Trafficked (9 page)

“Since when did you care about that?” She heard the pain in her voice and cringed at it.

“Hannah.” He cupped her chin in his hand, pinching her skin with his thumb and forefinger, and made her look at him. “You know I love you,” he said. “I want what's best for you.”

She leaned forward, raising her lips to him. At first, she thought he was going to ignore her, but then she felt his soft lips. It was exactly like before, as if they'd never broken up. Suddenly, he pulled back, glancing up at the stands. She looked up and saw that girl Lera standing there. Hannah rubbed her lips with the back of her hand while he stared at her, like he was deciding something. “Maybe America is a good idea,” he said. “You could get a new start.”

She'd hated him then, hated him for wanting her to have a new start, hated him for choosing someone else.

In the dark basement room in America, Hannah rolled onto her side and wrapped her arms around herself. She'd show him, she thought. She'd come back speaking perfect English, wearing a green suit made by Versace or Gucci, and she'd be irresistible and he'd want her back and she'd say, “Too bad.”

Chapter Thirteen

“E
lena!” A woman's voice woke her up the next morning. The room was pitch-black and Hannah didn't know where she was. At first she thought that Elena, the annoying girl in her class at school, was in her apartment in Moldova. But then she smelled coffee instead of the hot red pepper and vinegar sauce Babulya put in her carrot salad, the smell she'd woken up to every morning since her parents had died, and she remembered she was in the USA.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. “My name is Hannah,” she muttered. She'd been here for a week and three days and Lillian still called her Elena.

She glanced at the alarm clock and realized she'd forgotten to set it for the second time. It was already seven thirty. She jumped up, put on her bra and gray sweat suit, and hurried down the hall.

The family was sitting at the glass table in the kitchen. Sergey was reading the paper. The children were both eating their particular mixture of cereals. “Here comes the vacation girl,” Lillian said with a quick laugh, then took a sip of tea.

“I'm sorry,” Hannah said quickly, thinking that working twelve to sixteen hours every day was hardly a vacation.

“You're still getting over your jet lag, I suppose,” Lillian said, standing up. “Why don't you sit down and eat? You've got a long day ahead of you.”

“Oh no, I couldn't.” She took a step back.

“Go ahead, I'm finished.” Lillian took Hannah's arm and guided her to her chair.

She sat down in front of Lillian's dirty bowl and spoon while Lillian continued. “It is natural that your body hasn't adjusted to the time difference, but in the future, Elena, I would like you to set your alarm. I have a lot to do without having to wake you up too.”

“Sure, no problem,” she said, and then, because she couldn't stand to lose the first thing her mother had given to her in this world, she added, “Could you please call me Hannah?”

Lillian looked up. “Elena is the name on your plane ticket.”

She explained, “The agent in Bucharest took away my Moldovan passport and made me use a Russian one with a fake name.”

“What are you talking about, Elena?” Lillian laughed, lightly, then raised her eyebrows at Maggie, urging Hannah to play along. “The documents were not fake. You simply had the wrong ones for coming into America from Bucharest instead of Moscow.”

Sergey glanced over his newspaper at Hannah. Of course, the lie made sense. Children couldn't be trusted not to tell friends. She felt sick that she'd made such a foolish mistake.

She fumbled to make up for it. “Yes, of course, you're right about the documents. But everybody calls me Hannah.”

Maggie was watching, her spoon hovering over her cereal bowl, her eyes dancing back and forth between them.

“We'll call you Hannah. Why not?” Sergey said, smiling.

Lillian glanced at him and looked annoyed. “If it's your nickname.”

Hannah felt her insides clench, because Hannah was her real name and it was special to her because it had been the name of the American doctor who'd delivered her. This woman had befriended her mother and convinced her to become a nurse, once she learned of the natural remedies she gave to the poor people in their neighborhood, remedies she'd learned from Hannah's babushka, and which she'd taught to Hannah. She'd made her mother believe in herself. Her mother had often said that Hannah would be a great doctor like the woman she was named after.

Everyone was looking at her.

“Yes, it's my nickname. I don't like the name Elena.”

“You said Moldova,” Maggie pointed out.

Lillian looked at Maggie and then back at Hannah, with a look of fury.

Hannah scrambled to explain. “I passed through Moldova to get to Bucharest. The flight was cheaper from there.” She hoped Maggie's knowledge of geography was not as good as her hearing. Nobody would go from Moscow to Moldova to Romania.

Maggie squinted. “You're Papulya's niece, right?”

“Yes.” Hannah glanced at Sergey and wondered how he'd explained this to her. Didn't Maggie know her own family? He looked down at his paper, as if he wasn't listening.

Lillian cleared her throat. “Do you want more cereal, Maggie?”

“You don't look like him,” Maggie said to Hannah.

“No.”

“Maybe we could give you a new nickname,” Maggie suggested. “An American one.”

“No, thank you,” Hannah said, thinking that her name was already American.

