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NOTES:

CHRISTIAN SHORT STORY: SPRING 2008 -THIRD PLACE (TIED)

This story text appears exactly as sent in by the writer. No changes or corrections have been made; however, all stories to be included in the published Anthology will be edited for grammar and punctuation before printing.

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"Awakening to an Apple"

by Sonja Bonfiglio - Pinetown, KZN, South Africa

TIED THIRD PLACE IN THE "CHRISTIAN" CATEGORY, SPRING 2008

I would have preferred a less public place to undergo a life-changing experience. But a supermarket? And on a crowded month-end Saturday morning?

I’m not arguing the odds against having a transcendental episode in a supermarket; I’m just saying that, if it’s going to occur, its timing should be appropriate.  Like at the check-out till, for instance, where – given the escalating cost of keeping body and soul together – being fuelled into an out-of-body orbit could reasonably be expected. But, since I was nowhere near the checking-out stage, I wasn’t ready for an otherworldly incident.

I was minding my own business in the fruit section – with a headache coming on from the thumping beat of something in the name of music blaring down on me – and wishing that other people would also mind my business when abandoning their trolleys every which way except considerately.

One such mountainously heaped trolley – positioned in the middle of the aisle for maximum inconvenience – was causing untold difficulties for a frail and extremely frustrated old man. He eventually gave up pulling and pushing it out of the way and angrily shoved it head-on into my trolley.

It was only after I’d I manoeuvred past it that I noticed the small child in the seat at the front of its towering contents. He was about two years old and wearing nothing but a skimpy pair of shorts. His semi-nakedness was, no doubt, due to the sweltering heat outside the building. Inside, however, the air-conditioning, although a welcome relief at first, was close to threatening hypothermia for those with long shopping lists.

His little face was grimy and snot-smeared, and the tears lingering on his eyelashes testified to a very recent bout of crying. He was blue with cold and shivering visibly. And, judging from the purple colour of his legs and feet, the two plastic bags of apples on his lap weren’t doing his circulation any good.

He’d torn a hole in the uppermost bag and was eating one of its apples, oblivious to the snotty sliminess also being consumed. When I smiled at him he quickly looked away – a little guiltily, I thought. And I was about to learn why.

A young woman wearing the latest in fashionable wedge-heals, cropped pants and boob-tube, charged down the aisle, her battleship-scuttling face intent on warfare.  Snatching the apple from him, she stuffed it back into the bag – snot and slime notwithstanding – and smacked him hard across his frozen little legs. “I told you not to touch them! I’m not warning you again! These apples are for guests!”  

She turned the bag upside down, dumped it back into his lap, and then gave him another resounding slap before storming off down the aisle again.

I expected the little boy to start screaming blue murder – something that would have been perfectly understandable considering the violence with which his mother had applied her fury. But he didn’t. To my surprise, he merely balled a slimy little fist into his mouth while huge tears bubbled out of his shock-widened eyes and cascaded down his face, splashing onto the bag of apples.

Although his body heaved and shuddered in response to his suffering, he suppressed all audible expression of it. Whatever it was – disillusionment, pain, agony, fear, or even betrayal – he endured it in total silence. And this silence, infinitely more eloquent than words, aroused within me such overwhelming grief that it broke my heart.

My first instinct was to reach out and comfort him. But I questioned whether it was

my responsibility to do so. Perhaps my responsibility was to chase after the mother for a face-to-face delivery of my incensed pieces of mind. But then I risked being scuttled along with any other battleships she might still have had in sight. And, waiting to confront her in the car park afterwards would have been too late to serve any purpose.

To my everlasting shame, I did nothing. I shared the head-shaking and outraged whispering of other witnesses, but that was all. Within minutes we’d gone our separate ways, each taking up from where we’d left off.

I finished my shopping, went home, unpacked, made a cup of tea and put my feet up. They didn’t need putting up, but my mind did. It needed relief from the heavy thoughts that had occupied it since the incident.

What did a small child know about guests, anyway? Would the guests have suffered any great loss due to an incomplete bag of apples? Couldn’t the mother have sacrificed a single apple?  Better still, couldn’t she have bought the child his own apple if she wanted to keep the bag intact? And why hadn’t she replaced the bag with something less tempting – or nothing at all considering the child’s discomfort?

