Get your rags out of here—this is junk! We need to clear the room for Lenka!” the mother-in-law demanded, and the husband nodded. But they weren’t expecting the answer they were about to get.
Anna was working on lace cuffs. A thin needle obediently dove through the weave of threads, leaving behind a barely visible stitch. The work required total concentration: the light from a desk lamp fell across her hands and the expensive ivory-colored fabric, while a scatter of pearly buttons lay in a porcelain cup.
The studio door opened without a knock. On the threshold stood her mother-in-law, Valentina Borisovna. She had just been on the phone with Lena, her daughter, and her face was tense, her lips pressed into a hard line.
Her gaze swept the room with undisguised irritation—over the racks of finished dresses, the rolls of fabric neatly lined up against the wall, the boxes of notions stacked on the shelves. To Anna, it was order. To her mother-in-law, it was clutter choking up space.
“Look at this—this whole room is piled up!” she said. “Your rags are junk, and Lenka has nowhere to live!”
Anna flinched, and the needle stabbed her finger painfully. She lifted her head. In the doorway, behind his mother, stood Ilya. He looked tired—he always looked that way whenever he found himself caught between Anna and his mother.
“Mom’s right, Anya,” he said, avoiding her eyes. He tried to sound soothing, which made the words feel even more treacherous. “This is too much. Lena’s in real trouble—the landlord gave her until the end of the month. We need to clear the room for my sister. You can see it yourself—we’re stuck. This is just a hobby, but Lena has an actual problem.”
Anna looked at them in silence. She was exhausted by these conversations, the reproaches, the constant, humiliating belittling of what she poured her soul, time, and strength into. Today’s ultimatum was simply the last straw.
She set the lace cuffs aside, carefully pinched them between two fingers, and placed them in a special cardboard box lined with thin tissue paper. She closed the lid. The ritual helped her steady herself, smother the flare of anger. Arguing was pointless—they never heard her; they only saw what they wanted to see.
“Alright,” she said calmly.
Her obedience startled them. Ilya even lifted his eyes to her.
“You’re right,” she continued in an indifferent voice. “Lena’s problem needs to be solved—once and for all. Let’s have a yard sale this Saturday. We’ll sell all my ‘rags,’ all this junk, and give Lena every ruble we make.”
She looked them straight in the eyes—first her husband, then her mother-in-law.
“I won’t even take part, so I don’t get in your way. You organize everything yourselves. Set the prices.”
Ilya and Valentina Borisovna exchanged a stunned glance. They had expected tears, a scene—anything but a cold, practical proposal. Then their faces lit up with barely concealed delight: not only would they get the room, they’d also have the chance to prove, publicly, how worthless her “little pastime” was—how none of those fabrics and threads were worth a penny, and how she had finally admitted they were right.
That evening Ilya tried to act normal—talked about work, asked how her day had been. But his interest was fake. Anna answered in short phrases, not looking at him. Her detached politeness frightened him far more than an open argument would have.
Later, when they were in bed, he couldn’t hold it in.
“Anya, you have to understand—it’s my sister,” he whispered in the dark. “I can’t just watch her end up on the street. And Mom isn’t trying to be cruel—she’s just worried about Lena.”
“I understand everything, Ilya. We agreed. The problem will be solved. Saturday morning you take the вещи for the sale. Everything on the racks—I won’t touch. Good night.”
She turned toward the wall, making it clear the conversation was over. He lay there staring at the ceiling, with the unpleasant feeling that he’d missed something—failed to understand something important in her words.
Saturday morning began with an enthusiasm Anna hadn’t seen in her mother-in-law in years. At exactly ten, Valentina Borisovna and Ilya arrived at the studio armed with large checkered bags.
“Well then, let’s get to it,” her mother-in-law said briskly, rolling up her sleeves. “We need to haul all this junk out before lunch.”
They began ripping garments off hangers, crushing the finest silk, snagging delicate lace with clasps. To them, it was all just rags.
“Alright, we need to price everything right away, so we don’t mess around later,” Valentina Borisovna ordered.
She picked up a light summer dress made of Indian cotton with intricate hand embroidery along the hem—Anna had spent almost a week on that embroidery alone.
“What is this, calico?” her mother-in-law sneered, pinching the fabric. “So thin—wear it once and throw it out. Five hundred rubles. No one will pay more for this. Ilya, write it down!”
Obediently, Ilya tore off a piece of paper tape, scratched “500 ₽” onto it, and slapped it onto the fabric.
Next came a jacket in expensive Scottish tweed: complex tailoring, a perfect lining of natural silk, vintage buttons.
“It’s kind of heavy,” Ilya declared, weighing it in his hand. “And the color’s gloomy. Seven hundred—maybe some old lady will take it to wear at the dacha.”
Then Valentina Borisovna grabbed an evening dress made of deep navy velvet. The fabric shimmered with every movement, creating a sense of depth.
“Velvet? Well, that’s something,” she said condescendingly. “Dressy. Fine—put a thousand. The fabric seems decent, though it shines kind of cheap. Some poor girl could wear it to a prom.”
They wrote price tags on crooked scraps of paper and pinned them to dresses with office clips or plain safety pins, sometimes piercing the delicate fabric itself.
Anna watched the performance from the kitchen, silently sipping coffee and staring out the window.
When they carried out the last batch, Anna picked up her phone. She opened her private chat for regular clients—only about thirty women, but they weren’t just customers. They were women who valued her work, understood its worth, and could afford it: the wife of a famous lawyer, the owner of a chain of beauty salons, a popular blogger, a well-known architect.
She typed a short message:
“Hi, girls! Force majeure. Tomorrow from 12:00 I’m doing a total clearance sale of ready-to-wear pieces, right in my courtyard. You know the address. The prices will surprise you. First come, first served… :)”
Replies poured in almost instantly.
