Leave me alone!

- She's out of control! I can't deal with her! Maybe she'll at least listen to you," Mom complained over the long-distance phone.

- And this one too! - she means my father. - He's completely crazy with jealousy. When he is sober - a man like a man, but when he drinks - a beast. He fights, destroys everything. But why am I telling you this? You've seen it all yourself.

I sympathize with Mom: yes, it's hard for you with them. Tanya is no angel, and Dad, to be honest, is no gift either, especially when he's drunk. But what can I do?

- Talk to him, eh? - Mom asks.

My father gets on the phone and says in a deliberately cheerful voice that everything is fine at home and there is nothing to worry about. Don't listen to your mother. You know she just wants to complain.

- I know, of course. But try not to drink, Dad, okay? - I mumble more to clear my conscience, because these wishes of mine for my father - an empty sound.

- All right, all right, I won't, - my father replies in shorthand. - Do you want to talk to Tanya?

Tanya picks up the phone and for a long time pours out her soul in a half-whisper - that everything is bad at home, that our mother yells at her all the time, makes her study and do housework - cleaning, laundry - and that our father only knows that he's cheating on mom, that yesterday he didn't even spend the night at home. And all these things.

- You're lucky you're not at home! - Tanya sighs enviously. - I'm going crazy here with them. I'm sick of this fighting, if only they would divorce sooner.

- Yes, I understand you, - I agree. - But don't get upset, just wait.

- Uh-huh," Tanya replies dejectedly. - Come back soon! At least I'll have someone to talk to.

"God, I'm so sick of all of you! - I think to myself and hang up. - Fuck you all, leave me alone!"

Parents and kids

Of course, things were not always so bad in our family. There were joyful, even happy days when Mom and Dad got along peacefully.

How I loved them in those moments! But family happiness seemed too fragile, too fleeting, like the calm before the storm - everything seems fine and you want to believe that it will always be so, but suddenly the apparent well-being collapses before your eyes like a house of cards - once and nothing remains. And you feel the fear and anxiety again.

Maybe I have the wrong parents? - I thought sometimes. Maybe they lived and raised my sister and me the wrong way? And now I realize: they lived and raised the best way they could.

They just didn't know how to do it differently. They didn't have a worthy example and obviously didn't want to understand what was wrong with them. So should I blame them?

Willingly or unwillingly, parents pass on to their children what they have, both their best and their worst qualities, and how the children dispose of this "inheritance" is up to them, the children.

- Who do you take after? - Tanya and I have heard this phrase used more than once by different people.

And it was unclear whether they meant to praise us or, on the contrary, to scold us.

- Stubborn, like Father! - Mom would snort when she was angry with my sister and me.

But as soon as there was a reason for parental pride, my mother would smile:

- We have good girls, they take after me!

In moments of anger, Dad would yell that we were as stupid as our mother. But if we took Dad's side on an issue, his opinion of us changed completely.

- Well done! - He would be happy.

So you have to wonder who Tanya and I took after.

Wolves

My mother was born in the village of Ivanovo.

When my grandmother became pregnant with her youngest daughter, she was already old by village standards - 33 years old. But her husband, my grandfather, really wanted a son, so she decided to keep the pregnancy.

But God sent them another girl - Angelina.

Mama grew up as a weak and sickly child. She often caught colds, spent long periods in the hospital - sometimes with angina, sometimes with rheumatism. Once she even missed the school year.

She was five months old when my grandfather came to the city hospital in a horse-drawn sleigh to take her and my grandmother home.

It was winter, minus thirty degrees Celsius. It got dark early, and it was a long way to Ivanovo. Besides, my grandfather came to the hospital drunk, because he had already celebrated his daughter's recovery somewhere with his friends.

My grandmother wrapped my mother in a warm blanket, pressed her to her chest, and sat in the sleigh, wrapped in a large sheepskin coat. They set off. Twilight, the creaking of the runners, the lulling rocking of the baby in her arms - my grandmother did not notice how she dozed off and fell out of the sleigh somewhere between the town and the village. Grandfather discovered the loss only at home. And only when Matrena, my great-grandmother, came out with a lantern and, seeing the empty sleigh, asked:

- Slava, where are Luda and Angelina? Did they stay at the hospital?

