Original Sin

Or, the Reason I Never Describe Myself as Having a Rough Childhood

Bobby is the runt of our grade. He’s short and he’s got no meat on his bones and his clothes hang like rags on the unkempt skeleton of a pirate. He’s so small, and so often it seems like the only thing he can do right is fall down and hurt himself. Bobby is so frustratingly inept that everyone wants to pick on him and even teachers will chime in with the occasional snide comment. Aside from that, nobody picks on Bobby because Bobby has family. He’s got family in a big way. Bobby has a brother or a sister in every grade above and below him, and the only thing they’re all good at is violence.

We all do our best to ignore Bobby.

Bobby smiles a lot, trying to tell stories and jokes—anything to get someone to pay attention—but the stories and jokes always fall flat because he struggles to understand what is socially appropriate. He’s kind of like a nice but ill-behaved puppy. All he wants is a scratch behind the ears and he’ll be happy. Except nobody can stand to touch him because he’s so filthy and he nips.

Everyone leaves Bobby alone because he isn’t too bright and he dresses funny and he gets the free lunch and it’s easy not to have to look at him all the way back at the loser lunch table.

Everyone laughs at Bobby when we go on the first grade field trip to see the Police Department. The cops told all of us to line up against the wall, so we did, except Bobby did it all wrong. Stupid Bobby turned to face the brick, put his hands on it to support himself, and spread his legs. Stupid, stupid Bobby! You think a cop is going to arrest you? You think the cops are going to put handcuffs on a little kid? We all laugh at him. Stupid Bobby! Stupid kid! We all quietly understand that this behavior is reason that Bobby can’t eat at the good lunch table, and we feel justified.

Bobby is confused and says that’s how the cops always make his parents line up against the wall, and suddenly the teachers and the cops stop laughing. But not us kids. We think it’s a riot. Bobby smiles at us. He likes the attention does that Bobby. Like that same filthy puppy, now content to feel the touch of his owner even if it’s only a soft dismissive kick to brush him to one side.

We laugh and laugh and Bobby slurps it up like it’s apple sauce mixed with love.

I made Bobby cry once.

I was proud of myself for it.

In second grade, Mrs. Hancock made me work with Bobby and Sam on a project. We had to do a work packet and I couldn’t leave for recess until Bobby and Sam were done. I tried to get them to copy my answers so we could just go, but Bobby wouldn’t do it. He had too much integrity to cheat. Bobby wanted to learn. He wanted to understand. He even had the gall to tell me he wanted to be an astronaut!

So I yelled. And I yelled. And I cut him down and called him a “great big dummy” and a “thick skulled ape!” and told him that the only work they’d let him do in space was the work that was too dangerous for the chimpanzees. So Bobby cried, because he wanted help and not abuse, and I refused to apologize because it was Bobby’s own fault for being so slow.

It’s your fault, Bobby, I think when I end up facing the wall at recess.

The teachers like to yell at Bobby too, although they all try to hide their joy in it. Bobby go out in the hall. Bobby stop talking. Bobby stop trying to make a joke or tell a story. Bobby stop being annoying. Bobby stop being you. And the other kids who tell jokes and stories don’t stand up to say it isn’t fair, because they have good jokes and stories and Bobby doesn’t and if he did, he wouldn’t be such a loser.

Bobby stops trying to “get it” after a while, and just does whatever he can do so everyone will stop yelling at him. It’s his own fault, we insist! If he would stop being such a loser we’d all leave him alone.

Well, we already left him alone. That’s the problem from Bobby’s perspective, isn’t it?

When we’re in junior high Bobby doesn’t even pretend like he’s going to graduate anymore. He stops coming to school except every now and again. The truancy officer is out at his house almost weekly, then even he gives up because Bobby’s dad was in Vietnam he went crazy over there and hell, a guy like that could do anything. So no one says anything and Bobby’s dad keeps f—king Bobby’s mom and they keep putting a kid in every grade. It’s like an assembly line for dysfunctional people.

Bobby stops caring because he can tell how this is all going to play out. Everyone has been trying to tell him how it’s going to turn out his entire life. Every time he tried to get out of that line and find another place to be we all sent him right back to where he belonged.

So Bobby follows in the footsteps of his brothers and sisters. Bobby does drugs. The scary drugs with needles. The kind that make your life stop sucking for a few minutes at a time and help distract you from the rest. And Bobby steals to pay for the drugs. And Bobby hits people when they get in his way. And Bobby f—ks anything that will let him f—k it because he needs to be close to someone in any way he can. Bobby’s like a mean dog that can’t help but feel its jaws are empty if they’re not wrapped around a man’s arm or leg.

Such a shame about Bobby, everyone thinks, but where else did you think this was going to end up?

Three of Bobby’s sisters are prostitutes. Everyone in town knows this. Just like everyone in town knows that Bobby’s brothers are a good place to score drugs. Rumor is that youngest has been turning tricks since the seventh grade. Their family is a running joke. Have you seen Bobby’s mom? People will say in gleeful tones, like carnies trying to hawk people into the tent for the freaks. They say she weighs ninety pounds and looks like someone brought her out of Auschwitz. Isn’t that hilarious? She’s pregnant again! Like a stick with a balloon in the middle! And everyone laughs and laughs.

