A loud crash sounded right by my temple, and the wall suddenly became splattered with crimson streaks. Sharp shards of white ceramic, like icy crystals, covered the floor at my feet with a melodious yet ominous chime. The air filled with the thick, pungent smell of beetroot and herbs.
“People who are in this house in the capacity of service staff must be fully aware of the limits of what is permitted!” my mother-in-law roared – a woman named Nina Petrovna, her breathing heavy and ragged from the emotions overwhelming her. “The process of cooking must take place in complete silence! The process of cleaning must also be soundless! And there should be no excessive activity of any kind!”
I froze at the stove, watching this woman, who was nearing sixty. For the third year in a row now she had been methodically and deliberately turning my daily existence into living hell. Short, stocky, with an inexorable, piercing gaze, she imposed her own rules within these walls, rules that allowed no objections. The sound of her voice, shrill and absolutely domineering, penetrated straight into my mind, making everything inside me clench from constant tension.
“Nina Petrovna, I only asked you not to raise your voice at little Lyonya,” I said in a quiet, almost soundless voice, washing warm scarlet splashes from my cheek. My fingers were trembling involuntarily, but I was doing everything I could to keep my speech even and calm.
“And who gave you the authority to make any remarks to me?” she grabbed a small saltshaker from the wooden countertop and hurled it straight at me. “You carry no weight whatsoever in this house! A temporary inhabitant!”
The saltshaker hit me right in the shoulder, and the tiny white crystals scattered on the floor like the first snow. I felt a dull, unpleasant blow, but the physical discomfort was absolutely nothing compared to the deep feeling of humiliation that filled me from within.
“Mom, please, stop,” my husband Andrey interfered, appearing in the kitchen doorway. But the sound of his voice was weak and devoid of any conviction. He stood hunched, his gaze stubbornly avoiding mine.
“You shut your mouth!” the mother-in-law barked at her own son. “Because of this bungler who can’t do anything right, all harmony has vanished from our home! Endless complaints, constant displays of discontent!”
“What displays of discontent are you talking about?” I couldn’t hold back. “I’m asking for just one single thing — not to shout at a small child who is only three years old!”
“At my own grandson!” Nina Petrovna screeched, snatching a long kitchen knife from the table. “Within the walls of my own home! And I will raise him exactly the way I myself consider right and necessary!”
The knife blade in her hand was visibly trembling, and I instinctively took a step back. My heart was pounding so loudly and rapidly it felt like it would burst out of my chest at any moment.
“Mom, put that knife down immediately,” Andrey finally showed some kind of reaction.
“Don’t you dare tell me what to do!” she waved the dangerous object in the air. “You dragged some empty, useless creature into our house, and now she dares dictate her terms to me! Who do you even think you are? Where did you even come from?”
“I came from a small village called Sosnovka,” I answered quietly, doing my best to hide the involuntary tremor creeping into my voice.
“Exactly! A backwater village!” the mother-in-law exclaimed with undisguised triumph. “The mud on your boots hasn’t even had time to properly dry yet, and you’re already trying to claim your rights!”
She walked over to the cupboard and pulled out a stack of some documents.
“See these papers? These are official ownership documents for this apartment! They’re in my name! And as long as I’m alive, I’m the one who sets the rules here!”
I stared silently at those sheets of paper, fully aware that they embodied my complete helplessness and defenselessness in this house.
“Fine,” I said, starting to pick up the sharp shards of the broken plate from the floor. “In that case, I will leave this house.”
“And where exactly are you going to go?” Nina Petrovna smirked contemptuously. “To your parents? Back to the village? With a small child in your arms?”
“Yes, to my parents.”
“And what are you going to tell them? That you couldn’t get along with a wonderful and generous mother-in-law?” she gave an unpleasant little giggle. “And what will they answer you? ‘Put up with it, you fool! You’re throwing away such a unique chance!’”
“They definitely won’t say anything of the sort.”
