Lies Hurt So Many

We moved to this town when I was only two years old. My father was killed in a car accident, not that I knew anything about what actually happened but that’s all I was told. I had asked my mother a few times why she chose this place to come to – I mean it is a great place to live but I won’t be staying here when I’m old enough to leave. I want to see things, go places, meet people, and this place is not where I will do that! She told me that it was far enough away that she could forget about how life used to be and start again. I was curious as to what she meant but knew that in time she would tell me.

She did say though that after my dad had died, she had felt lost and quite lonely at times. Her parents, my grandparents were a lot older than a lot of parents she knew but they were kind so we went to live with them after I was born. We lived with them for a couple of years and then mum needed to get away from the memories that caused her so much pain.

Anyway we had packed up and traipsed half way around the country to a small town, rented a two bedroomed house and gradually became accepted by the locals and became part of the town.

I remember my first day of school when I was about four and a half years old – the day when your parents walk you in, stay a while to do a puzzle or read a book and then leave – a lot of the children were crying and not wanting their parents to leave, and I was one of them. I can still picture my mum’s sad face and her silently saying ‘This will be good for you Bella, you will have lots of fun, but I feel like such a bad mother leaving you crying’.  When she kissed me and left it didn’t take long to wipe away my tears and enjoy being with all of the other kids, and I don’t think it really takes the parents long to start reaping the benefits of their new found freedom either!

I liked living here. No one took themselves too seriously, which I liked. Most of the locals were of the relaxed variety! The highlight of weekends was having the pizza shop open and the movie theatre running -there was always an amateur band playing somewhere in town, either the pub for those old enough to drink or the community hall for us others. It was a fairly simple life and suited mum and I.

My mother had a job in the bank in town and I was in my last year of High School, and had a part time job in the local supermarket. ‘A means to an end’ Mum would always say if I came home and complained about some of the customers and how rude they were, or sore legs from standing for five hours.

As mum was an only child there were no Aunties or Uncles.  When I asked why we never saw my grandparents after we left, I found out that my Grandad died when I was just three and sadly my Grandmother six months later. It was just the two of us. Whenever I asked about my Dad’s family, she clammed up after only saying “They didn’t like me. End of the conversation”.

There were a couple of photos of my grandparents with Mum and I, probably just before we left and one of my dad, on his own – tall and dark, but none of anyone else. I had been into friends’ houses where you could hardly see the wall because it was covered in family photos – sometimes I wish I had more family, but there was nothing I could do about it.

I used to ask my mother what my dad was like but she was always reluctant to tell me - all she said was “He was only a husband and father for such a short time but for the couple of years that he was, he was ok”.

“What does ok mean? Was he nice, kind, really funny? What?”

“He was troubled Bella. His childhood hadn’t been easy and he found life difficult, but yes he was nice, funny and kind – all of those things but I just don’t want to talk about it, ok?”

“Yes alright, don’t get your knickers in a twist just because I want to find out who my dad was and what he was like. Is that so bad?” I yelled. And stormed off, slamming the door behind me.

There was no point in her wanting to find anything out as there didn’t appear to be anyone to ask. She knew that when she left home after she had finished school and began travelling she would definitely find out all about the family she didn’t know. ‘I need to know’ she thought to herself ‘and if mum doesn’t want to tell me, then I’ll find out myself’.

Rachel felt terrible that she couldn’t bring herself to tell her daughter about her father and what really happened but it wasn’t that easy when the past wasn’t straightforward. She often thought about ‘that’ night all those years ago but she wasn’t ready to tell the story. She had to feel that Bella was mature enough to understand and place no blame on anyone, especially her. She already felt uncomfortable that she was continually telling her daughter a lie, and not a little one, a massive crater sized untruth, so when she finally told her, it would be a huge relief.

