The Hole of the Story

By Karen Pearson

Hope Fullerton-Smith's problems are adding up. A psychopath on the loose in her neighbourhood. A delinquent foster brother out to get her. A mute Russian girl sharing her bedroom.

Hope's new roommate, Vera, is weird. She can't speak and she has horrible nightmares. But she gets under Hope's skin. As details of her cruel life emerge, Hope agrees to help her try to dodge deportation back to Russia. But it's not a good time to be sneaking around town, and Vera's quest to find the one thing she believes will give her a shot at staying in the US leads her toward a vicious trap. As Vera puts herself in the path of mortal danger, Hope never suspects the shocking truth: that she herself stands to win, or to lose, more than she ever dreamt possible.

Artful storytelling in a thrilling tale that will grip you to the very last page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karen Pearson
• Release date: Aug 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9780473257149

Karen Pearson

Karen Pearson is an author of novels for Young Adults. She has worked as an advertising copywriter and a features writer for glossy magazines. She has a Master of Arts in Creative Writing.

Book preview

HOPE

Dear Diary,

I sometimes think about how Jesus was put in that manger after he was born. Just laid down there on all that scratchy hay. I dunno, maybe she put a blanket down first, but it still seems a pretty rough place for a baby. I can do one better than that, though. I was placed in a garbage bin. Dropped right in with the garbage some time after my birth. Not long after. Maybe a few minutes. Maybe as much as half an hour. The doctors said they could tell I’d been there no longer than half an hour because I was still alive.

It was ten below zero the morning I was born and there was a vicious wind off the lake. Neroli kept a copy of the Chicago Tribune so that I would know what was happening in the world that day. I think she was trying to make up for the fact that there would always be a big hole in my own story.

Neroli likes to look on the bright side. She agrees that being left in a bin by the woman who gave birth to you is a downer, but that was tempered (her word, not mine) with some significant good luck. She says I had three things going for me the day I was born, and they were big things.

Number one, my birth mother put me in the bin with a hat on. Well, I’m embarrassed to say it wasn’t exactly a hat. It was a tea cozy. One of those hand-knitted little colorful things you put over the teapot to keep it warm. Nobody uses them anymore. Well, nobody younger than ninety. I can’t believe that my first-ever garment wasn’t even intended for human use. No wonder I don’t care about clothes. Neroli says that the tea cozy shows she (the woman) cared about me and wanted me to survive.

Secondly, there was a litter of kittens in the garbage bin with me. Eight tiny bodies to scratch me and mewl in my ears and clamber over me, blocking my nose and mouth with their fur, and to keep me warm. And by keeping me warm, keep me alive until the third, and biggest, bit of luck came my way. Neroli.

She saw the sign. Scratched into a piece of cardboard torn from a soda carton were the words ‘Fre to god home.’ The sign was propped against the bin, one corner jammed through the mesh to stop it flying away in the wind. Obviously the person who dumped the kittens, and possibly me, was what Neroli calls ‘ESL’. That stands for ‘English as a Second Language.’ Either that or they didn’t believe in overusing letters. Why write ‘free’ when one ‘e’ will do? And why write ‘good’ when you can save yourself a whole ‘o’. Same basic meaning, I guess. Or maybe they meant to write ‘God’. Perhaps if they’d been more literate, they would’ve written, ‘Christian households in need of free kittens (or baby) apply within.’

We have no idea whether the sign writer was the woman who gave birth to me. Neroli says she likes to believe that someone else dropped the kittens in on top of me, not knowing that I was there.

So, Neroli was digging around in the bin, counting the kittens and worrying about how she would fit them all in her bag and what she would do with them when she got to work, when she saw a little fist poke out between two white and black fluff-clad spines.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ she said, continuing on with the theme set by the sign. There was nowhere to put the kittens. The traffic roared by just half a step from where she stood. She waded through the little bodies with her gloved hands until she felt something more substantial at the base of the bin. She grabbed it and pulled, and there I was! Delivered for the second time that day into the world, sloughing off kittens as I came up through the mouth of the bin.

