Meimei Pt. 01

Author's Note: Published here with thanks to lit author norafares for giving feedback on an early draft of this work. Go check out her amazing stuff. -FS

*****

On a chilly December morning of the day of her tryout performance to get into Berklee College, my younger, eighteen-year-old sister, An Shan, asked me--and me, alone--to watch her final dress rehearsal.

Living at home, working, and taking catch-up classes at the community college, I had zero interest. "What?" I asked in disbelief. "Do you know how many times I've heard those songs through the walls of this house?"

"I know, but please, Gege. I need this." Gege is Chinese for "older brother."

By ethnicity, I am not Chinese, but my sister and my parents are. I was adopted from Russia as an infant--back when Baba and Mama didn't think they could have children of their own. They're--or I should say we're--Americans.

As the story goes, Mama got sick on the flight back from Vladivostok with me, which was strange for her; she hadn't ever been airsick. The next morning back home in Minneapolis, she got sick again. This time, she took a pregnancy test. An Shan came along eight months later, and we were suddenly a family of four.

"Why do you want this?" I asked my sister.

Her eyes pleaded. "I--I'm nervous, and I know you'll tell me the truth."

"Meimei, I don't need to hear you again. I already know you're good. You're great." Meimei means "younger sister."

"Please, Jian Dao. Please!"

When she used my given name, I knew she was serious. I sighed and nodded. "Okay."

"Yes! Thank you!"

"When?"

"An hour?"

I nodded.

***

It took almost two hours. I yelled upstairs several times; Mama kept shushing me.

Not until Baba and Mama had loaded into the car and left for a drive did An Shan come downstairs. She definitely wanted a private audience.

I was messing around on my phone when she came into the living room, closed the French doors behind her, and sat down at the piano. Resting on the floor against the wall, I listened to her settle in. I put away my phone and looked up, seeing her face under the piano's raised lid beside the music rack. I said, "Hey, that's pretty cool what Mama did with your hair."

She looked at me, caressing the lock that hung beside her face. "You like it?"

"What is that?" I asked, pointing towards the side of her head.

"It's traditional."

Her long, jet-black hair was parted on the right side and brushed to absolutely perfect lines. On the left side of my sister's head, a thick lock hung straight down beside her eye. On the right under the part, her hair fell like a river of molten obsidian down to her neck and, I presumed, down her back. Just under the sweeping part was an intricately woven bun-like braid that was adorned with a bright chain of hanging jewels, all diamond-like.

"Pretty cool, Meimei."

She smiled with only her lips, and then her eyes bent down to the keyboard. She took a breath and began to play.

I knew the name of the first one: Chopin's Etude 10, Number 3. I'd hear Baba, Mama, and An Shan talking about it all the time. Then, for maybe the three-hundredth time, I listened to her play it.

No musician, myself, I thought of the song as three parts--sad, fast, sad--lasting about four minutes.

I rose and sat on the elevated chair across and facing her when she began. Once I adjusted myself to semi-comfort, I glanced at my sister and froze.

I knew she wasn't naked; when she walked into the room, I heard the swishing of her dress. Peripherally, I caught its color--bright red, almost orangish in hue. From my new perspective, though, she appeared to be naked. The line of the top of the piano's music rack intersected with her body at a level that separated An Shan's lower chest from her upper. This was a strapless dress. If I hadn't been able to see the fabric around her legs, I might have been fooled to think she was completely nude behind that baby grand piano.

Placing my hands on the armrests, I pushed myself a few inches higher to confirm the red dress was still there. Yes, there it was and--oh, damn.

I saw An Shan's cleavage. Swallowing a lump in my throat, I lowered myself back down and averted my eyes.

Damn.

Was she wearing some kind of special bra--something that made a woman's breasts look really, really big?

I smiled, thinking about what I might say to her when she finished--some teasing remark, but--.

Her breasts weren't actually that big, were they? I mean--what I just saw--those were huge.

Again, I pushed my body up, but this time I slid my foot underneath myself to gain a few added degrees of perspective.

Shit! I was looking at four inches--minimum--of cleavage. Her dress cupped the two breasts in a way that drew them together and made the lower halves appear more bulbous.

I glanced at her hair, again, and the shape of her face. I perused the skin of her neck and shoulders.

