“Irina, just listen. Please, just hear me out before you get upset,” Galina Petrovna said, placing a bag on the table—a package of cookies and a plastic container with something homemade poked out from the top. She immediately started unbuttoning her coat. This was her usual routine: the bag went down first, then her coat came off, and only after that did she greet anyone, as if groceries were more important than people. “I’m not your enemy. I’m doing this for you.”
Irina was standing at the sink, giving a baby bottle a final wash. Vanya had just eaten and was now lying on a blanket in the next room, babbling to himself. There was a dried-up stain from yesterday’s porridge right in the middle of the tablecloth, and every time Irina sat down she’d think, I need to wash that. But she hadn’t washed it yet.
“I’m not getting upset, Galina Petrovna.”
“Good. That’s good.” Her mother-in-law hung up her coat on the hook and walked into the kitchen like she owned the place. In truth, she did own it—a two-room apartment on the city’s edge, with chipped paint on the windowsills and a squeaky floorboard at the bedroom door. “Sit down, Ira. We need to talk.”
“I’ll stand,” Irina replied as she placed the bottle on the drying rack.
Eviction is tomorrow
“As you wish.” Galina Petrovna pulled out a chair and sat down, squaring her shoulders. She was a large woman, fifty-six years old, with a perm and that kind of rock-solid conviction in her own rightness that only grows with age. “Here’s the thing. I got this tip from someone I trust. Really reliable. There’s this company, they handle… well, they work with maternity capital funds.”
Irina didn’t turn around. She stared out the window. Outside: a streetlamp, a bench with peeling paint.
“What kind of company is this?”
“Oh, it’s a good company. They help people. You have that certificate—just over six hundred thousand. They take fifty thousand for their services, and the rest is yours. In cash. Can you believe it?”
“So, they’re cashing out the money?”
“Call it what you want. The important thing is—it’s real, live money.”
Irina finally turned around. From the other room, Vanya made a happy noise. Then another. Then something fell softly—probably the plush block he loved to drop from the blanket.
“Galina Petrovna. That’s illegal.”
“Oh come on, Ira.” Her mother-in-law grimaced as if she’d sucked a lemon. “Everyone does it. It’s not illegal, it’s just… a workaround. I’m telling you, everyone does it. So many people.”
“I’m not ‘everyone.’ And that money isn’t mine. It’s Vanya’s. By law.”
“Vanya isn’t counting that money, he’s only a year and five months old.”
“Not a year and a half, a year and five months. Right,” Irina said, turning back to the window.
The hallway floor creaked. Dmitry came out. He was thirty, but right now, wearing old sweatpants and a stretched-out t-shirt, he looked like someone who’d long stopped caring about appearances. His hair was flattened in the back from his pillow. He held a phone in his hand.
“Oh, mom. You’re here,” he said without much expression.
“I am. I’m talking with your wife,” Galina Petrovna replied, pointing at a stool. “Sit down, listen. You need to understand this too.”
“Yeah,” Dmitry said, taking a seat on the stool by the wall. He never put away his phone.
So, as I was telling Ira, six hundred thousand is a good chunk of money. We could finally replace the windows in the living room and kitchen—the frames are completely rotten. New doors, too. And that bathtub in the bathroom… it’s been long overdue for a replacement. I’ve put up with it for years. And there would still be some money left over.
“Hold on, Mom,” Dmitry said, frowning like someone dragged away from something important. “But that’s… that’s maternity capital. You can’t just spend it like that.”
“Dima, of course you can. People know how to do it. I’m telling you, there’s a company for that.”
“Come on, Mom.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Why? If she doesn’t want to, then let it be.”
That was all he said. Then he looked back at his phone. Galina Petrovna pressed her lips together.
“So, Ira. You know what I want. This is for all of us. The apartment will be better, and we all have to live here. You and Vanya too.”
“I don’t need new windows at the expense of Vanya’s money.”
“Vanya’s!” Galina Petrovna threw up her hands. “Did you hear that, Dima? Vanya’s. As if it’s even real money. It’s just a piece of paper—a certificate. There’s nothing proper you can invest it in, only an apartment or education, and who knows when the education will happen.”
