dropping muffin

by Kymberlee Rosen

Excerpted from The Little Things.

When I was six years old, Mom, my two brothers—Dodd, ten years old, and Brad, eight—and I ran away from our abusive, no-good, cheating father. Over the next two years, we bounced around Milwaukee, always staying one jump ahead of bill collectors. Eventually, we left the city and moved to a row of townhouses on the outskirts of Cedarburg, a small, stuck-in-the-past town about thirty miles northwest of Milwaukee. Cedarburg has since leaned into its out-datedness by rebranding itself as “historic.” Now it’s a trendy weekend haunt for well-to-do Chicagoans escaping the hustle and bustle. But back then, it was a run-of-the-mill town (complete with an actual, if no longer working, woolen mill) in the middle of what might be referred to as Bum-Fuck, Wisconsin. There was a bakery, a butcher shop, and Paulus’s (the corner grocery store), a bank, a library, and a movie house. Doc Weber still made house calls, and nothing was open on Sundays and holidays. And, like any small midwestern town, there was a good part of town and a not-so-good part. We lived in the not-so-good part.

Our new townhouse was almost exactly like the one we just left in the city, but the yard was better kept, there wasn’t as much traffic rushing by on the street out front, and the train tracks (there were always train tracks in the neighborhoods we could afford) were about a block away and not right across the street anymore, so the rumbling clickity-clack at night was softer. Behind our group of townhouses was a construction site where another apartment complex was being built, and next to that, a wide swath of undeveloped land. I could explore for hours in the dry scrub grass and weeds that came up to my waist, picking wildflowers, and hunting for bugs, snakes, and field mice. Stretching for ten miles or so beyond that was farmland and forest before you came to Thiensville, the next town over.

Ginny Bonzon and her three kids—Stephanie, Jimmy, and Baby Nicki—lived in the other half of our townhouse. Ginny was also getting divorced, and within a month, Mom and Ginny were best friends. Three years later, Ginny and her kids moved to St. Louis to be close to Ginny’s parents—but it didn’t matter. By that time, Mom and Ginny were no longer best friends, they were sisters. Even after they moved, we still saw them as often as the seven-hour drive permitted, and Mom and Ginny talked on the phone at least once a week (usually more) for hours at a time. I still make a point of going to St. Louis to visit Steph at least once a year, even though both Mom and Ginny are gone now.

Steph and Jimmy, and the boys and I were constantly in each other’s side of the townhouse, almost like we were one big family, six kids and two moms. We didn’t look anything like family, though. Mom, the boys, and I were all tall and blond, with blue eyes and pale skin. Ginny’s parents were Sicilian immigrants, and her ex-husband was of Italian descent, too, so all of them had black-brown hair and eyes, dark skin, broad faces, and were much shorter than us.

The only one of us on our side that looked even remotely Sicilian was Mom because, at that time, her naturally blond hair was Clairol 4B—dark, chestnut brown. Ginny had dyed Mom’s hair at the kitchen table during one of their Wine and Whines (that’s what they called their late-night drinks at the kitchen table) while they complained about court orders, how expensive gas was getting, and how sad it was that the Haight-Ashbury summer of love had ended in violent riots.

One time, I came into the kitchen to get a glass of water right when Mom was saying that my father had told the judge he shouldn’t have to pay child support if he never got to see his children. He was an advertising executive (a real Don Draper prototype) and I’m sure he sold his devastation and suffering like he was selling a pawned diamond ring. I’m also sure that was just another tactic he’d dreamt up to get out of giving Mom any money—he was so good at twisting facts and turning himself into the victim to get what he wanted—but this time, the judge wasn’t buying. Instead of telling Father that he wouldn’t have to pay, the judge ordered weekly visits. Outside the courthouse Father was furious because he couldn’t stand to lose. But Mom knew we were the ones who lost; we were the ones who would have to pay.

By then, Father had married Sandy (the woman he’d been sleeping with while Mom was burying her father). They’d almost immediately had a baby, and for reasons I didn’t understand at the time (and frankly, I still don’t), they had also moved to Cedarburg—the good part.

The first time the boys and I went over to Father’s new house didn’t really count because we were there less than an hour. Mom had driven us all the way across town to the fancy new subdivision where Father and Sandy had bought, of course, the nicest house on their block. All the houses on Father’s street were lined up like cookie boxes on the grocery store shelf. Each one had a white mailbox at the curb next to a walkway that led up to the front door. There were two-car garages, and extra-wide, cement driveways with no potholes or ruts – perfect for skateboarding or jumping rope. Some of the houses were brick, some wood, all of them with shutters on the windows that could be closed to contain their suburban secrets. Father’s house was brick on the bottom, white on top with a yellow garage door, yellow shutters, and red poppies in the garden under the big living room window like a bow on the perfect present.

