by Kim Purcell
Chapter Eight
Hannah ate in the kitchen. In the other room, Sergey and Lillian were talking in low voices, probably about getting her documents. Hannah tried to listen, but she couldn’t catch what they were saying. At least she was still wearing the pouch with the documents hidden around her waist.
She’d already made the mistake of giving up her real Moldovan passport, the only document that proved who she really was. If she didn’t want to give them the Russian documents, she’d have to lie, though the thought of lying more, especially to Lillian, made her sick to her stomach. Katya was a better liar—she’d know exactly what to say and how to say it. She always said a good lie needed just the right amount of details, and it also had to have some truth in it.
Hannah sighed. Her eyes felt heavy and her whole body ached. Now that she was sitting down, all the traveling and the lack of sleep hit her. She finished the chicken and took a bite of the potatoes, but she was too tired to chew. She pushed her plate away, folded her arms in front of her, and rested her head.
Just for a minute. They’d never know.
The smell of the chicken brought back a memory of her mother cooking in the kitchen in Chişinău, wearing her sunflower apron. She was singing a Russian folk song, flipping a cut-up chicken with potatoes, carrots, and onions sizzling in the same pan. Her long dark hair was swinging down to the small of her back, as her thin body swayed back and forth. Hannah was drinking tea, reading a book, not even really appreciating the moment. She didn’t know it would be the last time she’d hear her mother sing.
Hannah was jerked awake by the sound of a door sliding open and male laughter. The whole family was looking down at her. She sat up, blinking.
Sergey laughed. “The poor girl, she is too tired.”
Hannah rubbed her eyes. How long had she been asleep?
Lillian was frowning. “All that good food.”
Hannah reached for her fork. “I’ll eat it.”
“We’ll save it for you.” Lillian took Hannah’s plate away. “You need to sleep. But first, why don’t you give us your documents and your plane ticket? We’ll keep them in a safe place.”
“No,” she burst out. They stared at her. What had she just done? Her brain felt groggy. She wanted to trust them, she really did, but she didn’t want to make another mistake. If she gave them the documents and the plane ticket, she’d have no way to leave if she didn’t like it here.
“I can’t,” she stammered. “I lost them.”
“What?” Lillian glanced at Sergey.
Hannah stared at her suitcase, remembering that the plane ticket was in the suitcase, not in her pouch. She felt ill that she hadn’t thought to hide it, but it was done now. She had to go on. “I left my purse at the airport. It had everything.”
Lillian squinted at her in disbelief, then looked down at the suitcase.
Hannah thought about the truth that must be in any lie. “I went to the bathroom and I left it there. It’s a white leather purse with tassels.” She really did have a purse like that, but she’d decided it was too old for the trip to America.
“Why didn’t you tell us earlier?” Lillian asked.
“I only just realized, after you started eating, and I figured it had probably been stolen by now, so I didn’t think there was anything we could do.”
“Mom, can I watch TV?” Maggie said, as if this was boring to her.
“Give Michael a bath first,” Lillian said, then opened a drawer and heaved a thick yellow phone book onto the counter. She flipped through it and ran a polished pink nail down the page.
A few minutes later, Hannah heard Michael giggling in the bathroom down the hall. The girl was just eight and she helped give her brother a bath. This was a good family. She wished she’d just given them the documents. Why couldn’t she trust someone for once?
Lillian picked up the phone and dialed. “Give me Lost and Found.” Hannah was impressed at first by how fluent she was, but then, when she continued, her English was slow and halting. “I pick up my husband niece from airport two hours before and she leave purse in bathroom. It have passport, visa, airplane ticket.” She listened and asked Hannah in Russian, “Which bathroom?”
Hannah had to think quickly. “Between immigration and when I came out. By the baggage area.”
After a pause, Lillian said, “Elena Platonov.” She nodded a couple times as if the person could see her. “Okay,” she said, like “ahkay,” which didn’t sound right. Hannah remembered her English teacher drilling them on that “o” sound, lips forward, like they were kissing.
