Ding Dong!

 Inside the grey house on fourth street, a walk-in pantry lived to the left of and under the secret steps going upstairs. It’s shelves were many in as much as the pantry had a high ceiling. The top shelf was unobtainium. Or, Ding Dongs if you prefer the product name. Mom kept all the unobtainium up on the top shelf. Out of reach for children under eight years. Even if the three of them worked together to get a step ladder unfolded, pushed into the pantry, and lined up under the Ding Dongs. I know. We tried.

 High ceilings can sometimes feel like they are working against you. Here we are in a house full of magic stairs, ceilings for miles, bedrooms of books and yet, the Ding Dongs are on the top shelf of the pantry too tall. Even if three daughters drag a footstool into the pantry, pull the cushions from the couch and stack them on the footstool, and then try to climb the cushions to reach the Ding Dongs. I know. We tried.

 That’s when being yourself is the best you can ever be. High ceilings give you space. You give yourself the rocket fuel to fly. After we put the cushions back on the couch incorrectly the three of us ran back to the pantry to gaze up and consider our goals. Cindy cracked jokes about our problem. Cindy has used humor since the day she first drooled a word that sounded somewhat like language. I know. I laughed at her.

 “That didn’t work. It was a ding dong idea.” Priceless, my sister Cindy is priceless.

 Kimmy, being the littlest, had no clue of the enormity of the current attempts. She had no idea it could lead to trouble. She had no idea we were breaking an untold number of rules at every attempt. Even being inside the pantry was a vault break-in. 

 “Boring! Let’s go outside.” She gazed upon what we gazed upon, and yet did not fathom the extra special flavor of Ding Dongs taken.

 I was the oldest. Mom made it clear it was up to me to teach Cindy and Kim. To lead them into the promised land of good behavior. We were on the crazy train to ruin at the moment. 

 You might be wondering where our parents were on the afternoon of the Ding Dong Incident. Dad was at work. Mom was not on our floor. She was busy upstairs making beds and general maintenance for a family of five. High Ceilings mean sound barriers. The pantry was under the staircase leading to the bathroom on the second floor that was at the end of the hallway farthest away from any bed in the process of being made. By my calculations, we had a good long enough to snag three Ding Dongs.

 “We can’t get up to the box. We need the box to get down to us.” I looked at Cindy and grinned. She looked back at me as if Santa had proclaimed Christmas Day to now be Christmas Year.

 “Yeah.” She didn’t actually say the word, but exhaled it slowly. “Yeeeeeeeaaahhh. KNOCK IT DOWN!” She ended her revelation with an admonition.

 “KNOCK IT DOWN!” Kimmy shouted a second to the motion. Loudly.

 “Shhh!! Be quiet! Mom’s gonna hear you!” My whisper rasped against the back of my throat while my teeth clenched. Ninjas my sisters were not.

 “What are you girls doing down there?” Mom’s first warning tone. The one that means she’s not coming down, but is aware that she is closer to coming down than she was before the shouts. Call it a professional courtesy.

 Like a choir in church on Saturday evening we sang, “Nothing!” And then we crouched and waited. Cockroaches in pigtails. I held my finger to my lips indicating shut up. My sister's eyes watered; they were so wide. I looked up to the Ding Dongs promising a plan. I looked at Kimmy. My baby sister needing food. I looked at Cindy who was laughing to herself. Obviously delirious from starvation. It was up to me to save them both. Mom’s voice didn’t return. First warning tone. We only had one more try. There was no third.

 We stepped out of the pantry in silence. Stuck on ideas. My sisters gazed up through the open door. Lost in thoughts. I gazed around the kitchen for one last maximum effort. The broom.

 “Cindy, get the broom.” I waited. Order delivered. Ready to initiate Ding Dong Box Knockout.

 “No.” Cindy giggled.

 “No? Get the broom I’m going to knock the box down. You catch the box when it falls.” The plan was flawless.

 “You get the broom.” She giggled into her hand. Kimmy squinted at the broom then took after it like a squirrel on a nut.

 “I’ll get it!” She did not whisper. She had no clue we were about to break another three hundred rules. I cringed and waited for the second warning tone. Cindy giggled and shook her head watching Kimmy retrieve the broom. Kimmy was five. I had not started doing the math on that until she banged the table with the broom, then bumped the cabinet below the toaster. Loudly.

 I cringed further. Waiting. I also crouched toward the back door. I could get to the sandbox just in time to look like I wasn’t here before. No sounds from mom, though.

 “Here!” Kimmy handed me the bristle end of the broom because she had grabbed a fist full of bristles rather than the wooden handle which is why the broom fell over hitting the table to bounce to bang a cabinet. Cindy giggled and patted Kimmy’s head.

 I rolled my eyes taking the broom handle. “Okay. Look. Kimmy. Stay. Here.” I spoke in one word sentences now. The weighted threat of solitary confinement breathing down my neck. Kimmy ran off into the living room.

 “Okay. Cindy. I’ll knock down the box. You catch it. Okay?” More words for a sister that’s seven.

 “Okay.” She giggled and we headed back into the pantry. The broom was just long enough for me to knock the box off the shelf with the bristle end. It fell between Cindy’s outstretched hands and bounced off her head.

