by Kim Purcell
“I don’t drink alcohol.”
When her father had started drinking, she’d promised herself she’d never drink, no matter what happened to her, and she never had, not even after her parents were killed. Her friends drank, and she’d hang with them but drink Cola instead.
“Good,” he said, lifting the glass and gulping down the alcohol, fast.
She lifted the garbage bag, turned away from him, and took a step toward the back door.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
Was he suspicious? It would be horrible if he looked in the garbage at that moment and found the pouch. She licked her lips. “I’m taking out the garbage,” she said.
He gave her one of his toothy smiles. His jaw always seemed a little tight, even for a Russian, like he was nervous around her, though that was impossible. “It’s after midnight,” he said. “You’ve worked hard. I’ll do it.” He tried to take the bag from her.
“Please,” Hannah said, holding on to the bag and trying to keep her voice even. “You’re so good to me, but you need to relax. This is my job.”
“For years I have been taking out the garbage,” he slurred.
She didn’t know what to say to that. She heard Lillian’s voice in her head. Rule number ten. Maybe there was a good reason for this rule.
Finally he laughed and waved his hand forward. She picked up the bag and carried it outside into the hot night air, where she took in a shaky breath.
Her slippers sank into the wet grass. The sprinklers were off. The automatic sprinkler went on every night around dinnertime, making a sudden, if quiet, machine-gun noise. The first day, she’d run to the window to watch, beef stew boiling on the stove behind her. It was incredible, water shooting up from the ground like that. Even elites in Moldova didn’t have automatic sprinkler systems. She’d gone for a walk one day with Katya near a gated community in Chişinău and they’d seen a gardener putting out a sprinkler with a long hose. They’d admired the grass, breathing it in, until the gardener made a sharp hissing noise to get them to leave. They’d run off, laughing, and declared that one day they’d have a lawn with real grass.
Hannah swooshed her feet through the grass to the side of the house. Her slippers crunched on the gravel walkway. From the neighbor’s house, she heard some loud bangs like shooting, combined with rap music. She recognized the sounds from the video game system Daniil had bought on the black market. A male voice yelped and then shouted, “Yeah!”
She couldn’t keep herself from grinning. It reminded her of Daniil. Even though she tried not to think of him, sometimes she couldn’t help but miss the way he used to look at her.
She reached the garbage bins, which had wheels, of all things. There was no limit to American luxuries. Holding her breath, she reached into the garbage can and pulled out an older, full garbage bag, and dropped the one from the kitchen to the bottom of the can. She stuffed the older bag on top. If Sergey suspected anything, she hoped he’d look in the wrong one.
When she came back in the house, the kitchen was dark and Sergey seemed to have gone to bed. Her heart was beating so fast, she could hear it pounding in her ears.
She went down the hall to the garage, dropped down onto the sofa, and glanced at the glowing yellow numbers on the alarm clock. It was almost one o’clock in the morning. She wondered where her uncle Vladi was and in what time zone. She was sure he was still alive. He had to be.
It was eleven in the morning in Moldova. Babulya would be ironing clothing for Valeria’s horrible girls. Katya would just be waking up since it was summer, and Daniil would have already finished his morning soccer practice and might even be at the appliance store where he fixed rich people’s dishwashers.
She’d gone out with him for three years, but they’d had sex only once, just a month ago, though so much had happened since then, it felt like more than a month. After she had told him she couldn’t continue on to twelfth grade, he had been so angry he hadn’t come to see her at the market for the next three days. Finally she’d told her babushka she couldn’t work because she had her annual checkup.
She’d called him from a pay phone—her home phone had been disconnected months before. “We need to talk,” she said. “Can you meet me for pizza at eleven?”
There was a pause over the phone, a pause that made her heart stop.
“We’ll go to my apartment after,” she rushed, even though she knew she sounded too desperate.
“Okay,” he’d said at last.