“Do you want me to talk?” Sergey asked, reaching for the phone.
Lillian stepped back, gave the person a phone number, and hung up. “Don’t insult my English,” she said, poking him with a smirk on her face. “You speak no better than I do.”
“That’s true.” He laughed. “What did they say?”
“No one has turned it in. They’ll call us if they find it.”
She believed her. Hannah let out a sigh.
Lillian frowned. She’d caught her sigh. Of course, Hannah thought, she wouldn’t be relieved if she were innocent—she’d be disappointed they hadn’t found her purse.
Lillian looked down at the suitcase by Hannah’s feet. “I need to look in your suitcase.”
“It’s not in there,” Hannah said, mortified that Lillian was going to look through all of her things, especially her old underwear and the pictures of her family.
“If it’s not there, you don’t mind if I look.”
“Here? In the kitchen?”
“Why not?” Lillian said.
“She could unpack her bag in the playroom,” Sergey suggested. “Where she’ll be sleeping.”
“Whatever,” Lillian said, glancing at him with irritation. “Come on.”
They led her down the hall and around the corner, past a washer and dryer and through a door. It didn’t look like a playroom to her—it looked like a garage. It had some old shelves filled with toys and a parking lot of children’s riding toys and bicycles. Next to the door was a sofa with a sleeping bag and a pillow, where she was presumably going to sleep. There were no windows, and the two garage doors were chained up. Was that so nobody could get in or so she couldn’t get out? It felt like a prison, and the pink and blue braided children’s rug in the middle of the cement floor did nothing to soften this feeling.
“I wish I could sleep in the playroom,” Maggie sighed from behind her while Hannah stared in horror at what would be her room.
Lillian laughed. “No, you don’t. After ten minutes, you would be running up the stairs and coming into our room.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
Hannah glanced back at Maggie. Hannah had always slept in the same room as her parents and she’d never had a nightmare that she could remember, not until they died. After that, she’d had the same one every night. In the beginning, it had left her shaking and sobbing for an hour or even more, with Babulya rubbing her back the whole time; but now she simply got up, splashed cold water on her face, and went back to sleep.
“That’s where you’ll sleep,” Lillian said, pointing at the sofa. “You can put your things in those boxes.”
Hannah saw she was referring to some empty cardboard boxes piled next to the sofa. She couldn’t believe she had to sleep in a garage. What about the room upstairs?
“Your suitcase?” Lillian said, trying to take it from her.
Hannah glanced at Sergey, embarrassed that he was going to see her underwear and fabric sanitary pads, and looked back at Lillian. “I have private things.”
Sergey spoke up: “I won’t look.”
Reluctantly, Hannah put the suitcase on the sofa and unzipped it, hoping Lillian wouldn’t see the front pocket where she’d foolishly put the flexible return p
lane ticket because it was too bulky for the pouch under her clothing. Lillian sifted through the suitcase with the tips of her fingers as if Hannah’s things were too disgusting to touch. Maggie and Michael crowded in. Hannah sat on the sofa beside her suitcase and bit nervously on her lip. Michael grabbed at Hannah’s shiny blue belt, and Lillian swatted at his hand. “Dirty,” she said.
“Nothing’s dirty,” Hannah said, insulted. “Except for my traveling clothes.”
“We will get you new things.”
Hannah wanted to say that her things were just fine, thank you very much, but she kept her mouth shut. It was true that the hems of her pants were pretty dirty from when she’d stepped in a mud puddle before she got on the bus. Lillian winced as she picked up her traveling clothes and placed them on the rug. Do you want to get your surgical gloves? Hannah thought. It’s just a little dirt. Moldovan dirt. Without realizing it, she’d brought Moldova with her. She wondered if she should flake it off and keep it somewhere, though of course that was silly.
Lillian flipped the suitcase shut in frustration.
Sergey came in. “Nothing?”
“No.”
Sergey didn’t say anything, but he smiled that tight smile of his, as if to say I told you so.
