The call came on a damp, biting night in late October. Victoria sat in the dim hallway of her rented apartment on the edge of Lozova, pressing the cold phone to her ear while her four-year-old brother sobbed on the other end. He couldn’t understand why his Vika no longer slept in the next room or read him the story about the cunning fox. She promised coloring books for Saturday, ended the call, and slid down the wall, drained.
The phone lit up again. Her mother. Halyna’s voice poured like warm honey. How was work?
Was the apartment cold? Then, lightly, she set the hook: could Vika take three days off, unpaid? Her test results were bad. The doctor ordered bed rest.
The little ones needed her while her father sat stuck at the Polish border with his truck and the house debts. She’d send taxi money. Victoria stared at a crack in the ceiling. She was twenty-three.
She worked as a veterinary assistant and spent every spare hour studying Spanish. In six months there might be a prestigious internship at a rehabilitation center for working dogs outside Barcelona. She hadn’t told her family. And right now she understood: if she gave in tonight, she’d never leave.
“Mom, I can’t. My shifts are booked through the end of the month. No one can cover me. ”
A long pause.
“When you were in tenth grade with appendicitis, I slept on a hard stool by your hospital bed for a week so you wouldn’t be scared. But that’s different, I suppose. Goodbye. ”
The dial tone hit like a slap.
She walked to the railway station and sat on a cold bench, watching freight trains roll by. Her life came down to a single truth: she had been a mother since she was seven, without ever having children of her own. Taras was born when she was seven. By eight, she was changing diapers and warming formula.
At nine, she was watching one-year-old Nazar. At twelve, she told her father she didn’t want children anymore. He laughed, patted her head, and said big families were in Ukrainian blood. At thirteen, baby Solomiya landed in her arms.
Her mother’s health had collapsed, and Victoria ran the household. When Halyna announced her fifth pregnancy, fifteen-year-old Vika begged her to stop. Her mother smiled: children were a gift. She finished school, entered the local veterinary academy, and worked as an administrator at a private clinic.
She paid for Spanish lessons when the clinic partnered with a rehabilitation center in Catalonia. Her teacher, Carmen, told her once: “You have talent. You need to get out of here. ”
At nineteen, Ilko was born — the sixth child.
Victoria started staying late at work, translating articles, anything to delay the noise at home. She stopped answering her mother’s calls. The explosion came a month ago at a family dinner. Halyna announced she was pregnant for the seventh time.
The boys laughed. Solomiya clapped. Matviy frowned. Their father chewed his cutlet in silence.
Victoria put down her fork. “Mom, you’re forty-three. Your blood pressure runs over two hundred. You won’t carry this baby.
”
“Vika! ” her father barked. “I’m talking to both of you. Did you ask me if I’m ready to be a nanny again?
Did you ask Taras, who’s ashamed to bring friends home because there’s always chaos and crying? Did you ask anyone besides yourselves? I’m twenty-three and I already have five children. I can’t take another one.
”
Her mother burst into tears. Her father slammed the table. Victoria left the room. Three days later she rented a flat, packed two suitcases, took her documents, her laptop, and the old cat Borya, and moved out.
Her mother called, crying, calling her a traitor. Her father called once: “Had your fill of independence? Come home. ” She blocked his number.
A month later, her mother changed tactics. No screaming, only softness. But something in Victoria had turned to stone. She went to the family house anyway — she’d promised Ilko and Solomiya.
She brought mandarins, chocolate, and the big marker set Ilko wanted. Taras opened the door. “Our runaway is here. ”
Halyna emerged, her belly already prominent at four months.
Her face was gray, but she spread her arms wide. Victoria hugged her briefly and slipped into the children’s room, where she and the little ones spent half an hour on the floor drawing space monsters. Then Halyna called Solomiya to the kitchen. Victoria found her mother at the stove, stirring soup.
“Good that you came. On Friday I need to see a cardiologist. You’ll watch the little ones. ”
“I can’t, Mom.
I have a critical interview on Friday. ”
“The internship in Spain. I submitted my documents. If it goes through, I’m leaving in the spring.
”
Halyna turned slowly. “So you’re not just moving out — you’re running away. Abandoning your siblings. Leaving me in this condition.
”
“I have my own life. I have the right to build it. ”
“Ungrateful egoist. We gave you everything.
