Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva (2 page)

No one in my family, not my parents or their siblings or cousins or even any of my four grandparents had ever shown an out-of-the-ordinary gift for music or a burning desire to perform. And suddenly here I was, this little kid parading around the house, belting out Broadway melodies at the top of her lungs and overemoting like a silent-film star. I’m sure it was shocking to them, even frightening.

My mother liked to sing and play piano, but she mostly expressed her love of music in church, where she played hymns and sang in the choir.

At their religious core my parents believed that any great talent, be it an athletic ability or a beautiful voice, was a gift from God, and that the proper use of that gift was to glorify God. So hymns sung in the house of our Lord were good; most other music sung elsewhere was sinful.

Performers who boldly strutted their secular stuff across any other stage were condemned as
prideful
, which my father ranked as the number-one Deadly Sin—keeping one’s pride in check was a big, big deal, both at church and in our home. If we had a family crest, our motto would be: Pride Goeth Before a Fall. Or, as our pastor at Prospect Heights Baptist Church never tired of quoting from Proverbs during Sunday sermons, “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall!” My parents were also influenced by their own parents’ old-fashioned, puritanical disdain for performers—especially female performers, who were considered “loose” women, tramps.

So for them to see their little girl prancing about coquettishly with one eye on the footlights, it would have been nothing less than alarming.

WHEN I WAS
born, in Wheeling, Illinois, on August 4, 1960, my mother was seventeen and my father a year older. They were
high school sweethearts who had, I romantically imagined later, succumbed to adolescent passion in the backseat of a mint-green Buick Skylark. Unromantically—nine months later—after a hastily arranged wedding, Debbie Joy Voigt made her debut into the world.

My mother, Joy, was a pretty and voluptuous midwestern girl with a bright smile, kind heart, and a shy, trusting nature (aren’t they always the ones who “get in trouble”?). Even as a kid, I felt protective of her and didn’t want to leave her alone to go to school. She, in turn, showered me with affection. In my packed school lunches I’d find little “I love you” notes decorated with hearts atop my tuna sandwiches.

My father, Bob, was her opposite—a salesman with a type-A personality: outgoing, driven, ambitious, and a natural-born charmer (aren’t they always the ones who get the nice girls in trouble?) with penetrating hazel eyes.

In many ways my parents were amazingly mismatched, and I picked up on the tension from a very young age. Both were, no doubt, unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with the demanding realities and messiness of being teenage parents. They liked clean lines and control—when we had company coming over and Mom vacuumed, we weren’t allowed to walk onto the carpet and mess up the vacuum lines.

MY FATHER ALSO
had a temper, and an odd sense of humor, and the combination of the two frightened and confused us kids. Often at dinner, in a quiet moment, he’d suddenly bang his elbows onto the table as hard as he could for no reason at all—sending the dishes clattering across the table and scaring me and my brothers. He had no trouble displaying anger or disapproval, but he did have difficulty expressing tenderness. Even though I see us together in old photos, me smiling in his arms, I don’t have any memory of him hugging me
or telling me that he loved me. As affectionate as my mother was, he was that cool and distant—unreachable.

My theatrical self-expression as a child may have been my way of reaching across that divide, or acting out the drama I saw around me. All the elements of a Puccini tragedy were played out in front of me during my formative years—lust, betrayal, jealousy, rage, heartbreak.

My earliest memory is from age three, a few months before my Cockney-flower-girl turn. It’s a hazy memory: I was in my brother Rob’s room with my mother and it was night—this I remember, because I kept staring at the glow of Rob’s night-light, trying not to look at my mother’s face. The scene began with my little brother in his crib, and my mother, tearfully and furiously packing a suitcase that lay open atop a chest of drawers.

“Debbie, we’re going to visit Grandma Helen and Grandpa Henry,” she said to me as she tossed our clothes into the suitcase. “Go get your teddy bear.” My brother was crying, and I shifted my gaze to my father, who had wandered into the scene stage left and was leaning against the door frame, shoulders slumped, head hanging low. All we needed to complete the tableau was the appearance of Puccini’s betrayed geisha, Butterfly, to sing the heartrending “Un bel dì vedremo.” That is, if opera music was permitted under house rules.