Apart from the tea cozy I was naked. I must have been a sight, covered in blood and that gunky stuff you’re born with and ketchup and a couple of pieces of torn wrapper off a burger. My umbilical cord hung from my belly and I was crisscrossed with hundreds of fine scratches, courtesy of my bin mates. Neroli says she can’t be exactly sure, but she believes her next words were, ‘Oh, shit.’ She says in her thirteen years as a social worker she has had some surprises, but finding me topped them all.

I started to cry as the full force of the cold hit me. Neroli unbuttoned her coat and tucked me inside against her chest and sprinted for the hospital, six blocks away. She says her heart was pounding so hard she thought it might knock me unconscious. I can’t imagine Mom running. She walks like a pedigree cat at a show. Head up, chest out, and ‘don’t mess with me’ all over her face.

But she swears she practically flew over that sidewalk and I did become unconscious of a different sort. Within a block I had fallen asleep. Of course, I wouldn’t have known then the significance of what had just happened to me. In less than an hour I’d been born, lost the woman who gave birth to me and been found by the woman who would be my mother. I’m sure I was just happy to be warm again and back next to a human heartbeat.

Once Neroli had me safe and sound at the hospital, she remembered the kittens. She rang the animal shelter and somebody said they would go and collect them. It took the docs a couple of months to sort me out. In fact, the first day they told Neroli I might not make it. I was premature and weighed only four pounds and seven ounces.

While Neroli was waiting for me to come home from the hospital and going through all the paperwork so she could adopt me, she went and got one of my bin mates and brought her home, and that’s Mouse, who is still with us now. That was fourteen whole years ago. Blimey! That cat and I have seen some stuff together. We look after each other, which is more than you can say for my so-called ‘mother’. How could she do that to her own kid? If I say that to Mom, though, she gets mad.

‘She gave you life, and for that you should always be grateful,’ she says. She plants her hands on her hips, which makes her bosom stick out even further, and raises her left eyebrow and mutters something about waiting until I’ve ‘seen a bit of life’ before I judge other people. But she can’t stay mad at me for long. She never does, not even the time I skipped school and came home and cut up Daniel’s duvet. I got a ‘consequence’, but she also admitted Daniel provoked me.

While I was still in the hospital the Police returned the tea cozy to Neroli. She was hand-washing it so she could put it in my Treasure Box with the copy of the Tribune and she noticed something odd. The tea cozy was lined with fabric and there was some messy stitching in black cotton that did not match the rest of the neat little pink (yuck) stitches holding the lining in place. Beneath that section of lining the tea cozy felt thicker. She picked the black stitches undone, and found a scrap of soggy cardboard. Handwritten on it were the words, ‘Hope care 4 her.’

Maybe my birth mother meant, ‘I hope someone will care for her.’ But Neroli named me Hope.

Fullerton is Neroli’s surname. I got that when she adopted me. Smith, and my other middle names, she added. It’s a bit like saving the newspaper I guess. She was trying to create some history for me.

A week after I was born, the body of a young woman washed up on the shore of Lake Michigan. She had been in the water four or five days and the Police were having trouble identifying her. She didn’t tally with anyone on the Missing Persons list. An autopsy was done and the coroner said that she had had a baby not long before she died. The Police rang Neroli and said they thought they might have found my birth mother. There were no marks on her body and the coroner said she had probably committed suicide by drowning. The Police asked Neroli if she would like them to do a DNA test on me to make sure. Neroli said yes.

This is what I know about my birth mother:

She was 5 foot 4 inches tall, and weighed 116 pounds.

She had grey eyes and ash blonde hair.

She was about eighteen years old.

She was cremated.

Two people went to her funeral: the woman who found her body and Neroli Fullerton.

The hole in my story never used to bother me. But for the last two years it has really bugged me. I mean, who was she? What did she look like? Why couldn’t she keep me? Why did she have to go and wander into the lake so that I’ll never know any of these things? I lie in my bunk at night and think about that other mother. Most of all, why was she so sad?

I can’t ask Mom about it though. When stupid kids ask me ‘What happened to your real mom?’ I say Neroli is my real mom. She has looked after me every day of my life and there’s no way I could hurt her feelings.

