Drowned Barbies
Jo Underwood | Nonfiction, Summer 2024
On the day the neighbor's cat kills a mouse, my house floods. Mama is crying and upset ‘cause our dining room table is where the main pipe burst, and it’s made out of cherry oak wood from my dead grandfather’s barn. Even worse than that, my Barbies are floating in a few inches of water on the ground. I rush in to rescue them from the murky gray, washed with guilt for letting my friends—my best friends—fill with water that brings on mold. Mama tells me my dolls will be fine. Not dolls. Barbies.
Outside the backyard ground is rough and not meant for bare feet, but I wear no shoes. Occasionally acorns drop like kamikaze pilots and leave a welt on my head if I ain’t careful. I lay out my Barbies on old rusted patio furniture so they can sunbathe like how they do in the magazines. My fists clench as I look down at my drying friends, never to be the same, tainted by the fallen ceiling chips and the dirty floodwater and my neglect. What kind of mother am I to them if they grow mold on the inside and Mama has to cut them open like an old rubber duck? When she gave me these dolls, these Barbies, she said I had to be careful. The old woman at church says God takes care of us and promises that he’ll never flood the Earth again ‘cause he loves us. Well, now look at what I’ve done. God punished my Barbies ‘cause of me.
Seeing me standing out back, a boy from church that lives next door hops the fence and comes over to me, bringing the faint scent of his mama’s cigarettes. He comes over whenever his parents start arguing about the “housing crisis,” whatever that means. Sometimes he brings a clump of honeysuckle, ‘cause his daddy got all these old cars that don’t work and they’ve been there so long that flowers grow around them.
He tells me that we’ve gotta have a trial and a funeral, ‘cause a mouse drowned in the creek outside of his house where the floods made it overflow. He thinks maybe his cat had something to do with it. I tell him that since my daddy is a pastor, I’ll have to do the funeral. For the trial he’s going to get the girl that lives on the other side of us to do it, ‘cause her daddy is a lawyer. Her Grandma sits in their sunroom all day watching Judge Judy and shouting “indict the son of a bitch!”
My daddy steps out into the backyard, mumbling about clearing his head. I think the table getting wet really made him upset. His boots clomp over the concrete that he and Grandpa poured the year before he died. There’s a family of frogs living under that sidewalk. I wonder if they’re still under there or if the flood ruined their home, too. The church boy tells me to look down where a rusted chain link fence separates me from the pond. A shovel sticks in the mud down there, and with it is the lawyer’s daughter from next door. Last time I talked to her I had stolen a rollerball stick of anointing oil from Daddy’s office and was trying to bless everyone I saw, ‘cept she didn’t take none of it ‘cause she’s Jewish or something. I don’t remember.
I tell him I can do the funeral later, and turn back to my drowned and newly sun-crusted Barbies. I try to push down their hair so it lays right but nothing seems to work. I can’t believe I would let my friends be destroyed like that. I was supposed to be careful. The church boy reaches into his pocket and pulls out the damp dead body of the mouse and sets it out beside my dolls. My Barbies. I ask why the mouse is wet. He says he washed it off in the pond so it could be buried clean.
I look back at the line of dead and drowned things. I hope God can see what happened to my Barbies, and to my parents' cherry oak dining room table, and to that mouse. I hope he realizes that he shouldn’t bring any more floods.
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Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“‘Drowned Barbies’ is a love letter to seven-year-old Jo, who grew up in the church, where often when bad things happened the inclination was to say "there must have been something we could have done differently," or "God must be doing this for a reason we don't have the eyes to see yet." Comforting to some, but it puts the weight of a Savior on a kid's shoulders. I would be lying if I said I didn't want to be remembered as a Savior, or if I said I didn't beat myself up when there was no one to save. Those Barbies sit in a cardboard box in my parent's attic, water-stained and waiting to be saved. That has been the case since the waters rose ten years ago, and they will stay there for at least ten more. I hope my Barbies will remind others, as they have reminded me, that not everything can be saved.”
Jo Underwood is a writer from Greenville, South Carolina. Her work has been featured in Ambient Heights, The Library of Poetry Collection, and Sefer. She is the recipient of the 2024 Gilmore Award for Excellence in Creative Writing and serves as the Vice President of the Charleston Southern University Writer's Guild. When not writing, she spends most of her time teaching, sitting in her CSU professors' offices, or fighting dragons in her living room with her friends while playing Dungeons and Dragons.
