Polite Lies

by Kyoko Mori

  I find Michiko’s lies fascinating and repulsive in a similar way. Even in my anger, I could not help but wonder exactly what she must have said to my father to prevent him from confronting me about the supposed love letters. I wanted to know the details of her lies and her thinking—just as I wanted to know what “gamy” really meant.

  The lies Michiko told are nothing like the white lies most people tell, wishfully exaggerating the truth. Hers involve making up—from scratch, as it were—a series of circumstances, facts, and details. I still wonder what motivated Michiko to choose the particular scenario about my writing love letters, just as I wonder what motivated the Joy of Cooking illustrator to choose a particular boot as the instrument of squirrel-skinning.

  Lies are fascinating because there are so many possibilities for invention and embellishment. In a liar’s mouth, facts are no longer boring and predictable, but interesting and surprising. The sense of unlimited possibility is what lies have in common with another vice that most people find irresistible: gossip. Gossip is interesting because what we hear and pass on to others may be the truth, but it could also be a wild fantasy; we are captivated by the very uncertainty of what we hear.

  In spite of the proverb, the truth is seldom as strange or interesting as fiction. Most of us don’t want to know the painful facts about other people’s lives. I often feel burdened when friends confide in me about their marriage problems, childhood traumas, or job dissatisfactions. Even though I try my best to console and reassure, I can’t help wishing—selfishly—that my friends had told someone else. Most people feel the same way: hearing a confidence is a duty. When someone is a good confidante, we see that person as possessing a virtue.

  Gossip is entirely different. There is nothing virtuous about engaging in gossip, but we enjoy it to the utmost. When someone tells us vague rumors about someone else’s marriage problems, childhood secrets, or job scandals, our ears prick up. When the same information is told to us in confidence, we feel a sinking sense of duty. We listen silently and carefully, trying to think of the few right words to say and maybe getting a headache in the process. When the information is passed on to us as gossip, we jump into the conversation with gusto: nobody knows the truth anyway, so we are free to offer our own theories, conjectures, and interpretations. We can talk all we want.

  To gossip is to “talk behind someone’s back,” to be sneaky, to take liberties. But the guilt I feel about gossiping is similar to the guilt I feel about speeding on the freeway or bringing my own food into movie theaters instead of buying popcorn at the concession stand: the guilt never cancels out my pleasure in getting away with the offense. Gossip can be malicious. It can be used to spread false rumors, to destroy someone’s reputation, but most of the time, people who gossip don’t intend to do any of this.

  My friends and I like to gossip because gossip is a sort of free-for-all talk-a-thon. Sitting around with cups of coffee, we can spend the whole afternoon offering various theories and interpretations about what might “really be going on” in someone’s marriage or why two people we work with seem to hate each other. Our interpretations and theories are usually kind or neutral. Maybe we stretch the few facts we know and try to outdo one another with our imaginings and perceptions, but we don’t assume the worst about the people we are talking about. Usually, all we feel toward them is a mild good wish. We conclude many of our statements with, “Well, I hope everything works out for them,” “We’ll see what happens next week,” “I’m sure they’ll come through this crisis and be just fine.” We don’t care what will really happen in the future: the main pleasure of gossip is talk, not the subject, the outcome, or the information. If, after two hours of conversation, none of us knows anything we didn’t already know at the start, we aren’t disappointed at all. It’s like when we go shopping and nobody buys anything after four hours—who cares? We spent time together and talked; what more could we want?

  The emphasis on talking—talking for talking’s sake—may be what divides men and women in the matter of gossip. The way we gossip could be one of the few real differences between us. The “manly” ideals of “being fair” and not getting “too personal” about other people seem to affect all my male friends. Even the few men I gossip with—who are not traditional “macho” types by any means—do not gossip with other men in the same way they do with me.

  If “gossip” meant simply talking about other people in their absence, men could be said to gossip as much as women. Just like women, men talk about people they work with, comparing stories about whether the new principal or supervisor is a good administrator. They offer their interpretations about their colleagues: “Is he comfortable with people?” “Is she organized?” “Does his secretary like working with him?” But when I go out for drinks with my colleagues, most of whom are men, and we talk about people who are not there, I am struck by how little the conversation strays from immediate facts and evidence. So-and-so did this or said that; therefore, he must be insecure with people. So-and-so drives this kind of car; therefore, he must like to show off. Nobody says, “I wonder what So-and-so’s father was like?” or “Is he an only child or does he come from a big family?” The few times I brought up such questions—questions any woman would ask right away—men looked at me with a big frown as if to say, “What? Why are you talking about that?” My speculations were too personal and yet too removed from the immediate circumstance and the “evidence” before us. It was unfair and petty to talk about someone’s family or upbringing (but not his car); the past was irrelevant.

  What my women friends and I could spend three hours talking about and not resolving in the end can be dispatched, with something like the “answer,” in ten minutes of male conversation. Men don’t talk just to talk; they talk to exchange information or to solve a problem. When they offer theories or make predictions, they are concerned about the accuracy of their words. They end their discussion with “We’ll see what happens next week” because it’s only fair to be cautious, to add a disclaimer to the prediction they just made. For me and my women friends, “We’ll see what happens” means “I really don’t have any idea what will happen, but I enjoyed talking about this. Now it’s your turn.”

