Lasso of Truth

By Callie G. Mauldin

Every afternoon, Superman was my go-to-awesomeness-villain-destroying-superhero. So, when Mom changed from her eyeglasses and brown-button-up cardigan into Wonder Woman’s bright blue, red and white suit, my heart jackhammered like a firecracker. Pow-pow-pow! 

“You’re like the real thing,” I yelled, and hugged her hips. 

She whipped her Lasso of Truth for effect, and it made a swishing noise, startled us both. 

“I can barely see without my glasses, Jonah.” She pushed her bulky brown frames back on, and looked like Mom again, like a Clark Kent-Wonder Woman hybrid. I loved her so much sometimes it hurt, like a bee sting. 

On the way to the party, we folded into our 1968 Dodge Dart, a car my dad had taxied us around in, and then discarded when he left. I imagined that his new wife and family had upgraded to a Mercedes, or something fancy, and that maybe they jetted off on family vacations like we never did. As we drove farther from home, the houses swelled, hulked, and pressed against the gray October sky. I thought if I looked hard enough, I might see Dad staring out at us from one of the windows, waving. Telling us he was sorry, so sorry. But I didn’t. Truth was, I had only seen him twice since the divorce, once at Christmas and then again on my birthday. He’d bought me a gray stuffed rabbit, something that seemed better suited for a four or five-year-old.  

When we parked in front of Mom’s boss’s house, the sky burst into icy wetness, like sharp pine needles being chucked from the heavens. Mom’s cape canopied me and a brown grocery bag from the downpour. I imagined this is how she used to hold me when I was a baby, and I nuzzled her, taking in her scent, a warm vanilla perfume, clean soap smell, and the faintest trace of cigarette smoke.  

Inside, the warehouse-sized mansion smelled like a fire smoldering. And heat blasted from the vents, making me want to loosen my costume, shed a layer, but I didn’t. 

“Kids are in the den, Champ,” Bill Manrite, Mom’s boss, yelled over the music. That song—the one about wanting to rule the world—shouted from the speakers, and I could barely hear my own thoughts. 

“Looks like we had the same idea,” he said, and pointed to his Lex Luther costume. 

“Be good, Lovie,” Mom whispered as she leaned down, kissed my forehead. 

Then, Mr. Manrite patted my back with the jolt of the Heimlich, his ham hock-sized arms ushering me toward the other children. The adults had set up camp in the kitchen, and if I stood in the center of the den, close to the door, I could see them through the hallway. And yet, they appeared completely oblivious of us. 

In the wood-paneled den, Mr. Manrite’s daughter Kate mewed and pawed at the walls. A dozen other kids twisted around the room as witches, firemen, Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls, Darth Vadar, and Strawberry Shortcake. A couple of Smurfs lazed by the toys. Strawberry and Darth licked their Kool-Aid red lips and ran around the den like it was a racetrack. 

“Nice costume,” Kate meowed, and clawed at my foam-padded eight pack with her fingers. “But Superman’s no match for Cat Queen.” We played that we were on Krypton, and that she ruled the universe. As Queen, she made all the rules. “You cross me, I cut your head off.” When she said this, I thought of Alice in Wonderland, the Queen’s arrogant pronouncements.  

Occasionally, I glanced through the doorway and watched as the adults wielded Bloody Marys and tossed their heads back in laughter, showed their teeth. I imagined celery stalks as swords, Bloody Mary blouse stains like blood. I hooked my eyes on Mom chewing at her celery stalk, leaning against a cabinet, looking around the room at the other adults. Some dressed as Disco-themed couples, a nun and a priest, Han Solo and Princess Leia, Elvis and Priscilla, a couple of policemen, and two nurses. Two by two. She looked like I imagined she looked at work, lost in thought, a little bored of typing and answering phones. 

On the other side of the island, Kate’s mom wore her Rockette outfit like a second skin, smoked a long cigarette, and giggled at Han Solo’s jokes. Occasionally, she steadied herself by placing one hand on a countertop. She reminded me of Dad when he’d had too much beer, glassy eyed, and a little wobbly.  

In the playroom, when Kate tired of her Kryptonian dictatorship, she ordered Darth Vadar and Strawberry Shortcake to tie the fireman to a wooden chair. They both smiled, and their teeth shone bright white against their red-stained mouths. They pulled his arms behind him, bound them with a rope. My heart beat faster, and my thoughts jumbled. I feigned helping by holding the chair steady. Superman fought for justice.

“Each one of you have to hit him,” Kate said. Darth Vadar didn’t hesitate and whacked the fireman across the cheek. 

I looked around, guilty, nervous. I didn’t want to hit this little kid, who looked a few years younger than us and scared. The freckles on his left cheek dotted into a curved line, like the Big Dipper.   

Thwack! Kate slapped his cheek. 

The fireman started to whimper and then to cry, and Darth Vadar scurried to the other side of the room. I couldn’t think straight with the music so loud. Some singer cooed on and on about wings and flying. It made me angry. I wanted to hulk my way out of this mess, to save this kid from humiliation. I needed to turn green, smash something in the room, scare them all, like Dad used to back when he lived with us. 

