Original Sins

by Lisa Alther

  In front of Dupree’s lounged men in sports clothes. They’d been hanging around all day, passing a bottle of Four Roses to celebrate spring. All winter they’d clustered around the kerosene heater in the pool room, moving away a couple at a time for games of Eight Ball. As the line of sweaty men filed past, those in front of Dupree’s called out greetings, and received tired waves in reply.

  Donny got into cream slacks and a matching pullover left over from high school. The slacks were too tight, and Nicole had chewed some snags in the shirt. As he strolled toward Dupree’s, he glanced into the laundromat. Rochelle was sitting and talking with Charlene as she nursed the baby and joggled Nicole’s stroller with her foot. She looked up and spotted him through the window just as he tried to duck behind the wall. She motioned him to come in. “How you, honey?”

  He pecked her forehead.

  “Just fine. How you?” He sat down, nodding to Charlene.

  “You look real nice, Donny,” said Charlene. “Real springlike.”

  “Thank you. Thought I’d go talk to them boys over to Dupree’s.”

  “Honey, you know I don’t like you hanging around them men.”

  “Mama, I knowed them cats all my life.” Leon had come down from New York City not long ago calling everyone a “cat,” and now the expression was all over Pine Woods.

  “They a bad influence.”

  “Bad influence? What trouble is they to get into around this place?”

  “Now, Donny, listen to me, hon. Them men don’t work without they have to. Most has left their families. Half of them’ll run off to New York City or Cincinnati, Ohio, by the end of the year. We seen it happen all our lives. Honey, I don’t want to lose you.”

  He put his arm around her. “Baby, you ain’t gon lose me.” It was true: The men with families sat on their porches when they got home, and played with their children. They strolled up the street to the soft ice cream stand with their wives and kids. Once they joined the men at Dupree’s, it was usually just a question of time before they left their families, and eventually left Pine Woods. Or ended up in the alley next to Dupree’s drinking liquid shoe polish, after-shave lotion, and paint thinner.

  But as they passed Dupree’s. him carrying the baby and her pushing the stroller, he noticed her sideways glances at the men out front, the increased thrust of her milk-swollen breasts, the added sway to her hips. The men noticed, too, and watched her pass, not daring to comment with him there. But what about earlier in the afternoon when she’d gone down to the laundromat, while he was pushing his mop for her and these babies? He glanced at her. These cats were rested, and hungry for women because they weren’t working. When they did, they spent the money on fancy clothes and let the county take care of their babies. What did she want—a stud, or a husband and father? Looked like she wanted everything.

  In front of the Palace Theater some boys and girls from high school were flirting and badmouthing each other. The boys kept glancing at the men in front of Dupree’s, copying the way they stood, the way they held their cigarettes, the way they examined and commented on each woman who passed, as though judging a dog show. Donny and Rochelle as they strolled past didn’t even merit a glance. Although those kids were only three or four years younger than him, Donny felt like their father. He smiled.

  “What you grinning about, nigger?” asked Rochelle.

  “Those boys, they all think they gon be big heroes.” He recalled sitting in the Castle Tree confidently planning to be a commando trooper in a camouflage uniform, a penthouse dweller in New York City. “They gon turn around all of a sudden and find out they ain’t nothing but ordinary niggers like all the rest of us.”

  “What’s funny about that?”

  “What you want me to do, woman, cry?” They strolled down the street of ranch houses belonging to Mr. Dupree, to the mortician, to the principal at the high school, to several of the teachers, to Reverend Stump. The houses were freshly painted, with shutters and shiny brass door knockers. Their gleaming windows reflected the spring sun.

  “Wouldn’t you just love a place like that, Donny? You reckon we’ll have us one someday?”

  “Don’t see a way in the world.”

