I became my little sister’s parent before I was old enough to become an adult myself. I believed that keeping food on the table and a roof over our heads was enough. Then she spent every dollar of her lunch money buying a birthday cake for a lonely boy in the hospital. The next morning, a black balloon and a red box appeared in our yard, and everything I thought I understood about love changed.
The morning after my little sister used every coin she owned to buy a birthday cake for a boy staying in the hospital, I opened our front door and discovered our front lawn filled with balloons.
Dozens of them had been tied to bricks and placed throughout the damp grass.
Right in the middle stood one huge black balloon. Beneath it rested a red box.
Della, my little sister, clutched the back of my shirt. “Syd, who is that from?”
I couldn’t answer. My stomach had already sunk.
A note had been taped to the lid.
“You came to my window every day. Nobody else did. And nobody knew anything about me. Please open it.”
—
I had been raising Della alone since I was nineteen.
Eight years earlier, our parents disappeared during a hiking trip and never returned. One week I was arguing with Mom about staying out too late. The following week I was signing school paperwork for Della with trembling hands.
By the time Della turned eight, our life had settled into a routine. She had the bedroom. I slept on a foldout couch while working breakfast shifts at a diner and evening hours in a pharmacy stockroom.
Della never complained.
