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.