Trafficked (22 page)

Chapter Forty-five

T
he next night, Lillian was still studying in the dining room at eleven and Hannah started to worry. She'd promised Colin she'd meet him at midnight. At eleven thirty, Hannah began cleaning the refrigerator as an excuse to stay in the kitchen and listen for Colin.

At midnight, Colin's back door opened and shut. She heard his footsteps trotting down his back stairs and around his walkway. He'd see she wasn't there and it would look like she'd decided not to come, and then he might leave anyway.

Tea. She'd make Lillian some chamomile tea. It would seem like she was being nice, but it would put her to sleep. Too bad she didn't have any valerian root.

After she'd made it, she knocked on the sliding door. “Lillian?”

“Yes?” Lillian sounded annoyed, but she didn't have that quivering sound Hannah heard in her voice when she was furious.

Hannah opened the sliding door. “I thought you might like some tea.”

She gave Hannah a suspicious look. “Why are you still awake?”

“I was staying up for you,” Hannah said, putting the tea next to her. “In case you need something.”

“I'm studying. What would I need?”

Hannah shrugged. “What are you studying?”

“Microbiology,” she said, taking a sip of the tea, eyeing her over the rim.

“The other night,” Hannah said, then cleared her throat, hesitating. It was a risk. “You misunderstood.”

“What?” There was the fury. Hannah had never known someone's voice to hold so much power.

Hannah stood her ground, even though she was afraid. “Sergey never tried anything with me. He told me you were the most beautiful woman he's ever met, but he said he met my mother when he was younger and I was lucky that I could always remember her because I only had to look at my hair. It wasn't anything. He was just reassuring me because—” Hannah hesitated. She didn't want to say it, but she had to. “Because she's dead.”

Lillian's voice softened. “He said I was the most beautiful woman he's ever met?”

Hannah nodded.

A part of the tension that lived in Lillian's face melted away.

“Can you tell me how he knew my mother?” Hannah asked quietly.

Lillian lifted her chin. “Sergey told me he met your mother
and
your father at the Black Sea. They weren't much older than you are now.”

Hannah couldn't believe Lillian had actually told her something useful. Her parents had met at the Black Sea, but they'd never mentioned Sergey. She wondered if she'd met him before, when she was younger. He hadn't looked familiar.

Lillian stood up. “That's all I know. I'm going to Paavo's club—Sergey's waiting for me. Stay up until I get back.”

Hannah doubted Sergey was waiting for her. She knew he was probably drinking and that it might not be a good scene if Lillian arrived, but there was nothing she could say. Lillian went upstairs, got dressed, and headed out the door. Hannah waited five minutes after Lillian had left, to be sure she was really gone, and went outside.

Before she saw Colin, she could smell his freshly washed hair, but no baby powder deodorant. His face appeared in the fence opening and she smiled, wide, unable to stop herself, before she realized that she was showing her crooked teeth. Quickly, she closed her lips around them.

He grinned at her. “I like your smile,” he said.

“Yes?” she asked, blinking.

“Why are you surprised?”

“I no like my tooth.”

“Your tooth?”

He hadn't noticed—that surprised her. She lifted her upper lip and showed him the one tooth that twisted to the side, expecting to see him shrink back in revulsion. Americans had such nice teeth.

He shrugged. “You can't see it.”

She smiled at him again, showing all her teeth. It was her first American smile. “I bring something from my country,” she said, handing him a sirok bar. He opened it. “Coconut,” she added proudly, having just looked up the word in Lillian's dictionary.

He swirled the chocolate-covered frozen cream cheese around in his mouth. “Different.”

“You like it?”

He nodded. “Yeah,” he said, as though he was surprised. “You should come over sometime. I'll make you popcorn. I make a pretty mean popcorn.” He let out a laugh.

Something about popcorn. “What is this?”

“Oh, nothing,” he said.

He'd said “popcorn.” Was he asking her to go to a movie? “Please. Say this again.”

