Original Sin

by Greta Cribbs

  Given that culture of aversion and other, less friendly, sentiments, that cluster of girls looked like an impenetrable wall standing between me and my locker.

  I stood there, hardly knowing what to say, for much longer than would typically be considered socially appropriate. A couple of the girls looked at me, then looked away, their expressions making evident their disdain. No one made a move to get out of my way.

  Then Donna Marie spoke up. “I think we’re in front of his locker.”

  The other girls looked at me and at my locker in turn, then there was a mass muttering of “oh” and “whoops” and “all right” as the group shifted to the side in one seamless motion.

  Only Donna Marie lagged behind. “Sorry about that,” she said.

  “It’s all right. You didn’t realize.”

  “We should have realized. It was rude of us.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Well, I’ll let you put your books away now.” She took one step to the side but did not turn back to her friends. “Hey, what’s your first class?”

  “English.”

  “Mine too!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. So I guess I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  Then it happened. She smiled at me. It was somewhat less spectacular in an aesthetic sense than the one Everly Jean was accustomed to shoot my way, yet somehow it touched me on a deeper, more personal, level.

  It did not occur to me at the time, but I have since realized that Everly Jean’s smiles, her attempts to engage me in conversation, her constant tendency to niceness, were just that. Niceness. Or, to put it more clearly, politeness. Everly Jean was nice to me because that’s what young ladies like herself had been brought up to do.

  But this smile...this smile was different. There was no reason in the world for Donna Marie to be nice to me, especially not with her friends looking on a few lockers over. There must have been something, some genuine interest, behind that small gesture of friendship.

  She turned to walk away, and as that smile disappeared some of the beauty faded from my world. I had to get that beauty back.

  “Donna Marie?”

  She turned back to me, still smiling. “Yes?”

  “I was wondering if...maybe...I mean if it’s all right with you...I thought we might walk to class together.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well...if you don’t mind. But we don’t have to. It was just an idea.”

  “I’d love to.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  She made her apologies to her friends, then waited while I fumbled with my books. After I’d slammed the big metal door shut and clicked the lock into place, we both turned, together, and made our way to Mr. Donaldson’s ninth grade English class.

  We endured no shortage of strange looks on that first trek together through the halls, but Donna Marie never lost her nerve. She did not seem to care that she was walking with someone who was nowhere near good enough for her.

  We did not do much talking, and when we walked into the classroom and parted ways, she to her seat at the back of the room and I to the front, the whole experience seemed much too short.

  And so you can imagine how surprised and delighted I was upon arriving at school next morning to find her leaning against her locker and smiling at me as I walked down the hall. She was alone this time, her friends having already departed for their classes, and we managed to find a few things to chat about as I sorted out which books I needed. And, just like the day before, we strolled to Mr. Donaldson’s classroom side by side.

  It became a regular thing after that. Every day I would find her waiting for me, and every day we kept each other’s company on the way to class. She even began eating lunch with me one or two days a week.

  Not every day, of course. She couldn’t desert her friends entirely, after all.

  And then, one fateful Friday afternoon in early autumn (again, I’m sure you can hazard a guess at the exact date), I exited the school at the behest of the final dismissal bell to find her standing beside my bicycle, smiling that radiant smile for which I had begun to develop such genuine affection.

  “Hi, Duane.”

  “Hi, Donna Marie.”

  “I was wondering if you wanted to walk me home this afternoon.”

  A violent fluttering erupted in my stomach, and I had to swallow several times before I could answer. “You want me to walk you home?”

  She shrugged, still smiling. “Why not? We’re friends, right?”

  I swallowed again. “Friends. Right.”

  “Well, do you want to?”

  “All right.”

  Though our conversations in the hallway and at the lunch table had, by that point, become pleasant and easy, I found myself struggling to find things to say as I walked next to Donna Marie, pushing my bicycle down the sidewalk that led, eventually, to her home. This was uncharted territory. This was “going steady” kind of territory. Was that what Donna Marie and I were now? Were we going steady?

  Surely not. After all, I had not asked her. One party must always ask the other before the two are considered to be going steady, correct? That’s how it seemed to work for everyone else, at least.

  And besides, Donna Marie had clearly stated that we were friends. Nothing more.

  And yet...

  Here we were, walking home from school together. As friends? Or something else?

  Not knowing the answer to that question, I was quite at a loss as to how to comport myself.

  Having to push the bicycle helped a bit. I did not have to ponder the appropriateness of holding her hand, or offering to carry her books for her, when I had twenty odd pounds of metal to keep control of.

  Donna Marie, for her part, seemed entirely at ease. She rattled on effortlessly about the History test she didn’t study enough for, the new girl in her Algebra class, our school’s great win at the most recent football game, and all the other things teenage girls from small towns like to talk about.

