Me and Fat Glenda

by Lila Perl

  “What he did was still against the law,” Glenda said. “And he didn’t end up going to jail for it or anything. He only got a warning.”

  “That was bad enough. The police were checking up on him plenty for a long time.”

  “Well, he deserved it.”

  “Listen,” Roddy said, “you just take back what you said about Bruce throwing the eggs.”

  “I only said ‘maybe.’ ”

  “Take it back.”

  “I didn’t say he …”

  “Yes you did.”

  Glenda dropped her head so nobody could see her face. “Well … about that … maybe I was wrong. Maybe he …”

  Glenda stopped abruptly. The headlights of a car, driving slowly and very close to the curb, swept down the street toward where we stood. Somebody screamed, “They’re coming back! Look out, everybody.” And we all began to run, thinking about flying eggs, and Beast, and the other big kids who might be with him.

  And then the car stopped in front of the house and the headlights dimmed, and I saw that it was Inez and Drew in the borrowed station wagon.

  They got out of the car and at first they didn’t seem to notice the egg all over the house, the wreckage of “Stovepipes,” or Glenda, or even the bunch of kids standing around on the sidewalk. They just seemed to see me, and Inez ran over to me and said, “Sara baby, thank heaven you’re safe. I rang and rang the phone and there was no answer. No Toby. No you. What on earth’s been happening here?”

  13

  It seemed as though Mom and Pop and Glenda and I, and Toby who got a lift home in the car with Bruce (who, Toby said, really had been at the party with him all evening) were up most of the night scrubbing the egg off the house.

  Toby and Pop kept looking anxiously over toward “Stovepipes” while they brought ladders and started scrubbing the upper part of the house. They had both been tight-lipped when they first saw the damage. But once they got past the shock they began to talk quietly about “Stovepipes,” and I could tell they were already thinking about the next day and about reconstructing it.

  Glenda insisted on helping clean the egg off the house because she said she had a lot of experience and also because, if you didn’t do it right away, it dried on and was even harder to get off.

  When I asked Glenda if her mother had phoned the police after their house was hit by eggs, Glenda said she certainly had. But as far as she knew, the police had never arrived because they always got so many calls on Halloween and it was almost impossible to ever catch the culprits. “But don’t worry. My mother’ll go down to the station house tomorrow and make a full report. She always does.”

  While we were rinsing out the rags down in the basement Glenda confessed to me that she had known about her mother starting the petition.

  “But how could I have told you that, Sara? You’d probably have gotten so mad you’d have left me flat. Right? And even if you didn’t get too mad, when your folks found out they’d have made you stop going around with me. Then what would I have done?”

  I was really beginning to see how trapped Glenda had been.

  “So now I know why you’ve been having all that trouble with Roddy, too,” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “But why did you have to get so mad and hang up on me when I phoned you? That didn’t make things any better.”

  “Because, Sara, after seeing Bruce Fenton over at your place, I was scared. I was afraid he’d told you and Toby about the way I ratted on him and got him into trouble with the police. When you called me on the phone, I figured you were going to ask me about that next. I guess I really was ashamed of it, and of the way all the kids called me a ‘squealer.’ I didn’t want you to know about that or the petition. So I just didn’t say anything.” She sighed. “I guess that was pretty dumb of me.”

  I nodded. “It sure was.”

  All this time Glenda was leaning over the sink and rinsing out rags and wringing them dry as if her life depended upon it. “You know,” she said, without looking up at me, “even though it sounds awful to say it, in a way I’m glad they threw all those eggs at your house tonight. Because when Mary Lou came to tell me, it gave me a chance to go out and look for you … and for us to be friends again.” She looked up. “If we are, that is.”

  I wasn’t really ready to commit myself about that. So instead I said, “Oh look, Glenda, you won’t have too much trouble about friends from now on. You even apologized to Roddy, sort of.”

  Glenda shook her head. “Uh-uh. That won’t make any difference. The kids around here never liked me, even before I got Bruce into trouble. They always teased me about being so fat and clumsy. Roddy was usually the ringleader. But even without him to tell them, the kids were just awful to me. The girls were always sort of mean and stuck-up. And the boys didn’t want to go around with me because other boys teased them about it.”

  “Is that why you told on Bruce,’Glenda?”

  She looked at me startled. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know, to get even.”

  “Honestly, I never thought of it that way.”

  “But it could be true, couldn’t it?”

  Glenda nodded very slowly. “In a way. I suppose so.” She plopped down on an old crate as if she was suddenly very tired. But she seemed to be thinking hard about something. “Oh boy,” she said after awhile, “if that’s the way it is, I’m going to be in trouble for the rest of my life. Because I won’t have you around for very long, Sara. Didn’t you say once that your father’s teaching job out at the college was only for a year? That means you’ll be going back to California next June, won’t you?”

  I had heard Mom and Pop discussing whether Drew’s contract might be renewed for another year but, of course, it was much too early to tell.

  “Well that’s how it looks,” I said, remembering how only last night I’d been so angry at Glenda I was praying to go back to California right then and there.

  Glenda just nodded miserably. “See, that’s what I mean. I’m still going to have all the same problems. And every time I get unhappy and upset like this, I eat even more and gain another five or ten pounds.”

  It really was awful for Glenda. Whoever got the idea that fat people were always jolly and happy? And that’s when I got my idea.

  “Glenda,” I pounced, “I’ve got it!”

  “Got what?”

  “An idea. So you won’t have to worry about getting new friends even if I do have to leave here in June.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, between now and June you won’t be unhappy and upset, so you won’t have to eat a lot to make yourself fed better when you’re worried or when your feelings are hurt. Because Toby and Inez and Drew and I will be your friends and we’ll help you. And maybe we can ask Inez about her raw-food diet. You have to admit that Inez and Drew are about the thinnest people you ever met.”

  Glenda nodded. But she still didn’t seem to be convinced.

  “In fact, you could start eating all your meals over at my house so you wouldn’t be tempted by your mother’s stews and things. And we’d all watch you and try to think up interesting new things to eat that wouldn’t be fattening. And see that there was no nibbling in between meals and all that. And maybe by June you’ll be thin.”

  “Oh Sara, do you think I could?”

  “You could, Glenda, you could.” I raised my right arm to show it was the truth. “And the first thing that has to go is alphabet-burgers. Did you know that a 3-ounce hamburger has 245 calories in it? And that’s without the roll, which has about 150. And without the alphabet part, which we don’t even know how many calories it could have …”

  And that’s how come Toby and Glenda and I ate Z-burgers for lunch the day after Halloween—in our kitchen this time! It was to be the last of the alphabet-burgers. And Z stood for—guess what— zero-burgers!

  Zero meant there was not only nothing on top of the hamburgers; there was nothing in the middle either. I have to
admit it was Toby’s idea.

  We shaped the hamburgers like doughnuts, with holes in the center, and then grilled them. That must have cut the calories down to about 200 anyway.

  Frankly, we would have had to limp our way through the last five or six letters of the alphabet. Just think how hard it would have been to get ideas for X-burgers and Y-burgers. So we cheated and went directly to Z. Anyhow, I figured the sooner we called it quits with alphabet-burgers, the sooner we could get Glenda on her new diet.

  Maybe you can think of something better for Z-burgers. If you do—or if you get any really great ideas for Glenda’s diet—why don’t you let me know?

  I expect to be here in Havenhurst for a while.

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