Page 15 of The Light Year (Stardust Beach #6)

barbie

. . .

"The doctor wants me to have some sort of x-ray," Todd says, tossing his briefcase onto the couch dejectedly. He flops down next to it, letting his head fall back as he stretches out his legs with a deep sigh. "I feel fine, Barbie. I don't know what he wants from me."

Barbie, who has been kneading bread in the kitchen, wipes her hands on her apron as she stands over Todd with a worried frown. She puts a hand to her husband's forehead as if he might have a fever or something.

"Well, honey," Barbie says, sitting down next to him and pushing his briefcase to the side. "I think we have to trust him if he sees a reason for an x-ray. Have you been feeling anything strange?"

Todd closes his eyes for a long beat and then opens them again, focusing on Barbie. "During the day, I feel fine, but when I get up from the bed in the morning, everything is still spinning," he says, looking pained to have to admit this.

Barbie sucks in a breath. "Why haven't you told me?"

Todd shrugs, looking so much like his teenage self that Barbie wants to lean in and kiss him.

"I didn't want you to worry," he says. "You're busy with the kids and the house, and when I was off work, I realized that you already had your hands completely full. You don't need me underfoot, and to be perfectly honest, I get bored being at home all day."

He at least has the good sense to look apologetic when he says this, but Barbie still rears back, all thoughts of kissing him gone.

"Oh?" she says. "My life is boring to you?"

"No," Todd says, realizing that he's said the wrong thing. "No, no, no. It's fine for you, Barbie, but I need to be out of the house doing something. I need to be contributing to the world."

Barbie sits there for about twenty seconds, stunned, looking into her gorgeous, amazing husband's earnest blue eyes, and then she stands up again, looking down at him with both hands on her hips.

"Are you actually telling me that being a good mother isn't somehow contributing to the world?

You think I do nothing around here?" Her voice is high-pitched and screechy, and angry tears prick at the back of her eyeballs.

"You've got some nerve, Todd. Calling women's work unimportant," she says in a huff, turning and walking away.

Before she reaches the kitchen, she turns back to him, untying the belt of her apron as she stares him down.

"You think what I do around here is so mind-numbing and dull that you're above it?

Well, guess what, Mr. Roman? Sometimes it's the same thing for me.

Who made these rules anyway? Who decided that women have to do all the grunt work, while the men get to go out into the world and 'contribute'? "

Todd's face has fallen, and he's watching his wife in disbelief, looking as though he expects her to admit at any moment that the joke’s on him— ha ha, your wife is just playing at being mad, Todd Roman !

Only she's not. Barbie yanks the apron off over her head and balls it up in both hands before tossing it at Todd. The light yellow fabric falls open on his lap, draping over his knee as he stares at it open-mouthed.

"If you think my job is stupid, then you do it for a while!"

Todd sits upright, lifting the apron off his lap and looking at it like it's a foreign object. "Barb..." he says. "That's not what I meant."

"Well, that's sure what you said." Barbie is now standing in the archway between the living room and the foyer, and her chest is heaving with the exertion of her emotions. "And you know what? I get bored sometimes too.”

Todd still looks like he’s waiting for the punchline of a joke. “So… what—are you going to volunteer at the hospital with Jo Booker?”

Barbie can hear the disbelief in his voice, and she doesn’t like it. She and Todd rarely fight or even disagree, but this feels fundamental. This feels as though, if she doesn’t stand her ground now, she’ll eventually have no ground left to stand on at all.

“I might, Todd,” Barbie says. “But first I’m going to volunteer at the First Baptist Church of the Gospel.”

Todd laughs like she’s making a joke. “The what?”

“You heard me.”

“But… Barbie. Is that a—is it a?—“

“A Black church?” Barbie lifts an eyebrow.

She knows that Todd, at his core, is a loving man who believes in the equality of all humans, but she’s also aware that he, much like everyone else she knows, is a product of his time.

The thought of his wife giving her time at a church in a part of town where they might not otherwise drive is undoubtedly a hard pill to swallow.

“Yes, Todd. It is a Black church. And I went there with Carrie and we packed meals in the kitchen with the women parishioners.”

The smile falls away from Todd’s face. “You’re serious? You did this?”

