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!
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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