Entry 0.06

A sister

This is the sixth story in this little timeline I’ve been building. I’ve been writing about my life in order, not because I remember everything perfectly, but because it feels like the only way I can make sense of how I became who I am.

I’m calling this section Identity, Memory, Home because those are the three things I always seem to circle back to. Not always on purpose. They just show up in the way someone looks at me or in a smell I haven’t smelled in years. These stories aren’t really about facts. They’re about how things felt. About how memory plays tricks, how places change you, how your name can sound different depending on who’s saying it.

This is also where I’m letting myself write with some magic. Magical realism feels like the only way to talk about identity sometimes, how it floats, hides, shape-shifts. This is where I get to stretch the truth in service of something more real.

I’m not trying to speak for anyone, but I do think some of these stories might feel familiar to people who’ve ever felt out of place or between places. People who’ve moved a lot, or had to translate themselves, or had to build a home out of memories that don’t always sit still.

Anyway, this is where all of that lives. Welcome.

“IT’S BLONDE! IT’S BLONDE!” the nurse’s high-pitched American accent shouted as she took pictures of a baby being held by many hands and wiped. The baby screamed at the top of its lungs as they do when they are welcomed into this world.

“IT’S A GIRL!” yelled a different nurse with a nervous voice. We knew it was going to be a girl, but it’s tradition to say what it is when it’s born anyways. I guess you never know. This was my first sister being born. I was six. I was brunette. She was blonde.

Blonde wasn’t enough—she had a full head of straight white hairs that seemed razor sharp. She was chubby and pink like cotton candy, and her nose was somehow a little orange. We didn’t really know what color eyes she had, or what her name was either.

“She’s born, she’s born!” my grandma said to me while we walked down a hallway at the hospital. It was a green and brown hospital with infinite stories, endless hallways—how did anyone know where to go? I was wearing a green long-sleeved t-shirt with a heart on the front that said Big Sister. My pants were brown. And at this point in time I could not bear wearing white socks so they were fuchsia, matching my fuchsia sneakers.

“I know, I know! Why is everyone repeating everything they say?” I asked with excitement.

“Everyone is so happy about your sister and you being an older sister now,” she said as we kept walking down the hallway.

“I always wanted this,” I said with a smile from ear to ear.

We approached a vending machine with many candy and chip options but I went for a red Jell-O because I wanted what my grandma was having. It was a long day of not doing much other than waiting around in the hospital with much anticipation.

“I think it might be time that we can finally meet her. What name do you like?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t even know the options,” I said. It was true. So many names had been thrown around and no one was really asking me to name her so I didn’t mind what she was named as long as they named her soon.

I imagined her with different names. Valentina, Lucia, Andrea, and pictured her face changing with each one. Valentina had caramel curls, eyes the color of honey, and a sly little smile like she knew secrets. Lucia had glossy black hair, a wide forehead, and soft eyes that made everyone instantly calm. Andrea looked like a firecracker—light brown hair always a little messy, and a laugh you could hear across a playground. I wondered if names made you who you were or if you just grew into whatever they picked for you.

When we turned the corner to the maternity ward, the hallway felt colder and the lights brighter. A cleaning lady walked past pushing a cart of mops and supplies. She gave me a knowing smile.

“Big sister, huh?” she said.

I nodded proudly.

We passed a room with a big window, behind which rows of babies were swaddled in plastic tubs like muffins cooling on a rack. Grandma lifted me up so I could see better.

“Is that her?” I asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said, squinting. “Too bald.”

There was something sacred about the glass between us and them. Like a zoo, but for miracles. One of the babies yawned and stretched its arms. Another was crying like it had been abandoned.

“She’s probably hungry,” I said.

“Or she misses someone she doesn’t even know yet,” Grandma added.

Later, in the room where my mom lay tired but glowing, I finally saw her up close. My sister. My very first one.

She was asleep. I thought babies were supposed to be awake and dramatic. Instead, she lay there all pink and pale and with those terrifying sharp blonde hairs. I inched closer.

“Don’t touch her face, just her feet,” my mom said gently. “They’re more durable.”

So I poked one of her feet. It twitched.

“She moved!” I said.

“She’s saying hello,” said Grandma.

