The Lie You Live With by Carol Scheina
For my first four years, I never heard a lie. From the day I was born, Mom and Grams swaddled me in a fuzzy blanket, then wrapped my life in cold, hard truth.
“Lies can be warm,” Grams said, deep in her corduroy rocking chair. “You’ll want to nestle into them. Some lies are meant to hurt. They’ll prick hot at you, surprise you. But make a lie true? What’s gonna happen next? Chose carefully, ‘cause it’s gotta be a lie you can live with.”
I nodded, my young chin brushing the threadbare armrest while Grams focused on the television’s flickers of onscreen kisses. Like all women of our line, I was born with the gift of transforming one lie into truth. Mom and Grams were determined that I not jump into the first falsehood I encountered.
Our house balanced atop a weedy hill, the asphalt road wrapping a swirly-twirly-lollipop pattern on which cars sputtered up and down and never stopped. Mom kept me away from Other People, in case they lied.
After a day typing someone else’s advertising copy, Mom blew coffee-bitter kisses at me, “I don’t have stinky breath.”
The lie warmed my feet, then inched a cozy trail upward. Giggling, I’d push it away before it reached my heart and became true. I learned true and false before Mom and Grams let me leave our hilltop.
The first lie I almost made real was given by a nurse with an autodrive smile and a needle between her fingers. “This won’t hurt a bit.”
Those false words compressed my legs into a warm toothpaste tube, then jolted upward. This wasn’t like playing with Mom. I wanted this lie to be true, inadvertently giving it speed and power.
Mom squashed my small, damp hand in hers. “It’ll hurt, but it won’t hurt long.” Cold truth.
I trusted Mom and shoved the falsehood away.
In the car driving home, I rubbed my band aid and asked Mom why we only got one lie to make true.
“It’s one of those family stories that got lost with time.” Her heavy eyes connected with mine in the rear-view mirror. “I’m proud you didn’t pick an easy lie.”
I wrapped myself around those icy-true words.
At school, lies could prick needle-hot. I pushed them away with barely an exhale until I gazed at August James’s lopsided grin and suspected he was about to kiss me. Heart pounding, I licked my lips.
He leaned closer. “I love you.”
His lie became a sultry boa constrictor, twining hot caresses up. I could make his lie true and make August really love me
Grams’s cold voice came to me: Could I live with this lie?
No.
I jerked away and ran hard. Mom found me wet-faced and shivering on our weedy hill.
I fought against her hug. “All your talk of picking the right lie. Did you? Grams? Why didn’t you use this power to make a better life?”
Instead, Grams immersed herself in fake television romances. Mom burned the hours away writing chirpy fake advertisements on an ancient computer.
Mom’s eyes lowered. “You’ll always feel lies. And once you make your choice, you’ll still feel it. I chose to make a job come true, but I couldn’t build on that lie. The job didn’t last. I still live with my choice every day.”
“Maybe you didn’t think hard enough about your choice,” I snapped back. She and Grams had frightened me with warnings, but what if I made someone lie about me having a seven-bedroom house and money galore? I could live with that becoming true. Maybe then, August would love me.
For weeks, I wrote scripts to manipulate August into saying certain words. I revised and watched cars snake around our house. Mom tried to talk, but I tuned her out. She’d made a mistake with her lie. I’d do better.
The next lie came with the screech and crumple of a car spinning off the asphalt near our hilltop. Mom ran for the phone, while I stumbled through weeds to the shredded aluminum and ripped tires. Kids in the back, faces shiny-damp with terror. A woman up front whispering even as her body sagged and bent wrong.
“We’ll all be okay,” she rasped. A mother’s lie, given in comfort and love even as the glaze of death tip-toed over her face.
Her words sparked warm. I had plans. I would choose my lie carefully. I wasn’t ready now. But these children shouldn’t live with a mom-sized hole in their lives. As thoughts darted about, the mother’s chest stilled, a last tear rolling down her cheek. I wanted to grab her hand, hope for life, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel if she was cold.
Was her lie gone too?
No, my toes still felt a tingle of warmth. My heart beat a shaky rhythm as I yanked the warmth up my legs, torso. I wanted her lie to be true. For these kids to have a mom with coffee breath kisses and tired, loving eyes.
The lie hovered.
We’ll be okay.
Her words seared my heart, hot as summer asphalt. I needed her lie to be real. And then, her lie chilled into blissful, arctic truth.
She gasped, her body unfolding around the steering wheel. Whatever had been broken bent properly as she looked to her children. I stepped back as paramedics stepped in.
The paramedics arrived with piercing sirens, quickly surrounding the car. Mom pulled my shivering body into a warm hug, and despite the summer heat, I coughed an icy mist all the way home.
Grams creaked in her chair. “You look frosty. Found your lie, eh?”
Mom wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. “What better use for a lie than to help someone.”
The cold truth of Mom’s words swaddled me in warmth.
I could live with my choice.
