The Fourteenth Day

“Don’t drop the baby,” Mother told me, helping me to cradle my sister against my chest. She was swaddled in a pink blanket that may have brought out the brightness in her cheeks if her skin hadn’t been so angry red. Mother told me her skin would change over time, that she wouldn’t be this red forever.

“Like a chameleon?” I asked.

“Not quite,” Mother smiled.

My sister was two weeks old and because I was in first grade now instead of kindergarten, I knew that meant fourteen days. And because she’d been alive for fourteen days, I knew, too, that I’d spent the last thirteen of them wishing that I could hold her and introduce myself. I wanted to ask Mother if I could, but there never seemed to be a good time. She slept most of the day, and whenever she was awake, she was nursing. 

“Who’s my hungry girl?” Mother would say in her warm way and I wondered if she’d said the same to me when I was a baby. I tried really hard, but I couldn’t remember. 

Holding her in my arms there, I was nervous. I didn’t know that something you were excited to do could also make you so afraid.

“Don’t be nervous, honey,” Mother said, eyeing something in the hallway, “She can tell when you’re scared, and you don’t want your little sister to think you’re scared of her, do you?”

I sure didn’t.

I wanted her to know how much I loved her—how her being born was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I wanted to tell her about chocolate and Santa Claus and how Minnie Mouse wore pink, too. But mostly, I wanted to tell her that I was her big sister and that nothing bad would ever happen to her as long as I was around.

I would’ve told her all of these things if she hadn’t started crying. 

I’d never heard anything that loud before—not even the time there was an accident down the street and police cars and ambulances raced by our house with their sirens on. It hurt my ears and it made me sad. She didn’t cry when anyone else was holding her.

I thought Mother must have been right, that my baby sister knew I was scared of her because I was acting nervous. 

“It’s okay,” I said to her. “I’m not scared of you. Sisters aren’t afraid of each other.”

But I was afraid. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know what to do—didn’t know how to make her stop crying.

I looked up, hoping that Mother would sense my unease and come to the rescue, but the spot where she was standing just a moment before was empty. She wasn’t there. 

I called out to her, “Mother! Mother, please!” but she couldn’t hear me over all of the crying. I could barely even hear myself. 

“Shh, please,” I tried to calm my sister. “It’s okay. It’s okay, I promise!” But the more I tried to assure her, the louder her crying became. The sound tore through me and I didn’t know what to do—I just needed to make the noise go away.

I thrust my fingers into my ears and shifted in my seat—pulled myself away from that horrible wailing—and I found that it worked, that it must have worked, because the screaming stopped and my lap was as light as my brain in the newborn silence. 

I was relieved, but before the feeling could properly set in, the screaming was back and worse than ever. I could hear it even with my fingers in my ears. Mom was in the room now and she was kneeling on the floor, her parted lips trembling as if they were trapped around words that didn’t fit in her mouth. 

“Where were you, Mother?” I asked, but she did not answer me because it was her who was screaming, I realized. Screaming about something on the floor. Something small and pink with angry red skin and angrier blood oozing out of a crack in its skull.

My little sister, red forever after all.