Stolen Souls

18

GALYA WATCHED AS Billy Crawford set a tall glass on the Formica-topped table before her. He half filled it with something that was not quite milk, then topped it up with lemonade.

“Buttermilk shandy,” he said. He lifted the glass and held it out to her.

She caught its sickly sour-sweet odor and turned her head away.

He laughed. “It’s an acquired taste,” he said. He took a long swallow and placed the glass back on the table. White liquid clung to his whiskers. “Coffee?” he asked.

Galya nodded and pulled the blanket tight around herself.

He went to the worktop by the sink and clicked on the electric kettle. The jar of instant coffee he took from the cupboard looked old and seldom opened.

“I don’t know how fresh it is,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. He dropped a spoonful into a mug. “How do you take it?”

“Black,” she said.

The kitchen looked like Mama’s back home, cupboards with old sliding doors, cracked tiles on the floor, an aging cooker in the corner. The refrigerator hummed next to a top-loading washing machine. The wallpaper bore faded green flowers. It peeled at the corners.

Galya watched him work. He was a short man, no taller than she, but he was bull-shouldered with a thick neck. Muscles bunched and flexed beneath his shirt. He had short, graceless fingers, with dirt under his nails. His shoes were good quality, but heavily worn.

She looked closer.

They weren’t shoes, but rather work boots. Through the old net curtain that covered the window, she could see into his high-walled yard where his van was parked. She recognized the shape of a cement mixer underneath a tarpaulin and a thin sheet of snow. Around the rectangle of concrete lay piles of bricks, sacks of sand and gravel, shovels, a pickax, and other tools she didn’t recognize.

She guessed the journey here had taken less than fifteen minutes. He had told her to lie low in the seat lest anyone see her. She had obeyed until she felt the van begin to slow. Sitting up, she saw the house as they approached. The neighboring building looked derelict, and the pair of houses stood away from any others on the quiet street, on the apex of a bend. A patch of waste ground, overgrown with weeds, lay opposite.

He steered the van to the rear of the house. She waited in the passenger seat while he opened the gates to the small yard. Another stretch of waste ground backed on to the house, across which she could make out the low forms of some industrial buildings. A strange place, lonely with separation from the world around it, yet Galya could still hear the thrum of the city not so far away.

Once inside, he had walked her up a flight of stairs, fetched a towel from a closet on the landing, and brought her to a bathroom.

She emerged after ten minutes, scrubbed clean, but still dressed in the blood-soaked clothes she arrived in. A small cry escaped her when she found him standing exactly where she’d left him, waiting. He smiled. She pictured a vulture lingering over a dying animal. He draped the blanket around her shoulders, and she scolded herself for such ingratitude.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

“You said you are a priest,” Galya said, her fingertips seeking out the cross he’d given her.

“A pastor,” he said. He poured boiling water over the coffee granules. “Baptist. Pastor Billy Crawford.”

“Where is your church?” she asked.

He set the mug of coffee in front of her and sat down at the table. “I don’t have one,” he said, his voice soft like a child’s kiss. He took another sip of his buttermilk shandy. “I got my accreditation five years ago, but I never took a placement in a church. I wanted to work in the community instead. Helping people like you.”

Galya brought the coffee to her lips. It tasted bitter and stale. She tried not to grimace. The snowfall beyond the window started again, heavier than before, coating the tools and machines strewn across the yard.

He followed her stare. “I have to make a living,” he said. “I do occasional work on building sites. I’ve always worked with my hands.” He splayed his stubby fingers on the tabletop, then pointed to the long scar on his brow. “That’s how I got this. A block fell off a pallet, caught me over the eye. A dozen stitches. I always wear a hardhat after that. Not much work around just now, though. Things are quiet. But that’s okay. Means I have more time to help girls like you. Do you want my help?”

For want of a lie, Galya said, “I don’t know.”

“You should,” he said, his smile creasing his wide face. “Because that’s what Jesus has asked of me. To help girls like you. It took me a while to figure it out, what I was supposed to do, but He showed me in the end. I’ve helped lots of girls like you.”

“How many?” Galya asked.

“You’ll be the sixth,” he said, the pride plain on his face. “All of them like you, from faraway places, brought here by evil men to be sold like meat. With His help, I saved them.”

“How will you help me?” Galya asked.

“You speak very good English,” he said. “Where did you learn?”

“At school,” she said. “And from movies. I wanted to be a translator. Or a teacher.”

“You still can,” Billy said. “When you get home, you can be anything you want.”

