“A Beggar?” the Daughter-in-Law Sneered. “Then Why Has Your Family Been Living in My Apartment for Three Years?”
“A beggar?” the daughter-in-law sneered, her perfectly manicured fingers tightening around the edge of the table. “Then why has your family been living in my apartment for the past three years?”
Valentina Petrovna froze with the ladle still in her hand. Borscht bubbled on the stove, filling the kitchen with the smell of beets and garlic. She stared at Natasha and barely recognized her.
Standing before her was the same woman who, three years earlier, had cried in this very kitchen and said, “Valentina Petrovna, I will love you like my own mother.”
“I didn’t mean to be rude,” Valentina Petrovna said quietly, adjusting her faded apron. “I only said that we are living modestly now. Like beggars.”
“You’re not a beggar,” Natasha replied with a sharp laugh that cut through the room. “You are a family of pensioners living off your daughter-in-law. Do you have a mortgage? No. I pay the utility bills. I buy the groceries. I take your granddaughter to kindergarten. Your son, my dear mother-in-law, has been unemployed for six months, yet he somehow has a brand-new phone. Do you even hear yourselves?”
Valentina Petrovna gripped the ladle so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
Three years earlier, everything had seemed completely different.
Her son, Andrei, had brought Natasha to their two-room apartment. Natasha was beautiful, polished, and well dressed. Valentina Petrovna had only recently buried her husband, and emptiness had settled over the home.
Andrei took off his shoes at the door, held his mother’s hand, and said, “Mom, we’ve decided to live with you. Natasha will sell her one-room apartment, we’ll add some money, and then we’ll buy a larger place for all of us. Until then, we’ll stay here. It’s better when a family is together.”
Valentina Petrovna burst into tears.
She set the table and took out the crystal glasses she had not touched since her husband’s funeral. Natasha praised her borscht, admired the old family photographs, and promised to redecorate the apartment.
“You look so young, Valentina Petrovna!” Natasha chirped. “We’re going to take care of you. Right, Andrei?”
Andrei nodded.
He nodded a great deal in those days.
Valentina Petrovna believed them. She thought God had sent her a second daughter.
She gave the young couple the larger bedroom and moved her own sofa into the smaller room. She even gave Natasha the gold earrings she had kept for twenty years.
“They suit you better, my dear,” she had said.
A year passed.
They never bought a larger apartment.
Natasha blamed it on “the housing market crisis.” The money from the sale of her one-room apartment, which was supposedly being saved for a down payment, suddenly “had to be spent on her mother’s medical treatment.”
This was strange, because Natasha herself had always said that her mother was perfectly healthy apart from occasional high blood pressure.
Valentina Petrovna did not investigate. She trusted her.
Then Natasha announced that they would remain in the apartment because it was “more convenient for little Lena.”
“The apartment still belongs to you, Valentina Petrovna,” Natasha added. “We’re only staying here temporarily.”
During the following two years, Valentina Petrovna began noticing strange things. But she extinguished every suspicion before it could grow.
At first, the warning signs seemed small.
She would offer to buy groceries at the market, and Natasha would grimace.
“You’ll buy the wrong things anyway. I’ll order everything for delivery. You can pay the five-hundred-ruble delivery fee.”
When Valentina Petrovna asked Natasha to watch her own daughter for a while, Natasha replied, “You’re retired. You stay at home all day. Is it really so difficult for you?”
Valentina Petrovna also noticed that Andrei was increasingly sleeping on a folding bed in the kitchen.
“Natasha is a light sleeper,” he explained. “She needs silence.”
Valentina Petrovna endured it all. She found excuses for Natasha.
She is young. Raising a child is difficult. She works and gets tired. She is my daughter-in-law. I must take care of her.
Autumn arrived, marking the beginning of their third year together.
Valentina Petrovna returned from the pharmacy with her blood-pressure medication and placed it in a kitchen drawer. They were her usual tablets, which she took every day.
One morning, she could not find the box.
She searched through the drawer. Natasha entered the kitchen, already dressed and wearing full makeup, and said casually, “I threw them away. They were expired. I bought you new ones. But honestly, Valentina Petrovna, you always buy the cheapest medicine. Here, I got imported tablets. You owe me two thousand rubles.”
Valentina Petrovna stared at the new box.
The price was almost half her monthly pension.
Without saying a word, she took two banknotes from her purse. Natasha accepted them with two fingers.
“And one more thing,” Natasha said from the doorway. “Please don’t touch my things in the bathroom. Your belongings are scattered everywhere.”
