“I’m sending you to boarding school, do you hear me? Tie your things in a bundle and go clean the stairs in the building if you think you’re so smart!”
Nika, a first grader with thin little braids, froze in the middle of the hallway.
In one hand, she clutched a fancy dress with a fluffy skirt she was longing to wear to school, and in the other hand—her school backpack.
Her lips started to tremble, her eyes instantly filled with tears, ready to spill over and soak the collar of her white blouse.
“Grandma, what are you saying?” Matvey burst out of the bedroom, buttoning his shirt as he spoke. “Are you out of your mind?”
What do you mean ‘clean the stairs’? What boarding school?
“Exactly that!” Antonina Trofimovna snapped back at her grandson. “Look at you, rushing in to defend her!”
“Just look what your daughter wants to wear! There’s no warmth outside—it’s just damp, and she wants to parade around in silk.”
“Just like her mother, always trying to show off!”
“Mom doesn’t show off!” Nika shouted, sobbing harder and harder.
“Quiet!” the old woman barked. “Keep yapping and I’ll call the police officer right now to send you to the orphanage.”
They’ll teach you quickly there how to listen to adults and what to wear to school.
Yulia, who had just come out of the nursery holding a baby, turned so pale that the dark circles from endless sleepless nights stood out under her eyes.
“Antonina Trofimovna, stop it immediately,” she said quietly. “You’re scaring the child.”
“Nika, go to your room and put on the pinafore we set out yesterday.”
“Let her go naked if she wants!” Matvey’s grandmother threw up her hands dramatically and sank down on a stool, clutching her heart. “Oh, I can’t take this…”
“My blood pressure… You’ve all driven me to this. That’s it, I’m dying here and nobody cares. All you do is talk back.”
Matvey checked the time—they were all running late. Nika ran to her room, still sobbing, Yulia left to change their son without even glancing at her husband, and Grandma continued to moan loudly.
“Listen here, Grandma Tonya,” Matvey walked over to the table, leaning on it with both hands. “If I hear another word about boarding schools or cleaning stairs, we’ll have a very different conversation.”
She’s not your child. And don’t you dare yell at her!
“Pah, you fool!” the old woman squinted her eyes angrily. “Three diplomas gathering dust in your closet and you’re still the same idiot.”
“I’m just worried about her! If she gets cold and sick—who’ll have to watch her? Me again? I’ll be the one taking the blame?”
Matvey clenched his teeth and said nothing in response.
They had all been living together for five years now. When Nika was born, Matvey himself suggested his grandmother move in.
It was tough for Yulia to manage alone, Matvey was always at work, and Antonina Trofimovna seemed like the perfect choice—active, experienced, and a wonderful cook.
Grandma rented out her own apartment downtown and put the money aside ‘for a rainy day’—a day that, judging by her attitude, seemed to come every single day.
The first three years were manageable—she really did help out. But then she started getting bolder and overstepping.
A month ago, completely lost in his own feelings, Matvey finally decided to see a psychologist.
He had gone there thinking, “I have a crisis in my relationship with my wife,” but left with the painful realization that, for years, he had been slowly crushed in the gears of emotional blackmail.
“You see,” he explained to the therapist. “We can’t even go out for a simple walk.”
“Can you describe how it happens?” the doctor asked.
Matvey closed his eyes and instantly remembered last weekend.
“We were planning to go to the beach. It was summer, really hot, about thirty degrees. Yulia wore a sundress, I wore shorts. We packed a bag with towels.”
And then she came out into the hallway. “Where are you dragging the child? Her skin will burn! It’ll peel off in sheets and you’ll end up in the hospital!”
We said, “Baba Tonya, we brought sunscreen.”
She shot back, “Your creams are nothing but chemicals! And honestly, Yulka, look at yourself—dressed like that, you look like a girl straight off the street, it’s a disgrace. Put some proper clothes on!”
“And what did you do next?” the psychologist asked.
