Original Sins (28 page)

They raced to the library where they sweated over anatomy and physiology texts. The librarian, an old lady with a grey bun who had read to them both at Story Time when they were five, smiled benignly. High school sweethearts at work on term papers.

“It looks like it's fourteen days after the first day of your last period,” Jed concluded.

He waited in the driveway as she sneaked into her house and consulted her calendar. “This is the eighteenth day,” she said, climbing back in.

“Thank God for that. I think we're safe.” They fell into each other's arms and kissed fervently. “From now on I wear two rubbers.”

A couple of weeks later Sally threw up in the girls' room. She decided her breakfast ham had been spoiled. When she began falling asleep before supper, she decided to go to bed earlier. The aching and burning in her nipples she explained by the enthusiasm with which Jed sucked them.

When her period was several days late, she decided she'd miscounted and went back over the calendar half a dozen times. But her period had been late before, so she refused to worry. The timing had been wrong, and Jed had been wearing two rubbers ever since.

When she missed her second period, she began to get nervous. She made an appointment with a gynecologist in a neighboring town. After the exam he sighed and said, “Well, young lady, I can't say for sure whether or not you're pregnant. I'll give you a prescription. If you don't begin your period five days after finishing the pills, you'll know you're pregnant.”

Each morning she took a small peach-colored pill. A dozen times a day she retired to a bathroom, where she prayed for bloodstains. Even a hemorrhage would do. Her prayers remained unanswered. She'd sit on the toilet long enough to regain composure, before returning to the classroom or dinner table with her pep-squad smile intact.

One night Jed delivered her home from a Devout meeting where they had prayed for success against Chattanooga Central. Darlene, the new Devotions Deputy, shut her eyes in the flickering candlelight and said, “We thank Thee, Lord, for last week's victory over Roaring Fork. But we would have been even more grateful if Thou hadst not let their JayVees defeat ours by such a wide margin. But Lord, we really need this next one against the Purple Pounders if we're going to have us a go at the state championship …”

Parked in the driveway, Jed slid his hand up Sally's thigh. She shoved him away, wrenched open the door, and ran toward the house. He ran after her. “What's wrong? What did I do?”

“Nothing,” she gasped. “I have to be in early.” She twisted away and ran into the house.

“Those pills didn't work,” she told the doctor over the phone.

There was a long silence. “Well, I'm sorry, young lady.”

“Can't you give me something else?”

No reply.

“I mean, my period's late is all, doctor. It's been late before. I'm out of whack. Maybe something's wrong with my ovaries.” She'd been reading in the library about the diseases and deficiencies that could interrupt menstruation. She'd stood in front of mirrors inspecting her coloring for signs of anemia.

“I'm sorry, young lady. I've done all I can.”

“But what should I do?”

“I don't know, young lady. I'm sorry. Good luck.” He hung up.

She stared at the phone. After a while she walked into the bathroom and threw up. Then she picked up her calendar and counted off her periods. It was just humanly impossible for her to be pregnant.

“Come on!” whispered Leon, pushing aside hemlock branches and dashing across the open space between the wall and the band bleachers. The boys from Cherokee Shoals who hung out there during the game and the highway patrolmen who broke up their fights were all up by the fence watching the fire batons.

Donny got halfway to the bleachers before he froze. This wasn't right. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods,” the Bible said. Leon kept calling him Mr. Junior Church Usher and saying that white people had been stealing from niggers for three hundred years. So you was just getting some of your own back.

Rochelle's mother had gone into the hospital with a ruptured tubal pregnancy last month. She was in bed at home now, and it didn't look like that she was getting her strength back. The county was paying the hospital. Neighbors brought over groceries. Rochelle's mother's employer brought down boxes of old clothes and canned goods. Donny had given Rochelle his car money from this summer. Even so, she'd had to quit her library job to work at maiding every afternoon and on Saturdays. The neighbors took turns minding the kids. Mr. Dupree was giving them credit. But things couldn't go on like this. Rochelle was up at six every morning to get the kids dressed and fed and off to school and to babysitters, then off to school herself, maiding in the afternoon, home to fix supper and clean up the house and tend her mother and wash the kids and put them to bed and wash and iron their clothes; then she sat down to her homework. Every time she and Donny went out, she fell asleep on him. Her clothes were often unironed. She hadn't smiled in weeks.

