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     green garden hose, her thumb on the opening, drawing the water into small circles and figure eights. She was nuts about that
     lawn. We had a gunlike spray attachment and several rainbow sprinklers, but she never used them; she trusted the hose. During
     the school year, when we walked by her on the way to the bus, she rarely looked up she was so into it. In the summer, she
     started banging on the outside of our bedroom windows around eight.
“Aufstehen, aufstehen, Falle Leute,”
she yelled: “Get up, you lazy people.” She came in panting while we sat at the table with our bowls of puffed rice, her hands
     fluttering at the hem of her blouse, a light sweat beading on her upper lip. “What’s wrong with you girls? I’ve been working
     for hours.”
    By nine o’clock, whatever the day or season, Hilde was out the door and on her way to Noreen’s house. She had breakfast and
     lunch there, stopped by Shop ’n’ Bag or Continental Market for groceries, then raced home to have dinner on the table when
     Bub rolled up the drive at five-thirty. At first I thought it was a little kooky that she was always at Noreen’s, but soon
     I understood: she was lonely. Who wouldn’t be, hanging around the house all day? Once you did the dishes and vacuumed, what
     would there be to do? Soap operas would help, but she got those at Noreen’s. They sat and crocheted and talked excitedly back
     to the TV when something good happened.
Days of Our Lives
was their favorite — “The Show,” they called it, as in “Hurry up and get in here, Hilde, or you’ll miss THE SHOW.” God forbid.
    The only thing Hilde loved more than her days with Noreen — yammering over tuna salad, keeping up with The Show, beginning
     another afghan, chair cover, toaster cozy — was her daughter. Trying to make Tina happy was perhaps Hilde’s truest mission.
     She kept Tina’s bottom dresser drawer filled with bar chocolate and diet cookies and boxes of Jell-O, which Tina liked to
     eat raw, late at night, dipping in a wet finger and licking off the powder. Tina had more new clothes and nicer ones than
     we did, and received double our allowance, but we weren’t overly jealous. How could we be once we learned Tina was the reason
     we had come to the Lindberghs’ in the first place? Bub and Hilde had planned to have several more children after Tina, and
     although they tried for years to conceive, these attempts were foiled by what Hilde mysteriously termed “female problems.”
     They might have given up if not for Tina, who wanted siblings as much as she had ever wanted anything. We were the solution.
     Adoption was too permanent, but foster kids were like ponies bought at auction — you could always take them back. Bub called
     the Department of Welfare and settled on us because Mrs. O’Rourke insisted that if someone didn’t offer to take us soon —
     three children together were so hard to place — we’d have to go to a group home. That could be rough, she counseled; who knew
     what would happen to us there. Bub convinced Hilde it was the right thing to do. They signed the papers, took the preparatory
     class. Everything was set until the week before we were to arrive, when Hilde found the thermostat in the hall had been messed
     with and the heat turned on — this, when temperatures outside were still in the nineties. They asked Tina if she’d tampered
     with it, and she lied.
    “I know you did it,” Bub said. “Just admit it, and everything will be fine.”
    “No,” she said. “It wasn’t me.”
    Bub told Tina she’d blown everything, that we weren’t coming anymore because, as a liar, she didn’t deserve sisters. He let
     her spend a tearful night reflecting on her wrongdoing, then changed his mind. That’s the story of how we almost got sent
     to the group home, one Tina liked to tell when she was feeling particularly monarchical.
    I wasn’t sure she didn’t have plans to rule the world, our Tina. Maybe it was an