My aunt Rebecca lived in Squalor. I first heard my mother and my aunt Didi discussing this one day when I was nine. I was supposed to be in my bedroom doing homework, but I snuck down the back stairs into the kitchen for a McIntosh apple and an Oreo cookie. Mom and Aunt Didi were close by in the dining room, huddled together at the corner of the table, as they often were, and they were talking about Aunt Rebecca. To me, the most curious thing about Aunt Rebecca, whom I had never met, was that Mom and Aunt Didi only brought her up when they thought no one was listening.

“I’m sure she’s still living in squalor,” Aunt Didi told Mom authoritatively. “Unless she’s screwed her way out!”

I had no idea what all that meant, but it seemed like such an odd thing to say that I was willing to take the risk of letting my presence be known and ask. “What’s squalor, Mom?” I said, walking into the dining room.

“Goodness, Darla!” Mom said putting her hand to her throat. “How long have you been listening?”

“Not long. I just came down for an apple.” (I thought it best not to mention the cookie.) “What’s squalor, Mom?” I repeated.

Aunt Didi, knowing Mom would be loath to answer my question, took hold of the reins for her. “It’s a town in New Mexico, Darla. It’s an Indian name.”

Mom looked at Aunt Didi in amazement. I figured she hadn’t known what it meant, either.

“Oh,” I said. And then I took a bite out of my apple.

“You have a book report due tomorrow,” Mom said.

“I know,” I said, taking another bite.

“Well, you’re not going to get it done standing here, are you?”

“I guess not,” I replied reluctantly. “All right, I’m going. Mom?”

“Yes, Darla?” she asked impatiently.

“What did Aunt Didi mean about—”

“Please dear,” Mom pleaded softly. “Go upstairs and finish your—”

“But Mom, I really want to know what—”

“Darla!” Aunt Didi screamed. “Listen to your mother. Go upstairs, now, and finish your book report!”

“All right. Forget it!” I said indignantly. “How am I supposed to learn stuff if I don’t ask?”

I walked back through the kitchen to make my way upstairs, mumbling about how I had been treated. I knew that Mom hated being angry and having to raise her voice, but from where I stood that was no reason to slink into passivity and to allow Aunt Didi to do her yelling for her—especially when it was directed at me.

But Mom wasn’t the only passive one in the family. Dad very seldom got angry either, and even when he found himself in passionate discord with the rest of the world, he did little or nothing to argue his contrariety. Instead, he just seemed to “go with the flow”—always following someone else’s footsteps rather than blazing his own trail. Naturally, he had plenty of opinions to express, but the things he griped about—like dishonest mechanics, rainy weekends, and bad restaurant service—never seemed to hold much importance. Once, I asked him why he didn’t scream and yell like other fathers, and he told me that when you yell you lose control, and losing control is a very bad thing to do. Of course, the older I got, the more adept I became at recognizing his anger, as well as his oft-times Herculean efforts to keep it under wraps.

Dad had a penchant for speaking in clichés, which I suppose was a convenient way of acquiescing to “the flow.” For him, quoting something that had been said before, meant that he didn’t have to worry about holding unpopular or radical opinions. Clichés solved everything for my father. “Well, Darla, to coin an old phrase, you only go around once in life, you know,” or “You never have a second chance to make a first impression,” and “Well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.” I found it strangely fascinating that you only go around once in life, yet what goes around comes around, and that absence makes the heart grow fonder, yet out of sight means out of mind.

Today, with my youth far behind me, I realize that my childhood perceptions, though surprisingly accurate at times, were also severely hampered by my limited time on earth. Observing my father’s quintessentially dad-like behavior back then (because of the profound effect it had on me), I assumed that God had repeatedly pressed his dad mold into a giant slab of dough, thus creating an abundance of men just like my father and dispersing them at random throughout the world. Like a baker who has baked too many cookies, God had made too many dads just like mine. They were everywhere: my friends had them for fathers, they appeared on television sitcoms, and they modeled men’s clothing in Spiegel catalogs.