“What about their daddies?” Donny asked one night.

“Law honey, you know what men is like. They long gone,” replied Rochelle's mother with a bitter laugh, as he and Rochelle sat by her bed. She was wrapped in an old quilt and looked haggard.

“How bout farming the kids out? Your sister could take a couple. Grandmaw might take one or two.”

“If they's one thing I'd hate to see happen, it's to break us up. Cause we all each other's got.”

“Yeah, but then you and Rochelle could both have you a good rest. And once you was back to work again, they could come on back home.”

Damn, he had to help them. He ran under the bleachers. Leon was reaching up and slipping his hand into musical instrument cases to remove pocketbooks.

Through the planks Donny saw a patrolman gazing out toward the bonfire. Wide-brimmed hat, gun on his hip, legs planted, hands behind his back. The fire batons twirled twenty feet into the night sky. The crowd whistled and cheered and hollered.

The floodlights would come on. The cop would whirl around, spot him, grab him, drag him out to the bonfire. The crowd would screech, and the band would play as they barbecued him …

On the national news that evening was a shot of a cross burning in the front yard of the school superintendent in Donley, Tennessee. A stone had been thrown through his window with a note wrapped around it that read “Stone this time—dynamite next.” White folks didn't mess around. This white kid was interviewed saying, “I jes can't set next to em. They dirty, and they stink. Hit like to make me sick. They just animals, is all. Yall want em in our schools,
you
set next to em!”

“Grandmaw, you know I never realized before how much they hate us,” he'd said.

“Hush, honey. They mostly just plain working people like your mama and me. They be a few nuts in ever town. And sometimes they be colored.”

Donny opened a case lid and felt around inside. Leon was racing for the hemlocks, pocketbooks hanging all over him.

Donny was choked for a moment with anger, at all the men who'd been through Rochelle's mother's bed, having a good time and then running off without a second thought. Was that what being a man meant? But was this? No, there was plenty of men around Pine Woods who went to work every morning at whatever jobs they could find. They came home in the evenings and played with their children and made love to their wives. They paid their bills and went to church on Sunday. Mr. Junior Church Usher. All right, that's what he was then. He flew toward the hemlocks empty-handed.

In between trilling her flute to “The Sabre Dance” and marching in place to the drums, Emily sneaked glances at the queen and her court around the campfire. It was a big relief not to feel resentment any longer at being in Sally's backup band.

Earl had come over from State several times to take her to movies. Her classmates saw them, and word got around that Emily Prince was dating a college man, a frat man, a KT yet! He began holding her hand in the theater. And one night when he left her at her door, he kissed her tentatively. Missing was the revulsion she felt when Raymond kissed her. In fact, she felt mild enthusiasm.

They were lavaliered the weekend before the KT Fall Formal. As they watched
Gone With the Wind
at the Wilderness Trail Drive-in, Earl fastened a chain around her neck on which dangled a tiny gold-plated sabre. They kissed as Atlanta was consumed in a holocaust.

Emily wore her long white gown from the Plantation Ball to the Fall Formal. Earl wore a Confederate uniform and sabre. They strolled up the sidewalk between rows of boxwood to the white-columned KT house. To one side of the porch steps was a boulder painted green. Inside, the double living room was packed with brothers in grey uniforms and gold braid, and their dates. Several girls in long dresses struck decorous poses on the spiral staircase. Fires burned in fireplaces at either end of the room.

Partway through the evening Emily found herself surrounded by brothers. They sang the KT anthem, about Honor and Virtue and Fidelity. The president presented her with long-stemmed white roses, in honor of her lavalierhood.

Emily spent the night in a dorm. She and Earl walked up to the KT house the next morning, past a purple boulder.

