“Don’t say a word,” Aanwat told her when he noticed Claire searching the street for nearby people.
Maybe she should scream. It might save them, but then again, he might shove her away if she was screaming and just take Suda. She couldn’t let that happen.
He said something to Suda, and then repeated it in English for Claire. “Into the car,” he told her, gesturing to the ancient Honda hatchback idling in the red zone at the back of the bakery. The small backseat passenger window was shattered, and Claire guessed he had stolen it.
The pain in her thigh was intense, and she took a quick look at it. There was a hole in her jeans where the bullet had entered along with a corresponding hole in her flesh. Blood was spreading on the fabric, but she could tell by the fact that her leg was able to move her toward the car that the bullet must not have hit bone. She wondered if it passed through the meat of her leg or if it was lodged inside. She wondered how much it was bleeding and whether she could make it stop before she bled to death. She didn’t feel frantic or afraid, just calm and angry. She set her jaw and shuffled as slowly as she was able toward the car, trying to buy a little time, looking around for someone to help them.
Suda started to cry when she saw Claire’s leg. “I sorry,” she told Claire in English, the sadness on Suda’s face expressing her feelings of terror and pain. Claire waved her away.
“It’s all right, Suda. Don’t worry,” she told her.
As she approached the car, Claire felt for the knife and was relieved to find it was still in her front pocket. She would bide her time and then use it on Aanwat the first chance she had.
She felt for her phone but realized it was no longer in her jeans. She closed her eyes in frustration. Someone could have used that to trace them. She wondered if it had flown out when she careened across the counter. She looked back into the bakery and saw it, abandoned on the floor. If only she had realized and grabbed it on her way out. She looked up at the surveillance camera Simone had hooked up, hoping it would catch what was happening. At least then, Grace would know what to tell the police when she got back and found the store abandoned and blood smeared on the floor.
Aanwat opened the back passenger door and shoved Claire inside. Pain shot through her leg when it hit the front seat on the way into the car. Aanwat then opened the front passenger door for Suda, and she dutifully climbed into the seat.
Suda seemed resigned, Claire thought. But sometimes her expressions were indecipherable. Claire hoped this was one of those times and that instead of resigned, Suda was ready to act if they had a chance to escape. As the car pulled away from the curb, Claire tried to assess her leg. The most immediate thing she had to do was stop the bleeding, so she took off the flannel button down she had over her tee-shirt and wrapped it tightly around her thigh, using the arms to tie it in place. The pressure of it helped, and she tried to breathe normally and think.
She was determined to figure a way out for both of them. She was damned if she was going to get killed now, after everything she’d been through. She had survived Nick; she was going to survive this, too.
She caught sight of Aanwat looking at her in the review mirror and glared at him in return. She was livid. She would allow herself to be frightened later, when she and Suda were both fine. At least she hoped they’d be fine. She tried to think of a way to get in touch with Chai—or any police for that matter—but nothing came to mind. If they drove by an officer, would she have the courage to yell for help? She wasn’t sure given that Aanwat had a gun and had shown that he wasn’t afraid to use it.
She looked down at her leg. The blood was seeping into her flannel shirt, but it seemed to have slowed, so at least that was a good sign, she supposed.
Suda and Claire
Suda snuck a quick look over her shoulder at Claire and saw that she was incredibly pale and clearly in pain, yet her expression was intense and resolved. Her Giants baseball cap was pulled low on her head, and her blue eyes were fixed. Claire glanced back at her and Suda attempted to convey reassurance.
“I didn’t mean to shoot her,” Aanwat said in Thai. “She startled me when she jumped over the counter and I … I don’t know what happened. I accidentally pulled the trigger.”
“We have to take her to a hospital,” Suda said in Thai. “She’s bleeding.”
“No,” he said. “She should have kept away. There’s no way I’m taking her to a hospital.”
“We could drive by and let her out. We don’t have to go in with her. Just leave her in front of a hospital.”
“No,” Aanwat shook his head emphatically. “We’re getting out of sight. We have to hide. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to get you, and then we’re going to leave.”
“I’m not leaving with you. I’m not going back. I won’t, Aanwat. Gan will kill me. Or I’ll die from one of the men. I would rather die now. I would rather jump from this car or step in front of a bus.”
“It won’t be like that.”
“I’ve done what I was told to do my entire life, but I won’t do this. There’s another way. I can work in the bakery. Don’t you see? I would rather live here and be free or die, but I’m not going back to working in a brothel.”
Aanwat looked over at her, amazed at the difference in her since he knew her in Thailand. Her strength and determination surprised him.
“Life isn’t supposed to be a sacrifice to be endured,” she told him. “For you either. You don’t have to do this, Aanwat. You can let us go. Then you can go, too. Somewhere else, away from Gan.”
