Original Sin

by Greta Cribbs

“What do you mean?”

  A pause. “Well, for one thing, Joanna...she...”

  “What about Joanna?”

  “Joanna was...different.”

  “Different how?”

  “To understand that, you need to hear the full story.”

  “Then let’s hear it.”

  ***

  I find it curious that you mentioned my psychology class. That’s where I met her. Joanna Simpson entered my life because of Psych 101.

  Maybe it was all those discussions about the subconscious and about childhood trauma that caused her to take an interest in me. I think somehow she intuited that there was some deeper story hidden under my shy, awkward exterior.

  I think at some point she decided to make me her personal project.

  I was enrolled at Riverside Community College, about an hour’s drive from Crimson Falls. The Griffins had put up the money to send me, but I’m sure you guessed that already, considering that they were the only people in town who had taken any kind of interest in me. Mother certainly wasn’t in any position to pay for my education, and probably wouldn’t have wanted to, even if she could. I believe it was her sincere wish that I just go away so she could forget I ever existed.

  There was no assigned seating at college, but, as people are wont to do, we generally gravitated toward our customary parts of the room. I ended up sitting near the far wall by a window, and Joanna sat beside me on the next row.

  Remember how I described Donna Marie as pretty in an average way? Not so Joanna. She was more in league with Everly Jean. Possibly even a step above. Her hair was always perfectly styled, which in 1965 meant that it was teased high on top and flipped up in a single curl that skirted the entire bottom edge, à la Patty Duke. Her make-up was always perfect, her lips always a vibrant red.

  The long, flowing dresses of the fifties had given way to the miniskirts of the mid-sixties, and Joanna wore them better than anyone. While it had been an accidental peek I had gotten at Everly Jean’s knees that day back in 1958, I now had the pleasure of watching the intentional public exhibition of that body part on Joanna.

  Here’s something you need to understand. I did not want to look. I did not want to think of her in that way. Truth be told, I didn’t want to think of any girl in that way. I still had my mother’s voice in my head. Her words formed the thread out of which my inmost thoughts and feelings were woven, and they told me, over and over again, that looking was bad. That if I happened to look, I was bad.

  There must be something in psychology that says if you tell a child he’s bad enough times, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Well, I was determined not to let that happen to me. I was not going to turn evil just because my mother had predicted that I would.

  But day after day I had to go into that classroom and be confronted by Joanna with her long, tan legs. The thoughts that raced through my mind every time I looked at her were a source of endless shame to me. The thoughts, you see...the thoughts were evil. At least, I perceived them to be. That’s how well I had learned the lessons Mother taught me.

  Joanna was not Donna Marie. First off, she was older, but she was also experienced beyond her years. The “free love” craze may not have hit the nation yet in the fall of 1965, but the seeds had been planted and Joanna Simpson was one of the early flowers that sprouted from those seeds. I think she somehow sensed my sexual repression, as our psych professor had taught us to call it, and she began a courtship of sorts with me.

  It started innocently enough. A smile here. A “Hey, how did you do on that last exam?” there. A quiet greeting when we bumped into each other at the campus library. An occasional request to share my table in the cafeteria.

  Then she decided to take things to the next level.

  It was on October 13, 1965 that everything came crashing down. But then, you knew that already.

  I’ve already mentioned the significance of that date in our little town. I know you dismissed it as superstition. Maybe it was. Maybe the things that happened, year after year, always on the 13th, were the fruits of one of those self-fulfilling prophesies I mentioned earlier, rather than the results of an actual curse. Who knows? All I know is when that date rolled around, during my first year away from Crimson Falls, I felt something. Some kind of calling. Like there was this invisible force pulling me back. Urging me to go home.

  And urging me to take Joanna with me.

  I did not have murder on my mind as we sat across from each other in the deserted cafeteria at four in the afternoon, sipping weak coffee and celebrating the fact that we were both done with classes for the day. We each had some homework to consider, of course. She had a history exam coming up on Friday and I had a research paper due Monday, but we had both gotten a decent head start on our respective studying, and were therefore free to enjoy the evening.

  When the calling came upon me, it was not accompanied by any kind of sinister motive. All I knew was that I wanted to spend time with Joanna. Just spend time with her. Nothing more.

  And I wanted to spend time with her in Crimson Falls.

  Some part of me may have entertained a desire to take her home to Mother, but she was not the sort of girl one took to meet the family, and Mother was not the sort of mother one took girls home to meet. We were star-crossed from the beginning, I suppose.

  I really can’t say what I was hoping for when I raised my eyes to meet hers and said, “Hey, would you like to see where I grew up?”

  She smiled. “Where you grew up? Isn’t it way out in the country somewhere?”

  “It’s about an hour outside of the city. I could drive you out there, show you around a little, and still have you back before your curfew.”

  Joanna nodded. “I’d love to go.”

  I suppose no one saw us get into my car that afternoon. That’s the kind of thing one would expect to come up later in the investigation. It never did, so I must conclude that we were not seen.

