Nowhere Girl (12 page)

P
ART  
I I I

Discovery

35

Deliverance, when it comes, is sharp and sudden. It starts with footsteps growing steadily nearer, and I know then what is coming. There's a swish and a groan and a sudden burst of light, and then a bold, strong gasp of air lands on me like a slap.

I squint into the sudden pool of brightness. A man's voice yells, then falters, and then the cover drops over me again. Cringing into myself, I squirm farther back on my pallet, try to push myself out of sight.

I've been discovered. What will become of me now?

I feel like a cornered animal, and my panic is so strong it blinds my eyes, steals my tongue, paralyzes every muscle in my body. Blood pounds in my ears and in the time-frozen silence I can hear the
thump, thump, swish
of my heartbeat rising and falling.

A white cloud of fear swirls toward me and I want nothing more than to fall into it, lose myself in its blank emptiness. But the cloud becomes a screen and on the screen I see images. Me. My life. Through the pounding of my heart I remember everything that's happened since I left the prison. I remember Mama.

And I see her as she so often was: her wide, terror-struck eyes as she grappled with some nightmare, as she lay still inside her life and let fear hold her captive. I see her beaten not by prison but by her own refusal to fight. And I finally see the truth: Mama gave up on her life.

But what about me? I think of myself, the paths I've traveled and the distance I've come. I remember the danger on the road to Sukhothai. I remember arriving at the port, alone, betrayed. I was afraid, but I didn't lie down and quit. I didn't give up then and … the knowledge hits me like a bucket of icy water, waking me out of my stupor.

I won't give up now, either. I won't. I can't let my fear hold me down. Not now; not ever again.

Whatever is to come, I must face it.

I don't have long to wait. The bellow of voices gets louder; then my covering is pulled all the way off. Black-stained hands drag me to my feet and tug me onto the deck. More lights point at me now, three or four bright beams coming from different directions. Then two of the lights turn away and a rough brown arm reaches out and grabs hold of my shoulder, tries to yank me forward.

My legs crumple under me. Is it from fear? Hunger? Weakness after being hidden so long? I've got to stand up. I've got to be strong.

Four sailors loom on all sides of me. I push my palms onto the deck, stand up on wobbly legs. The nearest man digs callused fingers into my arm, half tugging, half carrying me along the deck and through a rusty metal door, where I nearly topple down a long flight of stairs.

The man behind me grabs my other arm, and together the two keep me upright. My shoulders ache and my head pounds, so I shut my eyes and just try to keep up. And then I'm in a room, propped up on a narrow seat that leans against the wall. Three of the men are gone, but the fourth glares at me. His hands open and close like he is looking for something to throttle. He glares at me through bloodshot eyes.

“Stowaway,” he says to me in broken English. “Much bad, very bad. You see captain now. Very bad, much danger. Captain very much punishment.”

I turn my eyes from the sailor's burning look, and after another minute he stomps away.

I am alone. Again.

The room I am in is sparse, with two chairs clamped to the floor and a bare countertop. A small round window shows the blackness of the outside. I am looking out of it, trying to find stars in the night sky, trying not to think about where I am and what will happen next, trying to cling to my hope, when there is a noise behind me.

The door opens with a sharp click.

Footsteps.

The captain has arrived.

Where is that strength I've only just found? Where is my backbone when I need it? My eyes are glued to the window. I can't move a muscle.

“You there!” grates a harsh voice. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

It's useless to delay what must be done. I take a deep breath and turn to face the captain.

And then I freeze midturn.

I don't know what I was expecting, but this is not it. The man in the doorway is no taller than I am, and has the frame of a boy. He's got very pale skin and his shock of gray-white hair is topped with a captain's hat that looks comically large. Even his clothes look too big. But his mouth is turned down at the edges, a stringy gray mustache quivers, and his eyes look like exploding firecrackers.

The first shock of unreality is followed by a lurch in my stomach as I look into his eyes. I see no softness, no mercy there. Whatever his size, this man means business.