Aanwat shook his head. He would tell her the plan later, but for now he gripped the wheel, focusing intently as he drove, not used to the traffic or the road signs in English. He had studied the map ahead of time and traced the route he would use to go from the bakery to the new motel he’d rented, but in real time, having to heed traffic, watch for pedestrians and the hulking busses that ran on the electric cords, it was overwhelming. He wished he had a phone with navigation, but those were expensive, so he’d had to use the tourist map he’d picked up to create his route.
Suda sat as far from Aanwat as possible, hunched against the passenger door. She would have flung it open and bolted at a stoplight, but she couldn’t leave Claire. She wouldn’t have believed Aanwat would kill anyone, but he had shot Claire once—even if it had been an accident—and said he would kill her if Suda didn’t do what he said, so she couldn’t take the risk of bolting.
The city went about its business. Men and women were out—business people walked to or from lunch back to their offices. Bicycle messengers delivered packages; life happened in their midst. And yet no one was aware. She was another girl being moved from one place to another. Trafficked. She had learned the English word for it, and it evoked an image that haunted her in its accuracy. Girls, children, people—like so many cars on a highway, being delivered for other people’s use like objects. She visualized a crowded road, full of girls like her, and it made her want to weep. The fact that human beings used others for their bidding—whatever the bidding—was an offense.
Aanwat’s voice broke her thoughts.
“I’m not taking you to the boss. I’m taking you away. We’ll live in Bangkok. There are so many people there, we’ll never be found.”
“What are you saying? That makes no sense.”
“I’m not taking you back. We’ll escape. Both of us.”
“How? I can’t fly, Aanwat. I have no papers.”
Aanwat looked at her stupidly for a moment. How had he not thought about that? He pounded his fist against the steering wheel, swearing in Thai, and Suda jumped.
“Fine,” he said, gaining control. “We’ll figure out a different plan. I got a motel for us. We’ll stay there until we decide what to do.”
Aanwat looked back at Claire and thought about what to do with her. She was an unexpected complication, but he would decide what to do with her la
ter. He turned back and focused on the road in front of him.
Suda saw Aanwat glance at Claire and looked back at her as well. She had no idea what would happen next. She was still in disbelief that she was sitting in the car with Aanwat and that Claire had been shot.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
They had been so careful. She had both feared it would happen and disbelieved that it would, given all of the precautions they had taken.
“I have been here looking for weeks. I was about to give up, but then I saw you. It was luck. I was walking to my hotel, and you ran outside and got into a car.”
“But I look different. How did you recognize me?”
“At first I wasn’t sure it was you because of your hair, but I waited and saw you when you came back. It was you. I couldn’t believe my good fortune.” His face animated, expressing the excitement he had felt when he’d found her.
“And my bad fortune,” she said and turned to look out the window. She couldn’t stand to look at Aanwat for another second.
She believed she was cursed. Born poor, no papers. Her parents died and sweet Ploy, too. Her aunt sold her. She suffered humiliation after humiliation. Each affront played like a film in her mind. She was forsaken. She was nothing but a thing to be used. Her life was only to be endured. How could she have believed for a moment that there would be anything but pain for her? She pressed her lips together and used the palm of her hand to wipe a tear that escaped.
She sniffed, and Aanwat saw that she was crying.
“We can be together now, Suda. I always wanted us to be together.”
“You sold me, Aanwat. Over and over to men who beat me, who used me, and it was nothing to you.”
“I didn’t want to. I tried to get you the ones who weren’t as bad. I told you to eat. I told you to be careful, but you didn’t.”
“You shoved me into a shipping container. I almost died. You should have seen me when I got here. I was skin and bones. Sick. Filthy. I was out of water, out of food.”
“I’m sorry. I had to do it, or the boss would kill me. He still might if I go back, which is one of the reasons I’m not going to Chiang Rai. The other is you. I want us to be together.”
He looked over at her with an expression of hope. His eyes asking for forgiveness.
“If you care about me, don’t do this. Don’t take me away. Bring me back to the bakery. I’m safe there. I like it there.”
“It’s too late. Now Tea knows about me. Who is he anyway? An informer? A cop?”
“Who? I don’t know anyone named Tea.”
“The big guy, with the arm tattoos.”
Suda guessed he must mean Chai, but she didn’t want to give him any more information than he already had. She smiled internally though, realizing the name play Chai had used. Chai tea. It worked in either language.
“Aanwat, I was happy there. It’s like a family at the bakery. A good family like when I was young. And I love baking. Take me back. You can take Claire back, too. It will be as if it never happened, and you can go away without me. I have no papers. I will hold you back. We’ll get caught; don’t you see?”
The car turned into the parking lot of a small, dingy motel, and Suda felt trapped. Her life was again controlled by a man who wanted her for something. He pretended he was keeping her safe, but he would put her to work; she knew it. And Claire? What was going to happen? Had the bleeding stopped?
And where was this God that Simone and Grace talked about? Where was He for them?
She remembered Chai telling her that Jesus had suffered. That he understood what suffering was. That he had been beaten, stabbed, and betrayed, too.
