Livia lone, p.3
Livia Lone, page 3
The skull man looked at the photo, then at Livia and Nason, then at the photo again. He nodded to the other two men, then began walking toward the hut. One of the two, who had a dirty, patchy beard, followed him. The other, whose shaved head was overlarge and unnaturally square, stepped forward and grabbed Nason by the wrist. Nason whimpered and tried to jerk free, but the man simply turned and began pulling her toward the van. Too startled to think, Livia grabbed Nason’s other wrist and pulled in the opposite direction, at the same time calling out to her parents, her voice high and frightened. For a moment, the man dragged both of them along, but then Livia planted her feet and strained harder, and managed to stop the man from any further progress. But the bearded man must have come up behind Livia, because he threw an arm around her waist and hoisted her into the air, breaking her grip. Enveloped by the stink of vinegary sweat, Livia scratched the man’s arm from elbow to shoulder. He cried out in anger and she tried to scratch him again, but he wrapped his arms around her and began carrying her toward the van. She panicked and tried to break loose but couldn’t. Then she saw that the other man had picked up Nason, too. She stopped struggling—she would never let anyone take Nason without going with her—but she screamed for her parents.
She twisted in the man’s arms and craned her neck, and saw them. They had come to the door of the hut, but they were just standing there, watching, doing nothing. Zanu came and looked, too, but their father pushed him back inside. And then her mother turned away, sobbing, and her father simply motioned to the men with a backward flick of his fingers. Livia was beyond terror now . . . why weren’t her parents doing anything? She couldn’t understand. It didn’t make any sense.
The men shoved her and Nason into the van. The interior was filled with children—eight of them, including Livia and Nason, some of them crying and babbling in the various languages of the hill tribes, others mute and trembling, their arms wrapped around their knees. The air was damp and fetid with the smell of sweat and urine and feces. There was a fourth man inside, too, and he pulled Nason and Livia in and rolled the sliding door closed behind them. The other two men got in front—one in the driver’s seat, the other in the middle. Livia fought her way to the window on the other side. She wiped a clear swath through the moisture and grime and saw the skull man give her mother the photo, then count out a stack of baht into her father’s hand. She shook her head in shock and incomprehension.
The skull man got in the van and they drove away. Livia watched through the streaked glass as her mother went inside, still sobbing. Her father remained, his eyes straight ahead, not on the van, one hand clutching the baht, the other rubbing his thigh as though trying to wipe something from his palm. The van went around a bend in the road, past the village’s rickety wooden shrine, the kind every village had to ward off evil spirits . . . and suddenly the hut, her parents, the village . . . all of it was gone.
She heard Nason behind her, crying, “Labee, Labee!”
Livia maneuvered around several other crying children and threw her arms around her sister.
“It’s okay,” she said, fighting her own tears and panic. “It’s okay, Nason. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.”
The van stopped at two other villages and picked up five more children. Then they drove through the forest for a long time, gradually heading down the mountain. Livia had no idea where they were going. The men spoke Thai and sounded like they were from the city, but that was all she could tell. Amid the stink and the sobbing and the bouncing from the ruts in the road, she held Nason and whispered to her that she was here, that she loved her, that they would be okay.
“But where are we going, Labee?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why aren’t Mama and Papa coming, too?”
“I don’t know that, either.” She thought back to the conversation she’d overheard, the one where her parents had argued about the girls getting jobs—could this be what they had been talking about? But then why would the men have paid her parents if the jobs hadn’t even started?
Not really believing it but needing something to tell Nason, she said, “I think maybe Mama and Papa got us jobs. To make money, so we can buy food.”
She hoped that the notion of having something to eat would help, but her words only made Nason cry harder. “But why wouldn’t they tell us?”
Livia had no answer to that. She remembered how opposed her mother had been to the idea of jobs, and she felt a chill steal into her belly.
“I don’t know, little bird,” she said. “I don’t know.”
At midday, they stopped in a clearing and the men pulled the children out of the van. Livia stood in the tall grass and held Nason’s hand, blinking in the glare of the scorching sun, her skin sticky with sweat. She tried not to be afraid, but she didn’t like that they had stopped. The van was horrible, but she had quickly become accustomed to it. She wasn’t afraid of the van anymore. She was afraid of what would happen next.
The four men stood around the children as they unloaded them from the van, obviously intent on preventing any escape. But one boy must have been planning for this moment, because as soon as his feet touched the grass, he took off running. One of the men grabbed the boy by the shoulder, but the boy squirmed free and raced away.
The boy had gotten not thirty feet when a man popped up from the grass like a tiger and clubbed him across the face with a forearm. The boy flew through the air and landed on his back. The man hauled him up, slung him over a shoulder like a sack of rice, carried him back, and dropped him on the ground in front of the children. And then, with no expression and no sound, the man pulled off his belt and began to whip him. The boy writhed and shrieked, but the man continued, his expression almost bored.
Some of the children turned away. Others were crying. One threw up. Livia, without thinking, shouted in Lahu, “Stop it! Stop!” And then, remembering her Thai lessons, shouted it in Thai.
