Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Sweet Darusya

“Eh-h-h, my dear friend… It’d be nothing if a boy had been born. But it’s a girl… and during the day no less, in the afternoon… No one has seen that child, maybe she’s a cripple… have you heard of such a thing that a man chops off a child’s umbilical cord, when half the village here can chop one off? He didn’t call Fulyachka… or the neighbor Marika, and Maria herself recently for the first time has had a child delivered, and knows all that business well… A woman birthing the first time – is no heifer that’s calving for the first time… and gazdas really need to watch, and here you have a tiny bit of a woman…. “As long as it’s for the good, sweetie, everything… for the good… otherwise the child can possibly be mute.” “May your tongue break

out in boils, Stefka, you’re prophesizing such poppycock! Why would the child have to be mute when the mother and father speak?!” “That’s because a married woman can’t conceal her bigness with seed. Pregnancy for a married gazda woman, that’s not a disgrace. But Matronka hid her pregnancy right up to the birthing.” “You’re saying stupid things, Paraska! Stupid! What, in front of the village she needed to bare her womb, so that a dumb shithead would know that they’ve finally made a child?!” “Stupid – or not, but that’s how my dead mother taught me, God grant her the heavenly kingdom.” * …Did someone really cast

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