Hannah held her breath, hoping she wouldn’t think about the front pocket. No luck. Lillian unzipped it and reached inside.
Hannah felt her insides groan like an old building.
Lillian pulled out the picture of her parents first and glanced at it briefly before handing it over. Her parents were sitting on the large granite steps that went up to the National Opera House with its large concrete pillars. Her papa had his arm around her mama, who was smiling that wide smile of hers. They were happy back then. Papulya used to be a mechanic, but he was so much more than that. People joked he was the most literary mechanic they knew. When she was just six, he’d started reading all the great Russian literature to her: works by Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, and Tolstoy. At first she didn’t understand the words, but she loved to hear the passion in her father’s voice. Then, when she was just twelve, her father’s father died in police custody—beaten to death by the police for no apparent reason—and her sweet Papulya had abandoned his books and turned instead to the bottle.
“Can I see?” Maggie asked.
Hannah handed her the photo, even though she didn’t want to. Maggie looked at it, her eyes opening wide. “That’s your mother?” she asked.
Hannah nodded, wondering if Maggie knew her parents were dead. She dreaded having to answer more questions, but then Maggie handed the picture to her father, who gazed down, longer than she would have expected, out of politeness, probably.
Lillian handed her the picture of Katya. “Pretty girl,” she said, then pulled out the picture of Daniil at the Black Sea. He looked sexy wearing his Speedo. On impulse, Hannah had taken it from her desk and slid it in her suitcase, though she regretted it now.
“Boyfriend?” Lillian asked.
Hannah shook her head. She and Daniil had been together for three years, and he’d told her he wanted to marry her, but when her uncle Vladi disappeared, she had to finish school at the end of eleventh grade instead of twelfth. It was a perfectly acceptable grade to graduate, but all her friends were continuing to twelfth, which would count as a first year of university. She would have liked to do the same thing, but she had to go to the market every day to help her babushka. It was the responsible thing to do, and she planned to take night classes, but Daniil told her he wanted someone more ambitious, like he didn’t know her at all.
Lillian handed Daniil’s picture to her, and Hannah pressed it facedown on her lap.
Next, Lillian pulled out Hannah’s keys to her apartment and dangled them in the air. “What are these for?”
Hannah shrugged. “I forgot I had them.” She knew it was crazy to bring her keys for the apartment, since Babulya was moving to her uncle Petru’s house in a couple of days, but she’d carried them everywhere she went for as long as she could remember.
“Why didn’t you have them in your purse?” Lillian asked.
“That’s why I forgot about them,” she stammered.
Lillian tossed them on the sofa and Hannah snatched them up. The keys were familiar in her hand and calmed her.
The plane ticket was near the bottom. Hannah held her breath. Lillian pulled out Anna Karenina and raised her eyebrows at Hannah. “You’re reading this?”
“It’s my favorite book,” Hannah said, her voice shaking. The only thing left was the plane ticket. Lillian reached back inside.
Hannah had to distract her somehow. She waved the book in the air. “Have you read it?”
“Of course I’ve read it,” Lillian muttered, reaching deep in the pocket. Hannah cringed as she pulled out the plane ticket. “Look what I found,” Lillian said to Sergey, raising her eyebrows.
“I forgot about it,” Hannah rushed to explain. “Now I remember it was too big for my purse, so I put it there.”
“It must have been a small purse.” Lillian gaped at her. “Now I see what Paavo meant about slippery Moldovans. Why didn’t you tell us you had the ticket?”
“Honestly, I thought it was in my purse.” It sounded lame, even to Hannah’s ears.
“Where are the passport and visa?” Lillian planted her hands on her hips.
“In my purse. Definitely.” She licked her lips and then remembered that Katya said you should never lick or bite your lips. It looks like you’re lying. Her face flushed and her eyes watered, giving her away again and again. It was so clear she was lying that she wanted to give up, but she stumbled on, like a runner whose legs have cramped up. “You can see I don’t have them.”
