The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is the fourth George and Lisa story. In order, the first three stories are: A Broken Vase, Hide and Seek, and Games we Played.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
I have told versions of this story before in other venues. It took place during the height of the Cold War, which explains some anachronisms. George was ten and in the fourth grade and his sister Lisa was eight and in the second grade. There were people back then who thought that we were at “the end of days.” We weren't, which is great because I’ve really enjoyed the last 50 years. But, we would have been ready.
Told in the voice of Lisa:
Four houses sat in a row along our street from the park to the parish road. They were identical when built, but in the fifty years since each had been individually added onto and customised. Ours was by the park. Uncle Mike, dad’s older brother, lived next door with his wife and three children. Our cousin Paul lived in the third house. His mom was dad’s older sister Judith. The last was the home of Reverend Rene Deveraux and his family.
It conveniently sat next to the parking lot behind the church -- the front of which faced the parish road. Our cousins: Eva, Lillian, and Claire, were the children of the reverend and his wife -- mom’s younger sister Lorei. We were in the basement of Eva’s house, getting ready to play “house,” deciding on the roles that we would assume until dinnertime.
My little brother, Ethan, was six. He and Eva’s youngest sister, Claire, who was five always played the children. Lillian, age seven, was the reverend’s middle daughter. Sometimes in play -- just as in real life -- she was Claire’s elder sister. Other times she was a mother -- often a sister-wife to her real big sister Eva. At nine years of age, Eva fit right between Jamie and me at eight, and George and Paul at ten.
Sometimes our cousin Michelle -- who, although she wasn’t even five full months older than me or Jamie, was in the grade ahead of us -- played too. Everyone wasn’t there every time. But when we all played there were three boys and seven girls, enough for two families. Each pretend family lived in half of Eva’s funky five and a half foot tall dry stone wall basement with the huge laminated wooden beam splitting it in half from front to back. Adults rarely ventured down into our world.
Some of our common ancestors -- it seemed that everyone in our town was related to everyone else somehow or another -- were French Huganots and some were German Anabaptists invited to the New World by a Spanish King. Some were Conversos -- Sephardim converted at the point of a sword. They were all “people of the book,” but not the English ‘King James Version’.
The God that my grandfather, uncle, and later Eva would preach about was a kind and loving father. I giggle to myself sometimes when I hear some people speak… People that claim to be both Christian and anti-sexuality because I can’t reconcile that particular dichotomy.
We were taught from a young age about human sexual relations in church. Not in the English “it’s bad -- don’t do it” tradition, but in a “it’s powerful -- be forthright and take responsibility” tradition. A tradition that drew directly from scripture recognizing that we have a polyamorous and incestuous past. That both brothers, Seth and Cain, were equally our forebears. That avarice, egoism, and irresponsibility were the true evils that we should fear.
Michelle had a crush on George. If she played, she always insisted on being his wife. On that day Eva and another cousin, Kristin, who is Eva’s age, played the part of Michelle’s sister-wives. Claire played George’s child. Paul would be my husband as well as the husband of my “sister” Jamie. Sometimes Lillian played my sister-wife, as she did on that day. Sometimes she played Ethan’s older sister.
Claire and Ethan have always been a pair, for as long as I can remember.
A few years later Eva would be leading us in a responsive reading of the ‘Song of Songs,’ when she led the ‘Youth Service’ next door in the church basement. After we agreed on the parts that we would play she bade us all to undress.
Everyone got naked, then Eva put on her mother’s slip. Treating it as a silky, and nearly transparent, pearl colored dress. She was playing the part of an itinerant preacher. Holding a bible and often quoting from passages that she marked with scraps of notebook paper beforehand. It was hot, and Eva was a little bit sweaty. The slip-dress clung to her. I was always in awe of Eva -- of her body and her mind.
She was explaining to Jamie, Lillian, and me how we needed to be naked “with Paul.” In order to correctly “know” our husband… To know “the real him, what makes him who he is and not his accoutrements. To be truly one with him.”
It was our role to be facilitators of the greater good and shepherds to our family.
