Apple

It may sound a little strange but since last Sunday not even my parents can deny it any longer, since last Sunday my sister is an apple.
Not a green apple with chubby cheeks and not a healthy red one with yellow spots either, no, more like a dry and brownish one bitten all over. She has only one strand of hair left so even that looks like a branch.
She just sits in her chair at the kitchen window, just sits and stares with dry eyes which have long forgotten to see and schtum, yes schtum, and this may sound nasty but that is a relieve after all that apple-biting noises she made in the last few years.

You see, Jessica decided on her 16th birthday that she would only eat apples.
No matter what our parents, her friends or even I said to her, threatened her with, she just smiled and polished an apple.
The first year we tried everything. We had her examined by a psychologist and a physician who could not figure her out and we even took her to Lourdes. She lost a lot weight the first year but seemed to be okay after a while. The doctors suggested trying to get other food into her by making apple pie, or apple pancakes or even candy apples but my sister would always scrub the dough away, scrub the sugar away and just eat the apples.

Over the next year, she developed a routine of eating apples by colours. In the morning she started with a green Granny Smith. Her first bite was her favourite. Loudly she smacked and spattered Granny Smith’s fluid all over the table – believe me after a while, just the sound of it gave me goose bumps.
For lunch, her favourite were tiny red apples like the ones you want to find in your stockings but she used to grate them with the core and with the leaves until they were a mere red and then brown pulp, believe me after a while only the flies liked the smell.
For dinner she always started with some apple juice, gulping down the first glass, and smiling, and some days you thought: now. Now, she is eating again. Now, she is over it. But then she started to cut one or two yellow apples, the ones that are sweet and soft, just on the edge of being rotten but not quite and all you heard at our dinner table were her teeth pricking and her swallowing and in the end you saw, I mean you HAD to see her tongue. Her tongue came out and licked her mouth and I had to look away, I had to.
I can’t say that we got used to it but we kind of adapted ourselves to the situation. Just as we thought it can’t get worse she started to climb the trees. Apple trees of course.
The first time she was rescued by the fire department like a damn cat. The second time my father and I got a hold of her, but the third time and all the other times she fell. Each time she fell she broke something, and each time it would need longer to heal. Eventually, she stopped healing. The doctors said she needed a feeding tube but she cried so loudly that my parents didn’t go through with it. After a while, she just sat in her chair by the window. My parents started to feed her apple puree three times a day. One day they wanted to make me do it but this is where I drew the line. No way. The apple puree was not so bad though. It came in little glasses and I kind of liked the plop it made when they opened it. It was not smelly at all and she just gulped it spoon by spoon. But in the end, her tongue would come out, I would have to look away.

Now, I haven’t seen her tongue in a long time but, since last Sunday, my own tongue has an urge to come out. I find myself licking my lips, and, just staring at her dry apple form makes my mouth water. This can’t be true. No, believe me, this is not true. I am forcing my tongue to stay in my mouth and that’s why my mouth waters. From time to time I can smell apples but that is not so farfetched considering the circumstances. What really annoys me is that I daydream about climbing trees. I climb up like an ape and pick fruit which make me shudder. I swear, I swear I will not eat them. Not one. Never.