Kiss and Don’t Tell

My mom is calling each of us into her bedroom one at a time. None of us knows what is coming. Julie is first. I guess my mom is calling us in oldest to youngest. My heart races. What does she want?

I am eight-years-old, the middle child with four siblings. I will be the third one called in.

Julie returns to the family room where Johnny, Jeffrey, Jimmy and I await our turn. We know it’s something bad, but Julie seems fine. She isn’t crying or anything. She tells Johnny that he’s next.

“What’s she want?” He asks Julie.

“Oh, nothing. She just wants to ask you something.”

Johnny comes back to the family room and tells me that it’s my turn. He doesn’t seem upset either.

I walk into my parents’ bedroom. Mom is standing in front of her dresser, the shorter of the two in the room. The one with the big mirror over it. Her dresser. My dad’s dresser is the taller one, right next to my mom’s. Mom is holding one of my dad’s white handkerchiefs.

I’m going to digress here a bit. My dad always kept a handkerchief in one of the front pockets of his pants. My mom would launder them after each use, and Julie and I shared responsibility for ironing and folding them. Doesn’t that seem silly? Ironing handkerchiefs that you’re just going to stuff into your pants-pocket? Do people still use handkerchiefs? I hope not. It’s kinda gross to blow your nose into the thing, stuff it back in your pocket, and then use it again the next time you had to blow your nose. Yuck! Thank goodness for the advent of Kleenex. Okay, back to my enthralling story.

On the handkerchief my mom is holding is a red stain. When I look closer, I see that the red marks are actually lip marks, as though someone has kissed the handkerchief. I don’t wonder why someone would do something as gross as kiss a handkerchief. Because I know.

It wasn’t gross because it hadn’t been a dirty handkerchief when I had kissed it.

A few days ago, I had been playing with my mom’s red lipstick, carefully drawing the bullet-shaped ruby onto my lips like a crayon. I’m not allowed to play with my mom’s makeup. I had tried to hide evidence of my misdeed by wiping it off with the handiest cloth I could find – one of my dad’s carefully stacked handkerchiefs from the top left drawer of his dresser.

I had pressed my lips against the handkerchief’s clean, white surface and when I had seen the perfect lip mark I had made, I couldn’t bring myself to ruin such a beautiful piece of art by using the handkerchief to wipe the rest of the lipstick off.

I can’t remember if I returned the kissed handkerchief to my dad’s drawer or if I threw it in the hamper. It doesn’t matter. My mom is holding it now.

My mom looks at me, her hand holding the handkerchief stretched toward me, and asks, “Jill, did you put these lip marks on this handkerchief? Tell the truth.”

I know I’m only about eight-years-old but I know you’re not supposed to lie to your mom. And I know that this is probably the best time to test the waters, to see what will happen if I tell the truth because my mom doesn’t seem mad. But…

I can’t risk it. “No,” I answer.

“Are you sure? Tell the truth,” she presses.

“No,” I repeat. There, I’ve lied two times to my mom in two seconds.

“Okay, then. Send Jeffrey in.”

About thirty years later, I told my mom the truth.

I have always regretted lying to my mom that day. When I look back, I wonder whether my mom thought some woman at my dad’s work had kissed his handkerchief and maybe my kissing it had caused a whole lot of trouble. I have also wondered whether my mom knew all along that I was the guilty party – maybe she had seen the dark red of my lips a few days before – and was giving me an opportunity to confess. If she had been testing me, I surely failed big time.