Free Ada's Rules by Alice Randall Page A

a path clear into each room. She set the mousetraps and collected the dead mice. She was a good daughter. Better than Bird deserved.
    Bird wanted to tell Ada that. But they were in the middle of the game where Bird acted like she thought Ada was the maid Ada sent to clean for her. It was easier that way. She didn’t want her daughter washing her toilets and picking up dead mice. The mice should be Temple’s job, and Bird knew she should be washing the toilets, but after the girls died she couldn’t do a single useful thing. Bird left the kitchen, left Ada with the casseroles she was cooking, and made her way to Glo’s old room, where Maceo was staying.
    â€œI am tired,” Bird said to Maceo.
    â€œMama love her some Maceo,” Temple said all the time,without jealousy. Maceo had one true woman he loved, and it was Bird. Maceo was dying from lung cancer. He held Bird’s hand and coughed.
    Bird said, “I want to be a vampire and suck some life out of something or fuck some life into something, I want to be full of life at least for a little, once more, but I ain’t. I look like I’m alive, but I ain’t. I’m a zombie who needs a face-lift.”
    Maceo laughed so hard he started coughing. “I’m so way past fucking life into somebody,” Maceo said, “or having somebody fuck life into me, but honey I sure would like to suck some life out of somebody one last time. Bring your neck over here, honey.”
    Bird leaned in close, and she kissed Maceo’s cheek and he kissed her neck, then he gummed it. He didn’t bother to put his teeth in anymore.
    â€œI’m gonna miss you, Maceo.”
    â€œI’m gonna be rolling in Buddy Bolden’s arms.”
    â€œYou crazy, Maceo.”
    â€œCrazy as a fox.”
    â€œWhen I get to heaven, I’m gonna see my daughters.”
    â€œSee Ada this afternoon.”
    â€œI ain’t seen Ada since her sister’s funeral. Ada don’t come ’round here. She married a preacher.”
    â€œBird, when I’m gone. You need to do sumpin’ fo’ me.”
    â€œAnything.”
    â€œSee Ada when she comes.”
    â€œI rather be a blind gal than see you walk ’way from me …”
    â€œMiss Etta James.”
    â€œUsed to be I sang it better.”
    â€œYou sing it better.”
    Soon Maceo was asleep, and Bird wandered through the maze to the center of the living room and took a Benadryl. She was dozing off when she heard the woman Ada sent to cook and clean arguing with Temple about money. About how she was thinking of selling her car or maybe the silver she had inherited from her sisters. How she needed one of the guitars. The woman’s voice sounded so much just like her Ada’s, Bird wanted to tell her the records were worth money, and she had some jewelry. But she didn’t think she could bear to part with any of it, so she didn’t say anything. She wanted to tell Temple that they needed to sell the house with the view and let someone tear it down and they needed to be in a small apartment with help and stop making the gal Ada sent cook and clean.
    She tried to remember the day Ada was born. She couldn’t. She went into Ada’s room to find something to help her remember. Sammy Heart was playing cards with Sonny Dee, sitting on Ada’s old coverlet that Bird had sewn herself. Sammy and Sonny paid Bird no mind, and she paid them no mind. She looked through her bookshelves, and she found Ada’s diaries. It took her just a few minutes to find the one she was looking for, the one that was pink cloth with flowers. She turned to an entry dated May 10, 1977. Ada talking about the day Ada was born. At her high school graduation lunch, Maceo had told her the whole story, and Ada had written it down that very afternoon.
    Holding the diary made Bird know she was right to never let anything go. You never knew what you might forget that a thing might help