about me, which mentioned my high school activities, and said that my mom had told him I was upset about the article since I was an adult going to college.
Ever the chameleon and quick on my feet, I covered my mother’s lies adeptly by telling Ken that the reporter who interviewed me was German and may not have understood my answers since English was his second language. I then disappeared into my bedroom, unable to wait to attack the food in my grocery bag of comfort.
Later I found out that my coverage of Mom’s lies wasn’t as adept as I had thought. She was furious with me because Ken had become suspicious. She screamed at me at the top of her lungs, and ordered me to call Ken and tell him that I had purposely lied to the reporter.
I refused to do it.
Mom stuck her wicked-witch-of-a-finger in my face, waving it around while reminding me that she was “the boss” and if I didn’t do what she said, then she would never let me be involved in any other community theater productions. I could hear Lori crying in her room as my mom and I fought. Mom went on to threaten my college and every other dream I held dear.
Enough was enough. I snapped. I shoved her pointing finger out of the way and rushed to the phone. I didn’t know who to call. I was in a foreign country. So I called the military police.
A man answered the phone and I told him I was reporting an emergency. He asked what the nature of the emergency was.
Trying not to cry I said, “My sister and I are victims of child abuse.”
“What kind?” he asked.
I was stumped. It had been a while since my last belt beating. How could I describe this current abuse? A long pause and then finally I replied, “Mental.”
Another long pause, this time from the other end of the phone. No response, just dead air.
Then, clearing my throat, I gave him my name and address, but I could tell the call and the information exchange had been useless. Looking back I realize that it was a different era, and the military police operator didn’t know how to process what I had described.
After I hung up the phone, I turned around to find my mother standing behind me, breathing fire. She told me to go down to the maid’s room and “Get your father.”
I headed down to the maid’s room to find my dad out cold. It took me forever to wake him up. The stench of alcohol seeped through his pores as he tried several times to pull himself upright. His legs wobbled when he stood up, and then he stumbled as he made his way upstairs to our third-floor apartment. I cried and pleaded with him to take my side. He was disoriented and nothing I said seemed to be reaching him.
Once I finally got him into the apartment, Mom proceeded to tell him what I had done. “He gave them our address,” she said in a panicked tone. My dad just stood there, bleary-eyed and dumbfounded.
After a moment I was ordered to go to my room and never to repeat that behavior.
As soon as I got to my room I searched for food. It was all gone. There was nothing there. Nothing to eat. Nothing to comfort me. Nothing to help me smash down my pain. Nothing for me to force-feed my sadness and hopelessness. My stomach felt like it was eating itself. I tried to cry some more—subconsciously I knew I needed to vent my fear and frustration. But, by then, my tears had dried up.
I’ve had a difficult time crying ever since.
The police never responded that evening. Or ever.
None of us spoke about that night again. But for the first time I began to realize what a true and utter monster my mother was. And that my father was a monster as well—for letting my mom get away with her abuse.
It’s amazing that Lori and I excelled as much as we did in high school. We never had any encouragement from our parents. They weren’t even around to make sure we went to school.
I never got involved with alcohol or other drugs while attending high school. There were many opportunities since the drinking age in Germany was much lower than in the United States, not to mention that no German bartender would bother to check IDs as long as you had the money to pay for whatever drink you were ordering. But my drug—or libation—of choice continued to be Twinkies and other delectable goodies instead.
Upon my high school graduation, I learned that my parents’ four-year-long divorce proceedings were final. Along with this came another revelation. Over the years Lori and I and our parents had contributed to two different savings accounts—one for Lori’s college education and one for my own. As far as my sister and I knew, these funds were available and earning interest to fund our higher education. Now it turned out my dad had spent most of the money on his drunken binges and attorneys fees to defend himself against the various DUI charges he’d faced.
This was my mom’s explanation as to why both savings accounts were now defunct. My dad claimed it was used to pay for travel expenses. No matter the real reason, fact was the money was gone and Lori and I would now have to seek financial aid and student loans if we wanted to attend college.
It was the summer before college, and I was still determined to attend. I was equally determined to take off the weight and be thin, gorgeous, and loved (in that order) before I embarked on my journey of higher education.
Consequently, this became the summer when my sister and I discovered the marvel of diet drinks called Sego that were sold in the local military-operated grocery stores. With this over-the-counter liquid diet plan, you were to drink four twelve-ounce cans of “great-tasting” fluid a day (so great “you’ll forget you’re dieting!”). That was it. You were to consume nothing else.
The fact that my parents would let an eighteen-year-old boy and a fourteen-year-old girl go on such a harsh dieting regime boggles my mind today, but of course, neither of them was really around to put a stop to it. So long as it wasn’t deemed “junk food,” Dad would buy anything that was put on the weekly grocery list.
The Sego drinks turned out to be one of the first diets I was able to stick with. It was simple. There was no thought required and little temptation during meal preparation, which consisted of popping off an aluminum lid. For two whole months, Lori and I downed those chalky-tasting beverages in place of balanced meals. No chewing. Just drinking. I’m not sure why Lori even enlisted in such a program. She was hardly overweight. Perhaps it was moral support.
Despite an intake of less than 900 calories per day, I hardly lost any weight. My metabolism seemed to slow down to a virtual halt, all the while I was growing taller, inches-wise. But the inches around my belly remained.
Still, I stuck with the program.
The summer was uneventful by our family’s standards. My mom traveled a lot with her boyfriend of the minute. It was at the Sego two-month mark that she and her current boy-toy showed up at our apartment, eating lunch.
That night, while I was throwing away my last can of Sego diet drink of the day, I found a half-eaten, crumpled up bag of Cool Ranch Doritos in the trash can. They were past their “enjoy by” date. My mother had thoughtlessly left the bag there, knowing Lori and I were on liquid diets and were trying to keep the apartment free of temptations. I stared into the trash can for about an hour.
And then . . . I reached into the trash, got my hands wet with various forms of garbage, grabbed the bag of Doritos, and ate the chips with abandon. They were stale and tasted like cardboard. Still, I devoured the whole remainder of the
