Necessary Lies

by Diane Chamberlain

There was something real breakable about Mary Ella and I was always afraid if I touched her in the wrong spot, she’d crack.

Mental illness and epilepsy are the other two reasons the board will agree to a sterilization, by the way, and she was neither mentally ill nor epileptic.”

“She’s smart and full of business,” she said, “and she sure knows how to get things done. You, though.” She nodded. “You a real human being.”

“Feelings are never right or wrong,” she said after a moment. “They just are.”

“If you’re having fun at the beach, like we are, but you spend all your time here wishing you could be here all the time, you’re wasting the time you’re here.”

If Ivy were my neighbor, though, no one would think of sterilizing her. That was the thing. The petition was because she was poor. Poor and on welfare and unable to speak for herself.

“There are too many silly rules in our lives,” she said, “and our lives are far too short to pay attention to them.”

Sometimes, though, you could do the right thing and still feel sick with doubt.

“Sometimes coloring outside the lines can cost you,” she said. “Only you can figure out if it’s worth it.”

I thought of how you could look at people and never know what had come before. What trials. What horrors.