“I just said you could come to my house.” He pointed at his house and then gestured for her to come. “You know, come over.”

She got it. “Now?”

“Not now.” He seemed to think she was quite strange. “I mean, sure you can come now.”

She didn't know why he was offering and then not offering. “Now is not a good time?” She might not have another chance.

Colin let out a nervous laugh. “I don't know about my mom. It's pretty late.”

She understood. It was the same in Moldova. “People do not come to neighbor house in Moldova.” Nobody wanted other people to see what they had.

“I just mean, you know, my mom will be weird. She'll want to hang out with us. Maybe we could stay outside in the backyard.”

If they stayed outside, she'd hear Michael if he cried. She looked up at Michael's bedroom window—it was open, but not so wide that he could fall out. Hannah hadn't double-checked the front door. But maybe Lillian had locked it when she went out. Hannah imagined Paavo coming into the house. Stealing the children. Was the upstairs light on? She didn't want Michael to fall down the stairs. He'll be fine, she told herself. He was asleep.

“Okay,” she said, and walked through her gate, around to his.

Colin opened his gate and waved her in front of him, as if she were a strange animal. His side of the fence was painted white instead of green, and the walkway was paved. She glanced in the first window and saw a large television, two armchairs, and some video game remotes on a side table between the two chairs. She continued down the walkway, past his bedroom and the kitchen. She listened to the sound of his footsteps behind her and felt awkward leading him into his own yard in the middle of the night. She thought of Lillian's accusation and hoped he didn't get the wrong idea.

She stopped. He passed her and gestured at the back porch. She followed him, but when he sat down on the top concrete step and patted next to him, she stared at him in shock.

In Moldova, a boy would never suggest that a girl sit directly on cold concrete—he'd at least offer her his jacket to sit on. It might be an old wives' tale, but they said you'd freeze your ovaries and you wouldn't be able to have babies if you sat on a cold surface. But if American kids did it, she thought, maybe that was silly. She sat down, clenching her knees together to keep her lower parts warm.

A helicopter zipped past above them. She wondered if it was a police or news helicopter. There was the sound of a police siren on Santa Monica Boulevard. Maybe the police were chasing a criminal. Who was walking down their street. Looking for an open house. Somewhere to hide.

Colin looked up at the sky, ignoring the helicopter. “I guess you don't see the same stars in the sky in Moldova.”

Boys said the same thing everywhere. “In Moldova, we have more stars.” She cleared her throat. “Do you think there is problem?”

“What? The helicopter? No. They're up there every night. Who knows what they're doing.” He grinned at her. “Don't worry.”

But he didn't know the children were alone and the front door might be unlocked. “I never see these helicopters in my country.”

“They're not everywhere. My mom grew up in Seattle and you never see them there. She says helicopters are the mosquitoes of Los Angeles.”

Hannah smiled weakly, wishing she knew what mosquitoes were.

“Do you like Los Angeles?” he asked.

It was a funny question. If she told him how much of Los Angeles she'd actually seen in almost six months, he'd be shocked. “My life here is okay. Some people have bad life in Moldova. I am lucky, I think. But I miss my family.”

“You don't talk to your parents?”

She shook her head. “My mother and father are dead.” She stopped—had she really just said that? She never said it to anyone, not like that, but in English it was easier somehow. “And my babushka, she cannot call.”

A car drove down their street and Hannah listened. It didn't stop, but Sergey and Lillian could be coming back any moment. She stood up. “I must go.”

Colin stood up with her. His round cheeks were red and his eyes looked miserable. “I'm sorry,” he said. “About your parents.”

She nodded.

The back porch door opened and Colin's mom stepped outside. She was wearing red and blue plaid pajamas—a top and a bottom, the kind men wore. “Oh, it's just you,” she said, looking down at them. “You scared me half to death. I was sleeping when I heard the siren and then some voices outside. I thought maybe it was your father.”

“Nah, it's just me and Hannah.”

