10th Grade Autobiographical Essay #2

The Can of Mushrooms

My sister’s face dissolved into tears as the blood rushed to the surface of her elbow and squeezed out of the abrasion, welling into a tiny bubble, a result of running on linoleum with only slippery socks on. The bubble lay there for approximately a minute before I roughly smeared it into oblivion. Since she continued to cry, I yelled at her to stop being a crybaby, which caused a few more ragged sobs before the house was still. It was the eve of my birthday.

The next day I trundled up the front steps and opened the front door after school and was greeted by my mom, whom I had not seen since 10 p.m. the night before, with a command to vacuum the living room and the hallway. I grumpily complied, not knowing that my best friend was on her way to surprise me. When the doorbell sang and a shadow fell across the entryway, I switched off the irritating buzz of the vacuum, rushed over and threw open the door. I was greeted for the second time upon arriving home with a big hug and a dozen sugary donuts, waiting to be eaten. And they were.

Relatively an hour passed, one full of hurried chores and much giggling, before my mom called me to get her a can of mushrooms for our Chicken Alfredo. I skipped past my friend, who was speaking to her mom via her cell phone, and out into the dark and musty garage with those horrid cement floors that always seem to be cold no matter what the temperature really is. I searched for a can of mushrooms on a shelf that stood nearly as tall as me while hopping from foot to foot to keep whatever contact between my bare feet and said cement floor to a minimum. I caught a glimpse of a squat can adorned by a still-life of mushrooms as I hopped, reached for it, bouncing, and sent a titanic 26 oz can of Hunts^® Roasted Garlic And Herb Spaghetti Sauce rolling forward, balancing precariously on the rim of the wire rack, before falling forward onto the fluffy package of Bounty^® Paper Towels. I let out a pent up breath and reached for the fallen can…

…right as an identical can tipped over the edge…

…and crushed my toe. I screamed.

Now over a month later, I look at the withering hematoma embellishing my big toe. I sit, wondering if a blind person could mistake it for the word “idiot” in Braille.

When I had screamed, my “crybaby” sister had been the first to drop everything (a.k.a her chores…) and come running. My best friend’s mom asked her, “oh, is that one of her little sisters crying?” My friend had bitten her lip before replying:

“No, that’s Jaecyn…” Now I can laugh about it.

A month from that day, my sister will drop a glass urn on her foot and have it shatter into hundreds of tiny, prickly needles, that will lodge themselves in various sites up and down her leg. She is not yet 10 years old. And she will not cry.