Ada's Rules (33 page)

When the service was over, Ada invited her mother and father to stay for lunch. They had to get back to the lake house and make Sunday dinner for the boarders. With more of the space cleaned out, there were more boarders.

“We are the colored division of the retired musicians union,” Temple said.

Everyone laughed. Bird got out a big laundry basket she had in the backseat.

“I have not had a drink in twenty-six days. I made these for you.”

They were patchwork quilts made out of her old stage gowns. And in the back of their old car sat three old trunks. Bird pointed to them. Then she linked arms with Ada and started talking.

“I cleaned all the best stuff and made a dress-up trunk. One for each of your girls.”

“They're too old for dress-up, Mama.”

“For their daughters.”

“Thank you, Mama.”

“Playing pretty-pretty is not the same as whoring.”

“Nobody says it is.”

“Everybody used to say it. Folks lie. Men cheat. Babies die.”

“I know, Mama.”

“The difference between a woman and a girl is, a woman finds a way to enjoy herself despite life being lived on a pile of shit. Me, I got to get back home and cook. I'm looking to find some of the pounds you lost. I ain't letting you have none of 'em back.”

Bird kissed Ada on the lips. Their lipsticks mingled. Bird thought, If I get killed in a car accident on the way home, I will die happy. For the first time in years, Ada wasn't praying for the Lord to quick come take them. One of the days on her treadmill, Ada had weaned herself off inertia. Moving on, she had stumbled into her mother's remaining sugar tit.

IT HAD BEEN a bit over a year since Ada had been to her doctor. She was excited to let the woman see her progress. She had lost the last pound. Seventy pounds down.

The appointment didn't go as she expected. The doctor had lost more weight than she had—probably thirty pounds more. The doctor looked extraordinary. She had lost a hundred pounds.

Willie Angel had had weight-loss surgery.

For a hot minute Ada wondered if she had made the right decision—not because the work had been too hard, but because her friend had gotten seemingly better results.

But that was only apparently. Where Ada had enjoyed her year, her doctor friend related that she had experienced her year as something of a tunnel. She had eaten a narrower and narrower range of food. She had taken something out of her life, while leaving it almost exactly as it was before. In the end, the doctor was a woman with a hole in her life. But she was magnificently transformed, and that served to confer a kind of buoyancy, hole or no hole.

She put Ada through the paces: mammogram (she insisted
on digital), colonoscopy (she suggested IV sedation, and recommended a Demerol-Versed mix). In-depth eye exam to check for glaucoma. Full panel of blood work. Skin cancer screen with punch biopsies. The modern midlife black woman works.

The glaucoma tests came back suspicious. She was called back for another test. She sat and looked through goggles at something like a video game screen, squeezing a hand-held device every time she saw a light, indicating the direction it had appeared in. After she got the hang of the device, which wasn't easy because Ada didn't play any computer games, Ada's eyes were cleared. No glaucoma, medicine, or surgery in her immediate future.

Everything else came back great. Willie Angel announced that Ada had taken six years off her life.

Ada reread her food diary. She took another look at the map of her body. She drew a picture of herself standing naked in the mirror of the Seaside house. She needed a life plan.

She wanted it all down on paper so she could stop carrying her beauty calendar in her head.

She started with the simple things, like the daily thirty-minute walk. She put in the yearly big medical tests. In between she put in the mani-pedis, the haircuts, the waxing. She put in changing up the uniforms and reviewing the uniforms. The daily flossing, because flossing is good for the heart. She made a little schedule of all that she needed to do to maintain a bit of shimmer.

And when she had it all laid out, she signed her name to the bottom of the calendar. It was more than a contract; it was a promise to keep. And it was the beginning of her novel. Ada
was going to write a novel. The first line was going to be, “I lost seventy pounds writing this book.”

She threw out her last box of tampons, then thought better of it and put the box in the twins' bathroom, and slept the sleep of the grown.

ADA WAS ADA skinny: healthy and happy in her skin. The size-8 tulip dress was packed. With the proper foundations, it looked great. Mainly she wore a 12 but she treasured her one size 8 that fit. All her reunion materials, including the first invitation that had arrived just over a year before, were packed too. In the morning she was flying to Baltimore. A friend—a girlfriend—was picking her up at BWI, and they were driving to Hampton together.