“Who are you and what are you doing on my ship?” The captain's voice booms so loud that I start to shake. Instinctively I bring my hands together and bow my head in a
wai
. He probably won't know the traditional Thai greeting, but it soothes me. And hides my face for one precious moment while I try to gather myself.

“Sir—” I begin, trembling a little, but he cuts me off. His voice rises to typhoon level.

“Do you have any idea how many stowaways try to sneak on my ship at every port of call? Do you know how much each one costs me? The trouble and paperwork and money it takes to get them sorted out? Do you want to know what I did with the last stowaway? Huh?”

I flinch as horrible images flash through my head. What
does
happen to stowaways on a ship? Do they get thrown overboard? Put to work as slave labor? Locked up in a dark prison cell?

A shudder goes through me as I picture myself returning to prison, only this time as a real inmate, this time all alone. I ball my hands and force myself to keep taking slow breaths. What can I do?

The captain marches closer. Suddenly he stops, a puzzled look on his face. He leans forward and grabs my chin, turns it from side to side. “How old are you, girl? You look like a child. Are you here alone?”

I shiver.

So this is it. The moment of truth. Where is that new girl inside me, the one with no stain on her past, the one with all ordinary answers to so many difficult questions? Can that girl save me now? Could she ever?

Because suddenly it seems to me that what brought me here, to this place, has a lot to do with my trying to be someone I'm not. Chaluay. Who was I to her? Some
farang
loaded with money—or so it would seem from the stories I told—and easily able to get more. I think back to those conversations when I lived out my make-believe life, drawing in bits and pieces of it whenever the mood struck me. If I had done things differently, would Chaluay still have acted as she did?

There's no way of knowing. But one thing I do know. I'm tired of pretending.

The room has gone quiet. I look at the captain and something I now see in those fireball eyes—some spark of warmth or understanding—gives me courage. Surely this strange boy-man with the larger-than-life voice has had his own share of difficulties in life. Maybe he, of all people, could understand mine. All the times I've closed my lips and held in my secrets, what was really the point? What good did it do me?

I'm sorry, Mama. I've tried—I really have. But this world is not like the inside. I can't fight my battles with fantasy. I am not you. I have to work things out in my own way.

With a deep breath, I decide to take a chance. I decide to risk everything I have on a handful of whispered words. I break the final taboo and, for the first time in my life, speak aloud my full name.

“My name is Luchi Ann Finn,” I begin. “I am thirteen years old and I was born in the Khon Mueang Women's Prison.”

The ship pitches and tosses, so much so that I hardly notice the sticky web of secrets break loose around me as I push through and lay my life bare before this stranger.

But it feels magical.

I am like a bottle kept so long closed in on itself, but once open, unable to be corked again. Words spill out of me like water, pouring over my lap, over the floor, over and around and through my listener. And the captain looks at me, wide-eyed, mouth open. After a few minutes he drops down in the chair opposite me, pulls a silver flask out of his jacket, and takes a drink.

“Go on,” he booms, and I do.

I tell him about Mama, about her secrets, about my grandmother's letter. I talk about Kiet and Chaluay and how I came to be sleeping with the cabbages on his boat. I talk until my throat feels like dried fish and every word comes out with a crackle. I talk until the sky outside the little round window glows pink and shiny, and the captain still sits next to me, shaking his head, turning his now-empty flask over and over in his lap.

It doesn't seem to occur to him to doubt my story. Maybe it's too fantastic to be anything but true, sitting here as we are, in a wood-paneled room on a container barge in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. One black dot in a sea of blue; two strangers tossed together by circumstance, and finding—just for a moment—a connection and kinship they had not even known they were looking for.

36

My story is finished, and at first the captain sits dazed. Then he leaps up and starts pacing back and forth, crackling with energy. Before my eyes he transforms from hunter to protector.

