in-class freewrite

We have our secrets and our needs to confess. We may remember how, in childhood, adults were able at first to look right through us, and into us, and what an accomplishment it was when we, in our fear and trembling, could tell our first lie, and make, for ourselves, the discovery that we are irredemably alone in certain respects, and know that within the territory of ourselves, there can be only our footprints.

–R.D. Laing The Divided Self

This quote is the epigraph of Mary Karr’s memoir The Liar’s Club, and it reminds me of the time I chose NOT to tell my first lie–the fear of hell is a powerful thing. 

It was Easter, and my brother and I must have been around the ages of four and seven or five and eight.  We were at my grandparent’s, as we were every Easter, and my brother had received, in his Easter basket, a flourescent pink watergun with a yellow trigger.  As young kids do, we went outside before church to play in our best Sunday duds–he with his water gun and me with…Lord only knows…a jump rope or something appropriate to my gender.  Anyhow, we both ended up intensely more fascinated with the gun, as my brother proceeded to drawn spiral designs in the fresh morning dew that coated the black of my grandparent’s Lincoln Towncar.  But of course, morning dew doesn’t protect fresh black paint. 

When we all left for church there was hell to pay.  My grandfather freaked over the circular scratches in his car.  But who had done that?  They attributed it to some hooligans in a local parking lot.  My brother hid behind that explanation, but the weight on my chest felt like the world (or the fear of hell). 

By the middle of mass I couldn’t control the tears that kept running down my face, and naturally the family wanted to know what was wrong.  I couldn’t keep the lie.  The adults COULD see right through me.  And I gave my brother up. 

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