He has endless dark curls and waves that wave even more so in the summer. His eyes, like my own, are changeable – now leaf green, now silver, now rust, - they change with his mood, with the weather, with the environment. His skin is soft and the color of Arabian sand. It is different from mine. Mine is ivory white. Alabaster. His is darker, more olive. He is of mixed blood, more so than I am. Part of his blood comes from the dusty roads of the Middleast and Jerusalem, Israel. His name is Abner and he is five years older than I am and I love him. I cannot remember a time when I did not love Abner. It seems unthinkable. Love, yes, I always loved him. But now, now I am in love with him, and when I think back, I suppose it began in earnest when I was fourteen or fifteen, one time during that summer to be sure. Certainly by the time I was fifteen I knew with certainty that Abner and I were in-love. That’s when our love, our relationship, began in earnest. We are in love. We run to the great orchard where there are apple trees and rows of late-blooming pear trees beneath which we kiss for hours. We are cousins.

It was early summer, I think, and we were walking alone on one of those heavy humid afternoons through the orchard, which was at the edge of the property with a narrow path that led to it, and the rest was fenced in by a winding and low wooden fence. The trees were mostly pear and apples that bloomed at different times.

“It’s too hot,” I said, flopping down under the shade of what had become ‘our’ tree – our tree because we had so often gone there to talk and seek refuge from the others, that we had claimed it. I flopped down on the grass, my summer slip riding up my legs, the cotton of it wet and sticking to my skin, my bare feet dirty and sprinkler wet. I remember Abner was still wearing his tennis whites from an earlier game with someone (probably his brother Martin) and how his wavy was really wavy that day and how he needed a haircut and I was hoping against hope that he would not get it cut because I really liked all those waves. I liked it messy and crazy like that.

We were lying on our sides, looking at each other’s eyes that rolled in their sockets as we spoke. I was asking Abner questions about what it was like being more ‘grown-up.’ – What’s it like to drive? What’s it like to have a girlfriend? What’s it like to be able to go out late? That sort of thing. I remember that much. And I remember too that I could feel his breath against my cheek – but because we always had lain close together I didn’t find it strange.

In fact, the only strange thing at all was that this time I noticed that I could feel his breath and that I could smell it as well and I liked the way it smelled – it smelled to me of white wine and grass and hay. Our hands were entwined, which wasn’t strange either – that had almost always been this case, only this time, this too felt different. I felt something in me turning over and for the first time I noticed the incredible softness of his hand, the smoothness of his palm, and I opened his fingers and began tracing circles on the center of his hand and up and down his wrist and watched as the hairs on his arm began to prick against his tan skin.

Neither of us spoke a word.

We had never not had something to speak about so this was confusing, but there it was, and there we were, in a private orchard, as the day began to end, and the bees hung overhead like a mobile sticking their proboscis deep into the flowers and we lay wordlessly holding hands, me tracing the fine etchings of his palm. Then I remember Abner leaning in and I wasn’t sure of what was going to happen next and I’m not sure he was either. Then all that I had waited for, that we had waited for all this time, it happened. He kissed me. That is, he-me, we kissed. I had wondered if he would ever kiss me again after that first kiss, even though it had scared me then, I remembered the feeling of his lips on mine – soft.

I had spent hours hoping that one day he would kiss me, and hours of course, hoping that maybe he wouldn’t because maybe that would be wrong and maybe that perhaps it was not such a great idea. Then I wondered what that kiss would be like. I also knew that Abner had thought the exact same things, not that he said them, I just knew. We always just knew. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure what it was I wanted from Abner before that day – I knew that I loved him, and I knew that I loved him perhaps more than I should. I knew this. But what this meant, I couldn’t say.

If you ask me now how to define that love, I still can’t. I can only tell you that I love him, he is my other, my best friend, a lover? Just my cousin.. And because we love each other, and because we are in it together, then we must be in a way “in-love.” If you need some definition, this is the best I can do. Still, I don’t think that really sums it up. Nothing could ever define our love for each other. Still nothing.

Long there had been something between us that was different – or different from the way it was between say, me and my other cousin Charles, or me and any of our other cousins or friends, but I couldn’t quite define it. I still can't. It would be like trying to define a sigh. Abner and I had a relationship that defied translation and since we really felt no need to explain it to anyone, neither of us felt any particular need to define it. More, a thing only requires definition if it is known to others and therefore requires some understanding on their part, and because we are both close-lipped by necessity, then our relationship is outside the realm of definition.