  Men make little distinction in their conversations between people they know and those they don’t. They discuss professional athletes, presidential candidates, or musicians in the way women would talk about people who live across the street. The way men talk about them, public figures don’t sound like faraway people, because so many facts and details are known about them—batting averages, places of origin, former coaches, slumps and good seasons, scandals and awards, who played backup on whose album ten years ago. “So-and-so just resigned (or was fired),” my male friends say to one another about a basketball coach in California—with as much shock or disappointment as they might express if the same thing were to happen to the associate dean of academic affairs at our college. Their tone suggests a conversation about a mutual friend, not someone they have and will never meet.

  Women engage in impersonal gossip, too, about movie stars and other famous people—the checkout counters of grocery stores are crowded with “gossip” magazines marketed for women. But the women who read those magazines don’t talk about Madonna and Elizabeth Taylor in the same familiar tone men use to talk about athletes and rock musicians. Madonna and Elizabeth Taylor are fascinating because their lives are so removed from ours—to most of us, they may as well be figments of our imagination. We don’t feel intimacy or familiarity toward them regardless of how many personal facts we know about them. Nobody expects the National Enquirer or the Star to stick to the facts; “gossip” magazines can entice their readers precisely because they contain exaggerations and wild guesses. Magazines marketed for men highlight facts, whether they are football statistics, stereo product information, or profiles of successful business people.

  Our attitudes toward public figures mirror our attitudes toward gossip in general: women like to talk, specul
ating about what may or may not be true, whereas men like to trade “inside information” based on facts. Women have a different tone or level of intimacy for talking about people they know personally, as opposed to talking about famous strangers, but that is not true for men. If anything, men seem more intimate, less inhibited, when they talk about public figures.

  But information isn’t everything even for men. My male friends often reminisce together about their favorite rock groups from the sixties or the football stars they worshiped when they were seven. That is their way of talking about a common childhood—miles, states, or continents apart, they were listening to the same music and watching the same games on TV. When men talk about the sports and music of “the good old days,” they are sharing common experiences, just as women do when we talk about ourselves: our parents, our old boyfriends, first dates, and other fiascoes. Through these “personal” anecdotes, women realize that we have all had the same childhood. Men must feel the same way when they talk about the 1979 Super Bowl or the 1984 World Series: we’ve all been there; we know. No matter whether you are male or female, talk, including gossip, makes us aware of our common ground. It establishes a sense of community. Maybe that’s the best defense I have for my love of gossip.

  Telling the truth is never as easy as I once assumed it was. I do feel guilty, though, when I fail to tell the truth in some major way. My Japanese friends and I were not brought up to lie on all occasions. What we received was a very mixed message: lying is all right under some circumstances, and yet honesty is also very important.

  Honesty was especially important when it was linked with the idea of respect. We were taught never to lie to our teachers, parents, or elders. If we did anything wrong at school or at home, we had to own up to it as soon as possible. Being respectful to our elders meant being honest with them. Even our names reflected these values. The names of the Kuzuha brothers, Makoto and Tadashi, are two versions or connotations of “honesty”: Makoto means “sincerity” and Tadashi means “correctness.” My name and my brother’s are two forms of “respect”: my name means a reverent kind of respect, while his refers to the peaceful feeling of humility. So when our two families went on trips together and the four of us were playing on the beach or in the field, we were meant to be four embodiments of respect and honesty.

  From our names and from the stories we heard, we did learn a certain reverence for the truth. One of the scariest images of my childhood comes from the Buddhist belief about the liars’ hell. Buddhist folklore has different types of hell for different sins and vices, and many of the stories were told to us children to make us behave. If we didn’t eat all our rice, we might end up in “the hungry goblins’ hell,” where people were tormented with hunger: they wandered around barren fields and mountains for eternity, looking for food and finding none, all because they didn’t finish their bowls of rice in their lifetime. When grown-ups—usually my grandmother or neighborhood old ladies—told us this story, I laughed. “What about people who didn’t finish their carrots or eggs?” I would ask. “Why is the story always about rice? What about bread? Would we have to go to the hungry goblins’ hell if we cut off the crust to make sandwiches?” My grandmother and the other old ladies would shake their heads and say that I had missed the point of the story, and I would laugh some more. “But I already know the point of the story. You want me to eat all my rice.”

  The one hell that truly scared me was the liars’ hell. We were told that the liars’ hell is ruled by a king, En-ma-san, who keeps track of all the lies we have ever told in our lifetime. When we die, we must stand before this king, who brings out a scroll in which all our lies are written down. He reads the scroll and decides if we are liars or not. If En-ma-san decides that we are liars, he makes us approach his throne and tells us to open our mouths so he can cut off our tongues. This story, unlike the others, did not involve wandering around or burning or drowning for eternity; the punishment was a single event, making it sound as though we were free to go and do whatever we liked once our tongues were cut off. All the same, the liars’ hell was the worst kind of hell. Without my tongue, I would never be able to talk or taste my food. The people in the other hells were heard screaming and yelling while they burned or drowned or were stabbed. At least they could talk, if only to curse their fate.