My father was a complex man who hid behind a stereotype well into his forties. And even after that, he never really let go of it. For a long time, I was too young to understand the pain that he carried in his baggage. Deathly afraid of confronting his past, he clung tightly to society’s perceived notions of fatherhood and husbandhood, obfuscating reality as if doing so would somehow ensure an error-free existence. He seemed content to exclude spontaneity and risk-taking from his life, thereby eliminating a great deal of the reward that can come from living each day like a new adventure. Don’t misunderstand me: our home was not without mirth or joy, but most of it was like prescribed medicine, safe if taken in controlled doses. And sadly, my father’s fears and regrets were echoed by my mother, only she had the added burden of trying to keep all of our lives free of malice and discontent: as if anyone, no matter how smart or skilled, could really accomplish that.

A real dilemma for Mom was when someone unwittingly asked her a question (especially when Dad was around) that required her to take a stand. No matter how Mom chose to handle the situation, her answers were always very calculated and clichéd, leaving little room for spontaneity or originality. Often afraid of expressing herself, or of discussing matters with me that Dad might not approve of, Mom would preface her remarks with “Between you, me, and the lamppost, Darla,” a temporary absolution that would then allow her to proceed with whatever “secret” was on her mind.

Aunt Didi, on the other hand, didn’t mind being outspoken or controversial at all, but like Mom and Dad, she didn’t reveal a lot about herself or the family.

One night, a few weeks after that day when I had heard Mom and Aunt Didi discussing Aunt Rebecca, my curiosity got the better of me, as it often did. It was a Saturday night, and Aunt Didi and Uncle George had come over for dinner with their three girls. Aunt Didi was in the kitchen helping Mom prepare dinner, and I sat in the living room with Dad, Uncle George, and my cousins. Suddenly, I just had to know, so I said to my father, “How far are we from Squalor, Dad?”

“Just a hop, skip, and a jump if we’re not careful, Darla.” He laughed. “What kind of thing is that to ask?”

“No really, Dad,” I pressed. “How far are we from Squalor?”

“I really don’t understand your question, sweetie,” he replied in all sincerity.

I was getting frustrated. My voice got louder. “Come on, Dad. How far are we from Squalor? You know, where Aunt Rebecca lives?”

Dad and Uncle George turned quickly to look at each other. And as she seemed to do on so many occasions, Aunt Didi burst forth from the darkness, a virtual Johnny-on-the-trouble spot, to diffuse an unpleasant situation before it got out of control.

“I’ve explained this to you before, Darla,” Aunt Didi said, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Squalor is in New Mexico and that’s very far away from here.”

“Is that why Aunt Rebecca never visits?” I asked. “And how come we never visit her?”

“She lives very far away,” she repeated, looking angry and uncomfortable. “Why don’t you just forget about Rebecca?”

“But why?” I persisted. “And how come we never talk to her on the phone?”

“Darla,” she said impatiently, “there are far more important things for you to concern yourself with than Rebecca.”

“Like what?”

Aunt Didi looked despairingly at my father.

“Like … the tickle monster!” Dad shouted as he lurched toward me with his rapidly moving fingers. “The tickle monster is going to get you…and your cousins, too!”

The four of us reacted appropriately and ran screaming out of the room. Dad’s quick thinking was an effective, albeit temporary, solution to the problem. But I’ve always been persistent when I want to know something. An hour later at the dinner table, I had not forgotten my original curiosity.

“I don’t understand why Aunt Rebecca can’t come visit us,” I blurted out.

Uncle George, who had been quiet on the matter up to this point, looked extremely agitated. He was a far less patient man than my father, and when the going got tough for Uncle George, the tickle monster never came to save the day.

“Darla, listen to me,” Uncle George barked. “We don’t see your aunt Rebecca because, well, as your aunt Didi says, she lives in Squalor, and knowing Rebecca, you can be damn sure there’s no way she’ll ever get out. That’s it now!”