“Wasn't that rock green last night?”

“Uh, gee, I didn't notice.”

Emily stared at the boulder.

One day at school Mo sauntered up to her. She and Mo had been grade school chums. Mo had gone on to become head cheerleader and president of Ingenue. And Emily, fink and brain.

“Hey, Em. How's it going?”

“Fine, thank you,” said Emily with suspicion.

Mo reached out and touched the tiny sabre at her throat. “KT, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Not bad. He's nice-looking, too. I saw you and him at the Majestic last weekend. You're the talk of the school.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

The next week the Ingenues, in their cream blazers with royal purple crests on the pockets, arrived at Emily's front door.

“Oh, hi,” said Emily. “I think Sally's in her room. I'll get her.”

“But it's you we want!” exclaimed Mo. “Me?”

“We've brought you your bid!”

Emily knew you were supposed to act like the honoree on “This Is Your Life,” and squeal and cry. She'd seen Sally do this. The most she could manage was a wary smile.

The initiation was held at Mo's, a small ranch house in the mill village. Her parents had moved out for the night. The Ingenues, clad in shortie pajamas, their spit curls pinned with crossed silver hair clips, sat in a big circle on the living room rug conducting a Lemon Squeeze. Each member was featured in turn, with the other members going around the circle saying one nice thing and one criticism of her. The initiates sat on the sofa and chairs taking notes on correct Ingenue conduct. Emily was trying to French inhale her Marlboro, as she had observed several old members doing. You let the smoke drift out of your mouth and inhaled it in a steady stream through your nostrils. Emily's head was obscured by clouds of swirling smoke.

“That's really true, Dawn. You smile so much that nobody can tell when you mean it.”

“Insincere, that's what it seems like, Dawn.”

“But it's not,” Dawn insisted, picking her lacquered big toenail. “I just smile when I'm happy. I can't help it if I'm usually happy. I mean, I'm not smiling now, am I?” She burst into tears and buried her face in her hands.

The group sat in disapproving silence. Finally the vice president said, “Dawn honey, we're just trying to help you be the best Ingenue possible. And besides, you know the person being discussed isn't supposed to say nothing.” Dawn wailed and buried her face more deeply.

They moved on to Sandy, who was accused of flirting with other members' boyfriends. “But you have very nice teeth, Sandy,” her accuser added.

Emily watched through her clouds of smoke. “You don't smile enough, Connie. Everyone thinks you're a sourpuss. We don't want Ingenues known as a bunch of sourpusses, do we?”

By the end, most Ingenues were in tears, mopping at eyes and cheeks with the hems of pajama tops. Sandy was passing around a piece of paper. She had a way of sauntering up to boys at school, and bumping them with her hip, and asking them in her lazy smiling drawl if they'd had their mileage that day. As members read the paper, they either gasped or blushed or tittered. Emily read: “Math problem: A cock is six inches long. At sixty strokes per minute for five minutes per day, how many days does it take to cover a mile?” The answer was upside down: “Depends on whether or not you have a blow-out. Smile if you've had your mileage today.”

Emily quickly exhaled another smoke screen and passed on the paper to tire girl beside her. The old members began discussing boyfriends like a harem its sheiks. The new members were led into a bedroom. Earlier that week each had turned in a set of underwear. They were returned, dyed royal purple, the club color. Holes were cut in the bras for the nipples, and in the panties for the crotches. Everyone was shrieking with embarrassed delight. Emily lit another cigarette and inspected her mutilated underthings. She could put them on and become an Ingenue. Or she could walk out and resume being a fink. She took a big drag. The others had put on spiked heels and were inspecting each other, screaming with laughter.

Emily squashed out her cigarette, stood up and undressed. She wanted to be an Ingenue. Why, she didn't know. It had a lot to do with all those years of not being one.

The girls marched into the living room, where the old members sat ogling and commenting and French inhaling and guzzling Nehis. The models posed and preened, while the old members cheered and applauded and leered like Lions at a smoker. Several whistled through their fingers.