Maybe it's better now...

Sasha Volkova was born in Moscow, Russia, in a narrow apartment tucked between identical gray buildings that all seemed to blur into one another. From the outside, her life looked ordinary. The windows were always clean. The hallway lights always worked. Her mother smiled politely at neighbors. Her father carried groceries upstairs and held doors open.

Normal. Respectable. Quiet.

She lived there with her parents, Lidia and Sergei Volkova. As their only child, she was loved deeply. Or at least, that was what people believed. They saw the birthday photos. The winter coats bought on time. The father who walked her to school. The mother who braided her hair.

From the outside, Sasha’s life made sense.

Inside the apartment, things were different.

Sergei Volkova was a man who cared very much about how he was seen. In public, he laughed easily. He placed a protective hand on Sasha’s shoulder. He praised her grades to relatives. He called her “my little star.”

Behind closed doors, that same hand could tighten into something else entirely.

Sergei had a temper that moved like lightning. Quick. Blinding. Unpredictable. It could be triggered by something small. A misplaced notebook. A wrong answer. A spilled glass of water. The sound of Sasha’s voice when she mispronounced a word.

When his anger rose, anything within reach became an extension of it. A shoe. A belt. A broom handle. Sometimes just his palm. Sometimes his fingers at her throat, squeezing just long enough for her vision to blur but not long enough to leave marks too obvious.

Afterward, he would breathe heavily, as if he had run a marathon. Then he would kneel down and say he loved her. That she made him do it. That he only wanted her to grow strong. That she needed discipline.

Sasha learned early that love and pain could exist in the same sentence.

Her mother, Lidia, was different. Softer. Quieter. She ran a small shop with her father across town. Every morning she left early, the scent of perfume and coffee lingering in the hallway. Sergei would stay behind to drop Sasha at school around ten.

When Sasha was small, she didn’t question the arrangement. She only knew that after school, she would go to the shop. And the shop was safe.

It smelled like cat food and dust and fabric and something warm she could never quite name. There were always cats there. Strays her father had taken in. Abandoned kittens. Old, sleepy creatures that had nowhere else to go.

Sasha grew up among them.

She learned that if she sat still long enough, one would curl into her lap. She learned that purring could drown out thoughts. She learned that animals did not ask her to speak perfectly. They did not laugh when her words slipped around her tongue.

She loved them more easily than she loved people.

At school, things were quieter at first. The teasing began like a whisper. A comment about her accent. A giggle when she stumbled over a word in Russian. She had grown up hearing a mix of languages at home and in the shop, and her mother tongue never settled comfortably in her mouth. Some sounds tangled together. She had a lisp that turned certain letters into obstacles.

At seven, children still pretended their cruelty was a joke.

By eleven, it was no longer pretending.

The jokes became routines. Her classmates repeated her mispronunciations back to her in exaggerated voices. They called her names she didn’t fully understand but knew were meant to hurt. They pointed out the softness of her body during gym class. Compared her to other girls who were thinner, louder, sharper.

The word “fat” followed her like a shadow.

The same girls who shared snacks with her one day would laugh about her weight the next. They borrowed her pens and whispered about her behind her back. They commented on her tan skin, on the shape of her nose, on the way she walked.

Everything about her became material.

She started to shrink.

She avoided raising her hand in class. She practiced words alone in her room until her throat hurt. She stood differently, hoping it would make her look smaller. At night, she stared at the ceiling and replayed every insult until it felt true.

She cried quietly, pressing her face into her pillow so no one would hear. She told herself it was fine. That other kids had it worse. That maybe they were right.

The bruises at home and the words at school blurred together until she couldn’t separate them.

And then, when she was eleven, something shifted.

Her father... stopped.

It didn’t happen dramatically. There was no apology. No conversation. One evening he simply didn’t explode. The next week, he didn’t either. The broom stayed leaning against the wall. His voice stayed at a normal volume. His hands stayed to himself.

Days turned into weeks.

Sasha waited for the storm.

It didn’t come.

He still corrected her, but without striking. He still frowned, but without grabbing. He began eating dinner without tension filling the room. He even asked her about school once.

The silence felt unreal.

At first, she didn’t trust it. She flinched when he moved too quickly. She watched his hands constantly. She studied his expression for

cracks.

But nothing happened.

Her body, exhausted from years of bracing itself, began to relax. The bruises faded and did not return. The apartment felt… calmer. Not warm, but calmer.

Sasha let herself imagine that maybe this was what other families felt like all the time.

Maybe he had changed.

Maybe something inside him had settled.

Maybe she had finally become good enough.

The bullying at school continued, but now it felt like only half the weight. She could survive school if home was peaceful. She could endure laughter in hallways if evenings were quiet.

For the first time in years, she felt something fragile and dangerous.

Hope.

She started smiling a little more at the shop. The cats noticed. They always did. She stayed later some evenings, helping her father organize shelves, enjoying the calm hum of the lights above.

At night, she no longer cried herself to sleep every single time. Sometimes she just lay there, listening to the distant sounds of traffic, feeling almost normal.

Her father became gentler in public too, but now it didn’t feel like a performance. He ruffled her hair once. He told a neighbor she was growing up fast.

Sasha wanted to believe it.

She needed to believe it.

Because the alternative was unbearable.

So she stopped scanning the room for objects that could hurt her. She stopped rehearsing apologies in her head. She allowed herself to laugh at dinner once.

Peace, when you’ve lived without it, feels like a miracle.

She told herself the worst was behind her.

That maybe the universe had finally decided she had suffered enough.

She told herself she was safe now.

And in that fragile, quiet belief, she let her guard down.

She couldn’t have known that silence can hide more than noise ever could.

She couldn’t have known that sometimes storms don’t disappear.

They just wait...

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