Trafficked (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-five

S
ergey and Lillian were sitting at the glass kitchen table reading their newspapers while Hannah cooked eggs at the stove. Maggie was upstairs getting ready for school, and Michael was watching Russian
Sesame Street
in the living room.

“What do you think about Hannah taking some English classes?” Sergey asked.

Hannah couldn't believe it. Finally. It had been weeks since she'd asked him to help her. She fumbled with the spatula and nearly dropped it, which would have been another opportunity for Lillian to say, “Don't burn down the house.”

“I don't see any reason for her to take English classes.” Lillian took a slurpy sip of tea and opened her newspaper. “She hasn't shown any interest. If she was motivated, she could have been studying the dictionary.”

Hannah wanted to protest. Every time Lillian was out of the house, she opened the dictionary and looked up words she didn't know, but she didn't have her own dictionary and Lillian had never given her that grammar book she'd promised.

“It would be good for the children,” Sergey said.

“She's supposed to speak Russian to them,” Lillian said.

Hannah could feel Lillian glaring at her back, but she flipped the eggs for the third time and pretended she wasn't listening.

“She could help Maggie with her homework,” Sergey said.

Lillian sputtered out a laugh. “Right.”

Hannah had been one of the smart kids all her life and she wanted to defend herself, but she knew if she said anything, it would ruin any chance she might have.

“There are free classes,” Sergey continued, and Hannah couldn't help but admire his persistence.

“Did she ask you to talk to me?” Lillian asked.

Hannah flipped the eggs again to keep her hands busy, even though they would be overdone and Lillian would complain.

“No,” Sergey lied. “I think it would be good for her. One of Paavo's girls took them.”

“He let her?” She sounded incredulous.

“Yeah.”

“He was probably screwing her,” she said, waving her hand in the air as if to discount what Sergey had said. “It's not safe for Hannah to talk to other people, Sergey, you know that. It's too risky for our family and too risky for her.”

“Have you been talking to Rena again?” he asked.

Hannah couldn't help grinning at the eggs as she slid them out of the frying pan and onto a plate. She wiped the smile off her face and walked toward the table with the plate of eggs. “Michael,” she called, poking her head into the living room. “Breakfast.” He stared at the television, mesmerized. Hannah put the eggs on the table.

Lillian waved the newspaper in the air. “Didn't you see the article about the arrests?”

“What?” Sergey asked.

“A group of illegal Russian women were caught yesterday—fifteen of them.”

Sergey looked back at his paper. “Paavo mentioned something.”

“All of them were put in jail.” Lillian gave Hannah a meaningful look, eyebrows raised. “They don't get lawyers because of that terrorism bill.”

Hannah walked up to the table and tried to see the article over Lillian's shoulder, but Lillian closed the paper.

“Were they terrorists?” Hannah asked.

“No, but they don't have any documentation, so they fall under the same category,” she said. “This is why you have to be careful, Hannah.”

Sergey looked over his paper. “That's ridiculous, Lily. They're whores.”

Hannah glanced back, surprised at the disgust in his voice.

“Rena told me Paavo is worried,” Lillian said. “There's a crackdown happening. They're taking everyone into custody.”

“What do you mean, everyone?”

“Police are asking any foreigners for documents. It's that new mayor, what's his name?”

“Hmm.”

“It's serious, Sergey.” She reached over and poked him.

“Ow,” he said. “Okay, it's serious.”

“I don't want her to leave the house. Do you hear that, Hannah? I don't want you to go out.” She shook her finger at Hannah, like she was a dog. “The neighbors shouldn't see you. You need to stay inside. Sergey, you should start taking out the garbage.”

He nodded and looked back at his paper. Hannah glared at Lillian. Did she really think with the snap of her finger she could take away the best part of the day? Forget it. She wouldn't give it up, not for anything. If Lillian wanted to pick a fight with her, she'd fight.

