It was the summer of 96’ and we were leaving all behind, the maids, the warmness and the anarchy as we planted ourselves in this utopian Yeshivish community in the midst of Miami Beach, just around the corner from Collins Avenue and Homosexuality Developed at Old Age Lane. Pappy was getting troubled from Mexico’s exponential suffering of the aftermaths of the financial crisis of 94’. The Mexican Peso dropped three zeroes from its currency and the streets were stormed as the prices on everything reached the polluted skies. In its international context, the economic consequences of this crisis were called just for the hell of it, the “Tequila Effect”. I emphasize my use of the word “Tequila,” because of the curious parallel of the ever self-deceptive tendency that manifests in the drinker and the liar. The last, a talent I mastered graciously during my childhood years in Miami Beach.
I turned four that summer and the little I can remember is how amused my sister I where when we walked into an American supermarket for the first time, where the aisles were flooded with the capitalist caprices of kids with different preferences for acidic candy. We were off in this golden land of freedom; the sand was so soft and it was only us, Mammy, Pappy and Yael. Yael and I were two pint-size stormy redheads, and I have heard that one minute we would be pulling out each other’s teeth and the next we’d be eating each other to kisses; things have not changed one bit.
My parents signed us up at an Ultra-Orthodox Kindergarten, where 5 year old girls were already keeping their distance from men and were self-conscious about the length of their skirts. In the meantime, Pappy and Mammy would split their time between studying Torah at the Yeshiva and rejoicing in the joys of Miami with us girls. Every morning we would slip our swimsuits into our extra modest tartan uniform jumpers, so that we could get picked up from school and driven directly to the cerulean beach by the Eden Rock Hotel. I was living the dream.
One could not put an exact label on the way things are done in my house, us, the Medresh family is celebrated for doing things in an unusual manner. We did not identify ourselves as Yeshivish, Chasiddic, Modern, Litvish or Kabbalistic, because we were constantly rethinking every step of our way by means of exploring the different ways God brings truth into the world. Not an easy task, but we were whatever we were and call us whatever you want!
I knew that some things done in my house could not be discussed out loud in school, like the fact that I would be given a sip of rompope every now and then, or that I would get dressed up on Halloween to go tricking or treating. I knew by my parent’s standards that there was nothing wrong in wearing a bikini to the beach, but my teachers at school would talk about the rotten world-to-come for the immodest women tanning in South Beach.
I cannot draw an exact line on the day the discrepancies of leading a double life stopped making sense in my mind. I recurrently had to make up excuses to cover up the exciting life that was taking place outside of school. I am unsure if kids have the capability of unveiling the dimensions of right and wrong and everything in between. I began to think of myself as a double agent, and it was fun. Every night before going to sleep my mind would get lost in a sea of possible excuses. I could not tell my friends what film I had seen at the movies the night before, then I would dramatize the removal of my appendix with a water marker.
Not only did I fall into the habit of lying, but I also began believing the things I imagined, the same way a drunken person can only partially reconstruct the events that took place the night before. I now had my own Reality and I had grown skeptical of others’. I also began lying at home, because I could no longer draw a line between true and false events.
By the end of my third year in Miami, I was telling my classmates that I was losing my sight, and that my parents were not really my parents, because my biological ones had left me off in an orphanage in Dublin, Ireland. Only my friend Karen knew that Mexico was not really a jungle and we did not live on trees.
I grew older and my lies became more sophisticated. One time, when I was six, I stole 400 dollars’ worth of toys in order to distribute them fairly among my entire class. I was a good kid; I promise, I did not keep one toy to myself.
And everything is fine until the day you get caught drinking down the entire alcohol cabinet and you cannot walk down in a straight line without stumbling, your breath stinks and you can only think about tequila. Yes, I got caught, and I got caught selling Mammy´s jewelry!
After that day, they snapped me back into reality through various methods that go without saying. I went through the natural symptoms of withdrawal. For months or maybe years after that, my life continued feeling extremely stupid and unexciting without lies. I even lost all my friends because I had become uninteresting.
To this day, I have to be very alert to the unexpected illusions that my imagination keeps constructing. It is so very easy and tempting to fall back into that electrifying fabricated confront zone. But let me tell you something. Reality is Oh! so much better.
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This is the first of SCW student Deby Medrez Pier’s monthly non-fiction story installation where she will share her poetic ruminations on religion and life while making us laugh and maybe even cry. Stay tuned.