All the alcohol was gone from Grandpa's head in a second. He turned his horse around and ran back at full speed.

At the same time, Grandmother, exhausted and buried waist-deep in snow, was walking along the sledding trail with a tiny child in her arms.

Green lights flashed behind her. Many. Many of them. They were getting closer.

There was a terrible howling. Wolves! Screaming? It's no use. It's a long way to the village, no one will hear. Grandmother was about to say goodbye to her life, but luckily a late hunter on skis passed by. Noticing the lonely figure, he stopped, took the squeaking bundle from my grandmother and went forward. Grandmother followed her rescuer. And here came grandfather on a horse-drawn sleigh.

The green lights disappeared into the darkness.

The smartest girl

In their youth, my grandfather and grandmother studied at the same agricultural college.

A handsome young man with black eyebrows and multicolored eyes - one brown, the other blue - was considered the first handsome man in the class. Many girls wanted to be friends with him, but my grandfather seemed to notice no one but Luda.

Luda was a little older than Slava and not very pretty. She was thin, dark-haired and had freckles on her nose. History is silent about what attracted the young man, who was spoiled by the attention of girls, to her, but evil tongues said that Luda had bewitched Slava.

But my grandmother assured me that it had nothing to do with women's charms, and my grandfather chose her because she was the best student and the leader of the group. She may not have been pretty, but she was smart!

In the third year, 1943, my grandfather was drafted into World War II. My grandmother stayed on the home front.

Then came the war with the Japanese. Slava served as a border guard in the Far East, where he was recruited by the KGB. He didn't come home for a long time, but when he did, he got a job in a military factory in Glazov and was well respected by his superiors until he made a mistake.

The case was as follows: that night he was drunk on his way home from a weekend, and in order to get home quickly, he picked up a hitchhiker.

The driver refused to take the drunk hitchhiker.

"What?" - The grandfather pulled his gun from his holster and threatened to shoot him in the head.

The driver got scared and put the troublemaker in the car, but then he reported him to the KGB, and my grandfather was fired from the factory.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

In 1950, after graduating from college, my grandfather went to Ivanovo, where his beloved Luda Derendyaeva worked as an agronomist. He became the head of the collective farm.

The young married.

But when there was a vacancy for a saleswoman in the local shop, my grandmother changed her profession. She had a commercial mind along with cunning and resourcefulness. She knew how to run a business so that there was no weak spot anywhere. She bragged:

- No one can accuse me of anything! I can deceive anyone!

Pebbles in a bag

One day, little Angelina walked into her mother's shop.

On the counter she saw a bag of her favorite chocolate candy, "Bear in the North. I'll have one, she thought, it won't cost mom anything. She ate one, then another, then another.

Before she knew it, the bag was empty, just the wrappers. She was scared.

But she was even more afraid to tell her mother. So she ran outside, picked up pebbles from the ground, wrapped them in paper, and put the bag back in the counter.

Her mother, who didn't even suspect the switch, sold the candy.

In the evening, angry customers came to her shop. Why are you selling pebbles instead of candy?

Angelina was beaten at home with a belt. It's one thing to cheat the auditors, my grandmother taught her. - It's another to cheat the customers. You have to be smarter!

Stash

When my mother was six years old, she committed another terrible crime - she stole fifty kopecks from the shop till.

Then she stole a ruble. Then another. And another.

She did it because she really wanted a brand-new bicycle for her birthday.

She had admitted that every time she stole the coins, she trembled with fear all day. Not for herself, but for her mother. In the evening, she would ask her carefully:

- Mom, won't they put you in jail?

She was surprised:

- For what?

- For shortage in the till.

My grandmother laughed:

- Daughter, what shortage? I've never had any!

But according to my mother's memory, by that time she had already stolen fifteen rubles from the cash register. That was a lot of money back then!

Of course, she did not steal it all at once, but how could such a sum go unnoticed?

Anyway, my mother was beyond my grandmother's suspicions.

But the stolen wealth didn't help her. The piggy bank - a rusty coffee can - had been found by my grandfather in his garage. He was delighted: "Oh, someone's stash!" And he drank all the money with his friends.

