“We’re stuck at the crossing again,” sighed Klavdiya Petrovna, adjusting her woolen scarf. “What do you think, Anya, maybe we’ll get lucky and find a gold bar on the tracks?”
“As if,” I smirked. “You’d be lucky to find a frozen crow here.”
The November wind cut to the bone. I was returning from my evening shift at the station, where I had worked as a cashier for years. The sky hung so low it seemed like it might collapse at any moment. The streetlights along the railway flickered, their dim glow casting an eerie dance of light and shadow.
Three years had passed since Nikolai’s death, but the grief remained fresh. I often stayed late at work, avoiding the empty apartment where only silence and an old radio in the kitchen waited for me. Occasionally, I wrote letters to my friend Tamara in Novosibirsk, though she rarely had time to reply—three children left little room for correspondence.
That evening, I decided to take a shortcut through the spare tracks. My legs ached from exhaustion when I heard a sound. At first, I thought it was the wind playing tricks on me, but then it came again—a faint cry, soft and trembling, like a kitten’s mewl.
“Kitty-kitty,” I called, peering into the darkness between the sleepers.
The sound grew clearer. It was no kitten. It was a child.
My heart pounded as I hurried toward the noise, stumbling over rocks and frozen earth. Behind a pile of old wooden sleepers, curled up into a tight ball, lay a little girl. In the dim light of a nearby lantern, I saw her face—dirty, tear-streaked, and filled with terror.
“My God,” I whispered, kneeling beside her. “How did you end up here?”
The girl, no older than five, shrank back in silence.
“You’re frozen,” I said softly, touching her cheek. She was ice-cold. “Come with me. We’ll warm up and have some tea with raspberry jam at home.”
She didn’t resist when I lifted her into my arms. She weighed almost nothing.
“My name is Anna Vasilyevna,” I murmured as I carried her. “I live close by. I have a cat, Vasily. He’s a troublemaker—always peeing in my slippers if I forget to feed him.”
The girl remained silent, but I felt her small body gradually relax against me.
At home, the first thing I did was light the stove. As the water heated, I placed a bowl of hot soup in front of her. She ate eagerly but carefully, her wide eyes darting to me now and then.
“Don’t be afraid,” I reassured her with a smile. “No one is going to hurt you.”
After a bath, wrapped in one of my old nightgowns with the sleeves rolled up nearly to her elbows, she finally spoke.
“Will you really not throw me out?”
“Really,” I said, combing her damp, tangled hair. “Will you tell me your name?”
“Lena,” she whispered. “Lenochka.”
The next day, I took her to the police station. The officers searched for any reports of a missing child but found nothing. A young officer sighed and looked at me sympathetically.
“We’ll have to place her in an orphanage. It’s procedure, you understand…”
“No,” I said firmly. “We won’t.”
“Anna Vasilyevna,” he hesitated, “but you live alone…”
“And?” I crossed my arms. “I can manage.”
That evening, as we sat in the kitchen, Lenochka cradled a warm cup of milk in her small hands.
“Why didn’t you have children?” she asked suddenly.
The ladle in my hand nearly slipped.
“Who told you that?”
“There are no pictures,” she said with a shrug.
“Smart girl,” I chuckled. “Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. But now I have you.”
For the first time since I found her, she smiled. And in that moment, I knew I would never let her go.
The guardianship process took three long months. Endless paperwork, skeptical officials asking if I understood the responsibility, if I could support her, what would happen if her parents returned. I simply shrugged and said we’d manage. At night, I counted every ruble, planning how to stretch my salary to feed two. I sewed dresses for her from old curtains, reshaped my coat into a small jacket for her.
Neighbors whispered behind my back. “Why does she need this? She has no children of her own, so she took someone else’s. What if the child has bad blood?”
The worst was Nina Stepanovna from the first floor. Every time she saw us by the entrance, she would sigh dramatically and mutter, “Oh, Anna, you’re going to regret this…”
One day, Lenochka had enough. “And you, Aunt Nina, are just bitter because your own son never visits you.”
I nearly choked trying to hold back my laughter at the look on the old woman’s face. Of course, at home, I scolded Lenochka for her sharp tongue. But deep down, I was proud.
Life found its rhythm. Lenochka started school, and I took a job as a janitor there just to be close. Her teachers adored her—quick-witted, hardworking. In the evenings, we sat at the old dining table. I checked her notebooks while she did her homework.
One rare weekend, while we were making dumplings, she shaped one into a lumpy mess and giggled. “Mom, look! This one looks like our school director!”
I shook my head. “Give it here before he ends up in the soup and we have a scandal.”
There were hard times. In sixth grade, she fell in with the wrong crowd, started skipping school. Then one night, she ran away. I found her sitting on a station bench, shivering in the cold.
“Where were you going?” I asked, sitting beside her.
“I don’t know…” she sniffled. “Everyone says you’re not my real mother.”
“And what is a ‘real’ mother?” I asked gently. “The one who left you in the cold?”
She buried her face in my shoulder. “I’m sorry… I won’t do it again.”
Years passed. Lenochka grew into a beautiful, strong young woman. After finishing school, she announced she was going to medical school. “I want to help people,” she said.
When she graduated with honors, she sat beside me on the couch, her medal gleaming on her chest.
“Mom, maybe it was fate that you walked that way that night?”
“Maybe,” I smiled. “But fate only gives us a choice. The rest is up to us.”
That night, for the first time, she told me about her past. About her mother’s drinking, the beatings, the night she fled and never went back.
“I was afraid you’d be like her,” she admitted. “But then I realized… real love isn’t about blood. It’s about the heart.”
When it was time for her to move to the city, I packed everything—an old suitcase, a few rubles, a jar of raspberry jam.
“Mom, stop fussing! I’m not a child anymore!”
“For me, you always will be.”
Years later, she surprised me. She had saved up, worked tirelessly, and bought me a house—a cozy little place with a big garden.
When I saw it, I cried. “How, Lenochka? This must have cost a fortune…”
“You think I worked all those years for nothing?”
We packed my things together. Each object held memories—the old chipped cup I had once glued back together, the worn-out tablecloth where she first learned to write.
Now, in the mornings, I drink tea on my veranda, watching the sunrise. And in the evenings, Lenochka visits. We sit, drink tea with raspberry jam, and talk about everything and nothing.
She once told me, “You saved me.”
But she doesn’t understand. She saved me, too.