-
Sonya Orlowsky
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Sonya Orlowsky They say in Plum Coulee there’s this old Ukrainian lady she can cure cancer. You know the Mennonites how they are always comin down with some kind of sickness or other. One time it’s pneumonia, nother time it’s they’re simple in the head. Not one thing it’s another. That’s why they keep lookin for other men, the women there. Somethin about needin new blood on account of they’re always marrying each other that causes all kinds of troubles for them—so babies dead when they’re born or they’ve got one leg shorter than the other maybe or they’ve got their eyes crossed, that sort of thing. Sure, some people say they go just crazy at times the women there sometimes they’re kind of mixed up crabby with women’s troubles I guess and wantin dark men somethin bad but I dunno, can’t say about that one. Anways, this lady, Sonya Orlowsky’s her name, she’s Ukrainian and she can cure cancer, that’s what they say at least. You might know her, remember she was just, well, one good-lookin woman at one time, apparently, they say, back round the 80’s the one you musta heard it when Garry Reed left his wife and six kids and ran off with that dark woman well that was her, caused a real stink with his folks, never talked to him after, not once in all those years since then. Funny, n she the best liked schoolteacher district ever had too. Still got a way with men, I mean that’s the story you get at any rate, isn’t it? But that’s not what I was gonna tell ya. She has this, I dunno, this watchemecallem, a kind of power I guess you’d say. Ever since she was 13, 14 and startin to turn a few heads in town she’s had it. It’s kind of strange I mean a guy doesn’t know what to make of it eh but, well, they say she just puts her hand on the growth, real gentle, always the right hand for some reason I hear. Say it’s on the neck here and she’ll just hold it there for 8 / By Word of Mouth The Poetry of Dennis Cooley / 9 awhile, maybe 2, 3 minutes say and then, when she lifts it, the growth ’s gone. It’s in her hand there, just like a small white octopus they say. But the crazy thing is there’s not sposed to be any scar left over. It’s gone, every last sign of it’s completely gone. Hands like that. I know that’s hard to believe but I’ve talked to dozens of people from out that way and they all say that’s what happens, they swear to God it’s true, every last one of them swears that she just lifts the hand and there it is the cancer’s gone, just like that. Layin right there in her hand. Think that’s amazin, wanna hear something really strange? All the people, all the ones had those growths removed, know what they do after? They go and pickle them. That’s right, they put them up in jars and set them in their sitting room where everyone can see them. Callin by Karl Dyck’s and his missus the other day, day it rained, week ago Tuesday must a bin, to pick up some eggs and there she was—a big white blob in this sealer, right there plop on top of the radio. Karl was pretty pleased about it, took down the jar and give it to me so’s I could get a good look at it floatin round like a pig’s foot in vinegar. Don know what he was thinkin but did he get a kick out of it, but to tell the truth it give me the willies. Got no stomach for them things but I guess it don bother the Dycks one little bit, they just passed it round like was one of those big French parsnips if you ever seen one of them, seemed to think it was somethin special we were all sposed to drop our drawers at or somethin. Funny thing ’s even the little girl, what’s her name, the little one always giggles, yeah—Caroline, Caroline she watched it like she...