by Kim Purcell
With a closed fist now, Lillian punched her in the face.
“Mama?” Maggie called from the hall. Her voice sounded frightened.
“Help!” Hannah croaked.
“Don’t come in here. Get upstairs!” Lillian screamed at Maggie, clamping her wiry hands on Hannah’s mouth. For one terrifying moment, Hannah couldn’t breathe. Her nose was stuffed with blood. She squirmed, grabbing at Lillian’s hand. Her face heated up with blood. Her lungs burned. “Go!” Lillian yelled.
Maggie ran down the hall and back up the stairs. Lillian lifted her hands.
Hannah gasped. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You had sex with my husband!”
“He forced—”
“Liar!” Lillian said.
Hannah stared up at Lillian’s nose, at the circle of foundation around each nostril. Hannah could still smell her flowery perfume, which was a relief. Even though her nose was bleeding, she hadn’t lost her sense of smell.
“You’re right, something happened,” Hannah panted, hoping this would stop her. “But we didn’t have sex. He rubbed himself on—”
Lillian punched her again. No matter what she said, Lillian wasn’t going to stop.
Hannah yanked her arms out from under Lillian’s knees and tried to use all her strength to get up, but Lillian was tougher and bigger than she was. Even though Hannah had never been in a fight in her life, she never would’ve thought Lillian could overpower her like this. She’d thought Lillian had had a pampered childhood, but it was clear that this was not Lillian’s first fight. She fought like a street kid.
“Get off me, suka,” Hannah grunted.
“You dare to call me a bitch?” Lillian yelled, her bad breath hitting Hannah in the face.
“You’re the worst mother I’ve ever—”
Lillian smashed her fist down on Hannah’s nose. Hannah felt so dizzy, she knew she was going to lose consciousness soon. She tasted blood in her mouth. She lifted her head and spit at her as hard as she could. A bloody gob landed right by Lillian’s eye.
Lillian roared and hit her again and again, clawing at Hannah’s face and arms. Hannah’s eye stung and she felt dizzy. She tried to push Lillian’s hands away, but she couldn’t focus. Lillian stood up and Hannah thought it was over, but then Lillian started kicking her ribs. Hannah felt a crack inside her. She couldn’t breathe.
Please, let it stop.
She managed to get on her hands and knees and started crawling toward the door. She felt Lillian’s hand reaching into the back pocket of her pants. Her documents. The money.
“How did you get this?” Lillian waved the three hundred dollars in Hannah’s face and then shook her head as if she couldn’t believe it. “He gave this to you?”
Hannah tried to find something to say that would save her. But she wasn’t fast enough. Lillian swung her leg back. Hannah lifted one hand off the ground two inches. The last thing she saw was the hard sole of Lillian’s slipper, coming straight toward her eye.
Chapter Fifty-three
Hannah’s mouth tasted like the dust on an unpaved road in the village. She opened her one good eye and lifted her head. She was lying on the concrete floor by the door of the garage, freezing. She groaned and looked at the clock. It was seven fifty-five in the morning on Christmas day. Her first thought was of Colin and how he’d probably waited outside for her the night before because they’d said they’d see each other before he left on Christmas.
Once, during the night, she’d woken briefly, but when she’d tried to move, she’d passed out from the pain in her ribs.
Someone was knocking softly on the door to the garage, as if they didn’t want anyone to hear. “Hannah, are you in there?” Maggie was whispering in English. “Are you in there?”
Hannah wondered how long she’d been knocking. “Yes,” Hannah croaked in Russian. “Help me, Maggie.” Her voice would hardly come out.
“Maggie!” Lillian chastised her from down the hall. “I told you to leave her alone.”
“But it’s Christmas, Mamulya.”
“Now!”
Maggie went away. A few minutes later, she heard Lillian’s Cadillac SUV beep to unlock the door. Michael and Maggie were outside. Maggie yelled through the chained garage doors, “Bye, Hannah. Merry Christmas!”
“Shh,” Lillian reprimanded her.
They got in the car, the engine started up, and they drove away.
Hannah tried to sit up, gasping from the pain. Her chest clenched, like she was having a heart attack. She stopped. Slowly now. Up onto her knees. She panted. The skin on her face was stiff. She reached up and felt dried blood. The entire front of her shirt was covered with brown dried blood. Her nose burned when she moved, as if she’d just opened a cut inside it. She dabbed at the fresh blood with the arm of her white shirt and forced herself into a crouching position. Her chest shifted, making her cry out. Something inside her was broken. She listened to make sure they were gone. The house was silent.
She hobbled to the door, turned the knob, and tried to open it toward her, but it wouldn’t budge. Lillian had nailed it shut somehow. She was locked in.
“Help,” she called, but it croaked out, barely loud enough for anyone to hear. Her mouth was so dry, and it couldn’t open wide enough—it was too swollen. She tried to scream. It was just a hollow gasping sound, not enough to get someone’s attention. If she heard someone outside, she’d try it again, but it was quiet out there.
She looked around the room for something to help her with the door. The hard part was that it opened in, not out, so she couldn’t bang her body against it. Her only hope was to find some metal to slide in the door and pry it open.
