Liar, Liar

Reedsy Contest #262 Dreams and Nightmares

C.B. Lee

Liar, Liar

I am a liar. I have been my whole life. But I'm not sure I am any good at it. I’ve lied about my grades, I’ve lied about my weight (I have the driver’s license to prove it), I’ve lied about who I have hung out with...and I’ve lied to protect someone's feelings. There are many things I have lied about, to cover up truths I didn’t want discovered. So yes, I am a liar. And I have been labeled as such for as long as I can remember. 

    Once I laughed while lying and was caught in the lie. However, from that day forward if I laughed whenever interrogated by my parents they assumed I was lying. No one stopped to think for a moment that nerves tickled my uncontrolled young body to the core, giving way to ripples of giggles.

    But what lies mold a person into a certified liar?

_______________

    “Mom, hey Mom?” I came up the stairs looking for her.

    “What,” a muffled, faraway sound seeped out, somewhere in her bedroom. Stepping in, I saw the closet door wide open, and heard the clanks of plastic hangers, things being shuffled about.

    “Um..” was all I managed. With trepidation, I slowly walked toward the closet, not too sure what kind of mood she was in, since her mercurial moods swung so high and so low. Suddenly she emerged from the depths of the tangible ocean of clothes and miscellaneous items. Mom’s long strawberry blonde hair was pulled high up in a ponytail. Curls and ringlets of hair flowed around her crown, about her pale neck and face. It was rare to see her hair in curls, in its natural state and I was struck by how beautiful she really was. Years later I would learn that my dad did not care for curly hair, so she religiously straightened it to long, stick strands with an iron on the iron board. This was before real hair straighteners hit mainstream. Of course, today, it was just her and me in the house.

    “Whatcha doing?” I thought if I was as nice, I would get on her good side if possible. Maybe she was getting rid of some clothes and I could rummage through before she donated them to Goodwill. She was slightly smaller than me, but most of her clothes still fit me, she just didn’t like the idea of sharing.

    “Oh just making some room for all my purses. Need a better spot to keep them out of your dad’s sight. You know he doesn’t need to know how many I actually have collected over the years.” Mom turned and went back inside the abyss of clothes and purses and whatever else would be in a thirty-four year old’s closet.

    “Ah,” I said, now enlightened to what she was up to in her closet. Looking at the kaleidoscope mountain of purses, such treacherous terrain was stacked caddywompus on her king sized bed. Moving some clothes and purses aside, I sat next to the splendid colored mountain, across the room from the closet. I picked up a random black thing, more like a mini backpack with patch worked tartan sprinkled about it. As I jostled it around in my hands, I thought about all the times I had to pretend my mom had bought next to nothing whenever we went shopping. That woman loved to shop. “Shop til’ we drop!” was the motto of her and her best friend. I never really understood it.

    Setting the purse down, I rubbed my sweaty palms on my jeans and swallowed down the cotton in my mouth, in vain. Gathering my words together, as they swam in a discordant school of thoughts, the susurrus air surrounded my body, whispering doubts in my ears. “So I, um, I need…” I licked my dry lips and took a quiet and deep breath, “I need a new sports bra.” It all came out with a release of air, in an out of body experience, thinking of the sports bra I was wearing at that moment. It was ugly and reminded me of something she would have worn in the 80’s during an aerobics class; geometric shapes scattered in pale yellow and seafoam green, bright pink and white filled the voids. And having no say in the matter, she bought it for me. So that had been that.

    “Why?” She slowly emerged from the closet, thin, opaque eyebrows furrowed in agitation, green eyes glowed emerald; a tiger in waiting for its prey, languidly crawling from the jungle ready to bounce. All at once the room became frigid and I was whisked from the jungle to Siberia. My stomach had several acrobats within flipping about causing a hollow uneasiness.  “Well the one I have is wearing out, because it hurts to workout,” I said. Chagrined with my body image, I couldn’t believe I got it out. I hated dealing with my body in any way, shape or form. Would I have fared better as a boy? My little brother seemed nothing but a bother to me, but never to her.

    “Ugh, I just don’t get it.” As she batted away a non-existent fly, abhorrent irritation graced her face, still young, yet lines were cracking at the surface; like cracking of her walls of her foundation, all signs of her senescence, settling body.

    As an aggravated breath escaped my full lips (one other thing she coveted), I tried to think how best to argue my point without losing my cool. Never would I be a great speech and debate scholar like my grandfather. Growing up, I watched and listened to him in awe, thinking he had the whole class eating out the palm of his hands. Whenever I watched him professoring at the local junior college, I believed that maybe I could be like him. The words poured forth in smooth, mercury like motion. I might as well have a stutter the way my brain shuts down, traffic halted by unnecessary and incessant construction. I could even envision the orange traffic cones, set up in road blocks formation.

    “Well, I don’t expect you to understand exactly, but big boobs hurt when you are being active.” I said. No malice or ill will meant, it was just the plain truth. The truth, no lies came forth and it made no difference in the matter.

    Anger settled with a flush of red into her new wrinkles. I froze, but inside my brain I raced around trying to figure out what exactly went wrong. Replaying the words, replaying the moment over and over, I just kept coming up blank, always a blank, stuck in traffic, behind the cones. But truthfully, she had extremely small breasts and at fifteen, mine were on the verge of a D cup. My curves were and always would be a source of hate toward myself. I was never sure if she had ever understood that.

    My bright green eyes met her cat eyes and I felt my facial muscles release as they fled from the horror her face projected. Then a creepy smirk I was sure I had never seen, appeared on her fresh freckled face, sans makeup. “Well you know what? At least when I’m forty, my boobs won’t be sagging to the floor.” With a bit of bobble in her head a triumphant look spread through her face, traveling through the rest of her body as if she had just won a grand prize. She crossed her arms, a statue of victory.

And for a brief moment I thought maybe, just maybe, we were joking with each other. We often did but in our house, emotions ran sky high and to Hades below. But as she stood stoically still, any emotion now had left her face, she seemed like she was Medusa and I an unwilling victim in her stone grip. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, the thought came and fell out of my mouth before I could even pick it up and examine it thoroughly. 

    “Well, I’ll just get a boob job!” I laughed as a sting of hurt lurked in the corners of my mouth, hoping, wishing there were jokes lingering in the still room. But as her eyes widened, I turned and rushed out of the room as anger jolted through my body, trying desperately to hide the tears.

    In my room, slamming the door behind me, I burrowed into my stuffed animals that lined my day bed, ensconced within their rainbow faux fur. Briefly I felt sorry they had to see me this way, having my hot tears and snot swabbed into them. The soft, delicate peachiness of the room had been disrupted by a severely wounded heart. 

              Acting like I wasn’t waiting, like I wasn’t completely petrified and like I was shocked, Mom threw my door open. Before me in the doorway, an unrecognizable person appeared. The light from the hallway and my blurry vision, set her hair ablaze, halo effect bleeding around her body, but still I saw her face and the anger foaming at the mouth, no longer a feral, jungle cat but now a rabid dog. Another Greek mythology character came to mind; Hydra, so much like Medusa but so not.

             While I waited for the bomb to fall that would destroy my world, I questioned everything. My thoughts no longer swam around in my mind, but now were a drug, crazed rat spinning in its wheel. 

    How could this be happening? Why is it changing? And when did it get so bad? I could not seem to keep up, keep up with what would make her happy or angry. My best friend, my life, my momma...it all seemed to slip away in one jealous filled interaction. Should I have lied or would she have known I had? I am a liar, I have been told this my whole life. But I am not good at it.

    This is my worst nightmare.