Irina stood on the narrow balcony, clutching a plastic watering can. Her cheeks were burning. Down below, on the second floor, Tamara Viktorovna was still shouting something about “outsiders” and “useless girls who couldn’t even water flowers properly.”
A few drops of water. Just a few drops had landed on the glass panels of the balcony below. Irina had immediately called down an apology and offered to come downstairs and wipe the glass, but the answering barrage had been so loud it made her ears ring.
Tolya stepped onto the balcony, silently took the watering can from his wife’s hands, and placed it on the windowsill.
“What happened this time?” he asked quietly.
“Water got on her window. I apologized and offered to clean it. She told me to drop dead. Those were her exact words.”
Tolya leaned against the doorframe and looked down. Tamara Viktorovna had already disappeared into her apartment, slamming the balcony window so hard that the curtain rod trembled.
“You know, Ira, I don’t think you should offer her anything anymore. You apologized. That’s enough.”
“I can’t behave like that. I keep thinking that if I speak to her calmly, she’ll understand. Maybe she’s just having a difficult day.”
“Every day is a difficult day for her. This is the third scandal she’s started since we moved in a month ago.”
Irina sighed. The apartment had not come easily to them. They had spent several years saving every possible kopek, giving up vacations and everything else that other people considered a normal part of life. They had gathered the down payment on their mortgage like ants collecting crumbs.
“Do you remember how happy we were when we got the keys?” she asked softly.
“I remember. You said, ‘It may be small, but it’s ours.’”
“And now, every time I enter the building, I wonder who it will be today. Who’s going to attack me?”
Tolya walked over and put his arm around her shoulders. Irina leaned against him and closed her eyes. She had grown up in a town with broad streets and spacious apartments that her parents had received from their workplace back in the Soviet era. Tiny Khrushchyovka apartments, with kitchens that were barely larger than entrance halls, had seemed like something from old stories until she found herself living in a narrow “railcar” apartment with eight-foot ceilings.
The next day, Irina encountered Vera, an elderly woman from the fourth floor who beat the dust out of her rug against the stair railing every morning.
“Good morning, Vera Nikolayevna. You know, the entire landing is covered in sand after you shake out your rug. Perhaps you shouldn’t do that?”
“Don’t you lecture me, girl. You’re young—take a cloth and clean it. It’ll do you good.”
“I do clean it. Every week. But this is a shared area.”
“I’ve lived here for thirty years. You’ve barely been here five minutes. Live here for thirty years, and then we’ll talk.”
Irina swallowed her hurt and walked past without another word. Sand crunched beneath her feet. She fetched a bucket and mop and washed the stairs from the third floor down to the first.
Not because Vera had ordered her to.
Because it was the right thing to do.
That evening, she told her husband.
“Maybe it really is difficult for her to clean by herself,” Irina suggested. “She is elderly, after all.”
“Ira, you’re a good person. But not everyone around you deserves your kindness. Some people are simply used to believing that everyone owes them something.”
“I don’t want to fight with the neighbors, Tolya. I don’t want to live in a war zone.”
“Then endure it. But remember that even patience must have limits.”
Six months later, Maksim was born. Tiny, with fists no larger than walnuts, he burst into their lives with screaming, sleeplessness, and endless colic. In the evenings, he cried uncontrollably, and nothing helped—not a warm cloth on his stomach, rocking him, or white noise played from a phone.
On the third night, someone began banging on the radiator from below.
Tamara Viktorovna.
She struck it rhythmically and angrily every ten minutes. Irina paced around with the baby in her arms and counted the blows like the ticking of a metronome.
“Tolya, perhaps I should go down and speak to her. I can explain that the baby has colic.”
“At two in the morning? Don’t even think about it. She’ll throw you down the stairs.”
“But surely she understands that he’s a baby. That he isn’t doing it on purpose.”
“She understands only one thing—that he’s keeping her awake.”
In the morning, Irina went downstairs anyway. She rang Tamara Viktorovna’s doorbell. The woman opened the door with a sleepy, rumpled face and sharp, hostile eyes.
“Good morning, Tamara Viktorovna. I wanted to apologize for the noise last night. The baby has colic. He cries, and nothing we do seems to help…”
“What does that have to do with me? I have high blood pressure. I have insomnia. I didn’t sleep a wink all night because of your screaming.”
“I understand, and I’m very sorry. But he’s still very small. He’s only a month old. The colic should pass in a couple of months…”
“A couple of months? I’ll lose my mind in a couple of months! Did you do this on purpose? You had a baby, so you can suffer. What does it have to do with me?”
