Every Lie

I write a lot of short stories. A lot. There's just something so yummy about a story you can write in a few days then be done with FOREVER.

But I'm lugging this one out and dusting it off just for you. You're welcome.

This is something I wrote over a weekend in eighth grade. It might not make much sense and it's on the outrageous side of things, but that's kinda part of the fun. Also, it's not actually that short.

This story is completely fictional, except for the parts that actually happened—I almost never write stories that don't have little anecdotes sprinkled throughout. I'm writing what I know, I guess.

Every Lie

My name is Karlene Dixon-Jobe. 

I am fourteen years old. My favorite color is purple. My favorite food is bacon. 

I’m originally from Wyoming, but when I was four we moved to New York City. We lived there and homeschooled for six years. 

Next we moved in with my great aunt Marcelle and her boyfriend Percy. They lived out in Nevada, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and they had a zebra farm. We went to a public school in Nevada. It was a two hour drive there and back.

But then one day my sister Molly found Percy dead in the field, with hoof marks all over his distorted face, and his tangled up body. And they got rid of the zebras.

Not much later, my great aunt Marcelle found herself a new boyfriend. His name was Ronald Berginsky. Ronald Berkinsky was the kind of man who will bribe you with candy to sit and listen to his hyperbolic tales of a childhood on the steaming, alligator infested coast of Florida, where he claims his entire left ear was bitten off and lost in the ocean and he’d had to get a fake plastic one to replace it. 

When he told us that story, he even took off the fake plastic ear to prove it. Underneath was what looked like a messy job with a chainsaw. After that I didn’t listen to any more of Ronald Berginsky’s stories.

And my mama decided we should start to look for a house of our own, somewhere on the East Coast, where there were warm beaches and perhaps a nice community, and where it didn’t smell like zebras. So two months later, my mama, my daddy, my sister and I headed off for North Carolina.

We took a train, just for fun, and at the station, my daddy decided he was going to buy some snacks from the vending machine by the water fountains. He disappeared into the crowd just at the same time the train doors opened, and people started pouring into the cars. Daddy was nowhere in sight. We didn’t have much time left. Oh, but now here he came, weaving through the people, carrying a bag of candy and one of potato chips. Mama flailed her arms at him, yelling for him to hurry up and get on the train before the doors closed, while at the same time pulling us kids into the nearest car with her. Daddy saw mama’s panicky waves but he acted like she was fussing about nothing, and walked, it seems to me, even slower. He was two steps away from the train, when the doors slid shut. We watched out the little windows as he got farther and farther away, until we were going too fast to really see anything anymore. 

I haven’t seen my daddy since. 

My mama had her own job then, in North Carolina, teaching some of the neighbor kids piano, and working a night shift at a bar downtown. The bar was a noisy place, lots of tobacco and drunk men. My mama was the dishwasher, and she only worked on the back, where the shouting and clanging of the outside space was muffled by a heavy wool curtain. Once Mama came home in the morning with a black eye, and a long yellow bruise across one cheek. She said there’d been a fight, with fists, and silverware and things were being thrown, and mama had been unfortunate enough to have been on her way to the ladies’ room when it broke out, and before she could duck inside, a few small objects had caught her face. My sister Molly had an argument with Mama that day. She said Mama could have been really hurt, and that a bar wasn’t a safe enough environment that it was worth the risk for just a few dollars when Mama could be working as a waitress in a nice little diner, or she could be a cashier, or a secretary. But my mama said it wasn’t worth it to go to all the trouble of getting a whole new job.

The next day Molly came home with the news that she’d just gotten herself a job at the old library in town. Molly was still in high school at the time, just finishing her junior year. I hardly ever saw her after she got that job. She was off to school before I woke up in the morning, and when I got home, she was already working at the library. Most days her shift was stretched over suppertime, and often she wouldn't be home until after midnight, because she had a lot of friends who would have parties with real alcohol and kissing teenagers and no parents and a swimming pool.

A lot of those friends were probably more like Molly’s boyfriend’s friends. Molly’s boyfriend was a gorgeous boy with perfect eyes and a perfect smile. His name was Carter Whetzel, and he was the type of boy who I generally do not trust—the type who smokes pot and lies to his mother and who was probably sneaking off every Saturday to deal drugs in the shadier parts of the city. 

