Original Sins

by Lisa Alther

  Some town father with a morbid sense of humor named the street outside the house Tsali Street. Tsali was a chief who refused to be marched to Oklahoma during the Removal. A soldier prodded Tsali’s wife with a bayonet, and Tsali killed him, fleeing to the North Carolina mountains. The troops promised to leave the other cave dwellers alone if Tsali would turn himself in. He did, and was shot.

  Like the layers of a compost pile, each culture that had inhabited this valley rested on the decaying remains of previous ones. The ashes from their fires, the graves of their forebears littered the valley. Humanity had existed for 20,000 generations, the most recent consisting of her friends and family. And what culture would replace the Newlanders? She could speculate, but it irritated her that she would never know. She recalled her outrage at Randolph-Macon when she first saw in a textbook a chart illustrating that most species failed to adapt to new conditions and went to extinction.

  Having Robert around triggered bleak musings like this. He was like a live-in Hamlet. Getting to know him had been a shock. The men around her—her father and brothers and their friends—had been so flamboyant, forceful, and gallant that she’d just assumed that that was what men were like. Her father owned a large tobacco farm and raised horses, in addition to being vice president at the mill. He wore silk shirts and a diamond ring on his little finger. And when he rode, the horse’s hooves scarcely touched the ground, seemed to dance deftly in the air. He merely flicked his wrist and the horse reversed directions or changed gaits.

  Robert had been so unflamboyant that she was scarcely aware of his existence until he asked her out in high school. Even then, he had stooped badly. Their parents were great friends, his father being president at the mill. Her father admired his father’s blustery optimism. He used to say, “We need us a few Yankees around this town who know there’s still such a thing as progress. You take a Southerner: He’s positively wedded to the status quo because, however pathetic, it’s an advance on the War and Reconstruction.” Robert’s and her mothers were heads of rival garden clubs that engaged in friendly but fierce competition when members opened their gardens to the public in early summer. All four parents were thrilled with the match, and it seemed a shame to disappoint them, so she kept dating him. And gradually she learned to appreciate his anguished seriousness. There was nothing he could take for granted and enjoy. But if these qualities made him interesting to talk with, they sometimes made him frightful to live with. Some mornings she’d go into their bedroom to see why he was late to breakfast and find him staring bleakly into his sock drawer. “Wear the green ones, dear,” she’d say. “They’re nice with that tie.”

  They’d both long acknowledged that he was in the wrong job. But there seemed nothing to be done about it now. She’d been in the wrong job too for a while, but had been able to quit, since no income and very little civic responsibility were involved. When she was a bride, all the various clubs had vied for her membership, and she’d joined half a dozen—her mother’s garden club, a bridge club, a book club, the Junior League. After several years of marshaling maids to take care of her house and children so she could be at luncheons and on committees and at fund-raising events, she decided that where she really wanted to be was home. She dismissed the gardener and began doing her gardens herself. Her mother and motherin-law were horrified. You planned your garden, you supervised your gardener, you cut and arranged the flowers. You did not do the actual spading and weeding yourself. But Melanie liked it. She’d grown up riding horses and building mud dams on the farm with her brothers, and was baffled by the life of a clubwoman, which involved such crises as who had refused to give which recipe to whom. Plants, on the other hand, stayed where you put them and did as they were told. But the gardens taught her more than that: When she and her friends and family were gone, whether or not others replaced them, the sun would still shine, birds would continue to sing, and weeds would grow. Oblivious to the absence of humans. Almost nothing was as important as people tried to make things.