So my mom got a bicycle only in the eighth grade.

Laika and the auditor

In Ivanovo in the family of my grandfather and grandmother lived a mongrel named Laika.

It was a very clever and intelligent dog, which guarded the yard. All day long she would lie under the porch as if she were sleeping - you couldn't see or hear her.

In fact, Laika did not sleep, but she saw, heard and remembered everything perfectly.

When a stranger entered the yard, the dog didn't move, but she wouldn't let the stranger go unnoticed - she simply wouldn't let him out of the gate until the owners came.

One day an auditor from the district consumer association came to the shop.

After the inspection, the grandmother invited the guest into the house for a cup of tea.

The auditor did not even notice the dog lying under the porch.

But Laika, as it turned out later, noticed him immediately. And when he came downstairs in the evening, she jumped out of her hiding place and clung to the auditor's pants leg with her teeth. She tore his pants to shreds! The poor guy ran away home in his underwear.

I think Grandma arranged it on purpose!

Let's smoke

Mom and her friend decided to smoke in secret.

Angelina had seen her father smoke many times - he took a cigarette, put it in his mouth and lit it.

The girls got a cigarette, hid in the backyard, put the cigarettes in their mouths and lit them. The smoke made their mouths bitter. Tears streamed from their eyes. They stood there spitting and coughing. It turned out they'd lit it with the wrong end!

From then on, my mother never touched cigarettes again, joking that she'd had more than enough smoke as a child.

Only once, when I was about six years old, did my father persuade my mother to take a puff of a cigarette.

I was so scared for her! I had never seen a woman smoke, and here was my mother! What if she got sick and died? I cried: Mom, please don't smoke!

And my mother obeyed and threw the cigarette away.

At the bathhouse

After living in the city, my grandfather never gave up hope of returning there.

And his dream came true. He became the head of the collective farm in Shtanigurt and got a wooden house in the suburbs, where he moved with my mother's older sisters.

My mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother stayed in the village to wait for my grandfather to settle in the new place, organize their daily lives, and then take them there.

The women worked day and night, and there was no one in the village to look after my mother, a six-year-old tomboy in a skirt.

One day, Angelina wanted some boiled potatoes.

She crawled into the cellar, gathered a dozen potatoes in her hem, put them in a pot, and poured water over them. But she didn't know how to boil them. She thought, "If I start to heat the stove in the house, the neighbors will see me, scold me, and maybe tell my mother.

So she decided to go to the bathhouse, away from prying eyes.

She found an iron tripod, put wood under it, hung a pot on it, and built a fire on the wooden floorboards.

But my mother must have known something, because before she struck a match, she brought a bucket of water from the well to the bathhouse in case of fire.

Fortunately, she didn't burn the bathhouse, but she did burn a hole in the wooden floor.

So the potatoes didn't boil.

Black Pepper Tea

After this incident, Mom got a babysitter, a small, thin old woman from the village.

The old woman liked to drink tea with ground black pepper. She poured it generously into the cup instead of sugar. It was a quirk of hers.

Looking at the nanny, Angelina also drank tea with black pepper, so when she moved to the city, she refused to drink unpeppered tea. She found it unpalatable.

And it should be noted that black pepper was in short supply in the Soviet Union in those years. And if the family could get it easily in the village, where the grandmother was a shopkeeper, there was no way to get it in Glazov.

It was difficult, but my mother was weaned from her nanny's habit.

Red-feathered Ducks

The suburb where my grandfather and grandmother lived was called southern settlement, or in common parlance, the Airfield. There they planted a vegetable garden with potatoes and had domestic ducks for food.

One day a neighbor's brood joined their flock of ducks.

My mother was ten years old at the time, and with her keen eye, she immediately noticed that there were more ducks in the yard. She yelled at my grandmother to chase the aliens away before the birds got mixed up. But my grandmother gave her a warning look and put her finger to her lips and said, "Quiet, don't make any noise!

What's wrong, Mom thought? Why is Grandma acting so strangely?

And then she had a hunch. Mom even laughed - how could she not have thought of it before, because the feathers of the neighbor's ducks are painted red - you can't mix them up!

