Original Sins

by Lisa Alther

  She was assigned to help the early teens, who were doing primitive camping, digging latrine holes in the forest and lashing limbs between tree trunks for toilet seats, cooking over open fires with black pots and reflector ovens. Their pup tents were pitched in a circle on a soft floor of pine needles. Often they hiked down to the lake for swimming and canoeing, sometimes for a meal in the dining hall with the other campers. Each morning they attended the flag ceremony in the field above the dining hall, and at night they sat around the fire, sang songs, told stories, and acted out skits.

  Emily wrote Raymond in the light from a kerosene lantern. His latest letters to her conveyed the same elation as his first: “When I’m not working, I walk around the city taking pictures. The wharves where the ocean liners dock. The streets off Seventh Avenue crammed with boys pushing racks of suits and dresses. Messengers on Wall Street with attaché cases chained to their wrists. The fancy stores on Fifth Avenue. Mulberry Street and the Italian delicatessens, their windows crammed with sausages and salamis, strings of peppers, bunches of herbs. Chinatown. The weirdos around the fountain in Washington Square. (That’s in Greenwich Village.) The wholesale flower market. Yorkville, the townhouses in the East Sixties. One night I walked by chance out into Times Square. A huge cigarette billboard was blowing smoke rings. Neon signs glittered like a vault of precious gems.

  “I went with Gus to his parents’ in New Jersey for Sunday lunch last week. We came back across the George Washington Bridge, and there was the skyline stretching below us. We drove down the Henry Hudson Parkway past huge brick apartment buildings with all this fancy molding and with thousands of windows reflecting the sunset. I felt a great surge of pride that I was part of this now. Sometimes I stand for half an hour or more on Park Avenue in the Forties and stare at these huge glass and steel skyscrapers. They take my breath away, Emily. This city is like a turbine. It throbs with energy …”

  Emily blew out the lantern and stretched out in her sleeping bag, listening to the frogs and crickets and an occasional mournful owl. Babs, her tentmate, a sophomore Phys. Ed. major from the University of Georgia, taught canoeing. The first time she saw Babs, Emily was standing on the porch of the counselors’ hut on orientation day, looking down to the lake. A tanned girl in a red tank suit was gripping the edge of the diving board and slowly pressing herself into a handstand. After coming down, she jumped into a canoe and glided across the lake, executing complicated maneuvers. She landed at the dock accurately, then hoisted the aluminum canoe out of the water and carried it to the rack. Emily sat by her at dinner that night and studied her burnt nose, coated with greasy white ointment.

  The campers arrived a couple of days later—mostly from Newland and other towns in the valley. One girl named Rowena was from a farm on the road up to camp. Her eyes were crossed, her hair was stringy and greasy, she was overweight, acned, and mildly retarded. She wore someone’s cast-off gabardine maternity slacks and a coral Orion sweater. Her tongue hung from a corner of her mouth when she laughed. The other campers avoided her. They wore blouses with Peter Pan collars and circle pins. Bermuda shorts, new tennis shoes called Grasshoppers, which had only two holes per side for laces, and college sweatshirts from older brothers and sisters. They made Emily nervous. She was sure they’d be voted into Ingenue when they got to high school. They always knew the right thing to wear, the right thing to say.

  There was an uneven number, and Rowena ended up tenting by herself. Emily paired herself with Rowena in jobs requiring partners, and talked with Georgia and Sissy, the most popular campers, trying to persuade them to include Rowena. They were just at the age to start thinking that Girl Scout ideals like kindness were finky.

  Rowena began following Emily around like a dog, trying to sit beside her at meals and to stand beside her at flag ceremony. Emily in turn was devoting effort to standing and sitting beside Babs. Emily’s skin crawled as Rowena tried to hold her hand. But she wouldn’t have minded holding Babs’s. Babs was pinned to a Sigma Nu named Rob. She wore a tiny gold crown studded with pearls on her breast. After supper, they sometimes played keepaway. Emily and Babs passed the ball under their legs and behind their backs as they ran—while the campers squealed with delight and frustration. Rowena galumphed up and down the field with very little idea what was going on, screaming with laughter, her tongue protruding over the corner of her lower lip. Emily tried to toss her the ball every so often, but she always threw it straight up in the air, howling with delight.

