Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

by Jeanette Winterson

‘She tried to protect you, and when she got ill that last time, she told me.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because it’s my problem too.’

End.

‘I think I’ll have to lie down,’ I said feebly.

Miss Jewsbury came in. ‘Feeling better?’ ‘Not much,’ I sighed.

‘Perhaps this will help.’ And she began to stroke my head and shoulders. I turned over so that she could reach my back. Her hand crept lower and lower. She bent over me; I could feel her breath on my neck. Quite suddenly I turned and kissed her. We made love and I hated it and hated it, but would not stop.

Taking advantage of an underage girl!

It was morning when I crept home.

I had a plan to go straight off to school hoping no one would notice. I expected

As I tiptoed past, I realised they were having a prayer meeting. I got my things ready and was all packed up to leave. On the way out they caught me.

‘Jeanette,’ cried one of the elders, dragging me into the parlour. ‘Our prayers have been answered.’ ‘Where did you stay last night?’ asked my mother sulkily. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘That Miss Jewsbury’s ...

Oh-ho! They're onto her.

It was 10 p.m. that same night before the elders went home.

You must repent!

I knew that demons entered wherever there was a weak point. If I had a demon my weak point was Melanie, but she was beautiful and good and had loved me. Can love really belong to the demon?

What sort of demon? The brown demon that rattles the ear? The red demon that dances the hornpipe? The watery demon that causes sickness? The orange demon that beguiles? Everyone has a demon like cats have fleas.

‘They’re looking in the wrong place,’ I thought. ‘If they want to get at my demon they’ll have to get at me.’ I thought about William Blake. ‘If I let them take away my demons, I’ll have to give up what I’ve found.’ ‘You can’t do that,’ said a vo...

‘Well, the demon you get depends on the colour of your aura, yours is orange which is why you’ve got me.

When the pastor and the elders came back, I was calm, cheerful, and ready to accept.

An expedient repentence.

As soon as they had all left I went straight round to Miss Jewsbury’s. ‘Do you know where she is?’ She opened the door wide. ‘I’ll tell you in a little while.’

Melanie was staying with relatives in Halifax. I told my mother I had to spend the night in the church. She seemed to understand, and so I made Miss Jewsbury drive me the twenty-five miles across to where I needed to be.

‘Is Melanie here?’ I asked the woman. ‘I’m her friend from school.’ ‘Yes, come in.’ ‘No, I won’t thanks, I’ll just give her a message, if she’ll come out.’ Melanie came to the door. When she saw me she tried to shut it. ‘I’ve got to talk to you,’ I begged. ‘Go upstairs in about half an hour, I’ll go up now and wait for you.’ She nodded, and let me slip past. I heard her say goodbye very loudly and shut the door. No one seemed to think anything of it. It was a crisis and once again I fell asleep.

In front of me was a great stone arena, crumbing in places, but still visibly round.

What an interesting dream!

It’s too late for all that now, toodle-ooo, I’m about to become a buyer.’

The end.

When I got back to the guest house my mother and I had taken, she was lying propped up against the pillows reading her new book from Pastor Spratt. This one was called Where White Man Fears to Tread.

Figures.

Katy sat in a deckchair and Katy looked at the sun. Katy ate an ice-cream and Katy looked like fun. ‘Hello.’ I sat down beside her. ‘Are you staying near here?’ ‘No, I came on the tram, thought I might as well in time for tonight.’

Spotted someone else, huh?

‘What do I want with four tins of black cherries and them water chestnuts in brine?’ blind Nellie grumbled when my father took her her carrier bag. ‘In the old days, we got bread and fruit and a few nice bits of veg. It’s new-fangledness, that’s what it is.’

When my mother heard about this, she was furious, and crossed Nellie off her prayer list.

My mother wanted me to move out, and she had the backing of the pastor and most of the congregation, or so she said. I made her ill, made the house ill, brought evil into the church.

It all seemed to hinge around the fact that I loved the wrong sort of people. Right sort of people in every respect except this one; romantic love for another woman was a sin.

‘Aping men,’ my mother had said with disgust.

Now if I was aping men she’d have every reason to be disgusted. As far as I was concerned men were something you had around the place, not particularly interesting, but quite harmless. I had never shown the slightest feeling for them, and apart fro...

that point I had no notion of sexual politics, but I knew that a homosexual is further away from a woman than a rhinoceros. Now that I do have a number of notions about sexual politics, this early observation holds good. There are shades of meaning, but a man is a man, wherever you find it.

My mother has always given me problems because she is enlightened and reactionary at the same time. She didn’t believe in Determinism and Neglect, she believed that you made people and yourself what you wanted.

Anyone could be saved and anyone could fall to the Devil, i...

While some of our church forgave me on the admittedly dubious grounds that I couldn’t help it (they had read Havelock Ellis and knew about Inversion), my mother saw ...

If there’s such a thing as spiritual adultery, my mother was a whore.

Read this whole paragraph.

So there I was, my success in the pulpit being the reason for my downfall. The devil had attacked me at my weakest point: my inability to realise the limitations of my sex.

‘Pompadour,’ spat my mother. ‘Living in sin with his pompadour.’

Should be "paramour". 😂