“Tamara Viktorovna, we’re trying. We…”
“Trying? You aren’t trying at all! You shouldn’t even be living here. Outsiders move in, buy an apartment for next to nothing, and now the whole building is expected to put up with you.”
Irina felt blood rush to her temples. But she controlled herself, clenched her teeth, and answered evenly.
“All right. I understand. We’ll try to take him outside in the evenings so there will be less noise.”
“Then go outside. And don’t come back.”
The door slammed in Irina’s face.
She stood there for a second, turned around, and walked back upstairs. Her legs felt weak, and something was rising inside her—not hurt anymore. No. Something different. Something heavier.
From that day onward, she began taking the stroller outside in the evenings. Not because Tamara Viktorovna had ordered her to, but because Maksim really did fall asleep more quickly in the fresh air. The July evenings were warm and long, and Irina was so exhausted that she sometimes fell asleep on a bench outside the building.
One evening, when Maksim was two months old, Vera from the fourth floor came to Irina’s apartment and rang the bell. Tolya opened the door.
“I need to speak to your wife,” Vera announced, peering over his shoulder.
“What about?”
“Your child screams every evening until nine o’clock. That isn’t normal. The neighbors and I think you’re doing something to him.”
“Doing something to him?” Tolya turned pale. “Have you lost your mind?”
“My mind is perfectly fine. I’m not so sure about yours. We’ve discussed it and decided that if this doesn’t stop, we’ll take action.”
“What kind of action?” Irina approached the doorway with Maksim in her arms. The baby had just quieted down and was breathing softly, his nose pressed against her neck. “Look at him. He’s asleep. He’s a normal, healthy baby with colic. Have you never raised children?”
“My children never screamed like that.”
“All children cry, Vera Nikolayevna. Every single one.”
“Don’t try to lecture me. You’ve been warned.”
Vera left. Irina closed the door and held her son tightly against her chest. Tolya stood beside her.
They remained silent.
“Tolya, I can’t live here anymore.”
“You can, and you will. This is our home, Ira. Ours. We make the mortgage payment every month. Neither Vera nor Tamara is going to drive us out.”
“They hate me. Why?”
“For no reason. Simply because they can.”
August was scorching. Irina spent hours sitting in the courtyard beside the stroller while Maksim slept. One evening, exhausted after another sleepless night, she dozed off on a bench outside the neighboring entrance.
“Dear, you should at least put a pillow under your head. Your neck will hurt for a week.”
Irina started and lifted her head. A woman of about seventy stood beside her. She was short, with neatly cut gray hair and warm brown eyes.
“I’m sorry. I must have fallen asleep…”
“There’s no need to apologize. My Kiryusha was exactly the same when he was a baby. I never had a moment’s peace. Once, I fell asleep at a bus stop with the stroller. Can you imagine? The bus arrived, left again, and I just sat there sleeping.”
Irina smiled involuntarily. For the first time in three months, it was not a strained or polite smile, but a real one.
“I’m Maria Ivanovna. I live in the second entrance. You must be from the third one. The young couple with the baby?”
“I’m Irina. Yes, my husband and I live on the second floor.”
“I know, I know. I’ve heard about your… adventures. Tamara is a force of nature. Arguing with her is like trying to reason with the wind.”
“You know her?”
“We’ve lived side by side for twenty years. Thankfully, there’s a wall between us. She treats everyone that way. She also tormented the previous owners of your apartment. They were a young couple, like you. They couldn’t take it. They sold the place and moved away.”
Irina froze.
“So… we aren’t the first?”
“No, my dear. You’re the fourth family in fifteen years. No one lasts long in the apartment above her.”
“And no one does anything?”
“What can anyone do? She stays on her own property. She shouts, bangs on things, and insults people, but technically she doesn’t break the law. That’s simply the kind of personality she has. Poisonous.”
Irina fell silent and looked at the sleeping Maksim.
“Maria Ivanovna, do you… do you have a family?”
The woman sat down on the edge of the bench and folded her hands in her lap.
“A son. Kirill. He moved far away a long time ago. He calls occasionally. At New Year, he sends me an electronic greeting card with glitter and snowflakes. Other than that… I’m alone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me. Pity is a poor gift. Tell me your baby’s name instead.”
“Maksim. We call him Maksimka.”
“That’s a good name. A strong one. He’ll move mountains when he grows up.”
From that evening onward, they talked every day. At first, Irina remained cautious. After months of war with the neighbors, she had to rebuild her trust in every unfamiliar person one brick at a time.
But Maria Ivanovna did not interfere, offer unwanted advice, or criticize. She simply sat beside her and told amusing stories about her son and how she had raised him alone.
