Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva (3 page)

In the summer she’d put on her bathing suit and mow the lawn, then get down on all fours and pull weeds until she was dripping and aching. Then she’d come inside, turn off the fans (no air-conditioning for us back then), and clean the house in the stifling humidity while the rest of us nearly passed out.

“Oh, Debbie, I’ve got to get this weight off me,” she’d say,
catching a glimpse of her bathing-beauty figure in the hall mirror as she went up and down the stairs.

My mother was by no means overweight. True, she wasn’t the skinny-minny type like the supermodel Twiggy, who was all the rage at the time. Mom had a voluptuous and curvy figure that, a decade earlier, when the blonde in style was Marilyn, most women would’ve killed for. I’m sure my father appreciated it back then, but apparently she’d put on a few pounds after having kids, and so she was in a constant battle to take them off to please him. My dad was on her case about it from the moment they got married. We didn’t want her to get as big as Grandma Voigt, did we?

Grandma Voigt was a stout size 18 for most of her life, but Dad didn’t inherit her fleshy genes, and neither did my two lanky brothers. All three of them could wolf down two helpings of Mom’s meatloaf and potatoes and never gain an ounce.

For Mom, though (and, later, for me), Dad was on constant diet patrol. I had a nickname for him by the time I got to my teens: the Food Marshal. He’d limit the junk food that entered the house, and if he ever caught Mom sneaking a bite of her favorite peanut-caramel candy bar, PayDay, which she kept hidden in her purse, he’d say with much concern in his voice, “Joy, honey. Do you
really
think you need that?”

Mom would shake her head no, then wrap it up and put it back in her purse, smacking her lips.

AS FOR ME
, with the exception of my inexplicable and shocking olive-juice bender—which would come back to haunt me as an adult in the form of too many dirty martinis—I was a normal kid who ate normal portions of regular kid food—toast with melted cheese for breakfast, a tuna sandwich for lunch (with Mom’s love notes tucked in). I didn’t place any special importance on food. I could be a picky eater, so sometimes I was even ordered to finish my dinner, especially on Friday fish nights.

“Debbie, eat your fish sticks. Show me you’re a member of the Clean Plate Club,” Dad would say, when he saw me toying with my food.

“But I’m not hungry.”

“It doesn’t matter. Eat it all up anyway.”

The cues I got about food confused me. My mother starved herself, but I was told to eat when I wasn’t hungry. But I shouldn’t eat too much, and it shouldn’t be the wrong, “bad” food—just the food that was sanctified by my parents. And still, not too much of it. It felt like my music rules: don’t be too exuberant or showy, and definitely not about the “wrong” type of music. If you crossed that blurry line, with either music or food, you were greedy, selfish, and undisciplined. Both were passions, appetites, I had to control.

I was somewhat clear on the music rules—I should sing songs about God, for God, in front of God, and because of God. But I wasn’t so sure whom I ate for, or how to do it right: I ate too many olives, but not enough fish sticks. I got love notes with my tuna sandwiches, but a disapproving look when I reached for a third cookie. I wasn’t chubby, but neither was my mother. And yet she and Dad were continually worried about what she put into her mouth and how it ended up on her pretty, young body.

I did my best to navigate my way around the powerful and dangerous world of food. The last thing I wanted was for my father to be angry at me, or to say to me the chastising words he said to my mother.

THE FIRST TIME
my weight became an issue was after I got home from a two-week vacation with Grandma Helen and Grandpa Henry Gruthusen, when I was about six years old. We’d spent two weeks by a lake in Ely, Minnesota, and, apparently, I’d returned home rounder than usual. I remember hopping onto my mother’s piano bench while my shocked parents led my grandparents into the kitchen for a private conversation. I could hear them, though.

“What did you feed Debbie?” my mother asked. My father said something, too, and it sounded angry. Being of good German stock, my grandparents fed me the same food they loved to eat—bacon, sausages, and pancakes, which I happily wolfed down without the Food Marshal around. After dinner, Grandpa Gruthusen took my brother and me to the public sauna, and I was sure whatever “bad” food I had eaten was draining from my pores, just like it did for Mom. Apparently, it didn’t do the trick, and from that point on, my parents took even more interest in what I ate.