  She looked at him. “Mr. Can’t never could do nothing.” A bigger apartment wasn’t enough. Now she had to have her a house. He couldn’t hardly keep up with her. What about the car he wanted? She wanted to settle in. Well, maybe he wanted to be all set to cut out. The street ended abruptly in a faintly greening cow pasture. They stood by the fence and watched a Holstein bull mount a heifer.

  Rochelle asked, “How come you ain’t like that ole bull, honey?”

  “If you look real close, you’ll see he ain’t knocking off the same heifer time after time.”

  Rochelle glanced at him. “I was just teasing, hon.”

  “What you on about sex all the time for anyhow? Before we got hitched, it was all I could do to get me a kiss off of you.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to go getting pregnant.”

  “And now you do?”

  “Twice is enough.”

  “OK, so just shut up about sex then.”

  She looked at him.

  He saw things different from her. He didn’t think much beyond this evening. Tomorrow he’d do pretty much what he’d done today, last month, last year. Next year he’d still be doing it. Whereas she seemed to see him rising into jobs that paid more. She hadn’t been able to turn herself into no librarian. How did she expect him to turn himself into someone who could buy her a ranch house? She’d been so excited when Mr. Prince phoned and told him to start work. The first colored person taken on at the mill—and even white people poured out of the hills when word got out that the mill was hiring. But here she still wasn’t satisfied. He yanked Isaac’s fingers out of his mouth. Isaac whimpered. He thrust him into Rochelle’s arms and began shoving the stroller so savagely that Nicole began whimpering.

  Raymond Tatro in his denim coveralls came up at Donny at work, glanced around, held out a blue card, and said, “Here you go, Donny. You want to sign this?”

  Donny took the card. “What is it, Mr. Raymond?”

  Raymond grimaced. “Just call me Raymond like everybody else, OK?”

  Donny shrugged. “Sure. Whatever you say, Mr. Raymond. Raymond.”

  “It’s a union card. You want to join the union?”

  “I don’t know nothing bout no union, sir.”

  “It’s sort of like a club. With meetings and things.”

  Donny looked at him. Since when did whites want coloreds at their club meetings? Not since the Castle Tree.

  “We working to get higher wages and health benefits and a pension plan and all like that.”

  “How you do that?”

  “Well, we all join together and ask for them. And if we don’t get them, we stop working.”

  “Mr. Prince, he won’t like that, will he?” He felt gratitude toward Mr. Prince and wasn’t studying to go doing nothing that might upset the man.

  “Mr. Prince won’t care. He’s got him his big house on the hill. He don’t own this company anymore anyhow. A bunch of rich men up North do.”

  “You sure about that? Mr. Prince, he all the time talking about us being one big happy family.”

  Raymond laughed. “Yeah, we one big happy family, all right. But Big Daddy, he’s up in New York City running around on us. But we gon get us our share.”

  “Yeah, all right. I’m with you, Raymond.” He signed the card and handed it back, feeling proud to be asked to join.

  “Don’t talk about this to nobody. We just trying to get going. I’ll let you know what’s happening.”

  “It ain’t dangerous or nothing like that? I don’t want no trouble.”

  “Huh-un. It’s just a little bit secret for right now.”

  He watched Raymond walk away. Didn’t know what to make of the man. He turned up at the mill last fall, seeming rushed and tense. Just like Donny’s mama. Going off up North did weird things
to people. His grandmaw told how Emily had come down to her apartment last Christmas after just a few months up at New York City and had stood around squinting and frowning and shifting from foot to foot like a nutcase. It’d be real interesting to know just what went on up there, to make folks act so strange.

  At supper Donny announced, “We might could start looking around for a bigger place, mama. I gon get me a raise.”

  Rochelle looked at him, delighted, and ushered the four children into the bedroom after finishing up the dishes. They made love on the sofa, like when they were first married.

  The next day as Donny was pushing a broom through the card room, he heard Raymond and Al Grimes talking behind some machines.

  “… ain’t setting at meetings next to no lazy, stinking, stupid niggers, Tatro. Lots of others feel the same.”