Molly hadn’t told Mama about Carter, since there’s nothing Mama hates more than teenage smokers. And really, you’d think since she works at a bar and all, Mama wouldn’t mind a little smoking on the boyfriend’s part, but even though she came home every morning stinking of cigar smoke and rotten eggs and wine, she’d know within a second of crossing the kitchen threshold if Carter Whetzel had been in the house.

Anyway, when Molly came home straight away after work with mascara streaks all over her face like she was some kind of heartbroken magazine girl, I immediately thought she’d been dumped. And actually I was happy about that. Carter always made me a little uncomfortable.

Well, turns out Molly and Carter were still together, but Molly had lost her job because they were tearing the library down and using the land for a zoo. That same day my Mama quit her job at the casino to start packing up our things, because we were moving again. This time we were moving all the way to our second cousins’ house in Arizona. 

We were not at all prepared for the blistering heat. Literally. Blistering. The moment we stepped out of the car, all three of us were nearly completely dehydrated from how much we were now sweating. I had never been so hot in my life. I started swelling up around my elbows, and blisters started puffing up all over my shoulders and back. I was having trouble breathing, and I could practically hear my hair snapping into pieces. I was literally burning up.

I had to go to the hospital and be dunked in cold water. Then I just ate applesauce and ice cream for the rest of the week. My cousin of some sort, Jesobelle, came to visit me in bed. Since she and I are the same size, she brought me a dress she said I should wear when we went to church together on Sunday. It was purple and blue, with sequins all over the skirt.

You’d never think somebody wearing something like that could fit in at any sort of church, but when I stepped into that sanctuary full of people, I had to squint my eyes so’s not to be blinded. Every person was wearing clothes just similar to mine, all sparkles and bright colors. Most of the people there were women, all kinds of women. One lady, wearing a neon green miniskirt and a sequined white sweater stood to the side of the stage with a music book in one hand and an enormous cello case in the other. Her hair was dark orange, and was a kind of cross between a mohawk and a mullet. She was the tallest woman I'd ever seen, and that’s saying something, considering I lived in New York City for six years, and New York people are really strange.

Anyway, Jesobelle guided us to an empty row of seats near the back. I peeked out of the corner of my eye to look at who was in the aisle across from me. On the other side of the aisle were two families sitting together. It looked like the older girls were close friends. They were some of the prettiest girls I’d seen. The one girl had a pale face and long blonde hair that hung halfway down her back, and it was sprinkled with lots of little red flowers. The same flowers were arranged in a dainty crown around the other girl’s head, which was full of beautiful dark curls. Her caramel skin was perfectly smooth and clear. She looked like a princess.

Her brother looked about my age, but he wasn’t as pretty. Maybe that was because he was wearing a yellow suit anda gold chain earring on one side. He looked pretty miserable. Actually, at Sunday school he said his mama paid him twenty dollars to wear that suit. I was impressed. My mama would never dream of paying me to do something she could just make me. I told him so, and he just said we should write letters if I ever move away.

That church was bigger on the inside, I tell you. There was a nursery and a kitchen and a foyer and four bathrooms. The pipe organ was made of oak, and the pipes were real silver. There were sequins all over the pulpit, and the curtains had sequins, too.

One Sunday for children’s time, the pastor brought in a peacock and a baby lamb. The peacock wouldn’t stop wailing and trying to peck at the lamb, and the lamb wouldn’t get up off its blanket. The pastor was nudging it and clapping her hands at ir and even kind of kicking it, but the lamb still wouldn’t move, so the pastor figured it was dead, and she had the sound guy come and take it away. All the kids were crying their eyes out, and they didn’t finish children’s time.

While we were living in Arizona, there was an earthquake. Jesobelle’s house almost all fell down. The front porch collapsed and the whole back half of the house was kind of gone. Jesobelle’s dog Parsley fell out of the living room and died. The fish tank shattered, and the bathtub split right down the middle, its feet straight through the floor.

Jesobelle’s parents had a lot of money and they had a summer house up in Washington State. They moved there after the quake, but we couldn’t move with them on account of their summer house not having any extra bedrooms.

So we moved again. This time we moved to California. Our first night there, we went to a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco. It took us two whole hours in the dark to hike there—and it really was a hike. The sidewalks were so steep, they were stairs. And it was foggy and drizzling, so we had to go extra slow because of how slippery the sidewalk was. By the time we finally arrived at the restaurant, we were all ready to just lie down on the floor and sleep. 

