Marylou was on a diet.
She had been on it for over six months but there was little progress being made
as she hopped off the bathroom scale. The needle registered always between 160
and 170 kilos. She had the habit of jumping off the scale every morning after
her toilet and bath. She was convinced that the call of nature and the sweat
exuded from the hot steam of the bath would help to bring down the needle.
Her ideal weight (the
doctor said) should have been around 65 kilos give or take a kilo or two. That
put her way over the limit; an ungainly blob which bulged and draped in uneven
clusters and globs around her thighs, forearms and breasts. Her clothing of
five years past didn’t fit her anymore having been stretched so taught that
they gave way at the seams and had even torn in other places.
Many pieces of clothing
lay hanging in the closet with mothballs in the pockets slightly
embalmed until they could somehow be used again.. If only she could master the
discipline to lose all that weight.
Marylou never lost hope
in dreaming that she would someday fit again into her old clothing. For this
reason she never threw them out or gave them to the poor or to the Church
Thanksgiving drives. She was confident that the day would come when she would
claim these clothes again as her own, some of which she had worn only once. All
that was needed was a strong will and a deep commitment.
That was all of ten
years ago. The years had gone y quickly and the weight had slowly increased. She
was also a vegetarian and detested the sight of cooked meat. She had once read
about the process by which animals were slaughtered and it filled her with
disgust and contempt. A calf would be separated from the herd and led down a
corridor. Then it would be stunned with a sledgehammer. Its skull would break
and finally its brains would receive an electric shock. The mere thought of
pigs having their throats slashed, chickens having their heads chopped off and
lambs being clobbered before they can bleat or baa a warning gave her an eerie
feeling; one of total disgust compounded with the fear that hidden within every
veggie burger was a trace of meat.
She was still a junior
high school student when she decided to make the change. Before then she was
very much a flesh eater gobbling down franks, burgers and beefsteaks. The she
decided one day to eat nothing which had so much of even a
trace of meat. This abstinence was comprehensive and
included anything which was associated with meat in any way. She abandoned
eggs, milk and cheese and went so far as to avoid broths made from the bones of
chickens or beef, or sauces and
gravies made from the blood droppings of roasted lambs and veal. The mere
thought of chicken or beef bullion cubes depressed her driving her deeper into
the world of fruits and vegetables.
Her firm resolve became
a crusade filled with religious overtones. This expressed itself in buttons and
badges either pinned onto or sewn into hats, shirts, jackets and bags. She
became a champion for animal rights and always carried petition for people to
sign. The petitions defended the rights of animals which the animals themselves
were unable to defend. There were petitions to ‘Save the Whales,’ ‘Protect the
Pandas’, and ‘Ban the Manufacturing of Fur Coats.’
She protested the
poaching of wildlife, defended the right of elephants to keep their tusks and
rhinos to hold on to their horns. She was a St Francis of sorts who spoke to
the birds and made friends with the fish in the pond; a perfect match for Dr. Dolittle.
Yes, even the flesh of
fish was taboo for consumption. Her motto was, ‘If it moves on land or swims in
the sea or flies through the sky on its own volition, it surely will be for me
a prohibition.’ She wanted desperately to have a T-shirt made with this
inscription but the phrase was much too long to fit on one side.
Over the years she
managed to find food sources other than meat for protein. She developed a taste
for peanut butter and beans, loved tofu and kinoa.
But, her one weakness was for bananas. Her taste for them came quite by
accident. She had eaten them as a child but found little pleasure in their
pulp. Suddenly, having forced upon herself the burden of being a vegetarian she
had to check the inventory of supermarkets to find substitutes for chops and
burgers.
Her first love was for
peanuts. She saw them as a source of unlimited protein and filled her diet with
them. First she ate peanut butter. Then she tried a peanut sauce to go with her
fried vegetables. She would sit for hours watching television nibbling on
lightly salted roasted peanuts which she popped into her mouth as if they were
jelly beans. Pistachio, cashews, walnuts, filberts, you-name-its, all made up a
substantial part of her diet until she realized how expensive they were. Her weakness
was for pistachio nuts imports from
It as then that she
decided on a substitute, something that would replace her love for peanuts and
be cheaper to consume. It happened quite by accident when she made the
discovery. She reached out one day as she was shopping for her evening meal and
added a bunch of bananas to her shopping cart. It was a small bunch consisting
of two large and two small bananas. They were very ripe and in their prime with
hardly a trace of imperfections. Other bunches had the telltale signs of over
ripeness with age. The others were beginning to turn brown in spots, but not
these. She had not eaten bananas in quite a while and was attracted to them
this time by their price. They were incredibly cheap.
