Mother's Milk

In the village, my neighbors are marking the holiday of Saint George the Victorious, signaling the beginning of the growing season. Saint George, as pictured on Russian icons and Tsarist coins, astride a mighty stallion, conquering the “snake” of paganism, is revered in Russia for tirelessly professing the Christian faith. The saint, known more simply as “Yegorye” to Russian peasants, is closely associated with rural life. “George” comes from the Greek word for farmer, and the two holidays for the saint – celebrated April 23 and November 26 – mark the beginning and the end of the growing season.

Many traditions in Chukhrai are associated with the vernal Yegorye. The villagers begin to plow their fields and sow seeds after Yegorye. If there is frost on Yegorye, it is said that oats and millet will grow well that year. If it rains on Yegorye, it will be a good year for cattle. The dew that falls on this day is thought to have healing powers. The villagers take clean tablecloths and soak them in the dew, then rub them over their cattle and newly born calves.

Kalinyonok’s bitch gives birth to a single puppy. He carries it on his arm from the other end of the village and asks me, “You want it?”

I decline. He carries it across the road to my neighbor Kalkan’s house. They take the puppy. For the next three days, I hear horrible squealing, whining, and yelping coming from their yard. Finally, I go over to see what is the matter. My dog Kisa trails behind me.

I enter the yard, but a padlock is hanging on the door of their small house. To one side, I locate a small shed, from which the whining is emanating. They have shut the poor pup in a dark shed normally used for the pig. I open the door. The pup, a round ball of brown puff, is frightened by the light and the stranger and begins to yap in self-defense, shaking all over. Kisa barks and nips at him, but I gently push him away. The pup calms down and stares at us, ever so slightly wagging his tail. In the newfound silence, I hear rustling coming from behind the house. I walk across the yard and find Kalkan’s wife Maria rummaging in some rags in another shed.

“Zdravstvuitye,” I call to her in greeting.

“Laura, oh Lorochka,” she replies in a slurring voice. “Our cow has just given birth to a calf. What to do?”

She is drunk and nearly in tears. A cow has given birth to a calf every year of her life, yet, in her state, the natural event seems traumatic. Her fat, wrinkled 67-year-old face is encircled by a tightly-wound, wool scarf. Her clothes are dirty and ragged. She is wearing short rubber boots, as we all do during the wet season.

I ask about the puppy, why they had locked it up, but I see her mind is elsewhere. 

“The calf, the calf,” she murmurs.

Her husband Kalkan comes in the gate behind me, his wadded coat hanging open over his tall, lanky frame for lack of buttons. Gray stubble pokes from his chin.

“Laura, Lorochka,” he mumbles past his three teeth. “Our cow... a calf.” He is drunk too. “Can we use your wheelbarrow?” he asks. “The calf... the calf,” he hiccups.

I walk across the way to find the wheelbarrow propped against our house. I push it to Kalkan’s cowshed. His cow is kept in the shack where Kalkan and Maria used to live, its roof so decrepit it had gaping holes in it. When their next door relatives passed away several years ago, Kalkan and Maria moved into their house, turning their old home into the cowshed. 

I find Maria holding a canvas bag in her hand in the small yard by the cowshed. She is standing over the calf, which is lying in the mud. “It’s a boy,” she informs me. 

The calf is bright white with chestnut patches. Fresh blood covers parts of his hide. His pink umbilical cord dangles from his belly. His eyes are open wide. He doesn’t look afraid, just slightly confused.

“Why are you taking him away from his mother?” I ask, hearing the mother cow bellowing behind the shed door just three feet away. “Can’t you let it be with her for at least a couple of days?” He’s got to drink the first milk to be healthy.”

Maria looks at me with her bloodshot eyes and says, “That’s the way we do it, Lorochka. Every year. That’s just the way it’s done. We’ll feed him milk from a bucket. He won’t drink maybe one day, two, three, but when he gets hungry, he’ll learn.”

“Man’ka!” Kalkan yells at his wife using her informal nickname, “Get that sack over his head.”

She looks up at me with tears in her eyes and points to her defective hand.  Her right hand has no fingers, an imperfection she was born with. 

“See how unlucky I am, Laura,” she cries, wiping the tears with her sleeve and smearing dirt across her face.

She pulls the sack over the calf’s head, using the stumps of her fingers on her right hand together with her left hand. Kalkan takes the calf’s rear end, and she lifts the front. Accepting that this tradition is older than I am, I lend a hand and support the head, helping the drunken pair lift the baby into the wheelbarrow.

The barnyard is muddy and I have difficulty pulling the wheelbarrow out with the calf in it. Kalkan doesn’t lift a finger to help, until I curse him and yell, “Vasya, you’re a man! Come on, pull, dammit!”

He grabs one handle, and we pull the wheelbarrow out of the yard to the house next door. We roll it up to the shed in their yard where I had freed the pup. Kalkan climbs into the dark shed, and Maria and I lift the calf from the wheelbarrow while he pulls it in.

Kalkan closes the calf in the shed. The baby won’t see the light of day until summertime. He won’t nuzzle his mother’s teat or feel her warmth in the chilly spring nights.

At least the pup is out. He leaps about happily, trailing behind Maria. She ties a rope around his neck and attaches it to a short chain by the woodpile.

I go home and tell Igor what happened. I say that I don’t understand why they had to take the calf away from its mother.

“Laura, how do you think they raise calves in America?” he asks. “If they let the calf drink from the mother’s udder even once, then it will always drink and steal the milk. People raise cows for milk, not for pets. This way the calf never knows the teat. They will feed him his mother’s milk from a bucket, and then gradually wean him. It’s just the way things are done,” he explains. 

“I guess I am naïve,” I say. But I just feel so bad.

“Now change the subject, would you?” Igor responds, frowning. “You are making me depressed thinking about that poor calf all by itself.”

Laura Williams’ book about life in the village of Chukhrai, The Storks’ Nest, will be published by Fulcrum Books this fall.