My grandfather has been trying to strangle his wife for decades, threatening her and cheating on her. Over the years, domestic violence in their family has become so commonplace that they don’t even talk about it. Grandmother continues to live with grandfather and take care of the house and garden. I observed all this since childhood and many years later I decided to tell you what it’s like to live in a patriarchal family, where a woman’s fate is nothing and even she herself takes it for granted.
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Early 2010s, I'm about eleven years old. I come to my grandmother after school, talk and drink tea with her, and then fall asleep in her light blue room on the second floor of the house. I am lying on a large hard pillow, from which feathers are knocked out here and there and prick my cheeks. The flowers on the windowsills smell fresh.
I extremely rarely go into my grandfather’s dark room next door, which rarely gets sunlight. (She and my grandmother have lived in different rooms for as long as I can remember.) I always feel awkward there. At the front door of this room hangs a large painting of a full-length nude blonde woman. The faces of the icons from the red corner opposite are looking at her.
My worried father wakes me up and asks what happened to my grandmother. I don’t understand anything, but I hear some kind of howling and come to my senses after sleep to the loud knock of the pendulum of an old wall clock.
We quickly descend the steep stairs to the first floor. A grandmother lies curled up on the living room floor. Next to her lies a large bear skin, which the grandfather, in time immemorial, placed in the center of the room. The grandmother is shaking as if in convulsions and screaming: “Kill me! Fucked up!” There is a kitchen knife in her hands.
I run up to her and begin to calm her down. “Go fuck yourself!” - she shouts back. My father pulls me away and we go outside, leaving my grandmother alone. We drive in silence the whole way home.
The next time I visit my grandmother, she assures me that she does not remember what happened. I think that this is unlikely to be forgotten and she simply does not want to discuss it. I never found out what happened that evening, but I can guess. I lived with my grandmother for most of my childhood.
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My grandmother is a stocky woman, most often dressed in loose house clothes and galoshes, always busy with housework: gardening, livestock, cleaning the house and cooking. I remember how every day she swept the floors several times with a goose wing and the house was always clean. The grandmother believes that she developed arthritis in the joints of her hand due to washing things in cold water.
She has a strong and rough character. As a child, I saw how my grandmother could slaughter and slaughter cattle without pity. There lived in the house an affectionate black cat who was constantly pregnant from the neighbor cats. She gave birth to them in the corner at the entrance to the house, and almost immediately the grandmother took all the kittens away and drowned them.
Taking care of the house, the grandfather believes, is not a man’s job at all, so he never helps her. My grandfather is a very thin tall man. He, like his grandmother, is 75 years old, but he still works somewhere and always dresses smartly when going out: in a cardigan, shirt and tie, trousers and pointed shoes.
He once had a business and was known as an influential and rich man in our small town in the Volga region. Grandfather still cannot come to terms with the fact that the case is closed. The habit of behaving and looking like a director apparently remained with him forever.
Grandfather and grandmother began dating when they were young and, as relatives told me, in those days they fought with each other. According to relatives, this began after the grandmother had an abortion: she did not want to shoulder a second child while working and caring for the house. Grandfather didn't like it. For some reason, he despises his grandmother’s family, but considers it important to continue his family line.
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Since childhood, I remember how my grandfather could jump up from his chair at any moment, go up to my grandmother and strangle her for several minutes, each time saying the same phrase: “I’ll crush her, you creature.” I ran up to them, hit my grandfather’s hands, and he let them go. After this, the grandmother coughed, but quickly got up and continued to do household chores as if nothing had happened.
Sometimes my grandfather limited himself to threats. If he didn’t like something in his grandmother’s words, he would swing at her and say in a low voice: “I’ll fucking kill her.” At such moments his eyes shone brightly, and it seemed to me that he could really do this. My heart sank. The grandmother indifferently said: “Yes, kill.”
When I left for school, I was afraid to leave her alone: I thought that alone he would choke her even more. If I came home and my grandmother didn’t respond, I would run to her room with a sinking heart to check if she was alive.
My grandfather never took aim at me. On the contrary, he took care of me, gave me gifts, taught me to ride a bicycle, and once even made a big swing in the garden. But I remember that he often touched me, and from an early age I shouted to him in disgust that “I’m not a prostitute.” For some reason, this phrase delighted both him and his grandmother: wow, the girl knows how to stand up for herself. I didn’t attach much importance to my grandfather’s actions and didn’t tell anyone about it. He’s my own grandfather, which means he can’t do anything bad to me.
One day at the family table, he put his hands on the knees of my 18-year-old stepsister, and no one found it funny anymore. Although no one objected - after all, a grandfather cannot harass his own granddaughters. I am sure that my grandfather also did not perceive this as sexualized violence, but rather as permissiveness. Every woman in this family is his property.
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When I turned 16, I thought that I could prove to my grandfather that he was doing wrong towards my grandmother. Secretly from her, at night, I went down to his kitchen, flooded with yellow light, and started a conversation:
- Grandfather, do you think you are a good husband? “Well, yes,” he answered in a special, voluptuous voice and broke into a smile. - Would you like me to have a husband like you? “Of course,” he smiled even wider and drank a glass of vodka.
My grandfather began to tell me what a holiday it is to be born a boy and what a misfortune it is to be born a girl, because you are doomed to eternal service to your husband. It seemed to me that the conversation made no sense. I went to bed, and he continued to watch Solovyov’s show and pour himself glasses of vodka one after another.
Grandfather became even more aggressive when we found out that he had a mistress. It seems that this reached my grandmother through rumors, and then she somehow confirmed it. At that time she was about forty years old, and the son of his grandfather and mistress was about seven. Although all relatives have known about this for a long time, the grandfather still calls his mistress from some secluded place in the house, communicates in a half-whisper and hastily clears the call log on the old push-button telephone after the conversation.
Grandmother often snaps at grandfather and does not miss an opportunity to be sarcastic on this topic. She says that the only thing stopping her from leaving is the garden: all her life she has “worked with the soil” and without it she will “wither.” My grandmother also constantly assures me that she doesn’t care who my grandfather goes to see. But every time he stays late, she can’t sleep and waits.
His arrival is announced by the loud barking of a hunting dog, which sits in the enclosure almost all the time and squeals joyfully when it sees a person. Grandma tries not to cross paths with grandfather again, so she doesn’t go down to the first floor when he’s there.
The grandfather snaps at her for any mention of his mistress, as if he believes that the grandmother has no right to interfere in his second family. But he happily tells his friends about his relationships on the side and is proud that in his old age he lives “like a young man.”
I heard his conversations with friends, they praised him: at this age they usually retire, but he has a “full life.” A man, they believe, is a polygamous creature and it is in his nature to cheat.
A couple of years ago, my grandmother took her engagement ring to a pawn shop. Although she understands that the marriage has already broken up, every year she still sets the table on her wedding anniversary - and every time she is upset that her grandfather does not congratulate her.
In the family, no one talks about violence in the grandparents’ house: everyone believes that their relationship is their business, which should not be interfered with. General silence has made these realities the norm.
I don’t remember my father standing up for my grandmother. She blames herself for this: she says that her son has not seen a strong family and does not know what it means to love. Several times my father suggested that she move, but she refuses: older people are afraid to change their lives.
I stopped communicating with my grandfather since I was a teenager. Now he has no such desire: after 2022, in his eyes I have become a “NATO Nazi.” Grandma thinks the same, but still calls me. It's embarrassing to talk about your life to others, she says. But it turns out that there is no one else but me.
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