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Genesis Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn't matter what. She was in the white corner and that was that. She hung out the largest sheets on the windiest days. She wanted the Mormons to knock on the door. At election time in a Labour mill town she put a picture of the Conservative candidate in the window. She had never heard of mixed feelings. There were friends and there were enemies. Enemies were:The Devil (in his many forms)Next DoorSex (in its many forms)Slugs Friends were:GodOur dogAuntie MadgeThe Novels of Charlotte BrontëSlug pellets and me, at first. I had been brought in to join her in a tag match against the Rest of the World. She had a mysterious attitude towards the begetting of children; it wasn't that she couldn't do it, more that she didn't want to do it. She was very bitter about the Virgin Mary getting there first. So she did the next best thing and arranged for
Exodus `Why do you want me to go?' I asked her the night before. `Because if you don't go, I'll have to go to prison.' She picked up the knife. `How many slices do you want?' `Two,' I said. `What's going in them?' `Potted beef, and be thankful.' `But if you go to prison you'll get out again. St Paul was always going to prison.' `I know that' (she cut the bread firmly, so that only the tiniest squirt of potted beef oozed out)…`but the neighbours don't. Eat this and be quiet.' She pushed the plate in front of me. It looked horrible. `Why can't we have chips?' `Because I haven't time to make you chips. There's my feet to soak, your vest to iron, and I haven't touched all those requests for prayer. Besides, there's no potatoes.' 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 t
Leviticus The Heathen were a daily household preoccupation. My mother found them everywere, particularly Next Door. They tormented her as only the godless can, but she had her methods. They hated hymns, and she liked to play the piano, an old upright with pitted candelabra and yellow keys. We each had a copy of the Redemption Hymnal (boards and cloth 3 shillings). My mother sang the tune, and I put in the harmonies. The first hymn I ever learned was a magnificent Victorian composition called Ask the Saviour to Help You. One Sunday morning, just as we got in from Communion, we heard strange noises, like cries for help, coming from Next Door. I took no notice, but my mother froze behind the radiogram, and started to change colour. Mrs White, who had come home with us to listen to the World Service, immediately crushed her ear against the wall. `What is it?' I asked. `I don't know,' she said in a loud whisper, `but whatever it is, it's not holy.' Still my mother didn't move. `Have you got
Numbers It was spring, the ground still had traces of snow, and I was about to be married. My dress was pure white and I had a golden crown. As I walked up the aisle the crown got heavier and heavier and the dress more and more difficult to walk in. I thought everyone would point at me, but no one noticed. Somehow I made it to the altar. The priest was very fat and kept getting fatter, like bubble gum you blow. Finally we came to the moment, `You may kiss the bride.' My new husband turned to me, and here were a number of possibilities. Sometimes he was blind, sometimes a pig, sometimes my mother, sometimes the man from the post office, and once, just a suit of clothes with nothing inside. I told my mother about it, and she said it was because I ate sardines for supper. The next night I ate sausages, but I still had the dream. There was a woman in our street who told us all she had married a pig. I asked her why she did it, and she said `You never know until it's too late.' Exactly. No
Deuteronomy: The last book of the law Time is a great deadener. People forget, get bored, grow old, go away. There was a time in England when everyone was much concerned with building wooden boats and sailing off against the Turk. When that stopped being interesting, what peasants there were left limped back to the land, and what nobles there were left plotted against each other. Of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will. It's a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained, it's a way of keeping it all alive, not boxing it into time. Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don't believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It's all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fat
Joshua `There,' declared my mother, laying down the vacuum cleaner. `You could keep a coffin in here without feeling guilty, not a speck of dust anywhere.' Mrs White came out of the lobby waving a dishcloth. `I've done all them skirting boards, but me back's not what it was.' `No,' my mother answered, shaking her head, `these things are sent to try us.' `Well at least we know they're holy,' said Mrs White. The parlour was certainly very clean. I poked my head round the door and noticed that all the seat covers had been changed to our very best, my mother's wedding best, a present from her friends in France. The brasses gleamed, and Pastor Spratt's crocodile nutcracker took pride of place on the mantelpiece. `What's all the fuss about,' I wondered. I went to check the calendar, but as far as I could see we weren't down for a house meeting, and there was no visiting preacher due on Sunday. I went into the kitchen where Mrs White was making a sad cake, a round flat pastry filled with curr
Judges `Now I give you fair warning' shouted the Queen, stamping on the ground as she spoke; `Either you or your head must be off.' * 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. There was no escaping this time. I was in trouble. Picking up my Bible, the hill seemed the only place to go just then. On the top of the hill is a stone mound to hide behind when the wind blows. The dog never worked it out; used it to pee against, or to play hide and seek with me, but still stood ears flattened and water-eyed till I slung her up in my jacket, warming both of us. The dog was a tiny and foolhardy Lancashire heeler, brown and black with pointy ears. She slept in an Alsatians' basket which might have been her problem. She didn't show that she knew what size she really was, she fought with every other dog we met, and snapped at passers by. Once, trying to reach
Ruth * * * Along time ago, when the kingdom was divided up into separate compartments like a pressure cooker, people took travelling a lot more seriously than they do now. Of course there were obvious problems: how much food do you take? What sort of monsters will you meet? Should you take your spare blue tunic for peace, or your spare red tunic for not peace? And the not-so-obvious problems, like what to do with a wizard who wants to keep an eye on you. In those days, magic was very important, and territory, to start with, just an extension of the chalk circle you drew around yourself to protect yourself from elementals and the like. It's gone out of fashion now, which is a shame, because sitting in a chalk circle when you feel threatened is a lot better than sitting in the gas oven. Of course people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things, so there's no need to take it personally. Why will it work? It works because the principle of personal space is always the same
Miscellany About the author Jeanette Winterson was raised by a family of Pentecostal evangelists in Lancashire, England. After studying English at Oxford, she moved to London, where she still lives. Her next novel, The Passion, will be published by the Atlantic Monthly Press in 1988. Review (excerpt) "If Flannery O'Connor and Rita Mae Brown had collaborated on the coming-out story of a young British girl in the 1960s, maybe they would have approached the quirky and subtle hilarity of Jeanette Winterson's autobiographical first novel…. Winterson's voice, with its idiosyncratic wit and sensitivity, is one you've never heard before."—Ms. Synopsis Adopted into an evangelical household in the dour industrial Midlands—where the heathen are everywhere, especially next door—Jeanette cuts her teeth on the knowledge that she is one of God's elect. She knows all the verses to "What a Friend We Have in Jesus;' and very little about the world. Although never exactly lamblike, Jeanette embroiders gr
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