“Hello, Hannah,” she said, her eyes smiling kindly. She walked down to the bottom step and reached out her hand, shaking Hannah's hand firmly. It was her first real American handshake with a real American. She hoped she did it right. “I'm Liz. You two can come inside, you know. We have some cookies.”

“Mo-om,” Colin said. The expression on his face was pained, and it was so familiar that Hannah smiled. Maybe parents were the same everywhere too.

“Thank you,” Hannah said. “I must go.” She glanced at Michael's bedroom window, getting more anxious. She'd been gone too long.

Liz ran a hand through her curly hair and studied her with worried eyes. “You don't go to school?” she asked.

“I finish,” Hannah said, taking a step back, but not wanting to be rude.

“You don't get out of the house often, do you?” she said.

“No,” Hannah said, worried by how many questions she was asking. She heard another car. She couldn't tell if it had stopped or not. What would Lillian do to her if she came back right now and found out that she wasn't in the house? “Nice to meet you. I go now. It is later.” She hurried away from them and down the path.

“Hannah, wait,” Colin called.

She looked back and saw Colin trotting after her. “You don't have to go,” he said.

“The children, they are alone,” she whispered. “I am too long here.”

His eyes widened. “Oh.”

“I see you tomorrow.”

“When?”

“Twelve.”

He blinked. “Okay.”

She turned then, and ran around his pink stucco house, through his gate and her own, along the gravel, around the white house, and through the back door. She hurried across the kitchen and sprinted up the stairs to Michael's room. He was there. Thank God. He'd kicked off his blanket and he was lying on his bed in his train pajamas with his little legs splayed out, his head resting on his pillow, his cheeks flushed, eyelids closed. He looked so peaceful.

She checked in Maggie's room. The bed was empty. The pink sheets and white frilly comforter were all twisted up, but there was no Maggie. She hadn't even really worried about her. Where was she?

She checked the upstairs bathroom next to the office, where Maggie usually went, but she wasn't there. She wasn't in the master bathroom either—or the master bedroom. Hannah tried the door to the office. It was locked. She started to panic. She ran downstairs and searched all the rooms. The garage. Maybe Maggie was waiting for her there.

Hannah threw the garage door open. “Maggie!”

A cold empty garage greeted her. She ran back up the stairs, into Maggie's bedroom, and patted the down comforter, hoping to find her thin body somehow hiding under it. All she found was one of Maggie's dolls, the gaunt one with the frilly yellow dress.

Her stomach heaved.

Then she remembered the time Maggie had fallen off the bed and slept on the floor all night. Lillian had talked about it at the breakfast table. Hannah crawled over the bed and looked down. Sure enough, there was Maggie, curled up on her side, on the hardwood floor, her dark hair fanning out behind her.

Hannah picked Maggie up, put her on the bed, and pulled the white down comforter over her. Maggie chomped with her lips as if she had gum in her mouth. It was such a sweet, little kid thing to do. She really loved these kids. Maybe too much, she thought, as she walked slowly down the stairs, her body shaky from adrenaline.

There was a double beep outside. Lillian's heels came up the driveway. The door unlocked and Hannah met her in the foyer. Lillian's eyes were red and puffy from crying. She looked terrible, even in the black dress that made her skinny body look even skinnier.

Hannah pretended not to notice. “I was just checking on the children.”

Lillian stared at her. “This is all your fault,” she said slowly.

It hadn't gone well at the club.

“The children are fine,” Hannah said, and hurried away from her, down the hall toward the garage. She felt Lillian watching her.

Chapter Forty-six

I
t was eight in the morning, the last day of school before Christmas break, and Lillian had locked herself in her bedroom. Once again, Sergey had not come home. Over the last few weeks, he'd been noticeable absent on many mornings. Hannah knocked on her bedroom door. “Go away,” Lillian barked. “I'm sick.” Hannah went to the kitchen to break the news to Maggie, who'd have to miss school.

