Injury

As a child, I dreamed of having a little sister or brother to play hide-and-seek, touch-and-run, and squash with. Unfortunately, my pleas to buy a "baby" at the store didn't help.

Mom didn't want any more kids. So I would probably continue to languish in loneliness, but my father had an accident at the factory. Due to someone's negligence, hydrochloric acid splashed into my father's face and blinded him in one eye.

Coincidence or not, many years later I found an old black and white photo in Grandma Dusya's photo album, when my father was one and a half years old. The picture was cut in half, and the cut line was right on the baby's left eye.

Dad was worried that the damaged eye could not be saved and that he would never be able to see again. But the doctors assured him that there was hope for him to regain his sight.

Eye clinics, tests, complicated surgeries - it took a year.

There was no miracle, his sight was not restored.

My mother was crying, my father was angry. At 27, it's hard to accept a sudden disability.

Because of my age, I didn't understand what had happened. What's the problem? On the outside, Dad hadn't changed a bit. He wore a cleverly chosen glass insert, and unless you looked closely, you could not tell that he had only one eye.

Of course, many people knew about my father's injury - rumors spread quickly in small towns - but I don't remember anyone mocking or insulting him. Even my classmates, who never missed an opportunity to talk unflatteringly about other kids' parents, kept quiet.

An outcast

In the yard next to ours lived a boy, Denis, my age.

For some reason, the guys didn't like him, considered him an outcast, bullied him, called him insulting names, and sometimes even beat him. This boy's father also had only one eye.

One day my classmate Lena shouted something insulting at Denis.

He picked up a handful of stones from the ground and threw them at her.

- You! - Lena got angry. - I'll get you!

She ran after him, but the boy was already running home.

- I see London, I see France. I see your underpants! - Lena shouted after him. - You are nut! And your father is one-eyed! Cyclops!

Even though the words were not meant for me, I felt like I was being electrocuted. How could Lena not be ashamed of saying that? What if someone had said that about my father? I grabbed her arm:

- Shut up! Have you forgotten that my father is also...?

The classmate was embarrassed, but quickly got out of the awkward situation:

- Your dad is different, at least he's handsome.

My father was indeed a handsome man, he was used to being liked by women, to being the center of attention. But he was so ashamed of his supposed ugliness, so afraid that my mother would leave him, that he almost forced her to have a second child, believing that only then would his wife not leave him.

That's how Tanya came into our family.

Three Sixes

- Oh, what a little thing, how can I play with her? - I said disappointedly, looking at the pink bundle in the maternity hospital. And immediately lost all interest in the newborn.

My sister was born on the sixth day of the sixth month, at four o'clock in the morning.

- It's a good thing she wasn't born at six o'clock, - said Grandma Luda. - Three sixes are the sign of the Antichrist.

- It's the birthday of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin! - laughed mother. - She has the same curls as him.

My mother wanted to name the newborn Marina after her best friend, but I insisted: Tanya!

Contrary to my grandmother's predictions, Tanya turned out to be an unusually quiet baby.

With me, my mother recalled, she couldn't sleep a wink: the diaper was wet, I cried, when I was weaned from the breast, I cried at the top of my lungs. And Tanya just sleeps in her crib. Hungry - she is silent, tummy aches - not a sound, pissed, pooped, all in silence. No fuss at all. Not a child, but gold. It would be great if every baby was like that!

Bathroom Accident

I am three and a half years old and Tanya is three months old. Mom is giving us a bath in the tub.

She just stepped out for a minute to check on the porridge on the stove, and I stayed to take care of my little sister. But as soon as the door slammed shut behind my mother, Tanya slipped on a flat spot and went under the water with her head.

The image is still fresh in my mind: water gushing from the faucet, little Tanya clinging desperately to the shower hose, and me looking down at her with curiosity and fear: will she get out or not?

Tanya struggled silently and kept her frightened eyes on me. Her look was so pleading, so desperate - why are you looking at me, hurry up and help me!

But it didn't occur to me to reach out to my sister or call my mother for help. If I had heard Tanya's scream, it might have jolted me out of my stupor, but instead I just stood there, mesmerized, watching my sister sink to the bottom.

I was afraid to even touch her, what if it too late and she is already drown?

And it was only when Tanya began to choke in the water that something clicked inside me: she is alive! She can still be saved! And I called my mom.

Oh, and I got a kick out of it! My frightened mother thought I had wanted to drown Tanya on purpose, out of jealousy. But I was more puzzled by another question - why didn't my sister make a sound in the moment of danger? She didn't scream, she didn't cry. Not even a squeak.

