Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Content Warning: This section contains depictions of anti-LGBTQIA+ bias and abuse.

Both of Jeanette’s adopted parents like wrestling: Her father loves to watch it on the television and her mother loves to wrestle others with her faith. Jeanette’s mother is very religious and classifies the people around her as either her friends or enemies. Love and hate are her two emotions, and she exhibits this with her hatred for the people Next Door. Every Sunday morning, Jeanette’s mother prays for the downfall of her enemies and tracks the progress of missions through the World Service on her radiogram. The news of these missions impacts everyone’s day as good news yields meals and bad news yields brooding.

Her mother is their local church’s Missionary Secretary, and on Sunday afternoons, Jeanette and her mother walk their dog around town. When they reach the highest point of a hill, Jeanette looks down and sees the Ellison tenement, the place where she buys black peas and fights with wealthy children. One time, as she buys black peas, an old woman tells her she will never marry. Jeanette does not want to marry a man, but rather hopes to be like the two old, single women who live together and run the town’s paper store.