The Little Lie

By R.M. Hamilton

Many years ago, I started learning Mandarin. I was teaching English as a second language at the time and a lot of my students were from China. A few muddles in my class had convinced me that it might be a good thing to have a better idea of what was going on in my own classroom.

There had been the incident with the flooded hallway (totally my fault) where a student had asked me to explain the phrase ‘wasting water’. I promptly ordered my whole class to the doorway of the bathroom where I had demonstrated the phrase so thoroughly, I managed to jam the tap (faucet) on full bore. I lacked the wrist strength to turn it off. Also, the basin was  too small for the full throttled power of the tap, and the water had gone shooting across the basin into the hall.

Not keen to look foolish before my audience, I continued to yell “I’m wasting water!” repeatedly while I wrestled with the tap. I was rescued by the passing senior English teacher, who really was from England, and who managed in the politest way imaginable, to imply that I was a bit of a lunatic. It was alright for her, I thought bitterly, as she wafted off to find some towels to sop up the impromptu swimming pool my lesson had created, she got to teach things like “what is the function of an adjective in a sentence?”

I wasn’t entirely sure how to explain that myself, but I had a shrewd suspicion that the answer didn’t involve the hall sloshing with water.

Then there was the lesson on visiting the doctor that had somehow resulted in my entire class believing that the phrase “I have diarrhoea,” was a cordial English greeting.

I felt pretty bad about that.

I loved my students and I was failing them.

I decided to learn some Mandarin. That would help me clarify things. How hard could it be? A Chinese friend told me to join the local weekend school for the children of Chinese migrants and immigrants. I thought this was a good idea. I was only twenty-two, surely that was young enough to pick up another language with relative ease.

Apparently not.

 I realized just how bad I was when I was sitting with my classmates, at recess, drinking a juice box. They’d put me in with the six-year-olds. I didn’t mind. Only the beginner class got juice boxes. I did feel a bit mean, stuck in the corner, drinking my juice box, watched jealously by the seven to thirteen year olds, but rules were rules. In any case, they didn’t let our class join in their big kid games.

A classmate came and sat beside me. “Hello,” he said. “I’m William.” I was flattered. William was popular. “You’re a big kid,” said William, slurping noisily on his juice box. “Yes,” agreed twenty-two year old me.

“In fact,” said William, sizing me up. “You’re the biggest kid in the whole class.”

Instinctively, I hunched my shoulders and tried to look shorter.

William looked at me with big, shiny black eyes. “How come you’re the worst in the whole class when you’re the biggest?” he asked.

I grew crimson with shame. It was true. I was the worst in the whole class.

William gave my arm a gentle pat. “Never mind. I guess its ‘cause your mum isn’t here to help you. I’d be a lot better too, if my mum was here to help me.”

I suspected that my mother would be a lot less help in a Mandarin class than William’s mother, but I was still moved by his tact.

“Thanks William,” I said humbly.

I might have failed to impress among the Mandarin speakers of the town, but my own family was a different story. Especially Mum. Having homeschooled me, Mum had a vested interest in discovering any proof that I was an intelligent life form.

“She’s learning Mandarin,” I heard Mum telling a friend in awe. “So she must be bright, because that’s a hard language, isn’t it?”

Inwardly, I sighed. It was a hard language. I wasn’t getting anywhere with it at all.

Then again, why did my family need to know that? We lived in New Zealand. Everyone spoke English in our circles!

 A gleam came into my eye.

A thought came into my head!

I proceeded to imply to my family at every opportunity that learning Mandarin was going very, very well.

I swaggered around the house, armed with a Mandarin dictionary that I couldn’t read, looking important.

My entire Mandarin vocabulary consisted of just ten words, but I conducted myself with an air that suggested I had a glittering future as a translator ahead of me.

My siblings were sceptical, but my mother wasn’t.

It was all going quite swimmingly.