Mom didn’t get out of the car, just let us out at the end of the driveway. We stood there and looked at the house. It was huge and I thought it must have at least twenty bedrooms (for the record it had four, plus a family room and office on the first floor, which could have been bedrooms, too), but no matter how many bedrooms it had, I thought it was a mansion.

Father came out of the house and walked quickly down the driveway, but Mom drove off before he reached the curb. I ran toward Father and let myself hope he would pick me up, swing me toward the sky like he used to, but this time he put his hand out like a traffic cop to stop me.

“You are too old for this nonsense,” he snapped. “This ought to help you remember.” He flipped up the hem of my sundress and swung his arm back to swat my bottom, but I twisted at the last second and his meaty hand hit my bare thigh with a smack that stung like a rug burn.

I stood in the driveway, mouth agape with tears welling in my lashes. Father walked back into the house through the garage and Dodd, Brad, and I followed him into the kitchen. “Stay here,” he said and left the room. We had no idea what to do, so we sat at the kitchen table and waited. The air felt close and tight like we were someplace we shouldn’t be, and I already wanted to go home. We sat there for what felt like an hour, but it was really only about ten or fifteen minutes. It turned out that Father was waiting for Mom to get back to our apartment so he could call her. He told her he’d just received a call about a last-minute emergency meeting with clients, and that he’d have to leave for the day. He told her to come back and get us.

Sandy made us stand quietly in the foyer while we waited for Mom to come back because she didn’t want us to wake the baby or make a mess. Sandy watched us from across the room like we had an odor and I wondered why Father wanted us to come but didn’t want us there. I guess it was just one more way to assert control. When Mom came back, Father blamed her for the trouble. He said he had come out to explain but that she had driven off before he could get to the car. Mom just clenched her teeth and told us kids to get in the car. Father leaned in Dodd’s open window, apologized like he wasn’t really sorry, and promised us kids we could spend the next Saturday in his brand-new, above-ground swimming pool.

Almost every night after dinner, Dodd, Brad, Steph, Jimmy, and I would watch Get Smart, or Bewitched, or The Beverly Hillbillies, and when we couldn’t agree on a show, we’d play board games like Life, Chutes and Ladders, or Mystery Date. Sometimes we’d listen to 45s that we’d cut off the backs of cereal boxes and jump around swinging our fists up and down like we were go-go dancers.

In the summer, when we didn’t have school, we were allowed to play outside till the streetlights came on. We’d often go down to the playground at the end of our subdivision, and while the rest of us tried to launch ourselves into space on the swings, Brad sat on the top of the slide and told stories in vivid detail about how some kid at school found a thumb in his hot dog because an Oscar Meyer factory worker got it caught in the meat grinding machine, how Paul McCartney was dead and the new Paul was really just a look-alike, or that a babysitter in Kansas murdered the kids she was watching because they didn’t go to bed on time.

One night, Steph came running over to our side after dinner. She had been bugging her mom to get a cat, and that day, Ginny finally gave in. She’d brought home a stripey orange kitten the size of a navel orange named Muffin.

All us kids (except of course Nicki, who was still a baby) went over on their side to play with Muffin while the moms hung out in our kitchen. We sat in a circle on the living room floor and took turns holding Muffin. Finally, it was my turn. I snuggled the tiny helpless ball of fluff under my chin and cooed like a pigeon in her big ears. That’s when Jimmy decided it’d be fun to drop her down the clothes chute from the second floor to the basement.

“Ha, ha. Very funny,” I said.

Dodd got really quiet, his eyes drifted to the right and toward the ceiling for a minute as he worked out the logistics, and then he said, “Me and Brad’ll go down to the basement, open the crate at the bottom and hold a blanket by the corners like firemen do when someone jumps out of a burning building.”

“Guys, no,” I said. I got up and pulled Muffin even closer under my chin and closed my hands around her.

Jimmy didn’t need any more convincing. He leapt to his feet, shouted, “Steph, get the cat!” over his shoulder, and bounded up the stairs two at a time. Dodd and Brad headed to the basement.

I turned my back to Steph, pulled my shoulders around Muffin, but Steph kicked me in the back of my leg. I fell to my knees and dropped Muffin. Before I could scoop her back to safety, Steph snatched her up and followed Jimmy to the clothes chute on the second floor. She had a good head start but I gave chase.

