Abscission
by Roann Enriquez | From Issue One (Fall 2025)
Two years ago, when I found out Junie was sick, I called bullshit.
The signs were still there, of course—I suppose I just chose to ignore them. I thought she just wanted to go to bed earlier, even though she still often overslept. I figured she just wanted to take a break from her online courses, even though she didn’t re-enroll the following semester, or the semester after that. On top of that, she gave up on her diet, quickly gaining weight. Seasonal affective disorder, Dr. Bunker had said, also known as SAD. Except Junie was never sad. I knew this for a fact, always having known all there was to know about my sister.
Junie and I had been inseparable since birth. We read each other’s thoughts with just a raise of the eyebrow, a tug of the ear, a twitch of the lip. She had the biggest smile and the most obnoxious laugh. I would’ve known from the beginning, long before her diagnosis—at least, I should’ve. Masaya ang kambal ko, Mom would often say, before she passed away. Living in Thunder Bay, Junie and I had endured some of the coldest winters in Canada for the past twenty-eight years. Was she always this unhappy? Why hadn’t she said anything? I know Mom would’ve blamed it on the engkanto—the supposed cause of our family’s misfortune. I didn’t believe her at first. But maybe if I had, things wouldn’t have ended the way that they did.
“Light therapy doesn’t work,” Junie reminded me. She pointed at the LEDs, unphased that the once-empty shelves of our tiny walk-in closet were now brimming floor to ceiling with plant life.
“They’re not for you,” I said. “Dr. Bunker suggested we try plants instead, remember?”
Junie surveyed the room, stroking the stems of budding orchids on a nearby shelf, as if coaxing them into bloom. I suddenly remembered the wild orchids we came across as kids in the forests of Capiz on our first trip to the Philippines. On that trip, Mom gave us her kambal tuko anting-anting. She didn’t need it after we were born and thought it would be a nice keepsake.
“We’ve tried everything else,” I sighed, arranging the last of the trays into place. And we had. We could open up a black market pharmacy if we wanted to, with all of the ragtag bottles of antidepressants, melatonin supplements, and other prescription pills that flooded our medicine cabinets. We drove across the province in our old Honda Civic, braving wind, rain, and snow, just so a number of psychotherapists could tell us things we already knew and charge us a pretty penny for it. We experimented with a variety of new lifestyle changes—cycling through endless sleep schedules, diet plans, and exercise regimens—only to be left hungry and tired. That was last year. It was getting bad again. And I knew it was only going to get worse.
“Where are they from?” she asked.
“The nursery,” I said. “They dropped off a whole skew. Didn’t have space to house them for the winter.” I switched on the LED strip lights, emanating a bright white light overpowering the sliver of sunlight peeking in from the window. I was quite satisfied with the finished product, considering I didn’t know anything about indoor greenhouse setups up until about a month ago, around the time Junie had finally quit school. She had an idea of what I was up to, but she didn’t ask any questions. I toiled away, thankful for my being able to work from home, as I installed the shelves and caked my fingernails in dirt during breaks and in the evenings. Junie minded her own business; she didn’t protest. She didn’t offer to help either, which was fine. I had tried not to bother her too much. Without school, she had spent her days staring into space, mostly. It was rare that she was doing something—daily chores like washing dishes or old hobbies like reading books—anything at all that signalled that, perhaps, for her, life was worth living after all.
“You didn’t have to do this,” Junie said. Her once cheerful, singsong voice had become so deadpan and quiet that it was often hard to tell if she was talking to herself or to me.
“Of course I did,” I said. “Who else is going to keep us alive?” Junie didn’t reply.
The next day, we moved my desk right next to the walk-in-closet-turned-greenhouse. While I worked my day job, Junie sat in the chair next to me, directly in front of the entrance. A large plastic sheet hung from the doorframe—a translucent portal into a vibrant jungle, tucked away in our dreary one-bedroom apartment. Junie refused to roll back the sheeting at first, staring listlessly into polyethylene folds. I let her be. She eventually came around a few days later when we entered the greenhouse, watering cans in hand. Her eyes lit up at a lone purple hibiscus that had not been there before. Junie and I took our time, watching water seep through soil in silence. I imagined the roots that lived below the surface, intertwined like lovers, swelling as they drank their fill. Mom once told us if we ever became extremely sick, we had to let her know so she could source the right anting-anting from the homeland. Back then, we had laughed it off, chalking it up to old superstition. But that night, I prayed the plants would care for Junie in perfect symbiosis, nourishing her just as she had nourished them. I prayed they would save her.