“She could screw her way out!” I said helpfully.

My cousins giggled and covered their mouths.

“Jesus! What’s going on here, Maggs?” Dad asked my mother.

 “What the hell did you tell this kid?” Uncle George asked Aunt Didi.

“Darla, a lady doesn’t use those words,” Dad admonished me.

“But Aunt Didi—”

“I knew it,” Uncle George said, nervously rattling the ice cubes in his glass.

Aunt Didi remained uncharacteristically quiet.

“Jesus, Maggs,” Dad said again.

“Won’t everybody please calm down?” Mom asked sweetly.

Aunt Didi rolled her eyes and stuck her chin in the palm of her hand.

 “Darla,” Mom began, “we all feel very bad that Aunt Rebecca lives so far away—in New Mexico—and it’s very upsetting to talk about it, for many reasons. So please, dear, let’s forget about it until—”

“Until I’m older?”

“Well, yes,” she said, breathing a little easier. “Until you’re older.”

“Much older,” Uncle George mumbled under his breath.

“Okay,” I said. “Could you pass the butter, Dad?”

***

For the next several years, Aunt Rebecca (to coin an old “Dad phrase”) was “gone but not forgotten.” I was intrigued by this mystery aunt who lived in a place called Squalor, New Mexico, and who nobody wanted to talk about. And she might have stayed “gone” for quite a while longer had it not been for a certain Friday in my seventh-grade American history class. My teacher, Miss Todd, was very excited, she told us, because a very special guest was going to speak to our class. He was a true Native American, and his name was Joe Running Horse. And no, we didn’t have to call him Mr. Running Horse. He preferred Joe.

Though more years have now passed than I care to count, I can still feel the passion this man stirred in me, as he stood tall, bright with pride, and told the story of his people, diligently explaining how their land, their language, and their culture had been stolen from them so long ago. I was spellbound by his tales, as were all my classmates, and I remember thinking he must’ve magically materialized from one of our textbooks, because in “real life” no one could be that awe inspiring. When he was done speaking, Miss Todd announced that we were going to have a question-and-answer period, and that our homework assignment for that weekend was to write a report about what Joe had taught us in class that day.

As usual, Amy Ludwig (Lughead to me) was the first to raise her hand with a question. “Where do most of the Native Americans in this country live today?”

“Excellent question!” said Miss Todd, as she beamed at her prize pupil. “Excellent!” Amy smiled her smug “I’m-so-smart-and-everyone-knows-it” smile, and all eyes turned to Joe. I felt like throwing up. I hated her.

It was then that the inevitable happened. Within moments, a discussion about New Mexico ensued. “Who can name a town or city in New Mexico?” Miss Todd asked, her eyes scanning the classroom for volunteers.

The Lughead’s hand shot into the air like a rocket taking off. “I can, Miss Todd. There’s Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Gallup, to name three.” It was just like the Lughead to give all the answers so no one else had a chance to look good for the teacher.

I raised my hand and glared at her.

“Yes, Darla.” Miss Todd smiled. “Can you add to that?”

“I have an aunt who lives in Squalor!” I said proudly, looking right into the Lughead’s eyes.

The Lughead broke into a broad grin and put her hand over her mouth. Someone giggled softly behind me and Miss Todd and Joe looked at each other, then briefly at the floor. I felt absolutely sick inside and had no idea why. I knew the mention of Aunt Rebecca had a strange effect on the adults in my family, but on the Lughead, Miss Todd, and Joe Running Horse? What could they possibly know about her? I half expected Aunt Didi to come barreling into the room and demand that the subject be changed. But instead, a loud hush fell over the room, one that was far more intimidating than anything my aunt had ever said or done to shut me up in the past.

