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Tanya Maliarchuk
home from work. He dragged
away her step-mother away
from my grandmother, but
my grandmother already
couldn’t move or speak. She
was covered in blood. Then
her father started to beat the
step-mother, but not with
the birch switches, with his
fist instead.
The step-mother hated my
grandmother. She used to
feed her borsht with soap,
and one time even with
rat poison. This is all true.
I’m not lying. It’s the pure
truth. Though you might not
believe something like this
could actually happen.
At
six
years
of
age
grandmother ran away from
home and ended up in a
boarding school.
At seven, she escaped from
the boarding school because
she was afraid of starving
to death. In the boarding
school, grandmother learned
a new recipe for soup: water
with two string beans.
At eight, grandmother lived
at the Novohrad-Volynsk
market and used to eat plum
pits.
Then she herded calves at the
collective farm, then cows,
then she tended some man’s
farm, who promised her
warm clothing for the winter
for a year of work. Then
with two years of additional
service to him, grandmother
earned a young calf. She
took the calf by a tether, said
farewell to the owners, and
went to the city of Zhytomyr.
The calf died in a week.
Grandmother had to butcher
it. She traded the calf meat
for two tarpaulin cloth boots
– both of them left footed.
I’m telling you all this in brief,
but it took grandmother ten
years to tell it all tome. For ten