I wanted to be good, but it wasn’t easy. I had diverted my interest in music to the church, and that had worked. Perhaps I needed supernatural distraction from food, too?

My timing was perfect, because this was right around the time Dad introduced “devotional time” at home. Mom was expecting my baby brother Kevin, and it was time, Dad said, we all learned more about our faith as a family. I was glad for the extra reinforcement to keep me on the disciplined path and help me suppress any lurking food benders threatening to surface.

Every night, after dinner, Dad would gather us all in the living room and read from the Bible. He’d tell us about David and Goliath and Noah and the Ark, and my brother and I were in awe and full of questions.

“Dad, how did Noah find the kangaroos?” I asked. “And did the penguins walk all the way from the North Pole?”

I was a precocious child, and Dad didn’t have all the answers. But I had faith in him that whatever he was telling me was the God’s honest truth.

I WAS INSPIRED
by my father’s religious example, and further motivated by a missionary who visited our church to talk about her work spreading the word of God in Kenya. After one Sunday sermon, she showed us slides of the village where she’d been stationed and pictures of the little African children she taught to love
Jesus. I was amazed at this stranger’s boldness—that she’d choose to be single and venture out to preach God’s word by herself, so far from home; how unconventional, how melodramatic, how selfless, how . . .
adventurous
.

She was the first grown-up woman I’d met who was different from my mother, except for my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Bieber, who was statuesque, divorced, and wore tight sweaters and colorful scarves wrapped around her hair. Both these women lived on their own terms, but this missionary used her teaching skills for God, just as I did my music. I was hooked. The next day at school I hatched a plan.

“Meet me by the fence during recess,” I whispered to my classmates within earshot of my desk. “We’re gonna have Bible study.”

I had no idea what religion my classmates were, if any at all—it was a public school, so for all I knew I was gathering a bunch of Jewish kids to convert to Christ. The bell rang and we met under the big oak tree; my followers sat cross-legged in a circle as I began my ministry.

“I have to tell you all,” I said, holding up my children’s Bible in one hand, “you are all going to the devil if you don’t become Christians right now.”

“What?” asked one terrified pal.

“You have to be born again!”

“How do you do that?” asked another.

“Well, Jesus died on the cross for our sins.”

“What’s a sin?”

Sigh.
Didn’t they know anything?

“It’s when you lie to your mommy, or . . . taking a cookie from the cookie jar when you’re not supposed to, or . . . drinking all the olive juice.”

“The
what
?”

“You’ll burn up in fire for all of eternity.”

I’d heard the minister say words like this, and they seemed effective in church. My audience was rapt, and I emoted the scene
beautifully. I even wore the perfect costume: my homespun, patriotic sundress with the red, white, and blue flowers on it that Mom made. I was so into my role, I’m surprised I didn’t think to take an offering—missed that opportunity.

But try as I might, my passion didn’t sway my friends. They were not as committed as I. When Good Friday and Easter came around, I’d cry, thinking about what Jesus had done to save me. Such a sacrifice appealed to me on a dramatic, soul-searching level. So much so, that one day I took the leap.

I had seen people become “born again” on Sundays when the minister called people forward as we all sang “Just As I Am.”

“Is the Lord speaking to you?” he’d call out to the crowd, “do you feel a moving in your heart for something else? If so, come up!”

Going up to the front and formally accepting Jesus as your savior was the first step to becoming a Christian in our faith. If I was serious about God, I had to do it.

In Sunday school, soon after, as the class colored pictures of Mary and Joseph, I looked up at the portrait of Jesus on the wall. He was handsome, with long, blondish hair and electric-blue eyes. I couldn’t wait for the sermon call; the time was now. I sprung from my seat and strode down the aisle toward my teacher.

“Mrs. Heggland, I want to accept Jesus as my savior!” I blurted out, breathless.

She looked up at me over her bifocals—surprised at first, as if she wasn’t prepared for such a responsibility, and then very, very serious.

“Debbie, are you saying you’d like the Holy Spirit to live in your heart?”

I nodded. Yup.

“Do you understand that Jesus died for your sins?”