“We snapped at her. She fell silent for about two minutes. Then she started again: ‘Oh, I feel dizzy, don’t take Nika, leave her with me, you’ll drown her there.'”
In the end, we only left after everyone had argued. On the drive, we were silent, and then we started snapping at each other.
Yulia cried, I yelled, and Nika curled up in the corner of the back seat. Instead of a beach day, we got a ruined day and a week of giving each other the silent treatment.
“Your grandmother uses guilt as a tool to control you,” the doctor concluded back then. “And until you set boundaries, your marriage is going to fall apart.”
At the time, Matvey didn’t believe him. How much trouble could one old woman cause two grown people? Turns out, a lot. She had the power to poison even the simplest joys.
Decided to go out to dinner to celebrate an anniversary?
“Why waste money? I made borscht, eat at home. And what’s with that dress? Where are you even going in that?”
Decided to buy new furniture?
“The old stuff will last another hundred years, you’re just throwing money away. You should think more about the kids!”
That day Matvey couldn’t work at all—the words of his father kept replaying in his mind.
He had found him not long ago, years after his mother had passed. His father finally told him the truth about why he left the family.
“Your grandmother drove me out, Matvey. She constantly got in your mother’s ear: said I didn’t make enough money, that I looked at people wrong, that I wasn’t raising the child properly.”
She created such a toxic atmosphere that it was physically painful to be at home. Your mother was always torn between us, and in the end, she sided with her. Or, more accurately, she was too afraid to go against her.
That’s when your stepfather showed up… a real tyrant. Grandma herself brought him in, thinking he’d do as she said. But he put her and your mother in their place, and ended up giving your mom a heart attack…”
Matvey clenched his fists. He remembered his stepfather. The constant fear, yelling, and how his grandmother would stay quiet because she was afraid of that man—one who could smash a stool over your head—he remembered. And now she was taking it out on him and Yulia.
Matvey returned home determined to have a talk. When he arrived, his wife was in the living room rocking their son, their daughter was in the kitchen working on her homework.
Their grandmother was sitting next to her, hand propping up her cheek—watching over everything, as usual.
“And what kind of handwriting is that?” Matvey heard Antonina Trofimovna’s voice as soon as he stepped into the apartment. “Looks like chicken scratch. When I was your age…”
“Grandma, I’m trying,” Nika answered softly.
“You’re not trying hard enough. Lazy, Nika. Just like your father. He always skimmed things, never did anything properly.”
Three degrees and what’s the point? You still took out a mortgage for an apartment and live off my food like freeloaders.
Matvey took off his shoes and went straight to the kitchen.
“Grandma Tonya, please go to your room. I’ll finish homework with Nika myself.”
“Oh, you finally showed up!” the old woman pursed her lips. “Here comes the breadwinner. Displeased again, are you? I’m struggling here with the child while you lounge around at your offices, and now you tell me to ‘go to my room’?”
“Grandma,” Matvey sat down across from her, “let’s talk. We still haven’t discussed what happened yesterday.”
“What’s there to discuss? You hurt an old woman, cursed me, tried to throw me out of the house!” she suddenly screamed, even though Matvey hadn’t raised his voice. “Everything I do is for you! I cook, I clean, I take care of little Dima!”
“No one’s asking you to ‘struggle’ if it’s too much,” Yulia called out from the other room. “We’ve told you a hundred times – if it’s hard for you, don’t do it. We can handle things ourselves.”
“Handle it yourselves?” Grandma jumped up. “Without me you’d be buried in filth! You, Yulka, can’t even make soup that isn’t like glue! All you think about is nonsense!”
Dima woke up in the living room and began to cry, and Yulia immediately rushed into the kitchen.
“Will you all just stop yelling!” she shouted. “Your fighting woke the baby! Matvey, do something, I can’t take it anymore!”
“What do you want me to do?” Matvey snapped. “I’m trying to talk to her like a human being!”
“You can’t talk to her like a human being!” Yulia was losing control. “She’s made my whole life miserable! Every morning it’s a scandal, every night is a breakdown! I’m afraid to leave my room when you’re at work!”
