The Mother-in-Law Diaries by Carol Dawson

Author:Carol Dawson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 1999-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

1980: Crucible

That’s the way married people are supposed to be. Why, my mother and father fought like cats and dogs for forty years. I wouldn’t take two cents for a dame without a temper.

—HUMPHREY BOGART in High Sierra

“Are you English?” I asked him.

“No. I’m a New Zealander,” he said.

I’VE THOUGHT ABOUT the mother-in-law, daughter-in-law structure quite a bit in my life, Treatie, and all the forms it takes around the world. There are Polynesian extended families whose members live under one roof almost as a multicelled organism, with parents or parents-in-law as the deciding brains. There are the infamous mothers-in-law in India who snatch the new bride’s dowry (gold jewelry, refrigerators, TV, silk saris) from her hard-sweating family, and then murder her off using some handy household tool—with the son’s assistance—and burn her dismembered body in the kitchen stove.

But the old Chinese custom is the one I’ve always feared most in my heart. Before the Revolution, a bride was handed over to her husband’s family without so much as a glimpse backward, which effectively stripped her of all previous identity except that conferred by the new mother-in-law. What a thought. Imagine never seeing your parents again, forfeiting your brothers and sisters and all other relatives like they’d ceased to exist. Imagine becoming a slave to your arranged husband and his mother, performing all the domestic chores, looking after your mother-in-law’s every little whim. Imagine living in a household where you have not one single ally.

Far worse than the housework was how carefully daughters-in-law got watched for signs of conception, and blamed and punished—by the mother-in-law—if no son arrived quickly. Often they became the household scapegoat. All they could do was silently pray for revenge, the only one likely: that they too would give birth to a boy who, someday when he grew old enough, would contract his life to some other innocent little girl’s and haul her into the home to fetch rosewater and bathe her new mother-in-law’s feet.

Cyclic consolation is all very well for some, I suppose, but I sure wouldn’t want to depend on it. But if there’s one point in my life when I first learned about the dynamics of revenge, it was when I met Geoffrey.

I’D WATCHED HIM out of the corner of my eye, his reflection swimming across the glassed etchings and bronze rails as he followed me from hall to hall throughout the gallery, without any indication whatsoever that he realized there was another human being within five hundred yards. You’re extremely noticeable, I wanted to say; don’t imagine you’re not. But I didn’t dare.

“I’m a New Zealander,” he said.

“So does that make you a tourist?”

“I’ve been traveling a bit.” He shrugged. “I’m living here for the interim.”

“The interim between what?” His presence felt so complete that it made me nervous. He seemed swathed in radiation. I’d sensed the pull on my back the instant he sat down on the same bench I was sitting on; without turning around I’d known, out of all the crowd in the Tate Gallery that Friday afternoon, who it was.

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