“Oh, they most certainly will!” the mother-in-law waved her arms. “I know your village parents very well! For them, the most important thing in life is to marry off their daughter as quickly as possible! And what she has to endure after the wedding – that doesn’t concern them in the least!”
Her words hurt me far more deeply than the sharpest knife blade. I remembered the countless letters from my mother – filled with boundless love, warmth, and sincere support, without a single hint of reproach or condemnation. I remembered my father, who always told me, “Dear daughter, remember this – you deserve only the very best.”
She hurled a heavy glass ashtray at me. She missed, but the ashtray hit a photo of Lyonya as a baby that was hanging on the refrigerator door. The glass in the frame cracked with a soft but distinct sound.
“That’s it, I’m leaving,” I declared, taking off my kitchen apron. My hands had finally stopped shaking – inside me, a cold, steely resolve was being born.
“Oh sure! You got scared, admit it!” Nina Petrovna triumphed. “And here I was thinking you had at least some kind of character!”
“Andrey, pack the things our son needs. We’re leaving here right now.”
“Don’t you dare even touch Lyona!” the mother-in-law screamed. “He’s my own grandson! And he will stay here and live with me!”
“Lyona is my son.”
“And he lives off my money! Eats the food I buy! Sleeps in a bed that stands in my own apartment!”
“He lives with his own mother.”
“With what mother, exactly?” the mother-in-law curled her lips in contempt. “With this failed secretary?”
“With the very mother who tomorrow morning will file an official statement with law enforcement describing in detail all the incidents of battery, threats, and constant psychological pressure,” I replied absolutely calmly.
“Ha!” the mother-in-law burst out laughing. “To the police! And what exactly are you going to complain about? That someone threw one plate in your direction?”
“About systematic incidents of physical violence, direct threats to life and health, and constant psychological pressure.”
“And who’s going to believe you?” she waved her hand dismissively. “We were just talking in raised voices!”
“Talking with flying plates and kitchen knives?”
“I have never in my life so much as laid a finger on you!”
I gestured to the sharp fragments of dishes scattered all over the floor.
“And what is this?”
“That just broke by accident…”
“Five different kitchen items all accidentally broke, and every single one of them flew exactly in my direction?”
“Lena, I understand perfectly well that you’re very upset right now…” Andrey finally spoke.
“I’m not upset. I’ve made a final and irrevocable decision.”
“What decision exactly?”
“I’m filing an official report with the authorities. I’m starting the legal process of dissolving our marriage. And I’m taking our son with me.”
“I won’t give up my grandson!” the mother-in-law screeched again.
“Oh, you will. From the legal point of view, I have far more rights to him.”
“Who do you think you are?!” she screamed. “Just a common secretary! Nobody! I’ll turn the entire local administration against you!”
“You won’t be able to do that.”
“Oh, I most certainly will!” Nina Petrovna waved her arms. “My own brother is the deputy head of our district! My godfather works as a local police officer! My in-law holds an important position in the prosecutor’s office!”
“In the prosecutor’s office?”
“Yes! A senior investigator! So no one will even bother reading your complaints or your statements!”
“And what is your in-law’s name?”
“Vladimir… Wait, what… That can’t be… She’s just some simple village girl… Are you absolutely sure?..”
She slowly, almost mechanically, lowered the telephone receiver and stared at me with eyes wide open.
“Who… who are you?”
“Yelena Vladimirovna Kozlova. You already know that perfectly well.”
“But… but Vladimir just said…” she faltered, searching for words. “What did Vladimir Petrenko say?”
“That my father…”
“That your father…” the mother-in-law couldn’t finish the sentence; her voice broke.
“That my father holds the position of regional prosecutor?” I prompted calmly and clearly. “Kozlov Vladimir Mikhailovich. Acting prosecutor of the Central Region. My biological father.”
Nina Petrovna dropped heavily onto the nearest chair. Her face suddenly went pale, and her hands began to tremble noticeably and violently.
“That can’t be true,” she whispered barely audibly.
