Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

by Jeanette Winterson

When she couldn’t come herself she sent my father, usually with a letter and a couple of oranges. ‘The only fruit,’ she always said.

Fruit salad, fruit pie, fruit for fools, fruited punch. Demon fruit, passion fruit, rotten fruit, fruit on Sunday. Orange are the only fruit.

‘There’s this world,’ she banged the wall graphically, ‘and there’s this world,’ she thumped her chest. ‘If you want to make sense of either, you have to take notice of both.’

Round and round he walked, and so learned a very valuable thing: that no emotion is the final one.

‘You’ll die first,’ shrugged the goose, about to go back to her feeding tray. ‘Not before you,’ spat the prince, and chopped off her head.

Lmfao

‘Sweet hearts for a sweet heart,’ he said and laughed. That day I had almost strangled my dog with rage, and been dragged from the house by a desperate mother.

Eventually, I thought, I’ll fall in love like everybody else. Then some years later, quite by mistake, I did.

Whelks are strange and comforting. They have no notion of community life and they breed very quietly. But they have a strong sense of personal dignity. Even lying face down in a tray of vinegar, there is something noble about a whelk.

‘So just you take care, what you think is the heart might well be another organ.’

People have never had a problem disposing of the past when it gets too difficult. Flesh will burn, photos will burn, and memory, what is that?

Here is some advice. If you want to keep your own teeth, make your own sandwiches . . . .

When I finally went home that day, my mother was watching television. She never spoke of what had happened and neither did I.

Soon afterwards I decided to tell her how I felt. I explained how much I wanted to be with Melanie, that I could talk to her, that I needed that kind of friend. And . . . . And . . . . But I never managed to talk about and . . . . My mother had been very quiet, nodding her head from time to time, so that I thought she understood some of it.

We were quiet, and I traced the outline of her marvellous bones and the triangle of muscle in her stomach. What is it about intimacy that makes it so very disturbing?

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.

Walls protect and walls limit. It is in the nature of walls that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.

Katy sat in a deckchair and Katy looked at the sun. Katy ate an ice-cream and Katy looked like fun.

The last I heard that evening was ‘Do not fear, I bring you tidings of great joy.’ At the back of the church was Melanie.

At last she put on her gloves and beret and very lightly kissed me goodbye. I felt nothing. But when she’d gone, I pulled up my knees under my chin, and begged the Lord to set me free.

‘Want an orange?’ she offered as we sat close, in a steady silence. She made to peel it. I grabbed her arm.

She was my most uncomplicated love affair, and I loved her because of it.

There was only one thing I could do; mustering all my spit, I did it.

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.

I loved God and I loved the church, but I began to see that as more and more complicated.

We didn’t talk about it, not the rights or wrongs or anything; she looked after me by giving me what I most needed, an ordinary time with a friend.

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

I don’t know what they did in there, but it didn’t matter; my mother had painted the white roses red and now she claimed they grew that way.

At that time I could not imagine what would become of me, and I didn’t care. It was not judgement day, but another morning.

‘She loved me.’ As soon as I had said this I felt he would kill me if he could.

‘Have you no shame?’ ‘Not really.’

I don’t know why I didn’t thank her, or even say goodbye.

Bc she was weird as hell

‘When did you last see your mother?’ someone asked me. Someone who was walking with me in the city. I didn’t want to tell her; I thought in’ this city, a past was precisely that. Past. Why do I have to remember?

You can salt your heart, or kill your heart, or you can choose between the two realities. There is much pain here.

Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.

‘When did you last see your mother?’ I don’t know how to answer. I know what I think, but words in the head are like voices under water.

Wouldn’t it be nice to sit on the ground again? I came to this city to escape.

Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception.

I went to Liverpool from here once, wearing a hat that looked like a tea cosy. Elsie knitted it for me; she called it my Helmet of Salvation.

I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.

I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal.

I miss God who was my friend.

As it is, I can’t settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me.

But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name.

I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never the destroyed. That is why they are unfit for romantic love. There are exceptions and I hope they are happy.

The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do not know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met.

And so, for the length of the mission, everyone had to eat gammon with pineapple, pineapple upside-down cake, chicken in pineapple sauce, pineapple chunks, pineapple slice. ‘After all,’ said my mother philosophically, ‘oranges are not the only fruit.’