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called anything so bourgeois as St. Petersburg, there stood a long, thin house on a long, thin street. By a long, thin window, a young woman in a pale blue dress and pale green slippers watched her new neighbor arrive in the house next door. An old woman clutching her suitcase, shrouded in a black wool dress, very tall and thin, whose waist was so stretched and skinny that Marya could have put both her hands around it. The woman’s fingers were amazingly long, her nose sharp and spiked, and her white hair pulled tightly back into a bun. She walked with a limp and a hunch, but Marya suspected that this was to hide how tall she truly was.
    “That’s Comrade Likho,” said one of Marya’s twelve mothers, darning an ancient stocking. “A widow with no children. She says she’ll take in all our laundry, the dear old thing. I thought it might be nice if you visited her after school. She could tutor you, watch out for you while I’m at the factory.”
    Marya did not like this idea at all. In a classroom she could think her own thoughts and no one would bother her—no teachers called upon her anymore. With a tutor, she could not avoid being asked her opinions. She frowned down at the hunchbacked Likho. The crone stopped and looked up at the window, the turn of her head fast and sharp, like a bird’s. Widow Likho’s eyes were black and huge, as though they had drooped and melted and slid down into her cheekbones. Her gaze was barbed and biting. The cherry trees dropped their blossoms across Likho’s black dress, and she scowled.
    “You shouldn’t be frightened of old ladies,” admonished another of Marya’s mothers—the one, by coincidence, who had borne her. Marya knew she should not show favoritism, but her mother’s hands looked so thin, the skin so dry, she wanted to clap them between her own, to warm them and make them red again. “You’ll be one someday, you know.”
    The widow Likho stared up at Marya’s window. Slowly, like ice sliding across a plate, she smiled.
    *   *   *
     
    Marya had heard no more from the domoviye. But she had very carefully put out her favorite boots, her black ones with fine black ribbon, and tucked a precious biscuit into each. All my fine things belong to the House, which is the same as saying the People. She placed them neatly at the foot of her bed. Besides, I have no place now to wear anything that makes me look like a rich man’s daughter. When she woke in the morning, the shoes were gone.
    In their place was a little teacup with cherries on the handle, glued inexpertly back together. When she picked it up, the handle fell off.
    Each evening, she brushed her hair with Svetlana Tikhonovna’s brush. Her hair rustled dryly, strand against strand, no longer so soft or shining as it had once been, but not yet falling out. Nothing of note happened. Perhaps Zvonok had been making a commentary on the state of Marya’s own ragged, wooden comb. It’s not my fault my hair is so tangled it broke off two of the teeth. She sniffed.
    Marya wanted very much to send a message to the House Below. At night, she whispered into the pipes: I hate it here. Please take me away, let me be something other than Marya, something magical, with a round belly. Frighten me, make me cry, only come back.
    *   *   *
     
    Despite Marya’s pleas to the contrary, all twelve of her mothers insisted she visit old Widow Likho after her lessons every day. And take her some nice rolls; she’s old and can’t walk to the bread line.
    *   *   *
     
    Marya stood very still in front of her neighbor’s door. Her toes had gone clammy and blue in her threadbare shoes, and her stomach chewed on itself. She wanted to go home. She ought to have gone behind the stove and called out Zvonok or Chainik to go with her. They would not have come—they never answered her tapping. But she would have felt better. She didn’t need a tutor, or looking after. She knew her algebra and her history and could recite two