SusanOsborn.net

Lie About

When the boy was born, they said that something was wrong with his heart, but after the operation, he came out all stiff and twisted. His left leg no longer bent at the knee so that when he walked, he had to drag it behind him the way a child does a toy. And his right arm which was now rotated and pulled up at the shoulder, looked like a tangled marionette’s, and the permanently cupped hand which ought to face backward faced forward.

Despite his deformity, he was the son of well-to-do parents and he hardly knew any affliction and was looked after quite well until after his mother died in childbirth when he was five.

After that, he was taunted mercilessly by his sisters who called him Lie About or Gimpy. They begrudged him his food which they felt would be better off given to the poor and they tried to ingratiate themselves with their father in the hope of outwitting Lie About so that he would not receive his share of the inheritance. These were the kind of sisters who made sure everything was divided absolutely evenly, down to the blades of grass in the backyard.

Their father was susceptible to this and after a short time, gave Lie About just enough to keep him from starving.

Lie About’s face grew gaunt and his eyes were dark and wide as a doe’s. Despite these injustices, he remained unperturbed which vexed his sisters no end. He was always willing to help with the chores around the house, and he actually did more than his sisters. He dragged his one leg behind him as he hauled the laundry bag from room to room collecting their soiled underpants, their tights; he mended the holes in their stockings; he bent his twisted body under the bed to fetch out their sling backs and slippers and the earrings that they had dropped or kicked under. Naturally, this infuriated his sisters even more who began making him the butt of cruel jokes. They convinced him to dress up in tutus and sometimes see-through ballet skirts and told him to pirouette like a danseur. Of course, the tutus showed off the Gothic splendor of his deformed leg even more and his hideous attempts at dancing made his deformity appear even more grotesque. And this made his sisters laugh so hard that they sometimes wet their pants.

Gradually, they got him so well trained that you could do just about anything to him…

The Editor

When the editor, Jack McCann, and his wife arrived in Bologna, they were met by scorching heat and petty disappointments right from the start. It had taken nearly an hour to get a cab at the airport and then, once they were finally in the city, everything looked inelegant and decayed. The streets were dirty and her husband, who took offense easily, was still smarting from a scurrilous remark he thought the cabby had directed at them upon dropping them at their hotel, a small dingy affair, nothing like what they had expected given the description in the convention brochure.

The room they were directed to did nothing to revive their feelings…