Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: 6. Joshua Summary & Analysis

Jeanette comes downstairs one day to find Mrs. White cleaning the parlor until it sparkles. Fine slipcovers have been placed on the sofas, and all of the brass has been shined to gleaming. Jeanette checks the calendar to see if a house meeting is scheduled, but there is none, and no visiting preacher is due in. Jeanette asks Mrs. White what’s going on, but Mrs. White doesn’t answer her, and only says that her mother has gone out.

Jeanette takes the dog for a walk. As she climbs the hill, she thinks about going to see Melanie later, and thinks about how she recently revealed to her mother “as much as [she] could” about their friendship, though Jeanette herself is not entirely certain what is happening between herself and Melanie. Uncertainty to her is foreign and uncomfortable, and something she has not felt since an incident she refers to as the Awful Occasion.

The Awful Occasion, Jeanette says, was the time her birth mother appeared and attempted to claim her back. Jeanette had found her adoption papers years ago, but when she asked her mother about them, her mother waved her away, insisting that Jeanette had always been hers. One Saturday, though, there was a knock at the door, and Jeanette’s mother answered it. Jeanette asked who was there, but Jeanette’s mother told her to go away. From the kitchen, she could hear angry shouting, and pressed a glass against the wall in order to hear what her mother and the stranger were saying. After five minutes, Jeanette put the glass away and began to cry.

When her mother came into the kitchen, Jeanette asked why her mother had sent the woman away when she had been Jeanette’s true mother, and Jeanette received a slap. Jeanette’s mother told her that the woman was only a “carrying case,” and that she had gone and would never come back. Jeanette ran out of the house and up the hill, and when she returned home, her mother was watching television. Neither of them ever spoke of the Awful Occasion again.

Though Jeanette is happy with Melanie, she feels uncomfortable all the time lately, and is sick of lying to her mother about where she’s staying at nights. Though it is common for members of their church to spend nights in each other’s home, Jeanette feels there is something different about spending the night with Melanie. Often, she and Melanie stay at Elsie’s house to evade suspicion, though Elsie seems to know what the two of them are up to. Once, when Melanie stayed at Jeanette’s house, Jeanette’s mother made up a spare bed in Jeanette’s room for Melanie to sleep in. The two slept in Jeanette’s bed together, though, and were narrowly caught by Jeanette’s mother when she checked on them in the middle of the night.

Soon after that, Jeanette attempted to explain to her mother how she felt, but she was unable to really communicate to her mother all that Melanie meant to her. After the conversation, Jeanette gave her mother a kiss, and Jeanette’s mother told her to go up to bed. The two of them have hardly spoken since that night, and Jeanette feels that her mother is “caught up in something,” though she is uncertain of what.

Jeanette returns home after walking the dog to find the house still and empty. There is a note on the fridge from Jeanette’s mother, which informs Jeanette that her mother has gone to stay at Mrs. White’s. Jeanette thinks it is odd that her mother is staying out—she never stays out—but decides that she can use the opportunity to stay the night with Melanie. After a quick bath, Jeanette goes over to Melanie’s house, and the two of them spend the night talking about the future, and whether or not they will be missionaries when they’re grown up. At breakfast the next morning, Melanie tells Jeanette that she wants to go to university to study theology. After breakfast, Jeanette tells Melanie she loves her, but Melanie does not say the words back.

When the two arrive at church, the first hymn has already started. The girls slide into a pew next to Miss Jewsbury, who turns to Jeanette and warns her to stay calm. Jeanette is confused, and asks Miss Jewsbury what she’s talking about, but Miss Jewsbury just tells Jeanette to come find her after services. As Jeanette looks around the room, she exchanges smiles with many of the congregants, and she feels happy and content among them, thinking that there is nowhere she’d rather be.

After the hymn is over, the church goes very quiet, and Jeanette realizes that something is wrong. The pastor is standing at the front of the church, and Jeanette’s mother has gone up to join him. She is weeping. Melanie squeezes Jeanette’s hand, and Miss Jewsbury urges the girls to stand up and head to the front. They go together, hand in hand. When they reach the pulpit, the pastor announces to the congregation that Melanie and Jeanette have “fallen foul of their lusts” and have been brought under Satan’s spell. He proclaims them “full of demons,” and a pained cry echoes through the church.

