The next evening, Sis came into my room after supper and sat on my bed while I was doing my homework. When I got to a stopping point and turned my attention to her, she pointedly told me "Billy, you know Charlene and I talked yesterday after school. What she told me surprised the Hell out of me, and I've got to talk to somebody about it. What she said… it's really, really important that you don't say anything about it to anyone else. That means nobody, not even Mom and Dad; and not now or ever. I know you'll want to, 'cause I sure as hell do, but you can't — not even a little bit. It's not something that you absolutely have to know, so if you don't think that you can keep it to yourself completely and forever, tell me now. Until I have your word on that, I can't break my promise to Charlene. All I can tell you that it's bigger and more important that the stuff we did together when we were kids."
From the way she was talking, I knew she meant all the times we'd looked at (and had our hands on) each other's bodies when we were younger. She wasn't one to exaggerate things, so if she said that whatever it was was bigger than that and had to explicitly tell me how private I had to keep things, I knew I had to seriously think it over before giving her an answer. I did just that for a couple of minutes before answering "Okay, Eve. You've told me how serious it is, and how important it is that I don't tell anybody else. I'm not sure what could be that big, but you have my promise: whatever it is you want to talk to me about, nobody will ever hear about it from me."
Even then, Eva looked into my face intently for several seconds before deciding that not only was I as serious as she was, but telling the truth about keeping whatever Charlene's secret was.
As she took a deep breath in preparation, I couldn't help but wonder what the hell it would be… and was completely unprepared to hear "Charlene is a hermaphrodite."
From the way she said it, I knew I was supposed to be shocked, but I really didn't know what she was telling me. Seeing the look of puzzlement I must have had on my face, Eva explained "Charlene has both girl and boy parts."
Unfortunately, I said the first thing that came to mind: "Of course she does. Everybody has the same parts. Hearts, lungs, kidneys — all that stuff."
Showing her exasperation, she acidly told me "Not that stuff, you dummy. I'm telling you she's got girl and boy sex parts. She has a vagina like a girl, but she's also got a penis, like a guy."
As should be expected, I spent a lot of seconds trying to get my mind around that idea — and only achieved minimal success. Thankfully, our folks had taken whatever chances they could to help us learn about new and different stuff — we made a family trip to Mexico one time, and went with them on a cruise ship in the Carribean, for example, so we'd learn about different cultures; on top of that, they took the time to explain to us about different kinds of handicaps we saw. So the problem I was having wasn't that Charlene was physically different, but how. I mean, I could kinda-sorta visualize that it was physically possible, but I just couldn't take the additional step of imagining it actually happening. All I could do, finally, was stammer "What… how…really?"#p#分页标题#e#
"Yeah, really" was the answer I got. Eva went on to say "She didn't actually take her clothes off to show me, but she did lift her dress up so I could see that there was an extra bulge in her panties. She said that she's mostly female, which is why she has tits and everything like a girl, but she also has a penis. She explained it all to me and what happened was that while she was still being made inside her mom, something went wrong; instead of growing all girl stuff like she should have, things got confused and a penis was started, instead. That's about all that's really different about her — I mean, she doesn't have testicles or make semen like a guy; she said that it's more like she has a really big clitoris, is all.
She's always felt like a girl and acted like one, it's just that being different the way she is, she's never been comfortable about getting too close or personal with other girls. The only reason she told me about it, she said, was that she's just so tired of being alone all the time and not being able to do all the stuff she hears about — like going on a sleepover and things like that."
Taking a deep breath, she continued "She also told me what happened that made them move here. She was exempted from gym classes at her other school, too, but one of the student aides in the offices got into her school records and found out why. After that, everybody in school knew about it, and they even had to fire an employee over it… but it was too late for her, of course. All the other kids were giving her such a hard time that her dad got a transfer from the company he worked for so they could move here. That's why she hasn't wanted to have much to do with the kids at school: she isn't stuck-up or a snob or anything, she's just been shy and scared. It's really taken a lot for her to learn to relax after that, and start trying to make friends. She told me that she really had to work herself up to telling me all that stuff about herself so that she could start getting out and doing things. She had friends and everything, before, but it wasn't like normal because of how she is — from the way she talked, I could tell that she missed being able to do so much of the kinds of things that WE got to do growing up."