Drowned Barbies
Jo Underwood | Nonfiction, Summer 2024
On the day the neighbor's cat kills a mouse, my house floods. Mama is crying and upset ‘cause our dining room table is where the main pipe burst, and it’s made out of cherry oak wood from my dead grandfather’s barn. Even worse than that, my Barbies are floating in a few inches of water on the ground. I rush in to rescue them from the murky gray, washed with guilt for letting my friends—my best friends—fill with water that brings on mold. Mama tells me my dolls will be fine. Not dolls. Barbies.
Outside the backyard ground is rough and not meant for bare feet, but I wear no shoes. Occasionally acorns drop like kamikaze pilots and leave a welt on my head if I ain’t careful. I lay out my Barbies on old rusted patio furniture so they can sunbathe like how they do in the magazines. My fists clench as I look down at my drying friends, never to be the same, tainted by the fallen ceiling chips and the dirty floodwater and my neglect. What kind of mother am I to them if they grow mold on the inside and Mama has to cut them open like an old rubber duck? When she gave me these dolls, these Barbies, she said I had to be careful. The old woman at church says God takes care of us and promises that he’ll never flood the Earth again ‘cause he loves us. Well, now look at what I’ve done. God punished my Barbies ‘cause of me.
Seeing me standing out back, a boy from church that lives next door hops the fence and comes over to me, bringing the faint scent of his mama’s cigarettes. He comes over whenever his parents start arguing about the “housing crisis,” whatever that means. Sometimes he brings a clump of honeysuckle, ‘cause his daddy got all these old cars that don’t work and they’ve been there so long that flowers grow around them.
He tells me that we’ve gotta have a trial and a funeral, ‘cause a mouse drowned in the creek outside of his house where the floods made it overflow. He thinks maybe his cat had something to do with it. I tell him that since my daddy is a pastor, I’ll have to do the funeral. For the trial he’s going to get the girl that lives on the other side of us to do it, ‘cause her daddy is a lawyer. Her Grandma sits in their sunroom all day watching Judge Judy and shouting “indict the son of a bitch!”
My daddy steps out into the backyard, mumbling about clearing his head. I think the table getting wet really made him upset. His boots clomp over the concrete that he and Grandpa poured the year before he died. There’s a family of frogs living under that sidewalk. I wonder if they’re still under there or if the flood ruined their home, too. The church boy tells me to look down where a rusted chain link fence separates me from the pond. A shovel sticks in the mud down there, and with it is the lawyer’s daughter from next door. Last time I talked to her I had stolen a rollerball stick of anointing oil from Daddy’s office and was trying to bless everyone I saw, ‘cept she didn’t take none of it ‘cause she’s Jewish or something. I don’t remember.
I tell him I can do the funeral later, and turn back to my drowned and newly sun-crusted Barbies. I try to push down their hair so it lays right but nothing seems to work. I can’t believe I would let my friends be destroyed like that. I was supposed to be careful. The church boy reaches into his pocket and pulls out the damp dead body of the mouse and sets it out beside my dolls. My Barbies. I ask why the mouse is wet. He says he washed it off in the pond so it could be buried clean.
I look back at the line of dead and drowned things. I hope God can see what happened to my Barbies, and to my parents' cherry oak dining room table, and to that mouse. I hope he realizes that he shouldn’t bring any more floods.
________________________________________________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“‘Drowned Barbies’ is a love letter to seven-year-old Jo, who grew up in the church, where often when bad things happened the inclination was to say "there must have been something we could have done differently," or "God must be doing this for a reason we don't have the eyes to see yet." Comforting to some, but it puts the weight of a Savior on a kid's shoulders. I would be lying if I said I didn't want to be remembered as a Savior, or if I said I didn't beat myself up when there was no one to save. Those Barbies sit in a cardboard box in my parent's attic, water-stained and waiting to be saved. That has been the case since the waters rose ten years ago, and they will stay there for at least ten more. I hope my Barbies will remind others, as they have reminded me, that not everything can be saved.”
Jo Underwood is a writer from Greenville, South Carolina. Her work has been featured in Ambient Heights, The Library of Poetry Collection, and Sefer. She is the recipient of the 2024 Gilmore Award for Excellence in Creative Writing and serves as the Vice President of the Charleston Southern University Writer's Guild. When not writing, she spends most of her time teaching, sitting in her CSU professors' offices, or fighting dragons in her living room with her friends while playing Dungeons and Dragons.