Cleaning-Up - Bud Pfohl

The blender perched next to the kitchen sink the silver-stepped base graduated to a narrow collar where the mixer rested on the gears that spun the blades. Looking up it seemed enormous in potential as well as size. I dropped to my knees and crawled to the family room door. I looked around the corner and heard the Saturday night extravaganza of Ed Sullivan. Topo Gigio would keep my great-grandma enthralled for the immediate future.

I crawled to the kitchen table and drug a chair to the kitchen counter. The chalky scratch of the wooden legs on the linoleum floor didn’t stand a chance against the television laughter and applause bleeding from the family room. So far I was safe. Both feet on the chair I rose above the kitchen counter and stared at the buttons: Mix, Chop, Puree, Blend and Liquefy. I pushed Liquefy and flipped the power on and watched as the blades whirred into action. I imagined vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup, malted mix and milk being churned into a malt.

I flipped the switch back to off and peered into the family room assessing my gram’s level of inattention to everything outside Ed Sullivan. Before I scrambled down the chair and to the freezer I looked at the various settings and wondered if Mix was slow enough for me to stop it from spinning if I held the blades before I turned the switch on.

I reached into the blender and rested my fingers against the cold blades. They didn’t feel sharp. I moved the switch from off to on and watched as a perfect line of red painted itself around the glass container. The blades were still spinning as I watched my fingers rain drops of blood into the kitchen sink.

I leapt from the chair and ran to the family room. I held my hand out to gram thinking words were unnecessary. She looked at my fingers and her eighty-year-old mind decided that I would need more than one band-aid. I knew the futility of band-aids and ran to our neighbors who hadn’t yet left for the New Year’s Eve party my parents were already at.

Fourteen stitches later I sat in Mr. Chapin’s car on the way home and wondered if I could get the kitchen cleaned up before mom and dad got home and found out what I’d done.