THE CEDARVILLE REVIEW 9 to name her Zoe. That’s all I know. It’s funny—she and Eden would probably have shared that room. There wasn’t another room to put her in except upstairs in the furnished attic, and Mom and Dad wouldn’t have wanted us little ones so far away. Besides, it was good to have a guest room. I can see an alternate childhood, like concept art: one where Eden didn’t try to steal my Breyer horses or Theodore’s Legos because we might not pay attention to her otherwise, one where she and this other little girl whose name meant “life” played with stuffed animals and hung sheets or blankets off their top bunk to make an enclosed litter or carriage or monastic cell, one where her favorite toys shared shelf space with Eden’s and her clothes took up all the space Eden’s had left on the closet rack. Would Eden have been born if Zoe had lived? Would she be herself or someone else? Would Zoe have been brownhaired, brown-eyed, and righthanded, like me, Theodore, and Caleb, or blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and left-handed, like Eden, Joshua, and Noah? Some combination, like Lily, the youngest, who has the hair and eyes of our lefties but writes with her right hand? Would she have decided with Eden that “bad attention is better than no attention,” as my dad would often say? Or, like me, would she prefer to be overlooked than reprimanded? ~ But then, when I was nine, we moved to a larger house several minutes away; Joshua, the fi fth child, had been born, and there wasn’t room for him. With that move, Mom and Dad decided Theodore should have his own bedroom, and Eden and I would move in together. I remember my anger dimly: Eden annoyed me to no end, while
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