“You could put it toward the mother’s pension,” Irina said calmly.
“Which mother’s?”
“Mine.”
Galina Petrovna fell silent. Then she said:
“Are you serious?”
“I am. It’s a legal option. Either for education, real estate, or the mother’s funded pension. That’s it.”
“We already have housing.”
“You have it. Vanya and I don’t.”
Dmitry looked up from his phone. He glanced at Irina. Then at his mother. Then back at his phone.
Outside the window, the neighbor walked by with his dog—a little reddish dog that always barked at the cats near the front door. Irina saw her every morning from the kitchen window while boiling water.
“Alright,” Galina Petrovna said, her voice changed to the one she uses when she switches from persuasion to something different. “Alright. I’ll just ask you as a person, Ira. Listen. We’re family. I want what’s best for you. You’re a young mom; you get tired, I understand. But we need the money now. For renovations. It’s for the apartment, and the apartment is our home together.”
“Your home. Not ours.”
“Ira.”
“Galina Petrovna. I’m not going to sign any papers or go to any company. It’s illegal, and I could be prosecuted. Me. Not you. Me, because the certificate has my name on it.”
“Oh, who’s going to bother you, honestly. Everyone does it and it’s fine.”
“I won’t do it.”
Galina Petrovna stood up. She was taller than Irina, broader in the shoulders, and when she stood abruptly and straightened up like that, you could feel a shift in the pressure in the room.
“So, you won’t,” she said quietly. It was worse than if she had yelled.
“No.”
A pause. The faucet dripped. Drip, drip, drip—it had been doing that for three weeks, and Irina kept meaning to ask someone to fix it. She hadn’t said anything.
“Dima,” Galina Petrovna called.
“What, Mom?”
“Dima, did you hear what your wife just said?”
“Yeah, I heard. Mom, she doesn’t want to. Don’t push it.”
“Don’t pressure me!” Galina Petrovna raised her voice, and in the next room where the door opened, Vanya quieted down before starting to babble again. “You’re living in my apartment! For free! Under my roof! You don’t work, she doesn’t work, I watch you, keep my mouth shut, endure, wait. Dima is tired, Dima is burned out, Dima is finding himself. He’s been searching for a year! And now she’s making things complicated! Talking about Vanya’s money, can you believe it. But who pays for utilities? Who buys the food?”
“I pay for the utilities,” Irina said.
“With your allowance!”
“Yes. With my allowance.”
“That’s laughable.”
“Nothing funny about it. I pay what I can.”
Galina Petrovna walked over to the table. She pressed her hands against the tablecloth, right next to that dried-up stain from porridge, and leaned in toward Irina.
“Listen to me carefully. You are nobody. You’re the daughter-in-law I let live here. You’re living in my home, and I could ask you to leave at any moment. Dima is my son, he’s staying. You’ll go. With your child. Out on the street. Got it?”
“Galina Petrovna.”
“Did you get that?”
In the other room, Vanya laughed. He was laughing for no reason at all, not because anything was funny, just because he was a year and a half old and sometimes things were just fun. He lay there, just laughing.
“So here’s what’s going to happen,” the mother-in-law continued, straightening up. “Tomorrow morning you’re going with the documents. To that woman. I’ll give you the address. You sign whatever’s needed, we get the money and start renovations. That’s my final word. Otherwise, tomorrow I’m seeing a lawyer and we’ll start the eviction process. And Dima stays with me.”
Dmitry sat on a stool staring at his phone.
“Dima,” Irina called.
He looked up.
“Did you hear that?”
“I heard,” he replied.
“And?”
He opened his mouth. Then closed it. Then finally said:
“Mom, isn’t that a bit…”
“Dima.”
“Come on, Mom.”
He glanced back down at his phone.
Irina looked at him for three, maybe four seconds. Long enough to understand what she probably always knew, but never let herself admit until now.
Then she said:
“It doesn’t have to wait until tomorrow.”
“What?” Galina Petrovna turned around.
“We don’t have to wait until tomorrow. Let’s do it now.”