None of the men even looked at her, least of all the one whipping the boy. She watched, horrified, holding Nason’s sobbing face to her chest so she wouldn’t see, then glanced at the other children to see if anyone else would at least protest. One of them, a Yao boy, she thought, looked older than the others. Certainly he was bigger, almost as big as the men, though not as big as the skull-faced one. But he did nothing.
It went on for a long time. And then, as suddenly and dispassionately as he’d started, the man stopped. He looked at the other children, as though mildly curious about which one he would whip next, and Livia thought his eyes were as flat and cold as a snake’s.
If they had been deeper in the forest, Livia could have found one of the herbs her people used for cuts and pain. But in this grass, there was nothing. She wanted to go to the boy and try to comfort him, but Nason was holding her too tightly, still shaking and crying. So Livia stood still and whispered to Nason that it was all right, she was here, she wouldn’t let her go, they would be all right.
One of the men unzipped his pants and urinated into the grass, not bothering even to turn his back to them. Livia realized she needed to go, too. She didn’t want to ask permission—it felt like a bad idea, and besides, it wasn’t as though they would allow her any privacy. She imagined waiting, and realized she couldn’t. So she squatted, lowered her pants as little as possible, and peed. She kept her arms in front, covering herself as best she could, and stared fixedly at the grass, her face burning with shame.
When she was done, she hurriedly pulled up her pants and stood. She glanced at the men. None of them said anything. But she didn’t like the way they were watching her.
Some of the other children, realizing it was okay, followed suit. But most of them, it seemed, didn’t need to go. They had already lost control of their bladders—and some, of their bowels—in the van, or while the man had been whipping the boy.
The other men relieved themselves, too. Then they smoked cigarettes while the children squatted on the ground, most of them softly moaning and crying, the only other sounds the buzz of insects in the trees and the call of birds in the distance. Then the tall man looked at his watch and nodded to the others. They gestured to the van and kicked the children to make them move. Livia got up quickly, Nason clutching her arm. She wanted to go before the other children so she could be next to the window. If she could see outside, she might learn something, something that could help them. Despite the kicks, some of the children remained frozen in place, crying helplessly. The man who had whipped the running boy pulled off his belt and drew back his arm, and the stragglers hurried forward, too.
Back in the van, Livia found herself next to the boy who had been whipped. She touched his arm and whispered in Lahu, “Are you okay?”
It was a stupid question, she knew. Of course he wasn’t okay. None of them was okay. But she had to do something.
The boy looked at her, his eyes red. His lips were swollen and bloody, probably from when the man had clubbed him to the ground.
“Are you okay?” Livia tried again, this time in Thai.
The boy said something Livia couldn’t understand—Hmong, she thought, but it was slurred because of his lips and she wasn’t sure.
“Thai,” she said. “Do you speak Thai?”
The boy looked left and right as though searching for something, then said in Thai, “Where? Where we go?”
Livia shook her head helplessly.
They were quiet for a moment, then she pointed to herself. “Labee,” she said. “I am Labee.”
The boy nodded and pointed to himself. “Kai.” Then he added, “Where we go, Labee?”
She shook her head again. She wanted to tell him he was brave, but couldn’t remember the word.
4—THEN
They drove for hours past sprawling fields and terraced paddies, by streams sparkling in the harsh sunlight, through small towns with wires strung on poles along the road. Livia leaned against the metal side of the van. The bumps made it uncomfortable, but this way Nason could use her as a cushion. At some point, she woke and realized she’d been dozing. The bumping was gone. She looked out the window and saw the road was paved. She had only seen one paved road before—the narrow, winding one connecting her village with those of the other hill tribes—and she was amazed to see how long and straight this one was, going on and on for what must have been kilometers.
They stopped twice more. At one of the stops, the men handed out rice crackers, which the children devoured, and then bottles of water. No one tried to run. Livia told herself she would have if she hadn’t needed to take care of Nason, but she wasn’t really sure.
As night fell, they reached the edge of a giant city. Livia had never seen so much concrete, so many cars, such massive buildings. Even from inside the van, she could hear the noise of the place, feel its swirling energy. She was pretty sure this was Bangkok, which she of course understood was the capital of the country, but which until that moment had existed in her mind mostly as a kind of dreamland described in schoolbooks, not a real place she might ever actually see. A part of her was fascinated, amazed, by the sheer density of it all. But more than that, she was just frightened. She thought this must be where the men were taking them—where else would there be to go, after a city so enormous? What would happen to them here, in a place with so many people, of whom she and Nason knew none? A city this big could swallow them whole, and no one would ever even know.
And then, in the distance, against the violet and indigo of a darkening sky, she glimpsed a line of giant monsters lit from below and looming over a vast body of water. Everywhere there were enormous boats and rectangular metal boxes bigger than the van, bigger than two vans. Then she saw a sign in Thai: Laem Chabang Port. Was this the ocean, then? And were those monsters actually . . . machines, of some sort? Yes, they were. She saw some of them holding the metal boxes aloft with strings, moving them to and from the boats. The sides of the boxes were marked with huge white letters in languages Livia didn’t know. And then a wave of terror stole through her: were these men taking them to another country? She had barely gotten over her fright at being swallowed up in Bangkok. She couldn’t even comprehend what might lie beyond it.
