“Kulaks!” she railed one day. This was not the first time we had heard the insult. Anytime someone had something against us, he or she would say or even yell the word. And nobody who did so ever got a reply: Neither Father nor Mother nor Grandma could afford to reply. But this was no way to tangle with Sister Torlaa—whose name meant “Little Partridge” but who certainly wasn’t one, didn’t know how to hold back, and who now flared up: “There has never been more than one kulak around here, and he’s dead as far as I know.” She meant Aunt Buja’s own father, who had been the richest man in our corner of the world. She kept going: “Don’t speak of kulaks who no longer exist. Speak of the dshelbege the place is teeming with!”

Aunt Buja was not prepared for this, and she squealed like a stuck pig: “You don’t mean us, do you?”

Sister Torlaa should have been called Mys, “Scratching Kitten.” She hissed: “Who else? How dare you claim not to be one? You have devoured your dowry and your father’s wealth like a dshelbege. And now you’re so ashamed and envious that you spit venom at whoever hasn’t done the same!”

Aunt Buja jumped up, let out a scream, and ran toward our yurt, screaming loudly all the way: “Your Torlaa, your daughter, has insulted me! I’ll take you to court. To court! Aaaah! Ihii-ih!” But just when she had almost reached the yurt, she turned around even while she continued screeching.

Brother Galkaan said to Sister Torlaa: “Watch it. Mother’s going to give you a thrashing, and maybe Father will as well.” There was pity in his voice.

Sister Torlaa, however, raged: “So what? I’ve got to be able to say, to my last breath, what sounds right to me.”

The aunt seemed to calm down once she had run a circle around the hürde. Sister remained unscathed but was admonished: “It’s not right for children to argue with grown-ups.”

The aunts, who used to drop by several times a day to chat and drink tea with Mother, stopped coming to our door. Instead, they now visited each other more often and drank their tea in either of their yurts, laughing especially loudly. And when they weren’t taking a nap, the uncles would sneak after them and join them for the chats and the tea. When we happened to show up, we noticed them either change topics or else make sure we would not understand. But we understood plenty.

While this was going on in the other yurts, the opposite conversation was taking its course in our own. Mother held forth, and Grandma threw in her bit.

Mother called the relatives nitwits whose heads had been turned. Grandma shook her head as she listened and spoke of times that would change and diseases that would heal.