She found him sitting on a pile of garbage near the road. Without uttering a word she showed him the doctor’s note and then pointed at her breast pocket.

“You need to put her back where you found her,” the hermit said, “and not look at her anymore.”

“Back where? The produce store?”

“Stupid woman! Where’d they find her?”

“In a cabbage patch. But I don’t know where that is.”

“Stupid woman!” the hermit yelled. “You knew how to sin; you must know how to save yourself.”

“Where’s the cabbage patch?” the mother asked again.

“Enough,” said the hermit. “And don’t look at her.”

The woman cried, bowed down, crossed herself, kissed the hermit’s smelly, frayed sweatshirt, and walked away. When she turned around a minute later, there was no longer any hermit, or any trash pile-just a wisp of fog.

The woman grew scared and ran. Evening was approaching, and she kept on running through empty fields. Suddenly she saw a patch filled with rows of little cabbage buds poking through the earth.

It was growing dark out, and the woman stood there in the drizzle, holding her breast pocket, thinking she couldn’t leave her daughter here in the cold and the fog. The girl would get scared and start crying!

So with her bare hands the woman dug up a big clump of soil and a cabbage bud with it, wrapped this into her slip, and dragged the heavy bundle with her to the city and all the way home.

As soon as she crossed the doorstep, falling down with exhaustion, she took out her largest pot and placed the clump of soil and the cabbage into the pot and then put all this on her windowsill. And to avoid ever looking at it, she closed the curtain.

But then she thought: she’d have to water the little cabbage. And in order to water the cabbage, she’d have to look at it.

So she took her pot out onto the balcony, into real field conditions. If there was rain, there’d be rain, and if there was wind, there’d be wind, and birds, and so on. If the baby lived and grew inside her, like all other babies, then she’d be protected from the cold and the wind, but her little Droplet was different-she couldn’t hide inside her mother’s body; she’d have only one cabbage leaf to protect her.

Carefully moving aside the young, firm leaves of the cabbage bud, the mother put her little daughter inside it. Her Droplet didn’t even wake up-in general she loved sleeping and was an unusually quiet, happy, and easygoing child. The cabbage leaves were hard, naked, and cold, and they immediately closed around little Droplet.

The mother quietly stepped back from the balcony, closed the door, and began living all by her lonesome again, just as before. She went to work, returned from work, prepared herself some food, and never looked out her window to see what was happening with her cabbage plant.

The summer went by, and the woman wept and prayed. So as to hear even just a little of what was happening out on the balcony, she slept on the floor right next to the door. When there wasn’t any rain, she worried that the cabbage would wilt; when there was rain, she worried that it would drown; but the mother forbade herself to think for even one second about what her little Droplet was doing there, what she was eating and how she was crying, there by herself in her green grave, without a single motherly caress, without any warmth at all…

Sometimes, especially at night, when the rain came down in buckets and the lightning flashed, the woman tore herself up trying not to go out on the balcony and cut down the cabbage plant and take out her little Droplet and feed her a drop of warm milk and put her into her cozy bed. Instead, she ran downstairs and stood in the rain, making quite a spectacle of herself, to show her Droplet that there was nothing scary about rain and lightning. And the whole time she told herself it must have been for a reason that she’d met the filthy hermit-monk and that he’d told her to put her little Droplet back where she found her.

In this way a summer passed, and the autumn came. All the produce stores were selling young firm cabbage plants, but the woman couldn’t bring herself to go out on the balcony yet. She was afraid she wouldn’t find anything there. Or she’d find a wilted cabbage plant and inside a little clump of red silk, the dress of poor Droplet, whom she’d killed with her own hands, just as she’d once killed her unborn child.

And then one morning the first snow fell, unusually early for autumn. The poor woman looked out her window, terrified, and rushed to open the door to her balcony.

As the door began to open, reluctant, with a heavy creaking sound, the woman heard a frightened meowing from the balcony, persistent and shrill.

“A cat!” the poor woman cried, thinking a cat had come over from a neighboring apartment. “There’s a cat on the balcony!” And everyone knows how much cats love to eat anything that is small and runs around.

At last the balcony door opened, and the woman ran out into the snow just like that, in her slippers.

Inside her pot was an enormous, glorious cabbage, covered with numerous curly leaves like rose petals, and on top of the plant, lying on its many curls, was a thin, ugly baby, all red, with flaking skin. The baby, closing tight its tiny eye slits, made mewling noises, choking with sobs, shaking its clenched little fists, wobbling its bright-red toes the size of currant berries. And as if that weren’t enough, the baby had, stuck to its bald head, a little scrap of red silk.

“But where’s Droplet?” the woman thought to herself, bringing the whole cabbage plant and the baby into the room. “Where’s my little girl?”

She put the crying baby on the windowsill and began digging into the cabbage. She lifted every leaf very carefully, but her Droplet wasn’t there. “Who left this baby here?” she thought. “Is this a joke? What am I going to do with this thing? Look at the size of her. They took my little Droplet, and left me with this…”

The baby was clearly cold, its skin bluish, its cries more and more piercing.

But then the woman thought that after all it wasn’t this girl-giant’s fault that she’d been dumped here, and she picked her up carefully, without pressing her to her breast, took her to the bath, washed her with warm water, cleaned her off, dried her, and then wrapped her in a clean, dry towel.

She brought this new girl to her own bed and covered her up with a warm blanket. As for herself, she got her old matchbox and took out the little half-bean where her Droplet used to sleep and began kissing it, and crying over it, remembering little Droplet.

By now it was clear that her Droplet was gone. She’d been replaced by this enormous, ugly, clumsy thing with its big head and skinny arms-a real baby, and not at all hers.

The woman cried and cried, and then suddenly she stopped. She thought for a second that this other child had stopped breathing. Could it be that this girl had died, too? Oh God, could she have caught cold on the windowsill while she was digging through the cabbage plant?

But the baby was sound asleep, her eyes closed tight-a baby that no one needed, and really in fact an ugly, pitiful, helpless little baby. The woman thought there wasn’t even anyone to feed it, and took her in her arms.

And suddenly she felt as if something had struck her powerfully on the breasts, from within.

And, like every mother on earth, she unbuttoned her blouse and placed the baby to her breast.

After feeding her little girl, the mother put her to bed and then poured some water into a jug and watered the cabbage plant before placing it on the windowsill.

With time the cabbage plant grew-it developed long sprouts and pale little flowers, and the little girl, when she in her turn got up on her weak skinny legs and began to walk, immediately headed over to the window, swaying, and laughed, pointing at the long, wild shoots of the cabbage-patch mom.