“No,” Galya said. She put the mug down. “To go to university, it is too much money. I have to care for my brother Maksim. He is all alone back home. He has no money for food. That is why I came here, to make money to send to him.”

“But they lied to you, didn’t they?” he said.

“Yes.”

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Nineteen,” she said.

He smiled. “So young,” he said. “Too young to be treated like that, stolen by these thugs. Tell me about home.”

Weariness tugged at the edges of Galya’s mind, but she brushed it away with a hand across her eyes. Soon she would sleep. After that, she would decide if she wanted this man’s help or not.

“I come from close to Andriivka, a village near Sumy, in Ukraine,” Galya said. Now that the smothering weight of fear had lifted from her breast, she found it easier to form the words in English. “We are Russians, my brother and me. We speak Russian, like many people where we have our home. We lived with Mama and Papa on their farm. We call them Mama and Papa, but they are not … I don’t know to say in English, they are my mother’s Mama and Papa.”

“Your grandparents,” the man said.

“Yes, our grandparent. Mother and father died when we were very small, so Mama and Papa took care of us. Papa died when I was ten, so Mama has to work in the fields. Sometimes I helped, but there is no money. So she sells the fields to other farmers to buy clothes for us. When she died, there is only one field for to grow a little food for us. She owes a lot of money. The man who lends money came, he said he would take the farm from us and throw us out to live in the fields. He said we are only Russians and we stole his money. We were never treated like that before. Russians and Ukrainians are friends, we don’t make a fight with our neighbors, not like this place.”

Galya thought of the murals and graffiti she saw when they drove her to this city from across the border, hatred spattered on walls everywhere she looked.

“One day, my cousin comes for to visit with me. He is rich. He has a car and he wears nice clothes. He told me he knows a man who can give me a job where I can make a lot of money. He said I could make enough to pay the man who lends money so he will leave us alone, and more to feed my brother. I only have to go away for a while and live with a nice Russian family in Dublin and teach their children to speak English.”

Galya lifted the coffee and drank, even though it burned her tongue. Better she burn her tongue than weep with regret in front of this kind man. Mama had always taught her to be upright and strong, never to be weak. Because the weak will always suffer.

“It didn’t work out that way, did it?” Billy asked.

“No,” Galya said. She told him about Aleksander, but she said nothing about how she might have, just for a foolish moment, thought she loved the handsome young man. She stifled a yawn and took a deeper swig of coffee.

“When I come to Ireland, a man waits at the airport in a—how do you call it? Like your van, but with seats?”

“A minibus,” he said.

“Yes, a minibus. And he collected other girls, and some men. He drove us for an hour. I ask him if we go to Dublin, but he said, be quiet. We came to a place, all around it long buildings with steam coming from them, and a smell like animals, but there were no animals. He brought us to a building and put us inside. There were beds, like a prison, or an army place. He said we sleep here, he comes back in the morning.”

The thought of slumber triggered another yawn, but this time she could not hold it back.

“Some of the others, they say they want to go away from this place, but he closes the door and he locks it. There were no windows, and only a toilet and a sink at one end. The girls cried, and so did some of the men. Some girls said they came here to be cleaners, some of them to dance in bars. The men said they came to make houses and roads. But when the man comes back, he says we have to work in these buildings, in the heat and the bad smell, and pick the mushrooms.

“We say we don’t want to do this work, but this man, he says we owe him money. He has our passports. We can’t go away from this place until we pay him back this money. So we have to work. Then we … in the place …”

She did not know how much time passed as she stared at the tabletop, trying to grab at the strands of her thoughts.

“Are you tired?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Of course you are.”

He smiled again, and Galya smelled sour milk.

“You’ve been through so much,” he said. “Do you want to sleep?”

Galya nodded.

“There’s a room upstairs,” he said. “It’s not much, but you can sleep there for a while if you want. I have some calls to make, anyway. We’ve a lot to figure out if we’re going to get you home.”

“Who will you call?” Galya asked.

“People,” he said. “Agencies. They deal with girls like you all the time, girls who’ve been smuggled into the country. They arrange everything, get you a new passport, organize flights, all that. Why don’t you go to sleep? By the time you wake up, it’ll all be sorted, and I can take you to them.”

“Okay,” Galya said.

She might have felt hope or fear in her heart, she couldn’t be sure, but her focus was on keeping her head upright and her eyes open. She swallowed. Something powdery and bitter cloyed the back of her mouth. Two thick arms slipped around her as the world fell away.