My Mom’s Lies
Piecing together the truth of childhood
The lies started with Hymie, our gentle, docile ram. He lived in our chain-link-fenced-in city backyard. As small children, we used to ride him around the yard. One morning when I was about 5, I came down to breakfast to be informed that Hymie hadn’t been happy living with us, and Mom had sent him to live on a farm.
Ah, the old “live on a farm” fib, you’re thinking. Not me. After my mom’s funeral when I was 25, I mentioned Hymie to my sister — six years older than me — who replied, “You still believe that? He died overnight. Mom had to get a crane in to remove his body before you woke up!”
I have always been — am still — an exceptionally gullible person. But this was a good lie. We lived in a small city surrounded by farmland. We had an old Victorian on a third of an acre with a small, turn-of-the-century one car garage for a barn. Admittedly, that’s a pretty large lot for a city dwelling, but surely no mid-size farm animal would be happy in our backyard for long. Our ducks had already been killed by the neighbor’s dogs across the back alley. It made sense that Hymie might be relocated for his safety and happiness.
My dad had died suddenly a couple of years previously, so in retrospect I understand why my mom didn’t want me to wake up to a deceased sheep. She was furious a year or so later when on a sleepover I was taken to see “Bambi.” To this day I feel sorry for the parents who made that kind-hearted error.
I was a small child at a chaotic, unstable time. There was a year of riots a short distance from our house. My eldest brother had been sent to Vietnam. One of my mother’s friends, a neighbor, was bludgeoned to death in her home around the corner from ours. My mom always said it had to be the husband, because he called her instead of the police when he “found” his wife, and allegedly hit on my mother later. I actually know that story was true, because when he called my mom, she had to take me with her to the murder scene. I was too little to be left alone at home, and I was friends with the daughter of the house.
So given the environment, it’s probably not surprising that I would believe any crazy story told to me. Because I knew at least one, arguably the craziest of them, to be true.
I met Rebecca in second grade. She lived about a half hour away in one of the farm towns, but attended the same private elementary school. She was kind and sweet and friendly. I hope I was as kind to her as she was to me. Rebecca quickly became my closest childhood friend.
Her equally lovely mom, Mrs. Y., was happy to have me over for almost weekly sleepovers. They lived in a large ranch house, down a long driveway with a guardhouse. Their house was what my mom would have called tacky: an indoor pool, gold-veined mirrors on the walls, satin sheets on the circular master bedroom bed. I thought it was beautiful.
I didn’t have a dad, so it never occurred to me to ask where Rebecca’s was. He was never there when I stayed over. He owned a clothing factory in the next small city and a pizza shop in the middle of nowhere (where my mom said he laundered money). I had met him, though, on a school tour of the factory and eventually, at horseback riding events.
Through a series of odd events, my mom had gotten us a pony. My sister and I learned to ride and showed in competitions on summer weekends. At that point, Rebecca had changed schools and we only saw each other on weekends. As I grew older and more involved in competitions, I saw less of Rebecca.
Mr. Y got Rebecca a pony.
Soon, Rebecca was competing in shows with me. I think she wanted to be there, but my mom was convinced that she was terrified and being forced to show by her dad. I think it lasted one summer. My mom may have told Mr. Y to stop making Rebecca ride and show.
My mom and I had just gotten into the car one day to drive to school that fall when my mother said, “I have some bad news. Rebecca’s dad was shot to death last night and her mother is taking Rebecca and moving to Ohio. They have family there. She called this morning to tell me.”
My mom explained about the Mafia, and how Mr. Y had been gunned down in a Mafia hit. Rebecca and her mother, she said, were hiding from the Mob so they wouldn’t be killed too. “You’ll never see Rebecca again,” my mom concluded. She was right.
As I grew older, the more I learned about the Mafia only bolstered my mom’s story. Mr. Y was never home at night — at least I never saw him on nights I slept over. They had crazy money. Visitors had to be announced and checked by the guard before they could go up the driveway (mind you, this is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by Amish farms). Their tiny town was about an hour from a large city known to have a Mafia presence.
I have long missed Rebecca and wanted to know what happened to my bestie. I told her story, as I knew it, to friends over the years. Even with the advent of the Internet, Google and Ancestry, I still was unable to find her.
Until early 2020.
In January, my usual Google search turned up an obituary. Rebecca had died of cancer in late December. She had lived about an hour and a half away from me all these years, not in Ohio at all. The face in the obituary photo was still familiar; there was no question whether the deceased was my old friend. The obituary and the responses below praised her kindness and thoughtfulness.
I don’t know how she ended up ten hours from our childhood area — maybe like me she came here for college — but I’m glad that whatever life brought her over the years had not dimmed her sense of joy.
From Rebecca’s obituary I was able to locate her father’s death notice. Mr. Y had died several years after my mom said he had, of “an illness of several months.” Not a Mafia hit, not even a Mafia associate. The former Mrs. Y had remarried and moved to Arizona five years after Mr. Y’s passing.
Why did my mom part me and Rebecca? Did things get unpleasant between my mom and Mr. Y? Did she feel threatened by him? Did she really believe he was in the Mafia? I think she did, and may have feared sending her daughter to his house. Or did the Ys decide they didn’t want me around?
I am sad to think that Rebecca may have believed I tired of her. I’m sad she lived so near me for years but I didn’t know. I’m sorry I only found her after she died.
I realize now that there were many more fibs over the years: the pony who went to live on a farm with a nice boy, the middle school friend who “moved to Ohio” (pretty sure that was my fault), but none lingered and hurt as much as the loss of Rebecca Y.
Little girls can be so cruel to each other that having a devoted friend like Rebecca really matters, both to one’s emotional stability but also to one’s emotional growth. Having a great friend is how you learn to be a great friend.
I know parents have to lie occasionally, but I’m a little disappointed that my mom thought I was too fragile to handle the occasional honesty, even into my teens.
And now, having learned the facts about Rebecca, I’m left questioning the rest of my childhood, trying to parse the lies from the truth.
