by Kim Purcell
Chapter Two
Hannah tucked her documents in the handmade pouch around her waist, pulled her dirty white shirt over top, picked up the old brown leather suitcase that had belonged to her father, and pushed on the metal doors to exit the baggage area. She jerked to a stop.
On either side of her was a red velvet rope, like they had for the Oscars, which she watched every year on TV. Beyond the rope, maybe a hundred people were waiting, including several men in suits waving signs with names in big block letters.
People darted past her, shouting and waving at long-lost relatives. An older Russian mother with spiky maroon hair rushed forward and embraced what looked like her grown American daughter. They rocked back and forth, weeping silently. Hannah stared at them for a long moment, despite herself, and then took a step forward. This was where she was supposed to meet the family.
And then she saw it. On a small placard, in among all the others, was her new name—Elena Platonov—in bright red letters. A man was holding the sign. Not a family.
She thought about striding past him to find a bathroom, but he’d already spotted her, probably based on the photo she’d sent. His bright blue eyes shone with recognition and he jerked his hand up in the air and smiled at her like she was a long-lost relative, like he was about to grab her and rock her back and forth.
Hannah walked slowly toward him. At least he didn’t look like a pimp or a creep. He had a thick head of reddish blond hair and wide shoulders like an athlete. His smile was Russian, tighter than an American smile, with his teeth clenched together. He was dressed in a black sports jacket, jeans, and a tucked-in blue dress shirt. His nose was on the large side, not perfect, which she always thought was a good sign. People with perfect noses could never be trusted.
But how could she know for sure that he was okay without seeing the family? The first and last time she got in a car with a strange man, it had been the biggest mistake of her life.
She considered her babushka’s last piece of advice to her before she’d left Moldova. Babulya had grabbed her hand just as she was going up the steps to the bus. Her grip was surprisingly strong for her age. Hannah had looked down at her, startled. Babulya’s once brilliant green eyes were coated with thin white cataracts that threatened to cast her into darkness, and Babulya gazed up at her, drinking her in like she might never see her again. Don’t worry, Hannah had thought. I will get your eyes fixed.
Her babushka spoke: “Listen to your nose, my girl.”
“Okay, Babulya,” Hannah had said, though she didn’t know how this would help her. She had what most people would call a very good nose, but it wasn’t an excellent nose; her mother had had an excellent nose. In Gura Bicului, the village where her mother had grown up, she was famous for having smelled the first sparks of a fire in a house halfway across the village. At her parents’ funeral, at least ten people had talked about how her mother had saved the village.
It would be cool to have that kind of a supernose, the kind of nose that saved people, but for Hannah, her nose was a bit of a nuisance. It made foul smells so much worse, and even nice smells could be irritating if they were too strong.
She stopped a few feet away from her new boss. He smelled of sweat and cologne that had been applied earlier in the day, which probably meant he wasn’t trying to impress her. This, at least, was a good sign.
“Hello, sir,” she said in Russian, using the polite form. “I’m Hannah.”
“Call me Sergey,” he answered. “It’s nice to meet you.” He spoke in Russian, but he held his hand out to shake hers like an American.
She wasn’t used to shaking hands—it wasn’t normal for girls or women to shake hands in Moldova—and she worried about the smell that would come from her armpit, but she had no choice. His handshake was warm and strong, though his hand was awfully calloused. How did a businessman get hands like that? She tried to let go, but he kept shaking it, gazing into her eyes.
“Welcome,” he said, and she noticed he had a habit of speaking through his smiling yet clenched teeth. It seemed odd. “Welcome to America.”
“Thank you.”
He still wouldn’t let her go. “You are a beautiful girl,” he said, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it.
Her face flushed. People never said she was beautiful. Except for Katya. But she was her best friend, so it didn’t count.
He released her hand, laughing. “Let’s go,” he said, and picked up her suitcase, which she thought was another good sign. He was a real gentleman.
Chapter Three
Hannah felt like she was floating on a cloud. She was sitting in the front passenger seat of Sergey’s black BMW convertible. The wind flipped her ponytail around as Sergey dodged other slower cars leaving the Los Angeles International Airport. It blew away the trouble in Moldova, the pain of the last year, everything that had happened. She was flying.
Her whole life, she’d either walked or taken buses that jerked her from side to side, bumping over the hundreds of potholes dotting the city streets of Chişinău like acne scars on a beggar’s face. Sergey had even asked her to wear a seat belt, which made it feel more like a gypsy carnival ride than a form of transportation.
If only Katya could see her now, or even better, be here too. A few days before she’d left, she’d gone out with Katya for some trout and cream cheese pizza, which was their favorite. It always made Hannah think of her mother, who used to put everything from the refrigerator on a pizza—carrot salad, crumbly brinza cheese, potatoes, plums—and somehow still made it taste delicious. After the pizza, they’d gone to an American action movie. A little bit of Moldova, Katya had said, tossing her blonde hair, and a little bit of America.
