The same went for their sisters as well. Not that I bullied girls- that was unheard of. That was unspeakable. No, I mean, they would inch away from me and whispered among themselves nervously.  But a handful didn't when we all were so young.

Like Verochka.

A gangly thing of 6 years to my 8 when I recall, her braids were a thin, brittle pair plaited too tight by her overworked mother.

 Verockha always demanded I carry her back home after church because she didn't want muck her good pair of German leather boots. She was proud of her boots because it was the last thing her father bought when he still lived.

“He bought them from a shop in the Capital!” she coolly bragged to us children, like some empress explaining her finery to her court.

"Come on, Andreika. Pick me up." She first commanded me as though I was her willing footman.

"Why should I? You can walk! And you live too far from me." I scoffed. I didn't want to be seen arguing with a bratty girl.

Verochka pouted her lips. "If you don't, I'll cry and kick you very hard. Then I'll tell everyone you made me cry, and your papa will thrash you." She coolly negotiated in a matter-of-fact voice.

"Why me? Ask someone else!" I growled back.

"Because you won't get tired because you're really strong. And you listen to me, too, so I want you to carry me home." Verochka stated firmly.

After bribing me with the promise of gingerbread at her home, I carried her home. A sack of cement the size of my own son is nothing for me to hoist over my shoulder now, but as that lad, carrying that slight slip of a girl proved a heavy task!

I received no payment of gingerbread-only her mischievous grin and sticking out her tongue in sly mockery.

From that Sunday on, Vera and her mother no longer came to church.

Three months of Sundays passed. As we sat at the table for Sunday supper, I tossed a careless comment about that girl, as children do. 

“Huh! That Verochka’s something else! Won’t go to church because she’s too proud to muck up her boots!”

“What, Andreika? You hold your tongue!” With the swiftness of a hawk on prey, had not my Auntie’s glared terrified me, I’d have laughed at such a burly figure jumping so quick to soundly smack my arm with her wooden spoon.

“Little Vera Yemelevna’s been stricken with the palsy! I thought it was Rickets, even lent her poor mother our cow for more milk for that poor child, but it’s not.” Auntie tugged my ear something fierce with a tone like an apostle calling for repentance.  “You better pray for forgiveness for your wicked tongue- and pray for little Verochka!”

Face burning with guilt and shame, I went the next day to call upon Verochka. It was true. A doctor from the capital was fitting her with leg braces- I never saw these before, and they looked cruel to a child as I was.

From then on, I carried her to church. As we grew, I took her in our family wagon.

Melancholy settled in her by the time she turned 15. She was completely bedridden by then. She knew she wouldn't marry.

Why I visited her every Sunday, I can't reason. But her mother thought it did Verochka good someone visited her besides her schoolmates.

Her mother always sat on that bench against the wall in Verochka's room when she allowed me in her daughter's room.

As I did before, I called upon her home and offered to take her to church on the wagon. Now she refused each time.

"Just go on, Andrei Danilovich." She turned over her in her bed with her back against me.

But one Sunday morning, I stood my stance. I wouldn't accept her refusal. Or at least her dejection.

We turned 17, the both of us, that year. It was my least year home before Cadet Academy began. I had one last chance to get Verochka out of bed!

Her mother had told me earlier that certain week Verochka's uncle in Rostov-on-Don offered to take her to a hospital in Poland. Some doctors, according the uncle her mother explained, promised they could get her legs moving. She might not be able to run, but she could stand on her own two legs and walk for short distances.

Verochka refused.

Because she had bevy after bevy of doctors from far as Kiev come to prod at her and ply their methods on her.

When their treatments proved futile, Verochka grew hopeless after each failure. She lost faith and resigned to living like a ghost in her bed.

She even abandoned needlework-that was alarming.

Verochka prided herself on her skill with the needle. She had a right to boast when she used to embroider words in perfect line. "Oh, you came again." She stressed the word 'you' with a sharp disdain. She grew more bitter with each passing week. This riled me a bit.  I bade my time, though.

"Yes, I did. I'm going to take you to church this morning." I said. This was the first time I ordered Verochka rather than let her order me. I waited to see if this stung a reaction from her.

