Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva Read Free Page A

many of them as I could.
    I’d been a good girl and done what everyone wanted, hadn’t I? I deserved it. I stood in the open doorway and ate the entire jar with my fingers, then tipped the glass to my lips to drink the juice.
    “Debbie!” Paige was at the kitchen door, in a panic. “Do your parents let you drink olive juice like that?”
    “Yup!”
    It wasn’t really a lie. My parents had never told me not to drink olive juice like that. I didn’t think I was doing anything bad. But by the time my parents got home I was already in big trouble. Like Violet in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , who turns blue from the blueberry pie gum, I was as green as the olives.
    When Dad drove Paige home she ratted me out, describing myspectacular act of gluttony to him. Meanwhile, back in my bedroom, Mom had shoved the family’s silver barf bowl in front of me. By the time Dad returned, I was heaving olives and pimentos into the polished dish. Eating and drinking a jar of olives clearly wasn’t the smartest thing to do, and I was learning this lesson the hard way. Unfortunately, Dad didn’t think it was hard enough. He burst into the house fuming and came into the bedroom as I was mid-hurl.
    “Did you tell Paige we allow you to drink olive juice?”
    “Yeah,” I said, weakly, vomit dripping from my mouth.
    “You lied. ”
    “Yeah,” I repeated, gagging.
    “You lied to someone . . . from our church !” Dad continued, stepping closer to me. For the first time in my life I was afraid of what he might do to me.
    “I’m sorry,” I squeaked.
    “Never mind sorry. You are going to get a spanking, because we don’t lie in this family.”
    I had never been spanked before; I’d never needed one. Perhaps I should have quoted my alter ego, Eliza: “I’m a good girl, I am.” My father took another step toward me, and my mother put her hand on his arm.
    “Bob, she’s sick, she’s learned her lesson and she said she’s sorry. That’s enough. Let it go.” My father hesitated.
    “This won’t happen again, right, Debbie?” Mom asked.
    I nodded, and Mom ushered Dad out of the room. He didn’t say another word to me. Mom stayed up with me for the next few hours—emptying the silver barf bowl, bringing me water, and putting cool compresses on my forehead.
    Eating the olives and lying about it to Paige was a bad thing, I got that. But what had really set my father off was that his good little church daughter had lied to someone from church. I had embarrassed and disgraced him, and, along with being prideful, that was the worst thing you could do.
    “Debbie,” my mother asked again, trying to soothe the both of us, “do you promise not to lie like that again? We don’t want your father to be angry.”
    I nodded.
    But there was something else going on with me, something much more troubling than lying, something my parents were completely missing.
    I had just experienced my very first out-of-control food binge with no idea where it came from or what it meant. And I had a horrible sense of dread that I had opened a dangerous door somewhere deep inside of me that could not be shut.

( 2 )
Jesus Loves Me
    FOR MY ENTIRE childhood, my mother was on a diet.
    Some days she ate hard-boiled eggs and tomatoes. Other days it was cottage cheese and grapefruit with Melba toast. At least once a month she’d go on a water-only fast for a day or two, or spend a week whipping up odd-looking pink shakes. One time the lid flew off the blender and the pink stuff spewed out like it was projectile-vomiting Pepto-Bismol.
    When she wasn’t weighing, measuring, or blending her food, she was “sweating off” the calories. This was the sixties, and women weren’t flocking to the local Pilates studios in their lululemon yoga pants yet. Housewives stretched and crunched using broomsticks while watching Jack LaLanne on TV, or they devised their own homemade methods. My mother was a firm believer that fat drained from the body out of the pores