Into the hot wax of the imagination of my childhood dropped the images of Christ and His saints. I have forgotten many things but not the floating feeling I had when I first walked through that polished parlour, out into the bright sunlight and into the grotto of my first school, the Convent of the Good Shepherd. The shock a child receives at her first sight of a plaster Christ, hanging in pain, with blood marks on him cannot be imagined by adults who so casually lead children to a lifelike depiction of the Crucifixion.

But very soon I was completely captivated by stories from the Bible and asked for permission to attend Catechism classes to the enormous surprise of the Christian girls who couldn’t get out of that class fast enough every time it ended. The stories were all so memorable that I believed them all to be true in the literal sense. Like all scriptural stories they conveyed strong messages about how to be and what to do; so although they are metaphorical in nature, we were encouraged to believe that they had happened to real people. People like us. Indeed to a child the line between story and reality is so thin that quite often it disappears altogether. That is what happened to me except that I probably carried it too far.

The first of these was to do with apples. Not that apples were easily available fifty years ago. But when I saw them I felt a fear and revulsion that I couldn’t explain. I had heard in Bible class that an apple had led to Eve’s loss of favour with God. So when I refused to eat an apple that my Mother brought home rather triumphantly, she was really annoyed. I offered to eat a banana instead but she insisted I eat the apple,shrewdly suspecting it had something to do with my mysterious questions and daydreams about people she hadn’t heard of.

Never particularly disobedient I surprised her with my obstinate refusal to eat the apple. Her temper rose and my Father hurried in to arbitrate. He went off suppressing a smile and returned with a heavy volume. “This is the Bible. All your stories are from this book. Look, this is the story of Eve. Tell me if you can see the word apple here.” I looked carefully at the cramped script and read what I could. The antiquated language confused me but no, I didn’t see the word “apple”. The only word connected with God’s anger was fruit.

I looked up into my Father’s brown eyes. He was dead serious. My mind raced in different directions.

“So…it’s all right to eat an apple?”

“Yes it’s all right to eat an apple.”

“Then what fruit should we not eat?”

“There is no fruit we cannot eat.”

I played my best card. The tree of knowledge….where did it grow now? I hoped we were not anywhere near the Garden of Eden?

“No, we are not near the Garden of Eden.”

“Don’t buy the fruit of knowledge” I told him.

“No,” he assured me and turned to my Mother.

“Don’t buy the fruit of knowledge, ketto?” he told her.

My Mother breathed heavily.

“I won’t.” she said.
I reached for the apple on the plate.

[@Copyright to the Author]