It was one of the only days I’d ever seen my mother clean the house.

Not only did she clean the house, but she got out the fancy plates and the embroidered placemats and the gaudy silverware that had been sitting in a closet since my parents got married. All this effort was her attempt at securing a promotion at work; her boss was coming over for dinner, and of course she had talked to me about being on my best behavior. At 11 years old, I had the inability to understand the significance of a promotion, let alone the significance of eating dinner with the boss who had the power to give it.

Showtime was nearing, and while mom plastered on make-up in the bathroom and dad finished chopping vegetables, I sat at the table and picked at the cheese plate. Dad sauntered in with a giant bowl of salad, and after setting it down he opened the wine cupboard adjacent to the table. He produced a bottle of wine with a label bearing an elephant wearing a tutu. At my age, I still hadn’t grasped the concept of alcoholic beverages (since they so rarely made an appearance before my bedtime), and the label on the bottle tricked me into thinking it was juice—something made for children.

“Daddy, can I have some of that?” I asked, holding up a glass from the table.

Dad laughed, and headed back into the kitchen. “That’s wine, sweetie. Only adults can drink that. Let me get something else for you.”

He reappeared in the dining room with a corkscrew and a pitcher of Kool-aid and poured a neon green concoction into my glass. I took a sip, but my eyes were still glued to the bottle of wine. “What’s wine taste like?”

The pause before he answered indicated this was his first time describing the taste of wine. “It’s bitter. It tastes like juice, without the sugar.”

“Can I try some?”

Dad tilted his head toward the stairs. He was undoubtedly checking to see if his more conservative better half was headed down yet, and when he heard the hiss of a hairspray can upstairs, he grabbed the bottle. “I guess just a little taste couldn’t hurt ya.”

He opened the bottle and picked up another glass and poured a small amount—maybe a tablespoon full—of wine into it. I took it from him and gulped it down, unaware of the fact that wine may taste like sugarless juice but is not meant to be guzzled in the same manner. I wish I could have seen the face I produced. Dad laughed and journeyed toward the buzzing timer in the kitchen.

No, the wine didn’t taste pleasant. Not in the least. But something drew me to it. It made me feel sophisticated (after all, mom and dad only stocked the wine cabinet for special occasions). It made me feel mature (after all, if there was one thing I knew about wine it was that I was not old enough to drink it). I peered around the corner into the kitchen, where dad was poking at a steaming hot chicken. It was obvious he was going to be occupied for at least a few moments; so, I grabbed the wine bottle and poured a little more into my glass.

At first I was just pretending. To me, it was the equivalency of little girls playing “tea party.” I imagined dining with a queen or a supermodel, and chicly drinking wine and talking about world peace. I was, in a way, a method actor, ignoring the taste of every sip so as to truly feel I was drinking wine with a classy, important woman. Then I looked down and saw that I had finished off round two.

In the kitchen, dad was slicing and peppering and perfecting the chicken. He began to hum the theme to “The Simpsons” and I knew that he would return to the real world only after the last of the food had been placed on the table. The tick of the clock above me became annoying. But what could I do but sit there and mind my manners? I was, after all, told to be on my best behavior that evening.

I figured I was staying out of trouble as long as I remained seated at the table. Dad wandered in, wiping his hands on his apron and peering at the clock. “Doing alright there, kiddo?” he asked. I nodded, and he peeled his apron off. “I’m going to go wash up. Listen for the doorbell, okay?”

I ate another piece of cheese. I picked up my spoon and made funny faces at my distorted reflection. I counted to three hundred (I would have gone further, had I not been at risk for boring myself to death). I turned around and glanced at the clock. Five minutes had passed since dad left the room, yet I felt as if I’d been sitting there for hours. And that bottle of wine sat there in front of me, and mom and dad were upstairs laughing together about something, and I was bored. I poured myself a third dose of wine.

Now, my second dose had been more than my first—maybe a few ounces, enough for a couple of big swigs. This was enough, for a short, stick-thin 11-year-old, to cause a little wooziness and to begin inhibiting judgment, at least slightly. All of this is to say that I may have poured a little too much wine into my glass the third time around. While mom and dad were upstairs thinking about a promotion, I was downstairs sipping on wine and thinking about sitting in a castle and speaking with a fancy accent.

Two glasses sat before me on the table: one was empty, and the other still glowed with lime Kool-aid. I heard footsteps on the stairs and immediately pushed the wine bottle away from me, as if to disguise any evidence.

The problem was, the wine bottle was not the real evidence. I was my own evidence. Mom came in, straightening her necklace so that the clasp rested on the back of her neck, and asked me to complete the simplest of tasks: “Honey, can you go into the kitchen and find some napkins to set on the table?”

As I said, the simplest of tasks. You get up, you go into the kitchen, you open the drawer where the napkins are kept, and you remove them and carry them back into the other room. Or in my case, you make it one and a half steps before falling flat on your face and giggling like a hyena at a comedy club.

