— Then go, Glasa. Go to your mom, your friends, to nowhere! — Denis shoved the last bag into the stairwell. — I already changed the lock yesterday while you were whining at the factory.
I’m not giving you the kids until you get treatment. Go, take a walk, “sick one.”
The door closed. Quietly, ordinarily. Denis always knew how to close a door gently, even when everything inside was boiling.
I stood in the Minusinsk stairwell, where someone had carefully left a box of cigarette butts on the windowsill between the second and third floors.
At my feet lay a blue bag, from which Tömka’s pink sneakers and my old hair dryer peeked miserably.
Of course I’m stupid. I spent five years believing that if I stayed quiet and humble, my “diagnosis” would disappear on its own. I’m a kvass technologist; I know everything about fermentation, how sugar turns into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
But I had no idea how my own brain had turned my life into sour sludge, where not a single living bubble remained.
— Mom! — Tömka pressed his forehead to the peephole. — Mom, are you there?
—I’m here, my little one — I stepped to the door. My hand trembled slightly, as it had for the past six months. — Dad is just joking. Go to Alinka, play with the Lego.
I squatted on the cold concrete. In my hand was a canvas bag — real, the one I bought at the fair last year.
Inside were the keys for the lab, two apples, and my passport, which I always carried as if I had anticipated this “ceremony of bodily removal.”
Depression isn’t when you cry. It’s when it doesn’t matter, even if your husband pushes you outside the door.
Denis called this my “spoiled behavior.” Reseda Mukhametovna, my mother-in-law, repeated: “In our time, we gave birth in the fields, and you are just bored, Glafira.”
I looked at my hand. Dry, with small wrinkles from constant exposure to chemicals. I had feared this moment for five years. That I would be alone, that I wouldn’t manage, that the children would see me falling apart.
And now — it happened. The stuff on the floor, the new lock, the apartment — silence, which I had tried to fill with my presence for so long.
I wondered, should I kick the door now? Shout? Call the police?
I just took an apple out of the canvas bag. Hard, Minusinsk-scented, cellar and autumn garden aroma. I bit into it. Juice splashed onto my coat.
— Stupid — I said aloud. — God, how stupid this is.
I remembered three years ago when Denis first said, “You’re not yourself.” I had dropped a saucepan and just stood, watching the greasy stains spread across the linoleum.
I couldn’t move. It seemed if I took a step, I would fall into hell. Denis didn’t help then. He just stepped over the puddle and went to watch TV.
“You’re lazy,” he said, and I believed him.
I stood up. The bags could stay. Who needs them? Old jeans, sweaters, microbiology books. I threw the canvas bag over my shoulder.
I descended to the first floor. The stairwell smelled of wet dog and chlorine. An ordinary March day. Minusinsk was preparing for spring — the snow gray, porous, like a failed loaf of bread.
I stepped onto the street. The air was cold, sharp. I breathed deeply — right down to the pain in my lungs.
And suddenly I realized: I hadn’t died. Five years of fear — and here was the result. Outside, without keys, with an apple in my bag. And… I wasn’t afraid.
It felt strange. As if I had carried a sack of grain on my shoulder for a very long time, and it had simply burst. The grain spilled, and I straightened. My back ached, my legs shook, but I no longer felt the burden.
I reached the nearest bench by the playground. The playground was empty, only the swings creaked in the wind — monotonous, rhythmic. I took out my phone.
I didn’t call Denis. Or my mom. My mom would have immediately started lamenting about “a woman’s fate” and “hold on for the kids.”
I called the bank.
— Good afternoon — my voice was surprisingly firm. — Pustovalova Glafira Ippolitovna speaking. I’m a joint debtor on a mortgage.
I would like to request the account division and to withdraw my share. Yes, I understand. No, the other spouse’s consent is not required for notification.
I spoke while watching the pigeons fight over a piece of bread by the trash can. Denis thought I was like the kvass barrel: wherever he turned the tap, I would flow.
But he forgot that kvass is a living organism. If tortured long enough, it can even burst the barrel.
Working at the factory was always a refuge. At the grain storage, during weighing, there was dust, dry malt, and a faint diesel smell from the trucks. Time stopped there.
If you measured the mash’s density, you didn’t have to think about why your husband wasn’t looking at you. You only had to check the Brix and acidity.
A month before the “eviction,” I stood at the scales. Iljics, the old mechanic, came in, wiping his oily hands on a rag.
— So, Ippolitovna, grumpy again? — he sat on the stool. — Denis again “furious uncle”?
— No, Iljics — I tried not to look at him. — I just have a headache. Must be the weather.
— Your soul’s weather has been bad for years, Glasha — he sighed. — You’re like that kvass we ruined last July. Pretty bottle, label in place, but inside the fermentation failed. You overcooked yourself, girl.
I was offended then. Now, sitting on the bench, I realized: he was right. I had been too immersed in this marriage. I had turned into acetic acid, thinking I was loyal to tradition.