Nothing outward happened, but in my head, it was as if something--a thing years ago caged and shrouded--had suddenly been unveiled and set free. She was stunningly beautiful. My meimei was an Asian goddess.

An Shan tanned well for a Taiwanese girl. Her skin glowed. I could not see a flaw; every soft curve was sheer and luxuriant, like a tawny cream. The full curvature of her breasts caught the light.

I swallowed a lump in my throat, entranced by her body.

Seconds elapsed with me almost paralyzed. What stirred me was the music, or, more accurately, the way she played the song awoke me to the melody.

I have seen An Shan play in concerts countless times. I knew she supposedly poured her heart and soul into her playing. It was a thing people commented on--her expression. After she played, the audience often talked about how she cared deeply about the mood of the piece, and her body naturally showed this.

When she played sprightly numbers, her fingers danced on the keys, her torso lifted, and her head upturned. On more melancholy works, her entire body appeared barely able to remain upright with the weight of her pain. I always felt it was an act. I remember being a bit repulsed by the seeming insincerity of it.

I was beginning to change my mind.

The first--sad--section of the Chopin song was ending, and the strength of her playing grew into it. She drew deep draughts of air and her breasts heaved. Her eyes searched the keys and seemed to look through them at the same time. It was a kind of intensity of concentration that I had never seen, one somehow brimming with sensuality.

She held a note with her middle finger. The sound hung, and her finger languorously slid down the key before rising up, combining with others and pursuing the next chord. The way she moved that finger made me think of a touch from one lover to another.

I wondered if this was how she looked when she made love: with such magnified sensuality. Once, upon hitting an intermediate, tension-relieving note and holding there, she turned her head away, and I saw the line of her profile: the sweeping curve of her cheek and where it met her soft jawline, slipping down to her neck in such a gentle, feminine slope. A raindrop might fall along that line, never leaving her skin, and tumble down into the darkness where her breasts met.

She moved into the up-tempo part of the piece, and her head began to grate and rock as her fingers struck chord after chord with building force. Suddenly, it peaked, and An Shan's head rocked forward. Her hair surged over her shoulders, and she attacked the keys with bravado, pounding out an astonishing barrage of high chords.

I thought of her climaxing underneath me--those long dextrous fingers pressing into my back, those breasts undulating like waves, that hair tossed about in testament to her uninhibited pleasure.

In the chair across from her, I felt myself fracturing. Desire urged me to move closer, see more. Guilt begged me to remember my position and duty.

I rose from the chair and walked over to her as the explosive part of the music slowly diminished and eventually transitioned into a recapitulation of the first, more melancholy, section.

I came around the bench and almost gasped when I saw the back of her dress. The fabric from the two sides met in a button just below shoulder-blade height, but there was no zipper. The dress was backless and looped out in a kind of oval, sweeping out toward her waist and curving back in at an extremely deep point on her lower back. The supple skin and tender musculature of her back were as flawless as her front, save for one beautiful mole on the left side of her spine at the height of her hips. It was the kind of back on a woman that, upon seeing, demands instantly to be touched.

I refrained, but I continued to crumble between competing desires.

I drew behind her left side, watching her fingers massage the keys. I found it challenging not to peer down the front too frequently. The skirt of the dress had a slit just below mid-thigh where I confirmed the milky-tan color of her skin.

The song ends restfully, and when she reached that point, I could no longer resist.

I let my right hand gently land on An Shan's left shoulder. When my fingertips alighted on her silky skin, she moved--her body listed toward me a fraction. Thrumming, warm energy seemed to flow into my body from the place where our skin touched.

I peered down her dress, and it was agony. I silently cursed, seeing the turgid heft of her breasts.

The piece finished with a whisper of a chord that perfectly resolved the longing tension of the previous notes. An Shan's hands slipped from the keyboard and fell to her sides. She sighed.

"Meimei, that was--it was beautiful."

She turned to me, her eyes searching mine. "You mean it?"

I nodded.

She smiled.

Then, my eyes betrayed me. For the briefest of instants, they darted down to her cleavage, then back to her face.

Her eyes followed mine, and then she looked up at me.

Oh, shit.

She asked, "Do you like this dress?"

"Oh--oh, yeah. No, it's perfect. You look amazing."

