“Let the one you gave the apartment to take care of you,” the granddaughter replied to her grandmother.
“Let the one you gave the apartment to take care of you.”
The words hung in the cramped kitchen like shards of broken glass. Yulia slowly placed her phone on the table beside the untouched mug of cold tea. The screen glowed with the contact name Grandma for a few more seconds, then went dark.
She leaned back in the creaky chair and closed her eyes. Her chest trembled — whether from anger or relief, she couldn’t tell. At last, she had said it. After so many years of silence, forced smiles, and polite “Of course, Grandma,” she had let it all spill out.
Outside the rented studio on the edge of the city, cars rumbled past. Somewhere a door slammed in the stairwell, the garbage chute clanked. Just another day in an ordinary residential district, where Yulia had been renting an apartment for the second year.
It had all begun long before that phone call. When Yulia was five, her grandmother, Margarita Ivanovna, adored her. The little girl with light brown pigtails helped around the house: wiping dust from the shelves, watering the violets on the windowsill, rolling out dough with a tiny rolling pin.
“You’re my little sunshine,” Grandma would say, kissing the top of her head. “You’ll grow up to be the prettiest and the smartest.”
Soon after, Yulia’s father, Sergei, divorced her mother and married Larisa — a stern woman with tightly pressed lips. And a year later came Vladislav. Vladik. The heir, the family’s pride, the long-awaited grandson.
Yulia remembered the day she first felt the change. She was eight. She and her father had come to Grandma’s for the weekend. Margarita Ivanovna fussed over two-year-old Vladik, cooing over his every move.
“Here, Yulenka,” Grandma shoved a crumpled hundred-ruble note into her hand. “Buy yourself some ice cream.”
Meanwhile, she handed Vladik a brand-new remote-controlled car worth three thousand.
“Look how clever he is!” exclaimed Grandma Margarita. “At two years old and already knows how to push the buttons!”
At family gatherings, the adults whispered at the table, glancing at the children. “The boy has more potential,” “Vladik will go far,” “With talents like his…” Yulia sat quietly, poking at her salad with a fork, feeling like an outsider at someone else’s celebration.
As the years passed, the difference only grew. When Yulia got into university on a state-funded scholarship, her grandmother offered a dry congratulations over the phone. When Vladik entered fifth grade at a prestigious gymnasium — she hosted a family dinner with a cake.
At university, Yulia lived in a dormitory. Four people in a room, a shared kitchen per floor, showers by schedule. Her father occasionally sent money — “for the bare essentials.” Grandma showed no interest at all.
One January evening, returning to the freezing dormitory after her shift at a café, Yulia opened social media. A photo filled the phone screen: Grandma Margarita and fifteen-year-old Vladik at a festive table. Flowers, gifts, beaming faces. “My golden grandson!” read the caption.
Yulia stood at the bus stop, snow blowing into the hood of her old jacket. In that moment, something inside her finally broke. The resentment she had tried for years to smother, to explain away, to justify — hardened into a cold, solid sense of injustice.
“Why?” she asked the empty, snow-covered street. “For what?”
There was no answer. Only the wind hurled icy flakes into her face.
In the dorm, her roommates were already asleep. Yulia quietly made her way to her bed without turning on the light. She sat down, still in her coat. Textbooks and lecture notes lay on the nightstand. Tomorrow was an exam — she needed to study. She opened her notebook, but the letters blurred before her eyes.
On her twenty-fourth birthday, her friends gave her small but thoughtful gifts: a cat-themed mug, a notebook, a pair of earrings. Her mother, whom she lived with after the divorce, gave her a modest silver ring.
“I’m sorry, honey,” her mother said, hugging her. “Once I get my bonus, I’ll buy you something nicer.”
“Mom, you don’t have to,” Yulia smiled sincerely. “This is already perfect.”
A letter arrived from her grandmother. Inside — five thousand rubles and a card with generic wishes.
Two months later, Vladik turned eighteen. Yulia learned about the celebration by accident — her father was talking to Larisa on the phone, not noticing that his daughter had come in to pick up some documents.
“Yes, the restaurant is booked… No, Margarita Ivanovna said she’ll pay for it herself… The main gift will be a surprise…”
What surprise exactly, Yulia learned a week later from her father’s conversation with a friend.
“Can you imagine? My mother gave Vladik an apartment!” Sergei Nikolaevich boasted. “A two-room place, in the city center. She said, ‘Let the boy have his own place.’”
Yulia stood behind the office door, clutching her document folder to her chest. Her ears rang. An apartment. A two-room one. In the center.
She pictured her own rented studio on the outskirts. Peeling walls, a leaking faucet, neighbors behind thin walls. She remembered living off instant noodles in the dorm, wearing old jeans to the last thread, counting every kopeck.
“And what about Yulka?” her father’s friend asked. “What did she get?”
“She’s a girl,” Sergei dismissed with a wave. “She’ll get married — her husband will take care of her.”
The call came on a Saturday morning. Yulia was making breakfast — a two-egg omelet and tea. Saving money, as always.