My depression didn’t come all at once. It was like mold on bread — first a small spot, which could be cut out, then the whole loaf goes to the trash. At first, I just didn’t want to go out.
Then I couldn’t taste anything. Denis got angry. He thought I was doing it on purpose to get attention.
— Look at yourself! — he shouted when I sat in the bathroom for hours staring at the tiles. — You have kids! You have a job! What more do you want? Completely spoiled?
I couldn’t explain that there was a vacuum inside. Every movement required as much effort as lifting a bridge crane.
Once I went to the doctor. The usual district clinic, where registration starts at seven and the smell of old coats lingers. The doctor, a tired woman with thick lenses, listened to my confused story for a long time.
— This is an illness, dear — she said, writing a prescription. — Like gastritis or a sore throat. Just harder to treat because people still think depression comes from laziness.
I brought the prescription home. Denis tore it into four pieces.
— No chemicals in my house — he said. — You’re just lazy. Go to the gym tomorrow. Or to the summer house, dig in the garden. Everything will disappear immediately.
I didn’t go to the gym. I started taking the medicine secretly. And… nothing happened.
The fear dulled, but didn’t disappear. Deep down, under my ribs, a tiny, cold little creature sat, always biting when Denis spoke loudly.
And now, on the bench, I suddenly realized: the little creature was dead.
I looked at my phone screen. Three missed calls from Reseda Mukhametovna. Oh, it had begun. My mother-in-law always interfered when “the victim needed to be controlled,” or to check that no one was bouncing around too much.
I called back.
— Glafira? — her voice full of righteous anger. — Where are you wandering? Denis said you took your things and went to an unknown place. The kids are crying! How could you leave the family in this situation?
— What “situation,” Reseda Mukhametovna? — I almost smiled. — When your son threw me out of the apartment and changed the lock?
— He just lost his temper! — she shouted. — You know how emotional he is. It’s your fault, always sour. Go back, apologize, and maybe he’ll let you in.
— No — I said.
— What do you mean “no”? — she choked.
— I’m not going back. And I won’t apologize. I’m taking the kids tomorrow with the police and a child welfare officer. I’ve already called the factory lawyer; everything’s explained.
I lied about the lawyer, but my voice didn’t shake.
— Who do you think you are! — my mother-in-law screamed. — Poor nobody! Without him, you’d be dead under Denis by the fence!
— Maybe — I agreed. — But that fence will be mine. Goodbye.
I hung up the phone.
— Fine — my mother said at the doorframe. — I made pancakes for you. With wild strawberries. I picked them myself.
I ate the pancakes and felt something inside open. There was no euphoria. Just life. Difficult, incomprehensible, with diagnoses and debts, but — mine.
Two hours later, I stood at the door of my old apartment. Denis opened it. He paled, the spots on his neck dark red.
— You’ll regret it — he said, trying to block the entrance.
But behind me stood my cousin Stepan, the foundry master, with fists the size of hammers. Denis quickly stepped back.
— Mom! — the kids ran to me.
I hugged them. Childlike smell, and somehow — the smell of my mother-in-law’s pancakes.
— Assemble, kittens — I said. — We’re going to grandma’s. Forever.
Packing took forty minutes. I didn’t take anything unnecessary. The TV, the microwave — all left for him. Only the kids’ things, my books, and the canvas bag came with me.
As we left, Denis stood on the balcony, shouting something after us. I didn’t listen. I looked at the sky. Spring sunlight pierced it.
In the taxi, Tömka asked:
— Mom, dad won’t live with us anymore?
— No, honey. He won’t.
— That’s good — Alinka suddenly said. — Because he was always angry. And you were sad.
I hugged them.
Three months passed.
I still work as a technologist. My kvass was the best in the region this year. I take my medication, go to therapy, and am learning to enjoy life again.
It doesn’t happen immediately. Sometimes the “black dog” returns and lies at the door. But now I know: it doesn’t bite if I don’t give it power.
The divorce is hard, Denis fights for every spoon. But I don’t care. I rented a small apartment on the edge of Minusinsk, by the park. Old floral wallpaper, a faucet I’ve already learned to fix.
Returning from work in the evenings. Dinner and a new book in the canvas bag. I met the neighbor on the stairs, a young woman with a stroller.
In the elevator, the stranger looked at me and asked:
— Are you okay? You’re smiling strangely…
— Yes — I said. — For the first time in a long time, I really am okay.
I entered the apartment. Tömka was drawing on the floor. On the paper were me, him, and Alinka. And a huge sun filling the whole page.
— Look, mom! — he showed me. — That’s you.
— Why are you so yellow?
— Because you’re like the sun. You shine.
I sat down beside him. My hand no longer trembled. I picked up the pencil and finished the little canvas bag on the drawing. My own basket for the new life.
Of course, I’m still a little silly. But now it was a conscious, cheerful silliness. Belonging to someone who no longer fears the dark because she has learned to switch on the light.
The anger disappeared. Only quiet, mature warmth remained. Life had become the best proof.