“Thank you, Darla,” Miss Todd finally said. “Now, who else has a question for Mr. Running Horse?” (Her sudden formality seemed to match the somber tone in the air.)
The subject quickly changed to Arizona, but the remaining ten minutes of class felt like an eternity. To this day, I thank God that it was the last class of the afternoon. I could not have endured another moment of school. I was humiliated, and even more so because I didn’t understand what had happened. I was just desperate to get home and confront my mother. I practically tripped on my own two feet when the bell rang, trying to get out of class, but Miss Todd asked me to stay behind a moment. I was so upset that I could barely focus on what she was saying to me. I felt as if I were hopelessly caught in a nightmare, and I could hear the Lughead’s laughter echoing in the hallways of my mind. The room looked as if it were melting, like Aunt Didi’s ugly “Candle of 100 Colors” from Greenwich Village (probably a fake place, too), and Miss Todd’s voice sounded faint and far away. All I can remember was when she said, “You’ll find ‘squalor’ in the dictionary, Darla, not on a map of the United States. I think it would be a good idea to go home and look it up.”

I always took the bus home, but that day I ran home instead. I couldn’t bear to be trapped on the bus (it might be melting, too), and even though running would take me longer, I would be free. I was filled with rage toward my weak mother and my take-charge aunt.
Mom was unpacking groceries when I came flying through the back door.

“Darla!” she said, hugging me with a box of Uncle Ben’s converted rice still in her hands. “Are you all right? I was so worried about you when you didn’t get off the bus with the others. You look sick.”

“I am sick!” I screamed. “And it’s all your fault, and Aunt Didi’s too! Where’s the damn dictionary?”

“Darla!”

“Never mind. I’ll find it myself!” I screamed, and went running into the family room. I grabbed my father’s dictionary off the shelf (I still had only a kid’s dictionary with big, goofy pictures) and practically tore the pages until I got to S. And then I read: “Squalor: the act of being squalid.” What the hell did that mean? “Squalid: foul and repulsive, as from lack of care or cleanliness; dirty from neglect; wretched, sordid.” At that moment, I plunged into a self-deprecating hell. All my thoughts raced toward the Lughead. I thought about the way I had beamed with pride, when I looked right at her and said those dreaded words: “My aunt lives in Squalor.” I couldn’t stop beating myself up, pummeling my self-esteem with every admonishment my adolescent brain could summon. I was the worst kind of idiot. I should be excommunicated from the planet! From the universe! What a fool! I was finally going to show the Lughead up, once and for all, and it turned out to be the most embarrassing, humiliating, horrible day of my thirteen years on this earth. This horrible earth! Why was I born? Why had Aunt Didi and Mom been lying to me all these years? Why did Dad and Uncle George go along with it? Damn them! Why did they lie?

I threw Dad’s dictionary on the floor, flung myself on the couch, buried my head in a throw pillow, and began sobbing. More deplorable thoughts squeezed their way into my head. By the ripe old age of thirteen, I had learned (without the aid of a dictionary) what “screw” meant, but until that moment, I hadn’t thought about my comment that night at dinner, when I was nine: “She could screw her way out!” The pieces were all coming together and getting uglier all the time. What an idiot I was at nine. What an idiot I still was. Even my cousins had known what “screw” meant! I couldn’t think anymore. My brain hurt. I sobbed uncontrollably. My mother sat next to me on the couch and put her arms around me. When I looked up, I saw she was crying. (I had asked her later how she could cry when she didn’t know what was wrong, and she explained that when you see your child in such dreadful pain, the reason doesn’t matter. You just want to cry too.)

It took Mom a long time to calm me down. I didn’t want to calm down. I wanted to torture myself with tears forever. I deserved it. When I was finally able to tell Mom what had happened, she turned white as a sheet and put her right hand to her throat. Then she moved her hand to her forehead, closed her eyes momentarily, and heaved a heavy sigh. When she was finished doing that, she put her left hand to her throat and sighed again. Then she looked down at her lap, nodded her head slowly, and sighed again. Suddenly, in a surprise move, which I had never seen before, she hit herself on the forehead with her right hand and sighed the loudest sigh I’d ever heard. It was a beautiful bouquet of gestures, but I was growing impatient. Was she going to say something? Was she going to slap her forehead with her left hand now?

