My husband wanted his mother to “put me in my place.” So I chose my own place…
My dear husband, little Yura, solemnly announced that his darling mother was coming to live with us in order to “put me in my place.” You know, I was not upset in the slightest. In fact, I was sincerely delighted. I had chosen my place long ago: in a comfortable chaise lounge on the glassed-in balcony of my own four-room apartment, which I had bought before I ever met that wonder of nature.
Yura was generally a man of broad soul and narrow outlook. In our marriage, he held the position of “unrecognized genius searching for himself,” which in practice meant lying on the sofa every day with his phone in his hands. I, meanwhile, worked as chief accountant at a large company and observed his searches with the same detached curiosity with which an entomologist studies a bustling dung beetle.
And then the fateful day arrived. Into the hallway, huffing and puffing, rolled Darya Petrovna. My mother-in-law had not come empty-handed, but with three enormous duffel bags and the face of a Roman patrician who had arrived to inspect a barbarian province.
“Hello, Tatyana!” she boomed, dropping her bags onto my light parquet floor. “I have come to save the family. Our Yura has wasted away on your store-bought dumplings. From now on, patriarchal order and decency will reign in this house! A woman must know her place!”
I leaned against the doorframe, folded my arms across my chest, and smiled sweetly.
“Welcome, Darya Petrovna,” I sang. “Only, my dear, patriarchal order is rather expensive these days. I hope you have arrived with your dowry?”
Yura, standing behind his mother, puffed up like a turkey before a thunderstorm.
“Tanya!” he declared theatrically. “How dare you speak to my mother like that? A woman must listen to the wisdom of her elders with lowered eyes! And in general, a wife is obliged to wash her husband’s feet and drink the water. That is what our ancestors commanded!”
I shifted my gaze to my husband, without losing the blessed expression on my face for even a second.
“Yura, my bright little falcon,” I said evenly. “Tradition really did prescribe washing feet in a wooden basin, but we have a shower cabin with hydromassage. Are you and your dear mother suggesting I drink from the drain, or will you pour it for me straight from the siphon?”
Yura was so outraged that he flung his arm so sharply he knocked a vase of dried flowers off the cabinet. The vase crashed to the floor, showering his fashionable suede shoes with dusty debris. He froze with his mouth open and eyes bulging, like a carp that had suddenly been asked to recite Hamlet’s monologue.
Darya Petrovna did not give up. The next day, the invasion began. When I came home from work, I discovered that my kitchen — my holy of holies — had been raided. My collectible pu-erh tea had been thrown out, and in its place stood a three-liter jar of some cloudy hay.
“What kind of installation is this?” I asked, lifting the jar with two fingers.
“It is a healing herbal blend for nerves!” my mother-in-law proudly announced. “And I sent your dried little bugs down the garbage chute.”
She planted her hands on her hips, making it clear with her entire appearance that power had changed hands.
“Darya Petrovna,” I sighed heavily, sitting down at the table. “Those ‘dried little bugs,’ as you so elegantly put it, cost two thousand rubles per hundred grams. I may be an ignorant woman, of course, but I had not planned on supporting the two of you with medicinal hay.”
My mother-in-law turned pale, tried to lean on the countertop, missed, and slid her elbow straight into a plate of sliced beets, decorating her snow-white blouse with a crimson stain. She sat there blinking at her stained sleeve like a confused penguin seeing the tropical sun for the first time.
The conflict escalated to its peak by the weekend. They apparently decided that behind-the-scenes battles were not enough and invited Yura’s relatives to my apartment — aunts, uncles, and some third cousin. Evidently, the public coronation of Darya Petrovna and my solemn overthrow had been planned.
By the time the guests arrived, the table was sagging under my mother-in-law’s culinary masterpieces: pale aspic, salad with a finger-thick layer of mayonnaise, and cutlets whose hardness was in no way inferior to granite.
When everyone had taken their seats, Yura stood up, raised a glass of compote, and tapped it with a fork, demanding silence.
“Dear relatives!” he began with the pathos of a Roman tribune. “Today we have gathered here to celebrate the return of traditions to our family! The husband is the head of everything. And therefore, as the head of the household, I have made a decision. Tatyana!” He pointed at me accusingly. “I demand that tomorrow you transfer half of this apartment into my name. It is only fair! A man must feel like the master, and my mother must have guarantees of a peaceful old age!”
The relatives murmured in approval. Darya Petrovna smiled triumphantly, adjusting her hairstyle.
I leisurely took a sip of mineral water from my glass and stood up.
“Yura,” I said, my voice quiet, but dead silence instantly fell over the room. “A fortress is built with one’s own funds; it is not taken by siege through residence registration. The law of our vast motherland states that property acquired before marriage is not subject to division. The only thing of yours in this apartment is your toothbrush. And even that was bought by me on sale at the supermarket.”
Yura turned crimson and tried to slam his fist on the table for intimidation, but missed the tabletop and struck his own knee with full force instead. He howled and started hopping comically on one leg. He bounced around the chair, whining like a baboon stung in its most tender place.
“How dare you!” Darya Petrovna shrieked, jumping up from her chair. “My son is pure gold! We will not tolerate such humiliation! Either you write a deed of gift immediately, or we leave this very minute, and you will stay here alone, cuckooing inside these empty walls!”
That was exactly the ultimatum I had been waiting for.
“As you wish,” I said, smiling radiantly. “I can even call you a premium-class taxi to the train station.”
The relatives gasped. Yura stopped hopping. Darya Petrovna opened her mouth, but could not produce a sound.
“You see, dear guests,” I said, addressing the stunned audience while resting my hands on the table, “there is one immutable rule in psychology and in life: respect is like a bank account. To withdraw something from it, you must first deposit something into it. And you, my dears, came into someone else’s monastery with your own charter and tried to drive a bear out of its den, while being nothing more than fussy hares with delusions of grandeur. You cannot demand the rights of a master when you have only the duties of a dependent.”
Ten minutes later, the scene in the hallway looked like the finale of a tragicomedy. Yura, who had suddenly realized that mold-ripened cheeses, the soft sofa, and unlimited internet had remained in the past, was mournfully clutching a bag containing his game console. Darya Petrovna, red with anger and shame, hissed viciously at her son: “Why, you monster, didn’t you tell me she was such a viper under a log?”
I stood in the doorway, watching them roll their duffel bags out onto the stairwell landing.
The door slammed shut, cutting me off from their dissatisfied muttering. A delightful, ringing silence settled over the apartment. I walked out onto my glassed-in balcony, lowered myself into the comfortable chaise lounge — into my rightful place, the one I had chosen myself — and poured myself a cup of the pu-erh tea that had survived in the cupboard.
Life, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is surprisingly good when you conduct an inventory in your own home on time and get rid of stale merchandise.