If You Tell a Lie

by Lucinda Berry

It felt wrong at first. Incredibly wrong. You always believe the victims. The biggest reason I’d never told anyone that my coach was abusing me was because I was afraid no one would believe me. So, there was no way I was going to do something like that to those girls.

But that was just because they didn’t want to believe something so terrible could happen to people that were happy.

There were no apps in 1998. But she’d hit a gold mine.

The one thing immediately clear was how many dates didn’t add up. Jared was with me during many of the dates that he was supposed to have been at camp giving private lessons to the girls and abusing them. Jared was as involved a father as he was a husband, so he insisted on going to almost all their appointments with me. He was constantly moving his schedule around to accommodate them. It was all there. Everything in black and white of where he’d been. And most of the time, he’d been with me. That was the turning point. When I started considering that the victims might be lying.

Every abuser said they didn’t do it. And the things they were accusing him of? Nobody ever admitted it. Every single man that’s accused of abusing little girls denies it.

But what if he’d been the one telling the truth? That was the last thing he’d said before he died. It wasn’t I’m sorry or even I love you. I guess it’s hard to tell someone you love them after they’ve just stabbed you one hundred and seventeen times.

But all the way to the end, that’s what Jared said, his last words before he took his final breath, while blood gurgled up from his throat and spilled out of the corners of his mouth—I didn’t do it.

There are parts of yourself that you hide from others, especially the ones that are dark.

But that was the thing. God didn’t have my back. He didn’t even have a single vertebra.

We ignored their death sentences. They had no place in our house of healing.

:(

Dad and I stood in the backyard, holding hands and feeling like superheroes. Real-life superheroes. We believed it. We did. I’d never been so filled with the spirit. I’d barely slept that night, but I hadn’t needed to. I was on fire. And then Mom died. Within ten days of planting our seeds.

I wore a huge smile on my face as I ran outside to say good morning to my mom. I froze when I saw it—the spots in the ground where the new mustard plants used to be. Gone. Empty dirt holes instead. The squirrels had dug up every single one of them and eaten them for breakfast. That was the day I stopped believing in God. In meaning. In life.

My mouth went dry. I couldn’t swallow. What did I say? What had they done? Where was this going?

What my friends might’ve done. Because my old friends were vicious creatures.