Original Sins

by Lisa Alther

  Mr. Shell, his father’s crony, also was not aware of his whooping crane status. A sweet old man in a long black robe, who had once been farsighted and flexible, and who was now sounding like a broken record: “… right from the start, and no doubt down to this very day, there were those who clung to the old ways and the ancient gods, those who repudiated every attempt to lead our people out of their wilderness of despair and desolation. But no doubt there were some with Joshua, too, who refused to enter the Promised Land, and returned to the grave of Moses to await their deaths. But for the rest of us, our sufferings in the desert have given us an immense delight in and gratitude for our brave new land of milk and honey. The Gospel counsels us to care for the weak as though they were our children, to practice generosity to the less fortunate, to aid all mankind as though each and every unfortunate were Jesus Christ himself. We have lifted our workers out of their mire of ignorance and disease and filth. We are instruments in the hand of a merciful God. Truly we can say of the mills and factories that stretch proudly along the banks of the Cherokee River, that they are ‘like trees planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth their fruit in their season.’”

  Emily inspected the congregation as she walked back from the communion railing. The kids her age were sons and daughters of factory managers, doctors, lawyers. “Brains” at school. Emily felt put upon having to attend this church when most of the Ingenues went to the Methodist or Baptist churches. Both had active Sunday night youth groups—arranged hay rides and suppers. How could she be expected to get a bid from Ingenue when she was forced to go to this weird church where you had to wear a hat? She glanced at her parents resentfully, plopped down on her knees and pretended to pray, then slumped into the pew corner with her arms folded. Her parents were weird compared to everybody else’s, who joked and shouted at their kids and really cared about them. Their drafty barn of a house was like a morgue. Everybody else had family rooms with pine paneling and dart boards, linoleum floors for dancing, Ping-Pong tables and pinball machines. Instead of junky old antiques you couldn’t touch. No wonder Ingenue didn’t want her.

  She wanted to be an Ingenue, not a Junior Servicette. She wanted to spend her time collecting punch cups, rather than serenading at the Poor Farm. To join the Junior Service Club, you had to have good grades, good marks in citizenship, and be a good Christian. In other words, you had to be a fink. A bunch of finks got together and did finky things. Like going to the Poor Farm, as they’d done yesterday. (Their adviser kept reminding them to call it the County Home.) It consisted of a white residential building, out-buildings, and surrounding fields, which the more able inmates tilled and planted in nice weather. But most inmates were too senile and fragile for farmwork. They were there because their families wouldn’t or couldn’t care for them, or because they had no families.

  The party was held in a dreary ground-floor room. Bare wood floors, wooden benches around the walls, flaking paint on the walls. On the benches sat a dozen inmates, scrubbed, combed, and dressed in fresh overalls and housedresses. They grinned toothlessly and murmured shy words of welcome.

  The boys hung crepe paper, while the girls arranged flowers and put out piles of gifts and organized cake and punch on a table they covered with a paper cloth. The old people watched, even though most had already endured several identical Junior Service Welcome-to-Spring parties.

  Roger, a slight young man who played organ at the First Baptist Church, sat at an out-of-tune piano and played “I’m Looking over a Four-Leafed Clover.” Marge, a Madrigal, said with a big smile, as though addressing two-year-olds, “Everybody let’s sing now!” Mostly Marge sang, with some help from the Junior Servicettes. The inmates droned an uninspired basso continuo. A man in freshly pressed overalls with a watch chain across the bib pounded time with his cane and grinned toothlessly. Several others clapped faintly, out of rhythm. A gusty April wind rattled the windows in their frames like chattering false teeth.

  The Junior Servicettes passed out gifts—lacy handkerchiefs for the women and billfolds for the men. They grinned and exclaimed, and Emily began to feel irritated that so little could excite them to such gratitude.

