“Why have you let my country house fall into such a terrible state?” Valentina Yegorovna’s voice thundered across the garden beds as though we had not spent five years sacrificing our weekends, money, and aching backs there, but had secretly gambled away her ancestral estate together with all the servants.
Her accusing finger, crowned with a fresh pearlescent manicure, sliced angrily through the air toward the waist-high weeds.
I froze beside the fence, holding an empty plastic water container.
Within seconds, everything became perfectly clear. This was not a spontaneous outburst. My mother-in-law had prepared for the occasion.
She was wearing an expensive silk scarf that normally came out of her wardrobe only for public executions.
And beside the neighboring fence, leaning comfortably against the wire mesh, stood Zinaida, already settled into the best seat in the house.
Valentina Yegorovna had brought an audience.
She was not interested in getting the garden weeded. She wanted to stage a public punishment for her lazy, disobedient laborers.
It had all begun five years earlier with an innocent, almost pleading request.
“Children, could you drive over and take a quick look at the little house after winter?”
That “quick look” soon transformed into four working hands, two permanently damaged backs, and a financial pit with no visible bottom.
Our weekends at the country house had long resembled some endless and pointless medieval battle. The indestructible hogweed played the role of the invading army, while my husband and I sank into mud beneath piles of gardening equipment.
We bought seedlings, hauled boards for the porch, and repaired the collapsed floor in the shed.
I transported water in heavy containers because the pump had broken sometime in the early 2000s, when the dollar cost thirty rubles, and the “owner” refused to pay for a replacement.
Valentina Yegorovna herself appeared only twice each season.
She came in spring to issue instructions, and again at the end of summer to collect the largest tomatoes in plastic bags while telling the neighbors how exhausting farming was for a woman nearing eighty.
Family favors are like comfortable house slippers. At first, someone tries them on politely. Then, before long, they start complaining that the slippers refuse to walk to the store and buy bread by themselves.
That summer, my body finally went on strike.
My back seized so badly that for an entire week I moved around the apartment at the speed of a wounded snail.
Sergey took extra shifts to pay for my massage treatment and cover the gap in our budget.
During all three summer months, his mother did not call once to ask whether we were alive.
She never wondered why her free gardening and harvest delivery service had suddenly disappeared.
But in September, she arrived for a ceremonial inspection of her property.
“Just look at this!” she cried dramatically, throwing her hands toward the sky and speaking more to Zinaida than to us. “The gate is peeling! The currant bushes are drying out! I counted on my family. I thought helping their mother would bring them joy. Instead, they have become unbearably lazy! They have neglected my property!”
The so-called young couple standing before her had a combined age of almost one hundred.
Sergey stood beside the crooked porch with a bag of charcoal in his hands. We had brought it because, for the first time that year, we hoped to do nothing more demanding than grill a few sausages.
He was breathing heavily, his jaw clenched.
“Here is what is going to happen, Natalia,” my mother-in-law announced, pausing theatrically before delivering her verdict. “You will come at the beginning of May. The house must be cleaned after winter. The veranda needs repainting, and you will buy the paint yourselves. Green paint. You will plant twice as many potatoes because I promised Zina a sack. And in autumn, naturally, you will gather the apples and bring them to me. I am the owner, after all. I am the one who keeps this place in proper condition.”
“Zina, you are my witness,” Valentina Yegorovna added solemnly. “They will come in spring without arguing. They will clean the house, plant the potatoes, and deliver the harvest in autumn. We are family.”
Zinaida nodded importantly, as though she had just notarized a legal contract through the fence.
Then she sighed with great sympathy, using her entire posture to condemn the ungrateful younger generation.
I looked at Valentina Yegorovna.
For once, I felt no embarrassment. I had no desire to explain my injured back or my husband’s exhaustion.
There was only cold, complete clarity.
Other people’s arrogance is like a soap bubble. It keeps growing until it finally touches the sharp edge of someone else’s “no.”
