The Trap
From the Backseat of My Mom’s Life
Continued . . .
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
In fourth grade, I sprung the trap my mother had set for me. Prior to our harrowing trip to California, my mother had bought a gun for protection. Because she worked for the Las Vegas Police department and now the two of us lived alone, fear stalked Mom like a ferocious beast.
To ensure that my curiosity did not lead to an accident, she showed me where she hid the gun, on a shelf so high in the walk-in closet that I would need to climb on a chair to reach it.
At the same time, she did a baffling thing, which I did not connect to the gun. She baked peanut butter cookies, put them on a plate and placed the plate on the shelf next to the gun. She showed me where she put the cookies, but forbade me to eat them, just as she had forbidden me to touch the gun.
All the way home from school the next day, I could think of nothing but those peanut butter cookies. My favorite. Thoughts of peanut butter cookies mushroomed like a thundercloud, growing bigger with every step. Tormenting my angry stomach, I thought Why can’t I eat just one? There’s a whole plate. Would one cookie be missed?
Besides fueling my appetite, fantasies of a mother waiting for me at home with milk and cookies, like Mrs. Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver, nourished the idea that homemade cookies convey love. And home. But unlike the Beaver, who lived in a two- story house with a sprawling front yard, I came home to a cinderblock apartment, built after World War II, situated in a barren desert. Spartan furnishings and black tiled floors made this space feel more like a mausoleum after both Renée and Daddy died. Empty and cold during the two hours before my mom got home from work, I sat alone.
I don’t remember how long I resisted temptation, but what happened after my mother got home left marks on my mind more indelible than the belt she used to spank me would leave on my body.
The interrogation began with “Did you touch the gun?”
“No.” Repulsed by the idea, the question bludgeoned me again and again. My face warmed under the heat of questioning, for true, I did feel guilty about eating one cookie. Willpower offered no match against a whole plate of cookies.
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.”
When the question shifted, “Did you eat a cookie?” I continued to claim innocence. Withering, I felt like a witness giving testimony in court.
Mom got the truth out of me. Once the inquisition ended, I got a beating because my mom knew the exact number of cookies on the plate. She knew I had lied about eating one.
With the belt flying between stinging slaps, she said, “If you lied about the cookies, then you lied about the gun.”
As whelps raised, she repeated, “I hate lies, and I hate liars.”
And while I had to admit that I lied, did that lie make me a liar?
And why, I wondered, was my mother exempt from punishment for the lies she told? Or the secrets she kept? Or the ways she avoided telling the truth?
Is there a difference?
Lies and secrets, the way I see it, one alters the truth and the other side-steps it.
Little did I know about persons in the Bible who lied and the life lessons God had in store for them. I was gaining a lesson on what Eleanor Roosevelt called “preachments and pretenses,” the oft repeated words, “Don’t do as I do. Do as I say do.”
So I took this lesson to mean something awful was wrong with me. My mother’s reactions to me, or slight twitches in her brow, reinforced that impression. Often after railing accusation, I would run to the mirror as if to readjust my hair, look myself in the eye, searching for some evidence that could account for her fury.
Was it only me? Did other people find themselves on the end of a sword ready to divide body and soul? Scolded and scalded, I curled up with the cat licking its fur as I tried to concentrate on the book shaking in my hands, to lick my wounds, seeking solace in some made-up story.
I deserved the spanking.[1] I knew that.
Yet I hated the designation of “liar.” That word haunted me like Cain’s deadly mark. While punishment for lying could have given me a clear conscience, that particular scene of crime and punishment failed to unravel the knot of contradictions between what my mother said and did.
I couldn’t understand why my mom could tell lies and then punish me for lying.
She had set me up to fail her test. Her ways and means chipped away at trust during a time when my mother and I both needed to learn how to trust each other. It seemed as if she wanted to teach me to value the truth, linking truth and consequences, while being unwilling or unable to apply those same principles to herself.
How in the world could I guess what she was afraid of?
But I was learning, oh was I learning.
“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”
Character Lessons 101
Temptation comes hidden in all shapes, sizes, and places. Consequences grip the heels of every sin.
My mother believed she was teaching me a life lesson: explore closets (and secrets) at your own risk; ignore warnings but then expect consequences; tell lies and the truth will punish your conscience even when you think you got away with something.
[1] Post Script: During a brief visit when my oldest daughter graduated from high school, my mother admitted she had been guilty of child abuse. “I didn’t know better. I did as was done to me. Today, you would have been taken away from me.” That confession was both startling and illuminating. I was grateful to hear her say those words, however short of “I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?” But I knew how hard it was for her find any words to cover years of mistakes and mistrust. The long road to forgiveness travels uncharted territory. That road has lanes that go both ways. I needed to be forgiven too. And I needed to learn to value the truth. Jesus said, “The truth will set you free” because “everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (John 8:32, 34).
Favorite Peanut Butter Cookie recipe, well-loved and used.
Actually makes 2 ½ dozen. I baked a batch to take a picture for this blog.😋