Niva looked at me straight on. My sister has our mother's face, everyone says so: the wide mouth, the dark eyebrows that go up in the middle when she's worried. They were up in the middle now.
"The other reason is that for a second, when he held it out," she said, "I wanted it. I really, really wanted it. I thought, he's choosing me. Finally somebody's choosing me for this. And I hated that I wanted it. And I took it anyway." She took a breath that shook. "I'm sorry, Maya. I'm really sorry. I was going to give it back to you tonight. When everybody left. I swear I was. But I took it. I'm not going to pretend I didn't."
I have thought a lot about what she said, since. About how easy it would have been for her to give only the first reason, which was true and which made her look good, and leave the second one out, which was also true and which didn't. I don't think I would have known the difference. I think she knew I wouldn't know. She told me anyway.
That's my sister. I didn't totally understand that until that afternoon. I'm still learning it.
Here is the part people don't expect, when I tell this. They expect the part where everybody hugs. There was some of that, later. But first there was a part where I got to decide something, and I want to tell it right, because it was the first time in my life I understood that I was allowed to.
I looked at the camera in the blue box. I looked at the tag in my hand, the block capitals on one side and the slanting brown cursive on the other. FOR MAYA, WHO LOOKS. Every picture you take, I'm in it somewhere, behind you, holding the bag.
Everybody was waiting for me. I could feel it. My father with his wet face, my sister with her eyebrows up, my grandmother with her hand still on my father's back. They were waiting to find out what I was going to do with it, and I realized that whatever I did would be the shape of this, afterward. That this was going to be a story the three of them told, or didn't tell, for a long time, and how it ended was up to me.
"Okay," I said. "Here's what I want."
My grandmother's mouth twitched. She told me later it was the single proudest moment of her retirement.
"It's mine," I said. "Niva gave it to me. She paid for it and she gave it to me and she put my name on it, so it's mine. I'm keeping it."