Dietland (6 page)

Cut to Eulayla sitting at a sun-dappled kitchen table covered with a red-checkered tablecloth: “By choosing to eat the Baptist way, you'll never have to starve yourself again. For breakfast and lunch, enjoy a Baptist Shake, flavored with real Georgia peaches. For dinner, the possibilities are endless. Right now, I'm enjoying chicken 'n' dumplings.” Eulayla, her blond hair in a tight French twist, her ever-present gold cross around her neck, set down her fork and stared into the camera, which moved in for a close-up. “On the Baptist Plan, there's no need to grocery shop or cook. My program provides you with everything you need, except for willpower. That special ingredient has to come from you.”

Every twenty minutes or so this woman appeared on the screen, bursting through her enormous jeans. She was accompanied in the ads by other successful photo-bursters. There was Rosa, age twenty-three: “If I had to look fat in my wedding dress, then I'd rather die an old maid.” Sad violins, then
Burst!
Rosa was thin. Marcy, age fifty-seven: “My husband wanted to take a cruise, but I said ‘No way, buster! These thighs aren't getting into a pair of shorts.'” Sad violins, then
Burst!
Marcy was thin. Cynthia, age forty-one: “After my husband was killed on American Airlines Flight 191, I ate at least ten thousand calories a day. If Rodney were still alive, he would have been so ashamed of me.” Sad violins, then
Burst!
Cynthia was thin.

For hours I watched TV, waiting for the ads, mesmerized. I dug out my yearbook from tenth grade, looking at a snapshot of me on page 42. The caption read: “Alicia Kettle works on her science project in the library.” I imagined seeing that photo on TV, me in my ever-present black dress, the roll of fat under my chin.
Burst!
I'd obliterate that hideous girl.

I wrote down the toll-free number, determined to become a Baptist, though I knew my mother would try to stop me. She had a play-the-cards-you're-dealt mentality when it came to matters of the body, be it height or weight or hair color. She saw these things as fixed, for the most part. “You're beautiful the way you are,” she would always say, and it seemed as if she meant it. Once when we argued about dieting, she said, “You look like Grandma,” meaning: “You look like Grandma
and there's nothing you can do about it.
”

No matter how much I had pleaded, she would never let me diet. My friend Nicolette's mother was a member of Waist Watchers, and I photocopied her materials, keeping them hidden. I tried to follow the diet on my own, but I didn't know how many calories were in the dishes that Delia brought home from the restaurant, whether it was lasagna or chicken potpie. There were too many ingredients to count. I took smaller portions and sometimes skipped lunch at school, but I didn't like being hungry. There were girls at school who starved themselves, but I didn't know how they did it. When I was hungry I couldn't concentrate, and I needed to concentrate so I could get good grades.

The ads on television said:
A Baptist is never hungry!
That was part of the appeal. I didn't know how I would pay for the Baptist Plan, but I would find a way. I was high on my secret plan. On the night of the junior prom my mother took me out for dinner. When we arrived home, we found a man kneeling in the front yard, paying homage to Myrna Jade. When he saw me he snapped a photo. “
Preeeetty
girl,” he said. No one except my parents and Delia had ever called me pretty. I was pleased. Since I had decided to become a Baptist there was a change in me. Just the thought of it had made me lighter.

I didn't care that I wasn't at the prom that night. I didn't need proms or the boys at my school. Summer vacation was approaching and then my senior year, at the end of which I would go to college in Vermont. Thanks to the Baptist Plan I would be thin when I arrived at college. No one would know that fat Plum had existed. I wouldn't even call myself Plum. I would be Alicia, since that was my real name.

If people asked about Plum, I'd say, “Plum who? Plum doesn't exist.”

Burst!

 

• • •

IN THE HOURS AFTER SCHOOL
, I didn't see friends or attend clubs. I did my homework. I was always diligent about it, never needing to be prodded. In the afternoons, alone in the house on Harper Lane, I sat at the dining table with the curtains drawn and worked by lamplight. Sometimes people knocked on the door and threw rocks at the windows. They'd jiggle the door handles. I did my best not to be seen.