“My dear,” he says. “Never in my life have I heard such a tale! Astounding! But don't you worry yourself—no, you've come to the right place. How you came to be here—bah!” He puffs a little, like an annoyed dragon. “That so-called friend … such treachery! Bald thieving!”

How quickly he has forgotten my own dishonesty, in his concern over the wrongs done to me. My eyes fill with tears.

“The
California Dreamer
is outfitted to hold fifteen passengers, fifteen paying guests we can carry as well as a full complement of goods. And how many are on board now, you ask? Hah!” The captain slaps his knee in a triumph of his own genius. “Six! Six passengers on board, and so we have plenty of room for you, my girl. No, say no more. You'll be my guest and I'll not hear of anything different. In fact, I have just the place to put you—a charming stateroom on the upper deck that will suit you perfectly.

“Well?” he barks, pausing midstep. “What do you think of that, eh? I'll have you outfitted in no time. Right as rain, you'll be. No need to worry about a thing. What do you say to that, girl, eh? Luchi—that's your name? Luchi, a fine name. Can't say I've heard it before, but it rings strong, yes sir it does.”

“I am overwhelmed,” I say. “I fear I will not be able to repay you. I do have some
baht.
It's not much, but …”

“Tosh and nonsense,” he blusters, going red in the cheeks. “Of course you're not going to pay me. You will be a guest on my ship—a guest, do you hear? I won't have it be said I took money from an impoverished child, no sir, not Captain Jensen! It's the least I can do after all you've been through, and that's a fact. Now, up you get, girl. Let's move you along to the dining hall.” He looks at me and lifts a burly eyebrow. “No. I think the stateroom first. You'll want to get cleaned up. Follow me.”

With that, the captain yanks open the door and marches out into the hall, leaving me wondering: What just happened? Did my story somehow cut through his crusty exterior to find the hidden warmth? Could it be that all it took to put my life back on course was a long shot of the truth? After all the strange turns my road has taken, I don't know how to handle this sweeping kindness.

“Who are you?” I ask the empty room the question I would not dare ask the captain to his face. “Are you some kind of a fairy godmother?”

Saying this out loud makes me giggle, and in the distance I hear the captain's voice booming: “Now, where's that young girl gone and put herself?”

I jump to my feet, slip my bag over my shoulder, and step out into the hallway. It's easy enough to follow him. His stream of words floats along like a guide rope through the corridors, leading me around unfamiliar cabins, through narrow halls, with the ship swaying gently around me.

For a second I think back to that moment I first set foot on a boat with Chaluay, and am surprised that I no longer feel the least bit afraid. It turns out that deep water—much like the truth about my past—wasn't there to drown me at all, but to bring me where I needed to go.

37

It is easier than I expect to fall into the ship's routine. It's a carefree life: all the structure and boundary of the inside, blown through with the salt tang of freedom, the knowledge that this small moving world is mine to explore, to navigate, to possess. That it is not only sheltering me, but also driving me toward my goal.

The stateroom the captain has promised me is enormous. This whole wide space—all for me? I count careful steps down the center of the room, from one side to the other. I measure ten paces one way and twelve the opposite. It is so much bigger than the room I grew up in, and that was always swarming with people. The bed is as big as three of my old prison cots, and it is up off the ground almost to my thighs. A colorful bedcover is draped over it, and when I peek underneath I see a smooth-sliding drawer: empty, inviting me to fill it with treasures.

The floor is covered with a deep brown fur, and after I have measured the room I kick off my sandals and spend long minutes treading back and forth, tangling my toes in its plush covering and trying not to laugh out loud. So this is the miracle of carpeting!

There is more to the room, much more, and it takes me several hours to explore it to my satisfaction. Once that is conquered I venture out to other parts of the ship: the kitchen with its sweaty, noisy bustle; the navigation deck, where the captain pulls up a stool for me and launches into long historical and scientific lectures; the lounge, where I make the timid acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg, retired globe-paddlers and self-appointed freighter-travel experts, who are authoring their third highly acclaimed book on the subject.