“Anya, what happened? Are you okay?” wrote the salon owner.
“A sale? Is this a prank? Your pieces belong in a boutique, not a yard!” the blogger replied.
“Prices will surprise us? Are you serious? I’m already driving over—I’ll sleep in my car by your building!” the lawyer’s wife joked.
They were worried and intrigued, not understanding what was going on. Anna didn’t explain. She sent one more message:
“Everything’s fine. Just come if you want an extremely good deal—and yes, cash is welcome.”
She put the phone down. The hook was set. She couldn’t be 100% sure they’d show up, but she knew her clients. They valued not only her clothing, but exclusivity. And a designer who never discounts announcing a total clearance sale—that was exclusivity at its highest.
At exactly noon, Ilya and Valentina Borisovna stood behind their improvised counter. Two folding tables were piled with clothes, and a flimsy rack stood nearby. The courtyard was quiet, almost empty. They had plastic bags ready and a little jar of coins for change, expecting a rush of pensioner neighbors.
The first to approach was Tamara Pavlovna from the third floor. She fingered the cotton dress tagged “500 rubles,” examined the seams with a critical squint, then clicked her tongue.
“Too expensive for secondhand,” she pronounced and walked off toward the grocery store without even saying goodbye.
Ilya looked at his mother. Disappointment flickered across her face.
“I told you no one needs this,” he said smugly. “We’ll stand here for an hour for appearances, then we’ll start clearing the room.”
They exchanged self-satisfied smiles.
At that moment, a gleaming black SUV rolled up to their entrance. Ilya and his mother watched, surprised—assuming someone had the wrong address. The door opened, and out stepped an elegant woman in a light trench coat and expensive sunglasses. With the focused look of a hunter, she headed straight for their tables.
She removed her glasses. It was Irina Volskaya, owner of the most famous beauty-salon chain in the city. Valentina Borisovna recognized her from photos in local magazines.
Irina didn’t even glance at the “sellers.” With a professional eye she scanned the laid-out pieces. Her gaze caught on a linen dress with complex tailoring and embroidery. A pathetic “1000 rubles” tag hung from its sleeve.
“Girls—that’s the one from the summer capsule!” she exclaimed, speaking not to Ilya and his mother but as if to invisible friends. “I’ve been hunting it for three months!”
Two more cars—each more expensive than the last—pulled up. Several more women got out and rushed to the table.
“Ira, hi! You too?” said one—the lawyer’s wife. “Oh my God, it’s here! I’ll give five thousand!” she shouted, pointing to the linen dress in Irina’s hands.
“Seven! Seven—I’m taking it!” interrupted a third woman, a famous blogger. “I need it for shoots!”
Before the frozen, stone-faced Ilya and Valentina Borisovna, a spontaneous auction erupted. They watched these high-status, confident women—people they were used to seeing on screens and glossy pages—snatch their “rags” from each other, arguing and driving the price up tenfold, twentyfold.
The blogger grabbed the “gloomy” tweed jacket.
“This is classic! Pure Chanel! And it’s only seven hundred rubles? Are you serious? Ten thousand—and it’s mine!”
Trying to regain control, Valentina Borisovna stepped forward.
“Ladies, please, quieter—this isn’t a marketplace…”
No one listened. She caught a fragment of conversation between two women tugging the velvet dress in opposite directions.
“Can you imagine this luck? It’s AnnaV! Her custom schedule is booked out six months, and here—ready-to-wear pieces, practically for free! I ordered from her last year—my husband is still obsessed.”
AnnaV. It sounded like a foreign word—an identity they’d never heard, a name they’d never known. In slow motion, Valentina Borisovna lifted her head and looked up at the second-floor kitchen window. She couldn’t see Anna, but she knew she was there, watching. And in that moment, it began to sink in.
An hour later Anna came downstairs. The courtyard still buzzed like a hive of overheated buyers counting their “trophies.” In Anna’s hands was a large, beautiful shoebox. She walked up to the bench where her husband and mother-in-law sat, stunned and lost, and silently set the box beside them. It was already half full—neat stacks of cash.
Ilya stared at the money, then at his wife.
By evening everything was sold. Empty tables and the lonely rack stood in the middle of the courtyard. Ilya and Valentina Borisovna sat in the kitchen. In front of them lay the money—tidy bundles banded with rubber. They counted it in silence for the third time, hands trembling slightly. The sum was unreal. It was more than enough—not just for a deposit, but for a full year of rent on a good one-room apartment for Lena.
The next day, Sunday, Valentina Borisovna timidly knocked on the studio door. She stepped in, shifting from foot to foot, and stood in silence for a long time, staring at the empty racks. Then, without meeting Anna’s eyes, she said softly:
“Anya… could you… sew me a dress? For an anniversary. My sister’s is soon. Something simple… I’ll pay.”
That simple “I’ll pay,” forced out with difficulty, was her apology and her recognition of Anna’s work—the only kind she understood now.
“Of course, Valentina Borisovna,” Anna answered just as quietly. “Tomorrow we’ll take your measurements.”
That evening Ilya came home after sitting for a long time in his car outside an electronics store. He typed two words into his phone’s search bar: “AnnaV designer.” He found a website, photos of professional models wearing his wife’s dresses, prices in euros, links to blogs. He saw an entire world—successful and beautiful—existing parallel to him, inside his own apartment, and he had known nothing about it.
Without a word he walked into the quiet, emptied studio and placed a large, heavy box on the table. Anna opened it. Nestled in foam was a brand-new, sparkling, professional sewing machine—the one she’d dreamed of for ages, but never dared to buy because it was “too expensive for a hobby.”
He didn’t say anything. He just looked at her—guilty, and at the same time immeasurably awed.