She left the kitchen. Walked into the bedroom. She opened the closet where, on the top shelf behind a stack of diapers, was a bag. Blue, a bit faded, she’d bought it before her pregnancy. She pulled out the bag and set it on the bed.
Then she went to the hallway, over to the cabinet by the door. She opened the drawer. Took out a small envelope. Walked back to the kitchen and put the envelope on the table.
Galina Petrovna stared at the envelope.
“What’s that?”
“Keys.”
“What keys?”
“From the studio. The address is on the envelope. It’s not for you, it’s just so you understand.”
“What studio?” Galina Petrovna said slowly.
Dmitry looked up from his phone. For the first time all evening, he looked at Irina for real, not like someone glancing at the background. For real.
“I’ve been renting it for eight months,” Irina said. She spoke steadily, with no drama, like someone describing something long decided and dull in its finality. “I rented for six months ahead, then extended it. I already moved most of Vanya’s things. And my essentials. Bit by bit, when you were asleep.”
Galina Petrovna kept her eyes on the envelope.
“You worked,” Dmitry said. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
“Yes.”
“At night.”
At night, while Vanya was sleeping, I typed out texts, handled orders, managed chats. The pay was low, but I saved every bit.
“You…” he started, then fell silent.
Galina Petrovna suddenly spoke, as if snapping out of a trance:
“You can’t just leave. You have a child.”
“I’m leaving with my child.”
“Dima, say something to her.”
Dmitriy sat there looking at Irina. He looked pale, and his expression was one Irina hadn’t seen on him in ages. Lost. Real.
“Ir,” he said.
“Dim,” she replied.
They said nothing more to each other.
Irina walked into the nursery—though it wasn’t really a nursery, just a corner in the room with the crib. Vanya lay on a blanket, turning that orange cube with the letter A in his hand. He looked at his mom and immediately reached out to her, because children sense when their mom is near, even if they can’t see her, they just know.
“Hey there,” she whispered to him. “Hi, Vanya. We’re going.”
She lifted him up. He was warm, smelled of baby powder and a little bit like milk. She hugged him close and went to the closet, pulled out a jacket with one hand and put it on. Grabbed the bag. It already had almost everything they needed.
The kitchen was quiet. As she stepped into the hallway, Galina Petrovna stood at the door to the kitchen, watching her. Her face was flushed, lips pressed tight. She didn’t say anything. Just stared. Dmitriy stood behind her, a bit to the side, phone in hand, also watching.
Irina put on her boots. It wasn’t easy with Vanya in her arms, but she managed. Then she grabbed her bag.
“I’m leaving,” she said. Not to announce it, just to say it.
“Dima, please, say something to her,” Galina Petrovna said, her voice strained.
“Mom.”
“Dima!”
“Mom, I…” He looked at Irina. “Ir, is this for real?”
“It’s real,” she replied.
He nodded. Slowly. Then looked away.
Irina opened the front door.
“You’ll be lost without him!” Galina Petrovna shouted after her. Her voice echoed down the stairwell, because the door was already open and all the sound rushed outside. “You’re alone with a child, no job, no place to live—you’ll be lost! You’ll come back! You’ll come back and beg!”
Irina stood on the landing, waiting for the elevator. Vanya watched the light above the button. He liked lights, he could stare at them for ages.
“And may you prosper without him,” Irina said. She didn’t shout—just said it toward the door. Maybe Galina Petrovna heard, maybe she didn’t. It didn’t matter anymore.
The elevator arrived. The doors slid open. Irina stepped in, pressed the button, and the doors closed.
Vanya touched the cold metal of the wall. Pulled his hand away. Then touched it again.
She hailed a cab outside the building, and they drove off.
The city rolled by outside the window. Streetlights, a gas station, a long fence with peeling blue paint, a hypermarket with carts at the entrance. Vanya dozed, leaning against her. The driver listened to the radio quietly, something about the weather for tomorrow.
Irina stared out the window, not thinking about anything in particular. Just looking.
The studio was on the third floor of a five-story panel building in another part of town. The area wasn’t new, but not really old either—just normal. In the courtyard, there were swings and bare trees. The entrance smelled of lime and a bit of dampness.
