We live in my apartment. That is an important detail my husband’s family tactfully forgets, as if it were a minor flaw in their perfect picture of the world. Sergey, my husband, a man with Napoleon-sized ambitions and a librarian’s salary, believed that his presence in my life was already a gift from heaven. He loved to talk about “traditional values” while lying on the couch that, incidentally, had been bought with my maternity payments.
“Kristinochka,” he began one evening, puffed up with importance, “Mom called. Aunt Valya is having renovations done and needs somewhere to crash for a couple of weeks. I told her we have plenty of space. You’re home anyway, so you can look after her and feed her. She needs Diet Table No. 5.”
I looked up from my laptop — freelancing does not disappear just because a six-month-old son is snoring in the crib — and studied my husband with the interest of an entomologist.
“Seryozha,” I said gently, “did you happen to ask your mother whether she might be confusing our three-room apartment with a health resort in Mineralnye Vody?”
Sergey rolled his eyes as if someone had handed him sour wine.
“There you go again. This is family! You sit at home all day — is it really so hard to pour someone a bowl of soup? A woman is supposed to keep the hearth, not act like a calculator.”
“A keeper of the hearth, my dear, protects it from drafts and unnecessary people. What you are proposing is called domestic staff.”
“You’re becoming cold!” he snapped, waving his hand. “Mom says maternity leave corrupts women. You’re losing touch with reality!”
“Touch with reality, Seryozha, is understanding that the groceries in the fridge do not reproduce by budding.”
My husband snorted, unable to come up with an answer, and retreated proudly to the bathroom — the only place in the house where his authority was unquestioned.
The next day, Lidiya Semyonovna arrived. She brought a bag of cheap gingerbread cookies and a list of tasks.
“Kristina,” she began without even taking off her shoes, “Svetlanka’s school performance is just around the corner. You need to sew her a squirrel costume. Here’s the fabric. You’re home anyway, the sewing machine is sitting idle. And I bought curtains too, they need hemming. Five windows. Can you get it done by tomorrow?”
She spoke in the tone of a general issuing orders to new recruits. In her world, I was a free add-on to her son, something halfway between a multicooker and a sewing machine with voice-control functions.
“Lidiya Semyonovna,” I said, carefully pushing aside the bag of mothball-smelling fabric, “I’m afraid I won’t be able to. My schedule includes the baby’s massage, a walk, and work.”
My mother-in-law froze. Her eyebrows rose, seemingly trying to merge with her hairline.
“Work? You’re on maternity leave! Your job is diapers and borscht!” She threw up her hands. “Young people these days! We washed clothes in ice holes, gave birth in the fields, and never complained! And you have automatic washing machines and you’re still tired! It’s laziness, Kristina, plain old laziness!”
“In ice holes, you say?” I fluttered my eyelashes innocently. “Well, that’s wonderful.”
“You insolent girl!” she hissed.
Then she stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door so hard it sounded like the stamp on a sentence being passed. I only shrugged. The show was just beginning.
That evening, a “family council” was convened. Sergey, after receiving a fresh dose of maternal poison over the phone, was in a determined mood.
“You offended my mother!” he announced the moment he crossed the threshold. “She asked for help! You are obliged to apologize and sew that damned squirrel costume!”
“Seryozha,” I said, pulling an A4 printout from a folder, “I’ve been thinking about what you said about family and everyone contributing to the common good. You are absolutely right.”
My husband looked surprised. He had expected a scandal, tears — anything but agreement.
“Well… see? I knew you were a smart woman,” he said, smiling smugly in anticipation of triumph.
“That is why I drew up a business plan,” I continued, handing him the sheet. “Take a look.”
It was titled:
Price List for the Services of LLC ‘Wife on Maternity Leave’
Sewing a squirrel costume (rush order + emotional damages) — 5,000 rubles
Hemming curtains (per linear meter) — 400 rubles
Cooking fish patties from customer-provided fish (including cleaning scales off the entire kitchen) — 2,000 rubles
Hosting Aunt Valya (bed space + three meals a day, Diet Table No. 5) — 3,500 rubles/day
Listening to advice on “how to live properly” — 1,500 rubles/hour
Sergey read it, his eyes growing rounder and rounder.
“Are you… are you out of your mind?” he whispered. “That’s my mother! That’s Aunt Valya! You’re going to charge family money?”
“No, of course not,” I reassured him. “You’ll be paying. You are the head of the family, the client ordering the services. And I’m the contractor. Free-market economy, sweetheart. You said it yourself: time is money. My time is worth something too.”
“That’s mercenary!” he shrieked in falsetto. “You should do it out of love!”
“Out of love, I sleep with you and bear your children,” I cut in, no longer smiling. “Cleaning three kilos of crucian carp for your mother is catering. Payment on delivery, or 100% upfront.”
Sergey grabbed the paper, crumpled it up, and threw it on the floor.
