in truth...
I love lying. And it looks good on me, I think. I never developed a tell; I can lie through my teeth. This is one thing my father gave me that he can’t take back and lock inside his desk drawer.
Lying underlined girlhood. When I was four I pinched a pack of colouring pencils from Montessori and sat proudly in the passenger seat, clutching my exploit. My mother eyed them briefly. She would pick me up everyday; sunglasses pushed back across her forehead, car keys in hand. She asked me how my day was and I told her. After a long silence, with her eyes fixed steadily on the road, she asked, “Where did you get those?”
I was prepared for this. I had it rehearsed. “My teacher gave them to me.” I tucked my hair behind my ears reflexively: my grandmother had ingrained in me that the best way to appear earnest was when you swept your hair out of your face, knit your eyebrows together, and widened your eyes all at once. I had spent hours (unconsciously, I think) perfecting the delivery of this trifecta in every reflective surface: I loved being reassured and I loved being believed. It was something I longed for so much I trained myself for it so young without even realising.
“Why?”
This — this I was not prepared for. She gave them to me, and now I had them. I had wanted something and now I had it. Why did it matter? I thought for a split second and said, “Because she thinks I’m a good girl”.
That was true; she did think I was a good girl. All my life I had been raised to be a good girl: sit straight, with your legs crossed at the ankles, no, not like that, the other way, look at me when I’m talking to you, look at that, your hair’s so pretty, brush it just like that, put your shoes away, keep your hand steady while you trace your letters, look at that, what a smart girl, what a good girl, only four and tracing cursive. I said my thank yous and pleases unprompted and without looking over at an elder for approval after. When upset I smiled so hard the tears would refuse to fall through and I always rested my left hand over my right, just like I was told. But she hadn’t given them to me. I had picked them out of her basket — made of blue plastic and sat next to a window that made me feel small — before my mother had arrived to take me home. They were the fancy kind, with big gold lettering and a paintbrush to drip in water and lace over so my work — my own work — would look like a painting.
“Are you lying to me?”
In the seconds it took for my mother to realise I was lying I knew I had done something wrong. Not the stealing. Not the lying. But I had let myself be caught. I remember thinking: if I had said anything, anything else, she would have believed me. I could have said I won them for being well-behaved. I could have said they were a present from a friend. But I had picked something so abstract, so menial, that I had been caught. You don’t just get things for being good when being good is a duty.
She made me return them. And I cried and cried and cried. Not out of shame for lying — this is a trait I never developed — but of embarrassment. How did I let this happen?
And then it became easier. And easier and easier.
When I was ten years old I was hopelessly in love with a boy. He was shorter than me and never missed a hoop. All the girls loved him. So I decided I had to have him.
It was hot and sticky and his friends teased him incessantly. “You’re in love with her! Go talk to her!” He was nervous. I was cool: of course he liked me. And I had decided I wanted him; of course I’d get him. He came up to me and brushed his hair out of his face. “Do you want to see me breakdance?”
I said yes. A crowd formed around us. Everyone watched as he moonwalked on dry dirt; all eyes were on him but his were on me. When he finished to cheers he took a bow in front of me, kissed two fingers and pointed them at me and said, “that was for you”.
Every time I think about this moment it makes me feel the same way it does when you peel a clementine and you pierce — in your carelessness — soft, orange flesh with a now-sticky thumb: uncomfortable, with an unsaid but obvious recognition of how this was completely unnecessary and avoidable. If today a man came up to me asking if I would like to see him breakdance, I would either instantly develop girl-interrupted syndrome or convince myself it was simply part of an elaborate man-on-the-street interview. But ten year old me — sweet, so sure-about-everything ten year old me — thought he had made his move. Now I could make mine.
While everyone else settled in class I reached into my pencil case and pulled out a wad of yellow sticky notes. With a red pen (that I had accidentally picked instead of a black one last week, as if my mindlessly moving fingers knew something momentous awaited before I did), I wrote:
“Do you like me? Check one:
Yes
No
Maybe.”
I reread it once to make sure, folded it thrice, put his name on it and had it passed to him. He looked up at me when he got it, smiled, checked an answer and passed it back to me.
He had said yes. He was mine.
I shoved the note inside my pocket.
This part is always the hardest to write. This is where, in more dramatic times before machines you knocked your words into, writers would sigh — exasperated or angry or weak — put down their pens, hold ink-stained paper up to their eyes and crush it between however many fingers could bear to destroy their own work. The most I can do is sigh (exasperated and angry and weak) and just decide not to go on anymore.
Anyway. I shoved the note inside my pocket. I shoved the note inside my pocket and sat beside my father as he drove me home. I went to my room and changed out of my clothes in a way my mother, who had recently moved out, hated: I had — as she used to say — “crawled out” of them.
I don’t know if my father is nosey or careful. Maybe it truly is care — the spite-lined care at the centre of nosiness never came to him. It never came to him naturally, anyway; though he did try when my mother left. He would always empty pockets out before putting clothes away to be washed. It was how he showed he cared, I think. He collected everything worth collecting and made sure clothes out of the dryer were never dusty with paper-turned-lint.
The mortifying ordeal of being ten years old and having your father discover you are in love. In love with a boy. Not in the way you promise you love your sister before hiding her favourite pillow under your bed, or the way you love your long fingered friend when she circles your wrist and promises — no, swears — they’re the smallest she’s ever held. This was different. It meant lying to stay at school longer than you need to; joining the swim team despite you being convinced the best way to die would be anything, anything except drowning in chlorinated water; believing the Spice Girls wrote Say You’ll Be There all that time ago just for ten year old you. Anyway. Anyway.
I don’t know. Some mumbling. Until. Until I decide to just tell him. What is the worst that could happen? There’s this boy and he moonwalks on dirt and I love that I’m a head taller than him. And we pass notes and he likes me, he checked yes here, see. Except what I said was: it was a joke and this is my friend’s and she must have slipped it into my pocket, I think; the thing is our handwritings are so similar because you know the English teacher with the big glasses — do you remember her? — she’s always so particular about how we loop and line our Ys. And then nothing. He sighs. And then: “Never leave things in writing”. Because being caught is so much worse. Worse than lying; far worse than being bad. As he threw away the first of many (now destroyed) communiques, I thought be bad but don’t get caught. That lying is a sport and I know I like to win.
Anyway. Anyway. Lying underlined girlhood until it didn’t. Until it became reflexive; no longer a weapon as much a shield. Lying underlined girlhood until it underlined womanhood and good women don’t lie but great women lie and lie again but you never know because they’re so good at it. And at that point it’s not lying, not really. It’s a version of the truth, like no, of course you didn’t do anything wrong, it’s my fault for wanting better or yes, I’m at home right now; I feel very at-home taking the night bus to my apartment after a full day of just being. Girlhood is knowing when you’re lying. The end of girlhood is marked by not knowing. When it just comes to you. Like: I really want to get better, I do. Or tomorrow, I’m going to fix things. No, you’re not. You’re not, but you think it before you can even stop yourself.
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