coding so that the young animal could easily be reprogrammed for pair bonding and parental responsibilities. In humans, the strain of growing up, combined with floods of neuromodulators, overwhelms the established synaptic coding in an adolescent brain, resulting in the commonly observed personality dissolution associated with that period of life.”
    Grandpa frowned, apparently disturbed by this last idea, then picked up a set of papers from his desk. “Take a look at this article later. It describes how prairie voles’ dopamine levels surge during their first sexual encounter, permanently recoding their brains, and they mate for life. In the studies described, virgin female voles given a single injection of dopamine immediately choose any nearby male vole as their mate for life. Scary actually, but that is how love is made—for prairie voles, at least.”
    I thought I understood everything Grandpa had said, but as far as I could tell, what he’d said wasn’t directed at what I was upset about: Elio’s recent strange behavior.
    “What I wanted to talk about, Grandpa, is Elio. I’m going to marry him when I grow up, and I think I’ll enjoy making love with him. So I think I should be able to see him naked, and he shouldn’t lock me out of the bathroom. Don’t you agree?”
    “I most certainly do not agree. I thought I made it clear when you called from Amsterdam that now is a time for you to respect his privacy. You’re not children any longer. If he feels uncomfortable being naked around you, then you accept that and don’t bother him about it. Besides, there certainly is no rush. You have your whole long life ahead of you. After you mature sexually in a few years, you’ll have plenty of time to be intimate with the boys you like. Furthermore, you should be aware that even though you feel you may enjoy making love with Elio, he might not feel the same way toward you.”
    “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