Maybe she's a mute?

Our Tanya cries loudly

Suddenly everything changed.

One night, our quiet Tanya woke everyone up with a loud cry. We turned on the light - the child had a fever. We took her temperature - forty.

Dad ran to wake up our neighbor, the invalid Zhenya, he was the only one on the floor who had a house phone. The ambulance came. "Teething," the doctor shrugged. - If the temperature does not drop by morning, call the district pediatrician.

The ambulance left. But Dad didn't wait until morning.

Somewhere on Tolstoy Street there was a doctor he knew by the name of Markov. Despite the late hour, my father decided to go to him and bring him to us. I went with my father. What an adventure!

It's dark and raining outside, and the wind is howling. My father and I walked at a brisk pace through the yards and alleys, drowning in the mud and jumping over huge puddles.

When we found the right entrance and the right apartment, we rang the doorbell. The lock clicked.

A big man stood at the door in shorts and a T-shirt, squinting in the bright light.

- I beg you, hurry! My daughter is dying! - The father breathed out.

Without further questions, Dr. Markov quickly gets dressed and runs out into the rain.

- You were right not to wait until morning," he said later. - Another half hour would have been too late. Your daughter has bilateral pneumonia.

The Hospital

The fight for Tanya's life continued for several months.

I saw my sister a few times through the glass of the hospital room - a small, puny body tangled in a web of IVs, needles and catheters.

Mom remembered that there was no room left for the injections on my sister's buttocks. The shots were so painful that Tanya's arms and legs cramped up.

But the serious illness did not go away. Tanya needed a blood transfusion. Her blood was rare type 1, so my mother became her donor.

Then there was rehabilitation in the hospital in Izhevsk. The rules there were prison-like - no visits, no toys, no transfers. The doctors would not even let my mother visit Tanya.

Little Savage

When my sister came home six months later, she was a different child. She didn't recognize her family and acted like a hunted animal in the forest. She started stealing food, taking it from the table, stuffing candy in her pockets, and hiding bread under her pillow. In the morning, before kindergarten, my father would ask at breakfast:

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

- Who wants cheesecake?

- I do! - Tanya whimpers.

She thinks Daddy is offering her

her favorite chicken tail.

As for the dumplings, Tanya never liked them and demanded the cutlets. My mom and I used to take out the dumpling stuffing, put the dough to one side and the stuffing on a plate, and assure her that these were cutlets, just small, for children. Tanya believed us and ate them with gusto.

My younger sister's good appetite saved me from being punished with a belt more than once.

My mother was annoyed that I wouldn't finish my sausages and soup. So I began to sneak the rest of the food into Tanya's plate and slip away from the table with a clear conscience.

Soon after leaving the hospital, Tanya went from being skinny to a fat girl with dimples on her cheeks.

- A real angel! - Grandma Luda admired her.

But she was in vain.

All against one

By the age of three, as if to compensate for her quiet childhood, Tanya had become a real tomboy. She could not be left alone for a second without supervision.

If you turned your back, she would split her forehead, tape her eyes shut with chewing gum, or swallow large amounts of ascorbic acid. One day she cut off her bangs completely. Then she cut off her toenails with a huge pair of tailor's scissors. I wonder how she didn't lose any fingers.

For New Year's, my mother's sister Nina sent us a package of rare chocolates. We put the chocolates in crisp, elegant wrappers in the cupboard next to crystal glasses - as a decoration - and warned Tanya: we would eat them on New Year's Eve.

The holiday came. At midnight, we looked in the cupboard, unwrapped the foil, and there was no chocolate! Sly Tanya ate them in secret, carefully taped up the empty wrappers, and put them back in their place so that no one would suspect her pranks.

At the age of four, this little savage escaped from my parents' hands and almost got under the wheels of a car. When she was five, she climbed onto the roof of a children's club and started throwing stones at passersby with her younger cousin Sasha.

It's a good thing someone climbed up on the roof and kicked mischievous kids in the ass, or innocent people could have been hurt by their antics.

Tanya was called a terrible child who didn't know how to behave - she stole, lied, got into trouble, always broke, ruined, lost everything.

Grandma Dusya usually refused to take my sister to Tagil for the summer. Other relatives, when they found out that we were going to visit them, said bluntly: "Only without Tanya!

They shied away from her like the plague, expecting some kind of mischief at any moment.

And Tanya, sensing their fear, would immediately arrange that mischief for them.

Even in those rare moments when my sister was not up to pranks and was trying to make a pleasant impression, she still managed to mess up - tearing a new dress, accidentally getting caught on a nail, or breaking my mother's favorite vase by accidentally touching the edge of the table.