Lillian placed a clean bowl and a spoon in front of Hannah, who'd never eaten cold cereal before coming to America.

“I don't care what we call you,” Lillian said, “as long as you start working a little faster. I've never seen anyone move so slowly.”

“We could call her Turtle,” Maggie said in Russian, giggling.

“Turtle,” Michael repeated. “Turtle.”

“No, thank you,” Hannah said firmly.

“Turtle,” Lillian repeated, laughing along.

“Oh come on. Stop teasing,” Sergey said, taking a sip of his coffee. He put it down and added another scoop of sugar as he talked. “Hannah was working until midnight last night.”

“How do you know that?” Lillian asked. Hannah looked away from Sergey, nervous about the suspicion in Lillian's voice, and yet she couldn't help but admire how sharp Lillian was—she didn't miss a single thing.

“I was up,” he said, adding more sugar, which was very strange for a Russian man. Most drank coffee black. “I had to make a call to Moscow.” He tried his coffee again and, finding it to his liking, placed it down on the table. He raised his newspaper in front of his face.

Lillian glanced from him to Hannah, whose face was turning red, even though absolutely nothing had happened. She told her face to stop it, that she hadn't done anything wrong, but it never listened to her. It made her look guilty even when she was not.

“Maybe you should go to bed when I go to bed,” Lillian said.

“I would love to go to bed earlier,” Hannah said, choosing her words carefully. “Aren't people supposed to work just forty hours a week in America?”

“Forty hours?” Lillian tossed her head back and laughed.

Hannah looked from Lillian to Maggie, who was staring at her mother, a crease forming between her own hazel eyes. She seemed worried, as if she'd heard this laughter before.

“Nobody works forty hours a week,” Lillian said, grabbing her used teacup. “I certainly don't, and Sergey doesn't. It's just one of those lies about America. You can't get anything done in forty hours a week.”

Hannah reached for the cereal box—“Cheerios,” it said—and poured it before Lillian could take it away. “I thought I would have time to take English classes.”

“She wants to be a doctor,” Lillian announced, like it was the craziest idea ever.

“Good for you,” Sergey said to Hannah. His eyes crinkled kindly, forming deep creases in his tanned skin.

Lillian grabbed his bowl, even though he wasn't finished. “It's good for her, but for me, you say it's a waste of time, that anybody with brains can make more money in business.”

He let out a bark of a laugh, as if he'd been caught. He reached up and wrapped his arm around his wife's waist, stopping her. “Lilichka, sweetheart, I meant that you could do anything you wanted in America. You're smart and beautiful. Why not make more money?”

“Being a doctor is a respectable job,” she said. “It's good, honest money.”

“You're right,” he said. “You'll be a great doctor.”

Hannah wondered why he said she'd be a great doctor if she was already a doctor.

Lillian squinted down at him, as if to see whether he was patronizing her, and then bent down to give him a quick peck on his nose. “Thank you.” She grabbed the cereal boxes and carried them to the cupboard. Then she stopped and threw her hands in the air. “Why am I clearing the table?” she asked, more to herself than anyone else. “I have to study.”

Hannah felt guilty all of a sudden for eating.

“You don't have to do this anymore.” Sergey stood up, wrapped his arms around her, and gazed into her beautiful face. “Now you can focus on your studying.”

“You're right. I'm not used to this,” she said, and kissed him slowly on the lips. Hannah looked away, embarrassed. After a moment of kissing, the children started giggling and Lillian broke away. “Elena—I mean, Hannah,” Lillian said. “The laundry is piling up. After you eat, you can bring Michael to the playroom while you fold the clothes.” Lillian always referred to it as a playroom, but to Hannah, it was just a garage, not unlike the one where her father used to work on cars. It even had an oil stain on the concrete floor, which was what Lillian was hiding with the pink and blue children's rug.

“I have to go,” Sergey said, tousling Michael's hair, then bending down to kiss Maggie's forehead.

“Bye, Papushka,” Maggie said.

“Have a fun day, little rabbit,” he said, and then strode out of the room, holding his paper.

Lillian followed him out of the room.

Maggie blinked at Hannah with those big beautiful eyes of hers. “You can eat with me,” she said in English.

“Okay,” Hannah answered her in English, then glanced at the door, worried about Lillian. She switched back to Russian. “Do you know how to hang this spoon on your nose?”

Chapter Fourteen

H
annah stretched her legs out and felt the hot sun on her skin. She'd been in Los Angeles for two weeks and was finally getting a chance to tan. In Moldova, that was what people her age did all summer. She wasn't officially tanning, though.
Officially
, she was babysitting Michael and Maggie together, for the first time, and she'd come up with the great idea of going in the backyard and playing with buckets of water.

It was already ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit at ten thirty in the morning. Ninety-five was thirty-five degrees Celsius. This was one of the unexpected things about America. Without converting things like Fahrenheit to Celsius, dollars to lei, and pounds to kilograms, she had no idea how much anything was. She knew twenty dollars was a lot, but it wasn't until she converted it to lei and thought about how long it would take her to make that much at the market that it really sank in.