“Tolya, I think I’ve finally found a normal person in this building,” Irina told her husband that evening.
“Maria Ivanovna? From the second entrance? I’ve seen her a few times. She plants the flower bed outside the building herself—roses and marigolds. She always looks so neat.”
“She’s lonely. Completely alone. Her son lives far away and never visits.”
“Not all elderly people are alike, Ira. There’s Tamara, and then there’s Maria Ivanovna. Get to know her.”
Irina did.
And she never regretted it.
When Maksim was four months old, the colic disappeared, exactly as Maria Ivanovna had predicted. The boy became calmer and began to smile. Whenever he saw “Grandma Masha”—the name he gave her as soon as he learned to form syllables—his face spread into such a broad, toothless smile that the old woman’s chin trembled.
But the peace did not last long.
Tamara Viktorovna waited for Irina in the stairwell one day when she was returning from a walk. She stood on the landing, blocking the stroller’s path.
“So you’ve become friends with Masha?” Her voice was quiet but vicious. “You sit together whispering. Gossiping about me, I suppose?”
“Please move, Tamara Viktorovna. I need to carry the stroller upstairs.”
“I told you that you wouldn’t live here in peace. Masha won’t help you. She’s nobody. Her own son ran away from her because she was unbearable.”
Irina felt her fingers tighten around the stroller handle.
“Don’t you dare speak about her like that.”
“And what are you going to do about it? Complain? To whom? That spineless husband of yours?”
“Move away from the stroller. Now.”
“Or what?”
Irina straightened and looked Tamara Viktorovna directly in the eyes. Then, in a voice she had never expected to hear from herself, she said:
“Or I will lift this stroller with my child inside and walk past you. And if you remain in my way, that will be your problem.”
Tamara Viktorovna blinked and retreated half a step.
Irina lifted the stroller and walked past, brushing the woman with her shoulder. Tamara pressed herself against the wall and said nothing.
Upstairs, after closing the apartment door behind her, Irina lowered the stroller and exhaled.
“Tolya, we need to do something. I’m not going to live like this anymore.”
Autumn arrived early. The leaves in the courtyard had turned yellow by mid-September, and Maria Ivanovna began collecting Maksim from kindergarten early whenever Irina could not get there in time. She categorically refused to accept money.
“Maria Ivanovna, at least let me buy groceries for you.”
“Irochka, don’t be ridiculous. Being around that child makes me ten years younger. He pays me with his smile. That’s enough.”
“But I feel uncomfortable…”
“It’s uncomfortable to sleep on the ceiling because your blanket keeps falling down. Helping someone is perfectly normal. It’s human.”
Maksim grew, and his attachment to Grandma Masha became stronger every day. He showed her his drawings and told her about his toy cars. Once, he brought home a crooked branch from a walk, wrapped it in a napkin, and presented it to her with the words:
“This is a magic wand for you, Grandma Masha, so you won’t be sad.”
Maria Ivanovna accepted the gift and sat on the bench for a long time, pressing the branch to her chest. Irina saw her from the window and turned away because her eyes had begun to sting.
But Tamara Viktorovna did not stop.
She found a new tactic: turning the entire entrance against Irina and Tolya. She went from apartment to apartment, spreading lies that the young couple held parties until dawn, that they had flooded someone’s apartment—which they had not—and that their child ran around striking the floor with a hammer.
Maksim was eighteen months old and did not even own a hammer.
One day, Lidia from the first floor approached Irina. She was a quiet, nonconfrontational woman who usually exchanged greetings and continued on her way.
“Irochka, I feel awkward telling you this, but… Tamara Viktorovna is collecting signatures. She says you’re violating the building’s rules. She wants to submit a complaint to the property-management company.”
“What signatures? What rules are we violating?”
“I don’t know. She says there’s noise, dirt, and water dripping from the balcony. I told her I hadn’t noticed anything like that, and she shouted at me.”
“Thank you for warning me, Lidia Sergeyevna.”
“You’re welcome. I won’t sign anything against you. But Vera from the fourth floor already has. And Gennady from apartment eight signed too, although he signs everything people put in front of him.”
Irina thanked Lidia and told Tolya that evening. He listened silently, then stood and began pacing around the kitchen.
“All right. That’s enough. I’m going to speak to her.”
“Tolya, don’t start a scandal.”
“There won’t be a scandal. There will be one conversation. The last one.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
“Yes. This is our shared problem. I’m not going to hide behind your back.”
