The Serpent's Orchard

"Oh God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" -- Holy Bible

At the beginning of time -- the very beginning of what we can even call time, because no one agrees when the first 'Once Upon A Time' occurred, but everyone knows who to blame for it.

Me.

Once Upon A Time, you gave me an apple. You handed me a tart, juicy, delicious apple. And you handed that crisp, juicy fruit to my mother before me. To my mother's mother, and her mother before her, and her mother before her. All the way back until my mother's mother's mother's mother's mother first drew breath, first listened to your hissed whisper Take thisssss fruit; it isssss good to eat, have no fright, first reached out to take the fruit -- the apple -- from your scaled grip -- took that first bite, then handed it to her husband.

Since then, we have never been allowed to forget. Always we must remember that Once Upon A Time, we listened to someone we thought was a friend, only to find out they were really a snake.

Did you hate us that much, because we could be what you could not? Because we had been given what you wanted, and thought you did not have?

Did you -- do you -- hate me so much that you would offer me the apple again? That you would rip me from even this second garden, this second attempt at faith, by offering me a wormy, rotten apple?

I have tasted your fruit once, and once, once I thought it sweet. I thought it clean and refreshing and I thought that the taste of that apple was all I would ever need. I thought I could walk away from the garden, from the pears and the strawberries and the blackberries and the roses and the peonies and the daisies and the bushes and the trees, from the stream and the grass. I thought I could follow you into an orchard, where I would never need anything ever again, because I would have the apples.

I would have you.

But then I took my first bite, and I realized that that tight skin of the apple hid a rotten flesh inside -- soft and mushy and turning brown. I spat the mouthful out onto the ground to the sound of your violent cursing, and terrible laughter. Even that mouthful was enough to pull me away, just a little bit, from the garden. I could not go back immediately, because I had bitten the apple -- I had looked where I was not supposed to look, I had gone where I must not go, seen what I must not see, and so I could not return. Not immediately. I had to wait for your apple's poison to work its way through my veins, through my body, through my soul. I had to wait for my vision to clear from that which had clouded it (or, perhaps, to wait for the clouds to return), I had to wait for the strength to return to my limbs, so that I could hold myself upright again.

For a long time I required the support of others. But you never came to hold me up. Did you only want to drag me down, to trip me and watch me fall?

To fall just like you once fell?

The poison of that apple lasted a long time; it started in my youth, and even to this day there are tremors and shakes that plague me. Even today I must watch my step, for there remain the traces of that rotten flesh within me, deep within, where I cannot root it out and burn it, cleanse myself with fire.

You are too deeply rooted in me for me to let you go. But I will not ignore you. I will not sweep you under the rug, and pretend you do not exist and think that I can fight your poison by denying its existence. No. No, I will face you head on, I will acknowledge your poison and the way it laces through my very self, the way it shadows me everywhere I go. There is no antidote for you, and even if there were, I would not ask for it.

Biting into the apple has made me stronger.

Because now I am able to recognize you, serpent, and not just in myself; I am able to see you in the people around me, in the grass and in the trees where you attempt to hide, to entice another to your embrace with your gift of rotten fruit. And I will never given up that recognition, that vestige of the apple, the bitter aftertaste that lingers not only upon my tongue but heavy upon my heart.

I know you, serpent. I know you, lizard. I know you, fallen one.

You, who ate the very first apple. You, who planted the seed to grow the first tree of apples. You, who used that same fruit to tumble a woman -- my mother, my self -- into a place not of her choosing.

I know you.

And I will not forget you. And I will not hate you. Because to hate you is to feed your poison, to feed your own hatred of yourself. I will not poison me, and I will not poison you.

But I will never eat an apple again without checking for worms, for soft and mushy flesh that is turning brown. I will check for rot and poison, and only once I have determined that the apple is safe will I allow my niece, my sister, my daughter, my granddaughter to eat the apple.

Once Upon A Time you gave me an apple.

Here, you can have it back.

Author's Note

This is actually a non-fiction piece, of a sort. I'm using a religious lens to look at a personal experience.

Reviews

[Wessik]

You are very sincere in writing this. And there is some semblance of a plot. Unfortunately, all that really happens in this story is that the serpent gives the woman an apple. Much of the exposition detracts from the story. But perhaps if something happened, some sort of action, it might make it more interesting.