But she had to pee first. She grabbed a sand bucket and crouched over it. Her pee spilled a little on the concrete floor and she put the bucket down to search for something to wipe it up, panicked over the mess. But then she stopped herself. She didn’t need to clean up anything. Not anymore.
She looked at the toys on the shelves, searching for something to help her pry open the door. Everything in the room was plastic or plush. A castle or a stuffed animal wouldn’t help.
Her keys from Moldova. They were made of heavy metal. She shuffled toward her tattered suitcase, breathing in shallow breaths, and found them still in the side pocket.
Home. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t her home anymore. She’d carried these keys everywhere since she was six years old. They were solid and reminded her who she was.
She had to escape before Lillian got back home.
One of the keys, the one for the front lock of her apartment building, was particularly long. She jammed it in the crack and cranked it backward. The door gave, just a little. Her fingers ached, but it had to work. She rubbed them together and pushed on the key again. The wood creaked. Her chest stabbed at her. She tried again. The door opened an inch and then bounced back. She smelled sawdust.
A car drove up the driveway and stopped. She wasn’t fast enough. The car door opened and shut, firmly. Heavy steps thumped past the garage. It wasn’t Lillian and the kids.
“Sergey?” she called.
No answer. Her heart drummed in her chest. It wasn’t Sergey. He would’ve answered. She stuffed the keys in the front pocket of her blue pants.
The front door opened. The house had been left unlocked. The man’s footsteps came down the hall, toward her. There was the sound of ripping wood. The door to the garage opened. Paavo glowered at her, his meaty hands tucked into his sides. She hobbled backward.
He grinned, then spoke in Russian to her, like always. “Lillian was pretty angry, eh? I told Sergey he wouldn’t be able to resist.” He laughed, a full belly laugh. “Come on. I’ll take care of you now. No more cleaning for you. I always said it was beneath you.”
A shiver ran through her
. Anything could have happened last time if Sergey hadn’t shown up. Little had she known that Sergey just wanted her for himself.
Despite her pain, she stuck out her chin. “He won’t be happy if I’m gone.”
“He’ll come visit you, don’t worry.”
“Where?” she sniffed, wiping her bleeding nose with her finger, hoping Sergey had an apartment where Paavo would take her and then she could find a way to escape.
He studied her with humor, as if she were a funny chimp at the zoo. “We have a place for the girls.”
A brothel. “I won’t do it.”
“Sergey asked me to be good to you. He doesn’t want you to get hurt. You’re safer with me than with Lillian, believe me.” He nodded at her face as if even he was impressed by the damage. “She’ll kill you.”
The blood from Hannah’s nose was dripping into her mouth. She wiped it on the sleeve of her white blouse, which was already spotted with her blood, and looked toward her belongings in the cardboard boxes, trying to think of a way out.
“You don’t need anything,” he said. “Lillian will send everything over later.”
“Please let me go home.” She was begging now and she hated it.
“Home?”
“To Moldova.”
He gave her a look like she had to be out of her mind. “How are you going to afford that?”
“I could work when I get home. I’ll pay you back,” she said.
He laughed. “You can earn money working for me here and be home in a year. And you’ll have time to take those English classes you’re so obsessed with.” He tilted his fat head to the side. “Let’s go.”
“I don’t want to be a prostitute.” She tried to stand tall, but she winced at the pain in her ribs and doubled over, her hand on the right side of her chest. “I won’t do it.”
“We know your family. And your friends. We will tell them you are a whore if you give us problems. And you’ll become a whore no matter what you say. But if you come easily, nobody needs to know.”
She thought of her uncles and Katya and, worst of all, Daniil hearing this news. She’d wanted to come back and be glamorous and show him that he was wrong for breaking up with her. And now everyone would hear she was a prostitute. She’d never be able to go back, but did it really matter? There was nothing for her in Moldova anyway.
“I won’t be a prostitute,” she said.
He shrugged. “If you don’t behave, I’ll take that sweet little friend of yours instead.”
Katya. “No!” she said.
“Or you can do this for a year and you will have a future,” Paavo said. “You will learn English. From our clients.” He paused and then his eyes got hard, as if he sensed she would not go easily. “Let’s go. I will not ask again.”
She stepped forward. It hurt to move, but she could tell that if she had to, she could run. It was only pain, she thought, that was all. A plan formed in her head. She hobbled past him down the hall, clutching her ribs, moaning with pain. He had to think she was so disabled that there was no way she could do anything.
He opened the door for her and squinted down at her. “Walk normally or I’ll give you a reason to limp.”
He must be worried about the neighbors, she thought, stepping out of the house. It was another beautiful day in Los Angeles. She felt betrayed by the sun’s heat, the chirping of the birds outside, the low roar of a lawn mower down the street, the sweet smell of grass and the laughter from the house next door.
Who was laughing? One of the boys, either Colin or his brother, Jack. Their red car was in the driveway. They weren’t gone yet.
Paavo had parked the large black Lincoln in the driveway. He held out his arm and she realized he believed that she couldn’t walk normally. She didn’t want to touch him, but she had to get his guard down until the moment came. They walked down the walkway toward the driveway and she clung to his fleshy elbow like they were a couple.
