Pariah

by Tiffany Fitch

I know I'm not the perfect mom, as much as I might long to be. I swear sometimes, in front of my children. I fuss more than I should. I've made my children eat lunch at school when they were serving lasagne, and I've failed to follow through on a promise. But never in a million years did I imagine I would be the mom peering down the street, at the other moms, through the azalea bushes.

"I don't understand, Mama, he cheated," my 5-year-old said, after two weeks of being unable to play with his former best friend. "I told the truth."

And he had, after our apple-pie-baking, 84-year-old neighbor came over one sunny spring afternoon to let us know about a present left in pastel-colored chalk on her swept-two-times-a-day driveway.

"I told the children they could use chalk on my driveway," she said, walking up to where I raked pine straw into massive piles in the yard.

I turned around to check, just in time to see them run past into the house. "They said they asked you."

"Maybe you should come see," she said.

Dragging the rake behind me like a lead weight, I followed. And there they were. Two words I wouldn't say in front of mixed company, much less my children, written in two distinct, childish scrawls.

"Miss 84-year-old neighbor is a .... Miss 84-year-old neighbor is a ...."

I could have died.

"It's signed, 'Hannah,'" she pointed out.

"Hannah can't write," I replied, face turning a brilliant shade of purple. "I am so, so sorry. I don't think they even understand what those words mean."

550,000 apologies later, I left her hosing off the drive and went to confront the perpetrators. "We did it." They caved after one good look at my face. No excuses, no hesitation, no coercion.

"Are you going to tell my mom?" Henry's friend asked.

I didn't want to. God forbid we become the social pariahs of the 39211. Vague memories of bad little neighbor children from my childhood, drawing nudie pictures on the side of our garage. Images of child wars and threats of calling the police--"If you come on my property"--made my stomach turn.

I shook my head yes anyway and off he went, down the street. "To do damage control," I thought with a sigh.

Things snowballed from there with denials, retractions, and blame. I tried to be fair, placing equal fault on both children. "Boys will be boys," I told the other mom. I grounded my child for two weeks (a long time for a five-year-old), helped him write a letter of apology, and watched over him as he scrubbed the offending words into oblivion.

"I don't think the boys should play together anymore," she told me. "Mine has never heard those words and I'm sure it wasn't his idea."

I said nothing as I watched her walk away down the hill.

I'll never be a Stepford mom and I may wear the scarlet letter of our neighborhood, but I apologize when I'm wrong. I'm proud to say that I hold my children accountable for their actions and myself for mine. And I realize that no one is perfect.

The Author

Tiffany Fitch was dragged kicking and screaming to small-town Mississippi from Dallas, Texas, in 2001. When not chasing her four wild munchkins through the house, or caring for the stable of animals her husband has rescued, she writes about the state she has come to love. Her essays can be heard on Mississippi Public Broadcasting or read on her blog.