  We meandered through the paved streets and past the perfectly manicured lawns of the more respectable district of Crimson Falls. Did the people who waved at us and called out greetings, which Donna Marie cheerfully returned, realize it was a Tolloch who escorted her that afternoon?

  It is possible they did not recognize me. After all, I seldom ventured into that part of town. Seldom ventured anywhere besides the school and the motel. Surely there was no need to worry about the judging eyes of the townspeople who likely had no clue who I was.

  All the same, I was keenly aware of being an outsider in Donna Marie’s neighborhood. And if there’s one universal truth in this world, it’s that “respectable” people don’t take kindly to strangers prowling their well-kept streets. As we walked past, the people were friendly to Donna Marie, but their smiles seemed to fade slightly when they registered my presence.

  Perhaps I was being paranoid. I was my mother’s son, after all. But knowing you’re paranoid does nothing to ease the paranoia, and with every step I took, the feeling seemed to grow. By the time we stood at the end of Donna Marie’s driveway, it was all I could do to keep myself from constantly looking over my shoulder.

  What if people saw us together? What if people didn’t like what they saw?

  Then she was standing in front of me, smiling at me, and everything in the world disappeared, save her. And as we stood there, the street and the houses and smiling neighbors blurring into a nondescript background which existed only to frame the loveliness of Donna Marie’s face, she did something that knocked me quite off my guard.

  She placed one of her hands on mine.

  Remember when I said my attraction to her was something more than physical? What I meant was that the attraction was something other than physical. I liked Donna Marie’s company. I liked her conversation. I liked her for the way she made me feel deep within my soul, if I even have such a thing, rather than for how she made me feel in my loins. I had felt nothing whatsoever in
that region during any of our previous encounters. But when she touched me, and this was the first time she had ever touched me, that desire for which I had neither words nor definitions of words came over me without warning and I was compelled to maneuver my bike so that the seat was directly in front of me, in the hope that it would prevent her from seeing the evidence of my impure thoughts.

  The fear of people seeing is something which, I believe, all teenage boys live with constantly. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. I truly believed I was the only boy in the world who had that reaction to girls, which made what was happening to my body all the more shameful.

  Remember, I had no friends with whom I could joke in the locker room. I had no older brother to share his dirty magazines with me. I had no father to help me understand the subtleties of biology. All I had was Mother, and I think I’ve made her feelings on the topic abundantly clear.

  So I stood on the sidewalk, pathetically hiding behind my bike and praying to whatever power might exist in the universe to please make it go away before anyone noticed.

  “Bye, Duane,” she said, giving my hand a gentle squeeze.

  “B...bye,” I stuttered.

  As she scampered toward her house, I noticed a curtain fluttering in one of the front windows.

  Someone had seen. Someone knew.

  I had to get out of there. Fast.

  I scrambled onto my bike and pedaled faster than I’d ever pedaled in my life. The faces, which had smiled as I strolled by with Donna Marie, seemed less friendly now as I raced, alone, out of the neighborhood. I increased my speed, needing the security of the four walls of the little caretaker’s cottage more than I had ever needed anything in my life. My thighs burned as the scenery rolled by and my heart felt like it was tap dancing inside my chest.

  I made it home in record time, parked my bike, and walked, gasping and wheezing, up the front steps to my house.

  Upon entering, I closed the door and turned around to find the end of a broom handle pressing into my chest.

  Mother scowled at me from the other end of the broom. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?”

  “Just coming home from school.”

  “Down Maple Street?”

  “How did you..?”

  “Mabel Watson called the motel. Wanted to let me know she’d seen you talking to her daughter outside her house. She politely asked me to tell you to stay away.”

  “We were just talking.”

  “Just talking?” She punctuated her sentence with a jab of the broom handle into the center of my chest. “Just talking?” Another jab. “I know you, Duane. I know what nasty little boys like you do to innocent young girls like Miss Watson. And I’m telling you right now, it won’t happen on my watch.” She pressed the broom into me so hard I was sure it would leave a bruise.

  “I don’t want to do anything to Donna Marie. She’s my friend.”

  She took the broom and smacked me, hard enough to hurt but careful not to do any actual damage, on the side of my head. “Friend? You think a boy like you can have friends like her?”

  “I like her.”

  “Like her?” Another smack to the side of my head, this one harder than the first. “You say you like her?” Smack. Smack. “If you really like her, you’ll stay away from her.” Smack.

  One of the smacks landed right at my ear and caused the world to go silent for a few seconds. I lifted my hands to shield my head, but Mother continued her assault with the broom handle.

  Are you wondering why I didn’t fight back? Or at the very least grab the broom? I was fifteen, after all. I was taller than my mother, heavier than my mother. I could have defended myself, but I didn’t. She was my mother, and for most of my life she had been my entire world. More importantly, she had been the lens through which I viewed the world. If she was punishing me, I must deserve to be punished because Mother was always right.