I can say that it is and always has been sweet and shy. Yes, I would say there was, for lack of a better word, some “chemistry” or “thing” between us” – everyone saw that – even we saw that. It was sort of hard to not see. Stupid to deny – but I always just assumed both of us too bashful, too shy to really do anything about it. As I thought, What happens when shy meets shy? Nothing. More, how could I possibly know what to expect since I hadn’t done anything with anyone and hadn’t read any books except for a few I managed to pilfer from the library, and even those I didn’t really understand very well and none seemed to capture what I felt for Abner, hence inapplicable.

Now I wasn’t so sure nothing would happen. We both lay there under the tree in the grass for a while just holding hands and looking at each other, eyes locked, as if looking for some tacit sign. I squeezed his hand tight out of fear and because my heart beating so quickly I thought it would explode. I was really pretty terrified because I knew what would happen and I didn’t know what would happen and I wasn’t sure which terrified me most: that he would kiss me or that he would not kiss me.

He did kiss me.

He leaned over and gently kissed me, gently and chastely on the lips, almost a whisper of a kiss. He stayed there a moment to see if I would start, but I didn’t. Not this time. I wanted to keep kissing. I liked his breath. I liked his mouth on mine. I remember thinking that I have played this in my head a thousand times and that it was nothing like I had imagined. It was better. I felt the tip of his tongue ever so gently part the pout of my lips as he offered it like Sunday Communion and I took it as such and I parted my lips and accepted him as one accepts the the thin communion wafer and I felt him melt on my tongue and I kissed him back.

I’m not sure how it went after that. I don’t even know If I knew how to kiss, because I had never kissed anyone before, but I just did. I remember it being gentle and how he never let go of my hand and how our hands kept holding and squeezing and fingers moving and changing as the kiss changed as if our hands themselves were part of the kiss.

He tasted of summer. I know that he stopped at one point and told me that I kissed like honey, and I knew exactly what he meant. Do you know what I mean? He meant that it was slow in coming, that when it did come, it was sweet and worth the wait, that it felt good on the tongue, that it lingered, soft, warm. I thought of how he said my eyes were like honey; green, like marbles with a yellow sunburst center. Miel. This was part of our common language and now, a language of the tongue.

I know that I probably should have felt guilty or something or terrible or that I had committed some deadly sin, but I didn’t think that. I also knew that in Judaism that first cousins were allowed to marry and often did and that Abner was Jewish and me a quarter and didn’t that count? I knew our family wouldn’t see it that way, but then, I didn’t really plan to go back to the main house and announce our kiss to our family, and I didn’t expect Abner too either. In truth, I felt happier than I had felt for as long as I could remember. I felt more complete somehow.

It was as if I had been waiting for so long to be recognized. Don’t get me wrong. Not recognized in some way as a ‘woman’ because I knew I wasn’t a woman yet, so that wasn’t it. It was more that I knew that Abner and I had some understanding that transcended words and that even we lacked the words for what we wanted, what was necessary for us to say. As I said, it was really all lacking definition. To this day, I still can’t define it. I can tell the story, but I cannot tell you what it is… I can only report the facts and how it felt.

It was Friday. Friday June 14th, that summer, at about 1:30 on a humid day when Abner first kissed me. I remember the smell of hay and of grass.

By the time we started making our way back to the house it was about 4:00 p.m., which means we had been kissing for hours, and without words, we had spoken a whole new language which both of us understood. Friday, which meant that soon everyone would be home – nobody at work, and Sunday, even though Abner was Jewish, we would all be expected to attend church, and although it was totally optional, communion was part of the ritual.

Would I take communion, I wondered? Yes. I would take communion. I felt no guilt at all. I felt if anything, only purer. In some way, perhaps some backward way, kissing Abner had absolved me, oddly, of so many things. It was something we both needed. It was good, pure, innocent - it was necessary and I was absolutely unapologetic.

The orchard begins to grow fruit – pears and apples – which will ripen by late summer and autumn – and blossoms and petals form on the branches and the leaves are thick and shady. Better, the grass has grown tall, which affords us yet more cover. Our favorite pear tree is a ways in anyway, so we are off the beaten trail and besides that, nobody ever ventures into the orchard, which to us and remains a great mystery since it is one of the most beautiful features of the property, but is just as well since we have claimed it as ours... It may just as well that the others just have not found the path. Perhaps the stand of tall linden trees at the entry obscure the narrow, dusty path. Either way, we are glad the orchard is ours. We say nothing of it. We do not mention it to the family or where we disappear to for hours. We do not say, and they seem cautious about asking; they want to know, but they don't really want to know.