Ada was already in bed and half asleep when Preach sat down on her side of the bed and stroked her arm. She half opened her eyes to see what he wanted.

It wasn't passion, or company; it was the surety she would return. He knew she was going, and he wanted to be sure she would return. He wanted her to be his boomerang. He couldn't say any of that. He was fifty-one years old, but in this place he might lose her, might lose her in the full bloom of autumn roses, because of what he had done, and because of what he had left undone. He was a little boy watching the prettiest creature on earth walk away from him, and he felt too small and too
puny to do anything about it. His arms went all over gooseflesh. She felt it and reached for his face with her lips. She kissed him, two pillows to two pillows. He started to sing her a blues song, of his own creation: “Ada stay right there, Ada stay right here, baby turn around, lay your body down, Ada stay right here, don't go to Hampton town, don't make your good man frown, I beg you now.”

“Don't beg.”

“All night long. Only a fool too proud to beg when he got a woman like you.”

“I love you, baby.”

“Are there any other Matt Masons?”

“Probably.”

“Be serious.”

“No.”

“Did you get yourself all fixed up for me?”

“No.”

“Matt Mason?”

“No.”

“Barack Obama?”

“No.”

“God.”

“No.”

“Who?”

“Me. I did it for me.”

She kissed him again, and then she fell asleep. He hoped she saw him in her dreams. He would stay up all night and look at her, just in case it was the last night she was his and only his. He didn't want to miss a moment.

Free will. Exquisite design. God's brilliance. She would dally, or she would not. It would be her choice to make, and he would be crowned again with love or he would not be. And he knew he would be. Like he knew he would handle his stuff, and he knew she would never cheat. And he would never cheat again.

There was only one song he needed to sing to Ada, and he sang it: “When a Man Loves a Woman.” When he got to the words about loving eyes being blind, for the very first time in the history of his grown life, tears rolled down Preach's face. One fell on Ada.

Her eyes opened, and her arms opened too. Her small but still round shoulders lifted toward him. “Here, I come,” she said, and soon she did. With him. At the very same time.

Stubbly gray box and all.

I must begin by thanking Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt Medical Center. Being located at a university that prizes innovative approaches to creative enterprise and tackling health care disparities provides the fertile ground in which I developed and taught Soul Food as Text in Text, and imagined Ada. I would like to thank all my colleagues at Vanderbilt for cocreating the electric campus I find sustaining. To Dr. Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting, director of the Program in African American and Diaspora Studies and dear friend, I owe an especial debt for reading and critiquing early drafts of the
Ada's Rules
manuscript as well as supporting the development of the course Soul Food as Text in Text. I also owe an especial debt to Cecelia Tichi, with whom I developed and co-taught Southern Food.

This book is a work of fiction. Ada's ideas about health, and science, and health care, are hers, and hers alone. They are the ideas of a fictional character. Writing Ada, I was, however, informed by my own experience of weight gain and weight loss as well as by my readings and research into the science related to weight, weight regulation, and nutrition. And I was inspired by the work of a number of dedicated physicians and medical
professionals. Some inspired with the power of their research. Others inspired with the compassion and insight of their patient care. And there were still others who inspired by being curious about the possibility of using a novel to help deliver health care information and to help motivate patient compliance. Dr. Kirk Barton, Dr. Frank Boehm, Leslie R. Boone, MPH, Dr. Walter Clair, Dr. Henry Foster, Dr. Chris Lind, Dr. Buzz Martin, Dr. Melinda New, Dr. Kevin Niswender, Dr. William Pao, Dr. James Price, Dr. Judson Randolph, Dr. Wayne Riley, Dr. Dan Roden, Dr. Dave Thombs, Dr. Harold Thompson, Dr. Ellen Shemancik, Dr. William Serafin, Dr. Paul Sternberg, Dr. Edwin Williamson, and Dr. Kelly Wright all taught me something of significance about health care challenges, health care delivery, or medical research. None of these folks endorse all fifty-three of Ada's rules. Some may not endorse any. All of them have a proven track record of service to the health needs of diverse communities.