Jimmy stood in the hall. The look in his eyes was like the Riddler on Batman—joyful and scary at the same time. The little door in the wall outside the bathroom was open, and before I reached the top of the stairs, Steph handed Muffin over. Jimmy dangled the helpless, mewling kitten in the opening of the chute. “On the count of three!” he yelled.

Dodd’s voice echoed up the tin tube. “Roger that.”

I pressed against Jimmy, reached into the opening, and tried to wrestle the kitten away, but Jimmy’s vise grip hands were clamped around her body. He rammed his elbow deep into my ribs and counted down. “Three, two…”

Steph pulled me back and wrapped her arms around my shoulders like the thick, leather straps that held Frankenstein’s monster to the table.

“Stop!” I screamed.

“One!” Jimmy shouted.

I pulled and strained, tried to get away. “You’re gonna kill her!”

Jimmy yelled, “Bombs away!” and opened his hands.

Muffin’s mew shrank as she fell. There were several dull thumps and then quiet. We all froze and strained to hear.

A couple of seconds passed and Brad shouted, “Did you drop her?”

With every ounce of frustration in me, I sunk my elbow into the soft bit of Steph’s body below her ribs just as Jimmy had done to me.

“Hey!” She pushed me forward and headed for the basement.

“Muffin never came out,” Dodd yelled.

Jimmy bent over and stuck his head into the chute. “I can’t see anything. Shine a flashlight up here, will ya? There’s one by the washing machine.” he shouted.

“Le’me see,” I said.

I pulled the back of Jimmy’s t-shirt, but he didn’t budge. Anger boiled inside me, and I balled up my fist and brought it down in the middle of his back. The force made his chest bow toward the floor and his head crank back, and whack the inside of the chute with a tinny thud.

“Ow!”

He stood up, one hand on the back of his head, and swung his fist wide. He hit me square in the shoulder. We stood still, staring each other down in a duel of might versus wit, and a faint mewl echoed up the chute.

“I hate you!” I screamed. I planted both of my hands on his chest and shoved him as hard as I could. He stumbled back several steps, and I leaned into the chute.

Dodd flicked the flashlight on below and, in the beam of yellow light, I saw the silhouette of the kitten hanging several feet down, just out of my reach, her claws stuck in one of the chute seams.

I tried to soothe her like Mom did for me when I was scared. “Hey, Muffin,” I sang. “It’s gonna be alright, baby.”

She turned her face toward me and her shiny eyes and little white teeth glinted when she opened her mouth to cry again.

“Why isn’t she falling?” Steph yelled up the chute.

“She’s stuck!” I said. “Her claws are caught in the seam!”

Jimmy yanked me back by the collar, twisted me out of the opening. “Get out of the way,” he said.

He spun me away down the hall and I turned back just in time to see him throw a sneaker down the chute. There was a loud echo when it bumped against the sides, down two stories.

“Hey!” Brad yelled. “You almost hit me!”

“Did it work?” Jimmy asked.

“Nope,” Dodd said.

“Gimme a sec,” Jimmy said and ran back to his room.

“No, Jimmy, don’t,” I said. “You’re gonna kill her!” I pulled my arm across my upper lip to wipe the snot away.

He came back with the other sneaker and leaned into the chute again. I grabbed hold of his t-shirt again and yanked as hard as I could. The unmistakable sound of ripping cut through the air, and I realized I’d pushed my fingers through the fabric of his shirt. A long piece of hem hung from my fists.

“Fuck off!” he yelled and kicked his foot back like a Viking battering ram, his heel catching me square in the belly.

I doubled over and fought to catch my breath. I needed to make them stop but I knew I couldn’t do it alone, so I ran down the stairs, through the living room and out the front door.

I was desperate because I felt like I was the one hanging in the dark and if I could save Muffin, then I could save me. I’m still trying to save the little kid in me that’s left hanging in the dark.

When I grabbed the handle of our front door, I remembered that Ginny always laid Nicki down in the living room while she and Mom sat in the kitchen and smoked their cigarettes, drank their wine, and confided all their worries to one another. I pressed the handle flapper and, as quietly as I could, pushed the door open with a soft shoosh. Sure enough, there was Nicki, bundled up in her pink and yellow blanket surrounded by pillows and cushions so that she wouldn’t accidentally roll off the sofa.

I tiptoed through the living room, through the dining room, and was ready to burst into the kitchen when Mom said, “I don’t know what to do.” Her voice was wobbly and she kept sniffling. I knew I shouldn’t have, but I listened. “The judge said I have to let him see the kids regularly.” She blew her nose and went on. “I don’t want him around Kim, but I also have to pay the rent and buy groceries, and school is starting again soon and the kids are gonna need school supplies and shoes.”

