Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Read Online Free PDF Page B

tell me? I’m going home to get your pyjamas.’
    What was she doing? Why was she leaving me here? I started to cry. My mother looked horrified and rooting in her handbag she gave me an orange. I peeled it to comfort myself, and seeing me a little calmer, everyone glanced at one another and went away.
    Since I was born I had assumed that the world ran on very simple lines, like a larger version of our church. Now I wasfinding that even the church was sometimes confused. This was a problem. But not one I chose to deal with for many years more. 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.
    At last my mother came back, and a nurse pulled me into my pyjamas and took us both to the children’s ward. It was horrid. The walls were pale pink and all the curtains had animals on them. Not real animals though: fluffy ones playing games with coloured balls. I thought of the sea walrus I had just invented. It was wicked, it had eaten the eskimo; but it was better than these. The nurse had thrown my igloo in the bin.
    There was nothing for me to do but contemplate my fate and lie still. A couple of hours later my mother returned with my Bible, a Scripture Union colouring book, and a wedge of plasticine, which the nurse took away. I pulled a face, and she wrote on a card, ‘Not nice, might swallow.’ I looked at her and wrote back, ‘I don’t want to swallow it, I want to build with it. Besides plasticine isn’t toxic, it tells you on the back,’ and I waved the packet at her. She frowned and shook her head. I turned to my mother for support, but she was scribbling me a long letter. The nurse started to rearrange my bed, and put the offending putty in her uniform pocket. I could see that nothing would change her mind.
    I sniffed; disinfectant and mashed potatoes. Then my mother prodded me, put her letter on the bedside cabinet, and emptied a huge carrier bag of oranges into the bowl by my water jug. I smiled feebly, hoping to gain support, but instead she patted me on the head and rolled away. So I was alone. I thought of Jane Eyre, who faced many trials and was always brave. My mother read the book to me whenever shefelt 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? My mother knew all about illness and operations. The doctor had told her that a woman in her condition shouldn’t be walking around, but she said that her time hadn’t come, and at least she knew where she was going, not like him. My mother read in a book that more people die under anaesthetic than drown while water-skiing.
    ‘If the Lord brings you back,’ she told May, before she went in for her gallstones, ‘you’ll know it’s because he’s got work for you to do.’ I crept under the bedclothes and prayed to be brought back.
    On the morning of my operation, the nurses were Smiling and rearranging the bed again, and piling the oranges in a symmetrical tower. Two hairy arms lifted me up and strapped me on