  As the old people ate cake and sipped punch, the Junior Servicettes chatted with them. Or rather, listened, as each old person told his or her life story, delighted to find a fresh audience. Emily sat with the old man who had pounded his cane. He told her about his childhood, hired out to a farmer by his stepfather from sunrise to sunset for twenty-five cents a day. His youth, in lumber camps and saw mills. His forty years in the card room at Benson Mill. His old age here at the County Home due to a complicated story of broken promises and abandonment, illness and death. He talked with a toothless smile. Occasionally he paused to wheeze and cough. “Hit’s my lungs,” he explained. “Done gone plumb punky. The Doc, he says hit’s the empheeseemee done got me. Too much smoking. Funny thang is, I ain’t never smoked.” He heaved with soundless laughter.

  Above the smiling mouth, in his eyes, Emily read misery, loneliness, lovelessness, bitterness, resignation, fear, humiliation—and contempt for young people who understood nothing. She got up and moved away, muttering an excuse.

  In closing, Emily on her flute accompanied Marge, who sang, “Shine glorious sun. / Banish all our cares and sorrow. Set thy radiance in heaven To greet the morrow.”The old man pounded his cane loudly and off the beat, smiling, until an attendant led him away.

  “Well!” said their adviser as they drove away. “That went very well. You all did a real nice job.”

  “I don’t think we should go again,” Emily murmured.

  “How come?” everyone asked with surprise.

  “I don’t know.”

  Mrs. Prince noted Emily’s sour look in her direction and was swept with guilt. What had she done now? Emily was at an age at which she seemed to need to expend energy making her parents feel bad for having brought her into this imperfect world.

  Next, right on schedule, arrived sympathy. (The two alternated, like flashing neon signs.) Sally was everything Emily wanted to be, and there was no way to tell Emily that the cheerleading set, force-bloomed, shriveled early and spent the rest of their lives consumed by a disembodied sense of injustice that they were no longer the focus for the entire community. Mrs. Prince had watched this happen to her own high school class. The athletes, the “fast” set had had their years. But now the classmates she’d envied so much were tired middle-aged householders like herself. Rose Tatro, for instance. She’d been a sponsor for the band, had marched in front at football games carrying an armload of carnations dyed orange and purple, the Newland High colors. Several boys had fought almost to the death over her. Melanie had seen her downtown the other day. Her hair was frizzy, she was too heavy, was wearing too much makeup in an attempt to conceal wrinkles.

  But Emily took after Robert and was almost impossible to console. She specialized in varieties of frowns and grimaces, and had ever since birth really. That was the astonishing thing—to realize that Emily had been Emily right from the womb. And Sally, Sally. As a baby, Sally gurgled and giggled and climbed all over anyone who was around, touching their eyelashes with fascination as they blinked. Emily had spent most of her early years sitting absolutely still in a playpen, looking as though she were carrying on a dialogue with unseen beings. Several times Melanie had looked out the kitchen window into the back yard and seen chipmunks down from the trees sitting quietly beside her in the playpen. Sometimes it felt as though the two girls were living out two aspects of Melanie’s own personality. Sally was the clubwoman, though she was successful at it. And Emily brooded about time and space and the meaning of life, while feeling bad about not being able to do what seemed to satisfy everyone around her.

  Melanie looked at the altar with an expert eye. She’d set up this communion. She liked draping the embroidered cloths over the chalice, straightening the corners. Changing the hangings for the different seasons and holy days. Changing the numbers in the overhead racks. Keep
ing the vestments clean and pressed for the choir and the acolytes and the deacon.

  Mr. Shell was about to retire, and they were having to pick someone new. Various young men were giving guest sermons. Recently an earnest young man from Baltimore chastised them for their non-involvement in the Negro struggle. He’d not gotten the job. But the points he’d raised had remained with her. Was church the place to raise such issues? She’d always thought of it as a place of refuge from the problems of this wretched world, like her garden.

  “… May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face to shine upon you and give you peace, this day and evermore. Amen.”

  Chapter Five

  The Plantation Ball

  The spotlight was on Jed and Sally as they strolled down the ramp, her arm through his. “Miss Sally Prince, escorted by Mr. Jed Tatro.”