Barbie gives a curt nod. “I did. I went there, and it was wonderful. The people. The mission. The camaraderie… I loved all of it.” She pauses, expecting Todd to object and tell her she is, under no circumstances, to go there again.

But instead, he just watches her face, looking at his wife like he’s meeting her for the first time.

“Okay, Barb,” he says, turning his palms to the ceiling. “Do what you need to do. I trust you.”

This stops Barbie in her tracks; she’d been prepared to fight tooth and nail to make Todd see how important it is for her to give something of herself in this world.

But now he’s just looking at her with eyes of acceptance.

And maybe a little pride. He trusts her to decide, and Barbie feels validated.

She is also not quite as surprised as she might have been, because she’s known all along that the man she married is good and loving.

“Right,” Barbie says, her indignant attitude somewhat deflated. “Okay then.”

“Will Huck go with you?” Todd frowns slightly.

“This time I asked Maryanne Justice to watch him for a few hours,” Barbie admits, tipping her head in the direction of the neighbors who live diagonally across the street from the Romans.

Maryanne has two small children of her own, and she’d been fine with watching Huck as well, but that’s not a permanent solution.

“The church has a daycare room and several of the other women brought their little ones along. I thought it might be good for Huck to meet some kids who… well, who don’t look like him and his brothers,” she says, holding her head high.

“It was a big, formative part of my life to get to know the people my parents employed, and to understand that they didn’t live or look like us. ”

At this, Todd narrows his eyes slightly, and it’s clear that he’s thinking about his words before he says them.

“I can appreciate that, Barbie, but don’t forget that you’re not there to save anyone.

No one needs a savior to swoop in. And I think it’s also important to point out that, while your parents certainly paid a rainbow of people to work at your house, those were not your friends.

They were paid employees, and you saw only what they let you see when it came to their lives. ”

This is a sobering thing to hear, and Barbie can feel her cheeks turning pink. “Of course,” she says defensively. “I know that.”

Todd leans back on the couch again, closing his eyes, and Barbie knows that this discussion is done.

It had gone better than she’d imagined, and yet she still has a strange feeling in her chest as she remembers Winnie and Neville and Etan and every other non-white person who had worked in her household as she’d grown up.

In her mind, this had always been a way for Barbie to see her parents as welcoming all kinds of people into their home, and she’s suddenly realizing how naive that was of her to feel that way.

After all, Winnie and Neville weren’t there as guests, and she knew the staff used a different door than anyone else who came to visit.

And, of course, Barbie couldn’t forget how Neville was summarily dismissed just for helping a little girl to a couple of cookies at bedtime.

As she goes about her own kitchen duties that evening, keeping one eye on Todd to see if he exhibits any signs of being dizzy or faint, and keeping the rest of her attention on the boys as they play in the backyard, Barbie wonders if perhaps her own altruism is really nothing more than a way to pay penance for the deeply buried feeling she’s always held in her heart, the one that nags at her and reminds her it was all her fault.

That she’d done something bad to get a man fired, and that, no matter what she did now, nothing could truly right the wrongs that had gone on under the roof of her own childhood home.

The back doors of the church kitchen are propped open by bricks, and the women are stacking, boxing, and carrying individual care packages of canned food out to the bed of a waiting pickup truck.

Barbie and Carrie are there again, with their heads covered by scarves that are folded into triangles and tied at the napes of their necks, and their feet in flat canvas shoes for comfort.

Barbie is pleased to see that her hands are covered in dirt and grime as she sorts the dusty cans and jars people have pulled from their shelves and cabinets and donated to the cause.

“Make sure you wipe those down good, baby,” Eartha says, walking behind Barbie and pausing to examine a banged-up looking batch of canned goods.

“Someone did us a kindness of donating things from their own kitchen, but Lord knows we don’t need to be delivering a bunch of dirty stuff to old Mrs. Ingram and making her feel like a charity case. ”

Never mind that what they’re doing is charity; Barbie has quickly come to see their work less as an act of pity, and more of an act of love.

Each week, the church provides goods—meals, canned foods, hygiene products like toothpaste and toilet paper, and used books and magazines for entertainment—to a list of people who, for various reasons, cannot leave their own homes.