This week I draw your attention to my sister, that saintly progenitrix who slavishly tends the alarming coven of teenage ne’er-do-wells she insists on calling “the kiddiewinks.” I think a few weeks back I may have mentioned her – she won a snack ‘n’ sandwich toaster in an Extreme Ironing Contest at the 1998 Sheepvention.
Ring any bells? The one who could start an argument in an empty house? You’d know her if you saw her. Anyway. She’s a frequent visitor to CharmingVille: enamoured, as we all are, by fresh coconuts for breakfast, affordable access to an outstanding roster of Indian melodramas on Star Plus, and $13 gin. Especially this last bit.
Scant minutes post touchdown and she’s lashing a careening tuk tuk eastbound on Russian Boulevard, taking a hard right at Bayon and bounding past the abalone display without a backward glance. Within seconds their booze aisle is alive with the sound of satisfied sighs as she skips into the embrace of bargain basement Beefeaters and those dazzling blue gems of Bombay.
More than once I’ve got the call from the Chinese lady who runs the joint like a retail Nurse Ratched; sis has been wet sampling the merchandise on site, and I’ve had to go collect her and her careworn My Little Pony wheelie bag from the massage chairs next to the trolley bay. Thai Huot may have a better dairy section but you can’t beat Bayon for discreet personal service. Being pleasantly hammered and manhandled into a mechanical shiatsu recliner by a couple of strapping stockboys may be the closest thing to a happy ending she’ll ever get. At least for free.
Aside from the cheap plonk there are the balmy morning strolls up Wat Phnom, an armada of disco boats on one of the world’s landmark waterways, and who doesn’t love a game of boules under the Museum’s stately trees.
Sis has fallen so hard for our fun-loving hamlet that she’s gone and bought a neat little flat near Psah Thmey. And since she’s still antipode-bound, rearing her snap-chatty millennials and working full-time to keep them in crop tops and weed, me and the Hubster are managing the renos.
It’s a shame you can’t choose your family. There are plenty of times I would’ve swapped my Dulux-chipping, Ikea-catalogue-referencing, polyurethane-specifying younger sibling for a ham fucking sandwich.
Luckily there were no colours involved. She’s insisted on white everything, though naturally the “right” kind of white, i.e., not too white. And like not chalky white. But like antique white. Don’t get me started.
On the bright side, her choice of a monochrome palette means that’s one less can ‘n’ string Skype call from an unairconditioned chemical warehouse in Takeo to discuss how to perfectly match and mix PMS 324 when all they’ve got is a container load of Jotun Tangerine Blast, some metal primer and a dirty old stick.
A small mercy though. Hubster and I have needed counselling over the still unfunny debacle that accompanied the installation of an exposed brick backsplash and waterproofing for the skylight. A vertiginous shitfight followed the fitting of a new balcony cage to avoid braining pedestrians with errant shrubbery. He went home to mum’s over the wood for the bar top. But eventually it all started looking like the “after” pix on Apartment Therapy. I even made a terrarium.
And just when we thought we could break out the moist towelettes, crack an ice-cold tinny and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, we discovered an alternate rat universe in the roof. Twenty-seven of the little bastards. Eating through newly laid wiring and pissing down that goddam skylight all over the freshly (white) painted drywall. It nearly sent us over the edge, and were it not for another family member’s timely intervention we may well have challenged each other to a duel down the shooting range. Good times.
Enter sister-in-law. A recent beauty school graduate and No. 5 in Hubster’s pantheon of seven handsome sibs, Sister is sweet and a little bit shy. She’s got flower pictures on her nails and terrific hair. But this rat fiasco revealed a hitherto unexercised facility for rodent annihilation – a steely backbone I suspect most Khmer women possess. She loves Bunster, and most other animals I’ve seen her with, but rats are a whole other can of verms. If the buggers are too wily or big for those Starckian cage traps that I want to make into a bedside lamp, out comes the glue on a plate. I’m not condoning. I’m just in horrified awe. Once those four-legged Typhoid Marys and their customary posse of enormous flying roaches hit the glug she spins them into a black plastic bag and dispatches them with one, decisive thwack of a foot-long two-by-four. Then she chucks the bags with their expired contents out into the skip.
I’m a bit scared, and also a bit proud. My sister knows I’ll get her home safely, no matter what. And it’s good to know that when rats shit down your skylight, you can count on family to have your back.