Chapter Two
The Orderly Grandma

«They have a mama critic. It's very difficult to be a critic.»

«Why?»

«Because you need to write all the time on the Internet that you don't agree with anything. Here you sleep at night, and mama writes them, although she, by the way, also wants to sleep!»

Alex

The Gavrilovs returned home. Here was already the «figure eight» street. The gate ahead showed black. The dogs Stool, Lad, and Tot ran to meet them. Lad, as usual, barked hoarsely – this was a solitary, terrible, almost lion-like roar – and rushed on the attack, but always recognized them about twenty paces away, stopped and, looking embarrassed, turned away into the bushes, where it settled on the ground. Stool and Lad could not calm down for a long time. They were all running around, spinning, barking. Then Lad quieted down, and only Stool alone was barking. It was barking in a quarrelsome way, shrilly, exactly like an old female venndor quarrelling with a buyer. The buyer was already long gone, but she still could not calm down.

True, today Stool did not manage to bark. «Hands up!» Kate said, and the yelping Stool immediately fell on its back, exposing its dirty belly to her.

Opening the gates, the Gavrilovs discovered that a striped rug was hanging on the railing with a carpet beater next to it, and all the animals were thrown out onto the street and sitting like beggars in front of the door, waiting for the moment when it would be possible to scurry back in.

«Someone broke into our house! What crooks!» Peter said, contemplating the stack of cages in which the rats were frisking and the hamsters were burrowing in the sawdust.

«We must blow them up!» Alex proposed. «We'll put a lot of baking soda in their pockets, and then pour in vinegar! They'll run, and we'll dig a hole in their path!»

«And if they run the other way?» Costa asked.

«Then we'll dig a hole on the other side too!» Alex said, and this argument seemed so sound to Costa that he immediately started digging.

Papa and Mama exchanged glances.

«What date is it today?» Papa Gavrilov asked.

«Thursday,» Mama said.

«Thursday isn't a date. Today's December eighth. That means, we didn't meet your mama!»

«My mama comes on Friday!»

«No. Mama comes on the eighth. And the eighth is today!»

Pushing through between the cages, Papa opened the door. The cat immediately slipped into the house. The chief rat papa Schwartz, who was able to open the cage with its paw, was chasing after the cat. All the children were already running after Schwartz.

«Grandma!» the children shouted. «Food! Gifts!»

For some reason three of these concepts – «grandma,» «food,» and «gifts» – were stuck together in their minds into one, so that there was a mysterious single «grandmafoodgift.» From this the conclusion somehow very naturally followed that if the grandmas disappear from life, then both food and gifts would disappear together with them.

Papa and Mama discovered Grandma Masha and Great-Grandma Zina in the kitchen. Grandma was tall, determined, and wore square glasses. Great-Grandma, on the contrary, was small, round, and had a cane. Grandma never left Great-Grandma, and they also always travelled together.

Vicky, Alena, Kate, Alex, and Costa were all over the grandmas on all sides. There was not a single granny to hug Rita, so she just climbed on all fours between the legs and hugged a grandma's foot and sneaker. Peter alone did not join in but only stood on the side and moved his hands in the air. He considered himself above hugs but not above gifts.

«How did you get into the house?» Peter asked when all the hugs, shouts, and kisses were over.

«Very simple. We came from the airport by taxi and climbed over the balcony. I mean, I climbed and opened the door! We weren't standing for two hours at the gate waiting to be met!» Grandma Masha said, giving Papa a combative look.

«Over the balcony?» Papa was surprised. «Did you climb over the balcony?

«It's high!»

«What's wrong with that?» Grandma Masha said. Then she thought for a bit and added, «Of course, it wasn't easy for me! I had to put the four crates one on top of the other and lift a leg up high… And the neighbours looked at us strangely!»

«And where were the crates from?»

«The neighbours. I asked. Where else?» Grandma was surprised.

Five minutes later she was already standing at the sink and washing dishes, scrubbing them with a sponge with such force it was as if germs could get inside.

