Trafficked

by Kim Purcell

  That was crazy. She should be free to go if the work was done. “Why?”

  “We don’t want you wandering around the neighborhood, announcing your presence. You are illegal, remember? If the police find out about you, they’ll put you in jail.”

  If she’d known about the fake documents from the beginning, she never would have come. “Will I be able to go to school?”

  “School? The student visa was only to get you in the country, and anyway, you’ve lost it. You didn’t really think you’d have time to go to school, did you?” Lillian asked.

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “Believe me, I’ve been trying to study for the last eight years. It’s impossible to do anything when you have to clean a house and take care of children.”

  Surely she’d have some time off. “But this is why I came to America.”

  “I was under the impression you were here to work,” Lillian said, a wrinkle forming in the center of her forehead.

  “I am,” Hannah said quickly, not wanting to upset Lillian. She thought of the four hundred dollars she’d make every week, money that would fix Babulya’s eyesight. “But I could take classes at night.”

  “Maybe. Let’s see how you adjust.” Lillian took a slurpy sip of tea and continued. “Number six—turn off the air-conditioning when the children are not home. We’re adults and we can sweat, but the heat is too much for them. And the garage doesn’t have insulation, so you need to keep that door closed. I don’t want to waste electricity.”

  Hannah had never had air-conditioning in her life, so this wasn’t a big deal. “Okay.”

  Number seven. Stay out of the office.

  Number eight. Speak only Russian to the children.

  “Maggie speaks English very well,” she said tentatively.

  “Exactly. We don’t want her to lose her Russian.” Lillian gave her a firm look.

  Hannah nodded. Maybe Lillian would relax over time.

  “Rule number nine. We don’t want any friends coming over, and we absolutely forbid boyfriends. Or boys you say are just friends.”

  Hannah wondered how she’d make friends anyway, if she couldn’t go to school and had to ask for permission to go anywhere. She thought of the boy next door. “Why not?”

  Lillian looked up sharply. “A lot of you girls say you want to work, but you spend all your time looking for a husband.”

  “I’m not looking for a husband.” This was the whole point of coming to America, so that she could support herself. If she married one day, it would be for love.

  “And finally . . .” Lillian placed the paper on the glass table and flattened it with her hand. “Rule number ten. I don’t want you hanging around Sergey. If he talks to you, answer him but look at the floor. He’s a man, like any other, and he has male instincts.”

  Look at the floor? “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m not like that.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  Hannah thought of Paavo’s warning to Lillian the night before and decided that must be why she was being so hard on her.

  “The biggest part of your job is keeping Michael away from me. He’s too attached, and I can’t get anything done. I don’t need any extra stress.” She cleared her throat. “I have to pass Step One in two months. You don’t know how hard it is to relearn microbiology after you’ve been cleaning diapers and wiping noses for eight years.”

  “I’ll keep him occupied,” Hannah said. “Don’t worry. You’ll pass your test.”

  “Thank you.” She relaxed into her chair and smiled. She looked more beautiful than ever, but Hannah couldn’t get rule number ten out of her head. That was definitely strange. Look at the floor?

  “It must have been difficult for you to leave your babushka,” Lillian said.

  Hannah nodded. “She’s all I have.”

  “How have you made a living since your parents died?” Lillian asked.

  “Working at the market.”

  “Did you have enough money for food?”

  Hannah lifted up her chin proudly. She’d never starved. She wasn’t a street kid. “My babushka grew vegetables in her garden in the village, and we traded the carrot salad she made for whatever we needed.”

  “But the winters were hard,” Lillian said, as if she’d been through them herself.

  “We had canning,” Hannah answered. “I didn’t go hungry.” When the canned cabbage, beets, meat, eggplant, and plums had run out at the end of last winter, Babulya traded carrots for bags of beans and they ate beans, carrots, and potatoes for weeks, but she never went hungry.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you now.” Lillian stood up and patted her arm. “Come. I’ll show you all my picky little cleaning details.”

  Chapter Eleven

  By noon, Hannah had already written three pages of notes about things like how to cook broccoli so Michael would eat it and how to work the coffeemaker in the morning. And Lillian still wasn’t finished.

  In the master bedroom, Lillian plunked down on the bed. She patted the spot on the bed next to her. “Sit down. Relax.”

  Hannah sat down. She was already exhausted.

  “I have a favor to ask,” Lillian said, shifting on the bed, running her hand over the down comforter, and crossing her legs in a way that seemed almost flirtatious.

  Oh no. “Yes?” Hannah’s voice croaked out of her.

  “Sergey thinks it’s too much to ask.”

  Hannah inched away, trying not to be too obvious about it. She felt like she had little rocks rolling about under her skin. This was the moment Lillian would ask her to do some sick sexual thing, and everyone back home would be right.

  “I stayed in this beautiful hotel in Japan once with Sergey on a business trip when we were still living in Moscow.” She paused and let out a nervous laugh. “Every morning, a girl came to clean my room. She brought my breakfast and washed my hands with warm washcloths. And then–” Lillian hesitated, licking her lips, as if she was uncertain about whether to go on.

