Like all the other kids, my baby sister Ronnie and I played doctor together when we were little, probably a little more intensely than most due to our loneliness and isolation, but it didn't get serious until that long, hot, west Texas summer when we first walked in the Garden.
One scorching June afternoon, cuddled together on a old worn-out brown army blanket in the back room of our family's restaurant, my kid sister and I accidentally discovered Eden.
People say that the Garden of Eden is guarded by an angel with a flaming sword. We found the gate guarded only by a thin white veil. When we pulled it down and started to explore, the very first person we stumbled upon was a friendly little man fast asleep in a boat. When by working hand in hand we finally managed to awaken him, he stretched, stood up tall and proud, and then showed Ronnie and me how to climb steep mountains, dance trembling on the waves of the sea, and slide down slippery slopes to lands yet undiscovered.
Still innocent newcomers, all summer long we continued our joint explorations of the incredible wonders of the Garden. Awestruck, we wandered wide-eyed for days on end through beautiful silken meadows and fresh sprouting forests. Side by side we probed hidden, secret caverns and gazed open-mouthed at warm, fragrant waterfalls flowing down like rivers of pure gold to water the thirsty valleys below.
One hot day as my sister was sampling fresh banana and kiwi fruit straight from the tree, and I was breathlessly enjoying firm, sweet blackberries, we were caught by surprise when the Fountain of Life suddenly sprang forth from the tree at the center of the Garden, with milk and honey.
At first we were puzzled and even a bit scared of its powerful flow, but by working together we quickly discovered how to draw its life-giving waters. Eventually we both drank deeply from it, me out of curiosity, she again and again out of sheer enchantment. It was a summer of bliss in an enchanted land.
We had thrilling adventures, races between our friend the boatman and his much larger opponent, races which, in spite of his size disadvantage, the brave and strong little boatman always seemed to win. There were even fierce swordfights between the two, mock combats which almost always ended up with both sides surrendering in heroic embrace. By the time we started school again after Labor Day, Doctor Livingston I Presume, Emilia Earhart and Indiana Jones had nothing over us except pith-helmets. My kid sister and I were world-class explorers.
But when Ma unexpectedly walked into the storage room of the restaurant one fall day after school and discovered her two kids all dressed up in rawhide, saddled and ready to ride into the west Texas sunset, we expected dire punishment. However, all she did was tell us to get decent. Then she called Ronnie aside and explained about the birds, the bees and the rubber trees. I guess she told dad too, but he never mentioned anything. In his culture, there are some things you just don't talk about out loud.
In any case, we kids were way too embarrassed to ever try anything like THAT again. All through school my adventuring was of a more pedestrian sort, limited to training for wrestling matches and then getting pinned to the mat, warming third chair in the school concert band, and ace'ing Mr. Garcia's AP history class. No more swordfights, damp caverns or perfumed waterfalls for me, and my best girlfriend had only five fingers.
My Khmer name is Oudum, but everyone calls me Adam. My kid sister, who's nine months younger than me, is Ronny. (Rathani, her Khmer name, means Jewel). We were always in the same grade since kindergarten. Everyone thinks she's anorexic because she's always been underweight and thin as a rail, and even up to now has no curves at all. But she eats like a horse and is as healthy as one, too. The doctor said it was just the effects of a poor diet in her first couple of years before we came to the States, plus a fast metabolism and our Khmer blood. The doctor told her she'd probably live to 120.
As a child she always preferred toy cars to dolls, and all through high school she cut her straight, jet-black hair short, wore boy clothes, and avoided girl-cliques. Except for a couple of gay guys who were her best friends and always hung out with her at school, the teenaged boys stayed away from her in droves. There were even rumors she was a lesbian, but the fact was that she gave an equal-opportunity cold shoulder to almost everyone else, gay and straight.
As the only two Asian kids in a small Texas Panhandle town, we were pretty isolated. The Black kids figured we were Chinese and teased us with ching-chong taunts, the Latino kids ignored us when they found out that in spite of our rich bronze complexions we didn't speak Spanish, and the White kids figured we were ugly colored kids with funny eyes and had no time for us. I was way too small for the Panhandle god-sport, high school football, so I went out for wrestling instead. But I was shorter and thinner than the others and never won a single match. Ronnie went out for the swim team and even won a couple of medals, which our parents display in a case, like holy relics.
Ronnie and I remained unusually close, and once, only once, on a late-night sophomore band bus to Austin, we shared a stolen, hungry kiss and wordlessly decided to revisit our secret Garden, which by now was wild and overgrown. The Band Coach and the Chaperone in the seat across the aisle were busily exchanging saliva and exploring mountains and jungles of their own, and slouched down in our bus seats, safe under our shared blanket, nobody could tell how far and wide we were roaming.
