I loved the quiet of our walks. Me, my mom in her faded Red Sox hoodie, and our grumpy old blue tick hound Vinny, just strolling from our house in Topsfield, a small neighborhood outside of Boston, to the bridge by our house like time didn’t exist. I always looked forward to the consistent drama that my mom would let me in on with our family. My older siblings always had their own things going on, and with my mom and dad working during the week, those evening walks were always special to me.
But that day, the air felt thicker. Not in a dramatic movie way, but more like a storm was about to pass through. My mom wasn’t fully there. She kept tugging at Vinny’s leash and didn’t laugh at any of my stupid jokes like she always would.
Then she said it.
“Anthony… how would you feel about the Shapleighs’ cousin Emma coming to live with us for a little bit?” Her words felt slow, like I could see each being sounded out. I nodded. I said “sure,” because what else do you say when your mom looks that serious? But inside, my stomach was in knots. I didn’t know Emma at all, in fact, nobody in my family did, really. She was my cousins’ cousin, not mine—and her story was horrific. Her mom was struggling with drug addiction, causing CPS to come and take her kids from her multiple times. Her dad had left before she could have any memory of him. She’d bounced around from orphanages to houses and had just lost her last guardian, who was her own grandmother.
So my mom, being a wonderful person like usual, wanted to help. Of course she did. It made sense, my older siblings were off at college, and I was about to finish middle school. Also, Emma desperately needed a home.
So why did I feel so guilty for not wanting her in mine?
Before Emma, life had a rhythm. I was the baby of the family, and most definitely treated like it. My siblings were a few years older and busy, and I’d become accustomed to having my parents’ full attention. I was used to being the main character at home and adding another person felt like replacing me.
When Emma arrived, everything changed suddenly. The quietness had disappeared. The house was filled with smaller shoes, Disney Channel, and glitter. She had long, tangled brown hair that she wore in uneven pigtails on most days. Her shirts were often a size too big or a size too small being that they were all hand-me-downs. So much glitter and slime. At first, Emma was so frightened that she wasn’t completely comfortable around all of us, which makes perfect sense.
She always seemed to be trailing behind my mom like a shadow. We all subconsciously started walking on eggshells around her, being afraid to say the wrong thing, trying not to make her uncomfortable. It felt like the whole house tilted slightly in her direction at all times.
I actively tried avoiding her at first. I started spending more time in my room, watching movies alone, trying to pretend like nothing had changed. But everything had changed. I even found Vinny betraying me by sitting near her instead of me on the couch.
I kept finding myself watching Emma from a distance. She tiptoed into our family like someone who wasn’t sure she was allowed to belong. She’d sit at the kitchen table with a blank stare, humming, barely speaking. My mom and dad did everything they could to try to get herself to break out of her shell with us, and even my older siblings seemed to adjust quickly, when they would be home for the holidays.
But I still didn’t.
One morning, I came downstairs and found Emma sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by all of her dolls. One missing an arm and no hair. Another had black Sharpie all over its face. I couldn’t help myself.
“You know they don’t talk back, right?” I said, jokingly.
She looked up at me, unsure, then slowly smirked. “That’s okay. I can talk for all of them.”
It caught me off guard. I didn’t laugh immediately, but I didn’t leave the room either. I sat on the opposite end of the couch, both existing at the same time, watching her press each doll’s hair flat with a plastic comb. It was the first time I realized Emma had a great sense of humor despite everything that she had been through already at the ripe age of seven.
That day, later on, she ran up behind me in the kitchen and tagged me. “You’re it!” she screamed quietly, sprinting away before I could even think to respond. It was sudden and random and made me laugh in spite of myself. Emma was starting to play and not just exist in my life.
Over time, her shyness started to fade. And with that came more chaos. She’d dance in the kitchen to her favorite Taylor Swift songs. She’d insist on sitting next to me at dinner every night and ask me a million questions full of nonsense: “Do you like dogs or cats better?” “Have you ever eaten a bug?” “What is your favorite milkshake flavor?”
She was always curious. And loud. And exhausting. I could see how much more effort my parents had to put in.
But she was also joyful.
The moment things changed for me wasn’t dramatic. It was the middle of April. I was walking off the bus from school, earbuds in, when I saw her ahead of me on the sidewalk, wobbling down the street on her bike, without training wheels. My dad was jogging behind her, arms out like he was ready to catch her.
“ANTHONY! I’M DOING IT!” Emma screamed.
She swerved and nearly fell off, but caught herself and kept pedaling away. When she reached the driveway, she jumped off and threw her helmet onto the ground. “I DID IT!”
I didn’t even realize I was smiling until my dad looked at me and said, “We taught her that. You helped her.”
I hadn’t realized it, but he was right. I had helped. I’d held the back of the bike. I’d told her not to give up when she scraped her knee weeks before. Somewhere in the middle of my quiet resentment and her endless questions, we had developed a normal sibling relationship.
Emma still isn’t perfect. She almost always talks during movies. She leaves makeup wipes and hairbrushes all over the house. She has this disgusting habit of putting an absurd amount of ketchup on everything. But she laughs like she means it. She always tells me I’m her favorite Anthony, even though I am confident she doesn’t know any others.
And she’s my sister.
That pit in my stomach I felt on that walk with my mom? It’s long gone. I never lost anything. I gained a loud, messy, joyful little person who made our family fuller.
I don’t miss being the youngest at all. I like being the big brother. It also came in handy once I got to high school and my mom wasn’t constantly asking me where I was going.
I like who I’ve become because of Emma. And while she might not know it yet, she didn’t just find a home with us, she helped make our house warmer with love, louder and better than before.