  She’d have done her own housework too, except that she didn’t know how to get rid of Ruby. Whenever she tried, Ruby informed her that Melanie wouldn’t be able to get along without her. Since Ruby had raised her, taught her how to tie her shoes, and made her stop sucking her thumb, Melanie was incapable of disputing anything she said. Which was why her own mother was always marching into her house and telling Melanie that she didn’t know how to “handle her servants.” As though Ruby were a mule in a field. According to her mother, the way to “handle” Ruby was to tie a cloth around your head and start cleaning with her and gossiping about the other families Ruby worked for. Eventually Ruby would insist on taking over. The one time Melanie tried this, Ruby sat down with a Coke and gave Melanie pointers on her cleaning techniques. But this world in which one “handled one’s servants” was passing, so this wasn’t a skill she’d felt obliged to figure out so that she could pass it on to her daughters. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to figure out any other skills to pass on to them either, since she didn’t understand what kind of a world she was supposed to be preparing them for.

  She glanced at her mother next to her, elegantly coiffed and dressed. Robert’s and her parents had spent a lifetime playing bridge together. Not long ago Robert’s mother and her father had died. Their surviving spouses now played double solitaire. Her mother had been talking for the past twenty years about getting her house and possessions “in dying order,” but Melanie was sure she’d outlast them all. She even said about herself, “Honey, when they plant me in that ground, I’ll still be sending up shoots, like an old rotten potato!”

  Rastus stood up slowly and hobbled forward. Everyone laughed. “Mr. Interlocutor, suh,” he said carefully.

  “Yes, Rastus?” the interlocutor asked with a bright smile.

  “Mr. Interlocutor, suh, I wants to tell you about my cousin LeRoy.”

  “Rastus, I believe you’ve already told us about your cousin LeRoy.”

  “Yassah, but I ain’t tole you everything bout my cousin LeRoy.”

  He raised his eyes to the ceiling and sighed. “No, Rastus, I expect you haven’t”

  “I tell you, boss, dat LeRoy, he so dumb. You know how dumb dat LeRoy is, boss?”

  “No, Rastus, tell me what your cousin LeRoy did this time,” he replied with restrained impatience.

  “Dat LeRoy, he went to de doctor and de doctor, he tell him to get undressed. LeRoy, he say, “Huhun, doc. You got to take me out a couple of times fust!’”

  Sally was surveying the gym. This was where the Plantation Ball would be held in a few weeks. They would buy bolts of cotton gauze from the mill, dye it, and transform the room into a billowing tent. The Ingenues had been raising money for this all year. The entire school was invited. It would take days to set up. She could squint and picture it as it would look that night…. Jed’s hand was caressing the small of her back. She nestled into his side.

  “… so de teacher finally buys de little colored chile some deodorant and says to him, says, ‘Honey, you put this under your arms before you come to school in the morning so you’ll smell good.’ So de next morning dat little kid, he shows up holding dat deodorant can under one armpit!”

  Emily smiled faintly. She gazed down at the sea of faces, red and contorted with laughter. She felt the bleachers trembling as their occupants howled. This show had been the high point of every year of her life. The Civic Club worked on it all year. The town looked forward to it all year, and discussed the previous show until they had the new one to talk about. But this year she wasn’t laughing.

  “Hey,” she whispered to June. “I’m not sure this is really funny.”

  “Shhh!” said those around her.

  Kathryn drove her black Ford Galaxy along the highway past the service club plaques welcoming motorists to Newland, “Progress City, U.S.A.”

  The marquee outside the gym of the white high school announced the Civic Club’s annual minstrel show. The parking lot was jammed. Her fac
e registered distaste. This was what she had to rescue Donny from. A minstrel show, for God’s sake. In 1961.

  She recalled that night four years earlier. Mr. Blanton had been after her for a long time. He worked at the brick factory and she knew him by sight. Every time she walked to the market, she would see him hanging over the fence in front of the huge stacks of red and orange and grey bricks and blocks. He always wore green work pants and a soiled T-shirt, his belly bulging over his belt. He would watch her, grinning. She would smile back, to be pleasant, and say something like “Pretty day we’re having?”

  “Sure is,” he’d reply. Just like a dozen similar exchanges every day.

  The next thing she knew, he offered Donny a job sweeping up around his office. Donny was thrilled to have the spending money. One afternoon as she strolled past, Mr. Blanton called, “Some boy you got there.”