And there is the rec room, so called not because it has been wrecked, as I first thought, but short for “recreation,” which is a word I did not find much use for growing up. This room is full of brightly colored game boxes, paperback books, a television larger than the window of my old cell, and stacks of movies and video games. This room terrifies me. I feel its magnetic tug but I cannot follow it. With such a glut of information, how could I possibly know where to begin? How could I keep from being buried by the mountain of things I do not know, that I cannot ever hope to catch up on?

These questions do not seem to bother Captain Jensen. He takes my gaps in stride and makes it his business to compress a lifetime of missed opportunities and knowledge into three weeks of travel by sea. There seems to be no time when his lips are not moving. It occurs to me at some point that it was a good thing I got my whole story out that first day, for I have hardly been able to speak six words together to him since.

But my mind is wild with new knowledge. I learn about the sea and the different types of freighters, of which the break-bulk, or general cargo (into which category falls the
California Dreamer
), is the vastly superior, in that it can load free goods as well as containers. While more and more freighters are reformatting to transport only containers, Captain Jensen tells me he sees the value in maintaining some of the old sense of tradition, and that he has made a fine business so far in giving value to big and small vendors alike, not only those who have the money and means to hire at the top of the line.

I learn about satellites, those hidden machines that loop the earth so far out of sight which have put the old navigational tools almost completely out of business. The satellite is a further boon, the captain explains, because it allows for phone and limited Internet usage, despite being so far out at sea. This is no small miracle, he assures me, and looks over to see if I am suitably impressed.

I consider this. “My set of encyclopedias was published in 1986,” I say. “My grasp of technology is … limited.” I am being generous, of course. I have seen the computer in Chief Warden Kanya's office, the one my mother was given special privileges to use twice a year, but I was never allowed to touch it myself. One magazine sent to Jeanne by her cousin contained an article debating companies named Microsoft and Macintosh, and meant nothing to me. I know computers are information machines, but in Mama's case they only launched her into weeks of dark depression. What could I want with such a device?

Captain Jensen looks thoughtful. “Nineteen eighty-six?” he asks. “Well, we shall have to remedy that somehow. But tell me, have you been in the rec room yet?”

I lower my head, shake it just barely. I hope he will not probe further.

But this is Captain Jensen, after all.

“All right,” he says. “Out with it, girlie. What's eating you?”

I sink lower in my chair, but seconds tick by and I am so shocked at his sudden silence that I have to put out words to fill it. “It's a lovely room,” I try. “But it's just … too much. There is too much there. I don't know where to start.”

That's all I can manage, and I am not sure if he will understand. But he nods.

“Ah, of course. Too bloody much information. And why not? A girl can't chow down a whole supermarket in one sitting, can she? And who would expect it? Well, my dear, I have an idea. We'll have things sorted out for you in no time. Nineteen eighty-six? My, my!” He shakes his head and his muttering trails off under his breath.

In a few minutes we are back to the history and development of satellite technology, but when I return to my room after dinner that night, I find that someone has been there before me. On my bed I see a small pile of books.

I approach, lift the first one reverently, as if it might explode in my hands, or maybe light a fire that will never go out again. I trace my finger along the titles, inspect each one:
A Tale of Two Cities. Charlotte's Web. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
I flick open this last one—it is a silly name that makes me want to laugh. And before long I am drawn into this story of a child who has grown up in one world, never dreaming that one day he would learn about another one so completely different from all he has known, so full of wonders, a world where every hidden dream has the chance to come true.

After that, a new book or magazine is on my bed every time I come into my room. Some have faded cloth covers and gilt writing. Others are soft paperbacks and have photographs of girls with red lips and shiny hair. Some are magazines from one, two, or six years ago. I read names of people I have never heard of, learn what they ate for breakfast and how often their shirts have come untucked from their skirts, and who was caught walking in public with toilet paper stuck to her shoe. It all seems so trivial. When I was growing up, many inmates were obsessed with analyzing and gossiping about what their cellmates or others said and did. It was a way of passing the time, putting a lens up to our tiny world and finding out what crawled under every rock. But I am shocked to find that same thing here, on the outside.

