I was six and the wheels of the grocery cart squeaked as my mom and I skated through the aisles; it was routine. But that day, we took a detour through the bulk containers and I stopped in my tracks. Amidst the towering plastic containers, my eyes were captivated by the bright, round, red gummies glowing between the individually wrapped suckers and brown caramels. To this day, they’re still my favorite.
“Mom… pllllleeeeeeeeaaaaassssseeeeeeeeeee,” I shamelessly begged, as only a child can. Of course, she did what all parents do when confronted with a child pleading for something that wasn’t good for them: she kept on walking and said nothing.
I wouldn’t realize that she only had enough money for the necessities that day until much later in life, but as she walked away, I realized that she couldn’t see me. In fact, no one could see me. With those glorious towering bins as my cover, I lunged. I popped that clear lid wide open, thrust in my grubby fingers and shoved those juicy gummies into my mouth. I strutted out the double door, smug as those damn things rested in pieces in my stomach. My mom asked me about the red stains on my tongue later that night — that was when I told my first lie. I don’t quite remember exactly what I had said (something about brushing my tongue too hard?) but I recall how I was careful not to look her in the face as I handed her my toothbrush and made a quick getaway. I don’t know where this knowledge came from.
Years passed and I hit that age where bras, pads and horniness were synonymous: I was officially a teenager. But my sexual awareness began to feel hindered; kissing, holding hands and open affection didn’t happen on my parents’ watch. You’d think that the culture responsible for the Kama Sutra would encourage open, liberal attitudes, but no. My dad threw the remote when Ariel tried to kiss her prince and exclaimed, “Disney is junk!” (In some ways, I guess he was ahead of his time).
So I did what any horny, shy, pubescent teenager did pre-Internet: I turned to books. I found my first Harlequin Presents romance novel and it was as if I was given the nectar of the gods: I didn’t even realize that what I was reading was pornographic. All I knew was that they answered all my burning questions. That is, until my parents saw the paperback covers featuring scantily clad women and banned me from reading them in the house.
But as luck would have it I worked at the library, so I smuggled them home at the bottom of my library bag and stashed them in my locker at school. Once I opened my locker and it had been so stuffed with romance novels, they had all spilled out into the hallway — my girlfriends have never let me live that down. My parents would tease me about always having my nose in a book; I’d laugh right along and learned that lying didn’t always need to be verbal.
But the biggest test came when I began to date. My lovely immigrant parents and I had never seen eye-to-eye about the concept of marriage. They were from old stock: in their time, arranged marriages were the norm and you met your pre-vetted life partner on the day of the wedding. The notion of the trial-and-error approach to dating was an alien concept they believed was strictly reserved for the “other,” the westerners, the goreh.
In my small-town high school, where I had known my guy friends since we were in diapers, I had no real love interests. University and living in residence, however, were mind-blowing. That’s when I met Pat.
Pat was everything that I never knew I wanted: he was soft-spoken, smiled with his mouth closed, had a giant, gorgeous tattoo and was the first boy to tell me I was beautiful. The sex? We’d spend hours between classes chasing after orgasms, fogging up the windows of our dorm rooms and listening to his roommates yell through his door.
“Can’t you guys keep it down?!”
Secretly, I think they probably enjoyed it.
Things would have been perfect except for one not-so-tiny detail: he wasn’t brown.
I knew what my parents expected of me and I hadn’t been planning to fall in love. I had just assumed that we would date and then break up. But then he moved in. We exchanged the L-word and promise rings. Things got serious, quickly — before I knew it, we were talking about a future together, life after university and our views on having beautiful mixed babies.
I then did what I did best: I decided not to tell my parents about it. I started small as I picked through my toolbox of lies: when they’d call to talk, I’d claim to be in a library studying and offer to call them back. If they asked who I was with, I’d bend the truth and say, “Oh, just a friend from class.” Pat listened on, silently.
My brazenness fueled my lies, or perhaps my lies fueled my brazenness: either way, soon enough I was travelling around the world with Pat. And even though my parents paid for my airfare, I told them I was just with a few “friends” from school.
Once, my dad saw Pat’s photo in my wallet.
“Whose picture is that?” He asked quietly. It was probably the only time I was at a loss for words. I turned around, walking away as I tossed a few words over my shoulder.
“No one.” Thank God he didn’t see how my face crumbled.
I had never set out to become the world’s most accomplished liar: in fact, in every other aspect of my life, I adopted an almost cutthroat, brutal honesty. It was almost as if I was trying to make up for the guilt, the shame and the secrecy that I was carrying around.
Keeping two colossal aspects of your life — your family and your love — distinct and separate for over eight years is no easy task. If you can avoid it, do. I don’t recommend it.
The day eventually came when I just got tired of the lies: I came out to my parents about Pat. It wasn’t easy. But after a lot of fighting, a lot of tears, some (empty) threats, they relented. In fact, the first time that Pat was alone with my dad, he actually asked for my dad’s blessing (yes, he’s totally that type of guy).
My dad looked him straight in the face and laughed.
“You’ve already opened the hose. No point in asking how to open it now.”
Manjinder Sidhu is an arts student who dreams of majoring in creative writing. Her current list of obsessions include fountain pens, ghost stories and sexy times with her not-so-brown partner.