When Rachel was a little girl she found it very easy to tell lies. She used to say to herself that they were just little ‘fibs’ that didn’t hurt anyone. When she was at school and found something on the floor, that didn’t belong to her, like a rubber or coin or even a pen, she would quickly put it into her pocket and not say anything. When the class were asked if they had found whatever it was, she would say nothing. If she wasn’t directly asked, in her young mind that justified her actions. Sometimes she would actually take something from a desk or a bag and even then, when asked would always say “No I didn’t see it”.

As she got older, the lies became easier; they seemed to roll off her tongue like honey sliding off a warm spoon. They also got more serious. When asked one day if anyone had seen Mr. Davies, the sports teacher’s gold watch that he had put down on his desk before taking the class out to the oval, the whole class said ‘definitely not’ but as Rachel was joining in the ‘not guilty’ chorus of the class, she was actually thinking about what she would do with it, now that she had it in the bottom of her sneaker. 

As the sport lesson progressed she wished that she had hidden the watch somewhere else – she felt and looked like a cripple running around. ‘What’s wrong Rachel?’ her friend Mavis asked her, seeing her hobbling around. “Oh I stubbed my big toe last night on a rock in the garden and it’s killing me” she deftly lied.

She put the gold Rolex away in her bedroom, in a box, in a drawer, right at the back – she wasn’t sure what she would do with it or even why she stole it in the first place.

Then there were the lies about boys and “Did you meet him or not?” her friend would ask, and the answer, because Rachel knew her best friend liked the same boy, would be ‘no’. But as the story got more detailed, as in “But Rachel, you were seen with him”….then Rachel would change her lie to what she called a ‘little white lie’…”Well I didn’t set out to meet him, but bumped into him just by chance…and that is the truth”. Well it wasn’t the truth and Rachel knew it.

When her Grandfather, who was in very poor health had his eightieth birthday, Rachel decided, without obviously thinking it through, that she would wrap up the gold watch that she stole from her teacher and give it to her Pop for his special day. But Pop was no fool. “That’s lovely of you Rachel” he said to her in his rasping breath, but “Where did you get this from? I know a sixteen year old school girl who works three hours a week babysitting can’t afford to buy this”, and he held out the shiny watch to her.

Pop lectured Rachel on the virtue of being truthful and honest. He said that all children tell little lies, that’s natural, but to steal and then to lie was something else altogether. “Rachel” he said to her “If you always tell the truth, what can go wrong? But one lie leads to another and on it goes. Now I want you to go up to your teacher, tell him what you did, give him back his watch and apologise. Then it’s up to him what punishment he gives to you. And this will go no further from me”.

In theory, she was well aware it was the right thing to do and she felt the need to start being honest and truthful, and knew it was something her Pop really wanted, but in reality, well that was a different thing - to admit to your teacher that you had stolen something that belonged to him and then you had lied about not taking it….. So she did the next best thing – she left it in the desk drawer of Mr Lyon and nothing was ever said.

It did make her think about both the right and wrong things in life and how many lies she had actually told. Making a pact to herself, and only herself, she decided that it was time for honestly, except maybe when her friends asked if they looked nice in their new dress, and they didn’t, but Rachel called that just being kind!

The now maturing Rachel had learned her lesson after the ‘wrist watch’ episode – she did feel remorse  but mainly because of how her Pop felt about it – he was such a decent man, a straight talker and someone to be trusted. She knew that he would never say anything to her parents about her stealing or lying and it was like a second chance, so she took it.

During Rachel’s short marriage she had been lied to a lot. Her husband of two years, Bella’s father couldn’t help himself. He drank far too much, forging his way into a destructive way of life. He lied about where he was, who he had been with, why he was leaving the house in the middle of the night, who the nasty looking people were knocking on the front door, where the savings had all disappeared to, and much more.

They hadn’t been married for very long when some bad luck led to the domino effect for Jason. He didn’t seem able to cope with adversities in life. It started with the loss of his job, then a motorbike accident and rehabilitation, which led to his drinking – then he began mixing with a bad crowd which after some time led to the wobbling of trust, the shakiness of a loving relationship and eventually the crashing down of the vows and pledges of ‘love, care, honestly’ and anything else they pledged to each other on their wedding day.

