Beans Will Be The Death Of Me

Azuka stood naked before the square-shaped wall mirror in her bedroom, panting, as she watched sweet boils form all over her body, and then proceed to move downward. She had just finished five sets of ten reps of sit-ups and 30-second planks.

Her hands which were kept freely akimbo to her waist now snatched on tightly, gripping two full hands of flesh, she looked down at it and shook her head, discouraged at not yet seeing the results of exercising for five weeks.

“I'll fast today,” she thought, “so that it will not show in my cloth tomorrow”.

It was to be Sunday tomorrow and she had picked for her dress, a brown with black stripe V-neck body con dress to wear, and it was still morning when she took this decision.

When noon came, her only thought was of her not-fed stomach. She applauded her effort on staying fasted for so long, but her mouth felt dry, so dry that not even water could moisten it. Her thought of food overpowered her, causing her to give in to her craving.

“I'll just get fruits from the junction. That should help keep my stomach flat” she said as she got dressed in a white dotted short and black polo.

The junction was a ten minutes walk, at most, from where Azuka lived, but it felt to her, more than ten minutes.

Arriving at the fruit stall, just when she was about to pick a soft spotted banana bunch from the table, she caught the salesman pushing a rubber spoon filled with beans into his mouth. Her nose caught the strong smell and looking down into the plastic plate he held in his hand, where he had scooped from, the red, paste-like, soft-looking beans moistened her mouth and ached her belly so it grumbled.

“Ah, customer,” she said, referring to the man with the beans, “you're enjoying oo. Won't you call me?”

The man smiled, revealing a gold-like tooth in front of his teeth and shook his head in response, also saying in pidgin English:

“No be for this one customer (not with this one customer)”

“Ah, you stingy oo”

The man only smiled and continued to scoop more of his beans. Azuka eyed him, while also contemplating if she should risk it and have beans rather than fruits. She knew how beans made her bloated, “but at least it will hold me till tomorrow” she contemplated.

“Which one you wan buy? (which one do you want to buy?)” the man asked her, arising from the bench he had been sitting on, and calling Azuka out of her thought with his impressive almost roof-touching height.

“I no know oo. Now wey I don see this beans and you ma no wan make I join you, e be like say I go go buy my own (I don't know. Now I've seen this beans and you wouldn't let me eat with you, I might just go buy some for myself)” replied Azuka, teasingly.

“Toh (a Hausa man’s way of saying ok)” he said and retraced briefly to the bench to continue his meal.

“Shey na for Kilimanjaro you buy am? (you bought it at Kilimanjaro, right?)”.

The man only nodded his head in response.

Azuka paused for a thought before pushing her feet forward toward Kilimanjaro.

Since it was the weekend, as per usual, Kilimanjaro ran like a jammed traffic. There were a couple of two that had to share their table with a guy, a family of six that had to do with just a table, a long queue stood vertically disoriented before the customer service table, and there was a lot of yelling as people ordered their food.

“But I came before him” an angry customer yelled to one of the customer servers.

“Sorry sir, I'll get your order soon” the customer server, a young girl, implored.

The busy sight made Azuka reconsider her choices, but just as she turned to leave, at the table on her right, a girl was eating mindlessly but slowly, the same beans she had seen her fruit customer with, but she had fried dodo (plantain) in hers. Azuka’s mouth moistened again like before and she swallowed hard.

“Let's just try and see. I might be lucky and get served before my intestines cry out from me” She said this because the smell of food everywhere was calling to her stomach and they were responding with loud growls.

It took some time and a lot of yelling, but Azuka finally got served, and she was lucky also, for it was the last piece of beans in the displayed food tray that she got.

“I don buy am (I've bought it)” she waved to her fruit customer as she passed by him.

Ready to devour her food, she sat the plastic plate down on the floor of her bedroom and went into her kitchen to make a mixture of garri (cassava flakes), sugar, milk, some ground nuts, and water, to drink along with the beans.

She now felt a pang of guilt after satisfying her craving, but her mouth was no longer as dry, nor her stomach as loud. Again she looked at her stomach in the mirror.

“It will go down before tomorrow” she comforted herself.

When tomorrow came, Azuka’s alarm woke her at 4:30 as she had set it. Enough time for her intestines to be activated by water therapy and so push down feces from her gut, relieving her stomach from the bloat caused by yesterday’s beans, so she may prepare and attend the 6:00 a.m. mass.

“Oh God!” Azuka exclaimed at her reflection in the mirror. “Maybe I should just wear something else” she thought.

But going through her closet, most of her Sunday wears required ironing, which she couldn't afford at the moment since there had been no supply of electricity for over a week and if she were to charge a charcoal fire to iron locally, she was certain that by the time she'd be done, attending Mass would be the last thing on her mind.

Azuka breathed deeply, still contemplating alternatives that would neither reveal just how big her belly was nor display any hint of tardiness of her person.

She began to do the jumping jacks, recollecting once on a piece of article she had read, that doing a few jumps, or any full body exercise at all can help relieve bloating.

When she was done and still felt nothing but the sweat that ran down her body, she decided to drink more water, go to the toilet, and try to force the dump out of her. It was a successful endeavor, though her belly still felt stiff.

She had run out of ideas, given up, and wanted to focus on getting ready for the Mass as it was 5:00 a.m. already. She put some toothpaste on her toothbrush and began to scrub her teeth, but when she started scrubbing her tongue and her toothbrush advanced far to the back of her tongue, making contact with the skin there, she almost gagged.

The feeling wasn't pleasant and neither strange, as it has been her way of brushing, but today it triggered her thoughts to a K-drama she saw once, where the female lead was required to stay lean as per model criteria, so whenever she ate, she'd shove a finger to the back of her throat till she could reflux the already eaten food.

She hated the thought of it, and the feeling of gaging, but she sought relief at the moment and could pay the price in gold if she needed to.

Azuka did as she recalled in the K-drama, repeating three times, but was only able to throw up as much water as she could from all the water she had taken that morning.

She was in luck, though the relief had not been wholesome, it was something, for when she touched her belly, it was no longer as firm as it had been when she woke up.