Chapter Twenty-six

H
annah crept along the old green fence. She was holding a heavy bag of stinky garbage to use as a reason for coming outside. Small stones poked her feet through the thin soles of her slippers.

A droplet of sweat snaked down the side of her face. It was hot outside, especially for eleven o'clock at night in October. Los Angeles was having a heat wave—everyone was worried about fires after the dry summer. Hannah's mouth felt parched no matter how much water she drank. At night, she always had a glass of water by her bed, and she kept the door open whenever she thought she wouldn't get caught, so that the air-conditioning would drift into the garage.

She pushed on the wooden slat in the fence.
Creak
. Her hand hovered in the air as she looked up at the master bedroom window. Her heart was ramming about in her chest. The curtain didn't move. She let out the breath of air she'd been holding and thought she should pour some oil on that nail.

The boy was in his room, dressed this time in a Lakers basketball jersey, sitting at an old wooden desk in the corner of his room, which was as messy as the last time. He pulled a sketchbook and a skinny black felt pen out of the drawer and smoothed the blank page with one hand.

He began to draw, and his back curved as he brought his face closer to the page. She could see a thick, arching line he was filling in with his pen, but couldn't tell what he was drawing. His whole body seemed to relax as he drew, like he got lost in it.

His door burst open and his mother flew into his room. The boy shut his sketchbook. “Mom!”

His mother had curly blonde hair and a big laugh, just like his, but unlike him, she never stopped moving. As soon as she got home from work, she was cleaning, folding clothes, making phone calls, always walking around the house, putting things away. She looked around his room. “Did you throw the clothes I just folded all over your floor again?”

Hannah mouthed her words just like she always did. The family's windows were always open, so if Hannah opened the back door while she was cooking or cleaning up, she could hear them talking in their loud voices. She repeated everything they said, gulping down their words like the watery soups from those last few months in Moldova.

The boy dropped his arm with the pen to his side, as if he was waiting for the lecture. She seemed to get angry at him a lot lately.

“What the hell, Colin . . .” His mother shook her head and for a moment looked like she might cry.

His name was Colin! The name rolled like butter over her tongue. “Colin,” she whispered, and the darkness held his name like a present.

“I folded everything,” his mother went on. “All you had to do was put your clothes in your dresser.”

Colin stared at her without saying anything, and for the first time, Hannah saw fury in those bright blue eyes, in that kind face that had smiled at her so brightly when he waved from the bus.

His mother pointed at the mess. “Pick them up.”

“I'm busy,” he said. “I'll do it later.”

Hannah understood nearly everything they were saying, except that word “dresser,” which she told herself she'd look up in the dictionary later when no one was looking.

“Busy?” His mother marched up to him and grabbed his limp arm. “Now. Get up. Get off your lazy butt!” When he didn't move, she whacked him on the side of the head. He cringed. Hannah cringed with him.

“Get up!” she yelled again, louder now, and Hannah glanced up at the window above her, worried that the noise would wake everyone up. The curtain didn't move.

He stood up. “Chill out. I'm up.”

Chill out?

“When are you taking out the garbage?” his mother demanded.

Now
, Hannah thought,
please, do it now
.

“Tomorrow. In the morning.”

Hannah felt the disappointment in her stomach, like a hunger she couldn't satisfy.

“It's always tomorrow with you. I'm sick of you sitting around like a fat, lazy pig,” his mother said, her voice shaking with fury. Her curly blonde hair quivered like electricity. “You're just like your father. Selfish. Selfish. Selfish.” Colin blinked each time she repeated the word, and his fingers curled up slowly, but the rest of his body stayed completely still.

His mother glared at him one last time, then strode out of the room and slammed the door. Colin sank back into his chair.

Hannah felt awful that his mother had said those mean things to him. She'd seen his mother laughing with him and his brother, talking with them at the dining room table, sincerely interested in their lives, and she felt pretty sure she was just having a bad day, but still. How would she feel if that was the last word she ever got to say to him?