He walked around the car with her, opened the front passenger door, tossed his jacket over the backseat, and swept his arm out. “Get in,” he said.
Listen to your nose. These were the last words her babushka had said to her as she moved from this world to the next.
She stood next to the car and breathed in through her bloody nose, using it to search the interior of the car. She smelled marijuana—it seemed to be coming from the glove compartment. There had to be a gun in there somewhere. A man like Paavo didn’t go anywhere without one. She didn’t want to smell Paavo, but she had to listen to her nose as her babushka had told her to do. She smelled cigar smoke on his shirt and a fishy woman’s smell on his hands. She smelled a woman’s fear and knew it was her own. She would use this fear.
The front door of Colin’s house opened. He stepped out wearing a large short-sleeved baseball jersey, and he looked up at her, frightened, probably at the sight of her bloody face. “Hannah?” he squealed.
Paavo grabbed her arm. “Get in.”
She wrapped her fingers around the keys in her pocket. She was fast. She could probably get him in the eye, even with her body all broken up. But it would be better to trick him into thinking she was coming.
“Okay,” she said, pretending to get into the car. Paavo released her. She ducked under his arm. His fingers grabbed on to the back of her white shirt, but it was slippery and he couldn’t get a grip on it. Good old Moldovan fabric, she thought, sprinting around the car toward Colin. Her ribs stabbed her insides as she ran, but she made her legs move as if they were separate from the rest of her broken body.
Colin stepped back into the house, afraid, and it looked for a moment as if he was going to close the door on her.
“Help,” she croaked, reaching her hand up to stop him.
“Stop, shlyuha, or I’ll kill the boy!” Paavo yelled. She kept running. The car’s back door opened. Maybe he was going for his gun.
Colin stood, frozen. Hannah ran across Colin’s driveway, faster than she’d ever run in her life. She was a child again, sprinting through the sunflowers; her mother and her father were cheering her on. Bistra! Bistra! Fast, Hannah!
Hannah’s nose started to bleed and the blood ran down into her mouth and tasted like metal, but still she ran across Colin’s lawn and up the short set of steps and threw herself into his soft chest. His arms wrapped around her and he stumbled backward. They fell down on the linoleum floor, just inside the house, in the hallway. The pain in her ribs made her scream. Her vision went black and then cleared. She looked behind her. The door was wide open. Paavo had something in his hand. Colin jumped up, slammed the door shut, and turned the dead bolt.
She reached a hand up to him and panted, “He have gun.”
“Mom, call the cops!” Colin yelled.
Liz ran into the hallway with a cordless phone. “What’s happening?” Her hand flew to her mouth when she saw Hannah’s face. “You poor girl! Who did this to you?”
“There’s a man outside. Hannah says he has a gun.”
“Oh my God!” Liz dialed a number on the phone.
Paavo knocked on the door, two quick knocks, like a door-to-door salesman. He spoke with impeccable English—Hannah didn’t even hear an accent. “This is the police,” he said. “The girl is illegal and she’s dangerous. She was resisting arrest. Open the door.”
Hannah looked up at Liz, who started to pull the phone away from her face, uncertain. She’s going to hang up.
“This is no right,” Hannah said, not making any sense, even to herself.
“I have an LAPD badge and her documents here. You can see them through your window,” Paavo said. “Hand the girl over and you won’t go to jail for harboring a criminal.”
Liz looked through the peephole. “He has papers.”
“Mom, I know her,” Colin said. “She’s not dangerous.”
&
nbsp; “He is lying,” Hannah said. “Don’t open door. Please.”
Colin’s brother, Jack, stepped into the hall. “What’s happening?”
Liz spoke to someone on the phone. “Yes. We have a problem. A man is at our door and he says he’s a police officer. We have a girl, our neighbor, and he wants her. But she’s very beaten up and I—uh—I don’t know.” She paused and then gave their address.
Paavo banged again on the door, harder this time. “Give me the girl,” he said. “I won’t hurt your family.”
“One second,” Liz yelled.
“Oh my God,” Colin said.
Liz helped Hannah up and pushed Colin toward his brother. “Get away from the door, all of you. Go upstairs,” she hissed.
“Come on,” Colin said, leading them up the stairs.
Hannah grabbed the banister, as her rib stabbed into her, and tried not to cry out with pain.
“Careful,” Colin said, glancing back, worried.
It wouldn’t help if they went upstairs, Hannah thought. Paavo could easily break a window, climb inside, then come upstairs. It would take him five minutes.
“In the bathroom,” Liz said, from behind Hannah. They hurried into a small yellow bathroom upstairs, next to the study. Liz locked the door. It had a tiny frosted window, which Colin cracked open, trying to see out. Hannah had noticed this window before, but hadn’t realized it was a bathroom.
“Colin, close it,” Liz said.
“He can’t get up here,” Colin said.
“He’ll know where we are.” Liz lifted a finger for everyone to be quiet while she listened to the police on the other end of the line. She relayed, “He’s not with the police.”
“Duh,” Jack said.
“Who is this man?” Liz asked Hannah, responding to a question from the police.