Before our breakfast stop, we had managed to reawaken the little boatman and his big friend, and found that both had now grown as much as we had. To our joy, we also found that the Waters of Life now flowed even more freely from their secret fountains in the deep than they had so long ago.
But that rare opportunity never happened again. Life settled into boredom: Every day after school we did homework and worked for our allowance and tips at the restaurant, and either Ma or Dad was always at home when we were. The storeroom was now padlocked. For obvious reasons we never had any dates in school, and Ronnie and I spent our senior prom working side by side as volunteers behind the snack bar.
After having strolled through the Garden of Eden, the plains of west Texas were pretty damn plain by comparison.
I turned eighteen in early September of my senior year. Ronnie's eighteenth was in June, three weeks after our graduation day. After high school, Dad wanted us to work in the restaurant full time, but Ma reminded him that they had come to the States to make a better life for us kids, not so we could steam Spring Rolls and serve bowls of Nuoc Mam to diners for the rest of our lives. I was kind of hoping to get into UT Austin, Texas A&M or some other school where I could finally date and fuck some girls who wouldn't recoil at the sight of my eyes and skin tone, but even with financial aid, the best we could do was Black Angus State College, Stafford, Texas, a hundred miles north of where we live.
Black Angus, whose football team is the Horny Toads, has more on-campus cattle pens than dorm rooms, so Ma agreed to dip into her personal savings to get us a furnished studio flat in an off-campus student apartment complex. The complex had a pool and everything. The place was clean and had a private bath. The bedroom was just barely wide enough to contain its single queen-sized bed. When we went to see the place, with Ma in tow, she apologized profusely that it was all she could afford, but Ronnie and I took one look at it and answered in unison, "Mom, it's cool! We love it."
We moved in a week before classes. Once we hauled in our stuff in and Ma left, we finally had enough time to take a break and check out the apartment swimming pool. There were already several other students hanging around the complex and a few were in the pool when I got there. I waited poolside for Ronnie, who was up in the apartment reassuring Ma on the cell phone that we were OK.
When my sister finally came down, my jaw hit the floor. Was this the little sister I knew, the one who wore checked shirts, utility jeans and work boots to school every day? On her narrow, boyish hips was painted the tightest, silkiest bikini bottom I had ever seen, so tight on her crotch that nobody would ever bother to ask her (as so many did in high school) whether she was really a guy in drag.
Across her chest, covering her nipples and non-existent boobs, she had on a simple, tight, two inch wide brown elastic band. "You like?" she asked. "Hot diggity dog dang, baby sister!" I gasped.
"One of these days I'm gonna wear a boy-suit in the pool and nobody will notice!" she laughed. "But I don' have any unit up front, so I'm gonna have to stuff something in the crotch!" I looked at her crotch and agreed. And looked some more. And some more. And I couldn't move my eyes away.
Her silky-thin suit bottom was almost the same color as her coffee brown skin. The last time I had seen her without any clothes on was when we were children, and though her waiflike boyish figure had not developed much since then, her childish innocence had turned into young womanhood. The sight of my sister's small body almost nude in front of me made my cock stiffen in my trunks, so to avoid embarrassment I plunged into the cold water of the pool. So did she.
In water her figure, or lack of same, lets her swim like a fish. We splashed in the pool for probably half an hour, and I think her chest-band slipped down at least twice, but nobody but she and I even noticed or cared.
In west Texas the air is so dry that even at 100 degrees it feels cold when you come out of the water, so when we were done swimming and chilled to the bone, Ronnie and I raced together up to the apartment. I had the key on a cord around my neck so I let us in and locked the door. Coming in from the bright, Texas sun, we were alone together in the dark for the first time in a long, long time.. And shivering. "Warm me up, Adam" she whispered.
I took my little sister's smaller, chilled body in my arms and held her close until she stopped shivering. As we embraced our lips met and our tongues danced in passion. My cock went to attention.
When we came up for air, my sister pulled away and said, "Hey, I need it too, but let's take this slow! We have all day. And all night. And all semester! Maybe all our lives!"
In the bedroom she slipped off her chest band and tossed it on the bed. My kid sister's chest was flatter than mine. I could see her ribs, but her exquisite black nipples stood out proudly like two sweet berries against her rich brown skin.
But before I could put my hand out to touch them, she rubbed her hands over her nipples and said, "Damn, that thing is uncomfortable! Fuckin' prudes! Why don't YOU have to wear one when you swim?" I had never heard her use a cuss-word before, so it sounded exciting from her lips.
"Hey, we gotta take a shower first to get the chlorine off, or else we'll be itching like dogs," I told her.