  A few years ago at a museum in New Orleans, I was walking through the Asian collection when I saw a small wooden statue about a foot tall: an old man seated on a throne with a frown on his face, as though he were perpetually chiding us. The card underneath said, “En-ma: the king of hell.” Decades away from my childhood, I stood staring at this statue as if I were seeing an old relative I did not like. Almost all the other statues in the room were bodhisattvas—gaunt, androgynous, and tall, their slender arms stretched out in gestures of forgiveness and mercy. They seemed utterly forgettable. Even though the bodhisattvas were five, ten times the size of En-ma, they were already shrinking in my memory while the old man, with his slight slouch, looked as though he were preparing to stand up from his throne and follow me home.

  He has, in a way. I still picture him now and then—espe cially after telling polite lies because I lack the courage to tell the truth. En-ma-san sits in a dark room, frowning, slouching, and writing down my lies. Near his throne, pink tongues lie in a pile, some of them still moving, as certain types of raw fish are said to wiggle in a gourmet’s mouth. Like strange delicacies, the tongues are arranged on a plate—morbid pink petals I stare at and cannot stop.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SAFETY

  From Green Bay, a trip to a major city—Milwaukee, Chicago, or Minneapolis—means two to five hours of driving through the countryside and small towns across Wisconsin, Illinois, or Minnesota. Although I like to travel, I sometimes worry about driving. I imagine that my car is making strange noises or that my tires look low. There is plenty of bad weather in all seasons: snow, heavy rain, lightning, fog, extreme cold. Then there is my bad sense of direction. About every thirty miles, I have a moment of panic: maybe I missed an important turn-off and am now heading in the wrong direction.

  Unlike most of my friends in Wisconsin, I didn’t learn to drive until I was twenty-seven. I still feel a little unsure about certain maneuvers, like parallel parking, which way the wheels should be turned when I’m parked on a hill, or what I should do if the car begins to skid in a snowstorm. Step-b-step instructions always confuse me. If this happens, then do this, but if that other thing happens, then you must do the second thing, unless there is also the third factor—and you must decide in five seconds exactly which situation you are dealing with and what should be done. I hate the combination of logic and pressure. It puts me back in the world of math problems I could never solve.

  My fear isn’t primarily about driving and logic, though. I don’t hear my car making strange noises, or imagine myself skidding in snow, or worry about my tires blowing out, once I am within ten miles of the city. As soon as I can make out the distant skyline, I am relieved. Weather doesn’t look quite as intimidating in big cities. Open space makes rain, fog, or lightning seem bigger: a wide-open sky full of disaster. Even though I get lost in cities as well as in the countryside, I know that I can go to a gas station and ask for directions. I don’t have to imagine myself walking up to a farmhouse and being bitten by a pack of big dogs. If my car were to break down in any city, I would know if I was in a safe neighborhood—in which case I would walk to a pay phone—or not—in which case I would wait in my car for help. What I am really afraid of is not my car but the countryside, where everything looks the same and there may be no pay phones for twenty miles.

  Mine is a typical city-person’s fear of the countryside. Walking down Michigan Avenue in Chicago, I notice that I am breathing much easier than I was while driving across Wisconsin and Illinois to get there. Although I have come to feel comfortable enough in Green Bay, every time I visit Milwaukee or Chicago, I realize that I feel truly at home only in big cities. A small town isn�
�t exactly like the countryside: there are gas stations and grocery stores in a town of three hundred people, and Green Bay isn’t even a very small town like that—it’s a city with its own suburbs. Still, I miss the anonymity of a large city. If I get out of my car and walk across a parking lot in a small town or in parts of Green Bay, people can see me for miles. Almost no one walks in the Midwest except in big cities; elsewhere, everyone knows everyone and can recognize one another’s car or winter coat from a few blocks away, so any stranger sticks out. I feel much safer in big cities as I cross the street in a crowd and weave my way through the canyonlike gaps between buildings. Nobody notices me or cares who I am. The sense of security I feel is physical. As soon as I see the tall buildings and the crowd and the cars, I feel surrounded rather than exposed. It’s similar to the way I prefer to sleep under a sheet even on the hottest summer day. I like a little protective layer between me and the ceiling, between me and whatever is out there.

  Maybe we are all like the city mouse and the country mouse of our childhood fables. No matter which we come from, a big city, a small town, or the countryside, life seems easier in the kind of setting we knew as a child. My friends who come from rural Wisconsin worry about having their cars break down when they go to big cities, though they don’t hesitate to drive the same cars across a hundred miles of countryside to visit their parents. Both my Japanese friends from Tokyo and my American friends from New York would feel more at home in Paris or Berlin than in a small fishing village on the Sea of Japan or in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. “What would I eat in a small town like that?” they worry. “Where would I stay? What if I didn’t have any cash and all the banks were closed?”