My boyfriend and I decided to live together and rented a room from an old lady. We’d been living there for eight months. We used her refrigerator and her shelves were always empty. The old lady ate nothing but oatmeal and water, washed herself with laundry soap and bought only cheap cooking oil. She was very poorly dressed, and her apartment had long needed major repairs.
Our mistress did not pester us with inquiries, and we rarely saw her at home, as she was always busy collecting cans and putting up ads. On Sundays, the woman had a humble feast of the stomach and ate rotten fruit. I always felt very sorry for her, and when a guest came to visit her, I almost burst with cruel injustice.
– Where is my money? – asked a woman, a little over forty-five years old, who opened the door with her key.
– Of course, honey. Daughter, here it is. – fidgetily answered the old woman.
– It’s not much, but God be with you, I’ll have a granddaughter tomorrow, I earned it.
– Whose clothes are you wearing? Do you have guests?
– I rented a room, I have to live for something, I give you my pension. – Grandma started making excuses.
– I’ll go see your tenants. You must have let the crooks in, right? – The lady barged into our room without knocking.
I was pretty pissed off that a woman broke into our territory that we’d already paid for:
– Lady, close the door on the other side!
– Who the fuck are you? I’m the lady of the house! Now you’re going to pay my rent for the room, here’s the bank card number and my phone number. If you don’t pay your rent, I’ll evict you. When was the last time you paid? – the lady asked.
– Honey, don’t take the money. Please, leave it to me, I had to urgently pay the debt for the electricity, if I did not pay, they would have cut it off, and how can I without light? – Hardly holding back tears, the old woman said.
– You won’t be getting rent anymore, they’ll be transferring money to me. I have to go. As promised, tomorrow I will bring my granddaughter to you, and you behave yourself, don’t be silly!
After her daughter left, our hostess sat down on a chair and cried. I began to calm the old woman:
– Well, let’s stop crying. Would you like me to make you some tea!
I never saw the old woman making tea, she always made herself some raspberry or currant leaves, which she gathered herself. Grandma took a cup of tea and began her story.
“After my husband went missing, I raised my daughter alone. My husband then went out to the store and never came home. I always tried to make sure my daughter didn’t need anything. I worked hard and gave her the last of my money. My daughter grew up capricious and spoiled, she had a lot of guys running after her, but she still couldn’t choose. She got married after she was thirty-five, and then she gave birth to my granddaughter. The problem was that my daughter’s husband was very greedy, you could not ask him for snow in winter. That is why I began to help my daughter with my granddaughter. However, it so happened that the help became my responsibility. My daughter started to take all of my pension, and if I don’t give it to her, she won’t let me see her granddaughter. I hoped that I would rent a room and have something to eat, but now she takes even these pennies. I raised a monster!
The woman burst into more tears.
– Now she is thinking about selling my apartment and moving me to a one-room apartment in the suburbs. Of course I’m against it, but she won’t let me see my granddaughter unless I agree, and I’ll do whatever she says, like a sweetheart.
When my young man came back from college, and he is studying to be a lawyer, he and I began to think about how to solve the problem.
We talked to the neighbors and some of them, who had heard my daughter demanding money from her mother, agreed to go as witnesses in court. After that, our mistress and I wrote a statement of claim to determine the order of her communication with her granddaughter. Beforehand, just in case, we took her to the narcologist and psychiatrist.
We managed to win the case, and now the grandmother can see her granddaughter in the order established by the court. No one is taking the woman’s pension and no one is blackmailing her. Now our grandmother can afford to eat meat and fruit are frequent guests on her table.
What kind of person would do this to her own mother? Doesn’t the daughter have any conscience at all if she took her mother’s already tiny pension?