Something was terribly wrong. I stood in the middle as my parents talked in strained voices—as if they were screaming at each other in whispers. They kept mentioning another woman at our church. Mom kept opening and shutting drawers loudly as Dad looked at her pleadingly, sorrowfully—a look you rarely saw on his face—and I wanted to cry, but I held it in. Days later, like all their arguments, the tragedy ended with a reunion and a lyrical love scene. From my bedroom, late at night, I could see their shadowy figures in the living room meet in a kiss, their silhouettes
highlighted against the flickering light of our black-and-white TV. I was relieved to see them happy again, but hopelessly confused about the interactions between grown-up men and women.

AT AGE FIVE
, after a successful two-year engagement belting out show tunes at Grandma’s, my passion for singing was rerouted by my parents and channeled toward the children’s choir at church. Somewhere along the way, they let me know, with nonverbal cues, that there was something not good about how and what I was singing. The connection dawned on me slowly, but once it did, I experienced a feeling I never had before and could not name at the time—shame.

My brief, happy gig as a song-and-dance girl came to an abrupt end and I was relocated to the church altar beside the other kids, where my voice could be used for a higher, nobler purpose—to celebrate the glory of God.

It was now 1965, going on ’66, and the rest of the world, especially young adults my parents’ age, were listening to the Rolling Stones, to the Mamas and the Papas, to the Beatles’ radically new, electric-guitar-pumped
Revolver
album. But my parents were having none of it. They may have come of age in the sixties, but their cultural feet were planted back in the conservative, clean-cut fifties, and they were more Pat Boone and Debbie Reynolds—pretty square. But they still appreciated music. Money was tight, but Dad bought us a piano, and we all took lessons. Mom would teach herself songs from
The Fifty Top Romantic Songs of the Era—
sweet, melancholy ballads like “Red Roses for a Blue Lady”—as I sat next to her on the piano bench with my eyes closed, listening to her pretty voice.

At church, I had traded in my pillbox hat for a navy pinafore and a repertoire of gospel hymns. I happily discovered that the hymns were beautiful love songs about God, like “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” and that I could sing them with all my heart, too.

I adored their spiritual sweetness. But if my parents thought they could exorcise their little girl’s inner diva by choosing what and where I sang, they were mistaken.

My very first public performance in church, at age five, was to be a duet, “Fairest Lord Jesus,” with another girl from the choir. The church was filled with at least a hundred congregants, and all eyes were on us. I wasn’t nervous or self-conscious—after all, I had years of experience under my belt. I was excited—this was to be my first “real,” nonfamily, audience! But my little singing partner was petrified, and when we reached the second stanza she flubbed a line.

“No, no!” I corrected her loudly, bringing the performance to a halt. Everyone was silent as the pianist tried to get us back on track, playing the same bars over and over as the choirmaster motioned from the sidelines to keep going. But my public scolding completely paralyzed my singing partner, who stood frozen at the altar. My parents, front row center pew, were horrified at what I’d done, I’m sure.

As a consummate professional, I knew the show had to go on; I continued the duet as a solo. And even though they could not clap in church, I could see my audience was pleased.

Soon, I was also able to transplant my budding acting skills into a role that served God and was therefore approved by my parents. The Sunday school teacher had noted my can-do spirit in that duet fiasco and began assigning me roles in the Sunday school pageants. My debut role was as a lead angel, but, being every bit as driven and ambitious as my father, by Christmastime I had petitioned for, and won, the coveted role of the Virgin Mary in the Nativity play.

I committed to it with all the fervor and passion in my young heart, knowing that, in the Greatest Story Ever Told, this would be
my greatest part of all time. Never mind Eliza Doolittle and Maria von Trapp—I now had the responsibility of playing the Mother of God, for heaven’s sake! I had arrived! I practiced casting my gaze downward modestly in front of the bathroom mirror, and our show a few weeks later was a huge success. The pastor himself took me aside afterward and told me that, even with my slight Cockney accent, he had never seen a more convincing Mary.

EVERYTHING WAS GOING
well for me, and that’s why what happened next was so disturbing. My parents had gone out on a rare “date” one Friday night and left Rob and me in the care of Paige, the babysitter, a bookish teenager from our church. She arrived just as we finished dinner, so she knew I’d been fed. But as soon as Mom and Dad were out the door I made a beeline for the kitchen. Paige was playing with Rob in the other room as I opened the fridge door and stood in the light’s harsh glare. There it was, on the top shelf, like a siren singing an irresistible song—a jar of green olives stuffed with red pimientos. I wasn’t hungry; I’d just eaten a big dinner and my tummy was as stuffed as those olives. But for some reason, as soon as Mom and Dad left the house, I had an uncontrollable urge to eat as 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 my
spectacular 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.

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 via sweat, so she took every opportunity she could to work one up.