They went downstairs together. Tolya rang the bell. The door opened. Tamara Viktorovna stood in the doorway wearing a dressing gown and holding a stack of papers.
“Oh! The entire delegation. What happened? Did I frighten you?”
“Tamara Viktorovna,” Tolya said calmly, “we know about the signatures. We know you’ve been going from apartment to apartment and telling people things about us that aren’t true.”
“They are true. All of them. There’s noise, dirt, and water from your balcony.”
“Three drops of water. Six months ago. Ira offered to wash the glass.”
“I don’t give a damn about your offers! You’re poisoning my life! The entire entrance’s life!”
Irina stepped forward.
“No, Tamara Viktorovna. You’re the one poisoning people’s lives. Four families before us fled from this apartment. Four! Not because the apartment was bad, but because you lived downstairs.”
“How dare you, you little brat!”
“I dare. These signatures are meaningless. Lidia Sergeyevna refused to sign. Gennady signed without reading anything. Vera signed out of spite. You cannot identify a single real violation because there aren’t any, and you know it.”
Tamara Viktorovna’s face turned crimson. She stepped toward Irina, raised one finger, and jabbed her hard in the chest.
“You’ll dance to my tune yet, girl. I’ll drive you out, just like I drove out everyone else. You, that husband of yours, and your little brat.”
Irina caught her hand. In one quick, sharp movement, she pushed Tamara Viktorovna backward.
The woman stumbled one step and struck her back against the doorframe. Something new appeared on her face—not anger, but confusion.
Pure, naked confusion.
No one had ever treated her that way before.
“Do not touch me. Ever.” Irina’s voice was icy. “You want a war? You have one. But not the kind you’re accustomed to. I’m not going to run away. I’m not selling this apartment. I’m not going to cry in the stairwell. I will live here, raise my son, and water my flowers on the balcony. And if you don’t like it, you can move away.”
Tamara Viktorovna opened her mouth but made no sound.
Tolya stood beside his wife and remained silent. Not because he had nothing to say, but because Irina had handled it herself.
They turned around and walked upstairs.
The door below closed quietly.
Without a slam.
For the first time, without a slam.
“Ira…” Tolya began on the stairs.
“Not now. Later.”
At home, she sat on a stool and placed her hands on the table. Her fingers were trembling.
“You were magnificent,” Tolya said.
“I pushed an elderly woman.”
“She jabbed you in the chest. That was an attack, Ira. You defended yourself.”
“I still feel terrible.”
“I understand. But do you know what? She was confused. I saw her eyes. She’s accustomed to everyone running away. You didn’t.”
By winter, Tamara Viktorovna had quieted down. Not completely—she still grumbled in the stairwell and gave Irina hostile looks—but she stopped collecting signatures, stopped banging on the radiators, and stopped waiting for Irina in the entrance.
Something in her usual pattern had broken, and she did not know what to do about it.
Maksim turned three. He ran around the courtyard, talked endlessly, and called Maria Ivanovna “Grandma Masha” so naturally that it seemed as if she had always been part of the family.
In February, Maria Ivanovna casually mentioned that she would turn seventy in March.
“Maria Ivanovna, will Kirill come?” Irina asked carefully.
“No, Irochka. He called yesterday. He said he had work and business trips. He’ll send me a greeting card. With glitter.”
She smiled, but it was the kind of smile that made you want to look away.
“We’ll organize a celebration for you. At our place,” Irina said. “Tolya and I have already decided.”
“Oh, you don’t have to…”
“We do. Maksim is already drawing you a card. If I tell him there won’t be a celebration, he’ll never forgive me.”
Maria Ivanovna laughed, and this time it was genuine.
Irina called both sets of parents—hers and Tolya’s—and invited everyone. Their parents arrived from different towns, and the tiny railcar-shaped apartment suddenly filled with voices, movement, and life.
They set the table in the larger room and extended it as far as it would go. Tolya borrowed chairs from the neighbors. Lidia Sergeyevna happily lent them three. Irina spent two days cooking.
Maria Ivanovna arrived in an elegant dress with a cameo brooch that she reserved for special occasions. Her voice trembled as she crossed the threshold.
“Irochka… Tolya… You have no idea what you’ve done for me.”
“Maria Ivanovna, you have no idea what you’ve done for us,” Tolya replied, offering his hand and helping her to the table.
Maksim ran out of the room carrying a large sheet of paper. Four figures had been drawn on it in colored pencil, accompanied by a caption in crooked letters:
“GRANDMA MASHA AND US.”
“Grandma Masha!” He climbed onto a chair and spoke in the solemn voice children use to announce the most important things in the world. “You are my favorite grandmother! I wish you good health and that you will live… forever!”
