“Don’t cook half of the dumplings. Put them into containers; your father and I will take them,” my mother-in-law ordered as she walked into my country-house kitchen with such confidence, as if the dumplings had already been registered inside her bag.
“A proper housewife should live more modestly and not teach her husband to be wasteful!”
Galina Petrovna burst into the house as if she were driving a tank into a captured village. Behind her broad back loomed Raisa Semyonovna, my mother-in-law’s dacha friend, whom she had clearly dragged along as an audience.
Only later did Raisa Semyonovna admit that on the way there, Galina Petrovna had been boasting that she was about to “show Oksana how to teach a young housewife thrift.”
I froze over the cutting table. My hands were covered in flour, and in front of me, lined up neatly like soldiers on parade, lay three hundred homemade pelmeni.
I was planning to boil some for lunch and freeze the rest for the children for the week. One day of making them — and several peaceful dinners. These were those very pelmeni with the thinnest choux pastry dough and a juicy filling made from three kinds of meat, which I had been shaping since seven in the morning.
Without waiting for an answer, my mother-in-law shoved me aside from the table with her shoulder, as if she owned the place, and began unloading plastic containers from her bottomless bag.
Her actions looked like a hostage takeover, with the freshly made dumplings playing the role of the victims.
Other people’s arrogance is an amazing thing. It always disguises itself as worldly wisdom.
“Galina Petrovna,” I said calmly, wiping my hands on a towel. “What makes you think these are extra? We’re having a family lunch today.”
“Oh, stop it, Oksanochka!” my mother-in-law threw up her hands theatrically, glancing sideways at her friend Raisa. “Look at my daughter-in-law, Raya. She has no idea how to economize!”
She swept her gaze around the kitchen as if she were the mistress of the house.
“How did I raise my Seryozhka? A penny saved is a penny earned! But here they’re chopping up meat as if it’s a merchant’s wedding. I was the one who taught them to eat homemade food; they are going through my family school, but one must know moderation!”
I merely raised an eyebrow slightly. As Comrade Sukhov used to say, “That is unlikely.”
Galina Petrovna and cooking had existed in parallel universes all her life, universes that had never even planned to intersect. But I did not start a scandal in front of her guest. Arguing with a manipulator is like playing chess with a pigeon: it will scatter the pieces, crap on the board, and then fly off to tell everyone how it beat you.
“Please, come sit at the table, Raisa Semyonovna,” I smiled at the confused witness. “The water has already boiled.”
Sunday lunch at our dacha is not just food. It is sacred. The children wait all week for their mother’s pelmeni.
My husband, Seryozha, had peeled garlic and ground black pepper since morning, while my father-in-law, Nikolai Ivanovich, had arrived first of all and solemnly placed farmer’s sour cream, a bunch of the freshest herbs, and a package of good herbal tea on the table.
He respects my work.
Fifteen minutes later, I placed a huge steaming dish in the center of the table.
The pelmeni glistened with butter, giving off such an aroma of bay leaf, allspice, and meat broth that even the neighbors’ dogs behind the fence probably started drooling.
The children immediately held out their plates.
Seryozha wrapped his arm firmly around my shoulders.
“Thank you, darling. It smells unbelievable!”
Nikolai Ivanovich generously scooped up some sour cream.
Everyone ate, squinted with pleasure, and praised the food. The juice from the pelmeni mixed with the sour cream and melted in the mouth.
Only Galina Petrovna’s face grew more sour with every passing minute. Other people’s joy affected her like holy water on evil spirits. It physically pained her that someone else was being praised, and that her authority here amounted to zero.
And she could not hold back.
“Well…” my mother-in-law drawled, disdainfully poking a perfect dumpling with her fork. “It is tasty, of course. But a bit too fatty. And the dough is thick.”
She put down her fork and raised her voice.
“I always told Seryozha: when you get married, find a woman who can make porridge from an axe. But this is nothing but wastefulness. Oksana, you could at least have added cabbage to the filling, for volume! And in general, you mustn’t spoil your husband like this. With your aristocratic habits, soon his face won’t fit through the gate! A proper wife thinks about the budget, not the stomach!”
A heavy silence settled over the table.
The children stopped chewing. Raisa Semyonovna shrank into her shoulders, realizing that she had been brought there not to enjoy a meal, but to attend a public execution.
