“You’re better,” she
said this time, probing me with six or seven of her limbs. “You’re gaining
weight finally. Thinness is dangerous.” The probing changed subtly, became a
series of caresses. / “He’s still too thin,” my mother said sharply. [p. 4]
I
can’t help but to relate this conversation with Hansel and Gretel when the
witch checks how much Hansel gained weight every day to gauge when she should
eat him and Hansel deceives the witch by giving her a bone, making her think
that he is too thin. Not to mention, even if I did not know the specifics of
the Tlic/Terran dynamic, I caught on that there was something almost
master/slave like in the relationship between the humans and the Tlic-largely due
to several implications such as impatient Tlic wanting teenage Terran, “sell,”
and “family.” The fact that T’Gatoi wants her human to be healthy implies that
this “something” is something physical, which later the readers find out that
it is in the form of “pregnancy.”
I
think the fact that Gan’s mother “sharply” retorts to T’Gatoi also emphasize
that perhaps what T’Gatoi want when Gan is healthy, may not particularly be
desirable. Gan’s mother is quick to defend him, probably wanting to push the
date as late as possible so that Gan is not taken away. I guess the reason why
my mind jumped to the witch in Hansel and Gretel is because of the mother’s
words, “He’s too thin.” Maybe my mind is just gruesome, going straight from “He’s
too thin” to “He’s too thin to eat.”
I
now catch that there is also something, predator-like or sexual about the way T’Gatoi
handles Gan. T’Gatoi, touches Gan that “bec[omes] a series of caresses,” there
is something sensual about this if I think about how they are going to be, in
really twisted way, husband and wife-ish, but then again, I just can’t let go
of the image of a predator, satisfied with how her prey is fattening up. It
could be in her nature, considering that she could have, as a worm, eaten Gan’s
father. This novel is just generally too disturbing.
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