“Goodness, Darla,” came the long-anticipated response. “Goodness gracious, my poor child. I’m so terribly sorry. I really truly sincerely am.” When she had finished using every “ly” word in her vocabulary, she clasped her hands over mine. “What can I do to make it better?”

“Mom,” I said frustrated, breaking her grip. “Why did everyone lie to me? Why did you let me exist on this planet for four whole years thinking Squalor was a town in New Mexico—and that Aunt Rebecca lived there? Why, Mom? Why did Aunt Didi tell me that? Why doesn’t anyone see Rebecca, or talk about her?”

It was then, at that precise moment, that Mom began her most famous “lamppost” talk of all. And in typical Mom fashion, she kept glancing at the door for my father to come in, despite the fact that he wasn’t due home for hours.

“Darla—” she began in a near whisper. “I know you’ve been wondering about your aunt Rebecca for a very long time now. I’m sorry that we’ve had to keep the truth from you, and even more sorry that the little white lie your aunt Didi told you so many years ago has come back to hurt you so deeply today.”

I listened patiently, but I was wondering when she was going to tell me something that I didn’t already know.

“We all love you and would never do anything intentionally to hurt you. Goodness, child, you know that, don’t you?”

I was losing my patience. “Tell me about Aunt Rebecca, Mom. Now! I’m old enough to know.” (I wanted to throw a “damn it” in there for good measure, but I’d already gotten away with saying “damn” and didn’t want to press my luck.)

“All right, Darla,” Mom said. “But it’ll have to stay between you, me, and the lamppost. Okay?”

I knew the routine by heart. “Yes, Mom. I promise.”

She paused for quite a while before continuing. “Your aunt Rebecca was always a problem child. Goodness knows why. She was raised the same way as Didi and I were. But although Rebecca is only four years younger than I am, and five years younger than Didi, it has always seemed as though she were raised in an entirely different generation—in a different place altogether. Different standards, different tastes in clothing, in friends, and even in music. And she never minded your grandparents the way Didi and I did. By the time she was eleven she had the filthiest vocabulary you ever heard.”

I suddenly wasn’t as proud of my “damn” as I had been five minutes ago, but I still didn’t understand what made Rebecca so different from other eleven-year-olds.

“By the time Rebecca was thirteen,” Mom choked, “things really got bad. She was smoking, drinking, and staying out until all hours. When she was seventeen, she dropped out of her senior year of high school and started doing drugs.”

At that point in Mom’s speech, despite the wretched pain we were both in, I was dying to burst out with a chorus of “When I Was Seventeen,” just like Frank Sinatra sang it on Dad’s record album, but for reasons too obvious and too numerous to mention, I didn’t.
“Your grandparents were heartbroken, Darla. They did everything they could to help her. Even your grandpa’s brother, my uncle Martin, who never did much for anyone, tried to help, but that only seemed to make things worse. One day he came over to talk to her, and Rebecca started cursing him and threatening to kill herself. It was horrid. She simply wanted nothing to do with any authority figure at all. Mom and Dad were frantic. They spoke to school counselors, police officers, psychiatrists— you name it. They even sent her to therapy, but she clammed up and wouldn’t talk. Finally, when nothing worked, they put her in a detox unit, but after only a week and a half, Rebecca ran away. I was the one who found her. That very same day.”

“Where was she?” I asked, mesmerized by Mom’s strange tale.

“At her boyfriend’s house. Or at least he was one of them!” Mom said in a surprisingly judgmental tone. “He was a college boy, but he was no good. He was as shady as that old oak tree in our backyard.” (I hadn’t heard that one before.) “Word had it around town that he sold drugs,” Mom told me confidentially, surprising even herself. She looked cautiously toward the door. “Now, remember, Darla. This conversation is between you and me, and the lamppost.”