Maybe some things don't change no matter where you are.

I soon begin to set those magazines aside unopened. It's the books that really tug me under. Most of what I read is new to me, but some stories I have heard before, in Bibi's croonings, in Mama's bedtime tales, even some books I owned or borrowed and read on the inside. These existing pieces frame my growing knowledge, make the new portions fit better. Slowly, one bit at a time, I feel the world beginning to take shape around me. It is a fascinating course of discovery, and before long I find myself with a huge stack of completed items.

One day soon, I decide, I will go into the rec room. Only to return things. I won't stay; I will just walk to the door and slide in the books I have read. Or maybe I could walk inside, just as far as the bookshelves. Just to make sure that every book I have been given is filed back in its proper place.

Maybe, if something catches my eye, I might also leave with one or two new books to read. Books that I have picked out for myself.

“So how are you faring?” the captain asks me a few days later, as we sit at dinner with the ship's first mate, Ahmed, and the Rosenbergs. “Enough to do? Your room to your satisfaction? Explored every nook and cranny of the place yet?”

“Oh yes, it is all wonderful. Thank you,” I murmur into my bowl of split-pea soup. And it's true. He's been so generous and welcoming I sometimes feel embarrassed by it.

“That's just capital. But I'd do anything for you, Mandy, you know that.”

Mandy? I look up. Captain Jensen's face has gone ghost-white. The spoon he is holding drops from his hand and clatters down onto his plate. Thick green soup splatters all over the tablecloth.

“Captain?” I say.

But he jumps up, pushes away from the table, and dashes off across the dining room. I look around the table. “What just happened?”

The others exchange glances. Then Ahmed says, “Mandy was Captain Jensen's daughter. She died two years ago.”

Mrs. Rosenberg reaches over and puts her hand on top of mine. “It's been so good to have you here, darling. This is our third trip with Captain Jensen, and the first time we've seen him the way he was
before
. He's been almost … happy. You've done this for him. I think he's just so glad to have a child around again.”

Missing pieces fall into place in my mind, and suddenly the captain's immediate welcome, his unconditional acceptance, makes a lot more sense. But at what price has come my rescue? I stand up and push my chair away from the table. “Please excuse me,” I say. “I'm not hungry anymore.”

I know that whatever happened to Mandy Jensen wasn't my fault, but I can't help feeling guilty. Her death, after all, has contributed to my own good fortune. And this makes me feel like the worst kind of thief. I walk past the captain's stateroom, but his door is open and the room is empty. Where would he be? I drift up one hall and down another, but he's in none of his usual places. Finally I come out on deck and there he is, on the bridge, looking out over the water.

He half turns his head, and smiles when he sees that it's me. “Luchi,” he says. “I'm so sorry. Shameful display, what you saw down there. I can't excuse myself. It's just—” His voice breaks a little and I rush over, put my hand on his arm.

“I'm sorry, Captain Jensen,” I say. “The others told me about—about …”

He wipes his eyes and laughs a little. “It's okay. You can say her name. Mandy was more full of life than anyone I've ever known. She … she would have been eleven this year. This month.”

There's nothing I can say to that, so I just squeeze his arm a little harder. He reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a picture of a girl with light brown braids and laughing green eyes. She looks so alive that it takes my breath away. And I never even knew her. How does he go on?

I think of Mama. How alive she was … until she wasn't. I remember my own picture, the one in my tea box, the one I've held through so many days, soaked with tears so many nights. And just like that, my feelings of guilt are gone. I haven't stolen anything from Captain Jensen, any more than he has from me. I'm not his Mandy, but if he can find some laughter in my eyes, if I can find some shelter in his words, then maybe—even just for a short time—both of us can feel that we've never really left home. That life can still go on.