“I had to put in a separate refrigerator,” Anna says. “The situation is ridiculous, but there’s no other way. I don’t mind selling the apartment and splitting the money. However, she is against it.”
Anna recently turned 24. She received higher education, found a job, but has not yet married. Her life in her own home cannot be called easy. Anna owns half of the apartment. Her father used to own the house. She and her mother inherited it in equal shares, she was 14 years old at the time.
Ten years ago it was very difficult for the family, because they were left without a breadwinner. Anna’s mother quit her job when she was a child. She decided not to leave her maternity leave. After all, her husband was earning well, they had enough. The woman concentrated on the household. And after her father passed away, Anna’s mother cried, “Where will they take me now forty years old? A janitor?”.
Anna continues her story – “I received a survivor’s pension, but my mother could not refuse to go to the salons and buy new things, despite the fact that we were barely making ends meet. At first her brother helped her, but then she got tired of it.
My uncle told Alla (Anna’s mother) that she needed to get a job somewhere. He has two children of his own and simply can’t support everyone. After about a year Alla brought a man home. His name was Dmitri. Alla said that now he would live with them. The woman was able to solve the problem of lack of money in her own way – by getting married. Dmitri really made a lot of money, but could not find common ground with his stepdaughter.
Dmitri’s words – “All you do is eat. You’d be better off doing laundry or cleaning. Why do you need to do homework? Are you going to go to college? What college, you have to work. Or do you think I’m going to feed you all the time?
Anya couldn’t say anything. Yes, she had a pension, but her mother got the money. Alla didn’t want to defend her daughter to her stepfather. She was just afraid of losing her breadwinner.
“How to live without him,” she asked Anna. “Just don’t argue too much and do as he says. He’s our breadwinner.”
Instead of going to college, Anna managed to go to college. She got a job. All this time it was thought that she was an extra mouthful and was sitting on her stepfather’s neck. He was constantly tallying up how much he was spending to support his stepdaughter.
“Six months after I got the job, I was able to buy myself a refrigerator,” Anna said. “I put it in my room because my stepfather put a lock on the one in the kitchen.”
“Got a job? Here, feed yourself,” said Dimitri.
Alla was silent again. And was silent even in those moments when Dmitri presented Anna with utility bills, on which she had to pay back everything that had been spent on her over the years. After a while, however, Dmitri was laid off. And he and Alla began to actively besiege Anna’s refrigerator. Communal services also fell entirely on Alla’s shoulders. At first she paid. But the stepfather sat without work for almost a year. She got fed up with it, so she put a lock on her fridge. Naturally Alla was against it, claiming that Dmitry had been feeding them all this time.
Anna said “if you want, help me. I’m not the first to start sharing everything in this house.”
Dmitri recently moved out of the apartment. Alla is fed up with a man who does not bring money. But the daughter still does not remove the lock from the fridge. Thinks that Alla should get a job, too. What do you think, whether she is right.
