- Why did they bring that dark strange woman here? We've got no place here, and she's sprawled out in the middle like a queen, her face swollen and dark, her kerchief up to her eyes, and they've put a piece of paper on her forehead so that no one would recognize her. I told you, we shouldn't have opened the door when they brought her in at night, but grandma if she got something in her head, she is so stubborn and she's always looking for troubles on her ass, and now we'll have to take care of funerals. When mom comes, Andrei will tell her what happened here. "She's just got old and acting crazy," she'll laugh at grandma, and then she'll just give up on it.
And Andreika's mom is funny, she has the longest braid in the world, and when they went to pick berries, they used to sing a song about commander Shchors with a red flag. Now mom is working on a special “branded” train somewhere in Siberia, there are the longest roads and the fastest trains in the world, the R 200 runs there. Mom will earn a lot of money, bring a big transformer robot, not from a small street shop where’s only some chinese junk, but a good one from the store "Moskva", they will get on a train and go far, far away, and when they get settled, they will take grandma to their new place, - dreamed Andreika, who was told by his grandmother to sit still and "say goodbye".
He wanted to go outside, he looked out of the window, where the fine autumn rain was already ending, and saw Sanya and Max waiting for him at the fence, but because his grandmother had taken him to other funerals before, Andreika knew that this was the proper way to say goodbye. "I'm not a little boy, I'll manage," thought Andreika, "but all the same, they shouldn’t have put that strange lady here”.
Then some men came in and said it was twelve o'clock and it was time to "bring up". Everyone went out. Andreika led his grandmother outside. The rain had stopped. The neighbors put two stools near the car, the back of which was covered with a carpet, there sat a man in a cap and smoked. They took out the coffin, which they wanted to put on the stools, but someone said that the stools were old and would not hold up, they looked for good stools and did not find any, so they decided to put it on the ones they had. The driver said to say goodbye only to those who would not go to the cemetery, and the neighbors started patting the lady. Andreika wanted to go to the boys and tell them about the black-black coffin and the black-black lady, but the driver took him by the shoulder and held out an aluminum cross. The cross was to be placed in front of the body. The women climbed in next, pulling up their hemlines, and the grandmother was taken into the cab. Before Andreika could remember, the car started, and he had to stand with the cross. The sky cleared up.
The car drove slowly through the village. Andreika smiled and waved at people he knew, or they might think that someone from his family had died. Near the cemetery they stopped and, having unloaded the coffin with the lid, argued about whether to carry the lid or the coffin in front. The driver came and said that the cross should be carried first. Some woman took it, but the driver told to give the cross to some old man. He went forward, followed by those with wreaths, two of them lifted the lid, and the men digging the grave carried the coffin. Andrei and his grandmother walked in front of the coffin and it felt that the men were well drunk, he wanted to go faster, to have time to go to the soccer game with the boys, but the legs of the men were braided, and he was constantly yanked. Spotting how the coffin was swaying, Andrei imagined that when one of the men fell, the dead woman would fall out of the coffin, and everyone would finally realize that it was a totally strange lady. And when it was only necessary to pass through the railway embankment that separated the village from the cemetery, and the old man with the cross, who had already crossed the rails, began to descend and the top of the cross glistened in the sun above the grass, when plastic flowers with wreaths and black skirts of the women who carried them flashed over the line, when the lid of the coffin obscured the view behind them, and Andreika and his grandmother also began to climb the embankment, then the horn sounded. 
A passenger train was coming. Approaching the station, the train slowed down and quietly crossed the path of the funeral procession. Andreika saw the driver looking at them, the passengers turned their heads to them, and, preparing to let the passengers out, the door was opened by the conductor, who looked a little like his mother. Grandma started howling again. With another honk, the train pulled away.
"Likhoslavl! ** Likhoslavl next," Tanya walked along the carriage, announcing the stop. - “Hey," she shook the passenger on the second shelf, "are you going to Likhoslavl? The man sat down sharply, crouched down, and stared at the conductor with wild eyes. Tatiana moved on. Almost everyone in the carriage was going to the final stop, many of them were awake, and the belated tourists, who in Moscow had somehow laid out their rain-soaked luggage, were singing softly to the guitar. A month ago, shouting and frisky crowds filled the whole train, sat at night, singing and drinking, only to fall asleep in the morning, and Tanya fought for a long time to kick them all out at the final station, forcing them to hand over their bed sheets. Now the passengers on train No. 666 were humble, orthodox - mostly going to the monastery, although, occasionally, the nuns would stay up late arguing, as Tanya had once heard, how many times one should recite the Virgin Mary for snakebite.
After Likhoslavl they decided to have a party - it was the last trip for her and Petrovna from the fourth, Valera and Lidka. Rumors that train No. 666 would be renamed at the request of the Orthodox and that it would run twice a week, which meant that the staff would be reduced, appeared in the summer. Tanya was sure that as a single mother she would be kept, she did not look for a job, but she was surprised to find her name in the order with the lists of the downsized - the foreman explained that only those who had graduated from the railway transport college would be kept.
After Likhoslavl, Tanya opened the toilet for the passengers and closed the door to the service compartment from the inside.  She unzipped the plaid bag lying on the second shelf - the girls had time to stock up, and put a bottle of Monastyrka on the table.  Lidka knocked. Tanya slid her an apple that the passenger had given her. Lida began to open the cork, and Tanya - to make up for Valerka's arrival. She loosened her brown hair, which fell heavily on the table, and Lida even took her eyes off the bottle:

- You're lucky to have long ass hair, and here are three tiny hairs like a cross, she touched her split blond hair and started picking at the cork again.
- Lucky like a drowned woman, Tanya agreed. 
Clamping the pins in her teeth, she lifted her face upward, the dim light bulb revealing the dark circles under her eyes, the first wrinkles, and the freckles that densely covered her nose, cheeks, and forehead. Rolling up her priceless treasure casually with one hand, with the other Tanya stabbed it at the back of her head. She lined her eyes, quickly powdered her dark circles, and painted her lips with bright red lipstick. Lidka raised her glass.
- To us, the downsized!

When Andreika woke up in the night, he peed in the bucket that stood in the hallway, and tiptoed to the window and pulled back the curtain: it was raining. "How is mom?  - He was worried," he said, "she'll run out of the train not dressed properly, and then she'll catch a cold. Mom would arrive from the trip by lunchtime, when he would be at school, but early in the morning the train would stop at their station. Of course, mom’s boss wouldn’t allow her to take a leave, it happened, but rarely, for example, when he had a fever and the vitamin pill lying on the table became huge, he got scared and started to move his hands, trying to dodge that pill, which did not fit in their small house, and was going to crush him.
The grandmother was also frightened and called an ambulance, and at the same time called  from the neighbors to the station duty officer to let the mother come for a leave . When she came running in the morning frightened, the temperature had dropped and her son was asleep. Andreika dreamed many times that one day he would wake up early and rush to the station, the Moscow train would stop, his mother would open the door of the carriage, see him, and Andreika would somehow beg to go with her further. This dream did not come true, because mom was downsized. Andreika poorly understood the meaning of this word, which now often heard at home, he imagined that it is such a railroad that used to be long, but suddenly became short, and mom did not fit there anymore.
Andrejka lowered the curtain and lay down in bed next to his grandmother, nestled under her warm side.
He jumped up in the morning, without waiting for his grandmother to start cursing and, what's more, to tell his mother, without arguing, ate almost all the semolina, only carefully shifting the lumps to the edge of the plate, and, shouting "bye" to his grandmother, rushed to school. Called only in math, and in his school diary appeared an "A". The last one was drawing. The teacher said that the topic of the lesson was the profession of parents. Andrei didn't have a dad, so, looking at the big trucks that began to appear in his classmates' albums, he started to draw two rails, which stretched from one edge of the sheet to the other, then he drew dashes of ties, sticking out his tongue, and then he began drawing a train, and oblique rectangle depicted the doorway of the carriage, where stood mom in a red hat, and when he drew the circles of wheels running on the rails - Andreika scratched his freckled nose and decisively erased half of the road - it turned out that the train is about to collapse from the fact that the rails were downsized. The bell rang. Andrei took a red felt-tip pen and quickly drew three sixes.
Coming out of school, Andreika by an effort of will refused the soccer game, where the boys were calling, and rushed home, anticipating the crunching of the Transformer package that his mother had promised to bring, because last time she bought one in the underground street shop, which broke the next day.
Opening the door, he shouted:
- Ma, it's A again!!!
Mom was asleep, tucked into her pillow. A big arrow on her pantyhose stretched up her thigh and diverged with a hole where her panties were sticking out from under her skirt. Andreika had carefully covered her with a blanket.

- She's got a cold. That's what I knew, her standing in the rain like a little girl. 
Mom raised her head. Andreika saw some strange face with dripping mascara. Mom opened the bag that was lying next to the bed. Andrei held his breath, waiting for the transformer. Trying to smile, mom pulled out her purse:
- While the grandma doesn't see, run for a beer, son, - lips in smeared red lipstick went under the slope, - and get a Snickers bar there for the change.
Mom started disappearing in the evenings. By winter, mom started coming back only in the morning. Grandma screamed that she would drive her to the grave, mom called the names and yelled that she didn't understand how hard it was to stay without work. After big scandals mom would sit for a few days in front of the TV and then disappear again. At the beginning of March, she disappeared completely. Andrew guessed that mom finally got a job, but somewhere very far away, and that grandmother wouldn’t freak out and he, Andreika,wouldn’t cry, she slipped away quietly. He would tell her off as soon as his mother returned, she always thinks that he is small and does not understand anything, but he is big, will soon catch up with his grandmother in height, he understands everything. 
Once, coming home early from school, because PE got canceled, Andrei found his grandmother all dressed.