  Hannah was ready to vomit. She’d heard men sniffed girls’ underwear in Japan and did all kinds of weird things.

  Lillian continued, “She put a chocolate on my pillow.”

  Hannah waited for more, but when Lillian didn’t continue, she said, “I don’t understand.”

  “A chocolate.” Lillian strode to her long dresser, pulled open the top drawer, and took out a box of wrapped truffles. “I want you to put one of these on my pillow after you make my bed each day. Just one. And hide the box somewhere.”

  Only a chocolate.

  “Under no circumstances do I want you to tell me where you’ve hidden the box.”

  “I can’t hide it from you.”

  “I insist. I will thank you later, believe me.”

  “What if you’re hungry, and you eat your chocolate before you go to bed?”

  “That’s too bad for me, isn’t it?” Lillian flashed Hannah her pale yellow smile. “That’s all I get. Just one.”

  Hannah could see some problems with this situation, but at least she didn’t have to wash Lillian’s hands with warm washcloths. Then she’d really feel like a servant. Lillian had listed so many cleaning jobs that Hannah had no idea how she’d have time to babysit. Olga had told her that most of the time she’d be babysitting and she’d do some light cleaning. But it looked like the opposite was true.

  Later, Hannah was scrubbing the bathtub in the bathroom off Sergey and Lillian’s room, her fingers all wrinkled and raw, when she heard Sergey drop on the bed with a loud groan.

  She thought he might start undressing, so she called out, “I’m in here.”

  The bed creaked again as he stood up and walked to the bathroom. “Yes?”

  She glanced back at him standing in the do
orway. “I just wanted to warn you.”

  “Why? Are you going to beat me?” He grinned.

  Hannah looked at him in confusion and then realized he was flirting with her. Katya would say something sassy back, but Hannah felt embarrassed and didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. What was he looking at anyway? She was wearing the baggy gray sweat suit, possibly the most unflattering clothing known to mankind.

  He cleared his throat and seemed embarrassed. Maybe he hadn’t meant anything by it. “Lillian has put you to work already?”

  “Yes.” Hannah continued scrubbing, remembering that she wasn’t even supposed to look at him. But if Lillian thought she was going to stare at the floor, she was out of her mind.

  He didn’t leave. She could smell his sports deodorant right behind her. He was still watching her. Maybe he was looking at the strap on the back of her pouch. The sweatpants were a bit loose. She touched the back of her sweatshirt. The strap was covered, but what if he’d seen her check? She had to find a place to hide the documents, a place where no one would look.

  “Sergey!” Lillian said.

  Hannah stiffened.

  “What?” he said, stepping away.

  “Let the girl clean,” Lillian said, her slippers slapping across the hardwood floor. She appeared in the doorway and stared down at Hannah as if it was her fault. “Why do you have so much soap? And why are you using the sponge? I said to use the scrub brush.”

  Hannah stood up, wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her soapy hand. The sweat suit was too hot. “I guess I forgot. There are so many things.”

  “You’ve only done the upstairs. You need to work faster than that or you’ll be up all night.” Lillian turned and stalked out of the room.

  Hannah cleaned all day. At night, after Michael’s bath, she was picking up the bath toys, which he’d thrown around the downstairs bathroom, when a burst of male laughter came through the bathroom window. It was so loud, it felt like someone was in the room with her.

  She peeked past the frilly green curtains and looked out. There was a high green fence between the two houses, but from above, she could see a few feet into the kitchen next door. They had no curtains or blinds, just windows wide open with the lights on for the whole world to see.

  The blond-haired boy was sitting in a yellow chair at a round, bright yellow table, with his mother and a younger brother, around fourteen, who was the opposite of his brother: skinny with longish dark hair. Probably took after his father. Hannah wondered where the father was. Maybe he was dead too. Maybe he died in one of America’s wars, she thought, noting a picture on the wall of a man in a military costume. She wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but at least then they’d have something in common.

  They were eating a brown dessert, maybe chocolate pudding. “Mom, you’ve got to lick the spoon,” the older boy was saying. He stepped out of view and then came back in, licking his spoon with his whole tongue. “Look.” He tilted his face up and hung the spoon on his nose. He wasn’t holding it or anything. Hannah leaned in, mesmerized. She’d never seen anything like it and wondered if it worked better with some noses than others. The whole family seemed to have upturned noses and oversize nostrils.

  The mother was licking her spoon with her whole tongue. There was no way Hannah’s mother would have done this, and it amazed her that any mother would. In Moldova, mothers were too busy or too serious, and sticking your whole tongue out like that, well, it wouldn’t be polite. Hannah kind of liked it that Americans weren’t so worried about being polite or doing what everyone expected, but it also made them a little unpredictable.

  The mother’s spoon stuck to her nose. “I got it,” she screeched. “I got it. Hurry.”

  The younger brother got his spoon up too. Yes! They had it—all three of them had spoons on their noses. It was miraculous. Then the mother’s spoon fell and they all burst into laughter. The older boy laughed with his whole body, clapping one hand on his thigh again and again, head down, belly shaking. Hannah grinned.

  Lillian came into the bathroom and looked over her shoulder, tisking.

