Just like the next person, I hate being lied to. I read the book with tons of sympathy for the writer. Strangely, James Frey and his fake memoir didn’t get on my nerves that much, although I did understand the other readers’ outrage. It is wrong on so many levels, I know. And unlike many closeted Hollywood actors who are constantly and unfairly forced to hide their sexual orientation, it’s quite justifiable to out Frey’s lies, or loathe him.

Using a traumatic experience that resonates with so many vulnerable people went through and twisting it with substantial lies is brutal and selfish. But who doesn’t lie? What makes him different to his fellow liars? And what’s the responsibility of the supporting cast? Bella dePaulo of Psychology Today gave her thoughts on James Frey: “Extraordinary liars are the stars of their own shows, but none of them, no matter how determined, could pull off their infamous deceits without a strong supporting cast.”

The habit of lying starts early at home because parents introduce us to lies. I know this because I am one of those parents. From Santa Claus to “Mommy doesn’t have money to buy those” kind of lies, I do lie to my kids even though I try hard not to. Of course, my defense is the fact that my lies are paved with good intentions, and they’re addressed to a small number of people for whom I’m fully responsible.

But there are things in life that I cannot lie my way out of. I wouldn’t lie to a man I’m about to sleep with if I had any sexual disease that would affect him. Or I know I would never make it as a big-time politician because I would have to lie about terrible things I have done in the past, including the existence of a picture where I was flashing my breasts to some freak on the internet. To some degree, we know when to use lies as our weapon or to opt to be honest. I’m quite sure James Frey does too.

My mother made me believe that my father was a poster child for Christianity. With him being a church-goer, a loving father and husband, and a great provider, I fondly believed in the idea. I was content with a figure of the great man I believed he was, so when I started hearing rumors about him having a mistress and seeing prostitutes on his frequent business trips I simply blocked it out. I even created a make-believe story to explain a scene I accidentally saw when I was little: my mother was pulling her hair, crying, and screaming at my father.

It was a distressing scene for any child to witness. But my imagination saved me: I settled for something a little less intense, a little less alarming. Perhaps my mother was overreacting to one of my dad’s bad habits, I thought. He had probably forgotten to take a shower and smelled really bad (my mother didn’t like people who had issues with body odor); or perhaps he had farted in his sleep (he did this sometimes and I could hear it from my bedroom).

When my mother died, suddenly my father’s infidelity was revealed and talked about. At first, I thought being the youngest of 10 kids, my parents and siblings were just trying to protect me. But later I realized they were protecting my mother.

Coming from a family with strict traditional values, adultery was not something anyone would take lightly. And from where we came from, when a marriage failed, a wife was to blame. My mother would have been seen as a woman who couldn’t take care of her husband, who couldn’t please him enough in bed, and who was not capable of keeping him happy at home.

Those things, combined with her Christian values and 10 kids on her hands, made my mother stay in such a marriage even though it made her suffer. My mother was a firm believer in the sanctity of marriage. Nothing but death could break her marriage, not even a mistress or a bunch of prostitutes. At the end of her life, she believed she had won over her marriage: my father got old and lost his sexual urges to diabetes. But I’m not my mother. Two days after my mother passed away we sisters gathered in our mom’s bedroom. My oldest sisters told me about my father’s infidelity. I was angry but I didn’t show it. I simply said, “I figure he might have cheated on Mom. He had a lot of month-long business trips.”

The truth is, I still cannot forgive my mother for lying to me. She was actually the biggest supporting cast of my father’s lies. She covered it up so well, and put up with it in a way that made it look as though she had approved of it.

It’s been years and I’m still mad at my father. I don’t despise him, but something has changed and I have no desire to deal with it. He doesn’t affect me much because I choose not to care. But I’m so hurt by my mother’s lies. It hurts to find out that my mother didn’t give me any chance to comfort her when she was suffering. She let me believe she was being unreasonable and angry when she screamed at my father and called him a pig. When I was little, she made me think that my father was a great husband, and she didn’t try to correct me when I said, “Someday I’m going to marry a man like daddy.”

I try to reason with lies that are constantly created by people around me. Those who lie to me are not necessarily bad. There are a lot of times people just have to lie to protect themselves or others. At some point, I will make peace with them. Or worse, I will adapt so much to finally be comfortable enough with my own lies.

***

Uly Siregar is an Indonesian writer and journalist. She lives in Arizona, US, with her husband and children.

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