I thought of my olive binge; what a thing to die for—but I was grateful. The other kids in class were now watching from their seats, transfixed at the scene being played out in their very own classroom.
Some in the back strained to hear the dialogue, so I pumped up my volume. I clasped my hands together, as if in a prayer. And in a clear voice, from deep within my diaphragm, I projected:

“Yes, I do. I understand that, Mrs. Heggland. Jesus died for my sins.”

“Well, then, Debbie,” she said, looking very pleased, “sit down with me and let’s pray.”

After class, she went to my parents in church and let them know of my Big Moment. Yes, I had done it all by myself, she bragged to them. Yes, yes, in front of the entire class! No, I wasn’t nervous at all, she added. I was a natural.

In keeping with Dad’s and my new zeal, our family started attending sermons twice on Sundays. After the first sermon, we’d come home, lay our nice clothes on the bed so they wouldn’t get wrinkled, then hop in the station wagon to pick up a bucket of Brown’s Chicken in nearby Chicago. This was the big family treat of the week, and even Mom was permitted to splurge. Then it was back home, have a nap, put on our Sunday best again, and back to church for the five p.m. show.

Now that I was getting older, I listened to the pastor’s words more intently.

“You are all born sinners!” he’d yell, pointing to us from the pulpit. “You must repent!”

He urged us to examine our actions and consciences and ask the Lord for forgiveness and strength to correct the wrongs we’d done. If we didn’t, we’d suffer those fires in hell forever. I was scared, and wondered: Was I a sinner? Did I deserve to be punished?

Around the time Dad instituted devotional time, he also introduced spanking into my childhood curriculum. I was basically a good kid, but I got spanked anyway. I never knew when I was going to get it, because I was never sure when I’d done something bad. At any time he could approach me in my room and let me know I deserved a spanking.

He’d sit down on my bed and put me over his knee and whack hard on my bare behind using his hand. The spanking came with a running commentary.

“You’re getting a . . . WHACK . . . spanking . . . WHACK . . . Do you know why . . . WHACK . . . you’re being . . . WHACK . . . punished? I want you . . . WHACK . . . to tell me . . . WHACK . . . what you did . . . WHACK, WHACK, WHACK . . . wrong . . .”

Hell was being unleashed onto my bare bottom; that I was sure of. What I had done wrong—I had no clue. Maybe I wasn’t good enough, or smart enough, or pretty enough, or slim enough. If I didn’t answer him the spanking went on longer, so I soon learned to mumble something incoherent, anything, just to end it.

At night, I began to start my bedtime prayers like this: “Jesus, forgive me of my sins . . .”

THE FOLLOWING YEAR
, I started to feel sick in the mornings. I had a stomachache, my head hurt, any number of symptoms a kid could think of to stay in bed. Sometimes I really was sick, sometimes I was pretending. I wanted to stay home with my mother, I was afraid to leave her. I wasn’t sure if it was for my own sake or for hers. I felt an impending doom, a fear that I couldn’t pinpoint.

“Mom, what will you do without me if I leave the house?” I asked her one morning, lying in a fetal position in bed and clutching my stomach.

“Honey, what are you talking about? Now c’mon, don’t you feel well enough to go to school today? You’ve already missed two days this week.”

She took me to the doctor and I had a battery of tests and X-rays that showed nothing wrong with me. Not physically, anyway. My mother was worried about me, and I was consumed with worry for both of us.

I’d always felt protective of her, ever since that time she was
packing our bags when I was three and Dad loomed in the doorway. I felt her fragility, as if I should be mothering her, instead of the other way around. I felt as though she was too young to struggle in this harsh, adult world, and I didn’t want anyone to hurt her, be it my father or a stranger.

Another incident from around that time compounded my concern. We didn’t have a washer-dryer at home then, and Mom recently had baby number three, my brother Kevin. She and Dad were struggling to make ends meet; and she was extra-stressed because my father was away a lot for his job, leaving her on her own with the three of us. That day, with our last few hundred dollars in the bank, Mom had bought some much-needed clothes for my brothers and me, and after our shopping expedition, she’d taken us to the Laundromat to wash the new clothes. We watched them spin in the wash, then went grocery shopping while they dried. When we returned, the dryer was empty—someone had stolen our stuff.

With Kevin in her arms, Mom collapsed atop a beat-up foldout chair next to the dryers and sobbed. “They didn’t even wait for our clothes to
dry
. . .”