When my conscience troubled me, I quashed it. I hadn’t actually said I could speak Mandarin, I told my conscience.

My conscience (that troublesome body part) retorted that I was being deceptive, and I knew it.

I told my conscience to shut up. “No one will ever find out, not in New Zealand, they won’t!” I told my conscience crossly, as I ate a jam sandwich under the oak tree in the back garden.

“It’s a lie!” snapped Conscience. “You know it’s a lie, and since when did not getting caught, make sinning alright?”

I wanted to glare at my conscience. But I wasn’t quite sure how.

“Go away!” I told Conscience in exasperation.

“I hope you get caught!” Yelled Conscience rudely. “I hope you get caught and I hope you repent and until you do, I’m going to needle you all the time and make you miserable!”

I leapt up from under the tree. “I’m going to the library,” I told a purple hibiscus fiercely (for some reason, I felt that was where judgmental Conscience was sitting). “I’m going to read something exciting and fast passed, full of gun smoke and horse’s hooves. Something you won’t be able to shout over!”

“WHATEVER!” shouted Conscience. “You’ll be sorry! BE SURE YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT!”

I slammed the gate as I stalked off towards town. I loathed it when Conscience started quoting scripture like that. The sign hanging on our fence that read “Organic Eggs for Sale” was crooked. I stopped briefly to straighten it. I half expected Conscience to pop up from the garden and make a crack about ‘crooked paths’, but he, or she, or whatever a conscience is (I don’t know), remained silent.

GOOD! I was sick of that voice anyway.

It was a beautiful, warm day. Just the sort of day to spend meandering down to the library. I spent a very pleasant afternoon reading Louis L'Amour.

I was right about that sort of book drowning out annoying Conscience. Not a whisper of ‘lies’ or ‘sin’ or ‘getting caught out’ disturbed my perfect afternoon.

I arrived home late, just as the shadows were lengthening across the garden and the streetlamps were about to click on. I walked in through the back door and met with Mum.

She had a wild look in her eye. “WHERE have YOU been?” she demanded.

I was shocked. Mum wasn’t in the habit of running tight surveillance on her offspring. “To the library,” I said.

“Well, we’ve been looking for you EVERYWHERE!” snapped Mum, looking thoroughly harassed. “We needed you! We’ve had the most awful afternoon! Someone knocked on the front door and suddenly, our whole entrance was full of people shouting in Mandarin! They didn’t speak a word of English and we still don’t know why they came! They may have wanted eggs! They may have been lost. We don’t know and that’s why we needed you!”

My mouth fell open in horror. “ME? Why would you want me? That sounds completely ghastly!”

Mum scowled at me. “You’re fluent in Mandarin, aren’t you? We needed you to translate!”

It was later. I had come clean about my lack of Mandarin speaking abilities. Conscience was smugly assuring me that it ‘had told me so’.

I leaned up against the oak tree in the back garden. The oak tree and I had a long history. It was privy to most of my more bitter moments in life.

I still couldn’t really see the harm in my little lie (I was now willing to admit that yes, it had been a lie), but I jolly well wasn’t going to do it again.

 I couldn’t believe our entrance had randomly filled up with Mandarin speakers like that!

What were the odds of that happening? Pretty low, I decided.

In fact, it was probably some sort of warning. I certainly wouldn’t be so lucky next time.

I bit my lip. I vaguely felt there was a bible verse about this as well.

Ever-helpful Conscience popped out from behind the oak tree and muttered, “for the LORD disciplines the one He loves, as does a father the son in whom he delights. Proverbs 3:12. Daughters too,” added Conscience.

I sighed with shame. “Thanks Conscience. I’m getting pretty big, to be so bad at speaking the truth.”

“Never mind,” said Conscience.  “Your Dad’s here to help you. I suspect you’ll do much better, if you just start listening to him.”

The writing belongs to R.M. Hamilton and the Pinocchio picture was generously provided by Pixabay.