Free Genesis of Evil by Nile J. Limbaugh Page A

he wanted to be, even if he was a cop. She hoped he wasn’t married. She hadn’t seen a ring, but a lot of men didn’t wear one. She wondered if she would see him again. She looked down at her legs and drew her mouth into a straight line.
    “Yeah, right,” she said to herself and closed the door.
     
    As Gerhart drove off he wondered what was wrong with Roberta’s legs. He wondered what had made the vacuum cleaner run around the room by itself. But most of all, he wondered if he would see her again. Once you started talking to her, he thought, you just forgot that her legs weren’t quite right. It wasn’t important. He smiled and almost ran a stop sign.
     
    Roberta Valentine was four years old before she understood that she wasn’t like everybody else. The rest of the world was a lot taller than she. Of course, at four years of age, that wasn’t unusual, except for the fact that even other four year olds were taller than Roberta. Everybody else could stand up, she realized, but she was relegated to dragging herself around the floor with her hands. When Mama took her out it was always in the stroller. Roberta was so big she stuck out all over, but it was the only way she could go anywhere. When she asked Mama about her condition, Mama just told her it was God’s will. Roberta couldn’t picture God, much less his will. That explanation didn’t help much.
    When Henry and Margaret Valentine realized that Roberta wasn’t going to be able to walk, they took their problem to the Church. After several counseling sessions, Henry reached a conclusion. The child wasn’t his. As he had never done anything illegal or immoral in his life, there was no other possibility. He never mentioned it to Margaret, but she knew something had happened to distance her husband from her and spent a lot of her free time wondering what it was.
    Money wasn’t easy to come by and both Henry and Margaret had to work to provide three meals and a roof that didn’t leak. Roberta was left with a neighbor—at ten dollars a week—and since the neighbor’s kids were physically normal she was left pretty much to her own devices. Besides, the neighbor liked beer. Roberta sat still a lot, watched television and wished she could be like the other children.
    One morning, the children were out in the back yard playing in the sandbox and the neighbor had fallen asleep on the couch before remembering to turn on the TV. Roberta was bored stiff. As she leaned against the wall in a corner of the living room she noticed a toy fire engine beneath the couch. It suddenly became very important for her to hold that fire engine in her hand. Although she could have worked her way across the floor and retrieved the toy, she started wishing it would come to her instead. She reached out a hand and pointed at the fire engine, wishing it to roll from the huge, overstuffed garage. Incredibly, it moved a bit. Roberta eyes widened. She held out both hands and concentrated on the toy with every fiber of her tiny being.
    The little fire truck rolled slowly out from under the couch and across the floor to come to a stop within reach of her right hand. Roberta picked it up and smiled.
    Practice made perfect.
    When Roberta asked once more, at the age of eight, why the doctors couldn’t fix her hips, Mama explained about their religion, Church of Christ, Scientist, and how it is based on the idea that disease, sin, death and so on are caused by mental error and don’t really exist. Because of this fact, Mama explained, there is no need for doctors or hospitals. Furthermore, she went on, if Roberta really wanted to, she could cure her hips by herself, by thinking hard about it and repenting her sins. And there the matter rested.
    Roberta was glad she had never mentioned how she was able to move things by thinking about it. She was bright enough to know how a talent like that would play in the Church of Christ, Scientist.
    When Roberta finally became confident enough to strike