The First True Lie

by Marina Mander

  Or funny ones, like topsy-turvy. There are lots of ways to talk about a huge confusion, but topsy-turvy is my favorite. So on the walls of the first-grade classrooms, along with the words airplane in the shape of an airplane and banana in the shape of a banana, they could hang a photo of me and Mama as topsy and turvy, the one where we look just like each other, like two peas in a pod, held together tight-tight in our shell.

  Words are useful for working out what others are really saying, the ones who think you can’t understand.

  Words in a row make stories.

  You put things in a row and make a story out of it. Stories put things in their places. Then you’re more relaxed. The stories you invent are your personal lullabies. Even when they’re horrible, they don’t scare you anymore because you’re the one who invented them.

  That’s what this is too.

  This story is only a secret I told myself to see if I’m able to keep a really secret secret.

  Now I open the door and smell meatballs in the hall.

  Meatballs and mashed potatoes, my favorite, the meal Mama makes me when she has to ask me to forgive her for something big.

  She’s still there.

  Usually she helps me do my homework. Or she checks it afterward. Or else she listens while I recite something in English. It seems like English is very important. English is useful for songs, and for PlayStation too. If you know English, you understand certain things better.

  Tomorrow I have a test at school.

  No matter what, I have to study.

  I have to study, study, study.

  If you don’t study, friend, you’re screwed. If you don’t get at least a “Good” on this test you’re in big trouble. They’ll put a big black mark next to your name and call a parent meeting.

  “Do you get it, friend? Dear Mama will have to go and talk to the assfaces who are talking about you behind your back. Who will you send, friend, the cat?”

  “Fucking shit. Blue, let’s get to work. Let’s show those assfaces who we are.”

  “Careful, friend, if you use dirty words they’ll fuck you up.”

  “Okay, okay,” I say, and put on my tough-guy face. “We’ll be the ones doing the fucking-up around here, friend.”

  No problem.

  4

  Something is different today.

  Mama has gone hard and is swollen all over. Yesterday she was colder; today she’s puffier. I touch the radiator to see if it’s working—it’s not. Mama’s not working anymore either.

  There’s a layer of dust on the radiator. She hasn’t noticed. Now it’s all the same for her if things are dirty or clean, ugly or pretty, lukewarm, freezing, or just terrible. She’s finished fighting with opposites.

  My heart starts beating loudly. I can feel it in my belly and in my head, like a pinball racing wildly, smacking randomly into the walls of my body, elbowing me in the stomach, battering me with punches to the sides of my head, pounding my back, filling me with bruises and shivers. I can’t stop it from doing whatever it wants, shooting all over the place.

  Today I stopped hoping.

  I look around and nothing seems like before.

  I don’t even know if there was a before.

  I don’t know if there will be an after.

  I don’t know anything about anything.

  The blank notebook still covers my whole brain. This has to be how crazy people feel in their padded white cells, rocking from side to side, staring into the sum of all colors.

  I’m rocking too, without even feeling like crying. I just feel like rocking back and forth on the edge of the bed.

  “Mama’s lost her spark, her mouth is oh so dark, no playing in the park…”

  I don’t know where the song comes from, I’m not the one who’s thinking it. It’s the song that’s thinking me.

  “Forget. Forgot. Forgotten.”

  “Forgive. Forgave. Forgiven.”

  We listen to the verbs being recited aloud and parrot them back. Then we have to complete sentences using the correct tense. My deskmate tries to copy me, but I’m in a daze, my pen in the air. I hear the sound of the words without understanding what they mean, like Ulysses with the Sirens, but to me they seem like police sirens.

  “What’s up with you? Are you daydreaming? What goes here?”

  “Where?”

  “Here! Third line, forget or forgotten?”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  No, it’s not the same thing.

  I don’t want to end up in a home. Forget, I write, and elbow my deskmate. The torture is over. I stand up.

  I hope I did well. I think I did.

