Momma always knowed. She knowed when it was something short of truth that came out of my mouth. Don’t ask me how she knowed, she just did. Like that time I said I was up at Mindy’s after school and I said as how we was working together on a project for biology class and momma just looked at me through the squint of her half shut eyes and she said straight out that I was a liar and that she hoped I’d choke on that lie.
Truth is I’d been at the back of Marty’s bar, there where they leave the empty beer bottles and the liquor bottles, all waiting to be collected by a truck that sorts them bottles into clear glass or green or brown so as they can be recycled. I was there with a boy call Fin and we was drinking what was left in the bottles. It tasted bitter and warm and it made us dizzy and silly with it.
Fin’s breath when he kissed me smelled of old beer. He put his tongue in my mouth and one hand under my shirt and he pinched the nipple ends of my diddies, not so as they’d hurt, but just so as I caught my breath. I felt a little funny then and I don’t know if I fainted or what, but I was suddenly bent in two and throwing up like Chrissie when she drank all of momma’s cooking brandy one Sunday after church.
I wasn’t about to tell momma all of that when she asked where I’d been. So I told her I was with Mindy.
‘And how does them lies taste?’ momma said.
They tasted of Fin and old beer and sick that’d come right up from the pit of my stomach.
That was years back and it’s no different now. Momma still knows when there’s an inch between the truth and what I tell her.
‘Did that boy hit you? Cos if he did, then I’ll deal him a sharp blow with the back of my hand and he’ll not hit you more.’
It wasn’t no boy momma was talking about. It was Ed. Been married to Ed for three years and momma’s never really liked him. He works at the garage, fixing cars and his hands is never clean, and he drinks at Marty’s most days and momma hears stuff about how he’s making out with Liz the barmaid there.
Then today I come home with a small bag packed and my eye is all black and blue and she asks me what’s what and I tell her I left him, I left Ed. And momma asks about the eye and I say I fell is all. And momma knows and she asks me, like she asked before, how them lies taste. And I don’t tell her that they taste of metal or blood in my mouth, that I want to spit on the floor, that there’s a pain in my stomach and I want to be sick.
‘How does them lies taste, Sissy?’ momma says again.
But then I’m falling and she catches me and she holds me like I’m a small girl again and her voice is changed to soft as whispers and she says, ‘There now, girl, I’ve got you.’ And I start crying and there aint never no lies in tears.
Patricia Ann McNair 
Momma always knowed. She knowed when it was something short of truth that came out of my mouth. Don’t ask me how she knowed, she just did. Like that time I said I was up at Mindy’s after school and I said as how we was working together on a project for biology class and momma just looked at me through the squint of her half shut eyes and she said straight out that I was a liar and that she hoped I’d choke on that lie.
Truth is I’d been at the back of Marty’s bar, there where they leave the empty beer bottles and the liquor bottles, all waiting to be collected by a truck that sorts them bottles into clear glass or green or brown so as they can be recycled. I was there with a boy call Fin and we was drinking what was left in the bottles. It tasted bitter and warm and it made us dizzy and silly with it.
Fin’s breath when he kissed me smelled of old beer. He put his tongue in my mouth and one hand under my shirt and he pinched the nipple ends of my diddies, not so as they’d hurt, but just so as I caught my breath. I felt a little funny then and I don’t know if I fainted or what, but I was suddenly bent in two and throwing up like Chrissie when she drank all of momma’s cooking brandy one Sunday after church.
I wasn’t about to tell momma all of that when she asked where I’d been. So I told her I was with Mindy.
‘And how does them lies taste?’ momma said.
They tasted of Fin and old beer and sick that’d come right up from the pit of my stomach.
That was years back and it’s no different now. Momma still knows when there’s an inch between the truth and what I tell her.
‘Did that boy hit you? Cos if he did, then I’ll deal him a sharp blow with the back of my hand and he’ll not hit you more.’
It wasn’t no boy momma was talking about. It was Ed. Been married to Ed for three years and momma’s never really liked him. He works at the garage, fixing cars and his hands is never clean, and he drinks at Marty’s most days and momma hears stuff about how he’s making out with Liz the barmaid there.
Then today I come home with a small bag packed and my eye is all black and blue and she asks me what’s what and I tell her I left him, I left Ed. And momma asks about the eye and I say I fell is all. And momma knows and she asks me, like she asked before, how them lies taste. And I don’t tell her that they taste of metal or blood in my mouth, that I want to spit on the floor, that there’s a pain in my stomach and I want to be sick.
‘How does them lies taste, Sissy?’ momma says again.
But then I’m falling and she catches me and she holds me like I’m a small girl again and her voice is changed to soft as whispers and she says, ‘There now, girl, I’ve got you.’ And I start crying and there aint never no lies in tears.