And before I knew it, the Apple of Eden had muscled its way to the front of my thought-queue, demanding immediate attention. Which it got; and which I would not have given it had I known the impact it was to have on my life thereafter. But there’s no refusing a clamouring thought, is there? So …

What would have happened to mankind if Eve had scuttled the snake with a warpath glare? What if Adam had refused a nibble of her apple? What if he’d given her a couple of resounding slaps along with reminders that the apples were intended for guests?

And who would the guests have been? Without a nibbled apple they’d never have got round to having guests. And that would definitely have scuttled the principle of ‘forever’ which, unbeknown to them, they’d been earmarked to put into practice.

I suddenly realised that my understanding of ‘forever’ had always been intellectual. It had never really entered my heart. Forever had always belonged to tomorrow, to the future, to a time that I’d eventually catch up with. But I hadn’t reckoned on ‘forever’ catching up with me – which is what happened when grief broke my heart.

But my grief and broken heart had no intention of letting me suffer in silence. They had words for me – their own incensed pieces of mind, as it were – and all of them on the subject of my unforgivable lack of compassion and moral conscience.

I’d turned my back on that little boy. I’d walked away, dismissing him as one of those casualties of life that were not my concern, and for which I was not responsible. I’d acted without regard for anything other than the events I’d witnessed. In my egotistical assessment of the situation I’d ignored both the bigger picture and the fact that things are seldom as they seem. 

It took a few minutes for the reality of these thoughts to sink in. Then I fell apart completely.

How could I have been so self-righteous in playing judge and executioner without knowing all the facts? I hadn’t once considered that circumstances, regardless of what they were, could have provoked the mother into an act of misdirected aggression. She could have been more in need of comfort than her child.  And I hadn’t spared her a single sympathetic thought.  Had I possibly turned my back on the wrong person?              What would a kind word or an offer of assistance have cost me – aside from being scuttled, of course? I don’t know. But it might have been my saving grace. I wouldn’t now be burdened with the guilt and shame of my non-action, not to mention the fact that I’d lacked the courage to express my humanity towards another human being.

The result of this re-evaluation of the supermarket incident – and more pertinently, of myself – is that nowadays I never leave home without a couple of apples to give to people. Not that I seek absolution with every apple I hand out, but because, for me, they embody the essence of consciousness. Apples are my personal reminders that ‘forever’ is a long time to carry the burden of ignorance.

Naturally, I don’t expect the recipients of my apples to miraculously experience transformations of conscience and forever after regard other people in an enlightened state of love and brotherhood. Nor do I wish them to wrestle with thoughts of Eden, beguiling snakes, tempting nibbles or even, Heaven forbid, the Fall of Man. And I certainly wouldn’t want them to suffer any grief, shame or guilt as a result of eating my gifts to them.

After all, awakening to an apple isn’t everyone’s responsibility. Or maybe it is. But that’s not for me to decide. My own awakening to an apple was, in truth, only the beginning of an awakening to myself.  It continues to be a life-changing journey of discovery that challenges me at every turn.

Not that I’m wiser when it comes to choosing the correct turns;  it’s just that I’m more aware of where I am – most of the time, that is – and that my sense of direction is a little more reliable than it used to be.

And it goes without saying, of course, that I’ve become more tolerant of month-end supermarket crowds – especially if apples are on my shopping list.

Copyright (c) 2008 by Sonja Bonfiglio - do not reproduce
without the author's written permission!
 

COMMENTS FROM OUR COMMISSIONING EDITOR, Jo Holloway:
An unusual "short story" in that it feels as though it belongs to part of a meditational-style book of similar insights. Well written, using shock and emotion in a modernistic parable that leaves the reader thoughtful and, hopefully, slightly changed. I'd have rewritten the first para slightly, linking the first two sentences into one with "...experience than a..."  But otherwise the writing is sharp and clear and puts us directly inside the writer's head and experience. Properly formatted, too! Congratulations on having TWO highly placed entries!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

I am a new-comer to "writing" - not that it hasn't been simmering on the back-burner for most of my life. Getting on with the business of living somehow got in the way. But a simmering pot eventually needs attention; and that point was about a year ago. What an adventure it's been; and without any end in sight. I hope that the "business of writing" will become a new and exciting avenue of exploration in my life.

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