Hannah's mother had never said anything unkind to her, while the last thing Hannah had said to her was that she was
tupaya
—stupid. She'd wished a million times she could take back that word. Even worse, it was over something as silly as a curfew. Her friends didn't have one and she didn't think it was fair that she did, so she'd called her mother stupid. She'd never forget that look in her mamulya's green eyes, the eyes that matched her own. It was like Hannah had hit her. Two days later, her parents were killed by the terrorist's bomb at a café in Transnistria, probably while her mamulya was sipping her tea, thinking about how her only child had called her stupid.

Colin stared at the door, as if he was waiting for his mother to burst back into the room. When it became apparent that she was really gone, his whole body sagged like the air being let out of a balloon.

Hannah realized then that maybe Colin needed a friend as much as she did. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and give him a hug, but she was stuck on this side of the fence.

Just ignore her
, Hannah thought.
Come outside. Bring the garbage out.

“Hannah!” It was Lillian by the back door.

Colin glanced back at the window. He'd heard! Hannah jumped away from the opening in the fence and pressed herself against the scratchy wood. Had he seen her? She looked down at the garbage bag in her hand. She'd have to cross the opening to get to the cans. Or leave it here. But if Lillian saw a garbage bag sitting by the opening in the fence, she'd know exactly what she'd been doing. She took one fast step to cross the opening and hurried to the garbage can. She raised the lid and lowered the bag into the can, trying not to make a sound.

“Where are you, Hannah?” Lillian was speaking Russian, which Colin couldn't understand, but she was speaking so loudly he was sure to hear.

Hannah hurried along the gravel walkway and rounded the corner of the house. “I'm here,” she said softly.

Lillian was standing on the lawn in a short yellow cotton nightgown and white slippers. “What are you doing?” she asked.

Hannah remembered to keep her voice calm. “I'm taking out the garbage,” she said.

“I told Sergey to do it.”

“Really, I can do it,” Hannah said, managing a casual smile. “Nobody will see me. It's nighttime.”

“Go inside.”

Hannah bit her lip and walked back across the lawn. There had to be something she could do to make Lillian trust her.

Chapter Twenty-seven

H
er chance came a few nights later.

“Wake up,” a voice said.

The light in the garage turned on. Hannah blinked her eyes open and squinted at Lillian, who was standing in the doorway to the garage in her white nightgown.

“Michael's sick,” she said. “Come.”

Hannah jumped out of her sleeping bag and pulled her bra up and under the black T-shirt she was wearing, a new T-shirt Lillian had bought her to replace “that small monkey one.” She glanced at the clock—five after two in the morning—and hurried up the stairs after Lillian.

Michael was crying in his bedroom. Sergey was crouched beside Michael's bed, wearing pale blue pajamas, the tips of his fingers fluttering along Michael's forehead. “Shh,” he was saying. “Shh, my boy.” But it didn't seem to help. Hannah smelled vomit in the room.

Lillian came up. “Okay. Go to sleep,” she said to Sergey. “Hannah can help.”

He nodded, glancing at Hannah briefly, as if he were afraid to look at her too long, and stumbled out of the room back to the master bedroom.

“Sergey can't stand the smell,” Lillian said.

Hannah could barely take it herself. That was the problem with having a sensitive nose.

Lillian pulled Michael's pajamas and overnight diapers off him and handed them to Hannah. They were all wet and sticky. “Clean these and change the sheets. I'll hold him. Get me a wet washcloth.” Lillian picked up Michael, who was now naked and wailing even louder.

Hannah didn't know what Lillian wanted her to do first, but figured it was most important to get Michael cleaned up. She dropped his pajamas onto the dirty sheet and then picked up his fuzzy blue blanket from his dresser to wrap around him. “Here,” she said.