  “… motherfucking bigots …”

  “… new here, Tatro … ain’t running this show …”

  Mr. Al tracked Donny down in the spinning room and handed him his blue card, torn in half. “I’m real sorry, Donny. Mr. Tatro didn’t know colored people ain’t allowed to join no union.”

  Raymond walked up later, averted his eyes, and mumbled, “… really disgusted … won’t always be like this …”

  Donny grinned. “Don’t you worry none, Mr. Raymond. I be just fine.”

  Raymond walked away. What was the matter with that man? Donny was the one not allowed in the union. What was it to Raymond anyhow? Donny didn’t need his sympathy. Sympathy didn’t pay the rent on no bigger apartment.

  Donny propped open the door to the ladies’ room with a trash can and began cleaning the toilets. As he scrubbed, he wondered how come white folks thought niggers was lazy and dirty. Seemed like that him and Rochelle, his grandmaw and mama, most of his neighbors spent their whole lives working at trying to keep things neat and clean. The dirt went from the white folks’ homes and factories onto you, and then you toted it home. But where did it come from in the first place? He scrubbed at a toilet bowl ferociously.

  Back home Donny studied his face in the bathroom mirror. His mother’s almost white features, his father’s darker coloring. He used to go for months without being aware of himself as a colored man. But lately, seemed like he was always seeing his dark nose from the inner corner of his eye. What would it be like to look down there and see a pink nose?

  He turned away. His skin stretched taut over his cheekbones like a mask of badly tarnished copper, a mask that marked him for life. Ah, shit. All he wanted was to earn enough money to move his family into a bigger goddam apartment. Buy himself a crumbling junkheap of a secondhand Dodge. He stared at Rochelle’s jars of vanishing cream and bottles of hair oil and remembered taking a jar of vanishing cream up to the Princes’ one day. The Five had slathered themselves with it, then waited to vanish. That dumb Sally had been scared to death she wouldn’t reappear. They’d finally had to accept that it was the cream that vanished, not the people wearing it. Donny saw his dark face smile in the mirror, felt himself relax a little.

  Rochelle was sitting on the sofa in the lamplight watching “Wagon Train.” He plopped down in the armchair and gazed at her. The woman was beautiful. Like his mother and grandmother, she had light skin. Almost like the women in magazines and on television and in movies. Unlike himself. Her father might have been a white man. Maybe one of the cats who didn’t want his unknown colored son-in-law to join his motherfucking union. He felt the tension building again.

  “What you staring at, nigger?”

  He smiled faintly. “You.”

  “See anything you like?”

  He said nothing.

  “Well, don’t just set there looking. Come on over here and do something about it.” She stretched out her arms and he went, but was unable to fulfill the rest of her request. She ran her hand over his rough head and cooed, “Don’t matter none, sugar. Don’t get all upset now.” But he already was.

  At Saturday morning breakfast Rochelle asked, “When you reckon that raise is coming through, Donny?”

  “Ain’t sure it is no more.”

  A long silence. “Well, I sure do hate to hear that.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you do.”

  “Don’t be like that, honey.”

  “Like what?”

  “Mean-mouthed.” She burst into tears.

  “Ah, hell, don’t, mama. Listen, I’m sorry.”

  She sniffled. “I’m sorry honey. It’s just that my monthly’s a couple of weeks late. What we gon do?”

  “We be all right,” he said, touching her hand. A car horn sounded out front. Mr. Prince picking him up for yard work.

  “I got to go,” he said, kissing her quickly. “Be good now.”

  In the car he nodded to Mr. Prince. “Mighty fine day, sir?”

  “Yes, sir, sure is. Thought I might play some golf.”

  As they drove under the railroad bridge, Mr. Prince cleared his throat. “Donny, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Yes sir?”

  “This union business.”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Mr. Mackay is thinking about letting some of those people go.”

  “Yes sir.” .

  “They were doing union business on company time.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “It’s not that he minds employees considering being represented by a union.”

