‘Thank you,’ she says, and I cease pouring.
‘Sugar?’
She shakes her head.
‘Milk?’ I enquire innocently.
She looks up at me then, her eyes sharp, cunning as a crocodile. ‘Thank you.’
I glance at the empty jug stationed beside her beringed hand and watch her hand spasm into a fist. Returning to my side, I fill my cup silently with tea and put two sugars into it. Then I return the milk from the bowl back into the jug, and taking it over to her and positioning the jug above her cup of tea begin pouring. She raises her hand to indicate when she has had enough. I take the jug back to my end of the table and sitting down pour some milk into my cup. Silently I stir my milk.
‘I have an issue to take up with you.’
I raise an eyebrow.
‘I’m not happy about that creature you have taking care of my grandson.’
My mouth hangs open with astonishment. I snap it shut, as mad as a cut snake. Now she has gone where she definitely shouldn’t have. ‘That creature happens to be my best friend, and I will thank you not to refer to her as such again in my presence.’
‘That woman with a neck that looks like a public lavatory wall is your best friend?’
The arrogance and snobbery is breathtaking. I take a deep and cleansing breath before I dream of answering her. ‘Has she done anything that makes you believe she is unfit to care for your grandson?’
Her eyes flicker insolently. She has done that on purpose to provoke me. The white, perfectly manicured fingers of her right hand are resting delicately on the table top. The air conditioning hums like a lazy insect. It is actually too cold in this room. I’m starting to get chicken skin on my arms and legs. I wonder if she has turned it up on purpose. No wonder she is wearing a turtleneck sweater.
I come to the conclusion that one of the things I detest and deeply resent most is being in a freezing hotel room with my mother-in-law.
‘Well,’ I say quietly, ‘I’d rather be her than a bloodline snob, any day.’
She smiles cynically. ‘Are you sure? You seem to have done everything in your power to…catch a bloodline snob in your net.’
‘By some quirk of fate I find myself married to one, but I can assure you I wouldn’t want to be one of you.’
‘You don’t seem to understand. Our bloodline can be traced back to antiquity, beyond recorded history. We, the thirteen original families, have been in power since time immemorial. We are born to lead. It is the design of the current paradigm. Our bloodline is a privilege. You cannot join the family. You must be born into it. There is no other way in. So you can never be one of us.’
She stops and takes a delicate sip of tea and I stare at the sheer hubris of the woman.
‘And just so you are aware, breeding is case specific, depending on the role required. There are no ‘unapproved’ unions. Our families always intermarry between houses. In all my time on this earth I have never seen or heard of a family member breaking this code.’
‘Your son just did.’
She carries on as if I had not spoken. ‘In the rare instance of a child being born in…well…difficult circumstances, that child will be raised in accordance with the family rules, but away from either of its parents. To serve the family.’
My heart hammers in my chest. ‘Is that what you have planned for Sorab?’
Her words chill me to the bone. ‘Everybody serves the family. One way or another.’
‘Well, Sorab is not. He is my son and I will die before I give him up to the “family”.’
Swollen with vanity she sits at her fine table and smiles knowingly, but I know how to prick her. ‘Did you know what your husband was doing to your son?’
She doesn’t pretend not to understand. Her eyes flash with anger. ‘You must be very proud of yourself. Rising up from the lowest rung of society, snaring a man such as my son and now presuming to sit in judgment of me. How old are you?’
‘Twenty-one.’
‘And you think you know how everything works, do you?’
How clever she is. Suddenly I am under attack again. ‘I know fathers shouldn’t abuse their sons,’ I say.
She scowls and flushes with rage. ‘Abuse? How dare you? Who said anything about abuse?’
For a moment I am so taken aback by her genuine anger that I start to think she did not know, and that I have accused her wrongly, and my brain instinctively scrambles to apologize, but her next words make me realize that she is not angry because I accused her, but because I have dared to question the ways of her precious bloodline.
Her voice is abruptly and disconcertingly quiet and mild. ‘There is a tribe in Asia, untouched by Western influence,’ she pauses to smile sarcastically. ‘Something you, no doubt, will advocate preserving. The custom of this tribe is that when the husband comes home from a hard day’s hunting, he puts down his hunting accouterments, and goes up the steps of his wooden house to call to his daughter—usually she will be very young, less than ten, perhaps even five or less. When he calls her, she knows what he wants of her and she will go to him and lie down, usually in the main room where everyone can see what is going on. He will open her small legs, and right there in front of his wife and all his other children, he will put his mouth between her legs and he will suck.’
She stops to savor my unconcealed horror. ‘Often while he is drinking from her innocent little pu**y, she will be drinking from her milk bottle.’
I stare at her in shock. Is she telling the truth?
‘You don’t believe me?’ she challenges. ‘Go look it up.’ Her face morphs into a hard, cold mask. ‘Mind you, only the father has this privilege. This act, no matter what it may seem like to your education and understanding, has no sexual connotation to it at all. It is done to strengthen the man. As the girl grows and becomes a woman, the practice is no longer considered strengthening and is discarded. But the girl will carry fond memories of the times she has ‘helped’ her father. After all, it must be a rather pleasant exchange.’
She pauses, and, picking up a pair of chopsticks, reaches for and expertly captures the dried shrimp and corn wrapped in cha phlu leaves. ‘Will you be the intrepid woman who will go and inform this tribe that what they are doing is shameful and barbaric?’
I swallow hard, bereft of words.
‘No? And yet you are happy to sit here and lecture me on the barbaric nature of our ways and our rituals.’