  One night the campers hid Rob’s photo. He was a handsome chunky-looking young man with dark curly hair, a sneaky grin, and a beer mug tie tack. Emily and Babs searched the woods. Finally Rowena led them to it behind a boulder, and stood looking at them with her crossed eyes, hungry for praise.

  Back in the tent Babs murmured, “It’s really gross not seeing him all summer.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Sort of. He’s in New York City now, though. Has a job up there.”

  “For good?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Gee, that’s tough.”

  “Well, I don’t know. We’re more like friends, I guess. We grew up together.”

  “Oh, that’s nice.”

  “It’s nice, but it’s not very romantic.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean. Why don’t you get somebody else?”

  “Nobody else asks me out. I guess they figure Raymond and I are going steady or something. I guess we are really. Or were.”

  “Well, now’s your chance.”

  “Yeah, but there’s nobody I’m much interested in.”

  “That’s what you always think right after you break up. But someone else always comes along.”

  “But we didn’t actually break up.”

  “But you weren’t actually going steady?”

  A couple of days later they went in two trucks to a TVA lake for a canoe trip, in preparation for a three-day trip. Babs and Emily rode in the cab of one truck, which was being driven by Earl, the camp caretaker. Earl was a junior at the state university. He was tall with messy shocks of light brown hair, piercing green eyes, and a good-natured smile. He wore riding boots, tight jeans, and a wide leather thong around his wrist.

  “Cigarette?” he asked, holding out a pack of Marlboros. Babs grinned. They weren’t supposed to smoke in front of campers. Babs removed her big straw hat and put it over the back window. Then she took a cigarette and lit it, cupping her hand around the match.

  Emily had never smoked. It was one more failing—she made good grades, she didn’t smoke, she didn’t drink, she didn’t pet. She didn’t particularly want to make good grades. It was something that had been thrust upon her, like menstruation. Each year her class elected her Most Studious or Most Likely to Succeed. The point was that she didn’t want to succeed, she wanted to be popular. Sally of course always got Most Popular or Best Smile for her class. Sometimes Emily would try to make a bad grade, but it was almost impossible on true-false quizzes and multiple choice. As for the drinking, smoking, and petting, these were things she was prepared to try, but opportunities didn’t present themselves. In junior high she had concluded that if only her mother would allow her to wear a bra, shave her legs and armpits, use deodorant, and wear lipstick, she would be a social success. Eventually she achieved these goals, but nothing changed. Ingenue still hadn’t given her a bid, and she was still voted Most Likely to Succeed.

  She took a Marlboro and sucked the match flame into its tip, as Babs had. The cab filled with billowing smoke, and Emily choked.

  Earl and Babs looked at her with concern. Her face purple, she gasped, “Oh, it’s nothing. Just went down the wrong way.” She crossed her legs and positioned the cigarette between extended fingertips as Babs had done. She looked casually out the truck window where trees were flying past, then glanced at the cigarette, adjusting it slightly.

  Babs flicked her ash into the tray with her thumb nail. Emily did likewise
, flipping the cigarette into Earl’s lap. The truck skidded as Emily dived across Babs and between Earl’s legs. She smiled, recrossed her legs, and repositioned her cigarette.

  “Either of you girls ride horses?” Earl inquired.

  “I used to, but I haven’t in a long time,” replied Babs.

  “Me neither,” said Emily.

  “You should come down to my cottage sometime after supper. I’m training a mare to jump. You could ride her if you wanted.”

  “Thanks. Might do it,” Babs said, squashing out her cigarette.

  On their first evening off Babs and Emily went to the clearing behind Earl’s cabin. Earl had set up two uprights joined by a bar of adjustable height. They sat on the leaf mold on the hill smoking Marlboros in the twilight and listening to whippoorwills. Time after time Earl headed the mare toward the jump. Sometimes she snorted and tossed her head and balked, her eyes rolling back. He’d whip her and whirl her back to the starting position, kicking her flanks with his boot heels. Other times she’d clear the jump, knocking down the bar. Occasionally she’d clear it altogether. Then he’d stroke her sweaty neck and murmur endearments.