«Well, you have grime, Gavrilovs! Dishes shouldn't lie in the sink at all! Every hour of dishes standing in the sink increases the number of pathogens twofold!» she said.

«Think! There was one germ, and it became two!» Peter said.

«Yeah. It was ten to the twenty-third degree, but became ten to the forty-sixth! No difference! That's all! Period!» Grandma formulated. She counted perfectly. Not for nothing was she once the chief economist.

Great-Grandma Zina shrugged her shoulders. With a serene expression, she sat on a chair and fed Alex eggplant spread with a spoon. Alex obediently opened his mouth and was clearly enjoying the situation.

«He's big already!» Kate was indignant.

«He's a skeleton!» Grandma Masha disputed. «A child should eat such that he can't eat anymore! I always eat that way, and look how strong I am!»

She picked up a heavy stool by the leg and lifted it over her head. The stool began to lean over dangerously to the side, and Vicky and Alena hastily ran off. Grandma put the stool back in place.

«Is it true that when our mama was little, she was so fat that not a single pair of her pants could be fastened together?» Alena asked. She still did not understand that you do not need to blurt out everything you know – some things you should keep to yourself.

«From whom did you hear this?» Grandma asked suspiciously, turning so as to see Papa's reflection in the glass of the kitchen cabinet.

«From Mama,» Kate came to Alena's aid.

Grandma Masha relaxed. «Ah! Well, we ate on schedule. Cottage cheese, kefir, sour cream. When she was a teenager, she got out of hand and slimmed down! Then the kids began to appear, and she lost even more weight! In fact, I wanted her to have only two kids! A boy and a girl! With an interval of four years. That's all. Period.»

Soon the whole kitchen table was crammed with plates and bowls. And in each lay some mushrooms, sausage, and salads. It was unclear where they came from. Perhaps they appeared by magic, because earlier, before the grandmas' arrival, they were clearly not in the Gavrilovs' home.

Grandma Masha was moving decisively around the kitchen, delivering short orders, «Alena, don't touch your brother! Peter, don't get distracted! Rita, you're already grown-up to put your hands into the soup! Annie, don't hunch! Nick, don't eat fish with sandwiches! I see everything!»

Costa and Alex opened their eyes wide. «Annie» and «Nick» were Mama and Papa, whom Grandma very dashingly included in the general rank of kids. Papa and Mama secretly exchanged glances, suffering the collapse of their authority, but, knowing Grandma, did not protest.

«Chew worms!» Papa said in a whisper. Mama kicked him under the table. It was their shared secret.

When Mama and Papa had just gotten married and were living at Grandma Masha's, they hid from her a starling chick, which they had found on the street. It was very difficult to hide the little chick because it also cheeped. One time, Papa hid it in an old teapot suspended on a rope among the old skis on the balcony. The nestling was very weak. It could not eat whole worms and it was necessary to grind them up, turning them into mush. It was from that time that the joke «Chew worms!» remained in the family. Grandma guessed that there was a chick at home and searched for it everywhere to throw it out, because when she was young she read in Health magazine that tuberculosis comes from birds.

Exactly at nine in the evening Grandma's alarm went off and a new life began for the children.

«That's it!» Grandma Masha said. «Get ready for bed! Bedtime! That's all! Period!»

«We already slept during the day! You made us!» Alex groaned in horror.

«During the day it wasn't bedtime, but admiral's hour!»^[1] Grandma said.

«What time is it now? Field marshal's?» Peter quipped.

«Now is night rest!» Grandma cut him off and went upstairs. Costa, Rita, and Alex trudged after her obediently, like sheep.

«Wow! They are obeying!» Alena whispered.

«But you aren't! She has an inner strength and a willingness to go all the way!» Peter assessed.

«By the way, this also applies to the older kids! Lights out at twenty-one thirty,» reached them from the stairs.

Exactly at 21.30, after finishing what Grandma called «wash-up routines,» the older children were driven off to bed. Only Peter alone escaped. He huddled in his room and sat there quiet as a mouse, covering the crack under the door with a blanket so that light would not show through.