I held on to the door frame, bent forward, and turned my ear toward the kitchen. I was confused. Why was it just me she didn’t want to see Father? He was also cruel to the boys and so much time had passed, I barely remembered why we’d left. I thought we didn’t see him anymore because of his new family, but how was that my fault?

“She’ll be there though, right?” Ginny said.

“Sandy?” Mom said. “They have a new baby so, I would guess. Did I tell you they named him Peter?”

“Wasn’t that what you wanted to name Dodd?”

“That mother-fucker told me he would never have a child named Peter. He’s such an ass.”

“He wouldn’t dare do anything while Sandy is there though. Would he?”

“I don’t know. Apparently, he smacked Kim on the leg hard enough to leave a mark last week. Brad told me Dave gave her a spanking all because she wanted him to swing her up in the air.” Mom’s sigh was more like the beginning of a sob.

My face burned. I couldn’t believe Brad told her. I bit down so hard my head shook.

There was the soft tink of a bottleneck on a glass and Mom blew her nose again.

I didn’t understand all the details, but I was sure they didn’t want me hearing any of what they were talking about, so I coughed.

A chair scuffed back and Ginny whispered, “Take one more.”

When I came around the corner, a blue haze of smoke hung in the air. Ginny was holding up a box of tissues and Mom stood next to her. She stamped out her cigarette in an overflowing ashtray and pulled one of the tissues from the box, then turned to check her reflection in the window of the back door.

She dabbed at her eyes and pulled her cheeks up in a bright smile. “Hey, kiddo, do you need something,” she said and turned back to me.

Her face looked like a vase that had been broken and carefully glued back together. For a second, I forgot what was so urgent and then I looked at Ginny. Steph looked so much like her that it came back in a flash.

“Jimmy threw Muffin down the clothes chute and now she’s stuck and he’s throwing shoes down trying to make her come out.”

“What?” both moms said.

I started crying and the words tumbled out in an avalanche. “I tried to stop them really, but Jimmy just threw her down and now Dodd and Brad and Steph are shining a light up from the basement and Jimmy is throwing sneakers down trying to make her fall the rest of the way, but her claws are stuck, and she’s not coming out!”

Mom yanked open the back door, the half curtain at the top swung wildly.

“Stay with the baby,” Ginny said and both moms ran out. The kitchen door on the other side of the double patio opened at the same time our screen door smacked shut, and both Ginny and Mom started yelling. I went back into the living room, sat in the chair across from the sofa, and watched Nicki sleep. She seemed so peaceful, her long black lashes flitted and fluttered as her eyes rolled back and forth under her closed eyelids. Her mouth pursed in a kiss as she sucked dream milk from a dream bottle. She had no idea what her brother and sister were like. I hoped they wouldn’t try to throw her down the chute one day.

I’m not sure how long I sat there, but I know it was a while before Mom came back followed closely by Dodd and Brad. They walked single file into the living room. Mom stopped at the foot of the stairs, held her arm out, and pointed up the stairs like the Grim Reaper pointing the way to damnation. Each boy marched past, head bowed and went up the stairs without a word. Before Dodd and Brad rounded the landing, they looked back, anger flashed in their eyes, and they each shot down a threatening glare. I was sure they were gonna pound me good for snitching, but I didn’t care. I would give as good as I got.

“Is Muffin ok?” I asked.

“Yes,” Mom said. “I was able to stretch my arm just enough to reach her and she’s safe in Ginny’s bedroom.”

“Are they in Dutch?” I pointed up the stairs.

“They are grounded for a week.”

“I’m sorry I snitched. I know I’m not s’posed to.”

“Well,” she said. She scooched me over with her hip and squeezed into the armchair next to me. “Sometimes you have to break the rules. Especially when someone might get hurt.”

“Or some kitten, too,” I said.

“Or some kitten.”

Just then Ginny came in from the kitchen. She tightened Nicki’s blanket around her, picked her up, and softly patted her bottom. Ginny turned and smiled at me. “Thanks for watching her,” she said.

Mom bent over and kissed me on the head. “You’d better get to bed, too,” she said. “You’re going over to Father’s tomorrow.”

I looked at her and her smile felt fake. “Do we have to?” I asked.

“It’ll be fun,” she said, but I could tell she didn’t really believe that and neither did I.

About the author:

Kymberlee Rosen is a fiction writer with an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University. This is an excerpt from her upcoming autofiction book, The Little Things (working title). Her work can be found in sneaker wave magazine, and Mobius: The Journal of Social Change. She and her husband live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Now that their two children are grown and flown, they share their home with a dumb but loveable dog and their two feline overlords.