Page 5 of Cuts like a Knife
My screen is packed with notifications.
Bex: Will probably be running a few mins late 2nite. Meet you there?
Bex is Rebecca, my twin sister (fraternal — we don’t look alike), my parter in crime, my ride-or-die. Bex to my Lex (our family nicknames). I never leave her on read, so I shoot back a quick reply.
Lex: NP. See you there. Am expecting drama drama.
We’re all attending our older sister Claire’s not-really-a-shower baby shower tonight. (Claire is the previously-mentioned sender of pointless articles.) By “we” I mean the Madison clan — my family. There are seven of us in total. Five kids, with me falling exactly in the middle position, and our two parents. Plus a plethora of partners and friends to contend with.
Big families are just that. Big. It can be … a lot.
Another one of my texts is from Gray, my youngest sib, our only brother, and the baby of the family.
Gray: Have you finished the text?
Shoot. I agreed to write the text captions for a video Gray’s been putting together as a gift for parents-to-be Claire and her husband Adam. And … I haven’t. Yet.
In my defense, this shower is supposed to be a no-gifts event. Claire has said so practically a billion times.
It’s a bit of an unusual situation. Claire’s about to pop, due in like a month, I think, so we’re a little late to be doing a shower anyway. And while this will be the Madison family’s first next-gen baby, it’s not Claire’s first pregnancy. She had a late-stage miscarriage about four years back.
It was awful. Terrifying.
I probably wasn’t the best sister about it all. I know I already said I was a jerk, but in the case of Claire’s miscarriage, it wasn’t about that. I just didn’t really know what to do. Since it happened, I’ve read up on the statistics.
I knew miscarriage was a thing, but I thought it always happened before the 12-week mark. And like, that’s generally true, but there are also tonnes of cases of it happening later, like it did for Claire. Her loss happened just before the 20-week mark, so it’s still considered miscarriage, but it was right on the edge of being considered a stillbirth4. I understand why people don’t talk about it.
Look, there are so many awful things in the world and sometimes I can’t really handle it. Like, emotionally. I used to be able to. I used to be really quick to jump in. I was an empathetic person, and I could grab my bullhorn and shout on almost any subject, but a few years ago, my ability to step up as an activist was sort of beaten out of me. I’ve closed myself off to empathy, for the most part.
Lately, I’ve been wondering if it might be coming back — my gumption, my ability to put myself in other people’s shoes. It makes me feel … less safe. Too much empathy never really got me anywhere.
Besides, I’m fine. No one has, like, noticed or anything. Sarcasm goes a long way. I do a pretty good impression of someone willing to fight for what’s right, but for a long time, it’s been little more than smoke and mirrors.
Anyway!
Next to Bex, Claire is my closest sibling by age. She’s my big sister. (Not my biggest big sister — that would be Diana.) And she’s not my favorite sibling, by any means. She annoys me most of the time.
Claire is just so apolitical. She doesn’t seem to care about or know anything about things that really matter, you know? (Then again, I’ve started to think she’s been a whole lot smarter than me in this regard. At this point, I strive to be more like Claire. I wish I cared less about the real world, at least.)
At the same time, what happened to her with her first baby was absolutely emotionally devastating. I can’t deny that and I won’t pretend to even be capable of fully understanding it. It was truly brutal. That’s all I really know.
Of course … you have to admit that way worse things happen to BIPOC mothers pretty much constantly, but …
Okay, I’m not actually evil, even if I am a little bit mean, so that’s not the sort of thing I’m going to say to her5.
I honestly haven’t ever had a real conversation with Claire about what happened to her. I know that makes me a crappy sibling or whatever, but we’re just not that close, and it’s way too serious a thing to chit-chat about. So I’ve kind of avoided it ever since. I stick with light-weight sarcasm with Claire now. And I think she likes it that way.
Back to the shower. As a result of what happened with their first pregnancy, Claire and Adam already have a lot of stuff ready for life with a kid. We had a real shower for her the first time around and I guess she saved most of the gear. So the no-gifts thing makes sense.
What a grim prospect putting it all away must have been.
Besides that, Claire and her husband have sort of become famous lately. Low-key famous. This is not a Brangelina situation, but they’re a thing.
Is Brangelina still a famous couple? I can’t keep track of such nonsense.
For over a year now, Claire and Adam have been on a freakin’ reality show. It’s like, a decor lifestyle thing? Sort of like that couple in Waco, Texas. Or that couple that flips real-estate? I don’t know any of their names.6 Talk about fluff and no substance.
This baby shower we’re all going to tonight is going to be filmed. It’s content. It’s not a real Madison family event. Which is another reason why Claire and her husband Adam said not to bring gifts. And another reason why I haven’t finished — okay, haven’t actually started — the text for the stupid video that my baby brother is currently messaging me about.