The apartment was tiny. One room served as the living space, kitchen, and everything else. But over the past few months, Irina had slowly made it feel like home: she set up Vanya’s crib in the corner, made his bed with the bunny sheets he loved, and hung his favorite mobile overhead. In the kitchen area, his cups and bowls stood on the table. On the narrow windowsill, no wider than her hand, she placed a small pot with some green plant that didn’t really need a name—just something green and alive.
She put Vanya to bed. He barely woke as she changed him—just mumbled something and drifted back to sleep.
Irina put the kettle on. As it boiled, she watched Vanya.
Eighteen months. A year and five months, to be exact.
The kettle clicked off. She poured herself a mug—not tea, just boiling water, because the tea bag was at the other end of the table and she didn’t feel like getting up for it. She wrapped both hands around the cup, feeling the warmth seep into her palms.
She sat there like that for probably an hour. Then she worked for another hour, replied to order messages, checked her spreadsheet. Then she finally went to bed.
She slept well. Almost without dreams.
That’s how it started, if we’re going all the way back to the beginning. Though, honestly, the real beginning was long before that.
Dmitry found her through mutual friends seven years ago. At the time, she worked at a small company—handling documents, nothing exciting, but the pay was decent. He was fun, easygoing, and had a way of telling stories that made everyone laugh. She thought: here’s someone who really knows how to live.
Later, she realized that being a good storyteller and knowing how to live were not the same thing at all.
They got married two years later. His mother was against it from the start, though she never said so outright. Instead, she’d say things like, “Well, we’ll see,” “God willing,” or “As long as it turns out well.” It all meant the same as being against it, just wrapped in kinder words.
Dmitry worked, first at one company, then another. Then he said he wanted to start his own business. He tried—it failed. After that, he took another job, enthusiastic at first, then less so. Eventually, he said he was burnt out. That was six months before Vanya was born.
Irina was pregnant, and his burnout was the last thing on her mind. She took unpaid leave herself, since by her eighth month it was tough to sit at the computer. Their plan was for him to work through her maternity leave, then she’d return and he’d finally figure out what to do with his life.
But he never did. He just lay on the couch. He wasn’t rude or angry, just… there. Sometimes he’d take out the trash. Sometimes he’d make tea. He kept saying, “Soon, soon, just a little longer.”
‘Soon’ dragged on for over a year.
Irina would feed Vanya and watch all those ‘soons,’ realizing they led nowhere. Nowhere, ever. But she didn’t do anything. Or rather: she waited, and that waiting seemed important to her, a kind of respect for the person she had chosen.
Then, one day, while Vanya was sleeping and she was washing the dishes, she heard Dmitry in the other room, talking on the phone. He laughed—really laughed, long and genuinely. The way he hadn’t laughed with her in a long, long time.
She didn’t feel jealous. She just thought: there it is—he can do it. With someone else, he can.
And something quietly shifted. It didn’t break, it didn’t collapse. It just moved a little, the way a table gets nudged when it’s not in the right spot, and suddenly you see all the dust that has piled up underneath.
That’s when she started thinking. At first, just thinking. Then counting. Then looking for work.
She didn’t say to herself, ‘I’m leaving.’ She told herself, ‘Just in case.’
She found jobs through a friend, who worked as a virtual assistant and recommended some job chats. The pay was small—very small, especially in the beginning. But she took on everything: writing, product descriptions, data entry, customer support replies under the names of different stores. At night, when Vanya was sleeping, she’d work quietly from her phone or laptop, careful not to wake him.
A month later, she earned a little more. After two months, even more.
She didn’t spend the money. She saved it. She opened a separate account, a card from another bank—one Dmitry never checked, since he wasn’t interested in her bank cards anyway. He wasn’t interested in much.
After four months, she found that little studio. The landlady turned out to be a calm older woman, renting it for the second year and looking for a reliable tenant. Irina paid six months up front—almost everything she’d saved—and the woman handed her the keys.
Then Irina started moving her things. Quietly, a bit at a time, in bags—on the way to the store or the doctor with Vanya, pretending nothing was different. She moved almost all of Vanya’s stuff: clothes, toys, bedding. Her own essentials. And documents, of course. The documents came first.
