By Anne Hellman

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Identical twins Ava and Brin sit in a mysterious restaurant awaiting their order. What they are about to be served will put a cherished twin tradition to a test.

Jumellie n., ju-meh-lee: A dish shaped like a giant fried egg, with a soupy middle, usually pale green in color. Inside the soft center, one will find a small dark pit, perfectly round, and impossible to cut.

The room started out dark, nearly pitch-black, and so they sat, unmoving. The chairs were ordinary restaurant chairs, the table a petite square between them. Ava could hear Brin’s breathing across the small divide. 

            Slowly, light leaked in. Dim, subdued rays from the cracks beneath the door, the windowsills. The restaurant yawned to life.

            “Why do they start this way?” Brin whispered in Ava’s mind, and Ava realized that Brin was mind-talking with her again.

            “There must be some reason,” Ava answered, silently.

            There were other people in the restaurant, sitting in twos and fours, quietly waiting instruction from the waitresses. Ava could make out the forms of the others, but as though she were only just waking up, opening her lids for the very first time in the morning. She couldn’t see the people clearly.

            Pretty soon, though, she could tell by looking into the other faces that she and her sister were the only identical twins.

            One of the waitresses flipped a switch. There was Brin across from her, in her line of vision, as she always was. Her twin sat with her hands in her lap, as Ava did; her shoulders back and relaxed, neck straight; they looked at each other and created their own mirror.

            “Welcome to The Beginning,” a voice echoed from a corner. This had to be the name of the restaurant. All of a sudden Ava felt—and she was sure Brin felt this way too—that she had gone to bed last night and somehow had walked here in her sleep.

            “Are you even hungry?” This was Brin again, asking another mind question.

            “I’m starving,” Ava mind-replied. Brin nodded in agreement.

            “You will be served your meals shortly,” the waitress continued, as though she had somehow tapped into their conversation.

            Ava and Brin hated the word “meal.” It reminded them every time of a cringy substance, or a too-wholesome one. They didn’t like anything to be too wholesome.

            The twins waited. Light creeped up along the sides of the windowsills and the sisters realized the blinds had been drawn. An experiment? Maybe so. They were identical twins after all. They had been experimented on before.

            There was no sound, not even a clock ticking. It was as though everyone was holding their breath. It gave Ava and Brin time to look around. The walls were a warm gray, somewhat pleasing. Black-and-white photographs hung neatly, sparsely, leaving large areas of blank wall, where the rising sun sliced bright lines here and there. There were no plants, which was probably a good thing, the twins thought to each other. Unless plants are well tended to, they can sag and make a restaurant look unhealthy. Yes, unhealthy, Brin nodded.

            The other diners were young and old, families of four, couples, single diners lined up along a short bar counter. They appeared to be from all walks of life, and from countries all around the world. These cliches popped into Ava’s mind along with a memory of a waiting room, from some moment in her life that she couldn’t immediately recognize. It was still quite dim. No uncomfortable white light at least.

            “And here we have your dish,” said the waitress, laying down a large bowl between them. “A special recipe called ‘Jumellie.’ We make it here exclusively and I hope you two enjoy it.” The waitress was an older woman, with pleasant gray streaks in her black hair. Her face a soft, wrinkled brown, with a striking beauty mark on her lower left cheek. Both Ava and Brin had trouble taking their eyes off her.

            She left them to it and they lifted their large soup spoons. Here was an amoeba-shaped bowl made of what at first looked like thin black clay, but which they realized was a husk much like an avocado skin, filled with a creamy pale-green substance. At its center was a lighter shade of the same goop, and at the center of that a black pit, perfectly round, the size of a squash ball.

            The twins stared at the food without saying a word.

            “How are we going to split this?” Brin asked.

            “Hmmm,” Ava hummed, shaking her head from side to side. Everyone else in the restaurant had begun to eat their dishes. Soft music played from the walls.

            As if they had counted to three, Ava and Brin dove their spoons into the thick soup, raising it to their lips and checking first for a tiny nod before they put the spoonfuls into their mouths and swallowed.

            Not bad. Like a warm avocado soup. Not too thick. 

            And lime, there’s a hint of lime. And mint?

            Yes.

            They continued to dip and swallow in simultaneous spoonfuls.

            This is how we’ll share.

            Yes.

            Eventually they came to the solid black pit at the center of the asymmetrical bowl, their spoons frozen above the rim. 

            How do we split that?

            Hmmm, not sure.

            After a few moments of silence, the restaurant growing louder now that everyone else had finished and had moved on to chatting, shifting in their chairs, even standing up and stretching. It was time to start the day.

            Let’s just leave it whole.

            They leaned back in their seats. The waitress came to their side. 

            “Finished?” she asked.

            The twins nodded.

            “I see you haven’t eaten everything though.” She nodded at the perfect sphere of the Jumellie pit.

            They waited. The waitress looked from one to the other.

            One of them had to speak.

            “We’ll take it home with us.” It felt funny to Ava to hear her voice out loud. Brin even found it funny.

            “I’ll get you a to-go box.” Everyone else was shuffling toward the door, and when the waitress turned to retrieve the container, Ava and Brin stood from their table and joined the crowd filing out of the dark room, eyes squinting in the new light. 

For both knew they couldn’t take with them what they couldn’t split in two.

Process

I have recently become interested in my own identical twin culture. When I had the opportunity to write about culture and food, I immediately thought of the tradition my sister and I have of splitting our food whenever we eat together.