“Thank you.” Lillian took it, wrapped it around him, and sat in the rocking chair in the corner. Michael buried his head in his mother's chest, whimpering. Lillian really could be a good mother when she tried, Hannah thought.

Hannah rushed to the bathroom, wet a washcloth, and hurried back. She ran it over Michael's mouth and face. “Do you want water, little rabbit?” Hannah asked him. “To clean out your mouth?”

He nodded, blinking his teary blue eyes at her. In the bathroom, she filled a glass of water and rushed back in.

Lillian helped him drink it. His crying stopped.

Hannah wiped off his body and arms with the washcloth. She grabbed a new diaper and pajamas, and put them on Michael while Lillian held him. Hannah always dressed him nowadays. Lillian had to chase him around to get anything on him, but he always cooperated for Hannah.

Once he was dressed, Hannah took the blue blanket, which had gotten dirty, and handed Lillian the alphabet one. Then she grabbed the dirty sheets, blanket, and clothes and hurried them downstairs. She wondered if she should rinse them first in the sink, but just threw them in the washing machine on hot with lots of soap. She ran back upstairs.

Michael was moaning in his mom's arms. Hannah felt his forehead. He was hot. “I don't want to give him Tylenol,” Lillian said, “but I will if I have to.”

“My mother never liked to give me medicine either.” Hannah remembered the cold leaf poultices her mother had applied to her forehead and her armpits when she got a fever.

“Why does it smell still?” Lillian asked.

Hannah looked. The rug on the floor was soaked, along with the side of the bed. Hannah rolled up the rug, brought it downstairs, then went back up with a spray bottle of cleaning liquid and paper towels. After she'd cleaned the floor and the bed, the room smelled a little better, but not great. Hannah lit the vanilla candle on the shelf.

Lillian urged Michael to drink more water. Hannah's mother used to do the same, and then Hannah would keep throwing up until she felt better. Michael began to cough. Hannah rushed for the garbage can, but it was too late. Michael started to gag and began to throw up again, all over his mother and his clothes.

Lillian looked so disgusted that if Hannah didn't know better, she would have laughed. Didn't she expect him to throw up again? “Here,” Lillian said, handing over Michael with her arms stretched out. “I need to change.”

Michael was screaming in distress, and Hannah clucked her tongue while she took off his clothes. Once he was naked again, she used wipes to get the vomit off his body, then put fresh clothes on him. Holding him on her hip, she wiped off the rocking chair and sat back down with him, remembering to lock the rocking chair. It was a little silly to rock a child with a queasy stomach. She put a cold wipe on his head. He whimpered, then wrapped his little hand around her neck and fell asleep.

Shortly afterward, Lillian came back in the room, looked down at her sleeping son, and felt his forehead. Hannah could feel that he was starting to cool off.

“I don't want to wake him,” Lillian said.

“Don't worry,” Hannah said. “I'll hold him while he sleeps. If he wakes up and needs you, I'll come to get you.”

Lillian agreed and left the room. Hannah rested her head back and drifted to sleep.

In the morning, Hannah was in the kitchen with Michael when Lillian walked in. She was holding Michael on her lap, feeding him a murky white liquid that her mother had always called rice soup, though the rice had been strained out.

“What is that?” Lillian asked, walking into the kitchen.

Hannah tensed up, ready for Lillian to call her a village girl again. “It's rice soup, for the diarrhea.”

Lillian laughed. “My grandmother used to make that for me. I forgot about it.”

Hannah let out a breath of relief.

“Mama, I want sirok bar,” Michael said.

“Not today. You're sick.” Lillian bent over and kissed his forehead, then looked at Hannah. “No fever. I guess he's feeling better. You held him all night?”

“Yes,” Hannah said.

Lillian gave her a long look and then nodded quickly. Hannah grinned and kissed the top of Michael's curly blond hair. Lillian was starting to believe in her, even if she wouldn't yet admit it. Maybe she'd even start paying her early.