Barbies and Broken Bones
“These scissors are only to be used for fabric. Do you hear me?” Mommy was holding her heavy, stainless steel sewing scissors, her beautiful auburn hair clasped with a long barrette at the nape of her neck. “Don’t ever use them for paper, or they will not be sharp anymore, and they won’t cut the fabric.”
The cardboard cutting mat was unfolded on the dining room table, and a layer of green calico fabric was spread over it. Mommy helped Serena and me place the thin paper pattern pieces so that the least amount of fabric would be used. Cautiously we pinned them into place, trying not to rip the delicate paper. Then she let us cut them out. They were small pieces. Most were no bigger than my hand. We were making Barbie doll clothes.
In the kitchen, taking up the space where a kitchen table would normally be, my mother’s sewing cabinet was open and ready for little fingers to learn how to guide the fabric through the machine. My grandfather—“Papa,” as we called him—had designed and built this grand piece of furniture. It had a bank of large drawers on the left side that were filled with envelopes of dress patterns and remnants of fabric. On the right, a swinging overhead door lifted up to reveal the steel blue sewing machine nestled inside a desk. The desk part was on wheels, with one corner attached to the cabinet with hinges, so that when my mother pulled it out it swung into the room and took up most of the free space in the kitchen.
We learned to thread the machine and wind the bobbin, and how to push down gently on the electric pedal so that the machine would gradually take the fabric and not jump. We made skirts and pants and blouses for our dolls, with tiny snaps that had to be sewn on by hand. But the big cardboard mat and all the fabric scraps, pattern pieces, and sewing pins had to be cleaned up before suppertime so we could eat at the table.
We heard Daddy’s car in the driveway and ran to the door to greet him. “Daddy, Daddy, guess what’s for supper?” This was a game we often played.
He swung me up to his shoulder. “Fish heads and rice?”
“No, no—yuck!”
“Spaghetti and chocolate cake?”
“No . . . Can you smell it?”
“Mmmm. Boy, howdy! I smell Purlow!”
I think my mother got this recipe from my dad’s grandmother. It was an old family favorite. Smoked sausage, onion, green pepper, tomatoes, and rice all thrown together in one big pot. She always served it with cornbread, coleslaw, and black-eyed peas. Cube steak and onion gravy was another favorite. Or ham and rice casserole, always served with green peas. On occasion we would have fried shrimp with French fries and hush puppies, which Serena got to help with. It was her job to drop the spoonsful of cornbread batter into the hot grease and then turn them over with the slotted spoon as soon as the underside got brown. I would be in charge of the cocktail sauce. Mixing ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, and relish, this was never done by measuring but by tasting a finger that caught a drip on the side of the bowl.
Not surprisingly, my favorite meal was Thanksgiving. Daddy would make the ambrosia that morning, and if I were up early enough I could help. Waking and finding Daddy alone at the table, I would pad up next to him in my pajamas. He would pull me onto his lap. First we would have coffee together and read the newspaper. He would pour milk into a coffee cup for me, stirring in a spoonful of sugar with just a splash of coffee. “Want to read the funny papers?” He would pull that page loose from the serious stuff he’d been reading and place it before me. I couldn’t read all the words, but I could look at the silly pictures.
When he was finished reading the paper, he would spread it out over the table and gather his supplies: two oranges and two apples from the refrigerator, a can of pineapple, a jar of maraschino cherries, a very large plastic bowl, a wooden spoon, the cutting board, and a sharp knife. We would sit at the table together, soaking the newspaper with juice as we created the best fruit salad in the world.
This would be served as a first course in our fancy meal that afternoon. It would be ladled into stemware and placed on a doily in the center of each china plate. My mother would prepare the perfect roast turkey, stuffing, green beans, and a sweet potato casserole with brown sugar and pecan topping. The same decadent meal would be repeated on Christmas Day, complete with pumpkin and pecan pies with crusts artistically crimped all around.
Grandma and Papa (my mother’s parents) came on Christmas Eve to spend the night with us. That was exciting enough, but I could hardly stand still when Santa came to our neighborhood. Mr. Joe, who lived down the street, built a big stage for Santa out in his front yard. There were lights and music and decorations, and all the neighborhood children lined up on the sidewalk to greet Santa. He walked right out of Mr. Joe’s front door and onto the stage in his big red suit. Santa! Right there in our neighborhood! When it was my turn to sit in his lap, I politely asked for Malibu Barbie. I had seen her on TV. She had long, straight blonde hair and came wearing a pink and orange swimsuit.
That night Serena slept in my room because Grandma and Papa would be sleeping in hers. We chattered and giggled in the dark until Daddy knocked on the door. “You’d better go to sleep, or Sanny Clause won’t come! I don’t want to hear another peep out of you. Not one more peep!” As soon as he walked away, we both whispered, “Peep!”
Christmas morning Serena and I ran out to the living room, my mission to find Malibu Barbie. There she was, in her clear plastic box, lying under the tree. But behind the tree, against the wall, was another wonderful surprise. Papa had built a toy stove for me. Just the right height, it was painted a beautiful white, with black knobs that turned and four black burners that had once been coffee can lids. It was lined with toy cups and dishes, and I went right to work, serving each family member a delicious pretend breakfast.