  “Yeah, old Donny is really something,” she called back with a laugh.

  A few weeks later he called, “Hey, come over here a minute. I want to tell you something.”

  Assuming it had to do with Donny, she went over. Mr. Blanton grinned, studying her with his pale blue eyes. “You know something? You just about the purtiest thing I ever did see,” he said in a low voice. “How’s about you and me getting together tonight?”

  This was a situation she’d heard about from her friends, but she’d never encountered it directly. She decided to joke him out of it.

  “Why, Mr. Blanton! I couldn’t hardly do that. You see, I don’t believe in this here social equality.”

  He blushed. “Well, I can see you ain’t no ordinary neegrow. You is an exception.”

  “I ain’t no exception, Mr. Blanton. I’m just an ordinary nigger. And proud to be one.”

  The next time, he cruised beside her in his green Pontiac as she walked home early one evening.

  “They’s ten dollars in it for you if you’ll come to my office for half an hour,” he said gruffly.

  “No, thank you, sir.”

  “All right, twenty-five.”

  She whirled toward him. “I’m sorry, but I ain’t interested, Mr. Blanton. I don’t go with no white men.”

  “I can’t help it if I’m white.”

  “Well sir, I can’t help it neither,” she said with a pleasant laugh.

  She ran up her sidewalk, pleased she’d kept it friendly, so that Donny could keep his job.

  Two weeks later she was looking out the window for Donny, who was late for supper. The phone rang. It was Mr. Blanton. “Your boy’s been hurt. I think you’d better come have a look.”

  She ran down the block to the brick company. Mr. Blanton led her in the gate and through the neat squares of bricks. “A pile of bricks toppled on him,” Mr. Blanton muttered. “He’s out cold.”

  In a corner of a darkened shed they stopped. “Where’s he at?” Kathryn demanded.

  Mr. Blanton laughed. “I’m just kidding you, Kathryn. Donny’s OK. He’s gone across town to do me a favor.” He took hold of her wrists. “Now how’s about you doing me a favor?” He put his hands on her buttocks and pulled her against him. She could feel his erection against her leg.

  “Come on, Kathryn. Love me a little,” he whispered, burying his mouth in her neck.

  She pushed at his chest “I done told you I don’t want none of this action with you, Mr. Blanton.”

  “I like a woman with spunk.” He ground his hips against her. They struggled, the only sounds being scuffling feet and grunts and gasps.

  “Uppity nigger!” he snarled, hitting her face. “Stinking black cunt!”

  He had her on her back on the ground, one hand on her throat, and was undoing his pants, pushing open her legs with his knees, then lowering himself onto her. She reached out, grabbed a brick and smashed it down on his head. He slumped across her. She shoved him aside and ran.

  Back in the apartment she told her mother what had happened. Ruby buried her face in her hands and began praying. Kathryn hitched a ride to the Princes’. Mr. Prince felt she should leave at once—go to her brother’s in New York City. “I’m scared, Mr. Prince.”

  “Don’t be scared, Kathryn. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  She watched the sun rise scarlet over the mountains, as the bus roared up the valley past rolling pastures and grazing cattle. The hazy blue mountains rushed past—those mountains her ancestors had climbed prior to descending into this valley. She was leaving behind this valley, these mountains. She alternated between elation and terror as her body swayed with the hurtling bus.

  Shortly after the lunch stop at a crowded rest area off the huge highway, she looked out her window and gasped. All around were lanes of highway, packed with more cars and buses and diesel trucks than she had ever before seen at one time. Across some murky grey water was the skyline of New York City, buildings sticking up like broken teeth on a discarded comb. Around endless curves, under overpasses, over underpasses, through a long tunnel. Her brother had told her he was a guard in a big tunnel under the river. Was this it?

