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This should be impossible. My sister is five years younger than me.
Not only do I lack that memory, I seem unable to perceive pregnancy at all. Even now, it can take me an uncomfortably long time to notice when someone is expecting, even after it has been pointed out to me. It is as if pregnancy exists just out of sight—something others can see clearly, but that remains blurred, or entirely absent, to me.
I have searched for the memory and found nothing. When I once asked my mother about it, she laughed.
“I was so pregnant,” she said. “But you never asked.”
What I do remember is this: one day, there was a baby.
She was in my grandmother's arms, wrapped tightly, her face barely visible. People leaned toward me, smiling, expectant.
“Do you know who she is?”
I didn't.
I remember the pause that followed, the way the adults exchanged glances, amused by something I could not understand. No one explained. My parents said nothing. The question hovered in the air as if it had already been answered.
Over time, the baby appeared more often. She stayed longer. Eventually, she came home with us. She moved with us to a new apartment, as if she had always been part of the arrangement.