My Sister's Phone

My sister is nine. She wants a phone.

"Everybody has one," she says. "I am the only child without a phone."

My mother says no. My sister asks every day for three months.

Then, on her birthday, there is a small box on the table. She opens it fast.

It is a phone. It is old. It is my father's old phone.

"It works," my father says. "You can call. You can send messages. No games."

My sister looks at it. Then she smiles and calls my grandmother.

They talk for one hour. My grandmother laughs a lot.

Now my sister calls her every evening.