When my mother arrived home from work she'd fling open the drapes, allowing in the light. “The weather is beautiful,” she'd say, but I'd escape to the darkness of my bedroom. One day Delia suggested that I come to the restaurant in the afternoons to do my homework. I assumed she had discussed the plan with my mother, but she made it seem spontaneous.

Between lunch and dinner the restaurant was practically empty. Delia and I sat in a red vinyl booth in the back, she with her paperwork, me with my schoolwork, both of us sipping Diet Coke in tall glasses packed with lemon and ice. I would sit for hours doing geometry and reading thick Russian novels for my advanced literature class. Sometimes Nicolette would join us and she and I would work together on chemistry or French.

I'd been going to the restaurant every day for a couple weeks when I had an idea. I'd been secretly thinking of ways to pay for the Baptist Plan and wondered if I could use the restaurant to my advantage. I began to go into the kitchen and watch Chef Elsa prep for dinner, expressing interest, asking questions. As I'd hoped, she allowed me to help out, teaching me to chop and sauté. When I asked Delia for a job she agreed, and so for a couple hours a night I worked in the kitchen, where opera played on the radio.

After nearly a month on the job, with school about to let out for the summer, I had enough money to become a Baptist. When I told my mother, we argued. “It's too radical,” she said. Behind closed doors, I heard her and Delia discussing it. “Be reasonable, Constance. Life isn't easy for her,” Delia said. I would have gone even without my mother's permission. I was seventeen years old and she couldn't stop me.

There was a branch of Baptist Weight Loss near the restaurant, its windows covered in white curtains so no one could see inside. I had passed two health clubs, plus Nutrisystem and Jenny Craig, on my way there, but I wasn't interested in any of them. The Baptist approach was the right one for me. On the first day of summer vacation, the money from my job in my wallet, I opened the door to the Baptist clinic and was greeted with a life-size portrait of Eulayla Baptist holding up her enormous jeans. Two chimes rang out as I entered, announcing the start of my new life.

With the other new members I was led to a darkened room, where we watched a documentary about Eulayla called
Born Again.
There was footage of Eulayla as Miss Georgia 1966 and of her competing in the Miss America pageant. After she married and had a baby she gained a lot of weight, which she couldn't lose. She tried every diet, and even anorexia, but nothing worked long-term. On her child's fifth birthday, she weighed more than ever. The former beauty queen became suicidally depressed and begged her husband to pay for stomach stapling surgery, but he refused. A neighbor had died after the same procedure and he wouldn't let Eulayla risk her life.

Allen Baptist, founder of a thriving evangelical church in suburban Atlanta, which he hadn't been allowed to name The Baptist Church for legal reasons, was devoted to his wife and desperate to help her. He hired his cousin to move in with the family, to cook for Eulayla and make sure she didn't eat too much. He decided she needed to be completely removed from the world of food. His cousin prepared all of Eulayla's meals so she didn't have to shop for food or go into the kitchen. Allen Baptist even took the drastic step of padlocking the refrigerator shut. He kept Eulayla away from restaurants and she stopped socializing with friends and even attending church. Rumors spread around the neighborhood that Eulayla was dead.

After nine months of hell, with Eulayla eating nothing but hardboiled eggs and lean roast beef and cottage cheese with canned peaches, she lost the 115 pounds that had been ruining her life, likening the process to rebirth. That's when she felt a calling to help others overcome their appetites and realize their full potential, as she had done.
¹

With her husband's reluctant support, Eulayla conceived of an idea to start a diet clinic that would provide its patrons with low-calorie shakes, frozen dinners, and a special exercise program. Baptists wouldn't cook or grocery shop; they wouldn't think about food at all, except when it was time to drink or heat up their next meal. The first Baptist Weight Loss clinic opened in Atlanta in 1978. By the late 1990s, when I was ready to join, there were more than a thousand branches worldwide.