  I drove that same Buick Roadmaster whose trunk Everly Jean had so provocatively draped herself over seven years previously. It was yet another gift from my generous benefactors.

  I think Joanna was annoyed that I kept my eyes firmly planted on the road as we headed out of Riverside and into the rural wilds surrounding Crimson Falls. She certainly seemed to be doing everything in her power to distract me from the task of driving. She moved to the center of the Buick’s wide bench seat and placed a hand on my arm. She adjusted her sweater so that, even in my peripheral vision, I caught a glimpse of cleavage. She complained that her stockings were twisted and, in a show of “fixing” them, proceeded to pull her skirt up much higher than what could, to any rational person, be considered decent.

  Meanwhile, I did everything in my power not to look.

  Why did I suggest this drive in the first place? What did I think was going to happen? Had I truly never anticipated that she would construe my intentions as in some degree sexual?

  Perhaps I was holding onto the hope that Joanna was my chance to do what I’d failed to do with Donna Marie. Perhaps some part of me believed that there could, indeed, be a meeting of the families. That Duane Tolloch, that illegitimate child with the absent father, might someday legitimize himself.

  Joanna Simpson was not the person to do that for me. I don’t know why I thought she was.

  So I shrugged off her attempts to caress me. I squared my jaw and refused to let my eyes take in the show she performed for my benefit. I pressed myself against the car door in the vain hope that she would take the hint and move back to her own side of the seat.

  But she did not take the hint and so we drove all the way to Crimson Falls practically joined at the proverbial hip.

  When I turned down Main Street and the tiny business district of Crimson Falls came into view, she threw her arms around me and squeezed, none-too-gently, as she exclaimed, “Oh! What a charming little town!”

  “It’s got its dark side,” I muttered, tensing my shoulders and trying to ignore her touch.

&
nbsp; “Naturally! That’s what makes places like this so fascinating.” She planted a noisy kiss on my cheek.

  It was the first time anyone had ever kissed me.

  That kiss stirred something inside me. Something I didn’t understand. It felt a bit like the arousal (I actually had a word for it now) I had felt in Everly Jean’s presence all those years ago, but it went deeper than that and awakened new feelings I didn’t have names for.

  Then Mother’s voice was in my head. Mother’s voice had always been in my head, telling me it was wrong. Telling me I was bad. That I shouldn’t be feeling these things. Thinking these things. How could I be harboring such impure thoughts toward a sweet, innocent girl like Joanna?

  Only Joanna, while sweet, was not so innocent. And I wasn’t harboring impure thoughts so much as having them dragged out of me by her constant, uninvited displays of physical affection.

  I drove through town with Joanna draped over me like some sort of shawl or blanket. You know the kind I mean. It keeps you warm, so you cling to it, wanting to disappear inside of it, but then you start to notice its rough fibers, scratching the back of your neck, becoming more irritating with every passing moment. So you have two choices. Cast it to the side and expose yourself to the cold, or let it continue to rub at you until you have no skin left and you become this hideous mass of raw, bloody flesh.

  I was trapped between two unpleasant options, with no clear idea which I should choose.

  And so I drove. Past the grocery store. Past the bar where Mother once worked. It was called The Crooked Crow now, Skip having retired and sold the business several years back. I drove past the cemetery in whose shadow I was conceived. All the while doing my best to ignore Joanna. To push down the unwanted sensations her touch elicited from me.

  “Hey, I thought you wanted to show me your hometown,” she said as I reached the end of Main Street and prepared to turn onto the highway.

  “I am.”

  “But we’ve passed it now, haven’t we?”

  “I believe I said I wanted to show you where I grew up. This is where I grew up.” I made a left turn and drove in the direction of the motel.

  “Oh, so you didn’t actually grow up in town?”

  “Not downtown, no.”

  She giggled. “Downtown? You make it sound like it’s a big city or something.”

  My shoulders tensed just a little more. “What do you call it, then? There’s the center of town, where all the businesses are. There’s the neighborhood right around that with all those nice, pretty houses. And everything else just kind of surrounds that section. If you wouldn’t call it ‘downtown’, what is it?”

  She shrugged. “You’re so cute. My adorable little small-town boy!”

  She accosted my cheek with another kiss, lingering a bit with this one and running her hands all through my hair.

  Those feelings, both the all-too-familiar desire as well as the new emotions for which I had no name, intensified. It was pleasant for a time, but then the fear came on. The fear that she would see.

  It was not like it had been with Everly Jean or Donna Marie. I had no tree to duck behind. No bicycle with which to cover myself. There in the car, with Joanna pressed against me, there was nowhere to hide, and I was quite sure that she did see.

  And if Joanna could see, Mother could see. Mother always saw. Always knew.

  By the time I pulled to a stop on the side of the road in front of the motel, beads of sweat had begun to prickle on the back of my neck. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and braced myself for another assault with the broom handle.

  Never mind that Mother wasn’t in the car with us. That made little difference because Mother was always with me. She never left me, even when I was secure in my dorm room an hour away in Riverside. She was still there, watching me. Judging me. Ready to punish me if I stepped out of line.

