Human Sister

reported that he had secured enrollment for Elio at one of the finest private international schools in the world. Children from over fifty countries were in attendance there, and classes were taught in English, so Elio wouldn’t have a language problem. I felt a pang of envy.
    “You’re the best teacher, aren’t you, Grandpa? Better than any at Elio’s school.”
    “Yes, honey. I promise you that I’m the best teacher any little girl has ever had.”
    The next morning when Vidtel announced a call from Amsterdam, I ran to the communications room and pressed the Accept Video button. The screen lit up as though a large window suddenly opened in the wall, and there was my cousin, that alluring mystery, life-size in three dimensions, sitting in a chair a meter or so in front of a bed. At first he was as speechless as I (this was the first time we faced each other alone), but after a bit of squirming in his chair, this boy with chocolate skin and hair the color of a crow began telling me about his new school, his new friends, and his new room, the bedroom he was sitting in. He spoke as if we’d long been friends who were comfortable in each other’s presence. “I want you to stay with me here in my room next summer. Your grandpa is really nice. He takes us everywhere. He even played football with me and some kids in the park. He says you’re coming to visit me. He says I should call you every day with my homework. He’s going to bring you all my schoolbooks so you can follow along. It’ll be fun!”
    I had no doubt it would be. I’d never been so enchanted.
    Grandpa returned two days later. I immediately asked about the schoolbooks. He pulled a little case out of his coat pocket. I opened it and found one chip inside.
    “Is it all right if I read them?” I asked.
    “Yes. You already know the math and science, but it’ll be good practice for you to read them. I think you’ll enjoy talking with Elio about his homework and about what he does at school. He’s an intelligent, nice young man. I hope you two can become friends. You live in very different worlds and can learn much from each other.”
    One of the first things I learned from Elio was that the bright colored lights and decorations I’d seen a few weeks earlier while out shopping with Grandma in Healdsburg weren’t expressions of celebration for the winter solstice; they were part of a religious festival called Christmas. He whispered this information to me, adding that his ma had told him not to tell me about Christmas because it would make my ma mad. He further informed me that only babies called their mothers and fathers “Mommy” and “Daddy.” He had always, so he claimed, called his parents “Ma” and “Pa.”
    As soon as that conversation ended, I called my mother, who told me that “Mom” and “Dad” would be appropriate names for them now that I was getting to be such a mature girl. I didn’t mention anything about Christmas.
    Thereafter, for half an hour or so each day, I sat watching and listening as Elio invaded my cozy little world with new ideas. “Ma says your grandpa is filthy rich,” he said one day, “but he won’t buy you any toys or new clothes. And he won’t let anyone else give you any, either, not even your ma or pa. He won’t even let you watch movies or play games on the internet, or anything. It’s all pretty weird if you ask me.”
    Of course, I defended Grandpa, saying that the internet was a huge, distracting ocean of information with “an almost vanishingly small signal-to-noise ratio.” Elio asked what a signal-to-noise ratio was. I didn’t know exactly, but I confidently answered that it meant I would waste a lot of time trying to find anything useful there.
    Before those daily talks with Elio began, I hadn’t paid much attention to the sparse, simple furnishings of our house or to our nearly twenty-year-old Mercedes car; nor had I thought it odd that all my clothes were hand-me-downs from Carlos’s three grown boys—all, that is, except for my sunglasses, white gloves, and the white hat on which Grandma had sewn flaps to cover my neck and the sides of my face.
    Late one afternoon as Grandma and I puttered in our garden, I confided in her that Elio thought it weird that I wasn’t allowed to watch movies or play on the internet, that all my toys were home-fabricated, and that my clothes were second hand from boys of “one of the workers,” a phrase Elio had used. After making sure I