  Sally was wearing a strapless white gown with a full ballerina-length skirt. Atop her dark blonde hair was a rhinestone tiara. The carnations she had shamed Jed into sending were tied on her wrist. She was overcome with pride and had to blink back tears. This was the moment each Ingenue had been working for all year. This was the whole glorious reason for the bake sales, the car washes, the raffles. She glanced with a proprietary smile at Jed in his rented white dinner jacket. He wore a ruffled shirt, and a plaid cumberbund and bow tie. Across his chest was the purple sash that identified him as an Ingenue Escort. He was grinning at their friends, who were applauding as she and he descended the steps to “Moon River,” played by the dance band on the stage. She and Jed took their position in the formation on the dance floor, just to the right of the free-throw line, and watched and applauded as the other club members were presented.

  Sally glanced around the gym, which had been transformed by coral gauze draperies into a voluptuous harem. The rest of the student body stood in the shadows and sat at tables around the circumference of the dance floor. She loved being able to provide everyone with such a lovely dance. Things would get so humdrum without special occasions to work for and look forward to.

  Behind the band was a mural the club used each year-—of a plantation house with white pillars. Jed studied it. This was the kind of house he’d always imagined he’d live in when he returned to Newland after his pro ball career to live off his endorsements and raise his family. Never mind that there wasn’t no such house in town. He’d build him one. Pulling up in front of the mansion was a horse-drawn coach, driven by a nigger in a satin uniform. On the verandah stood women in long dresses and men in white suits. A fat black mammy chuckled in the doorway and shielded pink-cheeked children in her long homespun skirts. Fancy writing said, “Our Southern Way of Life.”

  Jed glanced around the room. It looked good. The girls had done a nice job. The coral walls of the tent swelled and billowed. It reminded him of Betty Boob’s cunt when she was coming. This notion of being a midget trapped inside a giant cunt made him feel suffocated. He stretched his neck to loosen his collar.

  All twenty-eight Ingenues and their dates had assembled. The band began “The Champagne Waltz,” and the couples waltzed around each other in intricate patterns while the audience applauded. Bill Rogers, president of the boys’ social club, the Rebels, climbed up on the ramp with the president of Ingenue. He held up a cut-glass cup of fruit punch and gave the ritual toast: “To the young women of the South, exceeded by none in beauty and virtue. We pledge ourselves to your service and protection.”

  Sally blinked back tears as all the young men in the room raised their cups, then tossed down their punch. She glanced down to be sure her bodice wasn’t slipping.

  Emily, standing in a corner, glanced at Raymond, uncomfortable in his rented dinner jacket. He grinned and tossed off his punch. Then he put his arm around her and said in a deep voice, “Don’t worry, little one. You’ve got me to take care of you.” She removed herself from his grasp and gave him a disapproving look. “Virtue, my ass,” Raymond whispered. “Do you think there’s a virgin in this room?”

  “Besides me?” As she gazed at the assembled Ingenues, she felt gangly, unattractive, and envious. What could she do to become one of them?

  Raymond studied the mural of “Our Southern Way of Life” and thought of his kinfolks in Tatro Cove. Who were they trying to kid? He didn’t know anybody who lived like that. Of course, his great-grandfather had died defending “Our Southern Way of Life.” And Raymond himself on the junior high playground had participated in elaborate campaigns against the horrified sons of Newland’s Yankee industrialists. Occasionally he fought on the Yankee side because he played chess with them. But usually he’d devoted himself to restoring the lost honor of the South.

  “Let’s dance,” he suggested, steering Emily onto the floor as the band swung into “Sweet Little Sixteen.”

  As she and Raymond did their best to simulate chickens scratching after grain, Emily saw a Negro boy in a white waiter’s jacket by the refreshment table gathering up used cups. He looked up, as though feeling her stare, and glanced around.

  “Look, Raymond. It’s Donny.”

  They stopped dancing and stared. Donny, long and lanky, was grinning and serving someone punch. “Christ,” Raymond muttered.

  “Maybe we should go say hello?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Raymond said, dragging her toward the door.

