They waited. A woman in a white uniform brought food on a tray. Though Livia was painfully hungry, she wasn’t sure she should eat, because eating would keep her alive. But then she thought of Nason. So she devoured everything on the tray-chicken and rice, a sweet drink, and a weird, jiggly, translucent red cube that tasted like berries. Tanya stepped out when Livia was done, and came back a moment later with another tray just like it. Livia finished everything on that one, too.
They waited more. There was a telephone in the room. Like so many other things she was seeing here, Livia knew what a telephone was, but had never used one. From time to time, the phone would ring, and Tanya would pick it up and talk into it, then put it back the way it was. On one of these calls, though, she didn’t put it back-she nodded vigorously, and spoke excitedly, then handed the phone to Livia. Livia stared at the phone, uncertain, and Tanya gestured to it, as though expecting Livia to do something. Livia raised the phone to her face and looked at it. She could hear a tiny, tinny voice coming out. A woman’s voice, and she was speaking in Thai: “Hello? Hello, are you there?”
The feeling of someone she could understand, who would be able to understand her, was so overwhelming that Livia’s throat closed up and tears spilled from her eyes. Tanya stroked her arm, and strangely it looked as though she might cry, too.
Livia raised the phone to her ear the way Tanya had. “Yes,” she managed to croak in Thai. “Yes, I here. Please, please, do you know Nason? My sister. Where she is?”
“Hello? Your sister?”
“Yes, yes, my sister, Nason. Where she is? Please.”
“I… I don’t know that, but we’re going to try to help you. Are you Thai? The translators thought you might be.”
“Yes, I am Lahu.”
“You came from Thailand?”
“Yes, yes.”
The woman said words Livia couldn’t follow.
“Please, please, slower,” Livia said. “My Thai no good.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “I work for the Thai government. In America. In Washington. The capital of America.”
Livia was confused. “America… what? Why?”
“You’re in America. In Llewellyn, Idaho.”
America? No. That couldn’t be right. But they’d been on the boat for a long time… had they crossed the ocean? Livia had never felt so disoriented, so cut off from everything she knew. She might as well have been told she was on the moon.
She desperately wanted to understand the woman’s other words. “Lew-el-in?” she said carefully. “I-da-ho?”
“A town in America. And I am with the Thai Embassy in Washington.”
It was so frustrating not to know the words. “Em-ba-see?”
There was a pause. “Okay, the first thing is to find a Lahu speaker to talk to you.”
“Yes, please that! Please Lahu.”
“All right. The police will take care of you there. Until we find a Lahu speaker.”
“Wait, wait, my sister, Nason. Where she is?”
“The police can help with that.”
“But-”
“The police will help. We’ll find you a Lahu speaker. You’re going to be okay.”
“But-”
Livia heard a click. After a moment, there was a buzzing in the phone. She looked at it, not understanding, put it to her ear once more, then realized the Thai woman was gone. She handed the phone back to Tanya and started to cry again.
Tanya stroked Livia’s shoulder and spoke in her soothing voice. She handed Livia a square of delicate white paper, like paper for the toilet. Livia looked at the paper, not understanding. Tanya smiled, took the paper back, then gently touched it to Livia’s cheeks. Livia was confused-they used this kind of paper for drying tears, not just for the toilet? It was a small thing, but everything was so overwhelmingly alien here that this drying paper upset her and made her cry harder. But she raised the paper to her cheeks and dabbed at them, because it seemed to be what Tanya wanted.
After that, they just waited. More doctors came and went. Tanya spoke to them. They didn’t bother Livia.
Periodically, voices came out of Tanya’s radio. The radio was attached by a spiral cord to a little black box clipped to the shoulder of Tanya’s uniform. A microphone, Livia understood, like the one on the karaoke box in the village. Tanya would pick up the microphone when the voices came out of the radio and talk into it. One of these conversations lasted longer than the others. Tanya glanced at Livia while she spoke, and it sounded like she was arguing. When the conversation was over, she squatted so she was looking up at Livia, who was still sitting on the table. She spoke some words-a question, from the tone-and Livia could tell she was sad, or uneasy, which made Livia uneasy, too. A moment later, another blue-uniformed woman came in, this one pasty white. Tanya gestured to the pasty woman and said to Livia, “Camille.”
Tanya was introducing this new police person. Which meant she was leaving. Livia had been right. She knew not to trust Tanya. Not to trust anyone.
Livia turned her face away and said nothing. She heard the women talking, and then the sound of the door as it opened and closed. When she looked again, Tanya was gone, replaced by Camille.
Someone brought more hot food on a tray-some kind of meat, and vegetables Livia didn’t recognize. She devoured it all anyway. Then they brought her a blanket and a pillow. She slept curled up on the table, waking up frightened and disoriented several times during the night, and dreaming she was back in the forest with Nason.
In the morning, Tanya returned with several new people: three pasty men in suits and neckties, and a woman in western clothes but with a Lahu face. The woman looked at Livia and said in Lahu, “Hello, I’m Nanu, though here I’m called Nancy. Are you the one called Labee?”
Even more than when she had spoken on the phone the day before to the Thai woman, Livia was overwhelmed at being able to understand someone, and this time someone who spoke her own language. “Yes!” she said, nodding vigorously and wiping the tears that had sprung to her eyes. “Yes, I’m Labee. Please, do you know where my sister Nason is?”
“We don’t know, Labee, but I want you to tell me everything you can so we can help. Was your sister with you on the boat?”
“Not on this boat. On a different boat. A bigger one. The one that took us from Thailand.”
“All right, wait just a moment, I’m going to translate what you said for these people. They’re going to try to help. All right?”
Livia nodded vigorously, her jaw clenched shut. Now that she could be understood, it was almost impossible not to talk.
Nanu translated, talking more to the men in suits than to Tanya or the other policewoman. Then she turned back to Livia. “Labee, the small boat you were on, the one that brought you here, came from Portland.”
“Portland?”
“Yes, a city on the West Coast of America. Was Nason with you when you were put on the small boat from Portland?”
An image of Nason, mute and vacant and bleeding, flashed across Livia’s mind, and she pushed it away. These people were trying to help. To help, they needed information. And the more they learned from Livia, the more she might learn from them.
“I… I think so. The men who took us made me go to sleep. When I woke up, I was on the small boat. And”-her voice caught for a moment, and she forced herself to continue-“Nason was gone.”
“Do you know how long you were on the big boat?”
“I’m not sure. We were in a box. But I think… maybe a week. Is this really America?”
“Yes, it is. A week would have been long enough to reach Portland. Were there other people with you on the big boat?”
America. Livia still couldn’t believe it. It was so dizzying, disorienting. She pushed the feeling away and forced herself to focus. “Yes, eleven other children, plus Nason and me. Hmong, Yao… all from the hill tribes.”