Original Sin

Stand straight like Louise Lackeymy mother said, placing a firm handbetween my shoulder blades.

Miss Lackey, a third grade teacher,not mine, taught our Sunday Schoolat First Pres and possessed a face

of all angles, subtracted lips, searchingeyes behind her specs. She handed outthe day’s picture of a longhaired white

boy Jesus, busy chasing the bankersfrom the temple, sawing a boardbeside his father in an immaculate

workroom, and serving supper to lotsof folks on a pretty lakeside, but never,ever, on the cross. Carrying it up the hill,

maybe, but no sweat. Never the nailsor bloody hands and feet. In fact,Miss Lackey did not use the word

crucifixion. I learned it from otherchurches, especially the small Catholicone on Main Street, when, finally,

I got the courage to go in.There was bleeding Jesus by the altar,a Jesus embarrassing and really

quite terrible. My father had to bea pallbearer there once, said he didn’tknow what to do but knelt and stood

when his good friend David kneltand stood. We Presbyterians, though,didn’t kneel, drank small vials

of grape juice, swallowed tiny slicesof Merita Bread, and learnedabout the elect and original sin.

We are all fallen from goodnesslike birds from the nest,like the scary Rock-a-Bye Baby,

but finally we were told: Be happy!We didn’t have to die, not really,Miss Lackey proclaimed.

She was plain as a tree in winterin her tailored grey suit. I guessshe’d be surprised to learn

I remember her now,all these years later. She wasthe first old maid I knew,

she and the Misses Stroup,Ercie and Lottie, all teachersand buttoned up as all get-out.

When any one of themsmiled, a rare day indeed,I was grateful, zippety-do-dah,

maybe even saved—in spiteof myself—from commonness,which, my mother declared,was a fate worse than death.