“Leave me alone, Mother, will you? And I’m not going to a doctor. I’m not fat. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m going to kill myself if you don’t leave me alone.” She moved toward the door and I pushed her through it and slammed it shut and walked over and lay down on the bed and cried myself to sleep.

Chapter

4

Of course in the end I agreed to go to the doctor. By ten o’clock the next morning my mother and I were down at old Doctor Freer’s office and he had weighed and measured me and given me a diet and a prescription for some “pink pills” to take half an hour before breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I took one at the drugstore as soon as we had the prescription filled. By the time we got home and started fixing my diet lunch I was in a marvelous mood. Momma ran the cook out of the kitchen and fixed the lunch herself. She fixed me four ounces of steak and a very small lettuce and tomato salad and a piece of melba toast. She set the dining room table with a crocheted placemat and heavy Strasbourg silver and made me a glass of iced coffee and sat with me while I ate. I was chattering away, happy as a lamb on twelve milligrams of Dexedrine.

After lunch I went out onto one of the screened-in porches to sand a chair. I had the record player in the den blaring away, playing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto Number 1, a perfect complement for a brain speeding away on Dex. I was feeling thin already. This was a great diet. You didn’t even get hungry. This was perfect.

“We heard you were coming. We’ve been waiting for days for you.”

I looked up. Outside the screen door were the boy and girl I had seen the day before. They were standing side by side, a tall heavy-looking boy with his shirt unbuttoned to the navel and some odd-looking cross hanging down on a chain. He was barefooted. Beside him was the girl I had seen on the porch of the blue house. “I’m Charles William Waters,” the boy said. “And this is Irise Lane. We know your name is Rhoda, but I’m always going to call you Dee. For Dirty old Rhoda, for what you did to Lizzie.”

“Who is Lizzie? I never knew a Lizzie in my life. What did you hear about me?” I opened the door and they walked in, both smiling widely.

“Lizzie used to live here. She’s furious because she had to leave. This used to be her house.”