Maggie waved her cereal spoon in the air. “It's the last day of school before Christmas. There's a party.” Her voice was winding up into a panic. “We have a gift exchange. It's the last time I'll see Roberta, until, like, next year! They never let me do playdates during the holidays.”

“Go tell your mother,” Hannah said, not wanting to get involved again. “She says she's sick, but I'm sure she forgot about the party.”

Maggie went upstairs.

Their voices got louder. Hannah heard Maggie yell, “I want Papa!” in English.

Lillian answered, “He's gone to Russia. You might never see him again.”

Hannah listened with horror. Lillian had no idea what it was to be a child and hear she'd never see her father again, her father who loved her more than anything in the world. It wasn't true. It couldn't be.

“You're lying!” Maggie yelled. “He wouldn't leave me here with you.”

Lillian screeched, “Hannah!”

Hannah hurried out of the kitchen to the bottom of the stairs. “Yes?”

Lillian stood at the top of the stairs, her eyes red from crying. She pointed a finger at Hannah and jabbed the air. “I told you to keep them out of my room.”

Maggie squeezed past her mother and rushed down the stairs toward Hannah, her face panicky, her hazel eyes unfocused. Hannah caught her at the bottom and Maggie sobbed into her shoulder. Hannah looked up the stairs and saw a flash of regret in Lillian's eyes.

“It's her last day of school,” Hannah explained softly. “They have a party.”

Lillian's eyes hardened. “You take her. Go ahead. Walk five miles there and back.” Lillian slammed the door. Even at the bottom of the stairs, they could hear the click of the lock.

Maggie burst into tears.

“Shh. Shh. Shh.” Hannah stroked her hair, trying to soothe her. Why couldn't Lillian just drive her? Nobody would see what she looked like. She could put on a hat and glasses and stay in the car.

“I'm going to be the only one not there!” Maggie cried.

“I'm sorry,” Hannah said, not knowing what else to say.

Maggie looked up, sniffling, and then whispered, “You could take me.”

“Oh no,” Hannah said, shaking her head.

“She said you could.”

Lillian had said it. No matter what, she couldn't deny it.

“Do you know how to get there?” Hannah asked.

“I think so,” Maggie said in English, then nodded. “You go down Santa Monica Boulevard. My friend Sophie, she gets a scholarship 'cause she's, like, really smart, and she takes the bus.” Maggie grabbed a notice from the refrigerator. “Here's the address. You could ask the bus driver.”

“How will you get home?” Hannah asked.

“Roberta's mom can take me.”

Hannah thought for a moment. Maybe on the way home, after she dropped off Maggie, she could buy a phone card and call Babulya. No. It was crazy that she was considering this. She'd be in a lot of trouble.

“Please?” Maggie said.

Hannah remembered her last bus trip. It had been so much fun. As long as everyone was okay, Lillian would cool off about it. Eventually.

“Okay,” she said. “We'll go.”

“Yes!” Maggie said in English. She threw her arms around Hannah's neck and kissed her cheek. “Thank you. You're the best!”

Just for that, it was worth it, Hannah thought. She turned on the television in Michael's room and closed the door, so Lillian would think they were in there. That should buy them some time. Then she wrote a note for Lillian and left it in the middle of the kitchen table. But she hoped Lillian wouldn't get up to read it. If she was lucky, Lillian would just stay in bed all day.

She took some money from Lillian's purse—after all, it was for her children—then grabbed two truffles from above the refrigerator and pulled Michael close. “We're going to play a game,” she whispered. “It's the quiet game. We're going to tiptoe out of the house, sit in the stroller, and go down the sidewalk without talking. Whoever stays quiet the longest gets a candy.” She showed him the chocolate.

“I want a candy!” he yelled.

“Shh,” Hannah said. “First, let's put on your shoes and then we'll go outside.”

She put on his shoes and grabbed the extra stroller from the garage. Maggie handed her a white sun hat, which belonged to Lillian. “For your hair,” she whispered. Maggie was embarrassed about her hair. Well, she could hardly blame her. She put on the hat and opened the front door. Miraculously, Michael didn't talk and neither did Maggie.