After the sun set, and Dad started drinking, he transformed. First, his eyes looked different; his eyelids half-mast, that far-away, dead look. It was like he was watching his own movie or peeking into a kaleidoscope, fighting a battle inside his head. Then, the fist holes in the wall, cracked plaster, blooming into dust, right next to the family photo on the wall. It showed the two of them smiling, cuddling me, a newborn, pink-lipped, bald. Sometimes, late at night, or just before I woke up, I remembered the shouting turned to THUD! or BOOM! and then quiet. Finally, the low, muffled crying. I wasn’t sure if it was Mom or if it was Dad. The next day, Mom’s eye black and blued, her lip sliced, like she wore a single stripe of red lipstick. 

Then, Strawberry Shortcake jammed a pencil halfway up the fireman’s nose, and Kate shrieked, “WOWSA!” The fireman yelped, began to cry harder, the Big Dipper all swallowed up with wetness. Darth Vadar sauntered back over, tempted by the torture. He tickled the fireman, grabbed, and pushed at his middle. The fireman giggled, at first, and then started to cry, harder this time.  

I thought I might hulk right then and there if I didn’t escape, so I wandered down the hallway, peered into several rooms that looked like bedrooms. Further down, I saw a light on, and my heartbeat quickened. For some reason, I treaded quietly as I got closer to what sounded like laughter. Through the crack in the doorway, I saw Mr. Manrite and Mom, Lex Luther pinning Wonder Woman against the wall, her chin in the air. A fly on a board. 

“Not here,” she said, her eyeglasses off, her cheeks flushed. 

“Come on, baby,” Mr. Manrite said, and he folded his hand around her breast, kissed her, and pressed her against the wall again.  

I backed away so quietly a mouse couldn’t have heard me. The bathroom was the next door in the long hallway, and I thrust myself in there. I didn’t turn the lights on. K-Thunk-K-Thunk-K-Thunk. My heart pounded in my ears. My breath stuck in my chest, like a rope tightening around my ribs, and my whole body ran hot like a fever. The backs of my knees sweated. I remembered Wayne Robinson’s dad’s Playboys that he secret showed me when I spent the night at his house, the women’s bodies exposed, breasts with pink half dollar sized nipples, their legs open wide, everything on display. I didn’t want to think about Mom like that, but my mind let loose with images that sped like a race car: Lex Luther at home with us, lying on top of Mom, her thrashing beneath him; Lex Luther smashing the walls with those fat arms; Lex Luther holding his hand over my mouth while I screamed for help, telling me the neighbors might hear, don’t wake the goddamn neighbors. Hot, wet tears ran down my face. I punched the top of the white, shiny toilet seat and winced at the pain. 

“Don’t cry you dumb baby. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.” I balled my fists and hit myself in the gut. I breathed in slowly. I stared at my red-rimmed eyes in the mirror. I watched as I moved my eyebrows up and then down, how they arched like my father’s. My lips were full like his, the venom he spewed from them forever etched in my memory. My cheeks resembled my mother’s, dimpled, smooth like a baby. Naïve. I wondered then what kind of man I would be. One day. What was written in the stars. Would I become more and more like my father, the bully, the hulk? Or, would I become something all my own, something different? 

When I heard yelling, I realized I’d been in the bathroom for a while, and I hurried back to the den. Mr. Manrite and his wife, the Rockette, and what appeared to be the fireman’s parents, stood in the den’s doorway. 

“He was the one who wanted to be caught,” Kate yelled, and added, “I didn’t know he would pee his pants.” 

The fireman huddled with his mother, his front wet with urine, his face red and blotchy from crying. He looked even younger than he did in the torture chair. 

“Miss Kate Manrite, what do you have to say for yourself?” Mrs. Manrite slurred. She scrunched up her face and pursed her lips. I wondered if that’s how she would look and sound if she caught Mr. Manrite and Mom together. Or, if, maybe, Mr. Manrite would push her against the wall, blame her for his lonesomeness. Tell her it was all her fault. 

“Kids will be kids, isn’t that right?” Mr. Manrite tousled the fireman’s hair, and the fireman looked down at the floor. I thought I might have heard him crying again. I wanted the fireman to sock Mr. Manrite in the face, stand up to him, something, but he didn’t. The fireman’s parents ushered him out of the den, and they disappeared into the sea of partygoers. Kate looked at me and smiled, looked up at her dad, beaming with admiration. I wanted to scream, let loose a wild sound from my belly. 

On the way home, in the Dart, Mom pulled on a brown jacket over her costume. She’d transformed into a human again, as she squinted to see the road in front of her, as the rain beat hard against the windshield. 

“You’re quiet, Lovie.” She pushed at her glasses that kept falling down her nose. 

I stayed silent.

“That little fireman looked upset,” she said. 

“He deserved it.” 

“Jonah, that’s an awful thing to say.” She glanced quickly in my direction, as the wipers swish-swashed-swish-swashed-swish-swashed in rhythm. 

I punched my fist against the window. I didn’t know what else to do, what to say. 

“Jonah, stop that. Stop that now.” 

I punched the window again harder this time. I kept punching. Harder. The fire in my throat, in my belly had moved to my knuckles. Relief. I wanted to break it, to feel the satisfaction of watching the glass smash into tiny shards, raining like diamonds against the ebony sky, cutting my skin a thousand times, leaving cherry red lipstick-colored stains on my arms, my chest, my face.   

About the Author

Callie G. Mauldin is a fiction writer from Birmingham, Alabama. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Phoebe, Pithead Chapel, Jabberwock Review, and Fiction Southeast. She won the 2023 Nancy D. Hargrove Editors’ Prize in Fiction, was a finalist in Phoebe’s Spring Fiction Contest, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.