The grandmother was fat, wide, with a soft, singing voice. “The whole apartment was besieged!” cried Borkin’s father. And his mother obstructed him timidly: “Old man... Where does she go?” “In the disabled home, her place is here!”
Everyone in the house, not excluding Borky, looked at the grandmother as a completely superfluous person.

My grandmother slept in the drawer. Thro the night she was hard rolling from side to side, and in the morning she stood up before everyone and grumbled in the kitchen with the dishes. Then the son-in-law and daughter-in-law woke up and said, “Samovar has fallen asleep. Rise up! Take a hot drink on the road.

She approached Borka: “Get up, my daddy, it is time to go to school!” “Why?” – Borka asked in a sleepy voice. “Why to school? The dark man is deaf and dumb – that’s why!”

Borka hid his head under the blanket: “Go, grandmother...”

In the woods, my father shrugged a venom. “Where are you, Mother, Galashi Deli? Every time you’re in every corner because of them!”

The grandmother rushed to help him. “There are they, Petra, in the very appearance. Yesterday they were very dirty, I washed them and put them.”

He came from Borka's school, dropped his coat and hat on his grandmother's hands, sprinkled a bag of books on the table and shouted, "Baby, eat!"

The grandmother hid the cloth, hurriedly covered it on the table and, crossing her hands on her stomach, watched Borka eat. In those hours, somehow involuntarily, Borka felt his grandmother as his close person. He told her about her lessons, comrades. The grandmother listened to him lovingly, with great attention, saying, “All is well, Borjushka: both bad and good is good. From a bad man becomes stronger, from a good soul he flourishes.

Naively, Borka pushed his plate away from him: “Tasteful jelly today! “Have you eaten, grandmother?” “Have you eaten,” the grandmother nodded her head. “Don’t worry about me, Boryuška, I’m, thank you, full and healthy.”

Comrade came to fight. Comrade said, “Hello, grandmother!” Borka joyfully pushed his elbow: “Let’s go, let’s go! You can’t say hello to her. She is an old woman.” The grandmother wore a coat, fixed the sweater and quietly moved her lips: "To hate - what to hit, to lick - you need to look for words."

And in the neighboring room, the comrade said to Borka: "And our grandmother is always greeted. Own and foreign. She is the main one for us.” “How is it – the main?” – interested Borka. “Well, the old woman... raised them all. She cannot be offended. What are you doing with yourself? Look, my father will warm up for it.” It will not heat up! A struggle broke out. He doesn’t say goodbye to her.”

After this conversation, Bork often asked his grandmother, "Do we hate you?" and told his parents, "Our grandmother is the best of all, and she lives the worst of all - no one cares about her." The mother was surprised, and the father was angry, “Who taught you to judge your parents? “Look at me, I’m still small!”

The grandmother, gently smiling, nodded her head: “You would, fools, have to be happy. Your son is growing! I have lived my own in the world, and your old age is ahead. What you kill, you will not return.”

* * * *

He was interested in the face of the grandmother. There were different wrinkles on this face: deep, small, thin, like threads, and wide, carved for years. “Why are you so painted? Very old?” he asked. Grandma was thinking. “On the wrinkles, the pigeon, the human life, like a book, can be read. The need and need are written here. The children were buried, crying – they lay on the face of wrinkles. The need endured, fought – again wrinkles. My husband was killed in the war – there were many tears, many wrinkles remained. There is a great rain, and it is in the land of the hole.”

He listened to Bork and looked in the mirror with fear: did he do little in his life - will the whole face be stretched with such strings? “Go you grandmother! He cried out. You always say nonsense.”

* * * *

In recent times, the grandmother suddenly squeezed, her back became round, she walked quieter and all sat down. “It grows in the ground,” his father joked. “Don’t laugh at the old man,” the mother insulted. And the grandmother in the kitchen said, “What is this, you, mom, like a turtle moving around the room? I’ll send you something and you won’t wait back.”

My grandmother died on May Day. She died alone, sitting in a chair with a tie in her hands: an unfinished socks lay on her knees, on the floor - a cluster of strings. I was waiting for a fight. There was a ready tool on the table.

The next day my grandmother was buried.

Returning from the courtyard, Borka found his mother sitting in front of the open box. Everything was broken down on the floor. It smells of stuff. The mother took out the dirty red shoe and carefully straightened it with her fingers. “My,” she said, and leaned low over the drawer. “My...”

At the very bottom of the box there was a box, the same, the most precious one that Borke always wanted to look into. The box opened. The father pulled out a tight cloth: there were warm sweaters for Borka, socks for the son-in-law and a bracelet for the daughter. They were followed by a tailored shirt of old coloured silk – also for Borka. In the corner was a bag with slides, tied with a red ribbon. On the bag something was written in large letters. The father turned him in his arms, squeezed and read loudly: "To my granddaughter Borjushka."

Borkka suddenly pale, pulled out his bag and fled to the street. There, sitting at the door of other people, he looked long into the grandmother’s carakula: “To my granddaughter Borjushka.” In the letter “s” there were four sticks. “I have not learned!” thought Borka. How many times he explained to her that the letter “sh” contained three sticks... And suddenly, as if she were alive, a grandmother stood before him – silent, guilty, who had not learned the lesson. Borka looked at his house confusedly and, pressing a bag in his hand, ran down the street along someone else’s long fence.

He came home late in the evening; his eyes were swollen from tears, and fresh clay was attached to his knees. He put the bag under his pillow and, closing his head with a blanket, thought, "Baby will not come in the morning!"

Valentina Oseeva