Who will cook for them when I’m in the hospital? ”
“Did you think about that when you planned the seventh? ” Victoria stepped forward. “Did you ask me if I’d be the free nanny again?
Did you ask Taras? Nazar? Solomiya? ”
“Don’t you dare judge me!
You’re cold. You’re afraid to love. ”
Victoria laughed — sharp, bitter. “Mom, I’ve lived like you my whole childhood, just without a husband and without a voice.
I raised your children. I taught them multiplication tables while you hid behind your exhaustion. And now I’m the egoist? ”
Solomiya burst into tears.
Taras appeared in the doorway. Ilko came in clutching his toy car. Halyna gripped the table and lowered herself onto a stool. “Get out.
Get out and don’t come back. You’re not my daughter anymore. ”
Victoria looked at Solomiya’s crying face, then crouched before Ilko and took his little shoulders. “Ilyusha, I love you very much.
And Solomiya, and Nazar, and Matviy, and Taras. I’ll always love you. But I’m not your mother, and I never was. Remember that.
”
She walked out. The door slammed behind her as she ran down the stairs into the cold evening. On Friday, Victoria sat before her old laptop in a crisp white blouse. Mateo, the coordinator of the Spanish center, smiled from the screen.
She described assisting on complex surgeries, volunteering at the local shelter, handling aggressive dogs without fear. “You mentioned five younger siblings,” he said. “That must require enormous patience. ”
She paused.
In her memory flashed her mother’s twisted face, Solomiya’s tears, the slam of the door. “Yes. It taught me iron patience and quick decision-making under stress. But the most important lesson is that every living being has boundaries, and they must be respected — not violated for someone else’s needs.
I build my work on that principle. ”
Mateo translated her answer to a colleague off-camera, who nodded enthusiastically. Forty minutes later, the email came. She got in.
She didn’t call anyone. She bought a ticket for mid-March with a layover in Istanbul, borrowing part of the money from her former classmate Liza. Winter passed in a blur of shifts and Spanish drills. She packed her suitcase with documents, her Spanish textbook, warm socks her grandmother had knitted, and one photograph — her and Ilko and Solomiya building a sandcastle.
Borya stayed with Liza. One evening, Taras called. “Vika, forgive me for staying silent that day. I was scared.
Mom treated you unfairly. I’d run too if I could, but I have to finish school. ” He paused. “Go to your Spain.
I’ll watch the little ones. ”
She thanked him and promised to write every week. Two days before the flight, “Dad” lit up her screen. She hesitated, then answered.
He met her at a cheap café near the bus station. He sat in the corner, worse than she remembered — dark circles, gray stubble, hands cracked with grease turning a cardboard cup around and around. “Leaving for long? ”
“One-year contract.
It might be extended. ”
He nodded. “Your mother wails all day. Don’t blame her too hard.
She loves you — she just doesn’t know how to love any other way. They raised her to believe a woman is only a mother. ”
“And you, Dad? Did you ever ask yourself what you wanted?
You work like a slave. You sleep in a cold cabin. Did you want this life? ”
He took a slow sip.
“Maybe when I was young I wanted something else. But your mother — every pregnancy is sacred to her. I stopped arguing after Solomiya was born. So we drag this cart.
Just don’t hate us. ”
“I don’t hate you,” she said softly. “I just can’t drag it anymore. ”
From his worn jacket he pulled a thick white envelope.
“About a hundred thousand hryvnias. Not from the family budget — I didn’t shortchange the kids. My personal savings for a rainy day. Don’t tell your mother.
Tell her I spent it on truck repairs. You’ll need it to stand on your feet. ”
She started to push it back, but he covered her hand with his calloused palm. “Take it, daughter.
Don’t argue. ” His voice shook. “Maybe at least you’ll break out of this carousel. Live your life the way you want.
”
She took the envelope. It was more than money — it was the freedom he had never taken for himself. They sat a while longer, talking about airports and weather and water bills. Then he hugged her clumsily, patted her thin shoulder, and walked out into the gray crowd.
On the plane, the engines pressed her into her seat. Through the round window, the city dissolved beneath rain clouds. Behind her she was leaving the screams, the smell of baby formula, the scattered toys, the weight of other people’s expectations. Ahead lay Barcelona and something she had chosen for herself.
Victoria pressed the backpack holding her passport and her father’s envelope to her chest. She closed her eyes. For the first time in twenty-three years, she took a full, deep breath.
