Livia Lone

3-THEN

It was the end of the rice harvest when the men came to the village and took Livia and her sister Nason. Livia was thirteen. Nason was eleven. Their parents had sold them.

It had been morning, the time the children ordinarily would have been feeding the chickens, except that this year there were no more chickens in the village, or pigs for that matter, or even dogs. The last three harvests had been poor, and everyone was hungry. Livia caught worms, frogs, spiders, even scorpions, but it was hardly enough, and the emptiness in her belly gnawed at her constantly, sometimes merely an itch, more often an angry, throbbing ache.

Their father had told them to play outside, which he sometimes did when he was irritable, so they went out to the dirt in front of the small thatched hut and pretended to be different animals-fish swimming in the river, birds flying across the sky, tigers creeping stealthily through the jungle. It was one of their favorite games, and in fact Nason’s birdsong imitations were so uncanny that Livia’s pet name for her was “little bird.” They laughed delightedly whenever Nason got real birds to answer, and the game distracted them both from thoughts of the food they didn’t have.

They were Lahu, one of the hill tribes living in Thailand’s mountainous forests along the Burmese and Laotian border. But borders, like the outside world generally, were largely an abstraction for Livia. There was a single radio in her village, used mostly for music. The only television was a tiny vintage model that, when the weather was right, displayed snowy images picked up from a Burmese station somewhere to the north. She had heard of something called the Internet, but had little idea of what it could be.

Livia spoke some Thai from the provincial school she sometimes attended, and wanted to learn more. But her parents didn’t see why anyone would need a language other than Lahu. Besides, in better years, there were too many chores to allow for frivolities like school: rice to be planted and then harvested; well water to be fetched; game to be hunted. By the time she was six, Livia was already expert with the a-taw-the Lahu machete used for everything from clearing a trail to felling trees to butchering a chicken; the law-gaw, the sickle used for threshing rice; and the heh hga geu dtu ve, a wicker cage in which a small chick was placed in the forest to attract jungle fowl, which could then be shot with a ka-a crossbow of ancient but effective design.

Though Nason was only two years younger than Livia, she was small for her age and not very strong. Livia worried about her. She had seen what happened to the smallest piglets in the litters born to the village sows. Denied access to their mothers’ teats by their greedy brothers and sisters, the little ones quickly weakened, and it was never long before the villagers butchered them for their scant meat. Livia hated it. She would push away the stronger siblings so the little ones could get a turn at a teat-she would even feed them herself-but it was never enough. She knew Nason needed someone to help her, too. But their parents were too busy to give the girls much attention, and their brother Zanu, fifteen, handsome, and already the topic of marriage gossip in the village, couldn’t be bothered. Livia would have to protect Nason herself.

One night, lying on the pallet she shared with Nason, separated from the rest of the hut by a curtain, she heard her parents talking in low voices about the government in Bangkok, how it was trying to stop the hill tribes from farming by their traditional method of cutting and burning. Something about the environment. Her mother was frightened. How would they eat? Her father said they would have to find the girls jobs. Livia didn’t think that sounded so terrible, but for some reason her mother strongly protested, even daring to raise her voice. But Livia’s father silenced her by asking if she would rather see her children starve.

Nason stirred. Livia handed her the small wooden protection Buddha she had carved herself, and which they both liked to keep by the pallet. Sometimes holding the Buddha helped Nason sleep. Then Livia stroked her hair to soothe her, but Nason’s eyelids fluttered open. She moaned and rubbed her stomach.

“Here, little bird,” Livia whispered, reaching into a small shoulder bag. “I saved this for you.”

It was a durian fruit, Nason’s favorite. Livia had found it deep in the forest, fallen and overlooked by others foraging for food. She had badly wanted to eat it herself, but knew Nason might wake up hungry.

“No, Labee,” Nason said, calling Livia by her Lahu name. “It’s yours. You need it, too.”

“I don’t. I had some already. I’m full.”

She knew Nason didn’t believe her. But was there anything more persuasive than hunger?

Nason looked longingly at the fruit. “We’ll share it, then.”

Livia nodded and took a small bite. And made sure Nason ate the rest, encouraging her to go slowly so it would last.

When the durian was gone, she snuggled closer to Nason and put her arms around her. And somehow, despite the hunger, despite her parents’ frightening words, when she heard Nason softly snoring again, she slept, too.

The men came not long after.

Livia and Nason were out playing, as their father had directed them. Livia was laughing at the way Nason was shimmying her body like a fish when they heard an unfamiliar sound-a car engine. Livia looked up and saw a rusting white van bouncing toward them along the rutted dirt road, a plume of dust behind it. She and Nason stopped their game and stood, watching.

The van slowed and crept closer, stopping just in front of them. Three men got out. Livia immediately disliked them-they looked crafty, like slinking dogs hoping to steal a morsel. One of them, taller than the other two and with prominent cheekbones that made him look like a skull with eyes, was holding a photograph-the photograph that belonged to her mother, Livia realized in confusion. One of the villagers who had a camera had taken the photo a year earlier, then had it developed for their mother in nearby Chiang Rai. The photo was of Livia with her arms around Nason in front of their hut, both in their finest clothes-brightly colored embroidered dresses, the traditional garb of their people. Her mother treasured that photo and kept it in the cooking area in a jar to protect it from dampness. How did these men get it? And what were they doing with it?

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.