My name is Hope Georgia Jane Maxine Fullerton-Smith. ‘Hope’ is the only thing I got from her, apart from a dirty old tea cozy. Mom still gets cross when I say that.

CHAPTER 2

VERA

For the first time in three hours, Vera took her eyes off Babushka’s face. She had watched a series of subtle changes occurring from the moment the life had left the old woman’s eyes. The color of her skin, the hollow in her cheeks, the amount of space her presence took up in the room had all altered. Life had ended for Babushka but numerous processes went on in her body anyhow. Even death could not stop change.

Vera felt sure that she had run the worst rapids of her grief, for now. She seemed to have split from the girl who, not long before, had convulsed with sobs, and who had torrents of tears pouring down her twisted face. Now she felt light-headed and numb. There was a tapping sound breaking her trance, calling persistently for her attention. To look for the source of this sound was what had forced her, finally, to turn away from Babushka.

Perched on the ledge of the window above the apartment’s only sink was a small black bird pecking at the glass with its beak. In all of her thirteen years living in apartment 11/237 Ulitsa Nevaskaya, Vera had never seen a bird tap at the window as if it wanted to be let in. In fact she rarely saw birds, other than pigeons, at all from the apartment because there were few trees nearby. She got to her feet slowly and they stared at each other, girl and bird, neither blinking for several seconds, during which a feeling of peace unlike any Vera had ever felt before washed through her. It was as if Babushka had found a way to say goodbye. Vera instinctively moved her hand to say thank you, but before she could form the gesture the bird flew into the dawn sky.

A steely spring light was seeping up from the horizon and Vera shook herself out of her trance. St Petersburg was waking. The bird had brought an end to her vigil and not a moment too soon. She had to make it to the factory on time, and act as though it was a normal day, even though it would be, if the plan was successful, her last day there ever. She would have to hide her grief so that not a soul would suspect. If the foxes knew they would come for her and she’d have no chance of implementing the plan. Most importantly, she had to get the signal to Sergei.

She still wore the clothes she’d had on yesterday, as she had sat up all night with Babushka saying goodbye. Now there was no time to change, to eat, or even to wash in the communal bathroom down the hall. The hunger concerned her less than normal, dulled as it was by grief. She pulled her hair forward over her shoulder so that it hung to her bellybutton, and dragged a hairbrush through it, then stood at the sink to brush her teeth and splash the icy water from the tap onto her face. She checked her reflection in the mirror, a square of glass no larger than a cake of soap, which hung from the window latch above the sink. It was crucial that she didn’t appear different from any other day. She looked exhausted and red-eyed but that was nothing unusual. Nothing must alert the other workers in case someone suspected Babushka had died. They might inform the foxes. Women or girls who fed the foxes ‘useful information’ about others in the factory were rewarded with an extra day’s pay.

She shrugged on her fur coat, running her hands over it to smooth the rabbit pelt over its balding patches. Turning her back on Babushka gave her an ache in the chest, but she drew back the bolts and opened the heavy iron door to the day. She stood there for a few seconds but found she couldn’t leave without doing what she had done every morning for as long as she remembered. Closing the door again she returned to Babushka’s side, leant over and kissed the cold, papery skin of both cheeks. The once dark, dancing pupils were still and clouded, although the long grey hair pulled up on the top of her head still smelt of her shampoo. Vera took a long deep breath through her nose, harvesting the scent for her memory banks, and forced herself to leave.

On the landing she stepped over Mr Mentov, who had collapsed against the door of his apartment, cuddling his empty vodka bottle. He reeked of sweat and alcohol and sick.

The cold whipped her face and her mind whirred into gear as she hurried away from the apartment. Spring was lethargic this year and the city pavements were still caked in a knobbly layer of ice that made them treacherously slippery.

Two blocks from her apartment she turned down an alley between buildings and emerged by a dump bin full of household garbage. Normally she would scan the contents to see if there was something they could use or sell, but she ignored the bin and, tugging her hat off, stepped into the phone booth. She knew Sergei’s number off by heart but when she went to dial it she found that the phone had been raided for parts.

