Page 22 of The Light Year

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 shedid 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 doingischarity; 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.

The first week Barbie had volunteered for this process, Father Watkins’ son, Sam, had been behind the wheel of the truck, and Barbie had sat in the passenger seat with Huck between them as they’d driven around the neighborhood, stopping at various houses so that Sam could run up to thedoor with a box for Mrs. Ingram, whose only son had died in Korea and who couldn’t get to the grocery store because of her diabetes; so that they could deliver a box to Mr. and Mrs. Younger, who both had trouble remembering where their house was any time they left it, and so the church had decided it was far safer to bring the items to them; and to make sure that old Mr. Wilson, who couldn’t hear a word they said, had food to eat because he hadn’t left the house since 1959, when his wife died and left him a childless widower.

The whole process is one that Barbie loves, and some weeks she delivers with Sam, while other weeks she boxes items and loads them into the truck. And occasionally, like now, she simply cleans the donations off and sorts them out, which gives her a chance to really think about what they have to offer all these people, and how important it is to be a part of something bigger than herself. And even though Huck spends most of the time she’s there playing with blocks and trucks with a little group of other children who, as Barbie expected, look nothing like him, she hopes that someday he’ll remember the time they spent at the church, and that he’ll understand how important it is to give things to the world instead of just taking from it.

“Well, this is looking like an excellent selection,” Sam says, his deep voice pulling Barbie out of her thoughts. She’s on her knees in front of a pyramid of dented cans, wiping each one down with a damp rag. When she looks up at Sam’s tall figure, her eyes land on his sparkling eyes, and she smiles.

“We got a whole load of homemade jams and canned fruits,” Barbie says, smiling even wider as he puts his hands on his narrow hips and assesses the donations. “I think that will be a nice change, being able to throw something sweet into some of the boxes.”

“Oh, you know it will,” Sam says, shaking his head at the generosity of their parishioners, which is something she’s seenhim do repeatedly. “Doesn’t matter how old or young people are, we all love a bit of jam on some bread, or that sweet taste of pears in syrup after we finish our dinner. Right?”

Barbie pushes herself up to a standing position and brushes her hands together. “Absolutely,” she agrees. “I’ve never met a person who didn’t like dessert.”

A look passes over Sam’s face that she can’t quite name, but just as quickly as it arrives, Sam claps his hands, rearranges his expression, and looks over to where Eartha is giving Sam’s sister, Betty, a dressing-down over putting too many cans of creamed corn in Mr. Wilson’s box. Sam chuckles. “Miss Eartha does not suffer fools,” he says, shaking his head with amusement just as he’d shaken it before in awe over the generosity of the donations.

Barbie reaches for the rag she’s been using to wipe the cans and twists it in her hands. “Hey, Sam,” she says hesitantly. “Can I ask you something?”

The women in the kitchen continue their hustle and bustle, shooting Barbie looks when they see her standing around chatting with Sam, but no one says anything.

“Sure you can, Mrs. Roman,” he says, putting his hands on his hips again. He looks at her curiously.

“I was just wondering?—“

“Barbara?” Pauletta, an extremely round, grandmotherly type of woman who oversees the children playing while everyone else does the sorting and boxing, is standing in the doorway to the kitchen with a tear-stained Huck on her hip. Barbie’s little boy has his thumb in his mouth and he’s hiccuping as he looks at his mother with his temple resting against Pauletta’s collarbone. “Little man here got into a scuffle over some wooden blocks,” she says apologetically. “He and the other boy are just fine now, but I wanted him to come and see Mama and let him dry his tears.”

Barbie tosses the rag aside again and goes to Huck, who climbs into her arms and wraps his legs around her waist while she hugs him.

“You’re okay, buddy,” she says to Huck, and she knows he is. She’s got three boys, after all, and a tussle over blocks is nothing worth writing home about. “You’re fine. You ready to go back and play so Mommy can finish working here?”

Huck nods against her chest, thumb still in his mouth.

“Thanks, Pauletta,” she says to the woman as she hands Huck back. “I’ll wrap up here soon and come get him so I can take him home for a nap.”

Pauletta smiles at her and carries Huck back to the playroom, and Barbie turns to Sam, ready to carry on their conversation. But he’s not there.

On the other side of the kitchen, Eartha is still ranting at Betty, but Sam is nowhere to be seen. Barbie looks around, and everyone is busy doing whatever they’ve been tasked with, so she carries on with wiping down cans and putting them in boxes.

There’s work to do and not much time for chatting anyway, and soon Barbie is lost again in the flow of being a part of a bigger project, happily doing her part to get the older folks of the community fed and cared for.

jo

. . .

---