She’d dressed carefully, wearing her green button-up shirt with a white skirt that stopped modestly above her knees and two-inch black heels. In the summer, many girls in Chişinău wore half tops and super miniskirts with just enough fabric to hide their underwear, but when Hannah wore anything too revealing, she couldn’t stop tugging at her shirt or her skirt the whole time.
When she walked into the pizza shop, she could tell immediately he liked how she looked. He gazed down her body at her legs, which had gotten skinnier over the last few months from all the standing on her feet and pushing the heavy cart back and forth to the market.
He wrapped his arms around her. She looked over his shoulder toward the door, worried her babushka would be standing there with her hands on her hips.
“I love you,” he murmured, kissing her ear, as if nothing was wrong between them.
After a quick pizza, which he paid for, they hurried to her apartment. It was hot and humid, but they headed up the open-air concrete staircase. Even though her apartment was on the fourteenth floor, they didn’t take the elevator because they had to avoid the curious neighbors, especially the older ones who took the elevator.
He pinched her behind and she swatted at his hand. He laughed and pinched her again. She started running and he chased her. By the time they reached the fourteenth floor, they were drenched in sweat and laughing their heads off.
She grabbed his hands. “Shhh,” she said. “Wait here.”
He stayed out of sight while she walked up the remaining steps to her floor to make sure no other tenants were leaving their apartments. She unlocked her door and then she hurried him in before anyone saw. His hand was warm and sweaty as he pulled her into the main room, where he started to kiss her with a strange hunger. Laughing, she folded her convertible armchair down into a single bed. He wanted to use the blue sofa, which folded down to a double bed, but it had been her parents’ bed and it was the one Babulya now used, so she said they couldn’t. She was always worried that her parents would be able to see her somehow.
He pulled a small square cardboard box from his pocket. On the front, there was a knight with a sword. Inside, the condom was green. She hoped it could be trusted.
It was over sooner than she had thought it would be. It was three minutes of pain and wrestling, and nothing more. Afterward, he gave her a quick kiss, like one you’d give a sister. This was supposed to be their moment of reconnection, their moment to realize that they could make it through this tough time together, that it didn’t matter if she had to delay school; all that mattered was that they were together. After all, he’d said he loved her.
He got dressed too quickly. Maybe he was worried about her babushka, she thought, and she got dressed with him. But at the door, he burst out, “I can’t do this.”
“What do you mean?” she cried.
He mumbled that he had to focus on school and didn’t want to get more serious. He couldn’t even look her in the eye. And then he ran.
Half an hour later, Hannah stood in a line of people outside her apartment waiting for the pay phone. She clenched her hands together to keep them from shaking. The rule was you were only supposed to talk for two minutes if people were waiting, but Hannah took longer. The moment her best friend answered, she started bawling. Long, wrenching sobs came out of her, making it difficult to breathe. Finally, she explained.
When Katya left, Hannah made her way upstairs. Babulya had come home and already knew what had happened. Probably a neighbor had told her that Hannah was crying in the courtyard and Babulya figured it out. She made Hannah some tea and said it was for the best, though of course she didn’t know exactly what had happened in the apartment that afternoon, only that Daniil had left her.
Hannah only spoke to him one time after that, to tell him she was going to America. She met him after soccer practice as he came off the field. He looked beautiful in his green uniform, his hair sticking to his sweaty brow, his blue eyes shining with exertion.
When she told him about the job in America, she saw the relief in his face. She asked him what he thought and stupidly hoped he’d tell her not to go.
“I don’t know, Hannah. You’re too naive,” he said, his blue Russian eyes blinking sharply, as if he were the smart one.
It bothered her, him saying she was naive, but she hoped he was only saying it because he wanted her to be near him. “You think I shouldn’t go?” If he begged her to stay, she would.
He shrugged and looked away, like he didn’t care.
“What?” she asked sharply.
“You could get hurt,” he said.
“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
“Elena!” 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,” Se
rgey 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.”