  They emerged onto the streets of New York City. Never before had she seen a place where there was no green. At home, even downtown or around the factories, there were empty lots, trees, and bushes. Fields and forested foothills could be seen from anywhere. She looked out the opposite window, out the driver’s window, up at the sky through her own window. All she could see was grey concrete—filled with honking cars and rushing bodies. She shrank back in her seat, closed her eyes, and tried to breathe slowly. She thought of her mother’s apartment in Pine Woods, with its trampled courtyards. The schoolyard. The fields that stretched down to the willows along the river.

  When she opened her eyes, the bus was dark and empty. Except for the driver, who was standing over her saying, “Excuse me, Miss, we’re here.”

  “Miss,” he was calling her. And he was white. As she climbed down, he held out his hand. She gave him a sharp look, then took it. Dozens of buses parked diagonally. The air stank of exhaust. Through some windows she could see a huge well-lighted room filled with people of all ages and colors, embracing, crying, laughing, running, dragging luggage, sitting disconsolately.

  Suddenly her brother loomed before her, exclaiming and hugging her and grabbing her bags. She allowed herself to be pushed here and there, through doors, down moving steps, through tiled tunnels papered with posters, through crowds, through turnstiles. Into a silver train, with words painted all over it in spray paint. It roared and screeched, and lurched and clattered, stopped and started. Doors opened with a hiss. People—black and white and yellow, well-dressed and shabby, smiling and scowling—got on and off. Her brother kept laughing and talking. She nodded and said, “Uh-huh.”

  They got off the train, went through some gates, and climbed some steps, emerging into daylight and a street packed with faces all shades of black and brown. More concrete and cars and buildings, honking horns, music blaring from record shops, flashing signs. Past a carry-out shop, laundromat, pool hall, tavern, liquor store, grocery store, secondhand store, loan company, pawn shop, storefront church. Her brother called to people. She smiled and nodded and wanted her mother. Into a dark red-brick building. Up flights of garbage-strewn stairs with missing risers. Into a living room crammed with tattered sofas and armchairs. Her brother’s wife enfolded her in her arms. They led her to a darkened bedroom, where she undressed, collapsed, and pulled the covers over her head. What had she done? How could she have been foolish enough to leave Newland? How could Donny manage without her? How could she manage without him? She cried, burying her face in the pillow.

  She lay in her brother’s bedroom for almost two weeks, weeping, scared to get up, terrified to go out into that roiling sea of black bodies and unfamiliar noises. But one day she didn’t pull the covers over her head. The next day she got up, dressed, and ate a meal with the family. She went for a slow walk with her sister-in-law, digesting new sights a few at a time.

  Eventually she realized that with five children and four roo
ms, they needed her to find herself a place soon. This meant a job. So she went downtown and cleaned offices in a tall glass and steel building from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. She drank coffee, then went to classes at nursing school, for which Mr. Prince had given her tuition. She came home to her room in a residential hotel and studied and slept until time to go downtown again.

  For the first few months, as she lay on the single bed in her stuffy room, trying to sleep in the early evening light, Pine Woods would materialize. Old people shuffled out to their porches to watch the night descend and the lights go on in white folks’ houses on the hill. Children, Donny among them, tussled under the streetlight and chased each other through the courtyards, bouncing on cast-off bedsprings. Young people gathered for an evening of wisecracks and flirting in front of the Laundromat. Couples strolled and petted among the willows by the river.

  Abruptly she would recall Mr. Blanton’s contorted red face and would know there was no going back. But her heart would ache, and she would wrap her arms around her pillow and bite it to keep from shrieking.

  She had gone from a place in which she knew everyone and everyone knew her, to one in which she knew no one except her brother, and not him very well anymore—if she defined “knowing someone” in the Newland sense of knowing their parents and grandparents and children and brothers and sisters and cousins, knowing everything they had ever done or were likely to do. Whenever she passed someone in the street up here, she prepared to smile and say hi and comment on the weather. With alarm she discovered that people looked resolutely ahead or at the sidewalk. And almost everyone had his or her robbery or mugging story. She learned to glance over her shoulder as she walked to the subway late at night.