“I’m not taking part in this! Tomorrow Mom is bringing the fish, and you’ll fry it! Otherwise…”
“Otherwise what?” I stepped right up to him. “You’ll go live with your mother? Just a reminder: this apartment is mine. And I can change the locks faster than you can say ‘little cutlet.’”
He froze. For the first time, he realized that the ground beneath his feet — which he had imagined was granite — was actually quicksand.
The climax came a week later. It was Lidiya Semyonovna’s sixtieth birthday. At first, they had planned a restaurant, but then my mother-in-law decided to save money — at my expense, naturally — and announced:
“We’ll gather at Kristinochka’s place! Her living room is large. Kristina will set the table; she’s home anyway. About twenty people, just family.”
Sergey passed this news on to me in a tone that allowed no objections, though he kept glancing nervously at my “Price List,” which I had attached to the fridge with a magnet.
“All right,” I said. “There will be a table.”
Sergey exhaled in relief. He decided I had given in, that the “women’s revolt” had been crushed. All week he strutted around like a peacock, humming to himself. My mother-in-law called to dictate the menu: aspic, pork ribs stewed with vegetables, three types of salad, homemade cake. I diligently wrote everything down.
On the big day, guests started arriving around 5:00 p.m. My sister-in-law came with her children and husband, Aunt Valya came, and some second cousins too. Draped in brocade and gold, Lidiya Semyonovna floated into the apartment expecting to see a lavish spread.
They walked into the living room.
In the middle of the room stood a large table.
Covered with a beautiful tablecloth.
Completely empty.
On the spotless white cloth there was only a vase with a single rose and a stack of laminated menus from the nearest pizzeria.
“Kristina…” my mother-in-law’s voice cracked embarrassingly. “Where is… the food?”
I came out to greet the guests. Not in an apron with a messy soapy bun on my head, but in an evening dress, with makeup on and a glass of wine in my hand.
“Good evening, dear relatives!” I beamed. “Happy anniversary, Lidiya Semyonovna! Since the client”—I nodded toward pale-faced Sergey—“failed to make the advance payment on the estimate I provided a week ago, the ‘Homemade Feast’ option has been canceled. But I have taken care of you! Here are the delivery menus. You can pay the courier by card or cash. I recommend the pepperoni — it’s excellent.”
“You… you…” Sergey gasped for air. “You’ve humiliated us! In front of the whole family!”
Lidiya Semyonovna collapsed into a chair, fanning herself with a napkin.
“Viper! A snake we warmed on our chest! Son, how do you live with her?!”
“He lives very well,” I said sharply, no longer smiling. “In warmth, cleanliness, and comfort. For free. But the banquet at someone else’s expense is over. If you want a celebration, pay for it. If you want me to work for you, respect my labor. I am not a servant — I am a wife and a mother. And I also want to rest on holidays instead of collapsing at the stove.”
My sister-in-law tried to squeak something about “a woman’s lot,” but I looked at her in such a way that she choked on the words.
“And now,” I said, taking a sip of wine, “who’s ordering the pizza? I think I’ll have the seafood one. On the birthday girl’s tab, naturally.”
The scandal was enormous. Shouting, threats, curses. But do you know what was most interesting? They were hungrier than they were angry. Forty minutes later, the courier arrived with ten boxes of pizza and sushi. Sergey paid, grinding his teeth so hard it seemed like his enamel might crack.
The evening passed in a tense atmosphere resembling a wake, but I felt like the queen of the ball. I sat there eating sushi I had not spent three hours rolling by hand, casually swinging my leg.
When the guests finally left, Sergey tried to begin a “debrief.”
“You humiliated my mother!” he started again, like a scratched record.
“I taught her respect,” I replied calmly. “And you, too. By the way, you owe me 5,000 rubles for cleaning. Your relatives trampled the hallway and spilled sauce on the carpet.”
“I’m not giving you a single kopek!” he roared.
“Okay.” I took out my phone. “Then I’m changing the Wi-Fi password, I’m no longer cooking your dinners, and I’m done washing your shirts. Oh — and tomorrow I’m going out to a café with my girlfriends, and you’ll stay home with our son. For free. You’re his father, after all.”
Sergey looked at me. Then at the pile of empty pizza boxes. Then at the cozy couch. In his eyes, greed and comfort fought it out. Comfort won by knockout.
“All right,” he muttered. “I’ll transfer it. But this… this isn’t human!”
“It’s market-based, Seryozha. Get used to it.”
That was six months ago. Now my husband’s relatives only come to visit by prior arrangement — and with their own cakes. My mother-in-law no longer asks me to hem curtains; she found an atelier that, as it turns out, “charges an arm and a leg,” but does the work silently.
Sergey has become surprisingly meek. He realized that the phrase “you’re home anyway” is far too expensive. And me? I still work, raise my son, and love my husband. It’s just that now this love has clearly marked boundaries and, in special cases, a price list.
And remember, girls: if someone thinks your time is worth nothing, do not be afraid to send them a bill. Sometimes that is the only way to make people understand that you are priceless.