- I'm going to look for your mom, wherever the devils are taking her, she grumbled.
- It's no use, Andreika threw his bag on the bench,  you'll only waste time.
- And you know everything, you'd better study at school, you, straight-D student, - the grandmother turned to Andrei.
- I know more than you, - snapped grandson.
- Slacker, eat and sit down to study! 
Andrei did not want to sit at his books, and he persuaded his grandmother to take him with her, once again promising to improve his math. Grandma poured soup.  Andrei swallowed it all instantly and even wiped the leftovers with the crust. Grandma sat opposite, wiping her watery eyes with the corners of her handkerchief. On their way out, they put their keys under the drawer, just in case the mother came back. A blizzard was blowing outside, the wind was blowing hard, and the snow was sticking in their eyes.

Her eyes were empty and blurry, as blurry as the fogged glass in front of her and the veil of snow behind it. Pulling back the curtain, she stared out the window. Her gaze faded into the snowdrifts, barely distinguishing a path with the muddy footprints of the man who had left two hours ago, and whose return she waited for with a senseless stubbornness. Her swollen face expressed nothing; she had become dull, lazy, and had even stopped combing her hair. As she finger-twisted her hair, she remembered her bag, where the keys to the house were, and wandering around the room, she went to the bedroom, looked under the bed, and began to rake through the clothes lying on the floor, pulling out dirty underwear and shirts, eventually forgetting what she wanted, she turned on the TV.
It was lighter on the bridge where the grader had just passed, and a faded patch of sunlight began to glisten over the surface of the lake, poor in color and detail, as if someone were drawing a coin under a white sheet of sky. When they came down from the bridge, Grandma, holding on to the railing, stepped carefully down the snow-covered stairs. Andreika snuck under a rung at the embankment and drove down, scattering clubs of snow - there was a slide. His grandmother began to scold him that if only he tore his good clothes, he would have to wear holey ones until the warm weather - there was no money for new ones. They decided to take a shortcut and went down a very narrow path, not even a path at all, but just a man walking through a snowdrift. Andreika began to trample the path for his grandmother, the snow got into his shins, his socks and pants got wet, so when they came out, his grandmother made him beat the snow out. Grabbing a pole, hopping on one foot and the other, Andreika shook out his felt boots.
She looked out again, with the same indifference, and recognized the vegetable garden, the fence, the barn door, the empty doghouse covered with snow, and when she saw the boy jumping behind the pole, she felt a prickling inside. She pulled the curtain wider, stepped back a little to get a closer look, and tripped over the bag that had been lying under her feet the whole time. The house keys jingled. The door opened. Hanging the bag on her shoulder, she said:
- Bye bye, I'm going home.
He took a bottle out of his pocket, and she froze in place, mesmerized by the murky blizzard that rose from the bottom. They drank. Chewing on a stale crust, she stared out the window again, trying to remember what had just happened. In the meantime, the glasses were full again. She fumbled around for something, stood up, swayed, and collapsed on the couch. He stripped her naked and snored.
His grandmother pointed to a ramshackle house, but the entrance was on the other side of the street, and he had to walk a long way around the fence before they opened the gate, and his grandmother told him to wait. 

There was a knock, the door opened, someone came in, and through sleep, figuring they'd brought more booze, she mumbled: "Wha-o-o-o-o-t?" - And trying to get up from the couch, she collapsed on the floor. 

Coming to the window, Andreika heard his grandmother's shout in the noise of the TV. After stomping a little, because it was scary to go in, he sniffed his nose and headed for the door.

She dreamed that she was lying naked on the floor, and mom came in, which was bad to see because of the hair covering her eyes, but falling into unconsciousness, she obviously felt a blow. 

Andreika opened the door, some woman with such shaggy, loose hair that you could not even see her face, sat all naked on the floor, and grandma was beating her on the cheeks.  

When she came to her senses, she tried to sit up, grabbing the sofa, and only recognized the doubling figure of the boy in the dark doorway, as she passed out again.

When they came out, Andreika, triumphantly, asked: "Well, where's mom?!"
Looking surprised, Grandma replied: "She's not here”.

Translated John Duncan



* https://rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=705342  
** Likhoslavl - Praise trouble is the translation of the name of a real city along the route of train № 666 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likhoslavl#References