As they left LAX, the BMW sped past a set of blue glowing pillars, which seemed strange and glamorous, because Americans could afford to light up random pillars. In Moldova, most of the streets didn’t have streetlights, even in Chişinău, the capital. And here, there were palm trees everywhere—like a tropical vacation. Hannah wanted to pull out the elastic on her ponytail and let the wind flow through her wavy hair, but she worried it wouldn’t seem professional.
“Did you have a nice trip?” Sergey asked.
She nodded. “Yes.” The flight was good, at least, and she’d left the rest behind.
All the signs on the street were in English. No more Russian. Good. Her plan was not easy, but she knew she could do it. First, she’d take English classes at night and during the weekends. Once she understood everything, she’d finish her last year of high school at a night school in Hollywood that she’d read about on the Internet at Katya’s house. She’d get top grades and then she’d get a student loan to go to medical school, and she wouldn’t have to be a nanny anymore.
Sergey’s cell phone rang from a neat compartment on the dash. He slid it out and answered in Russian. The phone was surprisingly large, and it had a big screen. In Moldova, everyone wanted the small ones.
He drove onto the freeway, darting around other cars while talking fast on his cell phone. It was getting dark and a bit cold. Hannah crossed her arms over her body. Sergey glanced at her, saw her shiver, and turned up the heat. It was such a kind and simple act, it made her want to cry. She leaned into the hot air. It blasted against her face while the cold wind whipped around her. The car’s lights shone on graffiti covering the insides of overpasses, and she remembered a program on television that claimed the excessive graffiti in American streets proved how backward the country was. There was some graffiti in Moldova, but not nearly this much.
She listened to Sergey on the phone; she couldn’t help herself, even though she knew it wasn’t polite. His Russian accent was clipped, like the accents of Moldovans who spoke Russian, though it was a little different, and then she caught the telltale “h” sound where a Russian would use a “g” sound. He had to be Ukrainian.
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sp; “We had some problems at the bank,” he said to the person on the other end. “They want someone else to secure the loan. The bank manager says we’re overleveraged.” It sounded like he was having money problems, but that was impossible with this fancy car.
Sergey exited the freeway and stopped at a light. The air stank of tar and gas and pollution. She spotted three nail shops on different corners of the street, and one doughnut shop. Three young, darker-skinned men were waiting at a bus stop, gazing at the BMW the same way young men in Chişinău looked at elites when they sped past in their Mustangs and their Hummers—with a mixture of anger, jealousy, and admiration.
Sergey pushed a button on the dash and the convertible’s soft top slid over them and clicked in above her head. The lock by her elbow slid down. She wondered why he’d put the top up and locked the doors. Perhaps this was a bad area.
“I’m dropping the girl off now,” Sergey said into the phone. “You can see her later.”
Hannah’s breath caught in her throat. He’d just locked her in and now he was going to drop her off somewhere. Where was she going, and who was coming to look at her?
The light turned green, and the BMW tore off down the street. Sergey slid his phone into the space on the dash. She stared at him with her green eyes opened extra wide; she was giving him “the eye,” as her ex-boyfriend Daniil had called it. Daniil said it was unnerving the way she could look at someone when they’d done something wrong, and Sergey seemed to feel the same. He glanced at her, and then looked away with a frown. He had the look of a guilty man.
Her heart raced, and her cheeks flushed. She felt ill. He’d been so happy she was attractive because he could get more money for her. He was bringing her to a brothel, just as Katya had warned.
She imagined having sex with twenty men a day. That was the number she’d heard. She’d break in half. She was nearly a virgin.
When they stopped at the next light, she looked down at the lock on the door and considered jumping out. She wondered if she could undo her seat belt and unlock the door before he grabbed her. Probably not.
And what if he was really taking her to the family? Even now, after everything, she still couldn’t believe that the good agent had lied to her so convincingly. She decided to ask before she risked her life jumping out of the car.
“You’re dropping me off somewhere?” She could hear an edge of hysteria in her own voice, but she managed to keep her face flat and expressionless.
“At home,” he said, as if everything was normal. “My wife and I are going out for dinner.”
She glanced at the clock. It was eight thirty—late for dinner. “Do you live near here?”
“We are farther north and east. Ten more minutes. This is the south part of La Brea.”
“Oh.” Hannah let out the breath she’d been holding. She was starting to feel silly. She wondered why he’d looked guilty. Had she just imagined it?
“You can make a sandwich. I think the children have eaten.”
She heard the word “children” and dropped back into her seat. He was a father. He did have a family. “Sure,” she said. She had to stop letting all the warnings from people back in Moldova get to her.
When she first told Katya she was going to America, Katya had been furious with her. They were walking along the wide sidewalk of Ştefan cel Mare Boulevard near the park and Katya had pointed at a large poster on the side of the office building. “That’s going to be you,” she’d said, tossing her long blonde hair away from her face and glaring at Hannah.
YOU ARE NOT A PRODUCT, it said. The poster depicted a miniature woman in heels struggling in the palm of a giant hand. It had been drawn by a girl at Hannah’s school—she’d won a contest as part of a campaign to stop the trafficking of Moldovans around the world.