“So what happened then?” I asked eagerly.

“Well, dear, Rebecca went back to the detox unit, but this time she stayed only a couple of days. She had no interest in being rehabilitated, and the director of the place told your grandfather that they were there to help people with drug problems, not to play prison guard, and that there was no point in bringing Rebecca back if she was just going to run away again.”

Mom sighed, fluttered her eyelids, and looked toward the door. She looked at me and then looked at the door again. She checked her watch. I knew the “good stuff” must be coming, or at least the part of it that she would be willing to share.

“Goodness. This is so difficult,” she said, looking around the room, as if doing so would help her to gather strength.

Suddenly, I saw a door slamming shut on the truth. “Don’t you think I’m old enough to know all this? I was old enough to be publicly humiliated today!” I bravely reminded her.
“Yes, that’s true. You’re right. And you are old enough to hear this.” She paused again, then blurted out, “Darla, shortly after Rebecca ran away for the second time, we found out that she had left town with a man.”

“With that ‘shady college boy’?” I asked enthusiastically, completely forgetting that I wasn’t supposed to be enjoying this story.

“Yes,” she said uncomfortably. She left with him and they went to another state.”

“New Mexico?”

“No, dear. New York.”

I suddenly felt like an idiot again.

“She ran away to New York City. But she didn’t stay with the college boy for long. He came back here, and Rebecca moved into a horrible place with an awful man she had met God-knows-where and—this is very painful to talk about.”

“I know, Mom,” I said sympathetically. I prayed that she would continue with her story, even though I could see that telling it was taking a great toll on her.

“Darla, it was a wretched place. She lived in squalor.” (After hearing the word used incorrectly for four years, the correct usage sounded so odd to me.) “It was a one-room tenement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The furniture, what little of it she had, was no doubt collected from the garbage—dirty, dusty, and downright dilapidated—oh, it was just plain hideous. The paint was peeling badly, and in some places, parts of the wall were missing altogether. The bathroom was unspeakable, and there was no kitchen. Only a hot plate, an old junky refrigerator barely larger than a bread box, and cold running water. The place was frightful—filled with rusted pipes, rotting food, and every kind of insect, vermin, and rodent known to mankind.”

I was amazed by this revelation. “Eeewww. Gross! How disgusting! Were you there? Did you see it?”

“Yes. Your aunt Didi and I went to New York to try and bring her back.”

“Alone?”

“Just us chickens. It was a dreadful experience.”

“How did you know where to find her?”

“Rebecca told us. She called us with the address. Naturally, we were rather surprised at that, but we didn’t think much of it because we were all just so happy to know where she was. In hindsight, we realized that she wanted us to follow her to New York and to see firsthand the filth she was living in.”

“Why would she want you to see it?”

”She wanted to shock us, Darla. It’s that simple. And shock us she did. In fact, she threw us out shortly after we arrived. It was all we could do to get out of that neighborhood alive and find a cab to take us back to the train station.”

“How come Dad didn’t go with you? You were married to him then, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” Mom said, disquieted by my question. “Yes, I was. But he had to work, and Didi and I thought it best if just Rebecca’s sisters approached her.”

“But I guess that didn’t work, huh?” 

“No, it didn’t. So a week later, your uncle George went up there, hoping to succeed where we had failed.”

“Did he have any luck?”

“Only the worst kind, Darla. George came home alone. And if all this weren’t enough, your grandpa was in ill health at this point, and we simply couldn’t bear to tell him about the ghastly place that his youngest daughter was living in. So, since Rebecca had turned eighteen by that point, and was legally of age, we told him that she lived in a modest apartment in Greenwich Village” (so it did exist!) “and had a job as a waitress, but, unfortunately, did not wish to be in contact with the family.”

“But if you’d told Grandpa and Grandma the truth, maybe they would have been able to rescue her—and to bring her home!”