The lady who took our orders spoke English, but I glanced at her notepad and saw that she was taking notes in Chinese. Molly asked if we could have extra rice with the meal, but the waitress said we wouldn’t need it. And she was right. I was perfectly satisfied at the end of the meal. 

In California I dated a boy who was the cousin of the nephew of Willie Nelson. At least that’s what he said. After a while I broke up with him because I decided I liked somebody else. I can’t remember who it was, but I do remember that soon after I dumped him, I started finding money in my locker. A lot of money. One day I found a hundred dollar bill! I didn’t tell my mama, though. She’d make me give it back. I stashed the money in the back of my closet, and after about six months, I had enough money to buy a horse. And actually, I wanted one.

I lived in an apartment, so I bought the horse from my friend and had her keep it there, at her house in the country. It took all my money to get that horse. He was a soft brown Paso Fino with pretty eyes and a sweet face. I called him “Dumpy."

I went to visit Dumpy every Friday after school. I told mama I had reading club.

My friend, Katie, had hens roaming free in her backyard, and a rooster. I was terrified of that rooster, and so was Dumpy. One morning I was going to ride him in the woods for the first time, and I had asked Katie to close the chickens before I headed out, and she’d agreed that would be a good idea. So I tramped to the tack room to grab Dumpy’s saddle. I clipped it around his belly then stepped my left foot into the stirrup and launched my other foot over his back. Grabbing the reins, I nudged Dumpy’s sides and we set off for the woods.

And then here he came, hurtling around the corner of the house, green tail feathers everywhere. Dumpy spooked, and I was thrown from the saddle as he bucked, his eyes wide and lolling. On the way down, my leg twisted, and my foot caught in the stirrup. I couldn’t walk for a week.

My mama thought I’d tripped on my way home from reading club. Katie was sorry about the rooster, I could tell. The next time I visited Dumpy, he was already groomed, and fed and watered. His mane was braided with blue beads. I gave Katie a hug and told her it was okay and that I knew she didn’t mean to get me hurt. And I think she got rid of the rooster. I can’t remember quite, because that was the last time I ever saw Dumpy. The next day, my mama found out from the principal of my school that a student claimed to have lost a whole lot of money in the last year, and every day had seen me slip some money—always the same amount that was lost—out of my locker and leave with it.

Mama asked me if I was stealing money, and I said no, because it was only the truth. Mama raised her eyebrows at me and pulled a dirty t-shirt off my dresser. She pointed to the strip of horse hair plastered to one side. She asked me what that was about. And she said she knew I wasn’t going to the reading club every Friday. The principal had said they didn’t have one.

I couldn’t think of any more lies, and so I spilled and told my mama all about the money and Dumpy, and Katie. Mama said she couldn’t believe me. And she made me sell Dumpy back to Katie, and pay the money back to the school so it could be given back to who’d lost it. And I had to wash the dishes and do all the laundry for the rest of the month. But I never regretted Dumpy.

After I finished my sentence, Mama decided I needed to see a shrink, because perhaps I had some issues and that’s why I’d lied about Dumpy.

My psychotherapist was Elliot-Mundy Rose, but I didn’t like the name Elliot-Mundy, so I just called her Mandy. Mandy had long black hair almost down to her knees. Her face was a little squinched, and she had an awful lot of wrinkles for a thirty-year-old woman. She wore a light teal tunic and gold heels, and her makeup matched: teal eyeshadow and gold sparkles. Clear lip gloss.

She sat down on a little green armchair and motioned for me to sit on the couch across from her. I did. Mandy said before we got started she wanted to show me her dog collection. I was confused.

Mandy reached into her bag and pulled out a jar of dead puppies.

I screamed at the top of my lungs and ran right out of there. I grabbed my mama’s arm and pulled her up out of her chair, at the same time Mandy walked out, holding the jar of dead puppies. My mama told me they were stuffed toys, and she made me go back to that room.

I had no idea why Mandy had those dead puppies, or why she showed them to me. Maybe it was some sort of threat. But she left the jar on the coffee table during the session, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I didn’t say anything for the rest of the session. 

That night I ran away to Katie’s house, because I kept having hallucinations of dead things coming into my room and smothering me with icy fingers. I couldn’t sleep.

But Katie didn’t open the door. You did.

And you held me and I confessed to you every one of these lies.