It was not long after
that bananas became a regular part of her diet, so much so that they were
included in almost every meal. Her breakfast would consist of banana juice and
toasted banana bread with a generous spread of banana jam melting off the
sides. If she chose to eat cereal, she would slice bananas on top and bathe
them in a sea of banana juice milk.
Bananas worked their way
into every aspect of her diet. For lunch she would often eat a peanut butter
and banana sandwich, taking two toasted slices of banana bread, smearing peanut
butter on them, slicing a banana onto the spread and adding a bit of honey.
She nibbled on fried
sugared bananas while watching TV, (A snack incidentally which she found to be irresistible.)
sliced bananas dipped in a flour batter and fried in peanut oil supplemented
her every meal and her favorite dessert was a banana split made with non-dairy
ice cream smothered with chocolate syrup and crowned with a maraschino cherry
and crushed peanuts ,(As much as she loved bananas she
never abandoned peanuts altogether.) The diet underwent few variations and no
substitutes.
Friends would ask her, “Marylou,
don’t you think you are eating too many bananas?”
“I like them,” she would
answer.
“But, why are you eating bananas
every day?”
“They’re rich in potassium,”
came her prepared reply.
“Who needs potassium?” they
would continue.
“I do. You do. We all do,”
she would respond with impatience. “Potassium is good for the blood. If one
does not have healthy blood, it’s easy to get sick.”
It was an insight Marylou
had gotten from a medical journal which she had read at the doctor’s office
while waiting to be injected with a flu shot. The article was about potassium
and healthy blood. She read it after she had gone on her banana diet and it
only firmed her resolve to never abandon the tropical fruit.
Her indulgence in bananas began to
show. This fruit of the jungle fit for monkeys and apes may have been rich in
potassium but it was also loaded with calories. The transformation was gradual
but the effects were irreversible.. Marylou began to
gain weight. At first she fleshed out and people commented on how healthy she
looked. She continued to expand until neighbors said she was quite plump, but
still she was labeled as healthy until she expanded even further into a
circular rotundity where her navel became the center of a circle.
What were once complements became
euphemisms to describe her size. Was it worth the
effort of having healthy blood at the expense of svelte thighs? She grew like
an expanding galaxy. Her thighs and hips merged into her waist which supported
the weight of her fleshy bosom.
As she grew older she passed adolescence
ad she continued to at bananas sensuously peeling the yellow skins and tearing
them ever so seductively until the white pulpy flesh was exposed.. She then wrapped her tongue around the erected fruit
moving it back and forth in a slow massaging of her puckered lips. The motion
was obscene. It was instinctive as if drawn to such behavior by an innate force
from the primeval recesses of her past. I was a total embarrassment to watch
had it not been for her innocence and naiveté.
“Have you seen Marylou recently?”
one friend would say to another at the check-out counter of the local
supermarket.
“Seen her? My dear, who could not
see her!” came the brisk reply.
For indeed she was
noticeable, a gargantuan figure at the check-out line with a shopping cart
heaped with bananas.
The years passed and her diet beame an obsession which grew beyond the limits of reason,
so much so that she was often the topic of conversation and not always of the
complimentary kind. She also became strangely attracted to zoos. She ventured
there often by herself and would linger where the monkeys and larger apes were
encaged. She perceived them with intense curiosity sensing a symbiotic union
had grown between them. Even tough there may have been scores of schoolchildren
making faces and contorted grimaces at the monkeys, the apes all knew that she
was one of a kind and part of them. They found her unusually attractive though
grotesque. She was given the attention which werewolves would have bestowed
upon Count Dracula.
“Master,” they appeared to say approaching
the bars of their cages, “Tell us your will!”
Their thin spidery arms extended
through the bars waiting for a peanut or even better, a banana. Even the
gorillas and chimps in the cages at the end of the apian way paid her the same
respect.
She never disappointed them. They
knew that in the recesses and pockets of her cloth bag she was carrying a
little something for them. There was either fruit or nuts especially for them.
Although the sign on the cage clearly stated,” Please do not feed the animals.”
Marylou paid it no attention.
She first distributed the peanuts
watching the apes crack the shells in their mouths, and later she gave each a
banana of his very own.
The zookeepers had noticed her and
permitted her eccentricity. She went unchecked and without reprimand or
confrontation. “After all,” they thought “She is just a harmless fat, banana
eating vegetarian.”
Her life continued like this for
years as she slowly slipped into obesity and obscurity with her potassium-rich
blood and flesh-free diet. Friends abandoned her to her eccentricities and
hardly took notice of her although she had tipped the scales at 120 kilos. On one
occasion an old acquaintance made an inquiry. “Have you seen Marylou recently?”
“Oh,” came
the quick but not subtle response, “She’s probably at the zoo feeding the
monkeys.”