Eva read to us from Proverbs: “Today I fulfilled my vows, and I have food from my fellowship offering at home. So I came out to meet you; I looked for you and have found you! I have covered my bed with colored linens from Egypt. I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon. Come, let’s drink deeply of love till morning; let’s enjoy ourselves with love!”
I was laying naked on the Naugahyde bean bag chair. Lilian was also naked and lying beside me on a off-white shag wool rug. Paul’s willie was hard. As he lay between his “wives,” Jamie, and Lillian he was carefully examining Lilian’s prissy. George, Michelle, Kristin, Ethan, and Claire were on the other side of the gigantic wooden beam.
“Why are you waiting?” Eva asked.
“Our husband is with our sister-wife,” Jamie and I answered, almost in unison.
“Yes, be happy for them, for you share God’s love with them,” Eva said. “But why do you not share God’s love with one another as he shares?”
“How?”
“With one another as you do with your husband. 4:10,” Eva said:“‘How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume more than any spice!’ Please, dear sisters, love one another in preparing yourself for even more love to come. Prepare yourselves for the love of your husband-brother.”
She removed her slip-dress and continued, saying: “We all need love.”
Jamie and I touched Eva, and we looked at her. She explained the distinction between being naked with someone and lying with them, how it wasn’t actually sex if procraetion was not possible. How smart girls controlled everything through their submission.
“Us girls, we control everything within our hands, our hearts, and our wombs. We control the fate of humanity. Mama IS the home, and without us time ends. It is a great and awesome power. Happiness lubricates everything.” Paraphrasing Stanley Liebowitz, she said, “with great power comes an even greater responsibility. Creating pleasure is what we can do. It is what we must do.”
“Prepare, my dear sisters,” she said.”5:4-5, ‘My beloved thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him. I arose to open for my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the bolt.’”
We had already discovered that girls and boys could have orgasms -- “receive joy” Eva branded it -- before puberty. Jamie, Paul, and George, the way their fingers felt upon me, and especially my prissy, was simply electric. But after Paul made Lillian feel good with his fingertips the same way that he had with Jamie and me, Eva laid down with her younger sister, and read more of the words of King Solomon -- a man who had 300 wives.
“7:2-3,” she said, kissing Lillian’s belly. “Your navel is a rounded goblet that never lacks blended wine.” Eva moved down, kissing: “Your waist is a mound of wheat encircled by lilies.” Then she moved back up, again kissing her younger sister: “Your breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle.”
Lillian kissed and then licked Eva’s “Kitty” as the elder sister gasped a little bit as she read a twenty-eight century old poem about two sisters or at least sister-wives engaging in the very same act the two were engaging in. “4:11,” Eva said: “Your lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb, my bride; milk and honey are under your tongue. The fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon.”
When Eva explained the power that we all possessed, men and women together in words, not just emotions, I knew that I was not alone. That I was not an aberration.
After she “received joy,” Eva directed Jamie to do for Paul as Lilian had done for her. “7:8-9,” she said: “I said, ‘I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.’ May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine.”
George had wandered over to our side from his own, and Eva looked at me. “4:16,” she said: “Awake, north wind, and come, south wind! Blow on my garden…” She paused and took George’s willie into her mouth, getting it nice and wet. “That its fragrance may spread everywhere.” She continued as she bade me to kneel and take my brother’s willie into my mouth as she had done, saying: “Let my beloved come into his garden and taste its choice fruits.”
Eva stood naked behind us and she ran her fingers through my hair and through Jamie’s hair as we were kneeling on the rug. Licking and sucking on George’s and Paul’s willies, pretending to know how to do what we were in fact doing.
“2:3-4,” she said to us: “Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my beloved among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. Let him lead me to the banquet hall, and let his banner over me be love.”
-- Lisa Ann
The quote from Proverbs is 7:14-18, the remainder are from the ‘Song of Songs’, also called the ‘Song of Solomon’ for its author, King Solomon. I used the NIV -- other translations vary some, but the underlying message doesn’t.
For the next story in this series, go to The George and Lisa Story, Part 5 of 8: The Doctor is In.