Slowly, incrementally, a dialect – a language – develops between us. We do not try to form this dialect, it just sort of happens spontaneously over the course of time. The language and the codified gestures are simply a by-product of a kind of necessary short-hand that we develop to keep our affection separate and, I hate this, but hidden from the others.

Why it should matter that our eyes are exactly the color and that we both really like this should be a problem for anyone is beyond us, but it is a problem. I also don’t know why it is suddenly a problem that we hold hands because we have always held hands or that we sit close because we always have, but now it is different, and yes, even we see that it is different, that much undeniable, it still all seems rather benign to me, especially in the context of our family, which always seems and still seems sordid to me.

Yes, things have changed. I know this. Abner knows this. I am no longer the nine-year-old trailing behind him. Somehow, no matter our age gap, equilibrium settled in somehow and it is not that he is immature or me mature. How to explain this? Maybe like this – it is that we are so very, very much alike, that now that I’m older, the similarities are more apparent and become so more every day. We have more to say, and although we look different, certain traits are just uncannily similar, like our eyes, which fascinate not only us, but anyone who notices, which happens quite often. He is different enough, but same enough. Recognizable and familiar, but different enough that I am drawn and likewise he to me.

All of this presents a huge problem since we are not about to give up our one respite, which is the sanctuary we find in each other, and the family is not going to give up their position and let us simply be together, which puts us in the most awful position of having to slope off, or sneak and creep about, and I hate that. I hate that something that is so simple and pure has been tainted by the views of others. I hate that it has to be defined at all. When it was between us, it didn’t require definition, now that they know more, it does require definition. Just the very fact of our having come up with a dialect tells us both that we that this is something we must keep now quiet. Oddly, we are driven deeper into secrecy.

You think I am going to tell you how we communicate? I’m not. I’ll only tell you that ordinary things take on huge symbols. I’ll tell you that small things, ordinary things, we exchange as tokens – things you’d find about the house, become symbolic. Obviously, by now, you’ve sorted out the pears, the honey… maybe the family has sussed that one out, but since they can’t quite sort out what it means, it doesn’t really matter because it doesn’t really mean anything other than that we share it and, gosh golly, we sometimes or most of the time, eat from the same spoon.

When I’m older, I read a book that says that love often begins in the sharing of fluids, such as sharing of the same spoon or eating of the same fruit. For months, perhaps a year, we have done this. That we still do it does not surprise me because it is just us. We have been known to sit face-to-face, just talking, and eating almost a whole jar of honey, just passing the spoon back and forth. We do this often in the orchard; he brings the honey, I bring the spoon. As we take turns sharing, we take breaks to kiss; honeyed kisses.

A few other things that become a part of our shared language: a key that Abner has to the coat-room of the house, which is always locked and which, we all assume, the family assumes, is always locked and that there simple IS no key, and even I assume this until one day… Abner swings it on his finger and leads me there one rainy day and quietly turns the key in the lock and since nobody knows the room is even available, we are safe there. We kiss for hours, hidden admidst the old coats. Abner lays one on the floor and we lay there for hours, my legs wrapped about his waist, where we kiss and I finger his dark curls.

He likes to tie the black grosgrain ribbon of my tap-shoes. This too will symbolize something (because sometimes, he pockets them, leaving me with no tie to my shoes, which is hard to explain), and the ribbons I wear to tie my plaits, which Abner likes to unloose in the orchard, he lets my long hair fall in waves and it falls about us as we kiss.

After, he keeps the ribbon, tucking it away in his tennis shorts pocket. By now, he has several blue ribbons, a pretty French ribbon that is peach-colored with delicate yellow and white daisies, and a blue, red and white one that is also sweet, an orange one with yellow flowers, and two indigo blue ones. I don’t know what he does with them. I know that he teases me when he steals them because he knows that I will have to go back to the house with my long hair, wavy from the plaits and falling down my back, and that I have no explanation as to how it is that my hair is now not in plaits or where the ribbons went to. This is Abner's subtle way of thumbing his nose at the family. I don't know what he does with the ribbons. I just know that he keeps them as treasure; that he keeps them somewhere safe. They are not trophies; they are objects of love, pieces of me that he keeps and touches and holds when we are apart.

There is so much more... so much more... but I have already said too much.