autoclave

The Vietnamese are being deported.

Sorry. I meant to bring you glad tidings this time, honest. Things just got a little jumbled up along the way.

Not all the Vietnamese, you understand. Just the ones I love the most. Rosalind. Winnie and Alma and Alma's brother, a sweet kid named Josiah. Saul, the bastard, though I'm pretty sure this whole thing is his fault.

They left the shelter last week, disappearing in a poof of smoke. They didn't tell anyone they were going, not even me or Pippi. I was a little mad, but mostly hurt that they didn't trust us enough, that they thought we might betray them. And I missed them, of course. I missed them a lot.

They'd claimed to be going to Bangkok, but they were spotted around the city by Albert, Robin, Pippi, and who knows who else. They should have been more careful. They should have been more fucking goddamn careful.

They were arrested yesterday morning by the immigration police. Maybe one of their new neighbors turned them in. They themselves think it was Khruu Aajaan, their former roommate, but I can't bring myself to believe that. He couldn't have known where they were hiding, I don't think. Anyway, if I did think it was him, that he'd narced on them, I would have to kill him. And there's no sense in all of us warming that jail cell.

If we don't get them out, they'll all be deported to Cambodia. They have no papers, nothing at all, so they'll surely be arrested while crossing the border. The Cambodian government may throw them in jail, or it may send them back to Vietnam, the motherland, the place they fled after having been targeted, imprisoned, tortured.

The options are not great. Elizabeth and Albert managed to buy Nancy's freedom in a similar situation a few years ago, and we might be able to do the same with the Vietnamese, since Thai policemen tend to have remarkably greasy palms. We've already tried to pay, but for once, the po-po aren't having it - or, rather, they say they'll accept a certain amount, then change their minds when we offer it. By "we," of course, I mean a Thai citizen. Farang have no leverage in these situations, nor should they, I suppose.

But it could still work, if we landed upon the magic number. What we need is time, and we don't have it. They're threatening to take them to Bangkok tomorrow, and from there to Cambodia. They might be bluffing, trying to scare us, but maybe not.

Pippi has spent most of the last two days at the jail, trying to work out what the hell is going on and what we can do about it. She brings them food, since the police station would happily let them starve, women and children alike. There are no cots in the cell, Pippi says, no chairs or cushions. Everyone sleeps on the floor.

I wish I were there with her, with them, but I'm not. I have shit to do, stupid shit, e-mails to process and staff meetings I'm required to attend, and Pippi thinks it's best if the police don't see too many farang involved in this. I'm trying to help from the sidelines, digging up information and passing it along to her at ground zero, but it's hard. I want to be there. I want to do something.

In Pippi's absence, Sally has become increasingly dependent on me. She's cried, a little. Once or twice she's sidled up for an uncharacteristic cuddle. Mostly, though, she sits next to me with her knees pulled up to her chest, asking the same questions again and again, apparently hoping that I might magically divine the answers between rounds: what, when, where. And of course, like a toddler: "Why? Why? Why?"

"I don't know, Sally," I say. "I don't know. I don't know."

Not for the first time, I find myself wishing I were the crying sort. A good sob might make me feel better, or at least like my grief and frustration were active, alive, instead of this dead weight crowding up against the press of my ribcage, a black hole where positive thinking goes to die. I don't cry, though. Instead, I pace, around and around the tiny main room of my house, arms crossed, hands tucked tightly against my sides like I can somehow hold in the inevitable decompression. I'm going to blow any day now; I can feel it. They'll be finding pieces of me for months after, heart muscle and bile, lead in my stomach.

Hour after hour, around and around, feet blistering against the smooth rub of the floorboards. I try not to think, but strange thoughts keep floating to the surface.

If Gertie ever comes back, this will kill her.
Did Rosalind say it was her grandmother they poisoned, or her grandfather?
Alma was supposed to go back to school next month.

Walking, walking, walking. Waiting.