  “But why? We just got here.” Raymond was a drag, always wanting to leave parties early and refusing to join in while he was there. No wonder Ingenue hadn’t given her a bid. Maybe she needed to break up with him and find another boyfriend who wasn’t so determined to be a creep.

  “Why is he grinning like that?”

  “Maybe he’s having a good time. Some people do at dances, you know.”

  “It’s bad enough that he’s doing it at all. But it’s terrible if he’s enjoying it.”

  “But why?”

  “They’re trying to fit him into his slot, same as they’re trying to do to me. I know a slot when I see one.” That week at school classmates had begun squealing through the halls waving college acceptances. Raymond was starting to feel frantic over the topic of what to do with himself for the rest of his life.

  Donny sloshed punch into cups, grinning grimly. His grandmaw had taken to telling him lately, “Good manners is the best life insurance a colored person can have.” Besides, a grin set you free. As long as you grinned, you could think whatever you wanted. And at this particular moment, he was wondering if these white boys was knocking off their girlfriends or what. So many of them looked so awkward out there, jerking around like they was half paralyzed or something. Even if they got it in, they’d never be able to keep it in, lurching around like that. No wonder Blanton was out after his mama. He felt the rage begin to rise in his throat. He squelched it, listened to a few bars of “Long Tall Sally,” did a couple of loose-limbed dance steps, and flashed his teeth at the white boy whose cup he was filling.

  “What you so happy about?” the boy asked, smiling back. “You having a good time?”

  “Yes sir, I sure is!”

  As far as his mama knew, he wasn’t here tonight. His grandmaw had come home with Sally’s message offering him this job. His mama yelled, “Why, that little slut! Who she think she’s talking to?”

  “Ten bucks, Mama, for one evening.”

  “I don’t care if it’s ten thousand bucks. You write back and tell her to go douche with her fruit punch!”

  “Kathryn! You watch that mouth of yours in front of your little boy!” Ruby snarled.

  Donny was laughing. “I ain’t so little, Grandmaw.”

  “That’s twice what I make in a day,” Ruby pointed out. “You put on a white jacket, and you dump punch in cups, and they pay you ten dollars. Law, I don’t see a thing wrong with that.”

  “I don’t neither,” Donny said.

  “If you don’t see, I can’t tell you. But I’m still your mama, Donny, and I forbid you to take that job.”

  Their eyes locked, Donny’s amazed. “Mama, I
’m sixteen years old. You ain’t been around here for four years. I decide what I gon do.”

  “If you take that job, I don’t want to know about it.”

  If this was what New York City did to people, made them too picky to earn a living, then he thought he’d better stay put. As far as he could see, his mama had turned plumb hysterical up there.

  It was early morning, too early for other boats to be out, but not too early for the sun to be scorching. The inlet was surrounded by wooden cliffs. Buzzards wheeled around nests high overhead. Jed cut the motor and drifted alongside the ski jump. He tied the boat to a leg of the jump and hopped out, then helped Sally onto the sloping canvas surface.

  They lay side by side, half-dozing, the hot sun burning into their tired bodies. In keeping with tradition they’d been out all night at post-ball parties that eventually became breakfasts. They were well fed on scrambled eggs and sweet rolls.

  Jed took Sally’s hand. She squeezed his. “Wasn’t it wonderful?” she sighed. “Everything went so beautifully. I can’t believe it’s all over.”

  Jed rolled over, nibbled at her neck and ears, and pushed the damp blonde hair back from her forehead. “You’re so beautiful.”

  “Of course, it isn’t really over, is it? We have to go clean up this afternoon. How will we stay awake?”

  Jed lowered his mouth onto hers. They kissed for a long time, their tongues playing hide-and-seek. “I want you so much, Sally.”

  “The band was OK, but I liked the Dukes last year better.”

  Jed worked a knee between her legs. He slid his hand down her bathing suit top and stroked a nipple.

  “You won’t forget to borrow that truck for the clean-up this afternoon, will you, Jeddie?”