Jeanette attempts to deny the pastor’s allegations, but the pastor singles Jeanette out as “the best become the worst.” He asks Jeanette on the spot if she loves Melanie “with a love reserved for man and wife,” and Jeanette admits that she loves Melanie. The pastor speaks about Unnatural Passion and the work of demons, and Jeanette screams that “to the pure all things are pure.”

The pastor then turns to Melanie and asks if she promises to give up her sin and beg for forgiveness. Melanie agrees to do so. The pastor instructs Melanie to follow Mrs. White to the vestry, and soon the elders will come pray over her and help her to truly repent. The pastor then turns back to Jeanette, but Jeanette can only say how much she loves both Melanie and the Lord both. The pastor tells Jeanette that the church will not see her suffer. He instructs her to go home and wait for the congregation to come help her.

Jeanette runs out into the street, where Miss Jewsbury is waiting for her. Miss Jewsbury brings Jeanette back to her house and makes coffee for the two of them. She asks Jeanette why Jeanette wasn’t more careful, and that no one would have found out if Jeanette hadn’t tried to explain things to her “mad” mother. Jeanette asks Miss Jewsbury who told her what was going on, and Miss Jewsbury answers that Elsie Norris did. Jeanette is deeply hurt, but Miss Jewsbury insists that Elsie was only trying to protect Jeanette. Miss Jewsbury gives Jeanette some brandy to drink, and Jeanette falls asleep in the living room. When she wakes up, Miss Jewsbury is sitting beside her, and begins to stroke her head and shoulders. Jeanette kisses Miss Jewsbury and soon the two are making love, though Jeanette “hates” it.

The next morning, Jeanette creeps home, planning to change quickly and sneak off to school before anyone notices. When she arrives at the house, however, there are voices coming from the parlor, and the church elders drag her into the room. They ask her whether she stayed the night with the “unholy” Miss Jewsbury, but Jeanette denies it, and insists she must go to school. The pastor urges her to sit down. It is 8:30 in the morning.

At ten at night, the elders finally go home after having prayed over Jeanette all day and urging Jeanette to renounce Melanie and the demon that lives inside Jeanette herself. When all the elders leave, the pastor offers Jeanette one last chance to repent, but Jeanette refuses. The pastor tells Jeanette’s mother that he will return with the elders the day after tomorrow, and instructs Jeanette’s mother not to let Jeanette out of the parlor and not to feed her until she repents. Jeanette’s mother nods and locks her in, taking the lightbulb out of the room so that Jeanette must sit in darkness.

During her thirty-six hours in isolation, Jeanette thinks a lot about the “demon” within her. She wonders if the pure love she had for Melanie could really have belonged to a demon, and decides that if the church wants to get at her demon, they’ll have to get at her. She realizes that if she does let the church take away her demon, she’ll have to give up what she has found.

Just then, a voice nearby tells Jeanette that she can’t give up. An orange demon is leaning on the coffee table. The demon tells Jeanette that it wants to help her decide what it is that she wants. The demon tells Jeanette that everyone has a demon, but not everyone knows how to make use of their demons; demons are not evil, just difficult. The demon warns Jeanette that if she ignores him, she’s “quite likely to end up in two pieces or lots of pieces.” Jeanette asks her demon what will happen to her if she keeps him. The demon warns her she’ll have a difficult time. Jeanette asks the demon if it’s worth it, and the demon tells Jeanette that the decision is up to her. Then he vanishes.

When the pastor and the elders return, Jeanette tells them that she is ready to repent. In truth, she really just wants to get the repentance over as quickly as possible, as she is starving. As the elders begin to pray over her, she feels the demon prickling the back of her neck. Jeanette assures the demon she’s not getting rid of him, just trying to get herself out of isolation.

The pastor tells Jeanette that he hopes she’ll testify to her repentance the following Sunday, and Jeanette, feeling exhausted and “squashed,” agrees. She asks what has become of Melanie. Mrs. White tells Jeanette that Melanie has gone away for a while to “recover.” As soon as the elders leave, Jeanette runs to Miss Jewsbury, and asks if she knows where Melanie has gone. Miss Jewsbury invites Jeanette in, and tells Jeanette that Melanie is staying with relatives in a nearby town. Miss Jewsbury agrees to drive Jeanette to see her, and Jeanette calls her mother to tell her that she feels compelled to spend the night in church.