  I walk toward the front to hand in my notebook and it seems like I weigh a million tons. It’s as if I’m made of concrete, with a stone heart inside. I feel as if I can only move like King Tut’s mummy, completely stiff. I feel the floor give way, as if it can’t support me, or maybe it’s my knees that have suddenly gone mushy. I feel everything and nothing. But somehow I reach the finish line and force myself to smile. It’s exactly like when you leave the dentist after having held your mouth wide open for two hours—it stays stuck like that and forgets how to move. My cheeks are sore.

  “Very good.”

  It seems everything is going well.

  The bell rings and we’re free once more.

  Davide wants to come to my apartment after lunch.

  “Great,” I say.

  He says he’ll bring Snowboard.

  “Even better,” I say.

  I go back home. I plan my journey—carefully choosing the opposite side of the street from where the smelly flower woman sets up, so she won’t get a chance to talk my ear off. I watch her across the street as she uses her poultry scissors to cut the stems of some lilies. She’s got mean eyes and big, wrinkly hands. Until not too long ago she always used to give me a little pat when Mama and I stopped to buy flowers, little bunches of irises that smelled like bubble bath.

  “Is this a gift, ma’am?”

  “No, they’re for me.”

  “Shall I put a bow on it?”

  “No, thanks, that won’t be necessary.”

  Every time the same questions and the same answers. Mama tries not to pay attention to the old busybody. She drops a coin or her wallet on purpose, or she fixes her hair like it’s no big deal and swallows a few times before saying good-bye. Then the flower woman’s hand touches my forehead and it feels like there’s the bottom of a shoe on my face or a bare foot with warty calluses.

  I don’t understand old people’s obsession with touching children. They should keep at least as far away as the years separating us.

  I walk past, as far away as possible.

  But I could, I should, I would like to buy some flowers for Mama, because people bring flowers to the dead. People bring flowers to their lovers, to sick people, and to the dead (there’s not a lot of common sense in all this).

  Mama likes white irises or red roses.

  “It may be a cliché, but if a man buys you red roses it still makes you happy.”

  I know what she means. I don’t have to be a woman. It’s that it’s important to feel important to somebody.

  People are ashamed of not feeling loved enough.

  People always keep themselves to themselves. If someone thinks about you enough to send you roses, it means that he or she thinks about you a lot, that you’re not alone. It’s more or less the same with all presents. Actually, that’s what presents are. That’s why they matter even if they’re not worth much. It’s the thought that counts, they say; and about this, they’re right.

  Tomorrow I’ll buy Mama some beautiful flowers, the most beautiful flowers of her life. But not today. I can’t deal with the old witch and her questions and her sandpaper touch.

  The last time Mama got flowers it made her very happy. It was a bunch of red roses so big that it didn’t fit through the door, and there was a little card attached with a pin. In her rush to read it Mama pricked her finger, th
en fell into a trance like Sleeping Beauty for a couple of days.

  To be honest, she’d seemed happy for a while before then, strangely enough, and a bit absentminded. She bustled around in high heels, tick tack tick tack, and acted like someone who’s just gotten away with something. That was a couple of years ago. The night before the roses she’d left me at home with the babysitter with the big boobs, Juana, and had stayed out late. I’d fallen asleep on the sofa between Juana’s boobs, soft as a mattress, and Juana fell asleep too because it was past midnight.

  When Juana heard the key turn in the lock, she was really embarrassed.

  “Desculpe, senhora, but I’ve been up since six in the morning, so sorry.”

  Juana’s boobs shook like Jell-O with a cherry on top, but Mama didn’t even notice.

  “It’s nothing, dear, nothing to worry about. I’m the one who’s late. It’s my fault.”

  Mama seemed more concerned with looking at herself in the mirror above the chest of drawers than with us, as if some detail might have revealed why she was late. And in fact when Mama returned to the apartment she had a run in her tights on the right ankle; earlier, before leaving, she’d had one on her left. I’d tried to warn her.