  So I cowered against the wall and allowed her to do her worst. I sank to the floor and curled into a ball, my face pressed against my knees and my arms forming a barricade around my head so that most of her blows landed on my upper back and arms.

  At some point tears came, dripping from my eyes and soaking through the stiff fabric of my slacks. I turned my face away so she wouldn’t see that I was crying, and waited for it to stop.

  Finally, she grew tired, or maybe just bored, and turned to walk away, throwing the broom aside and sending it clattering and sliding across the floor. I huddled against the wall a few minutes longer, unsure if it was really over or if she was going to come back and start again, then I finally rose, shaking and sore, and picked up my schoolbooks so I could start on my homework before she had a chance to come after me again.

  The next day big purple bruises had appeared all up and down my arms, and while I was at school I took extra care to make sure my sleeves were always pulled all the way down to my wrists. It may not have occurred to me to defend myself against Mother’s attack, but I did understand high school well enough to know that I could never, ever tell anyone what had happened.

  Were there guys at my school whose parents sometimes used them as punching bags? Naturally. There was one kid in my history class who practically boasted that his father gave him a hearty beating at least once a month. But it was his father doing the beating, so that made it respectable. There was no one, to my knowledge, who had ever admitted to taking a thrashing from his mother.

  It may have been a silly thing to worry about, considering that I was already one of the school’s most conspicuous social outcasts, but I had held out some small hope that one day I might get the other kids to take a second look at me and to welcome me into their fold. Admitting that I had allowed my mother to harm me, or abuse me, as we call it in these more enlightened days, would have driven the final nail in the ostracization coffin. So I was hesitant to tell anyone the truth.

  I was also hesitant to approach Donna Marie again. She had been the cause of it, after all. Her overtures of friendship had given me the false hope that somehow I could exist in her world. Mother had efficiently dispelled that myth, and so I kept my eyes cast down as I approached my locker and did not return the cheerful greetings Donna Marie cast my way.

  But I still thought about her. I thought about how it started. How good it had felt to talk to her and to accompany her to class. And I thought about the moment when everything began to go wrong.

  And for the first time, it occurred to me that it might not be completely my fault. It had been Donna Marie, after all, who had initiated physical contact with me. It had been her touch which stirred all those physical sensations of which I had been conditioned to feel so ashamed. Was it possible she knew what she was doing? What it possible she was trying to lure me into some kind of trap? Did she want me to feel those feelings? Think those thoughts?

  Was she trying to make me do something very, very bad indeed? Something for which Mother would likely beat me beyond recognition?

  It was an empowering thought. I’m sure you’ve experienced it. That moment when you realize you’ve been blaming yourself for something when really the blame lies with someone else entirely. It’s like the world becomes a little brighter, the air a little fresher, and you can breathe freely for the first time in a very long time.

  Chapter Seven

  Meredith sighed and said nothing.

  “Did I say something to upset you?” asked Tolloch.

  Meredith narrowed her eyes at him. “Look at me, Mr. Tolloch. What do you see?”

  “What am I supposed to see?”

  “A woman.”

  “Well, obviously.”

  “Do you think I’m going to feel any sympathy for a man whose worldview is built on the premise that women, simply by existing, are somehow responsible for all bad things men decide to do?”

  Tolloch frowned. “I never said I believed that.”

  “I think your three co-eds speak for themselves.”

  “I doubt they’re speaking at all a
t the moment.”

  Meredith swallowed, then shook her head. She was getting drawn in. She must not get drawn in. Professionalism had to be her guiding principle.

  Tolloch was sick, and she was in the business of attempting to heal the sick. Her personal feelings had no place here.

  “Donna Marie Watson was fifteen years old,” she said.

  “So was I,” muttered Tolloch.

  Meredith nodded. “Right. And you were innocent. Or, perhaps, naive would be a better word. You didn’t understand what was happening to you. Neither did she. In fact, I’d wager she wasn’t even aware of your predicament. Even today, even in a time when birth control pills are readily available, abortion is legal, and couples can have sex before marriage without destroying their reputations, still teenage girls are for the most part ignorant of the thoughts and desires of their eager male schoolmates. They often don’t realize that a tight-fitting shirt or a careless flip of the hair can be viewed in a sexual way. You have to understand that just a few short years ago, they were little girls and sex was in no way a part of their world. The fact that their breasts have grown and their hips have widened does not mean that they are fully educated in the ways of the world. Donna Marie was not trying to seduce you, Mr. Tolloch.”

  “I know that.”

  “But you didn’t at the time?”

  “All I knew at the time was that I didn’t want to endure the broom handle again.”

  “So you shifted blame.”

  “I suppose you could say that.”

  “And what about Joanna Simpson? Linda Campbell? Bridget Boswell? Did you shift blame with them, too?”

  Tolloch glanced down and sighed. “That’s not the same thing.”