At the end of the path that crossed their lawn, Maggie stopped. “I forgot my present.”

It was on the floor in the foyer, inside the house. “Do you need it?”

“Yes!”

Hannah handed Michael a chocolate truffle, ran back into the house, and grabbed the present from the floor. Automatically, she looked for a mirror so that she could turn around in front of it three times to take away the bad luck of returning for a forgotten item. But there was no mirror by the front door.
Forget it
, she thought.
It's just a silly Moldovan superstition.

An hour later, they were lost.

They were walking down the greenbelt on Santa Monica Boulevard, past the mansions of Beverly Hills, and they couldn't find the school. Hannah had brought a notice from the school with the address on it and the bus driver had told her where they needed to get off, but they couldn't find the street.

“I'm so late, I'll have to get a note,” Maggie said, speaking Russian as she always did when she was upset. “My teacher will be angry and they probably started the party already and someone else will get my Secret Santa gift and I'll have to keep Paavo's stupid doll.” This was the thing she'd wrapped for the secret gift exchange.

“Out!” Michael said, kicking with his feet. He hated the stroller, but Hannah figured if she took him out, they'd be standing on this spot all day. She pushed the stroller forward.

A black cat walked in front of them.
More bad luck.

Hannah was filled with a terrible feeling of dread. It sat on her bones like fungus. She turned to Maggie. “We have to go back home.”

“I'm not going home!” Maggie whined in tearful Russian and then muttered in English, “Idiot.” As if she didn't understand. Hannah bit her lip, surprised by how much it hurt to hear Maggie say this. It was different when it was Lillian.

She watched Maggie march ahead. “Maggie,” she said in English, “I am not idiot. We do not find school.”

They saw a Latino man pushing an ice cream cart, jingling the bells down the street. “Stop,” Maggie yelled, running after him. The man turned and opened his cart. She turned to Hannah. “Can we?”

Hannah nodded. The children chose their colors of flavored ice on a stick, Hannah paid with money she'd found in the laundry, and then, in Russian, Hannah told Maggie to ask him where the school was. Maggie asked in her perfect English.

He gave them a smile filled with holes from missing teeth. He reminded her of people back home. “No English.”

Hannah couldn't help but laugh. Just her luck. She showed him the address on the newsletter from Maggie's school and he pointed down the street. “Derecha,” he said, and then pointed to the right. It was worth a try.

They turned right, walked for five minutes, and finally, they found the street that was on the paper. “Which way?” Hannah asked.

“That way,” Maggie said, pointing to the left.

They kept walking. After a few minutes, a beautiful park came into view with a large wooden play structure that had four metal slides, gymnastic bars, climbing ropes, and a playhouse. Hannah had never seen anything like it.

“Playground!” Michael yelled.

“There it is!” Maggie broke into a run and sprinted ahead, down the sidewalk, toward the park. What had she seen? The park? The school? Maggie was eight years old, and at that age, Hannah had already started taking buses by herself around Chişinău, but Hannah knew it was dangerous to let any child out of your sight in America.

“Maggie, wait!” Hannah ordered, but Maggie kept running.

Halfway up the block, Maggie ducked behind some parked cars, and Hannah could no longer see her. She imagined her getting hit by a car or, even worse, disappearing somehow. She remembered Rena's sick words that she'd sell Maggie.

Hannah started sprinting down the sidewalk with the stroller. “Maggie!”

Michael dropped his blue ice on a stick and began to wail. Hannah stopped, picked it up, threw it on the stroller's tray, and ran with the stroller, bumping it over the gravel walkway.

“My ice,” Michael cried. “Dirty!”

“I'll clean it! Don't touch it,” she said, then yelled again, “Maggie! Come back!”

But Maggie didn't reappear.

The wheels of the stroller got stuck in a crack between two concrete slabs that were pushed up by the roots of a gigantic tree. Hannah lifted up the stroller and continued running down the sidewalk after Maggie.