The diabetes epidemic is a national challenge and a national tragedy with political and economic consequences for all aspects of American life. From the day I first began work on Ada, I have been aided by the fact that I live in Tennessee, where I have been fortunate to be represented by some of the smartest and most well-informed people to serve in the House and in the Senate, including a Rhodes Scholar, a surgeon, and a secretary of education. This project has had the support of my congressman and friend Jim Cooper, acclaimed in the
New York Times
as the conscience of the Congress, and of Congressman Marsha Blackburn, a friend and leader in the Republican Party. Over the years, I have also enjoyed the friendship and support
of Senator Lamar Alexander and former Senate majority leader Dr. Bill Frist. I thank them all for encouraging me to think about the politics and economics of health. I also want to thank Representative Lois DeBerry, the second African-American woman elected to the Tennessee House and the first woman to serve as Speaker pro tempore of the House. In the spring of 2010, Representative DeBerry was at the center of Links Day on Capitol Hill, in which Links from all over the state of Tennessee gathered at the Capitol to discuss food deserts, obesity, diabetes, and other matters of pressing concern to do with food quality and health. Representative DeBerry's support of this project and concern for matters of health within the African-American community have been a profound inspiration as I have worked to finish this book.

I want to thank my Link sisters. The Links, Incorporated, is an outstanding social organization of black women who do great things to further the health of all people throughout the world. I am proud to be a Link, and proud to acclaim—Links are green—in all the best ways. Some of the best ways now are standing up against the spread of hypertension and diabetes in communities of color. I owe debts of particular gratitude to Links Dr. Charlene Dewey, Dr. Debra Webster-Clair, and Professor Beverly Moran. I would not be a Link if it were not for my mother-in-law, Florence Kidd, who was brought into the Links by her mother, Corinne Steele of Tuskegee.

I also want to thank Yaddo for giving me five weeks of uninterrupted time, a studio high in the trees, and the Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger Endowed Fellowship. Yaddo shelters and inspires.

This is my second novel with Bloomsbury and my fourth
with my editor Anton Mueller. In a world where many publishing relationships are one deal long, we are happily arguing about whether this is our thirtieth or thirty-first year of a reading and writing friendship. In our Bloomsbury days, Rachel Mannheimer's taste, intelligence, and good cheer have done much to facilitate the publication of these two novels. And I applaud the work of Miranda Ottewell. She is the first copy editor I have ever adored. Helen Garnons-Williams is my UK editor at Bloomsbury. Having a UK editor is my idea of high cotton. In that high cotton I am proud to claim Amy Williams, of McCormick and Williams, as my agent.

My very favorite foodie, and best friend, is Mimi Oka. With her I would like to thank John Egerton, who inspires everyone who thinks about southern food or cares about civil rights. In a delicious twist of fate, Mimi, a Francophile American of Japanese ethnicity, is the reason I first met John more than twenty-five years ago! And through John I have met an organization I love: the Southern Foodways Alliance. If Ada were a real person, I would give her a membership in the SFA.

Writing about the body is an intimate undertaking. Writing with humor and love about the black woman's body is a delicate project. I want to thank all the women I know well enough to talk the triumphs and troubles of the body. They come in all shapes and sizes and colors but these ladies are my kind of brilliantly beautiful: There is power and grace in their hearts, their minds, and their bodies. Allison, Amanda, Becca, Betsy, Caroline C., Edith, Elena, Gail, Gayle, Hortense, Jane, Joan B., Kate, Leatrice, Leslie, Lissa, Martha, Mary Jane, Michelle, Minna, Perian, Siobhan, Thadious, Tracy, and Victoria.
And I want to thank the men who are my brothers who have been sometimes the hands sometimes the heart sometimes the mind of the father I so love and lost: David F., David K., Reggie, Seigenthaler, Steve Earle, and Court. Almost a half century ago, my father took a basketball out of my hands and said, “This is not for you.” You put the ball back in my hands. You my Dennis Rodmans. I will never forget that. Nor will I ever forget the men who have been brothers, cousins, godfathers, and other more playful kin: Carter Jun, Neil, Marc, Marq, Matthew, Ray, Ridley, and Steve. And Jerry. He has claimed me as daughter and that makes me proud. As always I thank the godchildren: Kazuma, Charlie, Lucas, Moses, Cynara, Aria, and my play-niece Haviland. I also wish to acknowledge my niece Maddie and nephew Richard. I treasure the steps I have walked with each of you and will walk with each of you.