Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Two Tales

happened to me. I made my way to the summer kitchen like a zombie, holding on to the hand-rails of the pens. I didn’t say “hello” to my grandmother. I simply sat down at the table – and she figured out everything. She gaveme a bowl of borsht right away and watched me gobble it down. Because I was really gobbling, and not just eating it. Grandmother looked at me and was overjoyed. It was as if I had become just like her – her rightful successor. Her shared child with the demon of hunger. That’s why I’m so sentimental. For us both. When my grandfather died, grandmother made me sleep on his bed. And always when I would be staying over at her place after that, I would have to sleep on his bed. On the bed where my grandfather died. But grandmother didn’t worry herself over this. At

times I would say to her that it was difficult for me to sleep on that bed, that I have nightmares, that I’m afraid, but my words just got on my grandmother’s nerves. She didn’t understand me. And I dutifully continued to dream those nightmares. Only at the age of twelve did I come to realize that I needed to run away from my grandmother as far away and as quickly as possible. We were picking the string beans in the garden together. It was a warm August day. Grandmother was telling me her next story, while I was tearing out the bean pods, placing them for her in big piles, and carrying them to her yard in burlap. I don’t know how it reached this point, but grandmother confessed. I don’t remember. Perhaps I said something

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