spat upon

“When I was born my father first spit in my mother’s face, then in mine. I was born a girl. He wanted a boy.” Darya said simply. Then she turned the thought into a prayer; “Lord, I forgive my father now. He didn’t know what he was doing. He did what everyone does here. I thank you for who I am, who you created me to be, and for your goodness.” And with that, Darya broke not only the curse on herself, her children, and her three grand-children, but also on her sisters and their children. For years she has puzzled why so many of them have failed marriages. “When I was married off at sixteen, my older sister was so jealous. Father had forced her to break her engagement. He beat her ring finger hand until she took the ring off. Someone in her fiances family had said something nasty about us, so that was that. But she was so angry that I got engaged next. I didn’t want to be married. I was terrified and kept running away from my husband, but I couldn’t escape. He was more than twice my age and knew how to control me. I have stitches in the back of my head, but I survived.”

But the issue isn’t just forced and failed marriages; nor multiple marriages; or even multiple wives. These and the beatings, divorces, and complicated jealousies and rejections are very real. But beyond that is another, more bitter reality: many of the women in her family have become lesbian. And with the spit, Darya finally realized why. They weren’t wanted for whom they were created to be, and from that moment, they’ve striven for an antithesis.

“Yes,” Deena thinks out loud from across the circle, “For years I would be in a room with people I felt I trusted completely, and a strange urge would come over me that the person I was talking with would slap my face in a minute. I couldn’t figure it out. Then once my mother told me that shortly before I was born, my father slapped her face. I realized then that the infant understands and feels far more deeply than one realizes.”

“Have you forgiven him, Deena?” Darya asks simply.

“Yes,” Deena smiles.

Amazing, this Power of Forgiveness.