My family and I didn't grow up with a lot of money, so there was a pattern of our family living together for years so that we could afford a place to stay. My mom got an apartment where my mom, dad, godmother, brother, and I stayed. The apartment was small and cramped, where the living room was connected to the kitchen, leading to a small, tight hallway that could barely fit two people at once if you tried. This hallway had three doors. The one on the right led to a cluttered room filled with toys, stuffed animals, and one bed my brother, godmother, and I would sleep in. The other door was straight down the middle, which was the hallway's bathroom door. It was also cluttered, with toothbrushes, jewelry, perfumes, colognes, and clothes scattered around the bathroom. And the room on the left. Neat and put together, the smell of my mom's perfume (Japanese Cherry Blossom scent from Bath & Body Works, which was, and still is, her favorite) would hit you instantly. This room was my mom's.

One afternoon, close to sunset, my brother and I were bored, lying in our bed with nothing to do. My godmother was also there, on her chair in the corner, chewing on one of those wooden toothpicks you'd get from a buffet. If she weren't chewing on a toothpick she would be chewing on one of those floss sticks that would saw between your teeth. I never understood why she did it; honestly, I probably don't remember. I can only remember the sound she occasionally made every few minutes as if she was trying to get something between her teeth by pushing air between the gaps. This afternoon, she was talking on the phone, and the sound of the door opening made her leave the room. I saw the toothpick fall out her mouth as she walked away, too focused on the conversation she was having to notice. My mom walks into the apartment, tired as usual, and goes to her room to nap.

It was around 9 pm, and my mom was awake and talking with my dad. My godmother was back in her old, wooden chair in the corner of the cluttered room. And me, on the bed, with my pillow. As a four-year-old, I was sleepy by 9 pm, so I wanted to turn off the light, but my brother wanted to stay up. This turned into an argument between my brother and I.

 After the usual kicking, screaming, and crying from a four-year-old, my brother hit me with his pillow. He turned this into a pillow fight. We were jumping on the bed as if it were our little trampoline. Then, my brother hit me with the pillow, but this hit was mid-jump. Mid-jump, I was struck by this sack of cotton, swung like a baseball bat by someone four years older than me and twice my size. My four-year-old body flung off the bed like a rag doll, and I landed on the rough, stained carpet.

At first, my mind was filled with anger, laughter, and confusion. Confusion because I didn't know why my leg hurt so much, laughter because it was funny to me, and a little anger towards my brother because why? In the span of a second, those emotions quickly bottled up into one loud cry. As I crawled to the other side of the hallway, I suddenly realized that the sharp, piercing pain was caused by a small piece of wood that was in my leg. It was a toothpick. My mom, trying to figure out why a four-year-old was crying so much, asked with a caring voice, "Que paso?" (What happened?) as if my vocabulary at the time was large enough to answer the question. She assumed I was hungry, and again, "Tienes hambre?" (Are you Hungry?) So she walked out of the room, leaving me on the bed with my dad, snoring as loud as my cries/screams. I don't blame my mom for not noticing at first. By the time I fell, it was around 10 pm and dark with no light in her room; the only little light was a dim illumination from the kitchen and the other side of the hallway. So, there was no way she could've seen the blood on my knee. My mom walks into the room. "Ten! ("here" in Spanish and not the number) She handed me a waffle, trying to figure out why I was still crying so loud. She turns on the light and is horrified by this wooden toothpick sticking out of my knee. "Ay, Dios! Que paso?!" (Oh my god! What happened?!) she yells, waking up my dad and drawing in my brother and godmother as if they were a flock of birds that had just found bread.

Terrified, my godmother yells at my brother, "Por que lo aventaste de la cama?!" (why did you throw him off the bed?!)

"No era mi culpa!!" (It wasn't my fault!!) my brother shouts back at her, still shocked by what he sees. All while I was there, on the bed, crying, eating my waffle.

After this, I blacked out. I do have flashes of the hospital and being on the bed while being rushed to a surgery room to get the toothpick taken out. I also remember the ride home after the surgery with this tight brace around my knee, being carried back into this apartment by my dad in the middle of the night. The surgery left an entertaining story on the only scar I have on my knee. The fall sparked an argument for the ages between us, whether it was my godmother's fault for not picking up her toothpick or my brother's fault for pushing me off the bed. To this day, the argument is still brought up every once in a while. It never has an ending; by the end, we never decide whose fault it was. 

It didn't matter to me who was blamed for my injury. At this point, I couldn't sleep comfortably for years because of the constant fear of falling off my bed. My godmother stopped chewing on her toothpicks, and every time we went to sleep, she would place blankets around the bed. To make sure I was secure even if I fell off the bed. Whenever the topic comes up, we end up just laughing about it. Though deep down, we all know that was a pretty serious and traumatic experience. This laughter became a cushion in a way. Something that I could rely on to get through challenging and traumatic situations. Finding the humor in things became my way of "letting it go."