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When Ludmila was born, Frola still continued to work as a cashier at a convenience store. At the end of the day, it was her responsibility to report to her manager and give him the key and the profits for the day. One day she left Ludmila home sick with the neighbor girl. She worried about her child’s well-being, making her anxious all day. All she could think about was how to get home to her faster. After her job was complete, she could not find the manager who was supposed to be on duty at this time. She waited for him another 40 minutes after closing, but she still could not find him. Unable to locate him, she closed and locked the store, taking the responsibility upon herself in order to return home to her child.

Ironically, the store was robbed that night, and Frola was blamed for what happened. Frola was positive that the manager who was supposed to close the store that evening was behind the robbery because he never showed up at his designated time. He knew her child was sick because she had informed him of her predicament at the start of the day, so he presumed that she would be in a hurry to get home, making her the perfect scapegoat for his crime. Nevertheless, the authorities needed someone to blame, so Frola was accused of robbing the store. She was found guilty, so her only options were to go to prison or pay for the stolen items.

Everything of value in Frola and Stepan’s home was sold, along with all the goods that Stepan had brought home from Berlin after the war ended on May 9, 1945. With Berlin completely occupied, each soldier had been allowed to take anything they liked back to their home in a carriage. Stepan had amassed a sizeable amount of goods from this event. Stepan and Frola were lucky to be able to pay off her debt, and Stepan never allowed her to work again.

All of Stepan’s happiness rested in his daughter, Ludmila, but he longed for a boy. When Frola learned that she would be having another child, she wanted to have an abortion, but he insisted that she continue with the pregnancy in hopes that she would bear a son. Frola felt that it was too soon to have another child because she would not be able to give them each the attention that they needed. It was difficult to bring up children in the severe Siberian climate, especially in a house without any modern conveniences. Nevertheless, Tonya was born 1 year and 9 months after Ludmila.

When Tonya was born, her father was so upset that she wasn’t a boy that for the first time he drank himself to the point where he could hardly walk. He wanted nothing to do with the baby and ignored Tonya for 9 months. One day when he was ready to pick her up with his hands, she was so scared that she started screaming. She did not want him to come close to her. It took some time for him to earn Tonya’s trust and for her to accept him.

As Tonya grew, she became her father’s “boy.” She did all kinds of work outside with him, and he taught her many skills that usually only boys would learn. He taught her to be a survivor, and she tried her best to be who her father wanted her to be. It was total affection between her father and his daughters, and he lived and breathed for them.

When Tonya was ten years old and in the fourth grade, she first learned about the nearby school of music. One of her classmates was enrolled in the school, and he often talked about his experiences there. Being the curious child that she was, Tonya dreamed of attending herself. She begged her parents to let her enroll, but her dreams were soon dashed with her mother’s talks of money. Nevertheless, Tonya’s father, who always stood up for his daughter, won this battle, and she was allowed to audition. Her mother relented, thinking she would not be accepted and talk of the school would soon be forgotten.

The school of music was a small structure, housing only three practice rooms and a director’s office. Three talented musicians who were in exile during Stalin’s repression, all from the Moscow Conservatory, founded the school. Pianist Georgi Georgievich Struve and violinists Saryan Nicholas Kaprelovich and Anna Vasilevna Dizendor all played a role in the beginnings of the school. After serving time in labor camps under Stalin, they were not allowed to return to their original home regions, but were restricted to living in Siberia.

The school offered classes in piano, violin, and accordion, as well as classes in musical theory. The director’s office also doubled as a classroom for the violinists. Despite its small size, the school of music was exceptionally well regarded and extremely exclusive in its selection of students. Every year, over one hundred children applied, yet only eight to ten of the brightest students were accepted due to its small size.

In spite of these daunting prospects, Tonya was chosen along with seven other children who had been accepted. She was eleven years old at that time and had been accepted only for the accordion class. After completing two years of study, the students begin to learn piano; however, the lessons were only for twenty minutes a week as they were designed to only cover general knowledge.

One Sunday when Tonya was walking downtown, she heard the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata playing loudly over the radio. She was stunned by its beautiful melody, frozen in place as she listened. The music touched a deep part of her soul; at 14 years old, she didn’t know such joy even existed. She fell in love with the piano, and it became her purest source of happiness.

She often stopped on her way to the school of music in an office supply store where pianos were sold. She would wait for a customer to come and open the lid so she could catch a glimpse of its black and white keys. Her heart would leap to her throat, and she was thrilled as she watched their fingers dance over each note; she dreamed that the piano was her own.

Much to Tonya’s happiness, the school of music was moved to a new building in the center of downtown. It became one of the most significant buildings in the area due to its large size and striking architecture. There was plenty of room for instruments, so she would remain at the school in one of its many music rooms to continue practicing, even after formal lessons were finished. Every waking moment was spent sitting at a piano, and the school of music became her home.

The last year of high school, before Tonya’s 10th grade graduation, her father talked her mother into renting a piano so she would be able to practice at home. Despite having such immediate access to the piano, her mother never let her practice more than two hours straight when she was more than willing to stay at the piano all day. It was never enough time. During a parent-teacher conference, the mathematics and physics teacher told Tonya’s parents that she was a candidate to graduate with a gold medal, and that she had good mathematics and physics abilities. After hearing this, Tonya’s mother wanted her to study in school and spend far less time on the piano.

However, Tonya was so enthralled with learning piano that she often tricked her mother, skipping her academic classes and going instead to the school of music. At times she would hide her schoolbooks behind her bed, replacing them with her sheet music in her book bag just before leaving for school. While her mother stood and watched her, she would head in the direction of school, but after one block, when she was certain that her mother could no longer see her, she would turn around and head in the direction of the school of music.

When some of the music teachers asked her, “How come you are not in school?” Tonya would smile and reply that the teachers did not show up. They would smile back at her. Everyone knew that her love of music far outweighed her love of academics, and they allowed her to stay and practice. Instead of graduating with an academic gold medal, she graduated the piano class in only two years instead of the seven years it took students on average.

Tonya never attempted to attend nighttime holiday celebrations and dances with her classmates because she preferred to go to the school to practice her piano. Tonya remembered one occasion when her mother had assumed that she and Ludmila were attending a dance together. Wishing as always for more time to rehearse, she did not attend the dance and instead traveled to the school to practice piano without informing her mother. She had assumed that the dance would end at approximately 9:00 p.m., so she planned accordingly to be home by that time. Unfortunately, the dance ended a half hour earlier than originally expected, and Ludmila returned home without her sister.