She took a sip of the compote, a Moldovan drink she'd made with water, sugar, and mashed strawberries. Michael was mixing water in his buckets, pretending it was soup, and Maggie was being a good sport and pretending to eat it. “Michael, could you dump some water on my legs?” Hannah called.

He ran over, giggling, holding a bucket full of sloshing water, and dumped it all over her legs and her shorts. She screamed. The water was freezing. “Okay, that's enough.”

“Do it to me,” Maggie said. Michael hurried back to Maggie, giggling.

Hannah heard a lawn mower start up next door. She loved that sound. It was one of the sounds of America, a sound she never heard in Moldova. In the village, people let the ducks and the chickens eat the grass, and in the city, the few people with lawns had gardeners who cut the grass with long curved machetes.

The lawn mower turned off. She glanced at the tall green fence. Was it the boy? Whoever it was started pushing the lawn mower along the fence to the front yard.

Lillian was out—now was a good time to meet him. Once they were friends, Lillian would see that it was harmless. She felt nervous all of a sudden; maybe he wouldn't be interested in meeting her. After all, she was just a nanny.

She glanced at Michael and Maggie. Michael was dumping water on Maggie's feet, giggling. She hurried across the lawn and down the gravel path beside the house, past the garbage cans, to the gate, but she was too late.

The boy was crossing the street with the lawn mower. He pushed it up the neighbor's driveway and a short, older man met him and handed him some bills. Then the boy began mowing his lawn. She couldn't believe it. He had a job, just like she did.

“Hannah!” Maggie yelled from the backyard.

She remembered how Lillian had said to be careful, that a child could drown in a bucket of water, and she sprinted back up the walkway. Michael was sitting cross-legged, pouring water from one little bucket to another.

Maggie was standing, hands planted on her hips. “Where did you go?” she asked in Russian. She always spoke Russian when she was upset.

“I had to throw something out,” Hannah answered.

“I thought you left us.”

Hannah gave her a funny look. “Why would I leave you?”

“Mama said if you left, I should call her.”

“I'm not going to leave you,” Hannah said.

“Alexei's girl left.”

“Who's Alexei?”

She shrugged. “Paavo's friend.”

No wonder,
Hannah thought.

“One day, she just left the kids all alone in the house and she never came back.”

“I'd never do that, don't worry.” Hannah walked over to the hose and picked it up, hoping to distract her. “Are you ready for a water fight?”

She turned it on full blast and let the water stream up like a fountain, falling on their heads. Maggie seemed shocked at first, but then she screamed and charged at Hannah. She grabbed the hose away, giggling, and sprayed Hannah and Michael and even the back windows of the house, like she was an action hero in a Hollywood movie.

Michael jumped in a mud puddle that was forming. Hannah worried about that puddle, briefly, but then Maggie turned the hose on her, spraying her in the face. Hannah grabbed the hose, laughing, Michael threw himself at them, and they all fell down, giggling in the mud.

“You are a mud monster!” Michael yelled. Hannah looked at Maggie and they started laughing so hard, Hannah's belly hurt.

And then she heard a car engine on the road.

Her heart started pounding and she jumped to her feet.

“Quick, let's get cleaned up.”

As they were toweling themselves off, Maggie glanced at her with admiration. “I've never heard you laugh,” Maggie said in Russian, then switched to English. “You're cool.”

Hannah realized she hadn't laughed, not in a long time. This was the most fun she'd had in ages. “You are cool also,” she answered in English, helping Maggie up.

An hour later, when Lillian's Cadillac SUV came up the driveway, Hannah was sitting with the children on a blanket on the dry part of the lawn. The children were still wearing their bathing suits, but she'd hosed them off, and they were eating a snack of sliced-up apples and drinking strawberry compote.

The side gate opened. Lillian's heels kicked up the gravel along the path. When Lillian came around the corner of the house, she gasped, bringing her hand to her face.

Hannah looked around. The children were clean. She'd even dried off the water on the windows with a newspaper, like Babulya had shown her.

“What?” she asked.

“You have made a swimming pool on my lawn.”

There was a fairly large mud puddle—she hadn't been that concerned about it before.

“Mommy, it was so much fun,” Maggie gushed in English.

“Russian, Maggie,” Lillian said automatically.

Maggie switched back. “We played restaurant with the buckets and we ran through the hose. I got to wear my new bathing suit.” She stood up and posed, sticking out her behind, which made Lillian smile at least.

“Did you put sunscreen on them?” Lillian asked Hannah.

“Yes, she did,” Maggie said, grinning. Thankfully, Maggie had reminded her.

“Well, it's not a total disaster,” Lillian said, tossing back her blonde hair. “I had a good meeting and it looks like you had fun. Even if our lawn is a mess.” She looked at Hannah and nodded. “Good job.”

Michael let out a shriek and tackled Hannah and she fell back, tickling him, and they all laughed, even Lillian.