Trafficked by Kim Purcell Page A

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.
    â€œThey’re funny,” Hannah said, glancing back at her.
    â€œStrange, 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.
    â€œThe 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
    I t was after midnight. Hannah had been in America for one whole week. She