“You are absolutely right, Valentina Yegorovna,” I said in a calm, emotionless voice. “The country house belongs to you. You are the owner.”
Then I turned around, placed the water container beside the porch, walked steadily toward the shed, opened the creaking door, and began an organized evacuation.
The first item to emerge was my brand-new reinforced garden hose, which had cost an absurd amount of money.
Next came an expensive Finnish pruning tool.
Then I carried out the folding camping table, a plastic storage unit filled with my seeds, a package of heavy-duty gloves, a box of preserving jars, and the portable gas stove I had purchased specifically for preparing vegetables there.
I carried everything to our car and arranged it neatly inside the open trunk.
My actions resembled the retreat of a disciplined army. We were leaving permanently, taking the bridges, supplies, and weapons with us, while abandoning the enemy to the ruined battlefield.
“What are you doing?” Valentina Yegorovna shrieked.
Her commanding dignity vanished instantly, replaced by the panic of a woman arguing in a marketplace.
“Where are you taking that stove? It was kept here at the country house!”
“Being kept here does not make it yours,” I replied casually, placing the pruning tool carefully on top of the hose. “We bought these things with our own money for our own convenience.”
Sergey had remained silent throughout the entire exchange.
He looked at his mother, at the neighbor stretching her neck over the fence, and then at me.
After a moment, he placed the bag of charcoal on the porch step, walked firmly toward the shed wall, removed his powerful gasoline trimmer from its hooks, wound up the thick orange extension cable, and carried both toward the car.
The shed emptied with frightening speed, losing the last traces of civilization.
“Sergey!” his mother wailed, instinctively pressing one hand to the left side of her chest, although she had never carried blood pressure medication in her life. “Where are you going? Your wife has lost her mind! She is stealing property, and you are helping her! Are you really going against your own mother?”
Sergey placed the trimmer carefully across the back seat, brushed his hands together, and turned to face her.
His voice was quiet, which made every word sound even heavier as it settled into the cool autumn air.
“Mom, if you needed help, you should have asked us politely whether we were able to come. But if you need silent servants so you can impress the neighbors, find them somewhere else. We will not be coming here anymore.”
Behind the fence, Zinaida slowly removed her elbows from the wire mesh.
She looked like someone who had suddenly discovered that her front-row ticket was not free after all. She froze with another sunflower seed halfway to her mouth.
I closed the trunk.
The metallic click rang through the heavy silence like the strike of a judge’s gavel.
Then I walked directly toward my mother-in-law, met her eyes, and spoke with a faint, almost sympathetic smile.
“You said this country house is yours. From now on, that is exactly what it will be. Completely and unquestionably yours. Your weeds, your unpainted gate, and your personal schedule for May.”
“You wanted to be the owner, so be the owner. But you will have to manage without free servants and without a family discount.”
I paused briefly, watching Valentina Yegorovna’s face turn crimson beneath her elegant silk scarf.
Then I added with icy politeness:
“If you need the complete package next spring—mowing, water delivery, seedlings, porch repairs, potatoes, preserving, and harvest transportation—prepare to pay for it. The family discount ended the moment you decided to humiliate us in public.”
We got into the car and drove away without pulling a single weed.
The ending of the story was predictable, but deeply satisfying.
When spring arrived and it was time to plant potatoes, Valentina Yegorovna had to hire workers through an advertisement.
Several strong men came to inspect the property and quickly gave her their price.
They calculated the cost of clearing the weeds, painting the veranda green, cleaning the house, and digging the soil.
When they presented the final amount, the “owner” experienced her first genuine pain in the chest.
Only then did she understand.
For the first time, she calculated exactly how much the so-called free family assistance had truly been worth.
For years, she had treated our time, strength, fuel, tools, and money as something automatically owed to her. Worse still, she had publicly belittled the very people who provided it.
Since that day, Valentina Yegorovna has never again asked why we abandoned her country house.
It turned out that playing the grand landowner was easy only while the laborers worked for free.
Once every weed came with a price tag, even her loudest declaration of “This is my property!” became considerably quieter.
