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.