‘Ergh!’ shouted Vera, and she hurled the useless receiver at the cubicle glass. It bounced off and she left it swinging silently from its cord. They had checked this phone booth only two days earlier. Next plan, she thought as she turned toward the Metro station. She jogged alongside the river, one gloved hand stuffed in her coat pocket, the other one on the metal handrail so she could stop herself falling if she slid.

The phone booth at the Metro was much more public and if she was seen by anyone she knew they would wonder how she had the money for the call. She could only hope the crowds of rush hour commuters heading to work would render her invisible. She transferred her now aching and frozen right hand to her coat pocket and put the call through to Sergei’s and Valentina’s number left-handed, dropping the coins twice in her haste and cursing her thin, useless gloves.

‘Hello?’ answered Valentina.

Vera hummed their code; the first few bars of a tune by Rachmaninoff that Sergei loved.

‘Oh my darling,’ said Valentina. ‘I am so sorry. I will tell him. God keep you safe today,’ and the line went dead.

He would be there when she got home. She knew she could count on him. But what if he had an accident or got delayed? The thought clutched at her empty gut, but she pushed the fear aside. She couldn’t afford to show fear, today of all days.

Back in the throng, Vera had the strange sensation she was seeing everything for the first time. She had always taken the Metro for granted, never thinking about it passing under the mighty Neva River, but today the thought startled her and the humid air in the tunnels felt claustrophobic.

Although she had ridden these escalators every day of her working life, today her descent seemed to be taking her into the unknown. But she had no time to dwell on her feelings as she jogged down the right-hand side of the escalator behind businessmen in greatcoats and teenagers in puffer jackets. They streamed past the commuters on the left who had no reason to hurry, so stood still, soaking up warmth, back-to-chest with the person behind them.

On the train she slumped into the only empty seat in the carriage, next to a filthy man who, like Mr Mentov, seemed to be sleeping off last night’s vodka, and checked her watch; a cheap souvenir stamped with the Red Army insignia that she had found on the street. Her heart began to beat harder. She was running late.

She sprinted out of the Metro station and right into the back of an old man who had stopped suddenly in front of her.

‘Careful,’ he growled.

She lifted her hand, palm up in apology. He was about to launch a squad of angry words when he caught the panicked look in her eye and harrumphed and shooed her on.

She didn’t dare check her watch again until she was outside the iron gates of the factory. She was two minutes late. If the fox were in the den she would feel the heavy metal ruler. She’d been late once before. The cuts had taken a week to heal and it was agony to sew for the first three days. That’s why they chose the hands.

She tore through the building. The humid air clung like a wet towel around her lungs after the cold of the outside world. The gadigga-digga-digg of two hundred and fifty machines punctuated by the hiss of the steam irons filled her eardrums. Not a woman on the night shift lifted her gaze from her sewing. A girl running down the aisles at three minutes before seven a.m. was nothing new. Besides, in three minutes they would be free to hand their machines over to the dayshift who lined the walls, leaning whispering to each other or waiting in worn-out silence for their twelve-hour shift to begin. Vera barely slowed her sprint and slammed into the wall at the end of the building with her hands.

She pressed Tatiana Dimitrovich urgently on the shoulder, imploring her with her eyes to hurry. The woman seemed to take an eternity to look up from her machine then haul her heavy rear from her seat.

‘You’re late, Vera Ivanovna.’

Vera nodded. Just hurry, you old bag, she thought. The woman grasped the side of a wooden shelving unit stacked with reels of cotton and rolled it away from the wall. The shelves rolled easily, exposing the trapdoor Vera had passed through twice a day since her fifth birthday. As Vera descended the steep metal stair she felt a whoosh of air as Tatiana Dimitrovich closed the trapdoor over her head to conceal the den from the rest of St Petersburg.

