Ilya’s Mother Asks What Is In the Cup

Anfisa Rylova stood in her doorway on Mulov Street tonight with her hand on the frame, not letting her son past it yet. Ilya is sixteen, tall enough now that she has to tip her chin up to look at him straight. He had his good shirt on, the one with the mended cuff, going out to hear the drum group in the New Quarter — Vairoc, the ones with the strings and the rhythm that carries three streets over on a still night.

She asked him plainly. Not whether he would drink the tea. Whether he knew what was in it, and who poured it, and how many times the cup would come back around to him.

He didn’t know. He said so, honestly, shifting his weight the way boys do when a question has no answer ready. She told him then: one cup, if any. If he didn’t know the leaf, he didn’t drink the second pour. If his heart started going too fast, or the door looked wrong to him, he was to leave and come home, and she would not ask him why until morning.

He said yes the way sons say yes to get out the door. She held the frame a moment longer anyway, until he said it again, slower, looking at her.

I have read this week that a healer named the plant, duskcap, and that an office drew a careful line around what nobody in its chain had thought to ask. Anfisa didn’t wait on either of them. She asked her own question, at her own door, before he had one foot past the step.

He came home before the tenth bell. I didn’t ask him why. Neither did she.