  Afterward the three sat on the hillside smoking. As the sky went black, Earl brought out beers. Emily took sips until she felt a weakness creeping up her legs to her knees. Earl and Babs progressed to a giggling stage. They began wrestling in the leaf mold, insulting each other. Emily felt like a chaperone, but Babs insisted on her going the next time.

  They returned to the lake for their trip—six canoes, three people to each. Emily paddled stern in one, with Rowena riding in the middle; Babs paddled stern in another. Through the long hot afternoon they paddled. Emily watched Babs’s long steady strokes, watched the sun burn down on her bronzed back and flash off her wet paddle. At one point Sissy threw some marshmallows at Rowena when Rowena wasn’t looking. Then she convinced her it was raining marshmallows. The other campers laughed as Rowena gazed trustingly at the sky.

  When the canoes were side by side, Emily proposed a race to Babs. Each brought up one knee and dug in her paddle. The canoes shot forward. They and their bow paddlers searched for a steady rhythm. Emily watched Babs’s back and arm muscles tighten as she slid the paddle into the water and pulled on it. It made a sucking sound and left behind tiny whirlpools. Water dribbled off the paddle as she swept it in a half circle, parallel to the water. Emily timed her strokes to Babs’s, and both canoes surged through the water toward the dam, leaving wakes.

  They beached at the base of the dam and climbed up the gravel bank to the snack bar that overlooked the concrete face. Far below, water gushed out after its journey through the turbines. They bought Cokes and candy bars. Emily stared at the families in their camper-trailers, feeling out of touch with this world after many weeks in a tent in the mountains.

  Babs said, “Rob wants us to buy one of those things and go cross-country after we get married.” “Married? Are you getting married?”

  Babs laughed. “Well, sure, after I graduate. We’ll get engaged a year from next Christmas, and the wedding will be the following June. Rob says we’d better take this trip before we start to have us our kids.”

  “How many are you going to have?” “Four.”

  They spread sleeping bags on a deserted gravel beach at the far end of the lake that night. Behind them towered wooded, cave-pocked cliffs. They sang grace and cooked stew from dehydrated meat and vegetables. The sun, a huge copper gong, inched behind the mountain across the lake. As far as they could see in all directions, there was no sign of human existence except their own. After supper the campers began teasing Rowena, calling her names until she cried. Roweener. Ro the Weener. Weener.

  Later they drank hot chocolate and lay around the fire listening to wild boars rooting in the underbrush. Buzzards settled in nests at the clifftops. Babs sat behind Sissy, brushing and braiding her long hair, as the group sang about anthropomorphic frogs and pigeons, with whippoorwills whistling a refrain from the forest. Emily watched Babs’s strong brown hands smoothing and patting Sissy’s hair and wished that her own weren’t chopped off in a curly cap. But she was a junior counselor now, supposed to pamper, not be pampered. But it wasn’t coming easily to her. Rowena was clinging to her hand, and it disgusted her. Why do I always end up with the freaks, she asked herself.

  After the girls crawled into their sleeping bags and began to doze off, Babs grabbed Marlboros from her knapsack and nodded down beach. They walked across gravel and climbed over driftwood. Waves lapping at their feet, they lit cigarettes and puffed in silence. The sky was so clear that even the clustered Pleiades looked almost separate. Emily recalled Injun Al’s telling The Five how Cherokees tested braves’ eyesight by asking them to count the stars in the Pleiades. She thought about the difficulties of being a nearsighted brave—perhaps equivalent to the difficulties of being a brainy, athletic girl at Newland High.

  The moon had not risen, but the millions of distant stars seemed to light up the black. Except for waves licking the shore, rustlings in the forest, their own sighs as they exhaled, and the distant crackling of their campfire, all was quiet.

  “God, I’m missing Rob tonight,” Babs murmured.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  Babs looked at her. “Do you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe not.”

  “A summer without sex. What a rotten idea.”