The den was a bunker-like room that had been dug out beneath the street. There were no windows, only one air vent through which the girls could see the shadowy shapes of passing legs clad in an array of fabrics that changed with the seasons; corduroy or denim for spring and autumn, fur or down for winter, and in summer, the tantalizing glimpse of bare calves that made Vera long for the sun on her skin. The room was lit by a dozen fluorescent tubes, which hung from the ceiling by wires. There were forty-eight machines in the den in eight neat rows and only one station remained empty. The other girls ranged in age from five to fourteen years old. A small hill of coats, all as threadbare and worn as Vera’s, had formed at the bottom of the steps from the trapdoor. Vera hurled hers on top of the pile as her eyes scanned the room in panic. Her bottom hit the plastic seat just as the fat fox appeared through the trapdoor, the metal stairs creaking and flexing under his weight. His face was red with exertion and the thick, grey moustache that concealed his mouth twitched in time with his wheezing breath.

He was late too. Perhaps she had made it.

She stood immediately and placed her pale hands, palms up, on top of the machine at the same moment the others did, and held her breath. If he saw her chest heaving he would know she had been running. And that would be proof enough she had arrived late.

The fat fox hung his coat on a hook on the back of the door to the office then walked slowly down the aisles between the machines, swinging the metal ruler. Vera’s chest felt like it would explode in a shower of pink lung bits but she held onto that breath. Her life depended on it. She must not attract attention. She kept her eyes down, but she could hear his approach by the rasping sound from his lungs. As he passed each girl they sat down, placing their hands in their laps. He paused when he got to Vera and she could smell his odor, a mix of cooking oil, alcohol, and cigarette smoke. She stared at a vein in her wrist that pumped furiously. Maybe he saw it too. But he moved on. A couple of seconds later there was a thwick as the metal ruler sliced through the air and struck soft flesh. The girl cried out and Vera winced.

The Romani girl sat three stations ahead across the aisle and Vera could now see the extent of her crime. Her right hand was covered with a glove. A white line opened up across her left palm then turned red and began to drip fat teardrops of blood. Vera felt dizzy and bowed her head slightly.

‘Take it off,’ said the fox.

The girl tried to remove the glove but couldn’t get her wounded hand to work, so after a few fumbling moments, she pulled it off with her teeth. The thumb and forefinger of her right hand were black with frostbite.

‘You stupid girl! You are useless to me!’ yelled the fox. ‘Get out!’

She got up and ran to the pile of coats, bending to find hers, but it was deeply buried and the fox, who had lumbered after her, hit her again across the back of the legs. She screamed.

‘Leave it,’ he said, and she pounded up the metal stairs and was gone through the trapdoor. She had lasted just over a week in the den.

She’s free, thought Vera, although she will probably die without her coat. She was an orphan the foxes had picked up off the street, a stunted girl with the coarse hair and bloated belly of malnutrition, who had the speech of a child half her age. They had paid nothing for her in the first place so had no investment to protect, but she had little experience and her sewing was rough. She was easily dispensed with.

‘You will have to cover her quota,’ said the fox to the room, and he picked up the pile of cut pieces of fabric from alongside her machine and began to distribute them among the remaining girls.

Vera took a deep breath and thought of Babushka, still lying cold on the bed they had shared, then turned her attention to her work. Over the next twelve hours she would sew together more than two hundred pink hooded sweatshirts with the words ‘Pink Princess’ printed on them. She would be given a half-hour break at three o’clock during which the thin fox’s wife would arrive with a pot of weak broth to be shared among them. She was lucky that there was usually food at home – not much, but some. For some of the girls this was their only meal of the day. At seven o’clock she would be released, her back, fingers, forearms and eyes feeling like they’d been torn apart and her skin coated in sweat and the grime of the den. The shock of the cold air after the heat of the den would hurt her chest and she would cough as if she were vomiting little knives all the way home.

By seven forty-five she would know whether Sergei was coming.

CHAPTER 3

THE LIBRARY

Like a cricket on steroids, the chirp of the school bell jolts me out of my daydream. I realise I haven’t been listening to Mr Zhirinovsky one jot and now I haven’t a clue what he’s talking about. As if he can read my mind, he looks right at me.

‘Am I correct, Hope?’ he asks in his freako accent. Now I’m stuck. It’s a case