Ada's Rules by Alice Randall

married a man, James Madison Whitfield, who had lost his wife to cancer. Inez doted on his grandchildren and her garden. She worked hard not to think every hour of every day about the children her children would never have. She got down to imagining who they might be only when she encountered something one of her children adored, or excelled at, or hated. She moved out of the house she had lived in with her children. She turned her front and back lawns into a vegetable garden. Her purple hull peas were coveted. Her poached pears, usually served with goat cheese and local honey, were legendary.
    Ada was still thinking about Inez as she walked into the grocery store. Five feet away from a tower of sponge cakes, a lady in an apron was offering samples of sausages she was cooking in an electric skillet. The sight and smell of food had Ada crazy hungry.
    She grabbed a giant grocery cart, then rolled it back and grabbed a medium cart. If she couldn’t be immediately smaller, her grocery cart could be smaller. She could have a skinny woman’s cart. It was a small satisfaction. It was not enough satisfaction to distract her from immediate hunger.
    She needed something quick to eat that wasn’t fattening. No, that wasn’t the right idea; she needed something that was useful to her body.
    She nibbled on one of her cuticles. Then silently quipped,Starvation. Quipping to yourself was something a minister’s wife had to do. She couldn’t risk being snide with anyone else—except the hubby and the girls, and they weren’t around. You’re it, she said to herself. When am I going to stop thinking about this as an exercise in deprivation, and start thinking about it as an exercise in filling myself up with what is good for me and what I like?
    â€œProbably the day I start losing weight.” This last, she said out loud. That was a problem. She was hearing voices and starting to talk too loud out loud, and she looked like a beached brown whale. She needed to hold on to the husband she had and put up with his mess and stop even thinking about running after Matt Mason—except that putting up with the husband she had is what got her to be “the hot mess she was.” She prayed she hadn’t said this last out loud. It was crazy thinking. This was starvation talking. She pointed her cart at the snack aisle.
    She was standing with a bag of Veggie Loot in her hand, munching straight from the bag, when Inez bumped into Ada’s butt, gently, with her cart.
    Inez sneered at the Veggie Loot. “That’s nothing but green Cheezos, cheese puffs, whatever you want to call it.”
    â€œOne hundred and thirty calories. Low-carb. This is good for you.”
    â€œGreen air.”
    â€œIt keeps me from getting too hungry.”
    â€œYou hungry right now. Unnatural hungry.”
    â€œUnnatural hungry?”
    â€œYou were not born wanting to eat puffy green air. Puffy green air is not helping you. It’s making you hungry. Chewingwithout filling you up, flavor but not enough flavor. Makes you want to eat. These food companies work together to keep you hungry, and probably they’re in it together with the health companies trying to keep us all sick. Fortunes are made on sick folk. I prefer to grow my own vegetables and pay as little money as possible to the drug companies.”
    â€œInez, you are one paranoid woman.”
    â€œI am an old rich Negro. I got that way by being cautious. And being curious. I got that way by not doing what everybody else was doing—if I saw everybody else was not doing so good. I see all you young things—and yes, fifty is young, even if you don’t know it—drinking Diet Coke and eating Veggie Loot, big as three houses, so I wouldn’t be doing none of that now.”
    â€œWhat should I be eating, for a snack?”
    â€œSoul food.”
    â€œFried chicken and monkey bread and collard greens?”
    â€œI mean baked sweet