  “No sir.”

  “But he does mind their doing it on company time.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Now Donny, I hear you signed up to join. Is that right?”

  “They told me you wouldn’t care none.”

  He sighed. “Not unless it’s on company time.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “My son-in-law, Jed Tatro, says he doesn’t believe you understood what was going on. Is that correct?”

  “They say if you join the union, you get you a raise in pay.” Goddam that Raymond Tatro anyhow. Promised him he wouldn’t get in no trouble.

  “Well, it’s not quite that simple. But do you really feel you’re not being paid enough for the work you do?”

  “Well sir, Mr. Prince, sometimes it’s hard to make ends meet, with two babies and another on the way.”

  “Another baby? Congratulations. That’s wonderful.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Well, if you need more income, I can speak to my neighbors about yard work. I can certainly recommend you.”

  “Yes sir. Thank you, Mr. Prince. I surely would predate that.”

  “But let’s not have any more union stuff on company time, all right?”

  “Yes sir. But they wouldn’t let me join anyhow, sir.”

  “They wouldn’t?”

  “No sir.”

  “Ah.”

  As Mr. Prince turned into his driveway, Donny felt a surge of gratitude. It was the same gratitude he felt when Mr. Prince paused on his tours of the shop floor in his shirtsleeves to remark to Donny on the weather. The white people at their machines noticed and sometimes made a point of talking to Donny themselves later the same day. With the sleeve of his work shirt he polished a dirty spot on the front fender of Mr. Prince’s Mercury as he walked past. Mr. Prince nodded his thanks.

  After a day cutting grass, Donny went to the back door of the big yellow house. Mrs. Prince was wearing a flowered dress that kind of clung around her hips. Her long dark hair, curling up on the ends, bounced and swung as she handed him a glass of lemonade, a jar of bacon grease for Ruby, and his eight dollars. He stood far away from her as he drank, feeling his green work shirt with sweat stains the size of cow piles under the arms would be offensive. Rochelle’s maid dresses were always stained like this at the end of a day, but did white women sweat? Not that he’d ever seen. Mrs. Prince he always thought of as standing at a third-floor hospital window in a white gown, tossing foil-wrapped chocolate-covered cherries to The Five on the lawn below, after giving birth to Robby. He smiled at her shyly, then ducked his head.

/>   “You look all tired out, Donny.”

  “Naw, ma’am. I be just fine. Just a little hot is all.”

  Walking from the bus stop to his apartment, he turned down the street of ranch houses that Rochelle coveted. He wished he could get her one. The Princes’ big yellow house, colored people didn’t live in places like that. But these here ranch houses had been built, were owned by colored people. How’d they done it? They owned businesses, were teachers, a dentist, preachers. Most had been to college. He could have gone. He had good grades, could have won a basketball scholarship. Instead he dropped out his junior year to marry Rochelle. He remembered being obsessed with not letting Leon steal her away from him. Leon, with his wallet stuffed with bills from pimping in New York. Donny had to find a job, get some cash. But how come nobody warned him what life was really all about?

  Then he remembered he had been warned. But since the advice came from his mama, who’d left him and Pine Woods behind, he hadn’t been able to hear it. So here he was with a pregnant wife and two babies in a two-room apartment. His mother was disgusted when she found out he’d dropped out of school to get married and had hardly been in touch since. But he was doing it, goddam it. Between the mill job and the yard work, he was supporting this show. Lots of men in Pine Woods just gave up after a while, and hung out in front of Dupree’s, or left the area. But he wouldn’t never give up.

  He stopped off to give Ruby her bacon grease. She was sitting in an armchair in a head cloth, quilted bathrobe, and high-topped tennis shoes, watching “Wild Kingdom” on television. The doctors had decided she had leukemia, but it was OK now. “In transmission,” she’d reported.

  “Hey, Grandmaw. What you know good?” This was another phrase Leon had brought down from New York. He kissed her.