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 . . .”
THE DAY I proclaimed to Mrs. Heggland that I’d accepted Jesus as my savior I had hoped everything in my life would improve. But I guess God, in His infinite wisdom, wasn’t ready to save me just yet. I had more to learn about being a sinner first.
In fourth grade, my new best friend was the boisterous Sandy Baker, known to all on the block for her raven, untamed hair, and a personality to match. Sandy had been one of my potential converts back in the school playground, but my preaching didn’t take.
Now, two years later, Sandy introduced me to her world. If my home was a house of God and worship, Sandy’s was a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah. After school, we’d go to her place and all hell would break loose.
It began in the kitchen, where we opened the pantry door to reveal boxes and boxes of—oh, joy of joys—brown-sugar-cinnamon Pop-Tarts with vanilla icing. To my eyes? Forbidden fruit! We’d pilfer a box and pour glasses of cherry Kool-Aid, then take it all upstairs on a psychedelic plastic tray (this was 1969, after all) to her bedroom.
Both of Sandy’s parents worked and didn’t get home until dinnertime; she was part of that new generational boom of “latchkey kids.” To be so unsupervised was unusual for me. But even if her parents had been home, they wouldn’t have minded our snack. They were as free-spirited and liberal as mine were strict, which I further discovered when I used the upstairs bathroom for the first time. Across from the toilet on a magazine rack I spied a pair of bunny ears and pulled out the magazine—Playboy.
I nearly fell off the toilet. The closest we came to any photos of a sexual nature in our house was a record in my parents’ collection by Herb Albert’s Tijuana Brass: Whipped Cream & Other Delights. On the front of the album cover was a photo of a nude woman slathered with whipping cream, licking some off her finger. You couldn’t see any of her lady parts, though—they were covered.
I sat on the toilet longer than I needed to, flipping through the Playboy with my mouth open. Here the women were completely naked and unashamed, confident. They were proud of their nakedness—boldly so.
Back in Sandy’s bedroom, our Barbie games took on a playful, X-rated nature. High on sugar and inspired by the bathroom nudies, we married Ken and Barbie and sent them on a honeymoon where they’d rip each other’s clothes off and roll around on each other. Sandy and I would give each other playful pecks on the cheek and hug on the bed, pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend. It was all very innocent, we were curious, as most kids are, and testing the boundaries. Especially for me, it was about being free to follow a natural impulse and express myself—something I couldn’t do at home. We wrote imaginary “love notes” to each other, until my mother found one in my pocket as she got the laundry together one morning. I saw her pull it out and read it:
Dear pretty girl Debbie!
I want to hug and kiss you! You are so pretty! Next time we meet, we’ll do that again!
“Debbie?” Mom turned toward me, still looking at the note in her hand. “What’s this?”
I froze.
“Oh. I don’t know, Mom.”
I didn’t think Sandy and I were doing anything wrong, but I knew my parents might think so. At the ripe age of nine, going on ten, I had already committed three deadly sins—gluttony, pride, and lust—and now I was an experienced liar. That night I asked Jesus to forgive me with extra sincerity.
THE NEXT DAY I woke up inspired. I had accepted Jesus as my savior, but I hadn’t been formally cleansed of my sins and saved. This is what I needed. At the front of the church, we had a big tub of water—the baptismal. It was where you made your commitment to Jesus publicly. The whole baptismal scene appealed to my theatrical nature, I loved watching people get dunked below the water’s surface. When I told my parents and the pastor that I was ready for this step they were very happy, and a date was set. I chose my outfit carefully: plaid culottes and a short-sleeved white shirt—solemn but with a girlish innocence. When the big day arrived, I walked up to the tub of water with a group of others, and when it was my turn, I carefully stepped in. The minister was already waist deep.
He pinched my nose with one hand and with the other dunked me under the surface, then pulled me back up. As I rose in a whoosh, I could hear angels singing from heaven (but really it was the church choir in the balcony). I rubbed my eyes and someone helped me out of the tub. I looked over at Mom and Dad, my brothers, and my grandparents, all smiling and waving from the front pew. They looked proud, and I was proud of myself, too.
As I changed into dry clothes in the back room, I was on a post-performance high. I had been cleansed of my sins, I had saved myself from my bad behaviors. I smiled as I laced up my sneakers. My family was waiting for me outside so we could go home and celebrate with a special chocolate cake in my honor. I quickened my pace; I was really looking forward to a piece or two of that cake. Maybe a little too much.
