Read As I Die Lying for Free Online Page A

other again. Because
sometimes my mom burns the eggs or Daddy has a headache from
drinking too much. Or Mom says she needs grocery money and then
asks if he wants to have fun tonight."
    I nodded again. I was remembering the
bedsprings and how they used to squeak a lot back when I was
younger, almost every night it seemed. But now the bedsprings only
worked every week or so, mostly on Friday nights.
    "And that's got something to do with what's
between people's legs?" I asked.
    She sighed and looked at me like I was a
third grader. "Haven't you seen your parents naked?"
    My mind flashed back to when I was very
young, when Mother would take me into the bathtub with her. She
would rub soap in my hair and laugh and splash water on my back.
When she stood up to towel off, I saw a patch of black hair between
her legs, frothed with white soap bubbles. I only knew it was a
dark, secret place, one that had parts that didn't show. A place
you knew was wrong to think about.
    And walking down the hall and passing by the
bathroom, seeing Father out of the corner of my eye standing over
the toilet. And my eyes, despite my trying to look away,
automatically going down to his hand that held the big red thing. I
had something that hung down, too, but Father's must have hurt, it
looked so monstrous and swollen and angry.
    "I’ve seen naked people," I said. She wasn’t
the only one who could pretend to know everything.
    "Well, men have what they call a
‘babymaker.’ Like what you've got, except you've got a little boy
thing. It's called a pee-pee now, but it'll grow up to be a
babymaker, too."
    My head was spinning, and my invisible
friend was rattling the closet doors in the Bone House, looking for
a place to hide. How did Sally know all these things? And did I
really want a big red babymaker? If I didn't, was there any way to
stop it from happening?
    Sally went on, smug with the knowledge of
grown-up secrets. "And women have muff pies. That's where the man
puts his babymaker and then seeds crawl out of his babymaker into
the pie and then little babies grow. And they have a hard time
squeezing the babymaker into the pie, because it's so big, at least
my daddy's is. And that's what makes the bedsprings squeak, because
they have to fight to get those baby seeds planted."
    My mouth hung open, airing out the base of
my brain where this new information was settling. Babymakers and
bedsprings, and all this somehow tied in with love. This stuff just
got scarier and scarier. "But that means they would have a baby
every time the bedsprings squeak."
    "No, because of the blood. Haven't you ever
seen the blood between your mother's legs?"
    I hadn't, but I had seen little paper wads
in the toilet, with streaks of blood running from them and down the
inside of the toilet. Sometimes after the squeaking, now that I
thought about it.
    Sally said, "Because the blood washes away
the baby."
    I was struck with the image of a hundred
bloody, tiny babies floating around in the toilet bowl. Then I was
wondering if the babymaker was so big that it hurt the muff pie and
that's what made women bleed. But I didn't dare ask Sally about it.
She already thought I was stupid. Better to learn all I could while
she was still willing to share her secrets.
    At least now I understood the reason she
didn't want to love me. She probably thought I was going to grow a
babymaker and hurt her. She probably thought I was going to make
her bleed.
    And, even worse, I saw why Mother was afraid
of Father. As if his boots weren't bad enough, he had other weapons
he could use on her.
    "So you have to be in love to try to make
babies?" I asked.
    She laughed at me, peeling my skin as if I
were an apple, then cutting to the core. "Of course not. Babies are
mistakes. Who wants to carry a baby around in their belly?"
    I marveled at Sally, sitting there rich with
exotic wisdom, her thin legs crossed in a pretzel of white hose,
clutching Angel Baby, her coppery pigtails bobbing with delight