Valentina Petrovna closed the drawer.
The tablets remained untouched in their box.
She did not take them for an entire week because she could not stop thinking about how much they had cost. Then dizziness set in, and she finally swallowed one.
An imported pill.
A pill she had paid for herself.
Winter came.
On New Year’s Eve, Valentina Petrovna baked a pie. Little Lena ran happily around the kitchen while Andrei watched television.
Natasha came out of the bedroom wearing a robe.
“Mom, we’ve decided to spend the holidays with my mother. The tickets are already booked. You’ll stay here alone.”
“But I cooked,” Valentina Petrovna said, looking at the pie. “And Lena asked for the Snow Maiden to come…”
“Lena will be with my mother. There will be a Snow Maiden there, along with presents. Here…” Natasha looked around the kitchen. “It’s boring here. Put the pie in the refrigerator. By the way, I sent your fur coat to the dry cleaner. It cost three thousand rubles.”
“I don’t have three thousand,” Valentina Petrovna whispered.
“Then I’ll lend it to you. You can repay me when Andrei finds a job. Speaking of which, Andrei,” she said, turning toward her husband, “you could work as a delivery driver. Your mother has no money, and we are supporting her.”
Andrei said nothing.
Valentina Petrovna stared at the pie.
It slowly grew cold.
Spring arrived.
Valentina Petrovna lay in bed with a high fever. She had the flu. Her body shook, and she could not stop coughing.
Little Lena entered the room.
“Grandma, you look like a mummy.”
Natasha appeared in the doorway but did not step inside.
“I’m not calling a doctor. It’s expensive. Take an aspirin. And don’t ask me to go to the pharmacy. I have a meeting.”
“What about Lena?” Valentina Petrovna rasped. “Who will stay with her?”
“I’ll take her to my mother’s. She’s better off there. Just tell me where the taxi money is.”
Valentina Petrovna reached toward the bedside table.
Her final two thousand rubles were inside. Her pension would not arrive for another week.
She handed over the money.
Natasha took the banknotes without looking at her and closed the door.
The apartment fell silent.
There was only Valentina Petrovna’s coughing and the ticking of the old clock.
Summer came.
Andrei finally found a job.
He arrived home excited.
“Mom, I got hired! I’m going to work as a warehouse clerk!”
Natasha sat at the table with her laptop. She looked up.
“Congratulations. You’ll bring home thirty thousand rubles. That should cover the utilities and groceries. My salary is mine. Agreed? I’m tired of carrying everyone. And Valentina Petrovna, don’t look at me like that. It’s not my fault your son is incapable of doing anything. Or that you live in my apartment.”
“It isn’t yours. It’s mine.”
Valentina Petrovna spoke quietly, but firmly. She had known the truth for a long time.
“This is my apartment. I am registered here. Lena is registered here. Andrei is registered here. You are simply my son’s wife. You are a guest in this home.”
“Oh, please,” Natasha said dismissively. “A guest? Who pays for everything? Who arranged the repairs? Who replaced the plumbing last year? I did. Do you understand? Me. If I left, you would be living in a ruin.”
Andrei lowered his head.
Valentina Petrovna saw that her son was crying.
Her heart broke.
She approached him and stroked his hair as she had when he was a child.
Natasha snorted and returned to the bedroom.
Autumn arrived.
It was Valentina Petrovna’s sixty-second birthday.
She decorated the room with paper garlands. She bought a cake with money she had secretly hidden from Natasha. Andrei promised to come home early. Lena had drawn her a birthday card.
Valentina Petrovna put on the same dress she had worn to her son’s wedding.
Natasha emerged from the bedroom after the candles had already been lit. She sat down at the table without offering any congratulations.
“You know, Valentina Petrovna, I want to give you a present. I spoke to a hospice. They need volunteers. You can go there and help elderly people. You need to make yourself useful. All you do is sit at home and read the news online. It’s pointless. You’re an active pensioner, aren’t you?”
Valentina Petrovna put out the candles with her hand. She did not allow her granddaughter to blow them out.
“Why did you do that?” Natasha asked. “And I’m serious. I gave them your phone number. You always said you wanted to help people. So go and help.”
“A hospice?” Valentina Petrovna repeated. “You want me to work for free so you can sit comfortably in my apartment?”
“It isn’t your apartment,” Natasha replied calmly. “You’re simply an old woman standing in the way of younger people.”
“Get out,” Valentina Petrovna said.