Irina’s father, a large, quiet man, coughed and turned toward the window. Tolya’s mother discreetly wiped her eyes with a napkin.
Maria Ivanovna took the drawing in both hands, studied it for a long, long time, and said:
“Thank you, Maksimka. This is the best gift I’ve received in all my seventy years.”
Glasses clinked. Conversation began to flow, light, warm, and familial. Irina’s father talked about fishing, Tolya’s mother talked about her garden, and Maria Ivanovna told them how she had hitchhiked across the entire Ural region in her youth. Everyone gasped and refused to believe her, so she pulled old photographs from her handbag.
In the middle of the evening, the doorbell rang.
Tolya opened the door. A woman of about forty stood on the threshold. She was tall, with tired eyes and a travel bag hanging from one shoulder.
“Hello. I’m Lena. Tamara Viktorovna’s daughter. I need to speak to Irina.”
Irina stepped into the hallway. The two women stood facing each other.
“I came from Yekaterinburg. Your neighbor Lidia gave me the number of your entrance. I know what my mother has been doing to you. All these months, the signatures, the scandals…”
“Lena, we’re celebrating a birthday. Perhaps this isn’t the right time.”
“No, it has to be now. Because I want you to know something. I haven’t spoken to my mother for four years. She did exactly the same thing to her own family. She drove people away, controlled them, and humiliated them. My brother moved to Novosibirsk and changed his phone number. I moved to Yekaterinburg. We both… ran away.”
Irina said nothing.
“Didn’t she ever mention you?” she asked quietly.
“She erased us from her life the moment we stopped obeying her. To her, only people she can oppress truly exist. When one target leaves, she finds another. You were next.”
“Why did you come?”
“Because Lidia Sergeyevna wrote to me. She told me what was happening. I didn’t even know she had my contact information. Apparently, my mother gave it to her years ago in case of an emergency. Lidia wrote that my mother was losing control and that a young family was suffering. So I bought a ticket.”
“What are you going to do?”
Lena placed her bag on the floor.
“I’m taking her home with me. To Yekaterinburg. Permanently. We’re going to sell the apartment.”
Irina felt the floor sway beneath her feet. Not from weakness, but from surprise.
“You’re… serious?”
“Completely. I’ve already spoken to my brother. He agrees. She cannot live alone. Not because she’s ill, but because she’s dangerous to the people around her. We were wrong to abandon the problem and run away. You didn’t run. You’re the first family that didn’t sell the apartment. And that… made me think.”
Maksim peered out of the room.
“Mom, Grandma Masha is crying! She says she’s crying because she’s happy. Do people cry when they’re happy?”
“They do, sweetheart. Go back to her. I’ll be there in a moment.”
The boy ran away. Irina looked at Lena.
“Would you like to come in? We’re celebrating a birthday.”
“No, thank you. I’m going to see my mother. It will be a long and difficult conversation.”
“Lena…”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. For coming. For not ignoring it.”
Lena nodded, picked up her bag, and walked down the stairs. Irina stood in the doorway listening as the woman’s footsteps faded—steady, firm, and determined.
She returned to the table.
Maria Ivanovna was holding Maksim on her lap, and the boy was explaining how the drawn Grandma Masha looked exactly like the real one.
“Irochka, what happened? Who was at the door?” her father asked.
“No one frightening. Quite the opposite.”
“The opposite?” Tolya raised an eyebrow.
“I’ll tell you later.” Irina sat down and picked up her glass. “Right now, we’re celebrating.”
Maria Ivanovna looked at her with a long, warm, grateful expression.
“You know, Irochka,” she said quietly, “all my life, I believed family was about blood. Parents, children, grandchildren. I thought that if blood ties couldn’t hold people together, nothing could. But it turns out something else can.”
She gestured around the table, toward the guests and Maksim’s drawing on the wall.
“This. This is family.”
“Sometimes neighbors become closer than relatives,” Tolya said, raising his glass.
“Closer than relatives,” Irina’s father repeated.
“Closer than relatives!” Maksim shouted, although he did not understand what it meant. He simply liked it when everyone repeated the same words.
One floor below, behind the wall, Tamara Viktorovna opened the door to the daughter she had not seen in four years and heard the words she had never expected:
“Pack your things. You’re coming with me. You’ve tormented people long enough.”
Tamara Viktorovna opened her mouth to object.
But then she looked into her daughter’s eyes and remained silent.
For the first time in her life, the person standing before her was not going to run away, argue, or endure.
She was going to act.
Just as Irina had.