  “One should never arrive at an appointment with torn tights. If you have an accident and have to take your clothes off, who knows what they’ll think of you.”

  But she’d been too busy getting ready to go out.

  She apologized again, even gave the babysitter a tip, and came to kiss me good night. Her perfume was different than usual, sharper. It smelled like the little green trees people hang in their cars.

  It didn’t last long.

  After a few days the petals fell on the table and also on the floor. As Mama went down on all fours to pick them up among the chair legs, she declared that when the roses wilt quickly it means that it wasn’t true love.

  Whose love she meant, I never asked her.

  In any case, that was one of the few times I ever saw her truly happy.

  Or at least happy about red roses.

  Maybe she’s happy now too.

  The light part of her has left her body and the heavy part has stayed in bed, like with a puppet. The puppets’ stories exist even when they’re sleeping. And even when people die, their stories still exist.

  Once I had a high temperature and I thought it was chicken pox, because the next day I had itchy blisters everywhere. I was in bed but also out of bed.

  I saw myself from the outside. I was moving around the room, obsessed with finding something, a bow and arrow, that should have been between the door and the wardrobe, along with a tennis racket. I had to hit an important target, that’s what I needed it for, but I couldn’t find it, and if I found it I couldn’t manage to pick it up, because my body was still in bed. Only my will to pick up the bow was moving around the room, and my will had no hands to grab things with. It was separate from me, me who remained stretched out on the bed, mouthing words that made no sound or sense.

  Mama says she needs lightness.

  “But every day things are getting heavier. Even the mood at work is getting heavy.”

  Giulia raises her eyes to the heavens.

  “What can you do? The fact is, they’re assholes, every last one of them. Sure, if you hadn’t ended up alone with Luca, you could have kept painting instead of working in that stupid office, but not with a kid on your back.”

  Mama makes a sign for her to keep her voice down.

  “What’s Luca got to do with it? If they’re assholes, they’re assholes.”

  But I understand, it’s not easy to paint with someone on your back. Still, I thought, maybe if Mama stopped working and rested at least for a little while, things would get better. Maybe if she stopped working she’d go back to being an artist and paint something better than what we’ve got hanging in the living room.

  Will there be any fruit juice left for when Davide comes over?

  I’ll tell him Mama’s at work, but it’ll seem strange if the fridge is empty and there’s nothing for a snack. We need a little snack and some juice at least.

  Supplies will run out sooner or later and Blue will end up with an empty bowl. Poor guy. It’s amazing how such a small cat can eat so much.

  The kitchen looks awful, like when you get home after being away for a while. I don’t think Davide will mind. His house is always a mess, worse than it is here. Good thing at least there are some leftovers in the fridge.

  I eat some gelato. Sometimes when Davide comes over he brings something. As long as it’s not his sister’s cookies, the ones shaped like hearts or stars that look great but then when you eat them you almost break a tooth.

  I go and lock the door to Mama’s room with Mama inside.

  If Davide wants to go in there, I’ll say that Mama doesn’t want anyone to because I looked in her drawers. That’s why her room is locked. It’s not completely a lie, it’s even half true, because I really did go looking in her drawers a few weeks ago. I wanted to read what she’d written the night before. She’d stayed up late writing in the living room and I wanted to know what was really on her mind. She’d seemed in a worse mood than usual.

  I didn’t find the pages. I found tights, underwear, and a red thing shaped like a willy hidden underneath her tights and underwear.

  You push a button and the thing turns on and goes vrrrrr, like a blender.

  Mama went through the roof.

  “Never, ever touch my things again—never, ever.”

  Or your red thing, I thought, but I didn’t say it, because she was mad enough already.

  I didn’t even tell her what I was looking for and why; it seemed impossible to straighten things out. I started to sweat like it was the middle of August.