“Empty your pockets.”
Hannah reached into her pockets and felt the pouch through the thin fabric. If Lillian tried to check in her pockets, she’d feel the pouch, so she turned the empty pockets inside out.
“Let me see your bra,” Lillian said. “Sergey, turn around.”
“Who wants to play with Legos?” he said, walking away and pulling a box of toys from the shelf. Michael ran up and they sat down on the pink and blue rug. Maggie stayed, staring up at Hannah, blinking. Hannah didn’t blame her. It had to be fascinating for an eight-year-old.
“Undo your top.”
Hannah hesitated, looking down at Maggie. “Can she—?”
“Maggie, go to your father.” Reluctantly, Maggie walked over to the rug, and Lillian stared at Hannah, waiting.
This was her body, Hannah thought, her eyes watering. This woman had no right.
But still, she undid the top buttons on her blouse, revealing her old beige bra, which was one size too big and had a hole in the lace, and once again she felt ashamed.
“More,” Lillian said.
She gulped down the saliva gathering in her throat and undid two more buttons, all she dared. Any more and Lillian would see the top of the pouch above the waistband of her jeans. Hannah slid the few sweaty lei out of her bra. In Moldova, lots of girls kept spare money in their bras, babushka style.
“You can see I don’t have them.”
Lillian cupped the outside of her bra, feeling for the documents. She was just inches above the pouch. Hannah sucked in a nervous breath.
“It’s okay. I’m a doctor,” Lillian reminded her, speaking softly as she dropped her hands.
Hannah promised herself that when she became a doctor, she was never going to use that as an excuse to touch someone. “The documents are in my purse,” she said, stepping back to do up her shirt, glaring at her. “If I had them, I’d easily give them to you.”
Lillian was staring at Hannah’s hands as she fumbled to do up the buttons.
“What do I need them for?” Hannah said, her voice shaking. “I’m already in America.”
“My wife thinks she is a lie detector,” Sergey said, laughing from his spot on the pink and blue rug. “She should have been in the secret police. She is always looking for the lies.”
“I am not,” Lillian said, rolling her eyes. Then she looked back at Hannah and spoke to her in a quiet voice, too low for Sergey to hear. “Did someone hurt you?”
The question was so out of the blue, it startled Hannah. She blinked at her.
“You are bruised.” Lillian pointed at her chest, above her bra, where there were purple and red marks on her skin.
Hannah’s eyes teared up. “I’m fine,” she said, stepping backward. Her hands shook as she forced the buttons into the too-tight buttonholes, covering herself up. She didn’t want to talk about that.
Lillian was silent for a moment. Finally she said, “We’ll call again about your purse in the morning.” Lillian picked up the plane ticket and frowned, turning to Sergey. “Didn’t you pay a lot more than this for the ticket?”
Hannah, dizzy from exhaustion, found it hard to follow what Lillian was saying. How could they have paid even more? The plane ticket was over eight hundred dollars.
“The fees included the ticket, the agent’s fee, and the documents,” Sergey said. “It was cheap, really, considering.”
“Cheap? Besides the fee, he charged extra for everything, even the ticket.”
Was she talking about the bad agent?
“You are in charge of the money,” he said, shrugging as he sauntered out of the garage.
“Come on, children. We have to let Elena sleep,” Lillian said, waving them out.
She was still holding her plane ticket. Hannah tried desperately to figure out what she could say to convince Lillian to leave it with her. There was nothing.
“G’night,” Maggie said to Hannah.
“Russian,” Lillian barked.
“Mo-om,” Maggie said, heading out to the hall.
Lillian flicked off the light and walked out, carrying the plane ticket with her. Hannah climbed into the sleeping bag with her clothes on, rested her head on the musty-smelling pillow, and looked around the too-dark garage. She was with a good family, she told herself. It didn’t matter if they had her plane ticket. She could have done worse, she thought, thinking of the bad agent and that hippopotamus, their friend Paavo. A lot worse.