So, maybe He understood, but she needed more than understanding now. She decided to try to pray and sent a silent plea for help. She did find it comforting in the midst of everything to feel that maybe their God was with her. Even in this.
Aanwat parked the car in front of one of the first-floor doors of the motel where he had rented a room. He took the gun off of the seat where he had rested it while they drove and turned to Claire.
“Don’t be stupid, you understand?” He said in English.
Claire nodded.
“I’ll let you in first,” he told Claire. “Suda, you stay here, or I will shoot your friend again. It doesn’t matter now.”
Aanwat got out, quickly moved to the trunk, and pulled out the same rope he’d used on Simone. Then he opened Claire’s door and pulled her out. She gasped when her leg had to move, but she was able to limp into the room. Aanwat pulled out the desk chair and told Claire to sit in it. She lowered herself down but kept her injured leg straight instead of bending it at the knee in an effort to manage the pain. She felt herself sweating and felt nauseated. She wanted to close her eyes and go to sleep—even just for a moment—but there was no way she was going to check out and leave Suda to this guy.
She had miscalculated when she jumped at him back at the bakery. It had been a mistake, but he was small for a man, and she had thought she could knock him down. Now her leg was throbbing, and she was bleeding. But she was also furious. And determined. She wasn’t going down without a fight.
“Don’t move.”
“As if I could,” she said, not being able to resist pointing out the stupidity of his command.
He glared at her, tempted to inflict pain on her just because he could. Instead he turned away and went out and opened Suda’s door.
Suda shakily got out of the car and made her way into the motel room. Her eyes immediately scanned for a phone but she didn’t see one.
“Don’t bother trying to find the phone,” Aanwat said, seeing her eyes moving around the room. “I took it.”
Suda frowned, angry with him but also with herself for being obvious.
Claire looked from Aanwat to Suda, wondering what they were saying, but she couldn’t understand them. She looked down at her leg. The pain hadn’t eased up at all. At least the pressure of the flannel shirt she’d used to tie around her leg was doing the job. That was something. She hoped it would stop bleeding soon.
She looked around the dingy room at the stained carpeting and a lime green bedspread that had seen better days. She shuddered at the memory of being in rooms like this when she was still with Nick—a vision of herself drugged and with men invaded her mind against her will. She refused to die in a room like this. The sounds of the city were loud around them. Cars honking, buses hissing as they lowered and raised up to let people on and off. Yet here were Suda and Claire: invisible. In the shadows. Ignorable.
Ironically, a dingy motel like this one was where she was rescued. A hotel clerk had seen her coming in and out with men too many times and realized what was happening.
When the cops grabbed her, she was seventeen years old, and at 2:00 a.m. when they picked her up, she already had been on the street for five hours that night. She was wearing a miniskirt and a little cropped top in spite of the cold night air, fog, and wind. The early days, when Nick was holding down a better job and just selling drugs on the side, had been the honeymoon phase. As Nick’s road had become more and more rocky, so had Claire’s. The hotels became squalid, the clientele became dingy, and then finally she ended up on the blade—walking her block until she was summoned to a car. Maybe once or twice a week, Nick still came up with a hotel room, but mostly her world had narrowed to a city block and men in cars.
When she’d gotten her first venereal disease, Nick had made her take a long shower, keep her face clean of makeup, put her hair in a ponytail, and tell the doctor that her high school boyfriend had been sleeping around and given her an infection. It worked then and kept working with each doctor they visited over the next three years, because her wholesome looks invited trust, and Nick, as her concerned father, was always waiting for her in the waiting room. But by the end, Nick had stopped even helping her with that, and being with me
n had become even more painful.
She had long ago stopped going to school. She had become too tired to get up in the morning, and to say that the quality of her homework had slipped was an understatement. She was no longer the golden student. Her teachers and then eventually the school counselor had asked her repeatedly if there was something wrong at home. She’d noticed Claire’s sallow face, and she had become skinnier than before, but Claire wasn’t about to say a word. By then Nick was her lifeline to the Percocet that she desperately needed to get through the day.
Her lying had become expert, and she had dressed the part of the conscientious student when she was there. Her friends tried to engage her, but eventually gave up. The library became her only connection to normalcy—and books her only escape.
When she finally did get picked up by the police, three years into her ordeal, she was more afraid of Nick and what he would do to her if she talked to the police than she was of being on the street, so initially she was determined to bluff through being questioned. She had no identification on her, after all. Nick kept everything back in the apartment in case something like this happened. And he took the money she made after each customer, so as of the moment the police grabbed her, she had nothing except the way she was dressed that gave any indication that she was working.
Because Nick kept his eye on her, Claire knew he had seen her get picked up and was already fuming. He would believe she was in on it and that she had willingly gotten into the police car. He would beat her when she got home. And she already dreaded it. But better a beating that would be over, she figured, than ending up in a detention center. Nick had told her how terrible they were.
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