Oh, if only I knew that my struggles then—food, lust, self-control, self-esteem, pride—would be my same struggles for the next forty years. And that it would take more than a dunk in cold water to wash them away.
( 3 )
Sweet and Innocent
WHATEVER CLEANSING I got from my baptismal dunking didn’t last long.
It was the summer of 1970 and the posters Scotch-taped on my bedroom wall were of a toothy-grinned Donny Osmond and his equally harmless peer, Bobby Sherman, he of the groovy chokers and striped hip-huggers.
But my new idols didn’t pose a problem for my religious life. Their music was as wholesome as their clean-cut, puppy-dog images—especially Donny, whom I loved the best because he was devoutly religious. He may have been Mormon, a denomination I knew nothing about, but he sang for God, and that was good enough for me. I was still singing for God myself. My mother and I had become regular performers at the annual mother-daughter church banquet on Mother’s Day, and we’d harmonize on duets: she was alto and I was soprano. It was great fun, and Mom made us matching empire-waisted maxidresses with puffy sleeves and green felt daisies sprouting from the hemline.
The concern my parents might have had at this point was another new passion of mine—wanting to become a Catholic nun.
With my father out of town a lot for his new sales job, family devotional time had fallen by the wayside and I had begun to look elsewhere to fill the spiritual gap. Through a family friend, I began volunteering after school at a nearby Catholic nursing home run by nuns. I followed the nuns down the urine-scented hallways and handed out glasses of juice and fluffed pillows for the old people. In the process, I became enthralled with a new kind of heroine—the pious nun in her distinctive habit.
Up to then, everything I knew about nuns had come from Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, Sally Field in The Flying Nun, and Audrey Hepburn in A Nun’s Story. I held my breathe when Audrey walked down the church aisle in a white dress and bridal veil, knelt to the floor, and had her gorgeous mane of hair chopped off. I was in awe of her sacrifice.
EVEN THOUGH MY parents had no need to worry about Donny or Bobby and my Tiger Beat pix, they still took precautions. They knew what dangers secular music could lead to. That year, under the Christmas tree, I tore the wrapping paper off my “big” present—and my parents’ weapon of warfare—a brand-new Philips portable record player.
“And this goes with the gift,” my father said, handing me Glen Campbell’s gospel album, Oh Happy Day. I ran my hand along the smooth album cover, speechless. Which was good, because my father had more to say.
“We expect you to play appropriate music. Your mother and I will be the judge of what that is. No rock and roll.”
They didn’t name names on the Do Not Play list, like the Rolling Stones or KISS or Led Zeppelin—they wouldn’t have known those bands, and neither would I. As far as I knew, Glen Campbell was rock and roll. And, again, they needn’t have worried about outside musical forces having a negative influence on me. Forces right at home were already doing that.
I never was a good sleeper as a kid. I’d lie awake for hours, thinking about everything; and I was all ears—too much so for my own good. One night, at around age ten, I was staring at the ceiling and heard what sounded like a loud slap coming from my parents’ room. They had been arguing a lot lately and I was worried my father was hitting my mother.
“Daddy!” I cried out from my room, in tears. “Stop hurting Mommy!”
The noise stopped, and I could hear my parents whispering.
“Debbie,” my father called out. “Mom’s okay, go back to sleep!”
When I got up the next morning, Dad had already gone to work and had left a note for me on the kitchen table. Mom stood by the sink, casually drinking a cup of coffee as I read it.
Dear Debbie . . . the noise you heard last night was not what you thought it was. I love your mother very much and I would never hurt her. Sometimes when mommies and daddies hug at night, they can be loud. . . .
They were loud when they argued as well, especially one night when they were talking about a man we knew from church. This argument had the same recriminating tone as the one when I was three years old and Mom was packing her suitcase. The day after this particular argument, I went skating at a nearby pond with the daughter of the church member Mom and Dad had been arguing about. We raced and twirled on the ice, the pom-poms on our laces bouncing in the air. As we twirled, my friend told me her parents had also been arguing the night before.
“What did your parents argue about?” I asked.
“Your mother. What did your parents argue about?”
“Your father,” I said.
There was nothing more to say. We’d both stopped skating now and were silent, listening to the cutting sounds of other blades scraping and slicing the ice. With just those few words, we understood the gravity of the information we’d just exchanged, and at the same time we knew it was beyond our comprehension. So we skated some more and went home and never spoke about it again to each other.