  And I had stepped out of line the minute I invited Joanna into my car.

  My whole body trembled.

  Joanna glanced out the car window and crinkled her nose. “You lived in a motel?”

  “In the caretaker’s cottage in the back,” I said.

  “Oh, I see.” She pressed her cheek against my cheek and said softly into my ear, “Gonna invite me in? Meet the parents?”

  I tensed some more. “It’s just my mother.”

  “Well, your mother, then. I’m just dying to know more about you.”

  More sweat on the back of my neck. Spreading to my forehead. Running in tiny droplets down the side of my face. I clamped down even harder on the steering wheel, hoping to hide the shaking in my hands.

  Take a girl to meet my mother? The woman who had beaten me black and blue for just looking at a girl? What would she do to me if she knew I had invited one into my car?

  No. Joanna would not be meeting Mother that night.

  I put the Buick in gear and pulled back out onto the road, making a U-turn and heading back in the direction of town.

  Joanna lifted her head and looked over her shoulder, watching the motel gradually disappear behind us.

  “Wait. We’re not going in?”

  “No,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “So where are we going?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t know where we were going. All I knew was that I had to get away from that little house at the back of the tree-dotted field and the angry, bitter woman who lived there.

  Not that it mattered. As I said before, there was no getting away from my mother.

  As I drove back through town, the setting sun cast a golden glow on the shops and restaurants that lined Main Street. It almost made Crimson Falls look like a pleasant place. But I knew better. I knew the dark desires that lurked beneath that wholesome all-American facade. Especially today. Especially on October 13.

  I drove through without turning my head to the left or the right. Doing my best to ignore Joanna’s incessant cooing and pointing. Trying to block out her frequent interjections of just how quaint everything was and how she would love to come and live in a place just like this, except that she had career goals and could never live outside of a city if she wanted to be anyone important in the world. She’d read The Feminine Mystique, after all, and would not be forced into the life of a housewife.

  She talked all the way down Main Street and was still going strong when I crossed the highway again and headed down River Road.

  Why was I on River Road? I had made no plan to go there, but then nothing that happened that night had been planned, and once I was a little ways out of town and the tall trees rose up to eclipse the setting sun, I felt that call again and I knew where I had to go.

  I had to take her to the falls.

  Crimson Falls, so named because of the bloody events which had occurred there as a part of the founding of our town. Surely I had some notion that taking Joanna there, on Founder’s Day of all days, would not lead to anything good. That somehow her blood, or mine, or both of ours would stain those waters just as the blood of those early settlers had done so many years ago, giving the town its name.

  Surely I had some premonition of what was coming.

  And still I proceeded to go to the falls.

  It was nearly dark by the time I pulled off the road, parking the car behind an outcropping of underbrush so that it would not be visible to passersby.

  Why did I not want the car to be visible?

  Not because I felt the need to hide what I was about to do. I didn’t even know what I was about to do.

  I shut off the engine and Joanna looked around.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “I...I wanted to...show you something,” I stammered.

  She smiled and snuggled up against me, resting her head on my shoulder. “What do you want to show me?”

  “You...you’ll see.”

  Her hands were all over me then. Sliding through my hair. Resting on the back of my neck. Grasping my shirt collar.

  Those feelings I’d been trying to suppres
s grew exponentially and there was nowhere I could hide.

  But Joanna didn’t seem to care. She pressed her hands against me and pressed her lips against me and pressed her breasts against me and through it all my only thought was that I wanted her. Heaven help me, I wanted her more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.

  But then one of those hands glided down my chest, making for a destination somewhat further south. Her fingers found my belt and set about undoing the buckle.

  And I didn’t understand what she was doing.

  Don’t get me wrong. By that point I did understand the physiology of sex. I knew all the whats and wheres and hows of human reproduction. But I didn’t understand what was happening in that car in that moment.

  You see, in my experience, the undoing of a belt always heralded a beating.

  Yes, I am aware that most young men have memories of being whipped with a belt, but their beatings were done to them by their fathers. Mine happened at the hand of my mother. And she always used my belt. She would trap me in a corner and put her hands on me, much as Joanna had done, then fumble with my belt buckle the way Joanna was currently doing. Then proceed to inflict punishment for sins I hadn’t even known I’d committed.

  The loosening of the belt triggered my fight or flight response (another phrase I’d picked up in my psych class) and my heart beat so hard I was sure Joanna could hear it. I’m convinced she could at least feel it since by that point her head was pressed against my chest.

  If she did sense any of the turmoil inside me, she must have mistaken it for arousal, because she proceeded to attack my belt, then the button of my trousers, then finally my zipper, with amplified frenzy and an increased sense of urgency.

  And there was Mother’s voice again.

  I will not tolerate naughty little boys doing naughty things.

  Do you think I don’t know what’s going through your mind?

  I know what nasty little boys like you do to innocent young girls.

  And I realized something. I realized that no matter what Mother had put me through when I was growing up, still I wanted to please her. I wanted to prove her wrong. Wanted to show her that I was not one of those nasty little boys.