Necessary Lies

by Diane Chamberlain

“Mr. Gardiner told me how far back your family goes.” “Oh yes, and I can’t leave, see? My brother could. He don’t care. But I can’t leave my folks buried in the cemetery here. I can’t leave what they broke their backs for. So I stay.”

I put the radio on the blanket next to me and then we laid down on our backs, looking at the million stars God put in the black sky. The tops of the trees made a picture frame around them and it was the most beautiful thing.

Although the characters in Necessary Lies are fictional (as is Grace County), the Eugenics Sterilization Program was not. From 1929 until 1975, North Carolina sterilized over seven thousand of its citizens. The program targeted the “mentally defective,” the “feebleminded,” inmates in mental institutions and training schools, those suffering with epilepsy, and others whose sterilization was considered “for the public good.”