“Yulia, it’s Grandma,” said Margarita Ivanovna irritably. “Can you believe it — my sister Anka is at it again! Says I’m spoiling Vladik! How dare she!”
Yulia stayed silent, stirring the eggs in the pan.
“Are you listening?” Grandma snapped.
“I’m listening.”
“She’s always been like that — envious. No kids of her own, so she sticks her nose in! But I give the best to Vladusha, he’s a boy, he’ll have to fight his way in life!”
“Uh-huh,” Yulia replied mechanically.
“Well, no point talking to her, the old fool. When I get old and helpless — you’ll take care of me. Vladik will be a busy man, career, family…”
Something inside Yulia snapped. Like a taut string breaking.
“And what am I — not a person?” she asked quietly.
“What are you saying? Of course you are. But you’re a girl — it’s your duty to look after your elders.”
“Duty?” Yulia turned off the stove. “It’s my duty?…”
“Well, yes. That’s a woman’s duty.”
Memories surged like a wave. The five-thousand-ruble envelope on her birthday. The apartment for Vladik. “Buy yourself some ice cream.” Expensive gifts for the beloved grandson. The freezing dormitory. Cheap instant noodles. Worn-out clothes.
“You know what, Grandma,” Yulia’s voice sounded calm and cold. “Let the one you gave the apartment to take care of you.”
After those words, Yulia hung up. Her hands didn’t tremble. Inside, everything was still and empty.
Half an hour later, her father called.
“Who do you think you are?!” he roared into the phone. “How dare you speak to your grandmother like that?!”
“I spoke just fine.”
“She raised you, she cared for you!”
“When?” Yulia asked. “When exactly did she care for me, Dad?”
“Don’t you dare say that! Call her right now and apologize!”
“No.”
“What do you mean ‘no’?!”
“I mean no. I’m not going to apologize for telling the truth.”
Her father kept shouting, but Yulia no longer listened. She placed the phone on the table and sat down by the window. Outside, snow was falling — large, soft flakes.
In the evening, she went to the store. She walked through the snowy streets, a bag of groceries in her hands. Simple food for a simple dinner in a simple rented apartment. But for the first time in many years, Yulia felt free.
No more forced smiles. No more pretending everything was fine. No more earning love that had never existed.
At home, she put the kettle on, sliced some bread, took out cheese. An ordinary dinner for a lonely person. But in that solitude there was a certain beauty — no one expecting gratitude for crumbs of attention, no one demanding she be a “good girl.”
Yulia sat at the table and propped her chin on her hand. In the window’s reflection was a young woman with a tired but peaceful face. Twenty-four years old. Her whole life ahead of her. Her own life.
Six months passed. Yulia changed jobs — she got hired at a small but promising company. Her salary increased, and she was able to start saving money. She still lived in the same rented apartment, but now it was her choice, not a forced necessity.
She hardly spoke with her father. He called a couple of times, insisting she “come to her senses,” “stop being foolish.” Yulia calmly replied that she was doing just fine and ended the conversation.
Grandma never called again. From acquaintances, Yulia heard that Margarita Ivanovna now told everyone about her “ungrateful granddaughter who turned her back on the family.” Let her talk.
Sometimes, rarely, Yulia thought of Vladik. He wasn’t to blame. He had simply been lucky enough to be born a boy in a family where that mattered. He had an apartment, a car gifted by his father, and his grandmother’s boundless love. Yulia didn’t wish him ill. Their paths had simply diverged.
One winter evening, nearly a year after that conversation, Yulia sat by the window with a large mug of tea. Outside, the city buzzed — cars, people, life. On the table lay a contract — she had finally saved enough for the down payment on her own apartment. A small studio on the outskirts, but hers.
Her phone vibrated. An unknown number.
“Yulia?” — the voice was elderly and trembling. “This is Aunt Anya, your grandmother’s sister.”
“Hello.”
“I’m calling… Margarita is in the hospital. Her heart. Vladik is on a business trip, Sergei and Larisa are at their dacha. There’s no one to go see her.”
Yulia was silent. Something stirred in her chest — not pity, not anger. Just exhaustion.
“Tell her I wish her a quick recovery,” she said calmly. “But I can’t come.”
“I understand,” Aunt Anya replied unexpectedly. “I understand, dear. It’s her own fault. I just thought maybe you…”
“No. I’m sorry.”
Yulia hung up. She stood by the window, looking at the city lights. Somewhere out there, in one of the hospitals, lay the woman who once called her “my sunshine.” But that sunshine had gone out long ago.
Yulia finished her tea, picked up the contract, and began carefully rereading the terms. Tomorrow she had to go to the bank to sign the mortgage. To start a new life. Her own life — where no one would decide her worth or what she deserved.
Snow was falling outside. The city lived its own life. And Yulia lived too — calmly, steadily, without looking back. There was no resentment or anger left in her eyes. Only a firm conviction: other people’s decisions and gifted apartments do not define one’s fate. Everyone builds their own life.
And she was building hers. Day by day, brick by brick. Without help, without support — but also without owing anyone gratitude for what she had never received.
