Nowhere Girl (6 page)

17

As I walk, the rain starts up again. I wrap my sarong tightly around my tea box, determined not to let in any moisture that might damage the precious contents.

It takes me less than fifteen minutes to get to the main road. I have heard the family talking about this road that leads back toward Sukhothai. From there, I will find a bus to take me to Bangkok. I have Isra's
baht
, so I will have no trouble paying my way.

The quiet afternoon air and the light rain lull me with their peace, and I think about my exchange with Kiet. Was I right in what I said, what I did? I lost face, and more important, I caused Kiet to lose face. But what else could I have done? The pushing in my chest was not something that could be controlled. I truly believe it was something that needed to grow, a moth that had to push its way out of the cocoon so that it might someday learn to fly.

I replay the memory in my mind. I see myself standing on that porch, telling Kiet what I thought, deciding what I had to do. All on my own. Not forced by circumstances outside of my control, but acting alone—choosing—for the first time in my life.

No. It was not a mistake, and I would bear an ocean of rain and a river of mud and the solitude of all the lonesome treks in the world to gain the strength that came from that choice.

Still, the rain and the mud are a poor exchange for my lost friendship, and I would be a fool not to see what I have lost.

The road to Sukhothai is longer than I had expected. After an hour's walk, I have no idea how far I have come or how far there is still to go. My hair hangs around my face in dripping strands and my clothes stick to my body. The soles of my feet are made of sandpaper. How much longer can I go on like this?

The road is well traveled, and each time a car or truck passes I scoot up onto the bank, getting as far away from it as I can. Yet I look wistfully after the clouds of exhaust, picturing wide-open doors and invitations to ride—anything,
anything
if I could just stop walking.

A pickup truck slows as it passes me, the paunchy driver in mirrored sunglasses swiveling his head around to study me as he goes by. Round lumpy figures line the back of the truck like a half-filled fruit bowl. I turn my head away from the man's buglike stare.

The truck drives only a few hundred meters, then stops and veers onto the side of the road in front of me. Suddenly I feel very exposed on this busy highway. My earlier wish for someone to stop seems reckless; this driver does not look like he has good intentions. I clutch my bundle closer to my chest and slow my walk.

The engine turns off.

My steps slow to an ant's crawl, but the truck waits. I have to reach it eventually. The shapes in the back unfold themselves into people, young girls and boys, with tight faces and empty eyes. I shudder, tearing my eyes away, breathing deeply as I come level with the driver's door.

The man leans out the window and moves his head to look me up and down. He drawls out a few words in what I can tell are a variety of languages. Then he croaks in English, “American?” He must see the flash of understanding in my eyes because he lunges on. “All alone walk? You ride? Back on, get. You. No walk. Come!” He flashes what might be a dazzling smile except it is shot through with a terrible leer like I have seen only in the worst of late-night television.

I try not to tremble as I move past the front of the truck and away.

But not away. The engine starts up again and the truck idles along beside me, matching its pace to mine, the driver wheedling and cajoling, calling out promises and pleas. From the edge of my vision I can see the faces in the back drinking me in, studying me as if trying to guess what I will do.

Are they prisoners, or have they chosen their fate—whatever it is—willingly? If this man has a mind to take me by force, I would not be able to resist. Perhaps it would be better for me if I went willingly. And for a moment, with my feet aching and my skin dripping rain, the thought of a seat in that truck, any truck, feels like a chance worth taking. I could ride to Sukhothai, then find some way to escape.

My step falters and the truck pauses in response, the engine purring its encouragement.

And then I hear a voice from the back—a whisper so slight I almost miss it. But it cuts through the noise of the traffic and goes straight to my core. “
Jai Klaasi
,” the voice says. Keep your courage. Go forward bravely.

I take another breath, gasp at what I nearly allowed to happen. I have heard the stories told in the cells at night, about young girls lured away to unspeakable fates, held against their will, unable to escape. This is the truth: if I climb in that truck, I will not be able to get out in Sukhothai. But I
do
have a choice, right here and now, and I choose to go forward as best I can. I will be nobody's prisoner.