As Mommy went into the kitchen to prepare real food for us, Grandma motioned for me to come to the sliding glass door. “Did you see what Santa left in your backyard?” Serena and I ran to look. A swing set! (No doubt Daddy and Papa had been up late with a flashlight and screwdriver in the backyard.)
For the next few weeks the new swing set attracted lots of neighborhood children, including an annoying little boy named Mikey. He lived next door to Sheri but didn’t have many friends, so my mother would encourage me to play with him. Once when all the kids were playing outside he came out of his house with a rubber band stretched around the top of his head. His forehead was turning purple, and we all laughed. Later when we told my mother about it she shook her head. “He doesn’t know any better.”
Mikey showed up on our back porch one day when I was playing with my Barbies. My mother, being gracious, invited him to stay and play. She went into the kitchen, cut an orange in half, and brought the sections out to us. I set down my Barbie on the cement floor, and we took our orange halves to the porch swing. We bit into them, slurping and laughing while the juice dripped down our chins. Everything was going well until Mikey spotted a spider in the corner of the porch. He hopped off the swing and caught it, then held it out to show me. I leaned away and whined, “Ewww!” Then he reached down and tore a wriggling leg from the spider and threw it at me. I shrieked. He threw another.
Curled up with my orange in the corner of the swing, I yelled what I had heard so many other kids in our neighborhood yell: “Go home, Mikey! Go home!”
And then Mikey did the unthinkable. He grabbed Malibu Barbie and twisted her leg. He bent her knee so far backward that it popped. The skin behind her knee split open, and the white plastic joint was hideously exposed. I gasped and stood up. Stamping my foot, I screamed through my tears, “GO HOME, MIKEY! GET OUT OF HERE!” He threw the disfigured doll at my feet and ran off.
Mommy came to the door. “What on earth?”
I picked up the Barbie and held it out to her, unable to speak. I began to sob.
“Oh, we can fix that.” My mother’s nursing skills kicked in. She found some white medical tape and sat down at the table, wrapping Barbie's leg firmly until it was in the right position. “Here, we’ll make her a cast for her broken leg. And we’ll make a crutch for her, too.” She found a couple of popsicle sticks in the kitchen drawer and cut one in half. Like magic, she fashioned a Y shaped crutch, wrapping it in gauze and medical tape to make it soft under Barbie’s arm.
Before having her babies, my smart mother had been a registered nurse in the operating room at Orange Memorial Hospital. For this reason we had various strange medical items in the kitchen drawers: syringes, surgical clamps, operating scissors, and all sizes of bandages. But more importantly, my mother was cool-headed and knowledgeable about what to do in a crisis.
Like the time the doorbell rang, and I opened it to find the lady who lived next door standing there crying, her hand dripping with blood. “Is your mother home? I was doing the dishes and I broke a glass . . .” Mommy quickly wrapped the woman's hand in a dishtowel and drove her to the emergency room.
Or the time I broke my arm.
After supper one evening my daddy had a surprise for us. Our cousin Scott, who lived in Tallahassee, was coming for a visit that night. I was so excited I got up onto a living room chair and jumped off, shouting, “Hooray!” As I came down, my foot hit the corner of the footstool, and I tumbled over. My forearm struck the carpet with a thud, and I looked down in bewilderment. My right arm was bent strangely, as though I had an extra elbow. Mommy grabbed a magazine from the nearby coffee table and wrapped it around my arm like a makeshift cast. She kept holding it tightly while we walked out to the car. And as Daddy drove us to the hospital she sat in the car right next to me, holding my arm in that magazine.
They sat me on a gurney in the hallway of the hospital, and a doctor pulled on my arm to make it straight again. I howled in pain, but Mommy was right by my side. And then, just like Malibu Barbie’s leg, they wrapped it round and round in white gauze with plaster of Paris.
For the next six weeks Mommy had to help me do a lot of things. When it was bath time, she would wrap my cast in a bread bag and help me hold it up out of the water. As I stepped out of the tub, she would wrap me in a towel and lift me to stand on the lid of the toilet while she hugged me dry. She helped me get dressed for school, brushed and braided my hair, and tied my sling around my neck.
At school I tried holding a pencil in my right hand, but I couldn’t quite grip it, with that bulky cast wrapped between my thumb and the rest of my fingers. So I did my best to write left-handed. The result was pretty sloppy, but I accomplished it. My normal recess activities were also thwarted. My favorite thing to play on was the jungle gym—that dome-shaped apparatus of metal bars. I would usually climb to the top and hang by my knees, but this would have to wait until I got my cast off. Swings were also impossible; I couldn’t hang onto both chains.
But I could still chase boys. And this I did with fervor. The other girls and I would huddle together under the shade of the live oak tree and decide who would chase which boy. Then someone would yell “Go!” and we would run after them. I’m not sure what I would have done if I had ever caught the sleeve of Christopher or Matthew, but they ran from me all around the playground, circling the jungle gym and avoiding the flying feet of the kids on swings. And when the bell rang we filed back into the classroom sweaty and breathless, with beggar lice seeds stuck in our shoelaces.
Suzanne Rood is the author of A LIMP OF FAITH (Credo House Publishers, 2019), her story of daily life with CMT, a hereditary neuropathy that challenges her walking, her music, and her faith. Here’s a link to purchase the book on Amazon.
