A Broken Glass of Lemonade

Siena Vreugde

“Can we th-set up a le-mo-nade stand at the park? I want to help, but you need to do all the talking”, my little sister said as she tugged on my ripped sleeve.

Part of me thought to myself, why can’t you just do it yourself? But then I turned around and looked deep into her widened eyes. Those dark pools of swirling cinnamon, glinting with curious flecks of copper and sunlit auburn. I traveled further into the abyss and discovered mysteries of desperation and fear brewing in the ripples of her soft brown eyes, and I knew that she couldn’t do it alone.

“Yeah, of course. Let’s start making the lemonade!”, I told her, and she excitedly ran into the kitchen yelling for mom to grab the lemons.

Dani liked to wear soccer shorts with bright turquoise t-shirts, and always had a head of uncombed pale sandy hair. Sometimes it got so tangled that I had to cut out giant chunks. Together we squeezed the lemons into a green jar and added mountains of sugar until our taste buds were satisfied.  

“Siena, how do you th-spell le-mo-nade?”

“L-E-M—” 

“Wait! Could you just wite it?”

She handed me the marker and I finished making our sign. We set up our stand outside the baseball game that was just across the street from our house. The sun beamed down on the dozens of families and friends that had gathered around to celebrate the beautiful day by watching their kids compete. Dani always liked looking up at me when I made conversation with the strangers, never wanting to add a word of her own.

            “Okay Dani, those people want three lemonades. Let’s pour them and then you go deliver them while I guard our stand.”

Holding the cups, she ran towards the customers in a gleeful gallop. She reached about halfway before turning back to look at me with that familiar blank stare.

“Keep going! You’re almost there.”

Timidly, she walked towards one stranger and tapped them on the shoulder. They graciously accepted it, and she came sprinting back towards me, with the cheeriest smile widening across her face, and pride gleaming in her eyes.

~

            The house was cold, and unnaturally static. A foul smell snuck its way into my nostrils from down the hall. The scented trail led me to a door clouded by murky fog. I knocked.

“Yes?”

“Hey Danielle, can I come in?”

“Yeah sure.”

Still in her track and field uniform, she sat in her cushioned chair with her phone in hand. Her golden hair was smoothly brushed into a high ponytail. The space between us was kind of awkward at the beginning, as if we never used to spend all our days outside together.

It had been four years since Danielle’s speech impediment had miraculously disappeared. Being the only one who could decipher her speech, I had taken on the role of being her official translator to the outside world. I did everything from going to the bathroom with her, to informing others that she was saying “run”, NOT “won”. She relied on me a lot when we were young, and I often ponder what life would have been like without me there, steering the car as she quietly sat in the passenger seat.

But when her speech impediment disappeared, so did I.

We stood in her room staring at each other, not knowing what to say.

“Do you want to make lemonade with me?” I asked her, breaking the silence.

She didn’t say anything for a whole minute.

“Yeah, sure.”

~

            “Danielle, please call me if you ever need anything, okay? I’ll only be an hour away. I love you.”; that was the last sentence I spoke to her before I left for my first year at university.

            I remember strolling up the bending, winding hill that led me to a campus that I was beginning to call home. Chunks of lost pavement crunched under my feet, and the heat of the magnificent sun warmed my cheek as I continued to stride. Noticing that I received a text message, I pulled out my phone to see that it was from my next-door neighbor. That’s odd, I thought to myself. I hadn’t spoken to her in years. “Is everything ok? There’s an ambulance truck in your driveway, and I just wanted to check in.”, it read. My lungs quickly tightened, becoming difficult to breathe.

I don’t remember the drive to see her. I took the elevator to the top floor, and sprinted down the hall to the room that they were keeping her in. I slowly cracked open the door, and there she was, sitting on a bed that wasn’t hers. She looked up at me. Her chocolate eyes that once twinkled with excitement, hope, and eagerness, were dull, drained, lifeless.

Grief cloaked me as we exchanged looks of fear. I wracked my brain trying to decode the unspoken thoughts in Danielle’s head, just as I so easily used to when she was younger. Her capable speech signalled to me that she was self-sufficient on her own, and blinded by her success, I misguidedly missed all the other signs of her struggles. There was more than just her stutter; it was herself, in her purest, most vulnerable form. She needed me then, and I saw it too late. After harm had been done and history had been written, I couldn’t save the sweet glass of lemonade from spilling out of the broken glass.