Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

by Jeanette Winterson

Once, when I was collecting the black peas, about to go home, the old woman got hold of my hand. I thought she was going to bite me. She looked at my palm and laughed a bit. ‘You’ll never marry,’ she said, ‘not you, and you’ll never be still.’

That was for sure!

There were two women I knew who didn’t have husbands at all; they were old though, as old as my mother. They ran the paper shop and sometimes, on a Wednesday, they gave me a banana bar with my comic. I liked them a lot, and talked about them a lot to my mother. One day they asked me if I’d like to go to the seaside with them. I ran home, gabbled it out, and was busy emptying my money box to buy a new spade, when my mother said firmly and forever, no. I couldn’t understand why not, and she wouldn’t explain. She didn’t even let me go back to say I couldn’t. Then she cancelled my comic and told me to collect it from another shop, further away.

The first lesbians she saw!

A couple of weeks later I heard her telling Mrs White about it. She said they dealt in unnatural passions. I thought she meant they put chemicals in their sweets.

One night, by mistake, she had walked into Pastor Spratt’s Glory Crusade.

Pastor Spratt spoke of the fate of the damned, and performed healing miracles.

My mother said he looked like Errol Flynn, but holy. A lot of women fou...

My mother is very like William Blake; she has visions and dreams and she cannot always distinguish a flea’s head from a king. Luckily she can’t paint.

😄

left him to it. When I came back into the hall somebody asked me if I’d seen Pastor Finch. ‘He’s in the Sunday School Room playing with the Fuzzy Felt,’ I replied. ‘Don’t be fanciful Jeanette,’ said the voice. I looked up. It was Miss Jewsbury; she always talked like that, I think it was because she taught the oboe. It does something to your mouth.

I lagged behind, thinking about Pastor Finch and how horrible he was. His teeth stuck out, and his voice was squeaky, even though he tried to make it deep and stern. Poor Mrs Finch. How did she live with him? Then I remembered the gypsy. ‘You’ll never marry.’ That might not be such a bad thing after all.

It was in this way that I began my education: she taught me to read from the Book of Deuteronomy, and she told me all about the lives of the saints, how they were really wicked, and given to nameless desires.

I was not to be misled by the smooth tongues of priests. ‘But I never see any priests.’ ‘A girl’s motto is BE PREPARED.’

A warning. Priests were doing hanky-panky back then too!

I learnt that it rains when clouds collide with a high building, like a steeple, or a cathedral; the impact punctures them, and everybody underneath gets wet. This was why, in the old days, when the only tall buildings were holy, people used to say cleanliness is next to godliness. The more godly your town, the more high buildings you’d have, and the more rain you’d get.

😂

‘That’s why all these Heathen places are so dry,’ explained my mother, then she looked into space, and her pencil quivered. ‘Poor Pastor Spratt.’

I asked my mother to teach me French, but her face clouded over, and she said she couldn’t. ‘Why not?’ ‘It was nearly my downfall.’ ‘What do you mean?’ I persisted, whenever I could. But she only shook her head and muttered something about me being too young, that I’d find out all too soon, that it was nasty. ‘One day,’ she said finally, ‘I’ll tell you about Pierre,’ then she switched on the radio and ignored me for so long that I went back to bed.

‘Why don’t I go to school?’ I asked her. I was curious about school because my mother always called it a Breeding Ground. I didn’t know what she meant, but I knew it was a bad thing, like Unnatural Passions. ‘They’ll lead you astray,’ was the only answer I got.

Meanwhile, my lessons continued. I learnt about Horticulture and Garden Pests via the slugs and my mother’s seed catalogues, and I developed an understanding of Historical Process through the prophecies in the Book of Revelation, and a magazine called The Plain Truth, which my mother received each week.

Then, one morning, when we had got up early to listen to Ivan Popov from behind the Iron Curtain, a fat brown envelope plopped through the letter box.

‘I have to send you to school.’

I went into the living room, looking for something to do. In the kitchen I heard my mother switch on the radio. ‘And now,’ said a voice, ‘a programme about the family life of snails.’ My mother shrieked. ‘Did you hear that?’ she demanded, and poked her head round the kitchen door. ‘The family life of snails, it’s an Abomination, it’s like saying we come from monkeys.’

I thought about it. Mr and Mrs Snail at home on a wet Wednesday night; Mr Snail dozing quietly, Mrs Snail reading a book about difficult children. ‘I’m so worried doctor. He’s so quiet, won’t come out of his shell.’

What an imagination! And so clever too.

‘The Devil’s in the world, but not in this house,’ she said, and fixed her gaze on the picture of the Lord hung above the oven.

Once I went deaf for three months with my adenoids: no one noticed that either.

I was lying in bed one night, thinking about the glory of the Lord, when it struck me that life had gone very quiet. I had been to church as usual, sung as loudly as ever, but it had seemed for some time that I was the only one making a noise.