She rose and hugged me.

My gosh, she smelled incredible--floral and feminine. The texture of her hair on my cheek was like thick, cool silk. Her breasts drove into my tummy, and I put my hands on the warm, smooth skin of her naked back. Again, our flesh-on-flesh connection drove little waves of rippling heat through my veins.

She held for longer--longer than normal.

"You're beautiful, Meimei."

I caressed her back with my fingertips, tiptoeing along a narrow path between casual and sensual.

She drew her head back, scrutinizing my expression it seemed, then asked, "Really?"

I nodded.

"Thank you, Jian Dao!" Her body fell into mine; we hugged again. Her lips rested on my neck, and I felt her breath there. Once. Twice. Then, her supple lips pursed. She kissed my neck.

"You're going to get into Berklee," I said. "I know it."

She did.

***

Duty. "Zeren" in Mandarin.

More specifically, family duty--jiating zeren.

I had blown it badly, and for a year, I had been in recovery mode with my family.

As a kid, my parents were frank and upfront with me about my adoption--tough not to be when I'm caucasian and taller than my Han Chinese father by seventh grade. Still, I felt like an outcast in my early teenage years.

My parents brought me up to put family duty before everything else. Respect parents and grandparents. Take care of siblings. Bring honor--never shame--to the family.

I bought in until middle school.

I wasn't as smart as An Shan. I wasn't as talented. I was strong, but slow--not a great recipe for fitting in with the other boys by being an athlete.

I took it out on my parents. I rebelled. I embraced my Russian heritage, or more accurately, how Americans portrayed Russian heritage. I put the Russian flag up in my room. I refused to speak Chinese with my family; I tried to learn Russian, but gave up fairly quickly. Winter became my favorite season, and I never complained about the cold. I always wore less than I should have to show how tough I was.

I read books about the Russian mafia--the Bratva. I told people that I would move to Russia and become a member on my 18th birthday. I put up a poster of Putin carrying an AK-47 in my room. Next to it, I hung a poster of a large-breasted Russian figure skater named Anna Semenovich. I played the role of the Russian bear. I ate as hard as I worked out, and the result was that I became as fat as I was strong. I grew grumpy. I mumbled and growled around the house, perplexing my family.

I decided that when I could drink, I would only drink Vodka. I even sneaked some from the high cupboard, coughing it down and insisting to myself it was the greatest thing I'd ever tasted. I became a curiosity at school, and in that way, found my place. I was the Russian Guy.

The result was a near-disaster. By the time I was in high school, I drank whenever I could score alcohol, and I pissed away my education.

Baba tried to help. Tight-fisted as he was, he splurged to take me on a trip to Russia during the summer between my Freshman and Sophomore years. We visited St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Vladivostok, where we looked for my birth mother. She was long dead.

In my adolescent sense of romantic grandeur, I mourned this woman I never knew, taking it to heart and growing bitter and angry. I repaid my father's efforts to connect with me by flunking four classes the next school year and getting suspended twice for fighting and once for getting caught with alcohol.

An Shan hated me. Never talked to me. Avoided me. I never heard her say it, but I knew: she wished I had never been a part of the family. Meanwhile, she was everything my parents could have hoped for in a daughter: hard-working, intelligent, successful, and eager to be a dutiful child.

Being the Russian Guy began to bore me by my junior year, and I distanced myself from it. It didn't change any of my bad habits, though. I barely graduated--it was a day-before decision for the Superintendent and the Principal. On the night after graduation, I was arrested for drinking and driving.

My parents did not bail me out. Instead, my father came to visit me in the county lock-up. He sat down and spoke in Chinese to me for the first time in years. He said, "Zeren. Ni shi jiating zeren de wang le." (Duty. It's family duty that you've forgotten.)

His words, conjuring memories of my much happier early childhood--before I became a grouchy prick to these good people--shattered me like a jackhammer.

Humbled, I returned home after my conviction and sentencing to apologize. Mama and Baba allowed me to live in the basement while I worked and enrolled in community college classes. I quit drinking and partying, and I started working out to shed the fat and keep the big.

I was committed to earning back my rightful place in my family. Zeren. Duty. I was all in.

Months later, when An Shan asked me to be the first to see her full-dress rehearsal, it was a signal--not just to me, but to Baba and Mama, too--that I was starting to earn back my place in her good graces.