Nason must have sensed her fear because she squeezed her arm and whispered, “What is it, Labee?”
Livia put an arm around and her and pulled her close. “Nothing, little bird. Nothing.”
They drove on, finally stopping alongside a wall of the giant metal boxes, stacked seven high and lined up as far as Livia could see. A single box lay in front of the others, displaced from the wall. One of the men got out. He opened a door on the box, looked around, then nodded to the other men. One by one, they began taking the children off the van and pushing them into the box. Livia was terrified—what was in there? What would happen to them? How would anyone ever find them in one box out of thousands? But there was nothing she could do. She had to be brave for Nason.
Livia and Nason were last. Nason was crying again, clinging to Livia. As two of the men pushed them toward the box, Livia, desperate, said in Thai, “Where? Where we go?”
Both of the men laughed. One of them looked at Livia in a way that made her want to cover herself. They shoved Livia and Nason inside, then stood blocking the doorway.
Livia looked around. There was nothing bad inside the box, at least. Actually, there was nothing at all. Just a few plastic buckets. But the emptiness was itself somehow terrifying.
Two of the men came inside and handed out more rice crackers and water. All of it was gone in seconds, and the men handed out more. While the children ate, one of the men gestured to his crotch, then to his backside, then to the buckets, grunting with each gesture. Livia understood. The buckets were toilets. They were going to be in this box for a long time. She fought back panic.
The men backed out and closed the door behind them. A quiet wail went up at the sound of bolts scraping into place. Nason stood trembling and clutching Livia, who held her and tried to keep her bearings in the dark. But after a moment, she noticed it wasn’t fully dark. There were holes cut along the top of all the walls. For air, she realized. But the holes were letting in a little light, too.
She made her way carefully to the door, Nason trembling by her side, and tried to open it, but of course it was useless. She tried to think, to figure out something to do.
“Who speaks Thai?” she called out in Thai. There was nothing but the sound of sniffling and quiet sobs in response, so she called out again, “If you speak Thai, answer!”
She heard someone say, “I speak Thai.” The Hmong boy, she thought, recognizing the slight slur from his swollen lips. Kai.
Someone jostled her. Livia resisted the urge to shove the careless child away.
“Listen!” she said. “We have to be careful, how we move. Or we hurt each other. You understand?”
“I understand,” Kai said.
“You are Hmong?” Livia asked.
“Yes, Hmong.”
“Then say my words in Hmong. And ask in Hmong who speaks Akha, Lisu, Karen, or Yao. You understand?”
Soon they were communicating simple messages translated from one language to another and to yet another. There wasn’t much to say—Walk carefully so you don’t step on people who are lying down; the buckets are for toilet; calm, we have to stay calm. There seemed barely any point to it, but it helped to feel there was something to do.
No one knew who the men were or where they were taking the children. One sobbing child reported that she had heard about men like these, that they took children to eat them. Livia could feel panic steal through the space as the message was translated and repeated. She said in Thai, “That’s silly. If they want to eat us, they feed us more—make fat.” That seemed to calm the panic a little. She hoped it was true.
After that, it grew quiet again. Livia wondered if there were other people on the boat, people other than the men. Maybe people who could help them. She picked up one of the buckets and told the children she was going to bang it against the door. Maybe someone would hear and help them.
“No!” the Yao boy said. “Stupid idea. Don’t make men angry.”
“No,” Kai said. “Good idea. We try. Try something.”
“Make men angry bad!” the Yao boy said.
The other children murmured support for whichever side they favored. Livia decided to just do it. She wished she had a heavy stick or a metal bar—it would have made a louder sound.
She slammed the bucket against the door once, then a second time with more confidence, then a third time even harder. The Yao boy yelled at her to stop, but it felt good to do something, anything, rather than just waiting.
Immediately after the third bang, she heard the sound of the bolts scraping. She stepped back. The door opened, silhouetting the figure of a man outside. She couldn’t see his face, but she thought it was one of the three who had taken her and Nason. He said in Thai, “If you make noise again, we whip you. All of you.”
The door closed and the bolts scraped back into place. There was no more noise after that, other than the sounds of quiet crying. The Yao boy said, “I tell you! You stupid girl! Get us all whipped!”
At some point, Livia lay down with Nason on the cool metal floor and managed some sleep—a fitful sleep in which she dreamed she and Nason were being chased in the forest by monsters, horrible monsters with the bodies of men and the faces of tigers. Nason screamed and Livia heard one of the man-tiger monsters roar as it pounced—
She jerked awake and glanced around wildly, frightened and disoriented. Nason was clutching her and wailing and everything was moving, swaying. Some of the children had fallen down; others were still on their feet, their arms spread for balance, their eyes wide with terror.
“Why box moving?” Kai cried out in Thai. “Why?”
“Box alive!” someone else called out. “Going to eat us!”
The words were repeated in other languages, and in seconds the box was filled with a terrified cacophony of unintelligible cries.
