But lying, now that was an equal-opportunity activity. Other venerable traditions, like burning our neighbors alive, casting a ballot, or taking communion alongside white Christians, had long been denied us. For black people in the 1960s, even less welcomed as full-fledged members of society than we are today, yarn-spinning presented a rare American ritual in which we could freely participate. They were lighthearted fabrications inspired and shaped by the stories we heard at the feet of our fathers, in barbershops and on front porches, at barbecues and ball games. Our lies and tall tales usually revolved around girls or athletic exploits and were only occasionally malicious.
I appreciated the way it transformed people into the very thing they were accused of. The local dialect turned you’re a liar into you a lie, a contraction I found irresistible despite my father’s prohibitions. If we caught someone making an assertion without evidence to back it up, we unleashed our vernacular and let the culprit have it. We gave as well as we got, diving into the exchange of insults and threats like stragglers in the desert plunging into a sparkling oasis. No such codes existed beyond our front yard, and the streets presented delectable opportunities to mix it up with the neighborhood kids. Words that hardly raised other parents’ eyebrows could quickly draw his ire, words like butt, funk, and especially-inexplicably- liar. His catalogue of deplorable lingo was expansive and, to our considerable confusion, unpredictable. My father’s admonishment was calmly but pointedly delivered, and even now my ears burn at the memory of it. Once, in the middle of an argument, I told my brother to drop dead. Lazy enunciation, insults, and vulgarities were the blunders most likely to set him off. But proper speech was an area he patrolled with diligence, and his radar was remarkably sensitive. A schoolteacher with a reputation for discipline, he wasn’t remotely as stern as my friends imagined. Slung with the casual malice that only bickering siblings can summon, Liar! somehow set off a warning beacon, alerting my father wherever he was. In my childhood home, we were not allowed to call each other liars.
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