Page 9 of The Light Year

“I would never,” the first woman said. “Not even for all this.”

They both looked around, taking in the fine furniture, the heavy brocade curtains that Marion Mackey insisted the staff take down once a month to clean, and the shining piano in one corner of the room.

“She came from nothing, you know.”

The second woman pursed her lips and gave the smallest shake of her head. “I heard she was a college dropout?—“

“College?” The first woman sounded horrified. “Why would a woman that beautiful be going to college?”

“To be anurse,” the other woman said, putting emphasis on the word nurse as if it were just a hair more respectable than being a lady of the night.

“Oh my.” The first woman, older by a decade, put a hand to her chest and looked scandalized. “And did he pay for her to finish college?”

The other woman laughed, but it sounded mean. “Well, he got her in a family way as soon as possible, so I don’t think she had much choice about going back to college, but also why should she? She has all this.” She swept a hand around, indicating house, servants, children.

“Hmph,” the other woman said, finally catching sight of Barbie and lifting an eyebrow. The women moved away as a unit just as the string quartet launched into Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden.”

Barbie wandered on, stopping to eat a tiny pastry that she discovered too late was filled with meat instead of sweet jelly or custard. Barbie made a face, but chewed and swallowed the hors d’oeuvre like she’d been taught to do.

The kitchen doors swung open as she drew near, and Barbie heard the clatter of pans and the rapid-fire discussion between cooks and servers as they prepared and plated the food. She stood just outside as the warmth of the ovens and the stovefiltered out into the hallway. Schubert was muted, but she could still hear it in the distance.

“Missus done fired him?” came a woman’s voice that Barbie couldn’t quite place.

“Mmm, no. Not missus—the senator did.”

Barbie knew that voice—it was Winnie’s. She bit the inside of her cheek, waiting.

“Why he do that?” the first woman asked. “Neville always do what he’s asked.”

“Yes, he does,” Winnie said. “He always did.” There was disappointment in Winnie’s voice, though Barbie could not see her face. She’d known Winnie and Neville her entire life, and even without seeing Winnie’s face, she could imagine how she looked.

“So why the senator man go and fire him?”

Winnie clucked her tongue in a way that was more than familiar to Barbie. “He stole cookies for little miss last night and let her eat in the kitchen here at midnight. Missus said no to that. Said little miss was to go to bed hungry. Senator didn’t like him disobeying.”

There was a sharp intake of breath, and for the briefest pause, the clattering and movement stopped short. Even Barbie, who wasn’t supposed to be lingering outside the kitchen and spying, had a moment of clarity: Neville was because of her. A man who had worked for her father for over a decade was sent away over something that minor. To Barbie, it was a feeling that life and everything about it were impermanent. For the people in the kitchen (Barbie realized much later in life, as she looked back on this moment), it was the realization that job security and loyalty did not exist when you worked for a white man.

“Anyway,” Winnie said with a clap of her hands. “We got work here. Get this food on the plates, or we’ll all be fired.”

There was laughter in the kitchen, but it was utterly joyless. Barbie didn’t want to hear anymore. In fact, she’d heard quite enough for the entire evening, and rather than rejoin the birthday party in the main rooms, she crept up the stairs of the West Wing and into her own bedroom, closing the door softly. Instead of being there while her mother blew out thirty-two candles on her birthday cake, Barbie sat on the floor in front of her dollhouse, playing quietly.

In the scenario she created there, everyone was happy. No one had money, and no one went without. No one got fired for being nice to children, and everyone got birthday cake and cookies. Lots and lots of birthday cake and cookies.

The patter of tiny hands against the glass of the patio doors brings Barbie back to the present. Little Huck is there inside their house on Stardust Beach, smacking the window with both pudgy hands. Carrie jumps up from her chair across the table from Barbie and opens the door for him.

“Hey, buddy,” Carrie says, reaching out both hands for him and picking him up easily. She rests Huck on one hip and slides the door closed again to keep the cool air inside. “Want to come out here with us?”

Barbie smiles at her friend gratefully, and she watches how easily Carrie leads Huck over to a spot in the shade under a palm tree, setting him down with the truck he has in his hands.

“I do want to help out anywhere I can,” Barbie says to Carrie definitively. “I want to join you at a march or help at the church—anything, really. It matters to me.”

Carrie stands upright after getting Huck settled, smoothing the front of her homemade peasant dress with both hands. She looks at Barbie like she’s seeing her with fresh eyes. “Yeah?” she says with a smile. “Okay, then. Let’s get you out there, girl. I’ve got a few things cooking, and I know I’ve got something you can be a part of.”

This sits right with Barbie; she knows she has something to offer the cause—whatever that cause may be. With a satisfied grin, she leans back in her chair and picks up her now-cold coffee, smiling at her little boy as he drives his truck up the trunk of the palm tree. If nothing else, Barbie will do as her mother did for her: she’ll set an example for her children. She’ll show them what it means to give and to do and to be more than the world thinks you are.

And she’ll start right now.

bill

---