“It can very well be true.”
“But… but you yourself said you were from Sosnovka… from a simple village…”
“From Sosnovka. It’s a small but very beautiful village located thirty kilometers from the regional center. My dad built a big, cozy house there when he retired. He always said he was very tired of the constant bustle of the city.”
“And… your mother?” the mother-in-law asked barely audibly, almost in a whisper.
“My mother is the former chair of the regional court. Kozlova Tatyana Alekseevna. She is also retired now.”
“Oh God…” whispered Nina Petrovna, covering her face with her hands.
“And yes, they both really do not like it when anyone tries to hurt or humiliate their own daughter.”
“Lena, are you serious?” Andrey asked in a stunned voice.
“Absolutely serious. And did it never occur to you to wonder how a mere secretary happens to have a university law degree? And why I know all the articles of the current legislation so thoroughly?”
“But… but you work as a regular secretary…” my husband mumbled.
“I work as an assistant to the district prosecutor. And my official position is anything but secretarial.”
Heavy, suffocating silence settled over the kitchen. Nina Petrovna was sitting hunched over, as if she had suddenly aged ten years in a matter of minutes. Andrey kept shifting his bewildered gaze from his mother to me and back again, as though trying to grasp and digest all the information he had just heard.
“So all this time you…” he began uncertainly.
“Yes,” I gently but firmly interrupted him. “All this time I wasn’t the ‘simple village simpleton’ you called me, but the daughter of the acting regional prosecutor. But that background of mine never affected my sincere desire to live with you in peace and harmony. I did everything I could to improve our difficult relationship. I genuinely tried to respect you. But when it comes to the safety and well-being of my own child, I immediately stop being soft and polite.”
Nina Petrovna raised her eyes to me, and they were full of genuine confusion and real fear.
“Lena… I didn’t know… I had no idea…”
“Now you know everything. And I very much hope that you fully realize and understand what will happen next if you continue to threaten me or my son.”
Andrey finally found his voice and managed to form complete sentences:
“Mom, you heard and understood everything, right? Lena is the biological daughter of the regional prosecutor. Do you now realize what you’ve done over all these years?”
My mother-in-law remained silent. Her face showed a complex, contradictory mixture of genuine horror and utter despair. It seemed that for the first time in her life she truly saw me – not as a ‘village daughter-in-law’, but as an independent person with her own name, a certain social status, and serious protection.
“So,” I looked closely at my mother-in-law, “shall we continue our serious conversation about ‘servants’ and their place in this house? Or shall we instead try to calmly and constructively discuss how we’re going to live from now on, taking all these new circumstances into account?”
With visible effort, Nina Petrovna slowly rose from the chair, leaning her palms on the wooden tabletop. Her fingers clutched convulsively at the edge of the white tablecloth.
“Lena…” her voice shook and broke off. “I… I didn’t mean to… I never planned…”
“What exactly did you not mean? What exactly did you never plan?” I asked again, looking at her with a calm, clear gaze.
She kept silent, and in that silence not just walls of misunderstanding were collapsing, but entire universes of prejudice. Her eyes fell on the cracked glass of the photo where little Lyonya was laughing – her grandson, for whose sake, it would seem, all of this had begun. And in that silence something new was being born – fragile as the first ice, yet as inevitable as the spring flood.
Sometimes the strongest walls collapse not from loud words or flying plates, but from the quiet chime of truth, which, like a spring stream, breaks through the thick ice of misunderstanding. And in place of shards and cracks, flowers of hope begin to grow – hope that even the coldest winter of the soul will eventually be replaced by warmth. That evening, it wasn’t just a plate that broke in the kitchen – the fragile glass of illusions shattered, and through it we finally saw each other. Not enemies, not rivals, but simply people who had lost their way and desperately wanted to find the road home. Home, where the air smells not of borscht and malice, but of fresh pastries and forgiveness; where the walls are decorated not with banners of victory, but with new photographs; where all of us are one family