She reached the parked cars where Maggie had disappeared and pushed the stroller into a parking lot in front of a large white building with pillars and double doors in the front. It looked like it could be a school, but it could also be another oversize mansion.

Maggie was standing by a side door, talking to a tall man, probably her teacher. He looked up at Hannah, stepped back into the school, and yelled something. Maggie looked over her shoulder, frightened.

“Maggie? Are you okay?” Hannah called in Russian.

A short black police officer marched out of the building. He looked at Hannah. Her heart jumped in her chest. She was sure she was going to jail.

The police officer pointed at Michael and asked Maggie something. Michael had a dirty blue chin speckled with grass from the flavored ice, which he was still licking. She didn't want to take it away, though, since he'd finally stopped crying. She reached into the diaper bag to get some wipes to clean his hands and face before anyone thought she was neglecting him.

“Maggie!” It was Lillian. Oh my God. She jerked up and dropped the wipes on the ground.

Lillian ran out of the school and swept Maggie up in her arms. She kissed the top of her head a bunch of times before putting her down. Hannah had never seen her give Maggie this much affection, ever.

“I was so worried, my love,” Lillian exclaimed in Russian.

Maggie looked up at her mother, stunned. “We got lost,” she said in a small voice.

“Everything's okay, then?” the teacher asked, patting Maggie on the back.

“I am sorry,” stammered Lillian. “My niece, she does not tell to me anything. I deal with her.” She ran her hand over her messy hair, trying to smooth it down.

“Don't worry about it,” the teacher said. “Come on, Maggie.”

Maggie went into the school with the teacher, glancing back at Hannah with a worried expression. The officer lifted his finger at Lillian and asked her to wait, saying, “I'll be right back.” He followed the teacher and Maggie into the school.

Lillian marched toward Hannah, her face a mask of fury.

“I left a note,” Hannah said, stepping back.

“How dare you take my children anywhere without my permission!” Lillian raised her hand and slapped Hannah hard across the face. The skin on skin made a lightning-through-the-sky sound. Hannah lost her balance and fell to the ground. She blinked. For a moment she couldn't see. Her face burned as though someone had just thrown a pot of hot water on it.

The police officer ran out of the school. “Ma'am, ma'am,” he said. “You can't do that.”

Lillian reached out her hand and helped Hannah up. “It's okay,” she said loudly in English, patting Hannah's back.

Hannah stood up and looked at her in confusion.

“Don't say anything to him,” Lillian hissed in Russian. “He'll put you in jail.”

Hannah pressed her palm against her burning skin. Her eye watered from the pain on that side of her face. Lillian had never hit her before. She'd grabbed her and cut off her hair, but not this. Hannah had no idea she was so strong.

“Mommy!” Michael wailed.

“Shhh, my rabbit,” Lillian said. She bent down, spit on her fingers, and tried to wipe off his face.

The officer came up to Hannah, who was still holding her face. His brown eyes were flashing with fury. “Did she just hit you?”

Hannah stared at him, frightened.

“Do you want to press charges?” he asked.

Press charges?
Hannah thought that meant she could go to jail. He seemed really angry. She burst into tears. “I sorry,” she said in English. “I trying to help.”

“Don't talk,” Lillian said softly in Russian, like she was saying something kind to Hannah, and she even ran her hand over Hannah's head, which would have looked kind from the outside, but Hannah knew she was trying to smooth her hair down somehow. She wondered where her hat had gone.

Lillian smiled at Hannah, then widened her eyes at her. A warning. She turned to the officer, switching to English. “We are okay. She is my niece. She is seventeen. We are guardians.”

“It doesn't matter if you're her guardian; you can't hit her.” He glared at Lillian with ill-disguised contempt, then turned back to Hannah, his dark eyes softening now with compassion. “Do you want to press charges? It's assault.”

“Tell him no,” Lillian said in Russian. “Tell him I didn't hit you.”