Oranges Flashcards
My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle.
CH1 Matriarch
The devil himself is a drunk (sometimes my mother invented theology).
CH1 Matriarch / Education
My mother had painted the white roses red and now she claimed they grew that way.
CH7
This is kindly light.
CH8 Matriarch
It’s an Abomination, it’s like saying we come from monkeys.
CH2 Education
So you just take care what you think is the heart might well be another organ.
CH4 Education
This little lily could herself be a house of demons.
CH1 Religion
These children of god, began the pastor, have fallen under Satan’s spell / fallen foul of their lusts.
CH6 Religion
To the pure all things are pure.
CH6 Religion
(demon) they talk a lot but they don’t see nothing.
CH6 Religion
Romantic love for another woman was a sin.
CH7 Religion
Anyone could be saved and anyone could fall to the devil, it was their choice.
CH7 Religion
Their kind of violence leaves no visible mark.
CH8 Religion
I couldn’t attract her attention, so I took an orange and went back to bed.
CH2 Family
She softened ‘good girl’
CH3 Family
I felt a blow that wrapped around my head like a bandage. I lay on the lino looking up into the face.
CH6 Family
She’s all right, I murmured mechanically (mother)
CH6 Family
Perhaps the Lord does, but my mother didn’t (forgive and forget)
CH6 Family
She burnt a whole lot more than the letters that night in the backyard. I don’t think she knew.
CH6 Family
But oh, Sir Percval, come and turn cartwheels again.
CH7 Family
He dreams of Arthur’s court, where he was the darling, the favourite.
CH7 Family
There are threads that intend to pull you back.
CH8 Family
Because it’s my problem too (jewsbury)
CH6 Guilt and Shame
Can love really belong to the demon?
CH6 Guilt and Shame
The skin hung stubborn, and soon I lay panting, angry and defeated.
CH6 Guilt and Shame
I made her ill, made the house ill, brought evil into the Church.
CH7 Guilt and Shame
Shaft of light staining the carpet.
CH7 Guilt and Shame
I lay in it, unable to forgive myself, unable to forgive her.
CH7 Guilt and Shame
Once I went deaf for three months with my adenoids: no one noticed that either.
CH2 Betrayal
I am busy with the Lord in Wigan. (a note) She didn’t comeback for three weeks.
CH3 Betrayal
Quite serene / she smiled / want an orange?
CH6 Betrayal
If she had been serene to the point of bovine before, she was now almost vegetable.
CH8 Betrayal
This was no spontaneous speech. / If there’s such a thing as spiritual adultery, my mother was a whore.
CH7 Betrayal
Oh she’s a demon your daughter, wailed mrs white / she’s no daughter of mine, snapped (mother)
CH8 Betrayal
The devil looks after his own.
CH7 Betrayal
I tried to imagine him without his clothes on. Horrid.
CH4 Sexuality
Did that mean that all over the globe, in all innocence, women were marrying beasts?
CH4 Sexuality
(the mac) it was bright pink / I looked at the shrimps / I felt sick.
CH4 Sexuality
We hugged and it felt like drowning / something crawling in my belly.
CH4 Sexuality
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?
CH6 Sexuality
Aping men.
CH7 Sexuality
He stood a safe distance away like I was infected.
CH7 Sexuality
The devil had attacked me at my weakest point: my inability to realise the limitations of my sex.
CH7 Sexism
The earth kept crumbling away
CH7 Struggle
I held on tight to the little brown pebble.
CH7 Struggle
‘will you repent’ ‘no’ and I stared at him till he looked away.
CH7 Struggle
It was not judgement day but another morning.
CH7 Struggle
After all, said my mother philosophically, oranges are not the only fruit.
CH8 Struggle
