Livia Lone (Livia Lone #1)(25)
And then a blue-uniformed woman with deep brown skin came and shoved the big man back. Livia couldn’t understand the woman’s words, but she was clearly angry and admonishing the big man. They argued for a moment, and then the woman pointed off to the side. The man glared for a moment, then stalked off in the direction the woman had indicated.
The woman leaned forward so her head was on the same level as Livia’s, and looked in Livia’s eyes. She said something. Livia had no idea what, but her tone was soft and her eyes were filled with kindness. Livia looked at her skin, fascinated. She was the color of chocolate, darker even than the darkest people among the hill tribes, but her eyes were lighter, her lips and cheeks fuller. Livia had seen such people on the village television, and she realized distantly that she had always assumed television was the only place they existed. She blinked her stinging eyes, trying to adjust. What was real? What was television? Was the village a dream? Where was Nason?
The chocolate woman kept talking—softly, gently, reassuringly. Livia recognized the tone as the way she herself would talk to a sow feeding a litter and nervous about Livia’s approach. It made Livia feel better. And then, still talking in her soothing tone, the woman stepped behind Livia, and all at once Livia’s hands were free. She pulled her arms around and massaged her wrists. The woman tossed something onto the ground, and Livia saw it was some kind of plastic, and that the woman had cut it with a knife she was holding. The woman folded the knife closed and returned it to a belt filled with tools, including a gun in a special holder.
Another big uniformed man rushed over and started arguing with the chocolate woman, gesturing to Livia and then to the cut plastic binding on the ground. He was obviously unhappy that Livia was untied. But the chocolate woman wouldn’t back down. She raised her voice and stood close to the man’s face until finally, like the first man, he walked off, snarling some words as he did so like a dog slinking away from a fight.
Livia sat in the hot sun for hours and watched, trying to understand. Dozens of people in different uniforms rushed back and forth, taking notes and photographs; picking up things too small for Livia to see and putting them in plastic bags; talking to each other and into little boxes Livia thought were radios. The chocolate woman stayed close the whole time. She gave Livia a bag of something salty and crunchy to eat and a can with a sweet drink inside it, and she wouldn’t let anyone bind Livia’s wrists the way they had done to all the other people. Livia wondered whether it was because she was a child. She didn’t know, but at least she wasn’t tied. Being tied was horrible.
A car pulled up and more people got out—people with Asian faces, not chocolate or pasty white. They squatted and talked to the people from the box, and after a while the police began to remove the wrist bindings. The Asian people tried to talk to Livia, but she couldn’t understand any of them. In Thai and Lahu, she said, “Nason, my sister, do you know what happened to my sister?” over and over, but none of them understood her any better than she understood them.
The police took them all to a big, modern building—a hospital, Livia realized from the people in white coats, although she had never been to anything more than the hill tribe clinic near her village. Livia sat in a small room on a table covered in soft white paper, the chocolate woman leaning against the wall opposite. A pasty man in a white coat came in. Livia knew he was a doctor—he had an air of authority about him, and the instrument for listening to hearts was hanging around his neck. He said some words, then tried to touch Livia with the instrument. But the thought of this strange man—any man—touching her was horrifying. She jerked away and bared her teeth. He took a step back, then frowned and came forward again. Livia put her hands on the table, ready to spring past him and run. But the chocolate woman talked to him the way she’d talked to the other men, and after a moment, he walked out.
The chocolate woman gestured to herself and said, “Tanya.” Then she gestured to Livia and raised her eyebrows.
Livia understood. The chocolate woman was saying she was called Tanya. And asking what Livia was called.
“Labee,” Livia said.
Smiling, Tanya held out her hand and said, “Hi, Labee.”
Livia looked at Tanya’s hand. Was she supposed to hold out her hand, too? She did, the same way Tanya had.
Tanya laughed. She took Livia’s hand in her own and gently moved it up and down. Livia understood—they didn’t use the wai in the West, the slight bow with the palms pressed together and the fingers up. They shook hands. Tanya was introducing herself. She was being nice. She’d been nice since the moment she had chased away the big policeman and cut the ties off Livia’s wrists.
It was good that someone was being nice to her. But while Livia was grateful, she didn’t trust it, either. Niceness could disappear at any moment. Maybe Tanya would get bored. Maybe something would make her angry. Or maybe she would sell Livia, the way Livia’s parents had.
So no. Livia wouldn’t trust Tanya, even though the woman was being nice. She wouldn’t trust anyone.
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.