Soon enough, Junie sprouted from her shell, spending more and more time with our greenhouse residents. She started with rearranging the layout, dividing up the room into distinct zones so plants with similar needs were grouped together. Later, she researched the individual needs of each species, meticulously recording care tips in a journal with an eagerness to put them into practice. Some needed more water, others more fertilizer. We found that larger ones needed to be repotted, while smaller ones just needed some pruning here and there. The greenery had become a refuge from both the cold winter and Junie’s nihilistic tendencies. It was a space where she had taken on a form that was both foreign, yet familiar—a shoot cut from an old stem, propagating into an entirely new being. I knew she could never be her old self again. We could never go back to the way things used to be. But Junie was alive. She was alive, and that was all that mattered.
As a long, cold spring bled into a short, hot summer, Junie remained unaffected by the turbulent change of seasons. We were rarely ever outdoors, as she opted to stay at home with the kids (as she called them), thriving on their energy, vigor, and vitality. We stopped seeing Dr. Bunker and became grateful for this second chance at life, like all the orphans we had adopted. We fed them only the finest organic nutrients and bathed them in a light mist when they asked. We watched them grow with pride, to the point where many had outgrown their planters. We spoiled them rotten—propping them up onto windowsills during rare, particularly sunny mornings and playing old jazz records in the evenings so they could dance the night away.
To celebrate the one-year anniversary of our little green haven, I decided to surprise Junie with the first new member of our family. I had rearranged the plants earlier that day, with just enough space left for a single pot. With careful hands, she unwrapped the cellophane packaging.
“No way,” Junie said. I watched her eyes light up at the basil plant, and I saw her smile for the first time in years. Her fingers danced gingerly over the soft leaves, ripe for the taking.
“Just like the one Mom had,” I said. Junie lifted it to her nose, taking in its sweet smell.
“We should make her Law-Uy! Although it won’t be as good.” Junie peered into the closet and, spotting the small vacancy I made, set the plant onto the shelf. I cleared my throat.
“She would be proud, you know.”
“Of what?” Without skipping a beat, she picked up the plant mister and began spraying.
“Of you.” I said. “Of us.” I looked around at the beautiful little world we had built for ourselves. Junie followed my gaze, nodding in agreement. Then, she went back to work.
A month later, all of our plants were dead. Mom once said that the engkanto often caused misfortune when their victim’s guard was down—striking when it was least expected.
It was benign at first, insidiously marked by wilting flowers, brown spotting, and leaves that curled at the tips. Junie and I hadn’t thought too much of it. We adjusted watering schedules, coated foliage with fungicide, and dimmed lighting wherever necessary. They appeared to get better. We quickly set up new irrigation systems and timer outlets as we prepared for a two-week stay at a friend’s cottage. We had left, confident that our plants would bounce back by the time we returned. When we arrived home, we realized just how wrong we were.
We gasped as we opened the door to the greenhouse, greeted by a sudden eruption of grey and red. Moths and ladybugs flitted excitedly about the room, perturbed by our presence. As one landed on my hand, we realized then that it was not two, but one type of insect that had invaded our greenery—the spotted lanternfly. Junie slammed the door and grabbed a fly swatter. I picked up an old rolled-up newspaper from off the floor. Together, we started swatting them, but we knew it was already too late. We had seen them on the news, swarming backyards across the northeastern United States. An invasive pest from Asia, they decimated entire crops in droves, feeding on the sap of plants. The thought hadn’t crossed our minds, doubting they could ever travel so far up north. Yet, here they were. I realized our mother must have thought something similar in the delivery room when she held us for the first time. A midwife had told her that Junie and I were a statistical anomaly—one in every fifty thousand births. Yet, here we were, too.
