A Little White Lie

“A Little White Lie”

It has been said that God has a sense of humour, one of the best examples being that tricksy ninth commandment, tucked in almost as an afterthought after the long list of ‘shalt nots’. It says you should not bear false witness against your neighbour. Was it deliberately vague? Given the pathetic attempts of humans with some of the other ‘shalt nots’, being too specific might be setting them up for failure. It had been done before, starting with Eve. 

Cordelia decided it only meant that you shouldn’t tell lies in court or spread false rumours about the people around you. It said nothing about lying in general especially in a good cause – a narrow, if convenient, interpretation.  So, despite just a few niggling qualms, Cordelia carried out what she chose to believe was a necessary deceit, not a lie, on her mother. She was not Janine, the woman who had borne her, but her beloved Gran who, with Gramps, had raised her when Janine did not want to.

Long before Cordelia’s birth, Gran had been given a pendant. It was a turquoise in a silver filigree setting on a long chain. Cordelia knew it well because Gran wore it for every special occasion whether it matched her best dress or not. She told Cordelia the mythology surrounding the turquoise -- one of the oldest and most beautiful of gems.  If it was given by a loving hand, it represented friendship, spiritual tranquility, and it gave protection to the wearer.  

It was also a Scorpio crystal, and Gran was definitely a Scorpio. So was Cordelia. Their clashes were sometimes monumental in intensity, but never sufficient to shake their profound love for each other. After all, one of the enduring qualities of Scorpio women is their intense loyalty.

The pendant was precious to Cordelia’s mother because it had been given by Janine, the wayward daughter, who lived in the Caribbean with her island-born husband and two children.  Those two had no knowledge of the one their mother had left behind, and Janine intended keeping it that way. She had resolved to have Cordelia secretly adopted but, by pure fluke – a nosy neighbour in fact -- her mother found out and had other ideas.

“She’s our grandchild, and she stays in the family,” she said firmly. “We’ll adopt her.”

Janine knew better than to argue, but she never visited her mother until Cordelia had married and moved abroad.

Cordelia had known the story of her birth from a young age and had no reason to wish it were otherwise, even if her mother’s tongue could sometimes be sharp, and her maxim to, ‘tell the truth and shame the devil,’ could be hurtful. Cordelia couldn’t agree; she believed that telling little white lies was justified if it saved people from being wounded. Where was the harm?

Years later, on an extended visit to her mother, she found her in tears, which was something she had never seen before.  Her mother showed her the pendant, now broken, its setting corroded beyond repair. The turquoise was still intact. Cordelia offered to take the gem back home with her as she knew of a jeweller who might be able to create a new setting. Her mother wrapped it in tissue, and Cordelia stowed it in her suitcase pocket along with her travel papers. But, by the time she returned home, and with the fatigue of jetlag and chaos of unpacking, along with her family’s excitement at their reunion and the gifts she had brought them, she all but forgot about the turquoise. She tossed out the clutter of paper accumulated during her trip, and the tissue-wrapped gem must have been caught up amongst it.

Too late she remembered and searched frantically, but she never saw the turquoise again. How could she tell her mother! She might never forgive Cordelia’s carelessness with her most prized possession.  Cordelia could not risk damaging their relationship, nor could she face her mother’s justifiable wrath. Somehow, she must make things right. 

It turned out to be surprisingly easy. The jeweller found a similar turquoise to the lost one and designed a simple silver casing for it. The new pendant was at least as beautiful as the original, and on her next visit her mother was delighted when Cordelia fastened it around her neck. Cordelia said nothing about the stone, persuading herself this wasn’t even a white lie, just a tiny sin of omission. And if her mother suspected the truth, she closed her lips and wore it until her dying day. 

After the funeral, Cordelia’s sister-aunt handed her a box of treasures. In it was the pendant.  She wore and cherished it because her mother had. Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, her half-sister Jeanne burst into her life. Their mother Janine was in the final stages of dementia, and Cordelia had finally summoned up courage to contact her half-siblings, fully expecting them to reject her. They did not. Jeanne begged her to visit, which she did. She met her half-demented birth mother who to her surprise recognized her. She, however, felt neither anger nor affection for her, just a rush of pity. 

Yet she felt an instant love for her newfound warm and loving sister and wanted to give her a symbolic gift linking their pasts and present. It could only be the turquoise pendant, even if it meant staying silent about the fate of the original stone. She did not want their relationship to be founded on a lie, but in the end it was. Cordelia persuaded herself it was in service of perpetuating a beautiful myth, but the lie was now a shade darker than white and began to weigh on her.

Jeanne embraced the story as well as the pendant but, although it was given by a loving hand, it failed to protect her. She died suddenly two years later – far too young and far too soon. Cordelia had found only to lose this purest of women. She wrote to her half brother and asked him for the pendant, as she wanted to wear it close to her heart as her mother and Jeanne had done. He never replied. Perhaps he had given it to his wife Jewel, a magpie hoarder of shiny things with no understanding their true value. After she also died, Cordelia didn’t ask again.  She had no daughters, but Jewel had one. Perhaps the pendant had been passed to her. 

For a second time, the turquoise was lost to Cordelia but, with its loss, a burden fell away. There was no more need for lies.  Only she knew the gem was not the original, but its essence had become a family heirloom in its own right, handed down from daughter to mother to grand-daughter to sister – others too, she hoped.  It had been treasured by all the women who had worn it, not for its market value, but for its quiet beauty and symbolism of their love for one another. 

This was not a lie -- white or otherwise.