Galina Petrovna looked around the table triumphantly, savoring the effect she had produced.
But then a fork clinked.
Nikolai Ivanovich carefully dabbed his mustache with a napkin, looked at his wife, and said in a voice that promised nothing good:
“Galya. Please announce the full list of your ‘family school.’ Because after forty years of marriage, I seem to have forgotten something.”
“Kolia, what are you talking about?” my mother-in-law blinked, feeling the ground slipping from under her feet.
“About cabbage, Galya. And about economy. In your entire life, you have not made a single pelmeni with your own hands. In the eighties, we choked down store-bought dumplings stuck together in cardboard boxes. In the nineties, you boiled plain pasta. And now you are trying to attach yourself to someone else’s dough and someone else’s love.”
My father-in-law calmly pushed his cup aside.
“Oksana feeds us in a way that makes you want to live. And you came here to ruin everyone’s appetite.”
“Dad is right,” Sergey added quietly, but in a steely tone, pushing his plate aside. “Mom, if our table looks like luxury to you, then don’t participate. But I will not allow you to count the meat on my wife’s and my children’s plates. You will not give orders in my wife’s kitchen.”
Galina Petrovna flushed to the roots of her hair.
She had been publicly whipped with her own weapon, and right in front of the very friend to whom she had been bragging about her influence half an hour earlier.
But female audacity is a renewable resource. Realizing that her authority had collapsed, my mother-in-law decided to take at least something material.
She pursed her lips, rose from the table with a loud sigh of offended innocence, and reached for the bag with the empty containers.
“No one needs to teach you anything, apparently! Live however you want, since your mother means nothing to you now!” she snorted. “I was simply caring about my grandchildren. Fine, put whatever raw ones are left on the board in here. Your father and I will go home.”
So she had just dragged my work through the mud in front of everyone, called me wasteful, and yet she had no intention of leaving empty-handed and without my “aristocratic” pelmeni.
Money in the morning, chairs in the evening. But for her, apparently, it was criticism and a container at the house’s expense?
I slowly stood up, walked over to the countertop, and calmly, with two fingers, pushed her plastic tubs to the edge of the table. Right toward her bag.
“Oksanochka, what are you doing?” Galina Petrovna was taken aback. “I said put them in.”
“No, Galina Petrovna,” I said quietly, but so clearly that on the veranda one could hear the wall clock ticking. “You are all for economy, aren’t you? Then we will economize. In this house, takeout pelmeni are given only to those who do not spit into the hostess’s pot.”
I crossed my arms over my chest.
“You did not want to take the pelmeni, Galina Petrovna. You wanted to take away proof that you can give orders in this house. It didn’t work. The containers are empty, but the lesson is complete.”
“How dare you?! I am your husband’s mother!” she shrieked, losing the last remnants of her composure.
“Respect, Galina Petrovna, is not paid for with meat,” I looked her straight in the eyes without looking away. “And it is not handed out in containers on demand. It either exists at the table, or there is no container. You may take your empty tubs. And take your advice about cabbage in the filling, too. It will come in handy when you make pelmeni yourself at home.”
Raisa Semyonovna, who had been silent all this time, quietly cleared her throat.
“Galya, on the way here you told me you were going to show how to teach your daughter-in-law economy. But it turned out that you were the one taught some decency.”
Galina Petrovna froze by the countertop with the empty tubs in her hands.
She had brought an audience for my humiliation, but got a witness to her own disgrace instead. My mother-in-law abruptly grabbed her bag, scooped up the plastic containers, and, loudly slamming the veranda door, flew out into the yard.
Nikolai Ivanovich did not go to see her off.
He calmly poured himself a strong glass of blackcurrant compote, cut a slice of homemade bread, and winked at my boys.
“Oksana, write me a list next weekend of what to buy. I’ll bring farmer’s beef for the filling and garden cherries. Will you make vareniki for us? We will support the one who creates joy in the family, not those who choke on it.”
Sergey silently squeezed my hand under the table.
And in that moment, I understood: my Sunday table is not an expense. It is my fortress. And its foundation is so strong that no mother-in-law can shake it.
Because whoever spits into the hostess’s pot leaves not with pelmeni, but with empty containers.