Mom ran to me, believing at first I was crying rather than laughing. I managed to stand up and mom began frantically licking her hand and smoothing down my now messy hair. Then she asked, “What happened, did you trip?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, even though I wasn’t really sure how I’d ended up on the floor. I made a second attempt at walking to the napkin drawer in the kitchen, and was successful—almost.

I opened the drawer, which contained not only napkins but also paper plates, toothpicks, and plastic silverware. The funny thing about alcohol is its ability to make you forget something that would otherwise make you look prematurely senile. I must have stared at the contents of that drawer for at least two or three minutes, before deciding my mother must have asked for toothpicks, and I headed back to the table with a box of multi-colored toothpicks in my hand.

Meanwhile, mom was checking last-minute details, like making sure the porch light was on and that there was plenty of toilet paper in the bathroom. When she came back into the dining room, I was reseated at the table. “I thought I asked you to get napkins?” She sounded confused.

Realizing my mistake, I played dumb. “You did?”

“Yes, just a minute ago. Have you just been sitting here?”

I racked my brain for excuses and explanations, but she saw the box of toothpicks before I ever created a good one. “Did your dad put these on the table?”

Perfect. I’d blame it on dad. I nodded my head.

“Well, put them in a nice glass dish or something, this looks tacky. And while you’re at it, make sure you grab those napkins.” She reached out to hand the box to me, and I reached out to grab it. But, as with many situations involving alcohol, things didn’t go quite as planned. I never did grab the box of toothpicks; instead, I ended up falling face-first after sliding off my chair.

And then, the worst of it happened. Mom wasn’t too happy with my falling off the chair, and she’d certainly grown suspicious of my slightly odd behavior. She grabbed me by the wrist and helped me up, and then I saw a look in her eyes I’ve never seen before. I’m sure it was meant to intimidate me, but I let a giggle slip out.

“Listen,” she scolded me, “you might think this is funny right now. But we had a talk about your manners tonight. Do you remember what we talked about?”

I nodded, trying hard to keep eye contact.

“What did we decide the punishment would be if your behavior was out of line?”

Normally, a reminder of this punishment (grounded and forced to dust every piece of furniture in the house—blech!) would have scared some sense into me. Apparently the fear of punishments is voided under the influence of wine, because my response to her was this: “I don’t need no punishment, lady, I can do what I want!” And I began to shovel cheese cubes into my mouth like they were the last cheese cubes on earth.

Mom let go of my wrist, and stood before me, dumbfounded. Then she inquired, “What do I smell on your breath?”

The sound of dad descending the stairs came traveling into the dining room, and then he joined us as we stood in an awkward silence. Dad began to say something, but he stopped when he saw the odd expression on my mother’s face as she looked in horror at the partially drained wine bottle on the table.

“Honey, was that a new bottle of wine?” she asked, and I could sense the saliva in her mouth begin to boil with anger.

“Yeah, I just opened it after I set the table.”

“And did you drink any of it yet?”

“No…”

The next thing my mother did would have looked great in slow motion. She picked up the bottle and raised it to eye level, where her eyes grew as big as quarters. She swung herself around and held the bottle where dad could see, and his reaction wasn’t much different. Then—and I’m surprised she didn’t drop the bottle—she exclaimed, “My 11-year-old child just drank nearly half a bottle of wine?!”

Bus-ted.

And do you know what I did? I laughed.

And do you know what happened then? The doorbell rang. Mr. Promotion was about to make his appearance.

Mom and dad stared at each other for an unnaturally long period of time before mom finally grabbed my hand. “Honey, get the door,” she said. “I’ll be back down in just a moment.” The next thing I knew, I was being escorted up the stairs (did you know it’s difficult to climb stairs while under the influence?).
“Mom, why are we going upstairs?” I asked just before we reached the second story of the house. Downstairs, I could hear dad playing the role of the good husband as he invited mom’s boss inside and offered to take his coat.

Mom led me into my bedroom and pointed at me, her finger poised like a magic wand of impending doom. “You are going to stay here until my boss is gone. You’ll eat dinner when he leaves. I will not let you ruin this promotion in your current state of mind, you hear me?”

After she descended the stairs, I cracked my door open and listened to the conversation below.

The unfamiliar male voice was commenting on the décor my mother had chosen for the kitchen. And then he said, “Angela, where’s your daughter? You talk about her all the time, I want to finally meet her.”

With no hesitation, mom blurted out, “She’s actually staying with her grandmother right now.” Then I heard silverware clinking against dishes, and knew they were all about to dig into the dinner that was meant to secure my mother’s promotion.

And I sat alone in my room, drunk for the first time, wishing I had the glass of toxic-colored Kool-aid that was sitting on the table, making an obvious liar of my mother.