I am not allowed in her room, but I adore secrets, or rather secrecy’s trappings, especially the hidden souvenirs of my sister’s beauty, her unseen evenings.

Memory (stage designer, costumer, expert in theatrical lighting) orchestrates the scene like this: my sister’s darkened room, a little summer twilight bluing the window and the chest of drawers. Chifferobe, my grandmother calls it, rich old word that seems itself to smell like a closed drawer; bureau, my father says, polished word, waxy, tobacco colored. This one isn’t dark and varnished like my grandparents’ stuff, or the hodgepodge of old furniture in the other houses we’ve lived in; this new blond suite, angular, forward looking, seems a physical expression of my sister’s grownupness and privacy. My parents never buy anything new, so who knows where it’s come from; they must have had some little flourish of money as well as some burst of interest in style. Or did Sally choose it? She is almost sixteen, I am newly six; she will leave home soon, but we don’t know that yet. For now the important thing for me is that she has become a Rainbow Girl. Is that where she is tonight, off with her new sisters? My parents are down the hall in the living room, watching television, far away, absorbed in something that does not concern me, so I am free to pursue my investigations.

Her room is full of things that might invite my attention: a luscious satin pillow a boyfriend won for her at a fair, with verses written on it in stiff gold cursive and a border of irresistible yellow fringe. An autograph hound, a stuffed dachshund with a lean body of white cloth on which her friends have written salutations and verses and names. A record case made just for 45s, an object that seems feminine and precise, exactly suited to its purpose: beige vinyl fabric, fabric hinges, and when you lift the lid her favorites are revealed, black and glossy. I could pull out the matching phonograph and plug it in, but that wouldn’t really interest me much. I like to hear the openings of the songs she likes—“You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog,” “Love Me Tender,” something by Brenda Lee—but I don’t feel like sitting still for the rest of the song; I don’t believe I will be rewarded for sustained attention. As I will be, I know with all my heart, the full certainty of my six-year-old power of belief, when I look into the drawer.