When the documentary ended and the lights came back on, we waited for the orientation to begin. Meanwhile, the photo-bursting commercials played on a loop.
²
There were only women in the group of new members, and several of them were quite slender. I didn't understand why they were there, but they were all friendly with me, behaving as if we had something in common.
³

Our group leader, Gladys, arrived to introduce herself. She was a black woman with an old-fashioned bouffant-style hairdo. She wore pumps that made a squishing sound as she walked. She smiled nonstop as she handed out the binders and Baptist handbooks and laminated cards printed with the Baptist Oath, which we were supposed to put in our wallets and on our refrigerators:

I collected the handouts, cards, and pamphlets and placed them in my shiny new binder, so thrilled to be part of Eulayla's family. That's what she called us: a family.

After the meeting was under way, a woman rushed through the door, apologizing for being late and taking a seat next to me in the back row. Janine was tall and bigboned, with cottony blond hair, and her appearance shocked us all, as much as if she'd been naked. She was wearing a radiant dress, floral patterned, with pink tights and boat-size heels on her feet, like Minnie Mouse shoes. None of the other new Baptists were dressed in bright colors, but instead wore the depressing shades of an overcast day. Looking at Janine was like looking directly into the sun.

I wished she hadn't sat down next to me, since we looked like two Humpty Dumptys seated together. During the part of the meeting where we were supposed to chat with our neighbor, Janine spoke as if the two of us were the same. She even invited me out for coffee after the meeting, but I said I was busy. I had never had a fat friend and I didn't want one.

Throughout the meeting, Janine spoke up, saying things like, “My whole family is fat and they think dieting is a waste of time.” Gladys shuddered at Janine's words and continuously corrected her. We learned to say
overweight
or
obese,
not
fat.
We were never to say
diet,
either, but instead use terms such as
the plan,
the
program,
or
eating healthily.

Toward the end of the meeting, Gladys handed each of us a booklet with “When I'm Thin . . .™” printed on the cover. There was a photograph of two smiling women carrying shopping bags. Gladys said that we would write in our “When I'm Thin . . .™” journals each week. Inside, at the top of the first page, it said, “When I'm Thin . . .™” and then there were five blank lines underneath with suggested topics such as romance, careers, and fashion. Gladys directed us to close our eyes and imagine ourselves thin. She told us to write down five things that our thin selves would be able to do that our overweight selves couldn't.

The other women and I began to write, but Janine looked stunned. “You've got to be kidding,” she said. “I came here to lose a few pounds because of back pain. What kind of sick, self-loathing mindfuck is this?” She was flipping through the booklet, red in the face, breathless from rage.

“Watch your language,” Gladys said. “Baptists do not use vulgarity.”

Janine looked at Gladys, her eyes blazing behind her rhinestone-studded cat glasses. “Are you for real?” She flung her “When I'm Thin™” booklet at Gladys, who seemed terrified, holding up both hands to shield herself. Janine made a door-slamming exit. In her wake there was silence in the room, leaving us to contemplate the departure of the loud, angry woman, disagreeable and huge, what none of us wanted to be.

When it was my turn to meet with Gladys individually, she apologized multiple times for the “unfortunate incident.” “What we're doing here at the clinic is radical and life affirming,” she said. “We're taking care of our bodies. People like
that woman
find this very threatening. She's like an alcoholic or drug addict, completely in denial. She'll probably be dead soon.” Gladys seemed to savor the thought.

She gave me a tour of the exercise room, with pink dumbbells bearing the Baptist name scattered on the floor and a woman in a modest leotard leading a group in jumping jacks. In the privacy of her cubicle, Gladys snapped a Polaroid of me and told me to stick it in my binder and bring it to the clinic each week. This was my
before
picture. She then weighed me and, using a software program developed by Eulayla's brother, a computer scientist, calculated that I needed to lose 104 pounds, which would take only nine months on the Baptist Plan. “In nine months, you'll be looking foxy!” she said, her silver charm bracelet clanking on the keyboard. Gladys made it seem so easy that I wanted to hug her. I would be thin in nine months. Software doesn't lie. I carried my first week of shakes and frozen dinners home in two shopping bags, puffed up with Gladys's words of encouragement.