It was a shock to discover that, like me with my immoral Playboy transgressions, my parents, too, had their secrets—especially since they were so vigilant to present a fastidious, devout image on the surface.
By sixth grade, I uncovered yet another family secret. That year in school we were learning the basics of how babies are made in health class. I was telling my mother about it one day as we drove home from the grocery store.
“Mom, we talked about how long it takes to grow a baby,” I said. “You and Daddy were married in January, and I was born in August . . .”
Over at the steering wheel Mom was looking nervous.
I tapped my fingers on my lap, doing the math: “January, February, March, April, May, June, July . . . and my birthday is August fourth . . .”
I looked up at my mother. “Mom, that’s only seven months!”
You’d think she might have prepared herself ahead of time for when this day arrived, so she could easily assure me, “Oh, honey, you were a premature baby.” Instead, she got flustered and said the first thought that came to mind—anything, to steer me off topic.
“Debbie,” Mom said, as she swerved sharply into our driveway, “don’t count on your fingers, honey, it’s not polite.”
That shut me up, but it didn’t stop me from thinking. I may have been too young to be told the truth, but I was also too smart not to understand the math and what it meant. Just like my chat with my friend at the ice rink, nothing more needed to be said here; the silence spoke volumes. I didn’t bring it up again for years—I could take a hint—but from that moment on, I knew the deal: Mom and Dad got married when she was sixteen because she got pregnant with me.
MEANWHILE, MY OWN sexual curiosity was stirring.
I’d started babysitting for the O’Hearns, whom Mom and Dad knew from the neighborhood, on Saturday nights. They had two adorable, easy kids, a kitchen cupboard full of junk food, and a bedroom drawer packed with erotic photographs and literature. You might say they were a babysitter’s trifecta jackpot. After entertaining the kids for an hour or two, then putting them to bed, I’d head for the master bedroom—a.k.a., the Den of Lust.
My first Saturday there, I was shocked to find, during a preliminary exploration upstairs, that Mr. and Mrs. O’Hearn had a round bed—something I’d never seen before. That in itself was titillating. What do these people do on a round one that you can’t do on a regular square one?
By Saturday number three, I’d found their stash. I was a natural-born snoop, always wanting to see what people had hidden away in their cubbyholes. Maybe I just wanted to know if other people were like my parents and me—showing one proper face to the world but having another, interior, world that was vastly different. Or maybe I was just looking for an outlet for my budding sexuality outside my strict Baptist confines.
Going on twelve, I had already begun to develop, and was wearing what we used to call a “training bra.” Grandma Voigt saw it as a containment device. On nights when we kids would go for sleepovers at her house, the message I got from her was clear: Cover those things up. As bedtime approached
, we’d finish watching TV, and Grandma would say, “Okay, everyone get into your pj’s. Debbie, don’t forget to keep your brassiere on underneath.”
At the O’Hearns, on the other hand, it was all about exposure, not covering up. In the bottom drawer of a bedside table I hit gold—piles of Penthouse magazines and erotic paperbacks. By Saturday number four I’d spread them out on the round bed—with one eye on the bedroom window for approaching headlights and, alternately, on the bedroom door for stirring children—and gobbled them up.
I knew it was wrong to be snooping around other people’s houses, and, worse, looking at and reading pornography. I’m sure even my parents, with their own extracurricular activities, would have been shocked to know their twelve-year-old daughter was doing this. But I couldn’t stop, and I didn’t want to.
Punishment came soon enough. My mother and father had no idea what I was up to, but there was always a feeling in our house that we kids must be doing something wrong, or were about to. I was always on edge—don’t say the wrong thing, don’t do the wrong thing, shut up, be a good girl.
My new mode of punishment that year was to get my mouth washed out with soap when I was “sassy” to my mother—which was anytime I tried to express myself or voice an opinion. That kind of self-confidence was not tolerated in our house.
“Debbie,” Mom might say, “I told you to clean up your room three times.”
“And I heard you all three times.”
(pause)
“Wait until your father gets home.”
My mother was never the one to dole out punishment, that was Dad’s domain. Once he got home, Mom would turn me in and I’d be marched to the bathroom. There, Dad would roll up the sleeves of his crisp, white shirt.
“To the sink, Debbie.”
I’d watch as he methodically rubbed the soap and washrag together under the hot water until the rag was good and soapy. Then he’d wind the rag around the bar to get a good grip and shove it into my mouth.
Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva Page 3
