LIES MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME

“One night when I was perhaps two, I stood up in my crib when my parents came in to say good night and announced, “I’m all alone.”
“No, no,” my father explained, “you’re not alone. You have us.”
“No. You have each other,” I told him, “but I’m all alone.”
Apparently my father sat down in a chair and burst into tears.
My mother used to say that these words of mine convinced them to adopt my brother.
Why had my statement made my father cry? Perhaps this is only wishful thinking on my part, but I hope that on some unconscious level, he knew my words were true.
When I was little my mother often told me, “If I had to pick between having your father or having you, I would pick your father.” This seemed to me a perfectly reasonable and honest statement because, given the choice, I also would have picked my father.”

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“My father was making progress on The Thin Red Line, so my mother, lying flat on her back, listened to him clacking away on the typewriter in the next room. One day, the laundryman arrived just as my father was writing one of the saddest scenes in the book. During an attack, Sergeant Keck, a die-hard, solemn, no-bullshit veteran, foolishly pulls a hand grenade out of his back pants pocket by the pin. Realizing this terrible mistake, he rolls away, onto his back, not wanting to upset, or hurt, his men.

My father got up and opened the door, and there stood the old laundryman, carrying their clothes. My father was shaking, his face twisted up, tears flowing; the laundryman could see my mother through the door, lying hugely pregnant in the bed. As my father reached for his wallet, the laundryman threw up his hands and said, “Ne vous inquiétez pas, monsieur! Pas de problème!” Don’t worry, sir, no problem! And he refused to take my father’s money. “You pay me next time!” My father, with his very limited French, couldn’t convince the kind man to take his money.

In early August 1960, a few days after I was born, we moved into an apartment my father had bought and renovated on the Île Saint-Louis, which overlooked the quai d’Orléans, above the Seine. My father had furnished it himself—with mostly Louis Treize, dark, shiny wood with red velvet and beige-toned upholstery. It was a strangely shaped apartment, since it spread out over two second floors in different buildings, and the buildings were not level. The living room/dining room was in one building, overlooking the quai and the Seine, while the bedrooms were in the back building, down a narrow hallway and shallow flight of stairs.

The Thin Red Line was published in 1962, and it was a critical and commercial success. The book was sold to the movies, and with that money, my father bought the ground-floor apartment in the front building, which became my parents’ elegant bedroom. A curving, carpeted stairway was built, which led from the downstairs entryway to the high-ceilinged living room. He also bought the third-floor apartment in the old, musty back building, which became his office.

Like a king and queen holding court, my parents were soon surrounded by admirers, revelers, court jesters, and even the occasional spy. They had a cook, a housekeeper/nurse, and a chauffeur. They were wild and irreverent and defiant, and so hospitable to anyone passing through that you never knew who might show up. As a little girl, I met famous writers, actors, movie stars, film directors, socialites, diplomats, and even an emperor—Haile Selassie—who stood by my bedside while I was awakened from sleep, and blessed me in some incomprehensible language…”

Kaylie Jones, LIES MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME

“There were a few things my Taekwondo instructor Mr. Bill Canegata told me before he died. One, was, “You’re a thinker. Thinking is what you do. So think. Stop beating yourself up for not being able to stop your mind. That is your talent.” Two, was, “Don’t quit martial arts, no matter what happens.” He was plugged into something I still hardly understand, as if he could clearly see the future — he knew my ego and big mouth would get me into trouble, which they did. I got into a battle of wills with my instructor who’d replaced Mr. Bill, forgetting for a moment that Mr. Sevilla is not only much stronger than I am, but also that he is my instructor. Walking home from the school in a blind rage, I decided to quit, but then I remembered what Mr. Bill had said and I changed my mind. Quitting was a perfect example of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Next day, I went back and apologized to Mr. Sevilla for losing my temper.”

~ Kaylie Jones (born 1960 in Paris, France) is an American writer, memoirist and novelist.
She has published seven books, including a memoir, Lies My Mother Never Told Me, and her most recent novel, The Anger Meridian. Her novel A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries was adapted as a Merchant Ivory film in 1998. Jones has been teaching for more than twenty-five years, and is a faculty member in the Stony Brook Southampton MFA in Creative Writing & Literature program and in Wilkes University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. She is the author of Speak Now and the editor of Long Island Noir. Her newest endeavor is her publishing imprint with Akashic Books, Kaylie Jones Books.