  “They’re funny,” Hannah said, glancing back at her.

  “Strange, you mean. They make so much noise, it drives me crazy.”

  Hannah released the curtain. Lillian looked at her firmly, as if she didn’t want her to start acting too American. “You still have to wash the kitchen floor and take out the garbage.”

  Hannah nodded, glancing at the clock on the wall in the bathroom. It was nine thirty. All the rooms had clocks.

  “The rest of the house looks clean,” Lillian said, smiling briefly, before she walked out of the room. Hannah listened to the laughter coming from next door. She couldn’t remember ever hearing her neighbors’ laughter in Moldova.

  It was eleven thirty before she finished working. She climbed into the sleeping bag on the sofa in the hot, windowless garage and stared at the haphazard shelves of toys. This job was going to be much tougher than she’d expected, but it would all be worth it when she got her first four hundred dollars. It would be a glorious thing, that moment when she held the crisp American bills in her hand. She wondered how they would pay her—with four one-hundred-dollar bills or maybe twenty twenty-dollar bills. After three weeks of work, Babulya would get her operation.

  She smiled to herself. Just when it seemed like life wasn’t going to get better, it did. She closed her eyes and fell into such a deep sleep, it was as if she’d been hit on the head by a good old American baseball bat.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was after midnight. Hannah had been in America for one whole week. She wanted to collapse on the musty-smelling sofa in the garage, but there was something she had to do first. She’d stayed up an extra hour to make sure everyone was asleep.

  There were no sounds coming from the bedrooms upstairs. It was safe. She reached under the sofa for the packing tape she’d hidden earlier in the day and then crept across the garage. After Lillian had told her that she really didn’t like playing with the children’s toys, Hannah had decided the toy area would be the best place to hide something. Everywhere else was risky because everything was super organized, but Lillian didn’t like to come in here. Toys made her cringe, she’d said, and not once in the last week had Hannah seen her sit down on the floor with Michael to play with him.

  Hannah took a small board book called Goodnight Moon from the bookshelf, taped the passport in the back, and closed the book. Nobody would ever guess it was where she’d put her documents. She lifted the seat of a fire engine riding toy, which Michael never rode because the wheels didn’t work, and placed the book inside with a small ball on top to grab Michael’s attention if he ever looked there.

  Was that a creak? She listened, holding her breath, but didn’t hear anything else. She wished she could lock the door to the garage.

  Now she had to get rid of the money pouch. If Lillian found even that, she’d know that Hannah had been lying. All week, Hannah had been terrified her shirt would come up while she was cleaning and someone would see the strap. She opened the door to the garage and tiptoed past the washer and dryer, then peeked around the corner, down the hall. The house was quiet. All the lights were off. As long as she could make it to the kitchen, she’d be fine.

  She took off her slippers and held on to them while she slid down the dark hallway in her socks. In the dark kitchen, she dropped the money pouch into the garbage under the sink.

  There was a creak, the sound of a footstep on wood. She smelled the vodka on Sergey’s breath and his overly strong sports deodorant. She spun around. He stepped into the kitchen, from the dining room, wavering a little.

  He gripped the wall. “You are working in the dark?” he slurred.

  Immediately she thought of her socks and how she’d taken off the slippers to be quiet. She put them on the ground and stepp
ed into them, figuring he wouldn’t notice since he was so drunk. “I’m almost finished.”

  He flicked on the switch and stared at her, as if she’d startled him. “You look so much like—” he slurred, stopping suddenly as if remembering himself.

  “Who?” she asked, thinking he was acting strangely.

  “Nobody,” he murmured. “Just someone I knew in Ukraine.”

  A lot of Ukrainians looked like Moldovans if they had Russian in them, but Hannah knew she looked more Moldovan than Russian, even though she was three-quarters Russian, one-quarter Romanian. Her grandfather on her mother’s side had been Romanian, and that was perhaps the reason her olive skin tanned so well, rather than burning like Katya’s, though the bright green of her eyes came from the Russian side. Her mother, her uncle Vladi, and Babulya all had the same eyes.

  Sergey stepped back into the dining room, where she heard the glug of alcohol being poured. She hated that sound. It reminded her of the man her father had become. The brandy her father used to make from sweet beets would fill their house with a rotting, sour odor that she’d never forget. More than once, the pressure cooker he’d rigged to make the alcohol had exploded and burned him. Her mother used to treat his wounds with a leafy plant called plantain that she found in the woods near their apartment on the edge of Chişinău, but Hannah wouldn’t have anything to do with it. She thought the pain served him right.

  Hannah heaved the garbage bag from under the sink. But she wasn’t fast enough. Sergey stumbled out of the dining room, spilling a glass filled with an amber liquid, and stopped, blocking her path to the door.

  She looked up, worried he knew what she was doing. Maybe he wasn’t as drunk as he seemed. His hand was steady as he placed the glass of whiskey on the kitchen counter. She’d seen a bottle in his collection, one that looked a lot like the Moldovan brand her father used to drink when he had money.

  “This is for you,” he said, pushing the glass an inch toward her. “Good job.”