“You ungrateful thing!” Antonina Trofimovna grabbed the edge of the table. “I’m making your life easier and you—”
“I’ll call down heaven’s punishment on you! Let you be left with nothing, you home-wrecker! You’ve turned Matvey against his own grandmother!”
“Enough!” Matvey slapped his palm on the table, making the salt shaker jump. “Enough, I said!”
Nika, frightened by her parents’ shouting, crouched in a corner by the window and covered her ears.
“Grandma Tonya, you have your own apartment. Remember? The tenants are moving out tomorrow, I already talked to them. I’ll help you move your things.”
The old woman froze in place.
“What did you just say? Your own grandmother out on the street?”
“Not on the street, in your own apartment,” Matvey corrected her. “You’ll be in charge there, no one will bother you making the right kind of soup and watching TV.”
“I’ll die there alone!” she wailed. “If my heart gives out, no one will bring me a glass of water! Is that what you want, you monster? For me to rot away?”
“We’ll come visit,” Matvey said, feeling a huge weight lift from his shoulders. “We’ll bring you groceries, the kids will visit. But you’re not living here anymore.”
I won’t let you ruin Nika’s mental health the way you did my mother’s. I’m not letting you call my daughter a ‘maid’ or threaten her with the orphanage anymore!
“But I’m doing it out of love!” Grandma squealed. “That’s my way! So she’ll grow up to be a good person!”
Antonina Trofimovna looked at her grandson, then at Yulia, who was standing there holding the crying Dima, and realized—this time, playing the ‘dying swan’ wouldn’t work.
“Fine, live however you want,” she spat out. “Let’s see how you sing in a month when your Yulia runs away from the housework to some other guy, and you’re left all alone with your two brats.”
I’ll curse you! I’ll curse you all!
Grandma stormed out of the kitchen, while Matvey sat down on the floor and covered his face with his hands. Yulia came over to him.
“Are you serious about the apartment?” she whispered.
“Absolutely.”
“I’m scared, Matvey,” Yulia admitted. “What if she really does something to herself?”
“She won’t do anything,” he replied in a muffled voice. “People like that live forever because they feed off other people’s energy.”
She’ll soon find new victims. The ladies at the entrance or the neighbors… And she’ll tell them all about what monsters we are.
The rest of the evening was spent packing—Grandma dramatically threw her things into suitcases, sighed loudly, clutched her lower back, and spoke mostly to herself, cursing her “ungrateful kin.”
Matvey silently carried boxes into the hallway. Yulia took the kids into a distant room and turned on cartoons so they wouldn’t have to hear their “loving” grandma’s outbursts.
In the morning, the car arrived. Antonina Trofimovna left the apartment with her head held high. At the doorstep, she turned around.
“You won’t get a single penny from me!” she hissed at Matvey. “I’ll leave the apartment to the cat shelter!”
“Whatever you wish, Baba Tonya,” he replied calmly. “Just be well.”
“Dad?” Nika peeked timidly into the kitchen once the old woman’s door closed behind her. “Is Grandma really gone for good? She won’t send me to that orphanage, will she?”
Matvey scooped his daughter up and hugged her tightly.
“Never, my little one. No one will ever send you away. And that dress… tomorrow, wear the one with flowers. It’s okay to go to school dressed up if you really want to.”
Yulia smiled with happiness for the first time in many months…
Antonina Trofimovna now lives in her own apartment. She has never forgiven her grandson, but she graciously accepts the groceries he brings her twice a week.
She found herself a new circle — the same grumbling old ladies in the yard, to whom she spends hours complaining about her ‘wayward grandson’ and her ‘viper of a daughter-in-law.’
Finally, peace settled into Matvey and Yulia’s home. It turned out Yulia cooks wonderfully when there’s no nagging, and Nika is calmer with school and no longer cries in front of the mirror in the mornings. In the end, it was all so simple…