She only left out the things she didn’t care about. An empty closet can look full if you know you’re not looking at the right things.
She lived like this for eight months. By day here, by night there—in her head, in that small studio where a green plant sat on the windowsill and Vanya’s crib with its bunnies waited.
When Galina Petrovna came with her idea about the maternity capital, Irina wasn’t scared. She felt something else—something like relief that, finally, there was a real point to push from, a specific place to start.
Eviction. There it was. Fine. Right now.
A month passed.
Vanya learned to pull himself to stand in his crib, holding on to the bars. He didn’t walk yet, but he’d stand proudly as if it was his personal achievement and he had to show it off. Every time Irina praised him, he smiled wide, showing all four teeth.
The studio was lovely in the mornings. Sun poured in through the window starting at eight, stretching across the floor in a golden stripe. Vanya always reached for that stripe, trying to grab it. Irina cooked porridge on the tiny stove. The faucet didn’t drip. The floorboard didn’t creak.
It was harder to work because Vanya was bigger now and slept less. But she adapted: she did some work during the day while he played nearby. He could entertain himself. He was a good, calm child.
Money was tight. But her mind was clear. It was strange and good at the same time: less money, but clearer thoughts. It was as if there had always been a buzzing in her head—some background noise—and only now, when it was quiet, did she realize it had been there at all.
She found another source of orders through a different chat. She even raised her rates a bit, realizing she could—if one client didn’t take her offer, another one would.
The landlady would stop by about once every two weeks, just to make sure everything was alright. She called herself Aunt Lyuda and would sometimes bring something from her garden—maybe a jar of jam or a bunch of dill. She always looked at Vanya with such affection.
“You’ve settled in nicely,” Aunt Lyuda would say, glancing around the studio.
“Yes, it’s good,” Irina would agree.
“All alone with the little one?”
“Just me.”
“Well, good for you. The important thing is to keep your head on straight.”
“I do my best,” Irina replied.
After Aunt Lyuda left, Irina would think: She’s right. I’ve got my head. I’ve got everything I need.
Then Dmitry called.
She didn’t block him right away. She wasn’t exactly sure why—probably because he was Vanya’s father and there were still some papers to sort out. He called once or twice a week. At first, his calls sounded like he expected her to cry or ask for forgiveness, and when she didn’t, he seemed lost.
Then he started to complain.
“Irina, listen. My mom is just… She’s making me pay for utilities now, can you believe it? And groceries, too. Says if I’m living here, I should pay up. Like I’m in a hotel or something.”
Irina sat by the window. Vanya was sleeping, the sun had already set, and the studio was quiet. She looked at the wall across from her.
“Well. You are taking up her living space.”
“But Irina, she’s my mother. A mother asking her own son for money.”
“It happens.”
“Irina, I’m serious. I don’t have anything. Really, nothing. You know I still haven’t found…”
“Dmitry.”
“What?”
“Dmitry, I filed for divorce. Last week.”
Silence.
“Are you serious?”
“I’m serious.”
“Irina, why? We could have talked. We could have figured it out. I didn’t…”
“Dmitry.”
“What now?”
“Did you want to ask for money?”
There was a pause. It was shorter this time.
“Well. Maybe five thousand. Just for a bit. You know I’ll pay it back.”
“Ask somewhere else,” Irina said. “Not here.”
She pressed the end call button. Looked at the screen for a second. Then opened her contacts, found his name, and chose block. The phone asked for confirmation: block calls and messages? She pressed yes.
She set the phone aside.
In his sleep, Vanya muttered something and rolled onto his other side. She got up, went to him, and adjusted the blanket he’d kicked off with his foot. She stood over him for a moment.
Then she returned to the table, opened her laptop, and started working.
A green plant stood on the windowsill. Outside, the street was quiet—not completely quiet, of course, since in the evenings someone was always walking by, the door to the entrance banged shut, sometimes a car drove past. But it was the kind of noise that didn’t bother you. It was just there.
She was the only one with keys to this door. And no one in the world could throw her out into the street just to lay down new linoleum.