“Katya, my uncle’s wife knows the agent.”
“Still.”
“The mother of the family is a doctor. And it’s not like I’m going somewhere in the Middle East. I’m going to America.”
“Why don’t they hire someone who lives there already?” Katya asked.
Hannah shrugged. “Maybe there aren’t many people who speak Russian who want to do that kind of work. Olga said the mother wants someone who speaks Russian.”
“You think all the Russians who live there are too rich to take care of children?”
“Maybe they don’t want to live with a family,” Hannah said.
Katya stared at her in disbelief. “Even if it’s a real job, you’re going to hate it. You don’t even like to do dishes.”
“I’m not going to wash dishes forever.” Hannah felt a surge of anger that Katya couldn’t be happy for her, but then remembered how Katya had stuck with her after the bombing, when so many others had abandoned her. She had to be honest with her best friend. “I need this, Katya.” Her voice cracked. “I don’t have anything. If I don’t do this, I’m stuck here. I’ll be nothing.”
“You would never be nothing.” Katya’s cheeks sagged a little and Hannah had a glimpse of what she might look like in ten years.
“Cheer up.” Hannah linked her arm in her friend’s. “When I come back, I’ll be rich. We’ll drive around in my new BMW.”
At the time, they’d both laughed at the thought that Hannah would ever be able to afford a BMW. But maybe it wasn’t impossible, Hannah thought. After all, she was sitting in one now. Four hundred dollars a week plus room and board sounded like an impossible fortune in Moldova. But not in America. Together, she and Katya had watched endless repeats of Sex and the City, so they both knew that lots of people in America spent that much on going out for dinner.
Sergey drove for another five minutes in silence. Elegant streetlights out of some old English storybook replaced the neon signs of a few blocks back. Clothing stores with mannequins and restaurants with white tablecloths replaced the doughnut shops and nail salons.
“What do you think of LA?” he asked.
She tried to think of something to say. All she felt was a tentative relief that he wasn’t dropping her off at a brothel. She cleared her throat. “I like the palm trees.”
“Developers planted them here. Los Angeles is actually a big desert.”
So the palm trees were like her. Transplants.
“Look,” he said, pointing up the street at the famous grassy mountainside with the large white block letters: HOLLYWOOD.
“Wow. You live close to here?”
“Not far.”
Maybe she could walk to the Hollywood sign. Touch the letters. That would be something to tell people back home.
After a few minutes, Sergey turned down a quiet street with modest houses and green lawns. It wouldn’t have been remarkable except for the small spotlights on many of the lawns. If she had a million dollars, Hannah thought, she would not light her bushes.
Sergey stopped in the driveway of a white stucco house with a red Spanish tile roof. It had two stories, but it was smaller than both of the neighboring houses. It had a short palm tree in the center of the lawn, with lights around it, like the other houses on the street. It was strange that he’d parked in the driveway, instead of the garage. It would have been cool to see the garage doors open like in the movies and then drive inside.
The car door unlocked and Sergey got out.
Hannah opened her door and followed him down a path to the steps by the front door. It seemed like a normal neighborhood, not a place for a brothel, but she’d feel better once she saw the family.
A blast of noise came from behind her. She turned around and saw a silver car zipping down the street, rap music blaring. The car screeched to a stop in front of the next-door neighbor’s house.
Loud female laughter burst from inside the car. It was a Mercedes.
A blond-haired boy heaved himself out of the car, shaking his head as if he
was embarrassed. He wore low-hanging, oversize jeans and a large American football jersey, which didn’t conceal the large rolls of fat around his belly. He seemed close to Hannah’s age, but it was difficult to tell in the dark.
There was no way a brothel was located right next door to an ordinary American teenager’s house. His house was pink, which was a strange color but made it look friendly. They had two floors as well, and on their lawn, there was a tree with bright pink flowers, which seemed to glow in the car’s headlights. They did not light their bushes.
“See you later,” a girl called from inside the car. Hannah couldn’t believe a girl her age could have a Mercedes, even here in America.
“Catch you later,” he said.
Catch you later. Hannah repeated the phrase in her head. You can catch a ball, but how do you catch a person? She gazed at the boy. Maybe they could hang out.
The boy glanced over at Hannah. He grinned and lifted a hand like he was taking an American pledge. Hannah lifted her hand in response, but then decided that he couldn’t be waving at her because he didn’t know her, and quickly dropped her own hand, hoping he hadn’t seen.
Sergey was taking her suitcase out of the trunk. He grunted out something that sounded like “hello.” Hannah wondered if he could speak English.
The girl’s car backed up fast and zipped down the street. The boy glanced at it once more, walked up the drive, and heaved himself up the steps to his house. Hannah knew she was staring, but she couldn’t stop herself. The boy was fascinating. He pulled out a set of jangling keys, unlocked the door, and opened it just wide enough to squeeze through. It looked like he was sneaking into his own home.
Sergey came around the BMW and rested one hand on her lower back to guide her forward. The unnecessary touch made her nervous. She took a large step away, though she tried to be casual about it so he wouldn’t notice.