 “My head went DING DONG!” Cindy convulses in giggles. Kimmy comes running in from the living room, each hand holding one end of a broken red crayon. For balance.

 “DING DONG!” She dropped the crayons and held her hands out.

“WHAT is all that running around down there?” Mom. She was now at the top of the stairs. Her voice carried clear to our location. She was two left turns away.

 I glared at my sisters growling through clenched teeth. Big sister shut up. “Nothing! We’re just getting some stuff to take outside. And ...play in the sandbox!”

 “Yeah, in the sandbox! DONG DING!!” Kimmy looked at Cindy. Her attempt at making her big sister laugh. Cindy screwed up her face and stuck out her tongue. 

 “Do not leave the backyard. I’m almost done up here. I’ll make you lunch soon.”

 “Okay!” A sloppy chorus from sloppy sisters committing sloppier crimes.

 I handed out their Ding Dongs. And realized our problem just got worse. There was no way to hide the crime. There was no way to put the box back. My sisters bolted outside banging the screen deck door behind them. Leaving me holding the bag, as it were. The box was half empty. I set my Ding Dong on a shelf behind me and thought. I leaned back into the shelves and knocked a box of crackers off. It lay on the floor with an unopened sleeve slightly hanging out. Being a projectile and all. I picked up the box and pushed in the sleeve and slipped the cardboard lid locked. The box was too close to the edge and ...wait a minute.

 I ran to the kitchen window to see where my sisters were. In the sandbox having already eaten their Ding Dongs. I ran back to mine left on the shelf. And I staged a Ding Dong Box Accident. I dropped the box near where it fell on Cindy’s head. The box was dented, and a Ding Dong halfway rolled out. I left it all like that. And ran outside with my Ding Dong. Bugs Bunny did something like this once. To fool Elmer Fudd. It had to work.

 It didn’t exactly work, work. What did work was the lack of pure evidence. Mom hadn’t counted the Ding Dongs and didn’t know just how many should have been there. Cindy and Kim had already eaten theirs and had thrown their wrappers in the neighbor’s garbage can she’d left out on the back stoop. It was easier than coming back into the house, closer to the sandbox. I ate mine out in the garden while hunting for caterpillars, my standing orders from dad. I always leave the found caterpillars on the other side of the alley in our neighbor’s garden. They had a garbage can nearby for my wrapper.

 When mom called us in for lunch we had all been in the sandbox for a good half hour. The three of us agreed over shovels of sand that if mom asked anything, we knew nothing. I specifically instructed Kimmy to take a big bite of sandwich and then shrug her shoulders. Cindy said she would pretend there were no Ding Dongs. I suggested it may come off as sketchy. Best to just say, “I don’t know.” I would do the same. No matter what, eat lunch. And look busy doing it.

 We sat down in our places. Half a bologna sandwich, bowl of chicken soup, and a plate with iceberg lettuce with half a pear nestled. In the center of the pear, a dollop of cream cheese. I still make that pear and cream cheese iceberg lettuce for myself. We ate quietly. Submerging spoons into white glass bowls filled with soup.

 “How did the box of Ding Dongs get knocked down?” Mom had her back to us. Standing at the counter making her own lunch. I looked over to Cindy, who looked at Kimmy, who giggled and shouted, “DING DONG!” She laughed through her top teeth while chicken noodles hung over her bottom lip. 

 “I don’t know.” Cindy, sticking to the plan. Unfortunately, her I don’t know came out with a question mark at the end. She slapped her hand over her mouth. I suppose when all else is lost, do that.

 I said nothing. Leaving my sisters to flounder. Thinking, sharks eat the floundering fish, not the quiet ones. I read that in a book. We continued eating. Kimmy sucked in her hanging noodles. Cindy released her face.

 Mom turned around and leaned against the counter. She was eating her sandwich. Looking from one daughter to another, then out the window. She seemed relaxed. As though the matter had lost interest for her and she was onto something else.

 “Well, I suppose you three won’t need your Ding Dong snacks today. Considering you had them early.”

 THE BROOM. I didn’t put the broom back. I’d left it in the pantry leaning in the corner. I ate faster. Cindy looked at me. I looked at her. Kimmy looked at no one. She just swung her legs to bump her chair in a rhythm, humming with noodles in her mouth. Blissful ignorance. She was too young to be held accountable. Too young to care about Ding Dong counts.

 Not another word was spoken about the incident. We cleared our lunches and put our plates on the counter near the sink. We were heading back outside. Or better, Kimmy was already outside and it seemed like a good option.

 “Kathy, you forgot to put the broom back. Would you please, before you go back out?” Mom looked at me and smiled.

 I smiled. It seemed like the right move. “Okay.”

 Mom, daughter of a Radium Girl. A Paquette on top of that. And married Kinzer. She had already weighed it all out in her head from the moment she grabbed bread and soup from the pantry, after moving the broom out of the way. She decided what she was willing to get into to prove her point. As a solid Paquette she simply wanted all three of us to know, she knew. She would always know. Knowing was her job. And she was a professional.