***

For the next several months after her recital, I was An Shan's best friend. She suddenly began texting me all the time when I was in classes or at work. When she finished practicing piano, instead of studying in her room, most nights she studied in the basement where I was either watching television, working out, or doing a little studying myself.

She remained diligent in her work through these times. Never a chatterbox in the first place, she didn't seem to be looking for a conversational companion. She just studied beside me. The only time she put her books down was when I exercised. Without fail, she silently watched my every rep, resuming her reading between sets and when I left to wash up.

As spring approached, An Shan started touching me on occasion. Instead of sitting on the other end of the big sofa, she sat right next to me, leaning her head on my shoulder or letting her thigh and mine mash together. Sometimes, she laid lengthwise on the couch and rested her feet in my lap while she read and I watched some show.

After a particularly demanding chest and back workout, I dressed and returned after a shower, groaning as I collapsed on the couch.

"What's wrong, Gege?"

"Just sore is all."

I threw my feet on the coffee table, grabbed the remote, and flicked on the tv. An Shan rose from the chair, glided over, and sat beside me--this was nothing new. But, this time, she said, "Lean forward."

I turned to her, confused.

"Lean forward."

I did. Her left hand and those long, strong piano fingers began to knead my muscles. I moaned at her touch.

"Feel good?"

"Yeah." This was an understatement. Feel good? No. Feel like paradise is more like. It was a revelation. I had no idea a massage could do this to me. The sensation was like melting, but always with that buzzing, almost electrical pulse where her body touched mine. I had difficulty suppressing moans of pleasure and tranquility.

After ten or fifteen minutes, she told me her hand was tired. I thanked her effusively.

She said, "No, I mean I need to switch sides."

So, I scooted to the middle of the couch and An Shan took my old place. Then, the massage resumed.

My gosh, it was amazing. I was torn between the desire to fall asleep and to feel every movement of her talented fingers.

When she finished, I thanked her again. Then, she thanked me--and I thought it strange for her to do so--and she went back to her work.

The next evening she gave me another massage after my workout. And, she thanked me when she finished.

After resuming her seat and opening her book, I said, "Meimei?"

She glanced up.

"Why do you thank me when you're the one giving me the massage?"

She closed her book. "Last week, my piano instructor told me I needed to strengthen my wrists, hands, and fingers to play the new piece we're working on--and for Berklee, too, next fall. She said giving massages was one way to do it. So, thank you for letting me work out on you."

"Oh," I responded. "How often do you need to work out?"

"I suppose I'll just do it every time you finish yours if that's okay."

"Sure."

I worked out every night without fail.

As the temperature grew warmer through March and April, we began to have brief conversations, usually after the massage. We talked about the future, mostly--goals and things like that.

She wanted to get married, travel, and play piano concertos around the world. She said she would do that for ten years after college, and then she would have children and teach lessons.

"Get married before the world tour?" I asked.

She nodded. "I'll need someone to enjoy my world travels with, won't I?"

I shrugged, nodding. "How many kids?"

"Tons," she said with a smile.

I guffawed and then asked why.

Smiling, she said, "I always wanted more brothers and sisters, didn't you?"

"Nah. You were plenty for me."

She watched me for a moment then asked, "How many kids do you want?"

"Wait. First, what do you mean by 'tons'?"

"Five, six--I don't know--seven?"

"Seven!"

"Yes."

"Okay. That's a ton."

"So how many do you want?" she repeated.

I shrugged. "I guess I could do seven if that's what my wife wanted."

An Shan went back to her reading with a satisfied nod.

This is how our conversations went--short, but enjoyable, and often ending abruptly when she remembered she needed to keep studying.

***

Not many days after the first massage, An Shan asked if she could remove my shirt. She told me it would help her fingers. I assented.

A few weeks later, I asked if she might massage the muscle groups that I had worked on, rather than always hitting up my back and shoulders. She assented.

With this new plan in place, it soon after occurred that I finished a legs and lower back routine. My sister watched the entire workout, and she began with my calves while I lay face down on the couch. Then, she moved up to my hamstrings, hiking up my shorts to just beneath my ass. Her fingers ran dangerously close to the bottom hems of my underwear.