“Believe me, Darla, we considered it, but in the end, we felt that the truth would be too devastating to Mom and Dad, and that if anyone in the family were to seek out Rebecca, as Didi, George, and I had, she would rebel by placing herself in even greater danger. Rebecca had put your grandparents through enough pain already. So we told Dad the waitress story and left it at that. We had to. It made him very sad, your grandma too, but at least they never knew the truth. God rest their souls.”

I started to feel really sad. I missed my grandparents. I was seven when my grandfather died, and eight and a half when my grandmother died. More than anything, I remember my grandfather as he was in the winter. He always wore a flannel shirt over a white undershirt and old faded jeans that Grandma regularly tried to throw out. He loved to snuggle with Grandma and me on the sofa. “Addie, you get to my right; Darla, you get to my left. We’ll have a snugglefest!” Then, we’d sit down next to him, and he’d grin, squeezing us both as hard as he could. My grandmother would laugh and say something like, “Henry, you’re going to squeeze the energy right out of me and Darla will have to cook dinner.” Then, he’d turn to me, request some elaborate menu, and nonchalantly ask when dinner would be ready. I would laugh, protesting zealously that I didn’t know how to cook, and Grandpa would keep the game going by insisting that I did. Grandma loved to play along too, but she was the one who usually ended it by telling him, “Henry, let’s stop teasing this poor child.”

My grandparents never felt the need to “set me straight” the way my parents did; they just enjoyed me. I didn’t understand until much later that grandparents don’t have the same responsibility and concerns that parents do, and as I grew up, I often resented my parents for not being able to just “enjoy” me too.

“Was that the last time you heard from Rebecca?” I asked, still reminiscing.

Mom sighed and looked at the door. “No, it wasn’t. A few weeks later, she called to tell us she was pregnant.”

“No way!” I gasped, reminding Mom that she was talking to a thirteen-year-old. “Get out of town!”

“The worst part of it all, Darla, was that we thought, once again, that Rebecca’s call was a plea for help. But it wasn’t. She just wanted to rub our noses in it. For some reason, she wanted us all to suffer. I will never understand why she hated us so. Never ever.”

“So did she have the baby or what?”

“We don’t know.” Mom gulped. “We never heard from Rebecca again.”

“Maybe she wasn’t even pregnant!” I speculated.

“Maybe,” Mom said, not wanting to discuss the possibilities with me. “Darla, I’m very sorry that your aunt and I deceived you.”

She was about to close the door again. All the signs were there. “Didi only made up that silly lie on the spot because you were too young to know the truth, and, unfortunately, because it was the first thing that came to her mind. It was wrong of me to go along with it, but I just didn’t know what else to do. I thought it would be forgotten that same day. As for Rebecca, well, she is our sister, and despite everything, we still love her and think about her. Goodness, we can’t help but wonder what became of her. But she knows exactly where we are and obviously has chosen not to see us. And as for seeking her out, well, we can’t endure the pain of being rejected again, and quite frankly, though I know it may sound cowardly, I don’t think I could bear to see what terrible fate may have befallen her.”

Finally, I was speechless. I just sat there, with my mouth open, looking at my mother.
“Darla, I hope now you’ll understand, but I must ask you not to talk about this matter again. As your father says, ‘It’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.’ If for some reason you must mention this again, please speak only to me.” Mom checked the door and looked at her watch. “Whatever you do, Darla, never discuss this with anyone, especially people outside the family. We don’t want a scandal, and stories like this can spread like wildfire. And the farther they spread, the worse they get—and the more distorted they become. Okay, dear?”

I nodded. “I promise, Mom. I won’t talk about it.”

“Scandal could destroy this family,” Mom warned, as if she had not heard me promise to keep quiet.

“Mom,” I reiterated. “I promise I’ll never say a word!”

“Good girl.” She smiled nervously. “Now, go upstairs and wash your face. I’m going to finish putting the groceries away.”