"No, I don't want to go. Just go on, Andrei Danilovich-" She began in her sighing tone.

I was sick of it! I cut her off at the quick.

"You say the same thing each Sunday! 'Just go on'! This one will be different. You are going!"

Fury peeved her and shot her sitting straight up in her bed. "You can't make me, you brute!" Her teeth bared in a snarl.

She darted her glare and implored her mother as an ally in her refusal. "Mother, stop him! Tell me I don't want to go! And tell him, he can't visit me again! He shouldn't be allowed in our house!" Her mother simply fixed her attention on her knitting. Her mother and I were conspirators here.

"You're going, Verochka!" I bite my word through my teeth.

"No, you won't make me! I never want to see you here again, Andrei Danilovich!" she bawled.

"Then why did you let me see you all these years? Why did you ask me to carry all these years? Why did you stop living?" I fired off my questions relentlessly.

You can only wake the half-dead roughly, you know.

Tears shone in her eyes and she bit her lip. "You know why! I'm a cripple! I'll never get married. No man wants to have a cripple on their farm! I probably can't have children either! I liked you because you didn't ignore me. But now it's better if you do! I know you won't marry, so why bother helping me?"  Her face twisted in a scowl- the sort of scowl the old wrench in their faces when grief gets too much.

"Your mother tells me about your uncle, and he says-" I began quietly and more gently. She cut me off.

"It's all the same! All these years! They all promise the same thing! They just sell me a bill but never deliver the goods! I'm sick of it!  I don't want to go! Just go and have my hopes dashed again! There's no point!" She sobbed.

"How do you know?" I demanded. Her resignation infuriated me. I'd help her mother get her to Rostov-on-Don even if heaven and earth went against me.

Verochka simmered into a threatening, sharp-eyed calm. It almost unnverved me seeing her like that.

"You've never been poked by countless doctors in their city suits and confusing words, you've never taken medicine after medicine and NOTHING ever happens! I'd rather die here than lose hope again. I won't go through it again!"

"How do you that one more time might be the time when you can walk again? You won't be running, but damn it, Vera Yemelevna, you'll be out of that bed!"

"Don't you curse in our house! Get out! I won't be forced and I won't have my hopes raised again!"

"I'll speak the way I see fit! I won't leave until you promise to go!"

"I'll scream!"

"You're going and you're walking again!"

"No, I won't! I'll just keep being useless-"

"Useless!" I scoffed in disdain. "Hah! You talk about being useless, I guess pining away in bed is useless. Even your legs are crippled, your arms and hands aren't, are they? Maybe your brains might be as well, judging from your damned babbling! You can still be useful with your hands! I know you- you can sew, knead and plait bread, and your lettering is the best in the town! Better than a clerk's even!"

Anger gaped her mouth. She hesitated in retorting.

Pressing on with new-found fervor, I didn’t relent. "You'll go to your uncle. Even if nothing comes from it, you can know you tried one more time, Vera Yemelvena! Whatever comes of it, you'll be useful in other ways. And you'll get married.  Maybe you'll marry some rich merchant in the city! Or a teacher- you can teach just as well sitting as standing!  If that's so, you can be useful with your mind."

Several moment passed. She blinked. I blinked. Her mother kept her eyes on the knitting work in her lap. The cat on the windowsill blinked. If samovars could blink, I imagined it did with its whistle of readiness.

Vera Yemelevna cried, but a smile wrenched from her face. A sob shook her, but the smile stretched her face so wide I thought her face would hurt. That's the smile of those who want to fight again. So my battle of words with her was done.

"Besides," I added, smiling myself, "You never did repay me that gingerbread you promised me when you were six. When you're in the city, I expect you to clear that debt with me." 

First, she went to church that Sunday with us. Then, the following week, she left for Rostov-on-Don. She never did walk fully, but she did become a governess for a rich family. She married a well-off tutor for sons of the wealthy.

She finally did settle her debt with me, all those years after!

Every Maslenitsa, she sent me a block of Tula gingerbread the half the size of a cartwheel.