But Grandma Luda, ignoring Mom, ran off the porch and, looking around furtively, began to pluck the marked feathers.

A few minutes, and now you cannot tell where your own bird is and where a stranger's is.

- All right! - Grandma hummed, stood up and shook the dust from her knees. - Now no one can prove that these are not our ducks, but the neighbor's. And that there are more of them, how should I know, maybe it's a wild flock.

Mom is a little ashamed of Grandma, it turns out they are thieves? She's also afraid that the neighbors will report them to the police. She hopes the ducks will return to their owners by themselves in the evening.

A devil? A Papuan!

When the first black-and-white television came into the house, my mother couldn't understand it: How can singers and actors fit into such a small box? Where do they hide their feet?

She also believed that the man on the TV could see her as well as she could see him, and when she turned on the TV, she tried to dress up.

And before going to bed, she would run away to change behind a screen - she was shy.

When my mother was seventeen, she went on a field trip to Volgograd with her school class. She brought back a souvenir - a Papuan with pearls around its neck - and put it on a bookshelf in her room.

My grandmother and great-grandmother didn't like the toy at first sight.

- You brought a devil into the house! - Great-grandmother Matrena was outraged. - Yuck!

And as soon as my mother went to school, the relatives burned the Papuan in the oven.

When my mother found out, she cried all night - how dare they! She was so offended that she didn't speak to her family for a week. The relatives laughed at her: "Silly girl, why are you crying? You're a big girl now, right?

But my mother remembered that resentment all her life and could never forgive them for what they had done to her Papuan.

But that didn't stop her from throwing the bag of my children's toys in the garbage.

When I discovered this, my mother just shrugged: "What's the problem? You are not a child to play with dolls anymore, get over it...

Matrena's house

In Ivanovo, my great-grandmother Matrena brewed moonshine in the bathhouse, secretly from everyone.

Although moonshine was considered the main currency in the village, not everyone dared to make it. At any moment the district police could come to the house and impose a fine.

Great-grandmother was sure that the neighbors did not suspect her.

She did not drink at all, but five-year-old Angelina would sneak into the bathhouse to take a sample. She liked the taste and smell of the bitter "mixture.

"Again Angelina ran to the bathhouse with a spoon, it means that Matrena began to brew moonshine," - laughed at Matrena sharp-eyed villagers.

And although her granddaughter's addiction to alcohol worried my great-grandmother very much: "It's not good," she did not give up moonshining, because it was money, the family income.

A keen sense of smell

Unlike my great-grandmother, my grandmother Luda and my grandfather Slava liked to drink.

But if my grandmother knew how much to drink because she ran the shop and was responsible for the money, my grandfather, who lived under the thumb of two women, did not. And how could he resist when his mother-in-law made moonshine herself!

Great-grandmother carefully hid the homemade alcoholic beverage - in the attic, behind a chest, in the cellar - for fear that grandfather would find it and use it for his own pleasure.

But strangely enough, Grandpa always found the bottle, no matter where it was hidden.

- Does he have a sense of smell like a dog?" grumbled Matrena, hiding the moonshine in a box of potatoes.

But even in that hidden place, Grandpa found the bottle.

Great-grandmother couldn't stand it:

- Tell me how you do it!

It turned out that the resourceful son-in-law used to smear valerian on all the corks in the house. Then he would let the cat out to look for it. And the cat always led the owner to the corked bottle.

The horse ran free

I seldom saw my grandfather drunk.

I remembered the stern, somewhat severe expression on his face. Grandpa spoke little, but even without words it was clear how much he loved me and my mother. Mom loved Grandpa too.

She had a difficult relationship with my grandmother, so Grandpa was her first advocate and protector - a light in her life.

During holiday celebrations, Grandpa would always sing a song: "When I die, I will be buried as if I never lived," after which he would burst into bitter, drunken tears.

But when he was in a good mood, he would sing: "Oh, in the meadow, in the wide field, in the familiar herd, a horse was running free!" That song is still one of my favorites.

And strangely enough, my husband, although he doesn't drink, also loves that song about the horse...

To be continued