Who are you? I inquire of the stranger lying in my parents’ bed. I’m Rebecca, Maddie and Sophie’s mom, replies the lady in the bed. Oh, I reply, I didn’t recognize you with glasses on. I thought you might have been a stranger. Mom and Dad always say never to talk to strangers. Why are you here? Last night, Mom and Dad had to go to the hospital, because your mom needed to give birth to your sister, says Rebecca. It will be fun to have a sister, but will I have to share my parents? That doesn’t sound like fun. It’s like having the sun and moon taken away. I won’t share my parents. No. I won’t share my parents, just like I won’t share my favorite toy. Rebecca helps me into my snow clothes. She drives me to her house to play with her daughters in the snow. I will wait at her house until my dad comes. My dad will take me to the hospital to see my baby sister.

The world is covered in a snowy blanket. We pull into the Zakin’s driveway on Laurel Street. There are Maddie and Sophie, playing in the snow. I jump into it like a cat jumps onto a mouse. The fluffy whiteness covers me like a blanket. We decide to eat the snow. We eat heaps and heaps of the fluffy, white snow. It slips down our throats like chocolate. My dad arrives in his car.

After we’ve driven to the hospital and ridden the elevator up to the floor my mother is on, we quietly enter her room like foxes, and on the bed are my mother and this chubby red lump that has fat sausages as arms and legs, a huge belly, and a head that resembles a pomegranate. So this is what my baby sister looks like, I think to myself; a pomegranate connected to sausages. Do you want to hold your baby sister? Asks my mom. Yes, I say. I climb up onto the mountain of a bed with the white, snowy blanket. My mom hands me my sister and tells me how to hold her. I hold my sister for the first time. She is warm like the sun, and she has plump, rosy cheeks. Hi, I say to the baby. Her name is Ella, my mother tells me. Ella. Ella. Ella, I repeat over and over and over again, trying the name out for size. It sounds pretty. I like the name. Ella is a spring flower. Ella is a beautiful tree. Ella is a clear pool of crystal clear water at the bottom of a waterfall. Is Ella going to steal you? I ask. You’ll have to learn to share, says my mom. I’m learning to share.