Why Lie?
I’m nearly bursting with excitement when I run up the stairs in front of my house. I burst through the door and yell, “Mom!” Then I notice that the house is dark, and the smile falls from my face; Mom won’t be home for at least another hour. The results from the tryouts for the school play were posted at the end of the day today, and I got the female lead. I can’t wait to share the news with Mom when she gets home.
I decide to watch TV while I wait for her to get home, but after I surf through all of the channels twice, I give up. I’m just too restless to sit around and wait. My smile returns to my face as I get an idea and take off for the attic. My school can’t afford to buy costumes for the play so all of the actors are responsible for finding our own costumes. I play an old lady, and I’m pretty sure I can find something to wear in with all of Grandma’s stuff. After she died last year, Mom and I boxed up all of her stuff and put it in the attic with the rest of the useless junk Mom refuses to get rid of.
Technically, I’m not allowed in the attic because it’s “dangerous,” but I don’t know how a bunch of boxes could be dangerous. Our attic is so full of boxes that there is barely any room to move around. I move through the piles until I find the boxes I think contain Grandma’s stuff. I pull the top box down off the stack and sit down on the floor with it in front of me. It does not contain Grandma’s clothes, but what it does contain is way more interesting. It’s full of stuff from when Mom was in high school: photo albums, trophies, report cards.
Mom never talks about when she was young because it’s too painful for her to think about my dad. They were high school sweethearts, and they had me right after graduation. Unfortunately, Dad joined the army and died overseas before I turned two. I have one picture of him; he stands in front of a brick wall in his uniform.
I pull the first photo album out of the box eager to find more picture of my dad. This album chronicles Mom’s freshman and sophomore years. I quickly flip through the pages, but I don’t see my dad anywhere. I grab the next photo album and flip through it’s pages slower this time so I don’t miss anything; it shows Mom and her friends during their junior year. I still can’t find a single picture of my dad.
I’m almost frantic now; Mom always said that they were together throughout high school. The last album is senior year, and there is still not a single picture of my “father.” At the very end of the album there are two pictures that tell the real story.
Mom is extremely pregnant by now. In the first picture, she is in a dirty basement wearing a graduation cap and a short blue dress. She sits on an ugly couch next to a greasy looking guy holding a beer. This man is the exact opposite of the one in the picture I keep by my bed. This man has dark hair; the one by my bed has light hair. This man is fat; the man by my bed is muscular. This man appears throughout the photo albums; the man by my bed is nowhere. In the second picture, my parents kiss.
He wanted her
Because she was the one girl who didn’t want him
He always went after what he wanted, and
She was no exception
He showered her with gifts
Flowers, Chocolate, Jewelry
Until one day, she saw a different man than the one she used to hate
He married her, and they lived happily for a while
Until he got a new secretary
She hated him
He couldn’t help himself
He wanted her, too
Recurring Nightmare
It’s the same thing over and over. It’s lunchtime in my high school, and I sit alone at the only table that isn’t full. Everyone else has their groups of friends, but here I sit the only one alone. Don’t get me wrong; I had friends of my own, once, but they left one by one. They moved away or graduated, and I was too afraid to make new friends. So now here I sit alone, just like every other day.
Some days are better than others. On the bad days, I remember the fun we used to have at lunch, and the pain becomes more than I can handle. Tears slip down my face, one after another. But no one notices,just like every other time. I’ve become a master at crying silently. I just bury my head in my book, and wait for the pain to pass.
Eventually the bell rings, and I can get back into my element. I can bury my feelings under a mountain of schoolwork, and make sure the pain doesn’t show through. Until tomorrow,when lunch rolls around again.