When it was over, we sank to our knees, embracing each other. Junie cried, mourning the loss of our children, surrounded by the corpses of their killers. On closer inspection, they were barely recognizable. The tops of leaves and the bases of stems had been bathed in a sooty mold. It was as if thousands of little fires had cropped up on their flesh, burning brightly before being quickly extinguished. There was nothing to be salvaged. A year of hard work completely and utterly destroyed. A few days later, the greenhouse was cleaned out. Junie refused to take part. She looked away as I shovelled the remains into garbage bags. The shelves, now bare, left an old familiar hollowness in our home, reminiscent of the day we finally cleaned out Mom’s bedroom.
A week later, I called the local plant nursery. I learned that the basil plant I gave to Junie had been transported on a shipment with other species containing spotted lanternfly eggs. There were likely dozens of them hiding among the leaves. When I told Junie the news, she didn’t bat an eye. She simply nodded, her eyes as vacant as our closet. After some time, I offered to buy new plants. I asked her over and over, suggesting we try again. But Junie shook her head. It was too painful for her to even think about. So, we sold our garden tools and greenhouse supplies. Dr. Bunker started prescribing Junie the same old medications under different brand names. We didn’t pursue any new hobbies or passions or interests. Soon enough, Junie fell into her old patterns, growing more and more despondent. As the days grew colder, I gifted her pink coneflowers for Christmas—ensuring they were free from pests—with the hope that they would cheer her up.
“They’re beautiful,” Junie said. She cradled the plant in her hands. The flowers looked as if they had just bloomed, gazing up at her wide-eyed in adoration.
“They symbolize health and wellness, I think. Healing,” I said.
As she placed the pot down next to our glass sliding door, I stood back, waiting for her to notice it. Sure enough, the flower in the very centre caught her eye. We took in its appearance: a long stalk much thicker than the others, supporting not one, but two round heads fused together. Outstretched petals surrounded both heads, overlapping each other in an overcrowded corolla.
“I looked it up. It’s called fasciation,” I explained. “Some sort of genetic mutation.”
“They’re twins,” Junie said. We stared at the two faces in silence, both one and the same.
“This flower,” she said then, finally, quietly. “It’s the most beautiful one of all.”
I woke up in the middle of the night when it happened. Junie looked asleep, but I could already feel her slipping away. She was there, but she wasn’t. Not long after, I woke up again, this time in a hospital bed. The steady, beeping sounds of a nearby monitor indicated one heartbeat—not two. Tracing the bandage just below my left breast, a sharp pain shot up my body. I screamed. So this is the engkanto’s curse.
The next day, the police came to visit. Junie had overdosed on sleeping pills. There was no note, no sign of foul play. On the day I was to be discharged, the surgeon came to my room to send me off. He told me that Dr. Bunker’s reports had saved my life. They outlined the anatomy of our union and cross-circulation in great detail. It included a surgical rundown to ensure that a separation, if required, would be successful. He told me that, by being conjoined at the sternum with only our livers connected, the operation had had a high probability of success. It was a low-risk procedure, removing the flesh and cartilage that bound us together. He asked me why we didn’t get separation surgery earlier. I looked past him at the mirror on the wall. How could you look at your reflection and see yourself whole, knowing your other half was missing?
At school, Junie and I were jointly known as “The Mirror”. By being connected at our chests, we both faced each other, as if constantly looking at our own reflections. Like Mom’s old anting-anting, we were two beings inextricably linked—bounded by iron, forged in fire. In the mirror, her face would be a reminder of mine and mine of hers, forever and for always.
I looked back at the surgeon, awaiting my response. I politely thanked him and left.
Roann Enriquez is a Filipino-Canadian multidisciplinary writer and filmmaker based in Mississauga, Ontario. She is a graduate of UCLA’s Professional Program in Screenwriting and was previously selected for writing workshops with Diaspora Dialogues, the Playwrights Guild of Canada, and the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival.
Roann has developed projects through various artist initiatives including the Reelworld Screen Institute’s Emerging 20 Program, Tarragon Theatre’s Local Young Playwrights Unit, and the Mayworks Festival of Working People & the Arts’s Labour Arts Catalyst Residency. Writing across mediums and genres, she is currently at work on a novel, a play, and a feature film.