At Melanie’s, Jeanette is turned away from the door when Melanie sees her, but Jeanette begs her to talk to her. Jeanette sneaks into Melanie’s family’s house, and promptly falls asleep upstairs. She has a dream in which she is in a great stone arena, where mutilated men and women are being emptied onto the grass. Jeanette attempts to climb a stone turret with the rest of the prisoners, and eventually finds a bookshop at the top. Inside, a woman tells Jeanette that she is in the Room of Final Disappointment in the city of Lost Chances—she has made a Fundamental Mistake in her real life, and no matter how high she climbs, she will just end up in this room.

Melanie wakes Jeanette up and tells her that she is running a temperature. Jeanette touches Melanie’s cheek, but Melanie pulls away from her. Jeanette asks Melanie what the elders did to her, but Melanie tells her that nothing happened—she repented, and the elders told her to go away for a week. Melanie tells Jeanette that the two of them can’t see each other anymore. They fall asleep crying, and make love in the middle of the night. In the morning, Miss Jewsbury sounds her car horn, and Jeanette leaves Melanie alone.

When Jeanette returns home, she has come down with glandular fevers. Her mother believes the illness is evil leaving Jeanette’s body, and tells Jeanette that as soon as she has recovered she will be accepted back into the fold of the church. While Jeanette lies sick in the parlor, her mother goes through her bedroom, collecting all of her notes and letters to and from Melanie and burning them in the backyard. Jeanette, deeply hurt by this betrayal, writes that her mother “burnt a lot more than letters that night,” though she still believed that her and Jeanette’s relationship would remain unchanged. A wall has fallen, Jeanette says, and “that walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet”—in other words, her mother has brought their impending estrangement upon herself.

Jeanette descends into a lyrical meditation on her “ransacked” life, perhaps returning to the scene of the raided Harvest Banquet she alluded to earlier in the chapter. “The Forbidden City lies ransacked now,” and even a small pebble at this point could fell a once-mighty warrior. The story becomes associative and filled with children’s nursery rhymes as, presumably, Jeanette’s fever worsens and breaks. She invokes the tale of Humpty Dumpty, and the myth of the chalk circle. She wonders how a great wall and a chalk circle can be told apart. A wall protects the body, she surmises, but a circle protects the soul.

Jeanette’s mother wakes her up with a bowl of oranges and tells her she has been rambling in her sleep. Jeanette takes an orange and tries to peel it, but she is weak, and has trouble. She wonders why her mother never gives her grapes or bananas. She finally peels the orange and tears the fruit open, and sitting in the middle of the flesh is the orange demon, who asks Jeanette if she’s feeling any better. Jeanette tells the demon she feels like she’s going to die. The demon assures her that she’s recovering, and that now that she’s made her choice she can never go back. Jeanette protests that she hasn’t made any choice. The demon disappears.

By the time summer rolls around, Jeanette is her old self again. Melanie has gone away before starting university, and Jeanette is back in the fold, preparing sermons for an upcoming tent revival in the seaside town of Blackpool. No one from church has mentioned the incident, and no one seems to have noticed that Miss Jewsbury has packed up and left town. Meanwhile, Jeanette’s mother is collecting canned foods to add to her War Cupboard beneath the church, which she is stocking with nonperishables to prepare for another Holocaust, or for the End of Days. Jeanette finds herself disagreeing with her mother more and more, no longer living under the illusion that the two of them see the world the same way—Jeanette realizes now that she and her mother are “on different planets.”

The meeting the first night in Blackpool is a great success. Jeanette preaches, and after the sermon May remarks how lucky it is that Jeanette has lost none of her gifts in her ordeal. Jeanette’s mother simply replies that she “got to [Jeanette] in time,” and then goes off to bed.

The next day, after a successful morning of passing out pamphlets on the street, the pastor gives everyone the afternoon off. May wants to go to the zoo, and Jeanette’s mother wants to go to see an exhibition nearby, but Jeanette declines both their offers and heads off on the promenade by herself. Down on the boardwalk, she finds a girl from church named Katy, who is sitting in a deck chair eating ice cream and “look[ing] like fun.” Jeanette sits down next to Katy and strikes up a conversation. She learns that Katy lives in a town just a short bus ride from Jeanette’s home. Jeanette tells Katy excitedly that they can see each other often after the beach trip, and the two exchange a meaningful glance. Jeanette “thinks it best” that she leave Katy and go inspect the gospel tent.

