Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson Page A
Authors: Jeanette Winterson
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fingernails always red.
The school song at Accrington High School for Girls was ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’, a terrible choice for an all-girls’ school, but one that helped turn me into a feminist. Where were the famous women – indeed any women – and why weren't we praising them? I vowed to myself that I would be famous and that I would come back and be praised.
That seemed very unlikely as I was a terrible pupil, inattentive and troublesome, and my reports were year-in year-out awful. I couldn't concentrate and I didn't understand much of what was being said to me.
I was only good at one thing: words. I had read more, much more, than anybody else, and I knew how words worked in the way that some boys knew how engines worked.
But it was Christmas and the school was lit up and Mrs Winterson was in her fur coat and bird hat and my dad was washed and shaved and I was walking in between them and it felt normal.
‘Is that your mum?’ said somebody.
‘Mostly,’ I said.
*
Years later, when I came back to Accrington after my first term at Oxford, it was snowing and I was walking up the long stretchy street from the train station, counting the lamp posts. I got near 200 Water Street and heard her before I saw her, her back to the window onto the street, very upright, very big, playing her new electronic organ – ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, with a jazz riff and cymbals.
I looked at her through the window. It had always been through the window – there was a barrier between us, transparent but real – but it says in the Bible, doesn't it, that we see through a glass darkly?
She was my mother. She wasn't my mother.
I rang the bell. She half turned. ‘Come in, come in, the door's open.’
8
The Apocalypse
M
RS WINTERSON WAS NOT A welcoming woman. If anyone knocked at the door she ran down the lobby and shoved the poker through the letter box.
I reminded her that angels often come in disguise and she said that was true but they didn't come disguised in Crimplene.
Part of the problem was that we had no bathroom and she was ashamed of this. Not many people did have bathrooms but I was not allowed to have friends from school in case they wanted to use the toilet – and then they would have to go outside – and then they would discover that we had no bathroom.
In fact, that was the least of it. A bigger challenge for unbelievers than a draughty encounter with an outside loo was what was waiting for them when they got there.
We were not allowed books but we lived in a world of print. Mrs Winterson wrote out exhortations and stuck them all over the house.
Under my coat peg a sign said THINK OF GOD NOT THE DOG.
Over the gas oven, on a loaf wrapper, it said MAN SHALL NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE.
But in the outside loo, directly in front of you as you went through the door, was a placard. Those who stood up read LINGER NOT AT THE LORD'S BUSINESS.
Those who sat down read HE SHALL MELT THY BOWELS LIKE WAX.
This was wishful thinking; my mother was having trouble with her bowels. It was something to do with the loaf of white sliced we couldn't live by.
When I went to school my mother put quotes from the Scriptures in my hockey boots. At mealtimes there was a little scroll from the Promise Box by each of our plates. A Promise Box is a box with Bible texts rolled up in it, like the jokes you get in Christmas crackers, but serious. The little rolls stand on end and you close your eyes and pick one out. It can be comforting: LET NOT YOUR HEARTS BE TROUBLED NEITHER LET THEM BE AFRAID. Or it can be frightening: THE SINS OF THE FATHERS SHALL BE VISITED ON THE CHILDREN.
But cheery or depressing, it was all reading and reading was what I wanted to do. Fed words and shod with them, words became clues. Piece by piece I knew they would lead me somewhere else.
The only time that Mrs Winterson liked to answer the door was when she knew that the Mormons were coming round. Then she waited in the lobby, and before they
The school song at Accrington High School for Girls was ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’, a terrible choice for an all-girls’ school, but one that helped turn me into a feminist. Where were the famous women – indeed any women – and why weren't we praising them? I vowed to myself that I would be famous and that I would come back and be praised.
That seemed very unlikely as I was a terrible pupil, inattentive and troublesome, and my reports were year-in year-out awful. I couldn't concentrate and I didn't understand much of what was being said to me.
I was only good at one thing: words. I had read more, much more, than anybody else, and I knew how words worked in the way that some boys knew how engines worked.
But it was Christmas and the school was lit up and Mrs Winterson was in her fur coat and bird hat and my dad was washed and shaved and I was walking in between them and it felt normal.
‘Is that your mum?’ said somebody.
‘Mostly,’ I said.
*
Years later, when I came back to Accrington after my first term at Oxford, it was snowing and I was walking up the long stretchy street from the train station, counting the lamp posts. I got near 200 Water Street and heard her before I saw her, her back to the window onto the street, very upright, very big, playing her new electronic organ – ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, with a jazz riff and cymbals.
I looked at her through the window. It had always been through the window – there was a barrier between us, transparent but real – but it says in the Bible, doesn't it, that we see through a glass darkly?
She was my mother. She wasn't my mother.
I rang the bell. She half turned. ‘Come in, come in, the door's open.’
8
The Apocalypse
M
RS WINTERSON WAS NOT A welcoming woman. If anyone knocked at the door she ran down the lobby and shoved the poker through the letter box.
I reminded her that angels often come in disguise and she said that was true but they didn't come disguised in Crimplene.
Part of the problem was that we had no bathroom and she was ashamed of this. Not many people did have bathrooms but I was not allowed to have friends from school in case they wanted to use the toilet – and then they would have to go outside – and then they would discover that we had no bathroom.
In fact, that was the least of it. A bigger challenge for unbelievers than a draughty encounter with an outside loo was what was waiting for them when they got there.
We were not allowed books but we lived in a world of print. Mrs Winterson wrote out exhortations and stuck them all over the house.
Under my coat peg a sign said THINK OF GOD NOT THE DOG.
Over the gas oven, on a loaf wrapper, it said MAN SHALL NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE.
But in the outside loo, directly in front of you as you went through the door, was a placard. Those who stood up read LINGER NOT AT THE LORD'S BUSINESS.
Those who sat down read HE SHALL MELT THY BOWELS LIKE WAX.
This was wishful thinking; my mother was having trouble with her bowels. It was something to do with the loaf of white sliced we couldn't live by.
When I went to school my mother put quotes from the Scriptures in my hockey boots. At mealtimes there was a little scroll from the Promise Box by each of our plates. A Promise Box is a box with Bible texts rolled up in it, like the jokes you get in Christmas crackers, but serious. The little rolls stand on end and you close your eyes and pick one out. It can be comforting: LET NOT YOUR HEARTS BE TROUBLED NEITHER LET THEM BE AFRAID. Or it can be frightening: THE SINS OF THE FATHERS SHALL BE VISITED ON THE CHILDREN.
But cheery or depressing, it was all reading and reading was what I wanted to do. Fed words and shod with them, words became clues. Piece by piece I knew they would lead me somewhere else.
The only time that Mrs Winterson liked to answer the door was when she knew that the Mormons were coming round. Then she waited in the lobby, and before they
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