Diallo is poor but gifted with the ability to tell great lies. After a bad afternoon with his friend Paul in which he nearly ends up in jail, the pair rely on fate to change their lives.
"Let's play it with a coin!" He says. "Flip a coin. Face: our...
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Of course I dare. I take out the coin from my pocket under the loud ovation of the honking cars behind us, and I flip it. It was my most precious coin—my lucky charm—and the first and only thing my dad had ever given me. Surely, it won't fail me like he did.
Our eyes stare up at the sky from his convertible car, just as I see all my life flashing out in front of me. Paul is right; it doesn't matter if I go to jail now or later; I will end up there somehow. I was poor by birth, and my right is just to survive another day, and I will fail my mom like my dad did.
He was there when I was young. He used to take me to the park and treat me to a milkshake afterward. He used to read me stories at bedtime, and I can tell that nobody can do voice acting like my dad. He used to bring hamburgers for dinner every Friday afternoon after work. Then one day, he lost his job, and from there, he changed. We all changed.
He grew bitter about life, just like he grew closer to alcohol, his new mistress. I didn't know what happened, and mom wouldn't tell me, but I remembered her and I dragging his passed-out drunk ass to the bedroom at night. Mom changed too; she started to yell at him a lot. She wanted him to gather himself, to be the man she married, the father he was to me. Perhaps that was the final straw, because he left that night and we never saw him again.
Since then, it has been just mom and me. She didn't cry, and that was a poor lie, but a lie that kept us going. She became so busy that she didn't even make me breakfast or dinner anymore, so I quickly learned to be her personal chef at home. Then I got promoted to do the shopping and the cleaning. Our taxes and bills were a bit too hard for me, but we held on and survived without Dad and that coin. That single coin was all I had left from him. Let's hope it was the coin to get us out of our debts.
It lands on my hand, and I turn it over.
Face.
The Fugio cent's face. The bloody ugly Franklin cent's face. The sun in its hopeful rays, with the line "Mind Your Own Business." I couldn't help but chuckle at it. I want to believe in it now. Maybe I could do what Paul said. I could write stories. I could be an even better voice actor than my dad. Dreams and hopes suddenly hit my face, then Paul wake me up.
"Let's do it then!"
"Sure, but how do you write a story?" I babble out, and this is where Paul presses a button in his car for the passenger's door to open.
"Get out of my car and go to the library!" He grins a nasty grin, and I do what he says. I step out of his car while he drives through a red light.
I walk back home from there. It wasn't too far; Paul had the decency to leave me at least a few blocks away. Our flat was small, with one bedroom and a kitchen lounge. Mom gave me the bedroom while the lounge was all hers, and there she was. Fast asleep in front of the TV with a fork tangled in pasta still in her hand. I bet the poor woman must have waited a long time for me.
I don't want to wake her up, so I take the fork from her grasp, and she immediately collapses onto the sofa. I put a blanket over her and clear the coffee table of her empty plate and glass. She didn't buy the meal; she used the frozen one I made for her a long time ago. Good old Ma, we know how to save money, don't we?
I wash myself before going to bed. The ceiling is blank, a blank canvas for my own imagination. I see myself and my mom going to one of those fancy restaurants on Fifth Avenue. She wears one of those gorgeous red silk dresses, like an actress at the Oscars. Her hair is all straight and cut short. Wait a minute, who am I to forget the most important thing? I should also put some makeup on her. How about those tutorials on YouTube from Nikkie De Jager that all the girls in the neighbourhood watch? She looks very confident and reminds me so much of my mom.
Speaking of mom, she is now eating a huge lobster, and we laugh, drinking wine to our hearts' content. It will be lovely to see Mom smile like this. It will be lovely to see her happy for once, and I'll make this lie come true for her.
I get out of bed at midnight, and I create my account on Wattpad. It's really nothing special; my name there is just Dildo. Why not? That bloody dildo got me into that dare after all. Then I stare at that white page. That terrifyingly blinding page there, and my finger types "The Smile of My Mom," and that's it. That's how my beautiful lie begins.
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