And everyone, including me, thought Tanya did it on purpose - out of spite.

One day I decided to complain about my obnoxious sister in a Pioneer magazine. I wrote three pages about how mean and rude Tanya was. I also mentioned how she secretly ate a three-quart jar of raspberry jam and a kilo of candy from Mom.

I reread what I had written and... tore up the letter. She is my sister! I felt sorry for her.

Tanya's life had been hard enough. After spending six months within the walls of the state hospital, in total isolation, at that tender age when communication with family, especially the mother, is vital for a child, Tanya had become so wild that she could not make up for lost time. She lacked parental affection, care, love and warmth. And she was ready to get it at any cost.

Resentment

The birth of the second child did not improve family relations. On the contrary, with small children in two rooms, it became cramped. The parents quarreled. My grandmother relentlessly scolded my mother for not divorcing my father and giving birth to a child of a "cripple". Grandmother Luda could not forgive her daugher.

The mother was as if between two fires, and unable to resist her parents and husband, began to tear down evil on the children. If you do something wrong, she immediately bursts into tears and screams.

Father, trying to assert himself and relieve the tension, began to cheat on my mother and drink with redoubled zeal. Because of this, he and my mother were constantly scandalized, shouting at each other, and sometimes my father would raise his hand to her. My grandmother did not interfere, but she never missed an opportunity to gloat over my mother, saying: "I warned you!" Needless to say, how depressing these quarrels were for everyone.

So that two families could finally live separately, my father joined the waiting list for a new apartment.

The factory gave him an apartment, but only a one-room one.

After much persuasion, pleading, and tears from my mother, my grandfather relented and agreed to an exchange. He and my grandmother moved into a one-room apartment on Pehtin Street, and we stayed in a two-room apartment on Karl Marx Street.

But my grandfather could not accept the new accommodation. He didn't like everything about it: the house, the neighborhood, the layout, especially the windows facing west instead of east, as he liked.

West, the sunset, meant death to him, slow fading. Grandpa didn't live in his new apartment for long.

Unloved

Mom and Dad continued to fight.

People usually say about such couples, "It's bad together, it's bad apart.

Many times my mother wanted to leave my father, but she was afraid of being alone with two children. She secretly hated the unwanted child and tried to blame the younger daughter for her failed life, saying that if it were not for her, everything would be different.

Adding fuel to the fire was the father who, in moments of jealousy, had said that Tanya was not his child. Though only a blind man would miss their blood relation - Tanya was an exact copy of Daddy. Perhaps after such accusations, the mother finally realized that she had made a fatal mistake in not listening to her mother's advice.

But what's done is done.

It seems to me that most of the suffering was not so much on Mom's part as on Tanya's. Isn't that why she got sick? Children feel everything.

My sister's illness became a serious test for my parents, forcing them to unite for a while, to forget their quarrels. But I hoped in vain that Tanya's recovery would bring peace to the family, that Mom and Dad would finally get along.

As soon as the threat of death passed, as soon as everything returned to normal, things got worse.

If before the sweet little girl had not caused the adults much trouble, had not distracted them from the endless drama and clarification of their relationships, now she began to demand more attention for herself - by whims, epathetic behavior, tantrums, which inflamed the already tense atmosphere in the family.

The Devil's Seal

For as long as I can remember, my parents have always insinuated that I was a good girl and Tanya was a bad one, attracting misfortune like a magnet.

She had a bad teacher in kindergarten and elementary school. And in general, Grandma Luda was probably right - it was all to blame for the unfortunate "three sixes".

My parents wouldn't even allow the thought that there might be something wrong with them.

Mom and Dad considered our family, if not exemplary, at least no worse than other families. Everyone is fed and clothed, what more do you need? As for cursing and scandals-that's nothing! The falling out of lovers is the renewal of love. But those scandals sometimes made me want to run away from home.

I used to convince myself and Tanya that we were adopted children, that our real father was the famous singer Valery Leontiev, and our mother was the sweet, kind singer Valentina Tolkunova. Would a birth mother really shout at her children? (I really took all my mother's outbursts personally).

Once I was really close to running away to an orphanage with my sister. I thought we would be better off there.

We are so different

However, the fact that my parents constantly compared my sister and me, and that the comparison was not in Tanya's favor, usually played to my advantage.

I liked feeling special.

It didn't mean that I was in any way better than my sister. It's just that I could disguise myself well, hide bad deeds and thoughts from others, "cover my tracks.

