Mary Karr, in The Art of Memoir, writes about the importance of truth telling. About lying or embellishing, Karr says, “It’s as if after lunch the deli guy quipped, ‘I put just a teaspoon of catshit in your sandwich, but you didn’t notice it at all.’ To my mind, a small bit of catshit equals a catshit sandwich, unless I know where the catshit is and can eat around it.”
Truth telling is important in memoir to establish trust with the reader. Likewise, truth telling in life establishes trust with the people you love, or like, or even just put up with. Telling the truth is an exercise of thought and feeling. It’s pausing, knowing, and then conveying the truth as accurately as possible. As I try to grasp the definition of ‘truth,’ it often eludes me. Even the dictionary offers four wildly different takes on the truth. The one I like the best is the first: truth is “the body of real things, events, and facts.” What could carry more truth than a body?
If truth telling creates trust, lying, of course, does the opposite. My friend Amy* was developing a business, and I had expressed interest in getting her help. I booked an appointment with her, then realized I’d made a mistake about the date. Imagine my relief when she said she couldn’t meet—at least not at her house, where work was being done. How about Zoom, Amy asked. No thanks, I said, let’s wait to meet in person. Amy investigated booking a room at the library to accommodate me. Then I was forced to tell the truth. I couldn’t meet. Not in person. Not on Zoom.
A week later we spoke as she drove on the highway. I remember the Greek chorus of the traffic whooshing in the background as she told me she wasn’t angry that I’d messed up the date; she was angry that I’d lied. She said it revealed a flaw in my character.
For a long time, I believed in a lot of things that weren’t true. I believed that the world was one long road that began in Idaho and ended in Hollywood; that the Snake River dividing Lewiston, Idaho from Clarkston, Washington also divided the good people from the bad.
All my life, I believed myself to be a good person, born in Lewiston, Idaho, on the good side of the river. It was my mother, from Clarkston, who habitually lied. It was my alcoholic, high-school dropout mom who lacked character.
My friend had pointed to something about me that I had never known was true, not until she said it. I was a liar just like my mom. I lied to smooth things over; I lied to make people happy. Tiny lies became effortless, second nature. I stayed quiet when someone told me something I already knew; I stayed quiet when someone spouted their political views; I complimented with flattering lies. I was entrenched in ‘going along to get along,’ so accustomed to doing so that I never even knew I was doing it. I want to please. I want to be liked. I want to be loved. Sign me up for your exercise class. Sign me up for your opinions. Sign me up for your business. Sign. Me. Up.
Telling lies to cover my ass was another level of skullduggery, yet telling Amy that lie was easy as a store-bought pie.
Since that day, I’ve done a lot of thinking and feeling about lying. The habit came to me early, and I used it often to dodge trouble. My childhood was an ordinary one, in the way that a childhood of neglect, violence, hunger, and fear should not be ordinary but often is. When I was a kid, I was beaten by my mom’s lousy piece of shit husband for trying to tell one horrible truth, and one beating was all it took to shut me up for good. I drew red loops between coloring book Barbie’s legs. I don’t remember seeing him molest my sister, but I must have known. Years later she told me about it, before schizophrenia dragged her down to Hades.
For my mom, every story was a catshit sandwich. She told me that she had bought a set of encyclopedias from a traveling salesman and that I could read them even before I went to school. She told my sister and me that she was going to buy us beautiful dresses that would make us look like movie stars. She loved clothing—she dropped out of high school because my grandmother wouldn’t buy her a spring wardrobe—so I really did think we would get those dresses.
My dad told me Mom lied just for the sake of lying, for no apparent reason, only to embellish a story. My grandfather did the same thing, and it was all underwritten by alcohol. I remember him telling me he was going to dive to the bottom of the ocean to fetch me pearls and make me a necklace.
Years later, Mom told me the truth about why she dropped out of high school. On the phone, Mom said she didn’t want to undress for gym class. Her back was covered with bruises, and she was ashamed to let the other girls see.
It occurs to me now that she also probably had the truth beaten out of her. She dropped lies like pieces of bread, as if they would lead her back to a home she never had, with wardrobes for every season.
I refute Amy’s statement about my character. But I do think my lying did not serve me. I don’t want that for myself anymore. I want to live within my body and listen to its deep wisdom and, to the best of my ability, convey that through words. Live close to “the body of real things, facts, and events.” Yet I still struggle every single day to keep my sandwiches catshit-free.
I encourage you to join me. In your memoir writing, let your truest, floundering, awkward, growling, vain and loving self be seen. I guarantee you that I am right there with you, trying so hard to be brave even in the face of what the world might have to say about it.
Let the reader know you. If not, what are you doing?
*Name changed to protect her privacy