The Lie (Part 5, No Time)

“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.”― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

She had been hoping to prepare herself for what she was going to do, because there was no way around it. Maybe if she read a couple of things that addressed her situation, she’d be less afraid. That’s what she thought. She might be right, trying to fortify herself with the content of her readings. While it wasn’t the most recent study on the topic (the book was from 1992), she had chosen it after reading the beginning pages. She would locate some more readings, the most current possible.

After finishing Herman’s book, along with two others, she felt she was ready to face the fears of the thing, or things, that went bump in the night. She laughed as she thought about where she’d first heard that phrase, “things that go bump in the night.” Very young, she thought. I was so very young. She really did hate the night with its dark walls, dark carpet, dark bed and dresser. It wasn‎’t easy to stop herself from moods that……..

“When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.” ― Yevgeny Yevtushenko

He who read all the time had quoted this statement to her and told her about some of the complexities of the writer’s life, but she hadn’t paid a lot of attention. Now this sentence comes to mind and she discovers she’s curious to learn more about that complexity. She had remained silent, putting a distance between her life now and before. Yes, her silence had been a lie, she admitted, and felt guilty. She would talk now, loud and clear, maybe louder. If she dared.

She was driving to that nearly forgotten, completely abandoned place when she looked down at her speedometer and quickly focused more on driving. She slowed down, and could breathe again.

It wasn’t long before another quote came to her, but she thought it might have come from a different source. It too dealt with the theme of lying. She shifted her weight while still keeping her eyes on the road and the speedometer. She felt uncomfortable.

“The truly scary thing about undiscovered lies is that they have a greater capacity to diminish us than exposed ones. They erode our strength, our self-esteem, our very foundation.” Cheryl Hughes

Hughes had a graduate degree in ‘Life writing’. She asked herself if it would be good for her to try it herself, but that might make her change. Which did she prefer? Writing or running? Which was more appealing? (Where are these questions coming from? She wasn’t used to thinking about things like that. She didn’t know if this statement came from a book or some other place, but she had memorized it the minute she heard it.

She stopped to get a coffee, wondering if she was trying to change her mind about going there. Done quickly , she found herself hurrying to her car, steeling herself to what and who she would find, if she managed to go through with her plan.

She did. That shocked her.

When she arrived, she didn’t knock or ring the bell. She just pushed the door open because she knew she could; it was never locked. She was suddenly inside and her gaze found a familiar face. Neither of them bothered to offer a greeting to the other. No need. The figure in the room where she now stood was wearing a mask. 

Why are you here? To cause trouble like always?

Me? She wasn’t sure what to respond to that. Someone else caused the trouble. And another someone. They too wore masks as they stood in the shadows of a narrow hallway. What should she, could she say? 

You’re lying. She uttered the words at the same time as the first figure said. It was as if the two words came from a single mouth. Hissing, burning.

I’m not lying. 

You are the one lying. 

To yourself. 

All of them were wearing masks. The masks were expressionless, as if the figures wearing them had no feelings and little else to say. They neither smiled nor frowned nor blinked. For that matter, they hardly moved. She wondered if they were all dead, not sure if she wanted them to no longer be alive. There was little she could say to the stony, frozen visages, certainly nothing they would want to hear. They didn’t care. They never had. In any event, her lips were incapable of speech.

Was it enough to confirm their existence? What good had her visit been? She tore the mask from her own face and flung it as far as she could. It shattered and was silent. Maybe that had been her goal all along: to see, one last time, their false faces and finally identify them as nothing more than bodies that walked around and hurt people, hurt her.

She had to run for her life so as not to sink into the oblivion where they had once imprisoned her. That sounded a bit dramatic, but she had never been free there, never been anything but the wearer of a mask. The memory was overwhelming and threatened to devour her right then and there. (There had to be teeth behind the false countenances. She knew the meaning of teeth and hands deformed by knuckles that had been unused since she had left.) 

She knew then that she’d seen enough, said enough. She knew who and what they were, what they were capable of doing (to her), and saw the danger that was hidden behind the disguise. Nothing there could be salvaged. She had been fortunate to escape. If she remained there for even a minute longer, the conquering worms would enter her flesh - the flesh she had worked so hard to heal.

She hurried out and slammed the unlocked door, crying and remembering the life that never came to be, as it passed out of her, perhaps aware it was unwanted.

Abortions will not let you forget.

You remember the children you got that you did not get,

The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,

The singers and workers that never handled the air.

Gwendolyn Brooks, “the mother”

(Where did that come from? What did it mean?)

 The door locked with the force of her hand, and she knew that was good. She no longer felt guilty about lying to herself in order to keep going. Because it was the only answer. Terribly unwanted. A stiff, yet shattered life. I was lucky, she said to herself wryly. 

Then his voice came to her, simply and absent of all aggression. He was saying:

I miss you. I hope you are safe. I miss you. 

That, she knew, was not a lie. 

As she drove back home, she realized that it had been a really good idea to go there. She hadn’t known how much she needed to take all the dark shadows back and burn them alive using every trained muscle in her heart. She had only kept a pinch of the ashes, as a badge of honor. And she was strong, because of all the running and climbing and playing by the rules of the game. Safe now.

She was going to read more, too. Surely he would have good recommendations. He also did not own a mask.