Truth.

When my mother and her sisters gathered they did so in a circle. They would whisper amongst themselves, the words coming out of their mouths sharply, hitting their teeth and passing through their lips in a soft whistle. They gathered at an oak table, and its strong tall legs held the three of them snugly together, knee-to-knee. Its surface was decorated with a map of intricate scratches and grooves, perhaps frequently oiled by my mother’s parents but rubbed raw in the years it had stood in our kitchen. My mother and her sisters were all round, with fat fingers and ankles that stuck out from the bottom of their pants like juicy plums. Their folds of skin seemed to seep together as they sat in their circle. I had always imagined it would feel safe and cozy in their unison of flesh, like climbing between giant marshmallows, soft and pudgy. Bessie’s stories were usually always the same; Big Bad World stories that, although sad, never really measured up to one another in their badness. Bessie told her stories gamely, changing face to suit the mood. Pity for the stories of women she had known whose husbands committed adultery, shame when dishing that the minister’s wife was actually Jewish and sheer boastfulness at the fact she knew there was oil still flooding across North America after that spill seven years ago. My mother and her sister always listened carefully to Bessie even though her stories could sometimes be mistaken as gossip.

“The Big Bad World will eat you up if you’re not careful Dara,” Bessie would finish her latest reel with, eyeing me up cautiously as I laid beneath their feet, eyes shut listening to their words vibrate against the old wood above me.
“Dara’s too clever to let that happen,” Joan, the eldest, would follow this comment with, fat toe tapping against my forehead, cool and rough against my skin.
But being clever will not stop the Big Bad World from reaching you. It has the ability to present itself in a matter of seconds; in the sweep of a doctor’s hands as he diagnoses your father with cancer or in the flick of a pudgy wrist whilst lighting a match.

The table held no real value. It had not been passed down by my great-great-grandparents or survived World War One. It had not been found in an antique shop, its history left for us to shape into whimsical exaggerations. The story goes that the table pretty much brought itself into existence. My mother’s father stepped outside one day and came back a few hours later carrying the table above his head, saw dust covering the front of his body. He was the kind of father who could only feed his children pasta with butter for dinner when his wife wasn’t home but who could make a table that would stay sturdy for years in under three hours. And so, the table stood while my mother and her sisters ate their buttered pasta in the kitchen I would later call my own. It stood and stood until it didn’t anymore.

Whose wrist it was that flicked while illuminating the match perhaps to light the wick of the beeswax candle that sat on the stove top or maybe to ignite the gas on the stove, still no one knows. In the distorted game between truth and happiness, lies always end up competing. Truth is so dangerous in all its purity but lies bring the relief, the temporary happiness, the blanket of protection so often draped over a loved one.

I had always wondered when they started sharing stories. When they gathered they would sit quietly for a minute, stirring their tea; the spoons clinking against the side of their mugs sounded like bells, calling me. And then swiftly and neatly, one of them would open their mouth and begin a story as if had been kept in a jar on a dusty shelf of memories, waiting to be opened to release years worth of suppressed feeling and pain.

“Our father pushed me into our backyard swimming pool,” my mother had said one night, “right in front of our mother”.
“I remember that Alice,” Joan said.
“And she didn’t even do anything. Didn’t even flinch.”
“Bless her Post-Partummed soul,” they chimed in unison.
“We never listened to each other when we were youngens did we Joan?” my mother posed.
“Nuh-uh.”
“Which is why it’s so important now,” Bessie clambered in with. “To heal. If everyone just listened goddammit there would be no oil spills or cheated-on wives now would there?” Bessie’s hand went flying, the milk flying off the tip of her spoon. She always got too excited when she was trying to get her point across.

They had not been gathering when the fire occurred. That summer day had been accompanied by heat that made the flies sleepy, hovering low enough to the ground so I could lift my foot and squash them into the oozing tar of our driveway. Betty had not wanted a driveway made of black tar because she thought it ruined the view we had looking out into the big, open field. But I liked how the flies became embedded in the black goo, bubbling as they cooked just beneath the surface. I had been flicking their hardened bodies out from under the tar when the screams began. My mother came flying out of the house shortly followed by Joan, their faces contorted into shapes of concern and anguish. Bessie ran out shortly after through the back door, phone in hand, gasping for breath.

“Fire!” my mother gasped, pulling me by the arm off the ground and hurtling me as far away from the house as possible. Joan crumbled to the ground, her knees creating oval dents in the soft ground beneath her. Bessie called the fire department and while we waited we watched as the smoke billowed out of the kitchen windows. No one spoke. What is there to say to the Big Bad World when it finds you?

The fire left a giant hole in the side of our home where the kitchen had sat like a big wound that would never properly heal. The doorframe connecting the hall and the kitchen still stood, the ceiling light pouring out onto the grass. There was nothing left. The table lay buried somewhere in the form of ash where it would sink into the soil, never to be seen again.

My mother and her sisters still gathered.

Bessie spoke first. “The fireman told me that a match caused the fire.”
No one spoke. “Which means that someone lit a match and didn’t put it out.” I could feel the tension trying to weave its way into the circle, nudging through the spaces between our shoulders with a child-like persistence.
“Are you suggesting Bessie,” my mother said coldly, “that one of us purposely let our beautiful kitchen burn down? That someone purposely did not put out the match?”
Joan let out a little gasp.
“You’re not listening, Alice. I am simply asking if someone could please explain what happened this afternoon,” Bessie asked.
Again, no one spoke. The tension had squeezed its way through, filling the circle with air thicker than when the sun had shone earlier that day. I felt as though I was suffocating, as if someone had jammed cotton wool down my throat. I suddenly felt very vulnerable sitting beside my mother and her sisters. There was no table to protect me, to shield me from the Big Bad World. This was it.
“You did it, didn’t you Bessie?” my mother whispered, her voice faltering.
Bessie snapped her head up, her eyes squinting down to the size of half crescent moons. I could feel her body beside mine clenching up as the tension seeped its way down her spine. “You came out the back door after all of us. You were in the kitchen.”
There was that blanket of protection again. Betrayal, like truth, is a funny thing. Why is it so easy to betray the ones you love and avoid the truth at all costs?
“I saved the table, Alice,” Bessie said, looking at her with a mixture of sadness and disappointment.
My mother sat up abruptly as if a wave of shock had coursed through her body. Joan sat paralyzed in the middle, holding me close to her chest.

My mothers and her sisters became distant in their silence after the day of the fire. They still gathered at the table that remained outside the gaping wound of the kitchen; for weeks all I could hear lying under the oak was the clinking of their spoons. But they were listening to one another, I know they were. Distance does something to the heart; makes it swell with longing, heals wounds like a patchwork quilt, brings out the forgiveness we never knew we had in us.
Of the many stories my mother and her sisters gathered to tell after that day, no one ever confessed it was their wrist that flicked when igniting the match that would burn down the kitchen. Maybe, in some cases, the truth hurt more than silence. Maybe forgiveness is a greater gift than the truth.

The day of the fire I found the table just outside where the back door used to stand, surrounded by ash and our half melted toaster. My mother and her sisters would have still told their stories had the table not been saved. And yet, as I ran my fingers over its surface, in and out of the curves and knots I had long ago memorized, I couldn’t help but think of all the words and lessons it held inside its grooves and notches. The table forced my mother and her sisters to listen to each other, even in their period of silence.

So many people lose to the Big Bad World. It can take everything away from you in a single moment; in the wrong turn of a steering wheel, a sentence full of lies or diagnosis. But stories will always remain the same. Stories that are left behind in this Big Bad World force people to listen. And listening, I hear, does a pretty good job at healing the soul.