The Memory of Earth by Orson Scott Card

an Auntie for your little boy.
    “I should have seen it coming. Your body is growing so fast—too fast, I fear, outstripping your maturity in every other area.”
    This was too much to bear. He had planned to listen calmly to everything she said, let her jump to her own conclusions, and then get back to class and have done with the whole thing. But to have her thinking that his gonads were running his life when, if anything, his mind was more mature than his body—
    “Is that as smart as you know how to be, Mother?”
    She raised an eyebrow.
    He knew he was already overstepping himself, but he had begun, and the words were there in his mind, and so he said them. “You see something inexplicable going on, and if it’s a boy doing it, you’re sure it has to do with his sexual desires.”
    She half-smiled. “I do have some knowledge of men, Nafai, and the idea that the behavior of a fourteen-year-old might have some link to sexual desire is based on much evidence.”
    “But I’m your
son,
and still you don’t know me from a pile of bricks.”
    “So you
didn’t
go to Dolltown?”
    “Not for any reason
you’d
imagine.”
    “Ah,” she said. “I can imagine
many
reasons. But not one of the possible reasons for you to go to Dolltown suggests that you have very good judgment.”
    “Oh, and you’re the expert on good judgment, I imagine.”
    His sarcasm was not playing well. “You forget, I think, that I am your mother and your schoolmistress.”
    “It was you, Mother, and not I who invited those two girls to
that family
meeting yesterday.”
    “And this showed poor judgment on my part?”
    “Extremely poor. By the time I got to the Open Theatre it was still several hours before dark, and already the word was out about Father’s vision.”
    “That’s not surprising,” said Mother. “Father went directly to the clan council. It would hardly be a secret after that.”
    “Not just his
vision
, Mother. There was already a satire in rehearsal—one of Drotik’s, too, no less—that included a fascinating little portico scene. Since the only people present who were
not
family were those two witchgirls—”
    “Hold your tongue!”
    He immediately fell silent, but with an undeniable sense of victory. Yes, Mother was furious—but he had also scored a point with her, to get her this angry.
    “Your referring to them by that demeaning
manword
is offensive in the extreme,” said Mother. Her voice was quiet now; she was
really
angry. “Luet is a seer and Hushidh is a raveler. Furthermore, both have been completely discreet, mentioning nothing to anyone.”
    “Oh, have you watched them every second since—”
    “I said to hold your tongue.” Her voice was like ice. “For your information, my bright, wise,
mature
little boy, the reason there was a portico scene in Drotik’s satire—which, by the way, I
saw,
and it was very badly done, so it hardly worries me—the reason there was a portico scene was because while your father was going to the clan council, I was at the city council, and when
I
told the story I included the events on this portico. Why, asks my brilliant son with a deliciously stupid look on his face? Because the only thing that made the council take yourfather’s vision seriously was the fact that Luet believed him and found his vision consonant with her own.”
    Mother
had told.
Mother
had brought down ridicule and ruin upon the family. Unbelievable. “Ah,” said Nafai.
    “I thought you’d see things a little differently.”
    “I see that there was nothing wrong with having Luet and Hushidh at the family meeting,” said Nafai. “It was
you
who should have been excluded.”
    Her hand lashed out across his face. If she had been aiming for his cheek, she missed, perhaps because he reflexively drew his head back. Instead her fingernail caught him on the chin, tearing the skin. It stung and drew blood.
    “You forget yourself, sir,” she said.
    “Not as badly as you have forgotten