My eyes turn back to the road and I begin walking again, more quickly this time, determined. The driver must see my new stride, for he shouts out something I don't hear, and a form detaches itself from the glom of people in back. A tall, broad-shouldered man jumps over the side of the pickup and starts toward me.

He holds a syringe in his outstretched hand.

I don't need prompting to know what will happen if I don't get out of here. I break into a run.

But how can I escape? The truck is just meters behind me, and I am no match for this long-legged runner. Half turning to look over my shoulder, I see he is almost within arm's reach. What can I do?

Again the whisper sounds in my mind: Keep courage. Be strong.

There's a swish in the air behind me as the man grabs for my hair. He misses, but barely, and I feel a few strands pull loose from my scalp as he yanks at them.

Take it, I think. Pull it all out, but let me go free.

I will not give up. I cannot think like a
farang
right now, some foreigner in a
thoratat
movie who will run screaming until the killer plunges a knife into her back. No, I must use the wiles I have learned on the inside.

I must do the unexpected.

Quick as a raindrop, I throw my body to the side. I dash off the bank and run straight out into the middle of the road. I don't look behind me. I don't look to the side. I hear a loud
HOOOOONK
and feel the hot breath of a car that has just missed hitting me. I hear the angry roar of the pickup truck and know the driver must be trying to follow. I don't hear the footsteps of my pursuer, but I know they cannot be far behind.

I hold my tea box and steady Mama's urn on my back and run. I run like I have never run before. Straight across the highway, across the grassy middle, through the other lane of traffic—no cars coming this time, I thank my ancestors. And then on the other side, with the cars heading in the opposite direction, I keep running, fast and hard, moving with a desperate need for survival.

On and on and on.

What finally makes me stop is the iron hand squeezing my chest. I'm not used to this kind of exertion. My skin is pouring sweat, so that now I am soaked from the inside and out. My whole body shakes like I have the coughing fever. But when I drop to the ground and look back the way I've come, there is no one.

The pickup truck is gone. The man with the syringe no longer chases me. I am alone.

I am safe.

Exhilaration and relief and delayed terror course through me like an electric shock. I lean forward and wrap trembling arms around my legs, rocking myself back and forth, back and forth.

I don't know how long I stay like this. I only know that I never want to move again.

And then I hear the motor, a rattling clang that can be made by only one engine in the world.

I close my eyes in relief.

Kiet has come for me.

18

His car pulls onto the side of the road just ahead, and what a difference this vehicle is from the last one that stopped! Pulling myself together, I stand and move toward it on shaky legs. I pause only a second before the door. My anger at Kiet is not gone, but it feels small when placed against the danger of this outside world, at what I have just been through.

And while I have saved myself this time, I know I might not be so lucky the next. This road is no place for a girl on her own. I need Kiet.

Pulling on the door handle, I slide inside.

“I was looking for you,” he says, voice dry and clipped. “I drove toward Bangkok. I did not expect you to be traveling backward.”

“I thought to take a bus from Sukhothai. And then …” I swallow. “I had a little trouble.”

He looks at me quickly, a flash of alarm in his eyes.

“It's all right. I got away. That's why I crossed over to this side of the highway. I was going to keep walking …” My words seem useless, empty. They don't matter anymore. They don't even seem real.

Kiet must see that in my eyes because he nods and turns back to the road. We ride in silence for a while, but it's not the comfortable silence of friends. This air is thick with unspoken words, prickly with things unsaid.

He lied to me. He betrayed my trust.

But he also came for me. In spite of my outburst, and though I shamed him in front of his family. Is there some way we can put all this behind us, start things over?

We are picking up speed, puddles sloshing around us, the hum of rain pattering across the front window. Kiet reaches down and shifts the car into a higher gear. His jaw is tight, his fingers clamped around the gearshift.

Jai yen
. Keep a cool heart. I can put this behind me; I can take this step. But I will do it in my own way. And so I reach out my right hand and place it on top of his.

Kiet freezes. I know it's not polite to be too affectionate in our culture, his culture—especially for a soon-to-be monk—but I want so much for him to understand me. I am a child of Thailand, I want to say, but I am also my own person. I am also someone else, from some far-off wild country, mysterious, unknown. A country with different shades of skin and different tones of language. A country where feelings do not always flutter within the chest but sometimes claw their way out into the open. I am not proud of all these things, but it is who I am.

