Nadezhda
I follow behind her, grabbing her arm just before she can grab the handle. She gasps when I grab her, but I'm too angry to care.
"Why are you acting this way?" I feel more like the parent in this moment. Like I'm disciplining a stubborn child. "You cannot just avoid me until the pregnancy is over. You do realize that, right? At the end of this, there will be a child. A baby who will need to be taken care of. Are you going to ignore me then, too? Are you going to continue pretending I do not exist until you join Father, wherever he is?"
"Do not speak to me like that," she hisses, stepping forward, her nose inches from mine. We are the same height and build, though her body is softer, thicker around the hips and thighs. And her eyes are a deep, dark brown. My blue eyes came from my father. "I am still your mother."
"You haven't been acting like it." My voice is loud enough that she takes a step backwards, but she isn't giving up. Not a bit. Her eyes narrow.
"I've been your mother for twenty years, Nadezhda." It is the first time she has said my name in a month, and I almost sigh at the relief. Even in her anger, it feels good to hear it. "I have raised you and cared for you in the way I thought was right. I've cleaned toilets and scrubbed floors and dishes to make sure you could have a good life."
"I do have a good life," I say, lifting my arms to gesture to our modest, but clean cottage. There is a flower bed in the backyard where my father and I planted herbs and a few vegetables. Flowers bloom from the ground in colorful bouquets on the other side of the door. My parents built something here in this cottage, and I am happy to continue it. I had a happy childhood, and that is all I can hope for my own child.
My mother shakes her head. "A better life. I wanted you to have a better life than me."
My mother had never said so, but my father let slip late one night-after he'd had a bit too much to drink and my mom had gone to bed-that I was an accident. Not unwanted, he'd clarified. But unexpected. He and my mother had only been married a few weeks when they found out. There was no time to be young and aimless and in love. Suddenly, they needed jobs and a house and security. So, they'd come to work for the Paplov family and they'd never looked back. As a child, I thought their life was a fairytale. Love and a warm, cozy cottage, and laughter every night. As I got older, I realized nothing was that picturesque, but still, to hear my mother say she didn't want the same thing for me-it stung in ways I didn't expect.
"I didn't grow up wanting to be a maid," she says. "I married your father because he was young and handsome and smart. I thought he would go places. I thought we would go places."
"And I ruined that for you?" I ask, bitterness dripping from every word.
She looks me straight in the eyes and shakes her head. "You did nothing wrong. I gave up, Nadezhda. I gave up on my dreams and that is what you are doing now."
"What dreams?" I ask, throwing my hands up. "What have I ever done except be here with you?"
She flings her hand over her shoulder, pointing towards the cottage. "Your walls are covered with your dreams. Your father spent a month's pay buying you a laptop so you could pursue your dreams."
I sigh and run a hand down my face. "The graphic designs are...a hobby."
"They are your future," she snaps, pointing at me so forcefully I expect her to jab her finger into my chest. "Working here as a maid is a dead end. Who will care for the baby while you clean toilets, Nadezhda?"
I feel my face redden. I haven't considered all of the details yet. "Just because I don't have an answer, doesn't mean-"
"We can't afford a sitter. Not on our wages," she says. "I cannot afford to stay home with the baby while you work. We are only useful to Dominic if we are both working. What do you think he'll say when you have to take days off to stay home with the baby?"
"He will understand," I say, regretting opening this floodgate. "Babies get sick."
"And maids get fired." She hurls the words at me like a slap, and I pinch my lips together. "You may call him Dominic, but he is not your friend, Nadezhda. He is not your friend or your family, and as soon as we are no longer useful, he will find new employees."
Tears sting the back of my eyes. This is the most I've talked to my mother in a month, and all she can do is tell me the many ways I'm failing. I imagined she would come around eventually and offer to help me. Instead, she is simply pointing out the many different ways I am alone. The many different reasons I can't count on anyone. Not even her.
I push past her and into the house before she can see me cry.
"You can't run away from this, Nadezhda."
I let out a harsh, biting laugh. "You would know all about running away, wouldn't you? You've done an awful lot of that the last few weeks."
Before she can say anything else, I walk into my room and slam the door shut.
The pictures on my walls flutter in the breeze from the door closing. There are pen and pencil drawings hanging above the little desk in the corner of my room, but as the pictures begin to expand outward and take up more space, they turn to color-paints and markers-and eventually, computer animations.
Before I had my own computer, I spent as many free hours as I could find at the library. I used the software on the computers there, paying thirty-one rubles to print out what I made, and tacked my artwork up on my walls. I started by copying pictures I found in magazines or characters from television, but as time went on, I began to create my own. Aliens with purple skin and golden hair invading Earth, turtle-like creatures flying through space and playing soccer with the planets, and flowers as tall as trees casting shade over silver lakes filled with glimmering fish.
They were the imaginings of a child. Nothing anyone would care about. No one besides me, that is. Or my mom.
Regardless of what my mom thinks, my art is for me and me alone. Putting it out into the world-hoping for anyone else to care-is only asking for heartbreak. And life has enough of that already. No need to pile on.
I slip out of my flats and into a pair of cloth sneakers, pull my long brown hair into a heavy ponytail, and walk out of the cottage and towards the main house without looking to see where my mom is. I have to focus on my real life. On what matters: scrubbing Dominic Paplov's toilets until they sparkle.
