At father’s house, I was forced to change my bedroom to the downstairs room that Tracy once
occupied. My old bedroom was to be given to my baby brother… Soumaya was due to give birth to him
very soon. I was quite annoyed at this. That room was the room that made me so enthusiastic about
moving to that house. Father and Soumaya thought moving me was the best solution. The new baby
would get a room close to them, and I would have the much bigger downstairs room.
When I moved to the downstairs room, I slowly agreed that it was the sensible thing to do. My new
room was twice the size of my old one, I still had my own bathroom, and I also had the hallway that led
to it. Technically, I had the whole bottom floor of the three story house to myself. The only bad thing
about this was that I would get scared to walk down those stairs at night when it’s dark… the light switch
was at the bottom of the stairs. I’ve always been afraid of the dark.
Soumaya gave birth to a newborn baby boy, and they named him Jazz. It happened during father’s
week. While father and Soumaya were at the hospital, Alex Bubenheim picked us up from school and we
stayed at his house in the afternoons. This occurred for three days, and finally, on the day of the birth,
father showed up to announce the birth of Jazz. We had a little celebration, and the song “Jessie’s Girl”
played from Alex’s sound system. Whenever I heard that song in the future, I would always think of that
day.
It was an exciting day. I actually had a brother… It was hard to believe. Technically he is my half-
brother, but I would always term him as my brother. I wasn’t as impacted by his birth as I expected
myself to be, possibly because I was so caught up in my own personal and emotional changes that I was
going through at that stage.