“I think she looks like a hedgehog,” I said. “A soft one.”

But as the adults began talking around me, the warmth turned into a hush. There were too many sideways glances, too many half-formed whispers that floated around like flies. She was so pale and blonde they even checked if she was albino. That word appeared in more than one conversation, never when my mom was in the room. I didn’t know exactly what it meant, but it felt sharp and pointy.

I overheard my aunt, my dad’s sister, whispering in the hallway with a nurse. Her voice was low but too dramatic to ignore.

"She might be," she said. "I mean, look at her. They’re not going to tell the mother until they’re sure."

They didn’t know I was listening. I stood behind a hospital curtain like it was a magic cape. My heart pounded. I felt like I was part of something important, something secret. Was she really sick? Was something wrong?

None of us looked like that. Our skin was warmer, our eyes darker. I started comparing my brown arms to hers in my head like a game. What if I had a sister who wasn’t really like us?

“She looks like Emily,” I said later, trying to sound casual. Emily was a girl in my class, blonde, pale, always sunburnt.

Everyone laughed. Even the baby stirred like she knew she was being talked about.

My grandma caught my worried face.

"No, mi amor. She’s just the first to look like that. Like my mother. Your great-grandmother had hair like wheat and eyes like the sky. Sometimes it skips around, lands on someone new like a surprise."

I blinked at her. “I didn’t know that.”

“Well, you wouldn’t,” she said, settling into the hospital chair like she was about to tell a fairy tale. “We didn’t know much about her either. She was German. Orphaned, because her father disappeared in the war. Missing in action, they said. And her mother… well, she left. Just left her behind. So she grew up without a real home.”

My chest tightened.

“She left Germany as soon as she could,” Grandma went on. “Ended up in France. And there, she met him, my father. A Spaniard running from his own war. They didn’t even speak the same language. But you know how love is. It doesn’t wait for translations.”

“They just… understood each other?” I asked.

“Enough to make three daughters,” she laughed softly. “Your grandmother was the first. Born in a strange country to two people who barely had a common word between them. And they left again, when I was still little. Got on a cheap boat and went south. They made a life out of nothing.”

I stared at my sister’s sleeping face. That delicate nose. Those blue-shadowed lids. I tried to imagine all those stories folded up inside her like notes in a bottle.

“So she’s not sick?” I asked again.

“No, baby. She’s just the first of all the cousins to come out looking like that. It doesn’t mean she’s not one of us.”

I nodded. But the thought stuck with me like gum under a desk. I started watching everyone more carefully, searching for who she looked like. Her eyebrows were barely there, but her lips curved like my mom’s when she was sleeping.

When we got back home that evening, the car ride quiet and golden from the setting sun, I held onto the Big Sister balloon someone had given me. It kept bouncing against the car roof.

That night, I dreamt I was in a forest of white-haired babies. They all had my sister’s face, and they were all crying, and I was the only one who could understand what they were saying.

“She’s here now,” they whispered. “What will you do?”

I woke up before I could answer. I looked out the window and watched the sunrise. The city looked pink too. Everything matched her.

The first few days at home were a blur of smells: powdery, milky, and a new one—something like soft bread. Everyone cooed at her like she was porcelain. I hovered near her crib like a ghost.

“Do you want to hold her?” someone asked.

I didn’t. What if I dropped her? What if she started crying and I couldn’t stop her?

“She doesn’t even look like a *****,” I said.

“No,” my mom laughed. “We named her something else.”

They had finally chosen. And when I heard it, I was shocked. It was a name with rhythm, with gravity, with a kind of elegance I hadn’t expected. A name that could win awards and command stages. It was, if I was being honest, better than mine.

“Wait, that’s her name?” I asked.

“Yes. You like it?”

I nodded, but inside I felt a tiny stab. Jealousy? Maybe. I suddenly wished I’d been named something like that. Something that felt like it came with a future.

But when I looked at her again, I knew it was right. That was her name. Of course it was.

I leaned over her sleeping body, the sharp white hairs finally softening a little, her skin already darkening slightly under the gentle sun that streamed through the window.

She yawned.

“Welcome,” I whispered. “You better be good. I was here first.”