In spite of everything, I want to tell him, I am becoming who I am. All the bars in the world cannot keep me closed in now that I am free.

And more: I understand why he did what he did. I don't agree, and it was wrong, all wrong, but I know why he did it. And I understand and almost—almost—I am grateful.

I can't explain these things, can't even try to form the words, but I think them. And I don't know how much of my thoughts reach Kiet, but after a minute his grip under mine relaxes.

I study his face and when I see a smile crack the corner of his mouth, I let out a breath. He understands, then. The relief makes me giddy. Then I look down at myself, clothes dripping wet, half-covered in mud from the side of the road. And suddenly a laugh starts in my belly, creeping up my chest and rippling out until it's swallowing me up.

Kiet jumps at the sound. “What?” he says.

“Every time we go driving,” I gasp out, still shaking with laughter, “I bring the monsoon into your car.”

Suddenly this is the funniest thought I've ever had, and I just want to laugh and laugh and keep on laughing. And soon Kiet is laughing, too, his mouth open wide and his head tilted back so I'm not sure how he's even watching the road. And as we laugh, all the anger and uncertainty and fear, and everything I've gone through in the last few hours slips away and falls behind me, like the puddles by the side of the road, like something that's in the past, like this really is the road to my new life.

19

Now that the air is clear between us and we are back on our way to Bangkok, I have time to give careful thought to what is up ahead. Kiet is lighthearted and cracks jokes to try to make me smile. But I realize now that my outburst of hilarity was more about shock and relief than real humor. I try to play along with Kiet, but the laughter keeps getting stuck in my throat.

Every time I look out at the side of the road, I see the flash of the syringe, the stranger's big hands as he lunged for my neck.

I shake off the past and try, as the hours creep by, to focus on the future. For that is problem enough on its own.

Kiet must finally come to this same realization. “Luchi, tell me about your plans. What is up ahead for you?” He juts his chin in the direction of the gray mass in the far distance: Bangkok,
Krungthep Mahanakhon
, the City of Angels.

I told the chief warden of my plan to locate Mama's friends in Bangkok, and I told the same to Kiet when he asked me at the start of our journey. But in truth, my focus then was on gathering my strength to leave the prison. I had so little concept of the outside world that planning seemed impossible. Now I see that I am terribly unprepared: if my plan were a piece of art, it would be a stick figure. There is little more to it than skin and bone.

Kiet turns to look at me, then jerks the wheel to the side to avoid another car. “You do have a plan?” he asks. He does not seem as sure as he did a minute ago. He is also no longer laughing.

“I have those addresses and phone numbers,” I say. “People my mother knew in Bangkok. I will go and talk to them, find out what they know. They can give me advice on how I will get to America.”

Kiet's foot slams on the brake. He whips the steering wheel to the side and barrels up onto the shoulder of the road. A green pickup truck leans hard on the horn as it passes us by, sending a spray of mud down the side of Kiet's window. The driver is still cursing in the distance as Kiet looks at me with round eyes.

“
That
is your plan?” he says. “That's all of it? You are going to Bangkok to talk to someone you have never met, and you just expect them to help you?”

I try to make my voice strong, but I feel my insides tightening up. “Mama knew more than one person in Bangkok. There will be people who know how to reach my relations in America.”

Kiet lowers his forehead onto the steering wheel and mutters under his breath. After a minute he digs into his back pocket and pulls out a mobile phone. “Here,” he says. “Get out your phone numbers and start calling. You cannot just come to somebody's front door without announcing yourself. Tell them who you are and see if they are willing to help you, before you go all the way there.”

I look at the tiny phone. It is not too different from the intercom system I used to play with on the inside. I can do this.

Setting the device in my lap, I bend over to open the lid of the tea box, focusing my full attention on it so I don't have to look at Kiet. But he is on the road again, back to avoiding potholes and dodging mud puddles. He, too, is making himself busy so he does not have to look in my direction.

I pull out the worn sheet of paper and hold it for a moment between my palms. The top is titled “Bangkok: Contacts” in blue ink. I look at the first name and number, take a deep breath, and open Kiet's mobile phone.

With trembling fingers, I begin to press the keys.