For the first time, there was steel in her voice.
“Get out of my kitchen. Right now.”
Natasha opened her mouth, but Valentina Petrovna stood up and straightened to her full height.
Natasha slowly backed away.
Then she returned to the bedroom and slammed the door.
A week later, Valentina Petrovna returned from the store. She had bought bread and milk. Only two hundred rubles remained in her pocket.
She opened the apartment door with her key and heard voices.
Natasha was speaking loudly on the phone, making no effort to hide the conversation.
Valentina Petrovna froze in the hallway.
“Mom, I can’t take it anymore. They’re driving me insane. She follows me around like a shadow. I feel like I’m in prison. I want them to move out, but how am I supposed to say it? She’s a penniless pensioner, her son is an idiot, and there’s a granddaughter I never even wanted, but it happened. I tolerate all of this only because I don’t have to pay rent here. Otherwise, I would have left long ago. You can’t imagine what she’s like. Her pills, her borscht, her pies—she is always forcing her care on everyone. I’m sick of her.”
Valentina Petrovna pressed her back against the front door.
The bread fell from her shopping bag.
She stopped breathing.
“So what am I supposed to do now, Mom? She threw me out of the kitchen. She told me to get out! Can you imagine? I practically live in my own apartment, I pay for everything, and she gives me orders. But I’ll show them. I’ve filed a court petition. I’m going to challenge their registrations. I know a lawyer. I’ll say they are harassing me. Andrei barely works, and she’s just a pensioner. The court will take my side. I’ll evict all of them and sell the apartment afterward. She acts like some beggar. Yes, a beggar—but in my apartment. That’s exactly what I’ll say during the divorce. I told Andrei that if he doesn’t figure out how to remove her registration, I’ll divorce him and throw them all out. He just stays silent. He’s afraid. And his mother acts like some heroic saint when she is really just a useless old woman who makes everyone’s life difficult. I don’t want to feel sorry for her anymore, Mom. I’m tired of feeling sorry for her.”
Valentina Petrovna slowly bent down and sat on the hallway floor.
Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she could not feel them.
She heard Natasha say goodbye to her mother and end the call.
Footsteps approached.
Natasha walked out of the bedroom and nearly stepped on Valentina Petrovna.
She froze.
Her face turned pale.
“You were… listening?”
Valentina Petrovna raised her head and looked at her daughter-in-law.
There was no fear in her eyes. No hope. No attempt to make excuses.
There was only emptiness and quiet fury.
“I wasn’t listening deliberately. I accidentally heard you planning to throw us into the street. You want to take us to court.”
“I was speaking figuratively,” Natasha said, attempting to smile, though it looked more like a snarl. “You’re twisting my words, Valentina Petrovna.”
“Twisting your words?” Her voice rang through the hallway. “You called me a beggar. You said I was useless. You want to take me to court.”
She struggled to breathe.
“You deceived me from the beginning. You said I was like a mother to you. You took my earrings. You took my money. You took my life. Now you want to throw me into the street.”
She rose on trembling legs.
“But it won’t happen, Natasha. It won’t happen, because I have something.”
She walked to the small cabinet in the hallway and took out an old folder. Inside were copies of receipts, contracts, bank statements, and other documents.
“I’ve been collecting everything for three years. Did you think I saw nothing? I saw you taking money from my drawer. I knew you lied about your mother’s medical treatment. I saw you transfer my money into your own account whenever I asked you to buy groceries. I have everything. Receipts. Bank statements. My friend’s daughter works at a bank, and she helped me. I have records of your transfers. And I know that you sold your apartment but never invested the money in ours. You spent it on yourself.”
Natasha turned so pale that her face looked almost white.
“You… you can’t…”
“I can. You cannot evict us because you have no rights to this apartment. I do. I am the owner.”
Natasha gasped for air.
“I didn’t know…”
“You didn’t know because you never asked. You assumed that because I remained silent, I was stupid. I endured you, Natasha. I endured you for three years because I felt sorry for my son. I felt sorry for my granddaughter. I even felt sorry for you. I thought you would come to your senses. But you didn’t. You decided to throw me out.”
Valentina Petrovna looked directly into her eyes.
“So now you will leave. Today.”
Natasha stepped backward toward the door.
“But my belongings…”
“You can collect them tomorrow. I’ll call the local police officer and ask him to be present. But tonight, you are leaving. And by tomorrow evening, nothing of yours should remain here.”
Natasha stared at her with wild eyes.
