A New Daddy (Chapter 3)

A New Daddy (Chapter 3)

by Kat Shevitz

We lived in the apartment for one year. After that year, the lady who owned the house raised our rent. We had to move again.

Luckily, there was an apartment available in the house next door. It was smaller. It didn’t have the screened porch and we had to share a bathroom with the people who lived in the apartment across the hall.

I was in the fifth grade now and still sharing it with my sister, Peggy. There were times when she had to be hospitalized because of her seizures. Those were sad times. Momma was upset and unhappy. I believed that if I had been a good girl, looking after Peggy, that she wouldn’t be in the hospital.

Things didn’t change much over the next two years. When I was in the seventh grade, momma started dating. I was furious. I thought we were doing just fine. She brought the man she was dating home one night to introduce us to him. She acted like someone else and I hated it! I guess I didn’t want to share her just as much as she didn’t want to be alone.

It wasn’t long before we had a new stepfather. We didn’t know what to call him, so we called him Mr. Persinger. He had a son who was younger than me. His name was Chuck. I liked having a stepbrother. The only thing I didn’t like was having to move again.

Mr. Persinger had a nice home and Peggy and I had our very own room to share. Chuck’s room was across the hall from our room. I went to his room one day and smelled cigarette smoke. He was only 10-years-old and already had a bad cough.

I told momma. I had to. She told Mr. Persinger and Chuck got punished with a belt. I was frightened and sorry for telling. It wasn’t long before the cough went away and I was glad that I had told.

In the eighth grade, a boy I liked called me “fatty”. I was crushed. I stopped eating. Well, not entirely. When we had dinner, I would take a few bites and then simply move the food around on my plate with a fork. I became obsessed with not eating and lost lots of weight. No one seemed to notice.


Peggy and I were going to an organization called Job’s Daughters. Momma had made it possible for us to go to these meetings because her father was a Mason. I enjoyed the meetings. I made friends and we got to travel to meetings in other cities. At one meeting, the father of one of my friends told me that I was losing too much weight. He was the only adult person during that entire year who seemed to notice me.

Soon, my monthly periods stopped. That got momma’s attention. She took me to see a doctor to make sure I wasn’t pregnant. She still hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t eating.

I wasn’t pregnant, of course. The doctor talked with me and asked about my weight loss. When I explained what I was eating and how much I was eating, he said that I was anorexic. He told me that if I didn’t start eating, I could die.

I started eating. I didn’t want to die.