The worst part of it all for Rachel was the shouting they would do in front of their little girl Bella. Sometimes when she was in her playpen, surrounded by toys and teddy bears, a beautiful and happy little girl, Jason would come home drunk and start shouting, loudly, scaring Bella and her little face would look from one parent to the other and suddenly burst into tears at the sound of the yelling and anger. She didn’t want this for her little girl – not for her to grow up in a violent and sad house. Rachel might not have had a privileged childhood, times were tough but there was never any violence between her mum and dad, not shouting matches. She always felt safe.

Jason had gotten to the stage where he didn’t seem to care anymore. As much as Rachel tried to get him help, group therapy, psychologist, even a retreat that would have cost her all of her own savings, he just wasn’t interested.  Her parents begged her to come and live with them and they would take care of her and the babies. She should have left him then but she didn’t.

The time had come. School had now finished for Bella for good. She had her whole life stretching out before her – she could travel, study, and meet new people, but before that Rachel had the difficult and challenging job of telling her daughter about the past and what had happened.

How do you begin to tell your only child that they were once a twin, and that the other half of them died, they shouldn’t have, but they did. Bella could have shared her childhood with a sister, a friend, someone to discuss thoughts and ideas with, have fun, argue and laugh together, but she didn’t .

It was one night when Jason had gone off to the pub and left Rachel as usual, on her own – seven months pregnant and dreadfully unhappy. She had reached the end of her tether, fed up of being left, pushed aside for other people and alcohol, not cared about and feeling so alone.

It was getting late and she felt small sharp pains in her stomach – she had felt them before so wasn’t really worried but she was angry that she endured them and everything on her own, night after night. She stormed up to the pub and pushed open the door and there he was, plastered as usual, laughing with his mates. Someone must have told him she was there because he turned around quickly, and seeing the look on her face, swayed over to her., unsteady on his feet. He was very drunk

“Give me the keys, I’m driving you home”.

He took the keys out of his pocket to the laughter and jokes coming from his mates about wives being in charge in some relationships, and handed them to Rachel.

When they got outside he told her that he was capable of driving himself, “S’only up the road” he tried to say “I can, ummm, gimme the keys. You’s can’t tell me when I’s too drunk to drive” I said “GIMME THE KEYS…NOW” he yelled at her and snatched them out of her open outstretched hand.

Rachel knew she should have kept her hand closed and insisted on him walking but she didn’t, and at that very moment didn’t care.

She watched as he tried twice to get the engine fired up, succeeding on the third attempt, catching his jacket in the car door as he shut it. She also watched as he put the car in reverse instead of drive initially, then crunching the gears, back into drive. He drove the wrong way up the wrong street, and she walked home, slowly, feeling the movement of the two babies inside her stomach, two little girls. “I will never let my children live in an unhappy house – ever” she said aloud as she slowly meandered her way home.

Jason had gone on to a mate’s house, and on the way there had driven into a tree. Rachel had been told when woken at 3am the next morning -  “speed and alcohol looked like factors in the accident but there would be an autopsy” the police woman told her, helping her into a chair and finding out the phone number of Rachel’s mother.

“Why did she let him drive the car? She was right there with him” was the main topic of conversation in the streets of the town during the following few days.

The afternoon of the funeral Rachel went into labour.  “It’s the stress of the gossip going about, and perhaps guilt” said the midwife to her assistant “and now it has caused this heartache”, she continued, referring to the delivery of one healthy baby girl and one stillborn baby girl, “ I am sure she will never forgive herself for it. What a senseless and sad predicament”.

Rachel wasn’t sure what her daughter would think about her story that she would tell, the past with its sadness and loss, especially the way her father died and the death of her  twin sister, but it was the truth and she couldn’t hold on to it any longer. She hoped with all of her heart that maybe not straight away, but eventually Bella would understand, not blame her, and forgive her.  But Rachel knew her grandfather would be with her as she told it, and she gained strength from that thought.