Around midnight, reckoning that everyone was asleep, Peter got out of his room and snuck into the kitchen to eat raw eggs. He was standing in an island of light pouring from an open fridge and holding an egg in his hands. He cracked it slightly and brought it to his mouth, but then someone stirred next to him in the dark. Peter gave a start in fright. An apparition in a long nightgown was sitting on the bench and rocking quietly.

It was Great-Grandma Zina. She could not get up to the second floor and had settled on the couch in Papa's office. Except that she could not sleep and was sitting in the dark: she was conserving electricity. «One guy came from the army. He bought an egg at the market, did not wash it and ate it. The egg had salmonella. He died. That's all,» Great-Grandma said.

Dropping the egg on his foot, Peter leaped back into his room.

Chapter Three
Great-Grandma's Deception

«You need to have twenty pairs of socks of the same colour! And ten pairs of pants of the same colour!»

«Well, socks – it's understandable. That's so they do not get mixed up in the wash. But why pants?»

Grandma pondered.

«I don't know why! But once you're advised, then there must be logic!»

Household Scene

The next morning was Saturday. Costa and Rita were sitting on Grandma Masha and swinging their legs. Kate stood at the sink and looked at the mountain of dishes from the evening.

«I have a proposal!» she said. «Papa's forty-one years old. He'll wash forty-one plates. Peter's sixteen. He'll wash sixteen plates. Vicky's fourteen. She'll wash fourteen. Alena's ten – well, you understand…»

«And you?» Mama shouted from the room, the sewing machine chirping.

She liked this plan. She had already figured out that, though they had a lot of dishes, it was clearly not more than forty-one. Hence, Papa would be washing all the dishes.

«And I'll carry out general coordination and check if there is grease on the plates!» Kate said and, waving her hands, brushed something standing on the edge of the sink. «Oh! Dang!»

«What was that sound?» Mama was startled.

«I smashed the blue plate,» Kate explained.

«My favourite?»

«Yes.»

There was a poignant pause in the room.

«But was it clean or dirty?»

«Dirty.»

«Well, that's alright then!» Mama said.

Distressed by the loss of the favourite plate, the girls huddled around the sink and washed all the dishes in ten minutes. In the meantime, Mama and Grandma Masha compiled a list of foods that Papa should buy at the market. This list was so long that its tail passed to the second side of the sheet. Papa was not too enthusiastic about this.

«Write me a 'lost list' as the last item. Then I'll start quickly from the end,» he said and set off to start the minivan. The minivan started pretty well, but the battery was poor. Therefore it was necessary that it must start on the first try.

While Papa was gone, Grandma Masha and Great-Grandma Zina conjured up breakfast. Grandma Masha complained that there was nothing to prepare, but all the same, the whole table was soon covered with plates. The children were running around impatiently, trying to steal something.

«Rita, did you wash your hands? Well, at least sometime in your life?» Grandma asked, looking closely at Rita's hand, blue from a marker, clutching a piece of halva. The kid's hands were quickly hidden behind her back. This did not go unnoticed. «With soap, sponge, and brush! March!»

Rita, whining plaintively, went to wash her hands, closed the bathroom door behind herself, and almost instantly everyone heard a racket and a splash.

Grandma was startled. «What was that?»

«Oh, nothing special! I think she climbed onto a chair to get the soap from the windowsill and flopped into the tub. Blankets are soaking there, right?» Kate guessed instantly, and a second later Rita appeared howling from the bathroom, water flowing like streams from her, and everyone was convinced that Kate, as always, was right.

«I will ne-e-e-ver wash a-a-g-gain!» Rita wailed while she was undressed and dried.

«And why is the soap on the windowsill?» Great-Grandma asked thoughtfully.

«Because Alex tried to set it on fire,» Kate explained.

«And it burns?»

«No! But it stinks!» Alex cheerfully explained. «Just need to set it on fire with a tennis ball! Let me show you!» Alex rushed to demonstrate, but he was forced into his seat and limited his research impulse with a piece of cheese.