Muckrakers
- Feb 28, 2025
- 4 min read
by Claire Guo
They say I came from a lineage of muckrakers, men and women who lived in the dirt of others. When I was born, I emerged from rot and magazine headlines, scornfully red and already screaming about extramarital affairs, about someone’s unpaid speeding ticket. My mother knew at once that I would be a successful journalist because I clamped my toothless mouth to her teat and didn’t let go, even when she smeared hot sauce over the reddened nipple. A fine specimen, she declared to the confused doctor, then coughed up dirt on his wife.
They say my mother came from a family of renown, before the age of the internet swabbed her ancestry clean of dignity. I have heard that my grandfather, who broke the news of sliced bread, died after seeing a google page load an image of a hairless cat. The medical diagnosis was a stroke, from extreme stress. Nowadays anyone could publish an article about the hairy mole allegedly growing on Rockefeller’s chin, no fact-checking or radicalism or identification necessary. Throughout my childhood my mother lamented this fact as she plastered her face on as many billboards as she could, confiscating her right to anonymity as she made her claims so that I drove to school under the blinding white of her photoshopped teeth, her eyelashes clumping together with cheap mascara, the lazy graffiti crawling along her chin like rust.
They say my mother made up everything she ever wrote, but I know that’s not true. My mother clung to her principles. She researched everything diligently and refused to use the internet. The only source she ever relied on was her own two eyes. There are many weekends I remember where we practiced her hobby together — following — or rather, stalking, our bodies crumbling together with excitement as we thumbed through our repertoire of newsworthy scandals. We drove her beat-up red Toyota Camry. We made sure to be conspicuous on the highway as we weaved towards the Kardashian’s mansions, the Oval Office, the In N Out with UFO sightings, my father’s house. Let’s do this quick, yeah, she said. She had wild hair, like a tornado of twigs. Just enough time to get what we need. We pressed our faces to the dirt, the only place we truly felt at home and listened to the roots tumble with gossip. They had so much to say. I noted down the drama from the Kardashians to tell my friends; my mother listened intently to the gravel of my father’s front lawn: if he’d cheated, if he had a new girlfriend, if he’d gotten engaged with the previous one.
They say my father divorced my mother when she found out that he was a raging diabetic and a gambling addict. That day, my mother cursed the lineage coursing through us for sparing no one, not even her husband. It was well known among the muckrakers that there was no such thing as a good person, or even a happy one, only people leaking dirt from their pockets or those who shoved it down their underpants and dealt with the chafing. My father was the latter. Maybe he thought we wouldn’t realize. After he left us in a perfume of shame and indignation, my mother took me to the laundromat down the street. We sat within the thundering of the machines, trying to feel normal. We used to write about the important things, like suffrage, my mother said, as she sank her head between the sharp jut of her shoulders. Her hair tripped over her face. Outside, dusk feathered the sky, and people were walking their dogs, trailing dirt like matching leashes from their pockets or pant cufflinks.
They say my mother cried. I can neither deny nor confirm. History tells us muckrakers were strong, progressive, and heroic, but I can only testify to their shadows on cracked sidewalks, my mother’s back curled into the hum of a washing machine, a failed marriage clutched between her fists. Her exposés were short and teethed full of pain. She didn’t write many willingly. At school, I was both feared and adored; my stories traded like sticks of gum, tacky with artificial flavor, my wrath noted duly by rounded pencils digging into lined paper. I knew everything, including that Milly called me busybody behind my back, that my existence was dedicated to the ruination of others.
She doesn’t understand, I decided. What about us? Look at my mother. At night she cleans her palate with tears, in the bathroom with the door locked, when she thinks I cannot hear. And my grandfather, who died because of a stroke. They say I punched Milly in the face and gave her black eye and buried her into the dirt, so maybe she could hear the sounds of lies and filth fossilized into facades, into people, into horror, and who could stand it if that was all they saw? They say Milly cried. They say I laughed and hollowed my guts of newspaper headlines. But then again, people say many things, and not all of it is always true.
Claire Guo is a writer based in San Jose, California. She has been recognized by the Adroit Prizes in Prose and published in the New York Times. Outside of writing, you can find her daydreaming, crocheting or playing tennis.
