Apple Snake
The phone vibrates inside my pocket as I sit in the verandah of your house, my childhood home, holding a washed apple and a knife—your mid-morning snack. The attendant wheels you out and sets you in front of me. The man has just changed and sponged you, but I see grains of oatmeal stuck in the silver stubble on your chin. You smile, that polite civil grin you reserve for strangers and casual acquaintances, the slit between your lips revealing only the top row of teeth, crooked remnants now, reddish-brown from the tobacco-laced paan you chewed every day of your adult life until you forgot.
Yesterday, I brought you an assembled paan from the bazaar, the leaf coated with lime and stuffed with betel nut—minus the tobacco, of course—hoping the taste would trigger an impulse from your tongue to your brain, resurface a patch submerged under the silt. You scrunched up your face and spit the leaf out as if you’d bitten into bitter cucumber.
You point at the apple with a knobby finger, and say, A for Apple, then look at me expectantly like a dog waiting for a treat after the sit or fetch command. Very good, I say, and press your hand, your bones stiff like sticks, blue-gray veins protruding like roots. B for balloon, C for cake, you continue. I remove the distracting phone from my pocket, and gaze straight into your eyes, the irises the same cocoa brown as mine. For a futile moment, I think I see a flicker, as if you know it’s my birthday, as if that part of your brain tissue isn’t covered in plaque yet, but you move on to the next letter, your eyes on the red apple.
D for daughter, you say. I pull my chair closer until our knees almost touch. I can see the depth of creases around your eyes, the ring of Pond’s talcum powder around your neck. When I was a child, you applied powder to my armpits with a puff. You look away, scratch your chin, furrow your forehead, trying hard to recall the alphabet. Next, you say the letters randomly, out of sequence, as if plucking them out from the air. M for moon, R for rain.
To amuse you, I peel the apple slowly, careful not to break the single strip, the peel curling into a ribbon, extending from my hands to my lap. S for snake, you say, and shrink away into the wheelchair, pretending to be afraid. The next moment, you laugh out loud as if you’ve succeeded in fooling me. Apple snake, apple snake, you clap your hands. I cut a small piece from the apple. Thank you, T for Teacher, you say as fruit mush collects in the corners of your mouth. I think of the photo from my sixth birthday, you posing with a piece of cake in your hand, my face already stuffed, the sugared cream leaking at the edges.
