Finally, the noise stopped. The big man removed his mask, then knelt behind her and pulled her wrists behind her back. She struggled, terrified, but couldn’t stop him. Something encircled her wrists-something flexible but also strong-and then tightened.
She tried to squirm free, but it was useless. All of it was useless. Why couldn’t she have eaten the bad food? Or just stopped eating, and drinking, too? She would never be able to help Nason, she would never even know what had happened to her. And now these men were going to hurt her, make her do more disgusting things, and how could she stop them? Her parents had sold her, and Nason was gone, and she had no one in the world. Her face twisted in torment and she sucked in a long, sobbing breath, and then another, and then the helplessness and emptiness and despair consumed her and she tilted back her head and wailed.
The man reached down and pulled her up by the shoulders. She didn’t even think about running. How could she run, with her wrists tied behind her? Where would she go?
The big man said something to her, but she just kept crying. She was so tired of gibberish, of people talking to her with words she couldn’t understand. All she wanted was to know where Nason was. And if Nason was dead, then she wanted to die, too. She didn’t care about anything else.
The big man gripped the underside of one of her arms and pulled her along to the dock. Through a blur of tears, she saw more people, and realized from their blue uniforms, like the ones on the Thai officers who had sometimes come to the village because of some problem, that they were police. The realization wasn’t heartening. She didn’t know these people and didn’t trust them. That they wore uniforms could be good or it could be bad. And what difference did it make, anyway?
Some other people from the box were already on the dock. They were sitting cross-legged, and, like her, their wrists were tied behind their backs. Other police were leading more of them to the dock, all with their wrists tied. Livia turned and saw two of the men who had been feeding them on the boat facedown on the ground, not moving, blood pooling around them. The police must have shot them. It didn’t make her happy, or sad, or anything at all. When they were alive, she’d needed them for food and water. Now she didn’t. So it didn’t matter whether they were alive or dead.
The big policeman said something to her again, but the gibberish only made her cry harder. He put a hand on her shoulder and pushed down, and she realized he wanted her to sit. But she didn’t want to sit. And she didn’t want to listen. So she resisted his pushing, crying uncontrollably. The man pushed more. Livia’s legs wobbled, but she wouldn’t let him push her down.
And then a blue-uniformed woman with deep brown skin came and shoved the big man back. Livia couldn’t understand the woman’s words, but she was clearly angry and admonishing the big man. They argued for a moment, and then the woman pointed off to the side. The man glared for a moment, then stalked off in the direction the woman had indicated.
The woman leaned forward so her head was on the same level as Livia’s, and looked in Livia’s eyes. She said something. Livia had no idea what, but her tone was soft and her eyes were filled with kindness. Livia looked at her skin, fascinated. She was the color of chocolate, darker even than the darkest people among the hill tribes, but her eyes were lighter, her lips and cheeks fuller. Livia had seen such people on the village television, and she realized distantly that she had always assumed television was the only place they existed. She blinked her stinging eyes, trying to adjust. What was real? What was television? Was the village a dream? Where was Nason?
The chocolate woman kept talking-softly, gently, reassuringly. Livia recognized the tone as the way she herself would talk to a sow feeding a litter and nervous about Livia’s approach. It made Livia feel better. And then, still talking in her soothing tone, the woman stepped behind Livia, and all at once Livia’s hands were free. She pulled her arms around and massaged her wrists. The woman tossed something onto the ground, and Livia saw it was some kind of plastic, and that the woman had cut it with a knife she was holding. The woman folded the knife closed and returned it to a belt filled with tools, including a gun in a special holder.
Another big uniformed man rushed over and started arguing with the chocolate woman, gesturing to Livia and then to the cut plastic binding on the ground. He was obviously unhappy that Livia was untied. But the chocolate woman wouldn’t back down. She raised her voice and stood close to the man’s face until finally, like the first man, he walked off, snarling some words as he did so like a dog slinking away from a fight.
Livia sat in the hot sun for hours and watched, trying to understand. Dozens of people in different uniforms rushed back and forth, taking notes and photographs; picking up things too small for Livia to see and putting them in plastic bags; talking to each other and into little boxes Livia thought were radios. The chocolate woman stayed close the whole time. She gave Livia a bag of something salty and crunchy to eat and a can with a sweet drink inside it, and she wouldn’t let anyone bind Livia’s wrists the way they had done to all the other people. Livia wondered whether it was because she was a child. She didn’t know, but at least she wasn’t tied. Being tied was horrible.
A car pulled up and more people got out-people with Asian faces, not chocolate or pasty white. They squatted and talked to the people from the box, and after a while the police began to remove the wrist bindings. The Asian people tried to talk to Livia, but she couldn’t understand any of them. In Thai and Lahu, she said, “Nason, my sister, do you know what happened to my sister?” over and over, but none of them understood her any better than she understood them.
The police took them all to a big, modern building-a hospital, Livia realized from the people in white coats, although she had never been to anything more than the hill tribe clinic near her village. Livia sat in a small room on a table covered in soft white paper, the chocolate woman leaning against the wall opposite. A pasty man in a white coat came in. Livia knew he was a doctor-he had an air of authority about him, and the instrument for listening to hearts was hanging around his neck. He said some words, then tried to touch Livia with the instrument. But the thought of this strange man-any man-touching her was horrifying. She jerked away and bared her teeth. He took a step back, then frowned and came forward again. Livia put her hands on the table, ready to spring past him and run. But the chocolate woman talked to him the way she’d talked to the other men, and after a moment, he walked out.
The chocolate woman gestured to herself and said, “Tanya.” Then she gestured to Livia and raised her eyebrows.
Livia understood. The chocolate woman was saying she was called Tanya. And asking what Livia was called.
“Labee,” Livia said.
Smiling, Tanya held out her hand and said, “Hi, Labee.”
Livia looked at Tanya’s hand. Was she supposed to hold out her hand, too? She did, the same way Tanya had.
Tanya laughed. She took Livia’s hand in her own and gently moved it up and down. Livia understood-they didn’t use the wai in the West, the slight bow with the palms pressed together and the fingers up. They shook hands. Tanya was introducing herself. She was being nice. She’d been nice since the moment she had chased away the big policeman and cut the ties off Livia’s wrists.
It was good that someone was being nice to her. But while Livia was grateful, she didn’t trust it, either. Niceness could disappear at any moment. Maybe Tanya would get bored. Maybe something would make her angry. Or maybe she would sell Livia, the way Livia’s parents had.
So no. Livia wouldn’t trust Tanya, even though the woman was being nice. She wouldn’t trust anyone.