A Simple Life

“...I have always been proud and stubborn. And what’s to say—if I were meek, I wouldn’t be able to stand up for myself, and then I probably wouldn’t be here in the world now. After all, I was ‘state property,’ from the Orphanage. And ‘state children,’ until they grow up, can suffer terribly. They send them to the village while they’re still tiny—around here, near St. Petersburg, more among the… people from the north. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a kind foster mother; but sometimes one foster mother has her own five—where would she find time to care for a чужe child…”

Author: Zinaida Gippius