I had assumed myself to be in a state of rapture, not uncommon in our church, and later I discovered my mother had assumed the same. When May had asked why I wasn’t answerin...

One Sunday the pastor told everyone how full of the spirit I was. He talked about me for twenty minutes, and I didn’t hear a word; just sat there reading my Bible and thinking what a long book it was. Of course this seeming modesty made them all the more convinced.

I thought no one was talking to me and the others thought I wasn’t talking to them. But on the night I realised I couldn’t hear anything I went downstairs and wrote on a piece of paper, ‘Mother, the world is very quiet.’

I couldn’t attract her attention, so I took an orange and went back to bed. I had to find out for myself.

The next day I leapt out of bed determined to explain to my mother what was wrong.

My breakfast had been left on the kitchenette with a short note. ‘Dear Jeanette, We have gone to the hospital to pray for Auntie Betty. Her leg is very loose. Love mother.’

So I spent the day as well as I could, and finally decided to go for a walk. That walk was my salvation. I met Miss Jewsbury who played the oboe and conducte...

She hadn’t been to church for a long time because of her tour of the Midlands with the Salvation Symphony Orchestra, and so she didn’t know that I was supposed to be full of the spirit. She stood

in front of me opening and shutting her mouth, which was very large on account of the oboe, and pulling her eyebrows into the middle of her head.

I took hold of her hand and led her into the post office. Then I picked up one of the pens and wrote on the back of a child allowance form, ‘De...

‘Dear Miss Jewsbury,’ I wrote, ‘My mother doesn’t know. She’s at the hospital with Auntie Betty. I was in bed last night.’

Miss Jewsbury just stared and stared. She stared for so long I began to think about going home. Then she snatched my hand and whisked me off to the hospital.

When we got there my mother and some others were gathered around Auntie Betty’s bed singing choruses. My mother saw us, looked a bit surprised, but didn’t get up. Miss Jewsbury tapped her on the elbow, and started doing the routine with her mouth and eyebrows. My mother just shook and shook her head. Finally Miss Jewsbury yelled so ...

Then a doctor came over to us, very angry, and then he and Miss Jewsbury waved their arms at each other.

The doctor and Miss Jewsbury whisked me away to a cold room full of equipment, and made me lie down.

Then my mother arrived and seemed to understand what was going on. She signed a form, and wrote me another note. ‘Dear Jeanette, There’s nothing wrong, you’re just a bit deaf. Why didn’t you tell me? I’m going home to get your pyjamas.’

Since I was born I had assumed that the world ran on very simple lines, like a larger version of our church. Now I was finding that even the church was sometimes confused.

The problem there and then was what was going to happen to me. The Victoria Hospital was big and frightening, and I couldn’t even sing to any effect because I couldn’t hear what I was singing. There was nothing to read except some dental notices and an instruction leaflet for the X-ray machine.

I tried to build an igloo out of the orange peel but it kept falling down and even when it stood up I didn’t have an eskimo to put in it, so I had to invent a story about ‘How Eskimo Got Eaten’, which made me even more miserable. It’s always the same with diversions; you get involved.

A born storyteller!

At last my mother came back, and a nurse pulled me into my pyjamas and took us both to the children’s ward.

I thought of Jane Eyre, who faced many trials and was always brave. My mother read the book to me whenever she felt sad; she said it gave her fortitude.

I picked up her letter: the usual not-to-worry, lots-of people-will-visit, chin-up, and a promise to work hard on the bathroom, and not let Mrs White get in the way. That she’d come soon, or if not she’d send her husband. That my operation would be the next day. At this, I let the letter fall to the bed. The next day! What if I died? So young and so promising! I thought of my funeral, of all the tears. I wanted to be buried with Golly and my Bible. Should I write instructions? Could I count on any of them to take any notice?

On the morning of my operation, the nurses were smiling and rearranging the bed again, and piling the oranges in a symmetrical tower.

A nurse held my hand while someone fitted a muzzle over my nose and mouth. I breathed in and saw a great line of water-skiiers falling off and not coming back up. Then I didn’t see anything at all.

‘Jelly, Jeanette.’ I knew it, I’d died and the angels were giving me jelly. I opened my eyes expecting to see a pair of wings. ‘Come on, eat up,’ the voice encouraged. ‘Are you an angel?’ I asked hopefully. ‘Not quite, I’m a doctor. But she’s an angel, aren’t you nurse?’ The angel blushed. ‘I can hear,’ I said, to no one in particular. ‘Eat your jelly,’ said the nurse.

I might have languished alone for the rest of the week, if Elsie hadn’t found out where I wa...

‘How old are you Elsie?’ I wanted to know. ‘I remember the Great War, and that’s all I’m saying.’ Then she started to tell me how she’d driven an ambulance without any brakes.