  “Have I ever come nosing around in your room? Have I ever opened your shitty private box where you keep all your junk? Have I ever spied on you?”

  Who knows, I thought. I don’t think so.

  “Then why do you do it to me? What happened to all the respect I’ve taught you? Go on, tell me that!” Mama screamed like a madwoman.

  “Don’t use dirty words, Mama.”

  “Who? Me? Fuck you, and fuck everyone!”

  Usually she doesn’t yell, but that time she went for it.

  She had a handkerchief in her hands, like the ones she keeps in the drawer on top of the red thing, and she was clutching it so tightly, it seemed like she might rip it to shreds at any moment, as if the whole world could crumble to pieces at any moment. For the first time I saw her veins climb up from her fists to her wrists, bluish and swollen. They were no longer my mother’s hands but my grandmother’s, or a man’s, or a wicked witch’s. Mama didn’t seem like Mama anymore; she seemed like a really pissed-off stranger capable of anything.

  The next morning she muttered, “Sorry.”

  I kept staring at my cup and the teddy bear–shaped crackers as I dipped them into the milk.

  “Sorry, there was no reason to get so angry about it.”

  What a silly excuse, what a silly life, what a silly everything.

  That time Mama managed to make me feel just like shit. Why she would keep a pretend willy in her underwear drawer is still a mystery.

  A disgusting mystery.

  I never thought of my mother as being like the women in dirty magazines. And I don’t want to think about it.

  Sometimes, in secret, Davide and I look at dirty magazines. His dad keeps them on top of a wardrobe, along with some movies too, because he thinks no one can get up there. On top of the magazines there’s a suitcase, and on top of the suitcase a bag with pliers, wrenches, screwdrivers, and other men’s things inside. Davide gives me a boost and I climb up because I’m lighter, and his fingers get red and swollen like sausages in the package. My willy has much pinker skin than the ones in the pictures. Maybe they get darker as they grow, the opposite of hair.

  It’s not that I don’t know that Mama likes to have sex once in a while. I’m sure that she did i
t with the last one, the one whose job seemed to be washing windshields at traffic lights.

  “Vade retro Satana,” she’d cry out in her little girl’s voice.

  “Vade retro!”

  I’d hear her “Vaderetros” from behind the door when I went to pee during the night. Once in a while I’d also hear her laugh and I’d think, At least she’s laughing. They have sex because, for some mysterious reason, they like each other. It doesn’t have anything to do with that other stuff.

  The fact is, now the room is closed, with Mama dead inside, and Davide mustn’t notice anything.

  When he arrives, he says there’s a funny smell.

  “I don’t smell anything,” I reply.

  We play with Blue for a bit. Davide scratches him on the belly and Blue sticks his paws up in the air, like a dog.

  “I told you a cat isn’t so different from a dog.”

  “Why is Blue called Blue when he’s gray?”

  What a moronic question.

  “Why are you called Davide when you’re a moron?”

  We end up in a fight.

  “Stop it, you’re hurting me! You’re hurting me, ouch!”

  I’m hitting him for real, not playing anymore. I’m on top of him and I’m holding him down with a strength I’ve never had before. He’s shouting and slapping his hands down on the carpet like in judo.

  “I surrender, I surrender.”

  I realize I don’t want to let go. I apologize. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “What’d you do that for?”

  It’s never happened before. Davide is much bigger than me. It’s better with Snowboard—he wins. I keep falling; I get the buttons confused; I can’t get it right. I see the turn coming and can’t help trying some fancy move, so I fly into the air and off the course, onto the roof of the chalet. The spectators laugh. Davide complains because he says playing like that is no fun. We drink fruit juice. And eat the last of the snacks.

  “What do you say we do some homework?”

  “Fine, I’ll do it for you.”

  It’s always like this; I do my homework and then I do his for him. It’s because it’s easier for me, I don’t know why.

  “You know, it’s handy having a friend who’s a nerd.”