Months later, Christmas approaches. Jeanette’s mother is chosen to write the script for the Nativity play, and she takes to the task with great seriousness and devotion. Meanwhile, Jeanette is teaching a Bible study class of which Katy is a “lively” member. Jeanette is nervous around Katy, but notes that she hasn’t seen the orange demon in a long time, so she must be “back to normal.”

On the day of the Nativity play, Jeanette sits next to Katy in the audience, holding the cue cards for the actors. In the middle of the performance, the side door of the church opens, and a figure slips in. Jeanette squints to see who the familiar figure is, and soon realizes that Melanie has come back.

After the play is over, Jeanette heads home and leaves her mother to bask in bravos at the church. Jeanette is shaken, rattled by Melanie’s sudden reappearance after having put Melanie out of her mind for so long. At nine o’ clock there is a knock on the door—it is Melanie. Jeanette lets her in, and the two of them chat for half an hour or so about Melanie’s life at university. Melanie asks Jeanette if she’d like to go for a walk someday, and Jeanette declines. Melanie then tells Jeanette that her mother will be moving away soon, and asks Jeanette if she’ll come and say goodbye. Again, Jeanette declines. Melanie puts on her gloves and kisses Jeanette goodbye; Jeanette feels nothing. After Melanie has gone, though, Jeanette falls apart, and sits with her knees tucked under her chin, begging the Lord to set her free.

It is a busy time, however, and so Jeanette cannot linger on her feelings for too long. The day after the Nativity play it is time to sing carols at the town hall, and a big crowd comes to watch. Jeanette spots Melanie in the crowd, but pretends not to notice when Melanie waves to her. The Salvation Army carolers arrive and set up shop nearby, and their competing carols drown out the congregation, so the church carolers disperse.

On the way to the bus stop, Jeanette feels a hand on her shoulder—it is Melanie. The two ride the bus together, and Melanie offers Jeanette an orange from her purse. As Melanie starts to peel the fruit, Jeanette tells her that she doesn’t want the orange. Melanie talks breezily while Jeanette sits frozen and panicked until it is time for her stop. That night at Bible study Jeanette is visibly upset; Katy notices and wants to help, and invites Jeanette to come stay the weekend at her house, camping out in her parents’ RV. Jeanette, who has not stayed anywhere but her own home for a long time, thinks staying out might do her some good.

Jeanette, launching again into a fanciful story, describes a secret walled garden on the banks of the Euphrates River. The entrance is hidden, and “there is no way in for you.” Inside the garden grows every plant imaginable, and at the center of the garden is a sundial and an orange tree. “All true quests end in this garden,” but to eat the oranges that grow on the tree at the center of it is to leave the garden, “because the fruit speaks of other longings.” Jeanette writes of reluctantly leaving the garden, and saying goodbye to the place she loves, unsure if she will ever return, and knowing for certain only that she will never return the same way as she got in.

At Katy’s parents’ residence, the two girls spend the night in the caravan parked outside. Katy is worried the two of them will be cold, but Jeanette writes that the two of them were never cold—not that night nor any of the nights they spent together in the years that would follow as their love affair unfolded.

In church, Jeanette took care to never look at Katy while she herself was preaching, though Katy always sat in the front row and listened closely. Jeanette concedes that the two of them had a spiritual relationship, and found happiness and fulfillment in both throwing themselves into church life.

On Palm Sunday, Melanie returns to town once more, excited to announce that she is going to be married in the fall—to an army man. Jeanette doesn’t object to Melanie getting married to a man—she does not feel threatened by men, as within her church she feels powerful and safe—but objects to Melanie marrying this man in particular, whom Jeanette feels has caused Melanie to turn “serene to the point of being bovine.” When Melanie asks Jeanette what she’s been up to lately, Jeanette remains close-mouthed, not wanting to tell her anything about her new love affair with Katy. That afternoon, as Melanie’s fiancé prepares to drive her away to his parents’ house, he approaches Jeanette to tell her discreetly that he “forg[ives] them both.” Jeanette musters her strength and spits in the man’s face.