Then she grabbed her handbag and coat and rushed out of the apartment.
The door slammed behind her.
Valentina Petrovna remained alone in the hallway.
She was trembling.
She looked at the folder in her hands and then slowly walked into the kitchen.
She sat down and poured herself a cup of tea, but did not drink it.
Outside the window, birds were flying south.
She was alone.
And for the first time in three years, she was free.
The following day, the local police officer arrived.
Natasha packed her belongings, cried, and begged for forgiveness. Valentina Petrovna sat silently on a stool.
Andrei stood in the hallway holding Lena’s hand.
Natasha tried to approach her daughter, but Lena hid behind her father.
“You did this yourself,” Valentina Petrovna said. “You made your own choice. I did not throw you out. You threw yourself out. Go and live with your mother. Lena will remain here. You can visit her on Saturdays, and I won’t stand in your way. But you will never live here again.”
Natasha silently picked up her final bag and left.
The police officer followed her out.
Valentina Petrovna locked the door and turned toward her son.
He was crying.
“Mom,” he whispered, “I was weak. Forgive me.”
“You were,” she replied. “Now you must become strong. For Lena and for yourself. Work. Help this family. And never again allow anyone to control you in your own home.”
A month passed.
Valentina Petrovna sat at the table while Lena drew another card.
Andrei returned from work and placed his entire first paycheck on the table.
“Mom,” he said, “I want to live differently now. I promise.”
“I know, my son.”
She stroked his hair and looked at the family photo album.
She removed Natasha’s photograph and placed it inside an envelope. She planned to send it to her former daughter-in-law without including a return address.
Then Valentina Petrovna opened the kitchen drawer.
Inside was the box of imported blood-pressure pills.
She picked it up, turned it over, and looked at the price.
Two thousand rubles.
She no longer took those pills. She had bought ordinary, inexpensive tablets instead.
They worked just as well.
Valentina Petrovna threw the expensive box into the trash.
“Mom,” Lena called out, “are we going to bake a pie?”
“We are. For us. For our family.”
Valentina Petrovna finally understood that she had never been a beggar.
She had been a victim.
She had given them everything—her apartment, her earrings, her medicine, her health, her faith, her hope, and her love.
She had given them herself.
But she had not understood it too late.
She looked at her granddaughter.
The girl resembled her. Not Natasha.
She looked like her grandmother.
“Lena,” she said, “remember this. The most precious thing is living with people who do not use you.”
“Like Mom used you?” Lena asked.
She was still young, but she already sensed that something important had happened.
“Your mother didn’t know how to be happy. She thought happiness meant possessions. An apartment. Money. She was wrong. Happiness is having people who love you. It is being able to remain yourself. It is being able to breathe.”
“Are we going to breathe now, Grandma?”
“Yes. We are.”
Valentina Petrovna opened the window.
Cold air rushed into the apartment, sweeping away the lingering smell of pills, arguments, and humiliation.
She took a deep breath.
No one can turn you into a beggar unless you allow them to.
And she would never allow it again.
She took out flour, eggs, and butter.
Lena reached eagerly for the dough. Andrei laughed.
The three of them kneaded the dough together, and Valentina Petrovna felt the woman she had once been slowly returning.
The woman she had been before those three years.
Before Natasha.
Before the lies.
Before the pain.
She looked through the window at a flock of birds crossing the sky.
She had survived.
She had reclaimed herself.
Without expensive pills.
Without humiliation.
Without fear.
She was here.
She was home.
“Remember, my dear,” she told her granddaughter as they placed the pie in the oven. “When someone tells you that you are worthless, it often means they are afraid of your strength.”
Lena nodded.
She did not fully understand yet.
But someday she would.
Valentina Petrovna sat down at the table.
The envelope containing Natasha’s photograph lay in front of her.
She reached for it and tore it open.
The photograph fell onto the floor.
She stared at it for a moment, picked it up, and threw it into the trash.
It landed beside the expensive medication.
Beside her former life.
She closed the lid and turned toward her granddaughter.
“The pie will be ready in forty minutes.”
“Will you tell me a story?”
“I will. I’ll tell you about a foolish princess who lost her home and a wise grandmother who won it back.”
Valentina Petrovna smiled.
For the first time in three years, it was a genuine, sincere smile.
Sometimes, to find yourself, you must lose everything except your truth.
Truth is the only thing that cannot be sold, purchased, or thrown away.
She lifted her granddaughter onto her lap and began telling the story.