  Emily sat in rigid silence, not daring to pursue this topic. Was Babs actually saying she’d had sex? If so, she was the only self-proclaimed nonvirgin Emily had ever met.

  Babs smiled and patted her leg. “You’re a good kid, Emily.”

  Emily felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. Her leg tingled where Babs had just touched her. She grabbed another cigarette and lit it with trembling hands. What in the world was that?

  A letter from Raymond was waiting when she got back to the main camp. She read it lying on her back in a stand of poplars, whose rustling leaves sprinkled drops of sunlight back and forth across her body. “I spend a lot of time riding the subways. I sit and watch the people getting on and off—every skin color and style of dress in the world. Or I go to a newsstand and look through newspapers from almost every country—the Irish Advocate and Staats-Zeitung, Novy Swiat, and La Prensa. Or I stand on Madison Avenue during rush hour and watch ad men and editors bustling past. The most talented people in the world are here. This is where everything is happening. Sometimes I go out to the airport and watch passengers getting off planes from Osaka and Dubai, Bangkok and Melbourne. I never before realized how boring Newland is—everyone looks and thinks exactly alike. You wear the wrong color socks one day and you’re an outcast for life. For the first time, I feel like a real person, an individual. Anything seems possible here. Can you understand this, Emily?”

  On the whole, she thought not. She was dwarfed by trees. The nearest person was a mile away. Raymond was dwarfed by glass and steel skyscrapers, surrounded by crowds. How did he expect her to understand?

  Emily wandered alone over to Earl’s. As usual he and the mare were struggling out back. Insects, birds, and frogs provided a continuum for the mare’s snorts, Earl’s curses and cooings, the whack of his whip, the pounding of hooves, the thud of the bar hitting the ground. The bar was up to three feet. Afterward he sprawled on the hillside with his beer and cigarette, attired in his usual brown leather riding boots, tight jeans, and T-shirt.

  “I’m getting there.”

  “I can see the improvement.”

  “Yeah, she’s a good horse. Learns fast. Did you have a good canoe trip?”

  “Yeah, it was nice. No rain. No accidents. Perfect.”

  “Where’s Babs at tonight?”

  “She’s on duty. Do you mind just me being here?”

  “Do I mind? Are you kidding?”

  “Well, I didn’t know. I mean I thought …”

  “What? Me and Babs?” He threw his head back and laughed. “She’s pinned.”

  “Yeah, I know. So wh
at?”

  “That’s the next thing to being engaged, you dope. You’re just a dumb little high school punk, ain’t you?” he teased in the tone he used with Babs when they wrestled. “Ain’t you?”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I guess so.” She didn’t know how to play this game.

  “Em’s a little high school jerk!”

  She decided to try. “Not so little!” she announced, punching him in his hard stomach as she had seen Babs do.

  “Aha! She fights!” Grinning, he twisted her arm into a hammerlock. She threw her other arm around his neck and got him in a head hold. “Take it back!” she demanded, tightening her arm.

  “Em’s a little high school creep!” He tightened his hammerlock. With one foot she kicked his chest, forcing him to release her arm. He flung himself on top of her, sitting on her stomach and forcing her arms to the ground over her head.

  “All right now!” he said triumphantly. “Tell me I’m wonderful.”

  “You’re a worm!” She brought one leg over his head and thrust it hard against his chest so that he toppled backward and rolled down the hill. He leaped up and ran back up in exaggerated, slow-motion strides. She was laughing, crouched. He tackled her. She fell back on her elbows. He grabbed her hair with both hands and pulled her head backward, until her mouth opened.

  Suddenly she wasn’t having fun. She had often seen his mare’s mouth drop open similarly as he sawed on her reins. She tossed her head trying to free her hair. His mouth lowered onto hers, and his tongue stabbed her compressed lips. She shoved him off.

  He lay looking at the sky. “I’m sorry, Emily. I thought you wanted that.”

  Emily understood she’d been playing out of her league. From her days with The Five she was accustomed to tussling with boys. But she was no longer a child. “I’m too young for that stuff, Earl.”

  He laughed. “Too young? Look at you! I hate to break it to you, kid, but you’re a big girl.”