Tanya was the more naive and ingenuous child. She followed me everywhere like a tail. I'll start collecting postcards and Tanya will do the same. OK, I start collecting calendars and leave the postcards to my sister, but suddenly it turns out that she's bored with them and wants to collect calendars too. It's like that with everything.

I used to tease Tanya, call her a copycat, hide my things from her. But you can't hide anything from Tanya, she'll find it and spoil it out of spite.

Being friends with my sister didn't work.

I was only willing to put up with Tanya if she obeyed me. It was nice to babysit her, tutor her, entertain her, play house (the mother in that house was, of course, me), but as soon as the younger sister broke my rules, took something without asking, or showed willfulness, I immediately fell out of favor with her.

Could sisters be so different? - everyone wondered.

We were very different indeed, but at the same time we almost always liked the same books, and for me that is an important indicator of spiritual intimacy.

When we were children, our parents measured our height by making notches in the doorjamb, and I remember my sister dreaming of catching up with me and then overtaking me in height. I grew slowly and Tanya grew quickly, and by the time we were twelve or fifteen, people around us could not tell which of us was the older and which was the younger, and some people thought we were twins.

At every opportunity, my sister and I would argue, call each other names, and sometimes fight.

Tanya's temper was fierce. One day she threw an iron cup at me so hard that I would have had a broken nose or a gash on my forehead if I had not ducked in time. There was a deep dent in the door where the blow landed.

Make friends, make friends, never, never break friends!

My parents used to punish us for fighting.

But they never found out who started the fight and what it was about.

"It's both of your fault!" - was my mother's favorite phrase. So she'd slap both of us and that would be the end of the conversation.

- For what?! - Tanya and I yelled in unison.

- For everything! - Mom would say, walking on our butts with a belt, slipper, robe belt, jump rope, dog leash, kettle wire, twisted towel or washing machine hose - Mom's ingenuity knew no bounds.

When it was later discovered that an innocent person had been punished, Mom rarely admitted her mistake. She would say, "Prevention never hurts!

The belt made me completely insensitive to physical pain, but it sharpened the sensitivity of my soul. I was a real "extrasens" here.

Have you ever noticed how animals and babies look at people's faces? They literally read them, tear off their masks. As a child, I could tell by my mother's footsteps and the way the key turned in the keyhole whether she was in a good or bad mood when she came home from work.

And if she was in a bad mood, it was better not to be seen by her.

Tanya and I hated the belt and tried to hide it as far away as we could, at the same time taking all the slippers out of sight. Then my mother would just put us in different corners or lock us up - Tanya in the bathroom, me in the toilet. And turn off the lights.

There was a window in the wall below the ceiling. After a little whimpering in the dark, my sister and I would begin to establish communication - knocking and talking. Or after we climbed up - Tanya on the radiator and me on the tiled wall, resting my legs and arms on it - we would stick to the window and make faces at each other.

So imperceptibly peace always came.

It's not me

The spring. Daddy, Tanya and I are walking in the yard. I'm playing ball, and three-year-old Tanya takes it from me. I don't give it back, Tanya cries.

Mom comes out, takes the ball and gives it to my sister, shaming me: she's a little girl!

I hold a grudge - against Tanya, against my mom, but most of all against my dad, who laughingly takes the camera and starts taking pictures of me, frowning and sobbing.

But soon I had the chance to get back at my sister. The thing is that I always wanted to try smoking, because my father smoked his Belomor cigarettes very appetizingly. When I left home alone, I went out on the balcony, took out the pack of cigarettes, struck a match...

And then a threatening voice came from above:

- What the hell is this? Throw it away! I'll tell your parents everything!

I recoiled from the railing in horror and threw away the unlit cigarette.

That same evening, the upstairs neighbor made good on his threat. But he mistook me for my younger sister, so it was Tanya who was punished, not me. I stood aside while she was whipped with the belt.

I felt sorry for my sister, but to confess my sin, to tell my parents the truth, was to bring down their wrath upon me. So I cowardly kept silent and mentally vowed never to smoke myself. "There's nothing wrong with the parents punishing Tanya," I thought in my defense. - How often was I beaten instead of Tanya! At least take this unfortunate ball. Now we're even.

Over the years, the relationship between my sister and me has improved. We became closer, trusted each other more, and even vowed never to separate. But I didn't keep my promise; I moved to another city. And twelve-year-old Tanya was left alone again.

Her letters to me were full of despair, but I did not notice, did not want to notice.

I didn't care about my sister, I started a new life with my own metamorphoses and searches. Meanwhile, Tanya got into bad company and started smoking...

To be continued