No one who doesn’t have state business has ever seen Bobby’s dad. Bobby’s dad doesn’t leave the house. And no one makes jokes about him, because even though we’ve never seen him we know he’s the Bogey Man. He’s the dragon everyone knows lives in the dark cave in the forest. You don’t have to see him to know he’s there. You don’t even have to smell him. You can feel the craziness of Bobby’s dad when you look at his family. When you’ve seen an effect that bad you don’t even want to close your eyes to imagine the cause. You can see it a mile off like a mushroom cloud. Bobby’s dad is capable of anything and no one wants to deal with that.

One time, when we were still little, Bobby and I were on the bus sitting next to each other. I didn’t want to talk to Bobby but he kept talking to me, and then something on his arm caught my interest. I already knew Bobby’s answer was going to annoy me, but I was curious and it might make him stop focusing on me if I asked.

“How come you got a bruise on your arm?”

I kept trying to read a book so I figured maybe if I got Bobby yammering he wouldn’t mind so much if I tuned him out and got back to the words on the page. Boy oh boy, was it important to read and not talk to Bobby. I was a weird kid but even I knew better than to be seen talking to Bobby.

“Oh that?” Bobby asked, shrugging.

His eyes were big and innocent still. Not very bright, our Bobby, so his mind hadn’t taken in all the shit it should have taken in. Bobby was still redeemable because Bobby hadn’t “gotten with the program” on the way his life was supposed to go, and I think that’s why everyone hated Bobby so much. Bobby reminded us. Bobby was still a puppy that wanted someone to scratch his neck, and if someone had been willing to scrub away all that filth, cursed through several months of sharp toothy nips, he could have grown up to be a good dog.

Bobby looked at his arm and smiled.

“That’s just where the n—ger is.” Bobby said matter-of-factly.

I could barely believe he said it. I don’t know what that word means, but I know that n—ger is a bad word and that we’re not supposed to say it. N—ger is a word worse than sex, and butt-face, and dill-rod and if the playground monitor heard us say it she would make us face the wall for every recess until the end of time.

“Shh! Bobby! Don’t you know that’s a bad word?” I exclaimed.

Bobby shrugged again. He didn’t mean anything by it. He could have said the worst words in the world and he still been a saint because he could never understand what they meant. Not then. Not when the filth was still on the outside.

“My daddy says that it’s the n—ger inside me that makes me do bad things. So he hits me so I can see it.” Bobby pulled up his shirt and I could see a network of other bruises all over his chest. “It’s black, just like a n—ger!” Bobby said and grinned.

Bobby smiled big and bright and his big puppy dog brown eyes shone with happiness and love. This, at last, was a story that caught my attention! Bobby loved attention and Bobby loved me and the whole world more for my giving it to him. Bobby loved so hard his heart was ready to explode with sunshine.

I was young. I was very young.

I still knew what this meant.

I was not ignorant.

This was the kind of thing the DARE officer always dropped hints about when she said, “If anyone needs to talk to me about anything….”

This was what the teacher would ask about every once in a blue moon because something had made her suspicious. “Do your parents… do your parents do anything bad?”

This was a thing that all kids everywhere silently know they must report. Not something merely bad but evil.

I knew this was why Bobby couldn’t fit in with everyone else. Nobody wanted to see it because seeing it would mean we couldn’t all go back to our lives. If we saw it we would have to deal with it or face the kind of people we actually were and nobody wanted that. Nobody wanted to see that.

Including me.

So I swallowed and told Bobby that I wanted to keep reading and he frowned, crushed at my rejection, and when I got home and my grandma asked me how school was, I made sure to say it was fine and went up to my room and in the way of children did my best to forget. Because in the puppy dog brown eyes of Bobby, those big wet eyes that somehow held more innocence and hurt than is held in the whole rest of the world, I could see the face of someone who might be an angel if someone would have just stood up and did something. Except that someone was doing their very best to make sure he turned out sour and it made my stomach hurt. And somehow, I knew, that’s just part of how people are.

I didn’t want to think about it.

I was so young I couldn’t bear to think about it. About that ugliness. Because it was the same ugliness I saw in my sister when she hit me. It was the same ugliness in my parents that refused to intervene. It was the ugly bad thing that wants to hurt because hurting is the one thing that will make it feel right. The thing we all know we must fight each time we find it, except we don’t. The very best of us, only sometimes. So, I chose to forget and do nothing. I didn’t want to fight the devil that day. No help for Bobby. No notes anonymously slipped to the DARE officer, no police forcing Bobby’s dad into an asylum, no social worker trying to find Bobby a good home.

Then Bobby turned bad like everyone knew he would, and we all laughed and said ha ha have you seen Bobby’s family?

Ha ha!

We all knew where his whole situation was going from the very beginning.

Don’t you think that makes us wise?

Ha ha!

I think we all laughed because if we stopped laughing we’d know it was our fault for not taking those children the moment they slid out of their mother.

Ha ha Bobby! Ha. Ha!

You thought you could be an astronaut?