Small Stories

Apple Pie

•••

The dinner table is quiet, just like it always is. The worthless starts of conversation fade out as no one wants to converse with one another. The pie that I had just baked sits in front of me, it is next to my older sister who scrunches her nose as she whiffs a faint smell of cinnamon.

I have spent almost an hour and a half making it, it brings me such joy that I have accomplished making one on my own.

"I fucking hate cinnamon... and apples. Why'd ya have to make a pie with both of them mashed together." A scowl is etched in her face.

My mother says nothing, despite my sister's cruel words.

"I just did it on a whim." I said. In my head I continue."But I don't care what you say... I don't." I let out a sigh of breath. I feel the happiness I felt not long ago, it seeps through me and I feel it wearing thin.

I glance at my mother beside me, she eyes the t.v and opens a discussion about the news. The blaming of an Asian country for a virus was the latest news. They agreed with it.

I did not.

I did not join their petty conversation.

It is not their fault nor should they be blamed for the pandemic. No person should be mistreated for belonging to any country.

They continue their conversation. Swaying from one topic to the next, once in a while I try to join in but each time I do my sister shoots me down like a sniper with the best of precision.

I sigh once again. I give up, I'll just stay quiet and let them talk till there's nothing to talk about.

The meal in front of me, no matter how bland it tastes, I eat. I am not rude enough to discard the work put into what is in front of me, this saying does not exist in my sister's mind.

She recklessly says what she thinks, no matter the result of her consequences. And often times the results are my tears, gleaming in my eyes.

The sight means nothing to her.

With my meal finished, I neatly put the spoon and fork on one side and say, "I'm finished." Nonchalantly.

My family has accomplished in bring me down once again, nothing new there.

Dinner with my family has always been my most hated time of the day. Not only does it bring back unwelcomed memories of fire in my mother's eyes and my sister seeing red, but after all those events, it brings a deafing silence that I can hear even after days have passed.

It just makes me want to abruptly stand up every time I take a sit and just run. But I cannot, so I shorten the time I sit on that godforsaken place. I eat little in turn.

Try as I might to change the habit, I cannot. I have tried, but no one cooperates with me. None of us are connected.

"You're so quick to eat, Ria." Said my mother. Her meal was only a quarter done.

"Because she's such a bitch and she's about to snap." My sister jumps in our mother's comment. Her words have little correlation with the sentence but it stings. I have nothing to say back.

I head to my room, where I will probably reside till midnight. I do not grumble nor stomp my feet angrily. The small rage inside me piles up.

As I close my bedroom door, I eye the table.

My Apple pie has long been forgotten.

•••

Here, have a pie.