Becoming the Talbot Sisters

by Rachel Linden

Stunned, Charlie gripped the edge of the table. Tendrils of panic were spiraling through her chest like cigarette smoke. She breathed in and out hard through her nose, trying to remain calm and in control. But the truth was that she was spooked. It had been years since she’d felt this vulnerable, and the memory of that night in Johannesburg and its aftermath still haunted her in unexpected moments. Charlie shook her head. She felt so alone. She had no idea what to do next.

  Outside of the ruin pub, Charlie walked slowly down the narrow street, turning her back to the sharp wind. The sky was leaden gray and low over the closely crowded buildings. The air smelled like car exhaust and snow. Without thinking she headed toward home. Around her flowed pedestrians—Hungarian businessmen in long overcoats carrying briefcases; short, sturdy matrons in brightly dyed fur hats with small nervous dogs on leashes; the occasional cyclist weaving through the press of bodies. A hunched Roma woman in a head scarf and flowing skirt lay prostrate by a bakery entrance, begging with her hands outstretched. A paper cup with a few twenty-forint coins sat in front of her.

  Charlie’s cell phone rang, and she glanced at the screen. A Serbian area code. With a sense of inevitability, she turned away from the crowd and ducked into the doorway of a closed boutique to answer the call.

  “Hello, I’m looking for Charlie Talbot.” The voice was female and American, brisk and businesslike.

  Charlie cleared her throat. “This is Charlie.”

  On the other end of the line the woman introduced herself. “My name is Sandra Ling. I’m a lawyer representing Kinga Varga and Simona Antonova. I work for a not-for-profit organization that provides legal representation in cases of exploitation and injustice. Kinga and Simona have both filed charges against the men who sold them, and the men will stand trial, but the defendants are claiming that the women went with them willingly. I understand from Kinga and Simona that you and your colleague Monica were the ones who discovered the girls in the back of the truck. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.” Charlie’s pulse was pounding in her ears.

  “I’ve already contacted Monica about testifying,” Sandra said.

  “She won’t.” Charlie interrupted the lawyer. “I just talked to her and she said she won’t testify at the trial. She’s going home to Romania tonight.”

  “Oh, I see,” Sandra said, her tone measured but disappointed. “Did she tell you why not?”

  “She’s scared,” Charlie said. “She got a threat in the mail today.”

  “A threat? What was it?” Sandra asked. Charlie heard her typing in the background.

  Charlie described the contents of the package and the slip of paper, glancing over her shoulder to make sure she was not being overheard. No one was paying any attention to her.

  “And has anyone contacted you or threatened you in any way?” Sandra asked.

  “No. I don’t know if they know I was involved.” Charlie realized her hands were trembling and tucked one under her arm, trying to steady herself. She was usually so strong, level-headed, but the zip ties and smashed cell phone had rattled her. Să nu scoți o vorbă! She was not obeying the warning.

  “I see. So someone’s concerned about what Monica saw and could testify about in court. That’s good. Ms. Talbot, even if Monica is not, are you willing to testify?”

  Charlie hesitated. That was the million-dollar question. “What happens if I don’t?” she asked.

  Sandra sighed. “Most likely the traffickers will go free. Without your testimony it’s just Kinga and Simona’s word against theirs. The other girls who were with them are too scared to press charges or to testify. They all have families back home who might suffer if they speak up. We’re up against a corrupt and flawed judicial system. Sometimes the justice officials are being paid off by the traffickers. The amount of money people make from human trafficking is staggering, and a lot of people stand to gain from making sure it’s allowed to continue.” She sounded weary.

  “So, if I do testify, will it make any difference?” Charlie asked. A large Korean tour group passed her, the tour guide holding aloft a bright-red umbrella, a stream of middle-aged Koreans shuffling along behind him, cameras at the ready. Charlie bent away from the press of people, trying to hear.

  “There’s a strong possibility that it could,” Sandra said cautiously. “With your testimony we would have a good case. More and more often we are winning these cases, and it makes a difference every time. Each trafficker who is sent to prison isn’t just one more criminal off the streets. He’s also a deterrent to all the others who are looking for easy money. The threat of prison can be its own deterrent.”

  Charlie said nothing, caught in indecision.

  “Ms. Talbot,” Sandra said after a long moment of silence, “you could be the difference between Kinga and Simona winning their cases or their traffickers going free to continue exploiting other women. Are you willing to give your testimony about what you saw that night?”

  “I don’t know,” Charlie said finally. “I need to think about it.” She felt pressured to make a decision and paralyzed by anxiety. She needed space to think through her choice and what it could mean.

  “Okay,” Sandra said, sounding resigned. “Well, please consider your decision carefully. If you do decide to testify, we will need you to appear in person in court for both trials as a witness. The trials will be in Belgrade. It’s where the girls were sold first. We don’t have dates yet, but it could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months from now.”

  “Okay, I understand,” Charlie said. She just wanted to get off the phone and be alone. She wanted to go home and make some toast and curl up on the sofa to think. She glanced behind her nervously. Was she being watched? No one was looking in her direction, but she felt exposed all the same.

  “I’ll be in touch when I know more,” Sandra Ling told her.

  Charlie disconnected the call and started to walk briskly, eager to be home, but at the last moment she changed her mind and headed instead for Castle Hill, needing to be high above the city, somewhere she could gain perspective. Everything was moving too fast, the ground shifting under her feet. She needed to regroup and to breathe.

  Twenty minutes later Charlie reached Castle Hill by bus and made her way across the almost deserted square to Fisherman’s Bastion, an enchanting series of white stone terraces and towers set high on the hill overlooking the city. She had it all to herself except for a South Asia family who were bunched together in the cold, snapping photos of Matthias Church, their colorful saris and white tennis shoes poking from beneath their down coats. She ducked into one of the turrets in Fisherman’s Bastion and braced herself against a pillar, looking out over the stone parapet to the Danube below. Although it was only late afternoon, the daylight was fading and the lights along the river were just coming on, golden and soft in the quiet air. It started to rain, an icy mist that drifted and settled slowly like the breath of clouds. Charlie huddled closer into her down coat.

  She felt removed from the situation, a little numb, unable to believe that this was really happening. She was shaking with adrenaline, but her mind was clear and clinical. She wished she could have a drink. A shot of whiskey to steady her nerves would be welcome right about now. Charlie shivered, feeling at once vulnerable and alone. No, not alone. She put a hand to her stomach. She was vulnerable, but she was not alone. And that made the situation infinitely more complicated.

  She pictured the baby bobbing about placidly in the warm darkness of her womb, sucking his thumb or toes, safe and content. It was not just about her and the trafficked women. She thought for a second of calling Waverly but dismissed the notion in the next breath. She could imagine her sister’s reaction—demanding that she return immediately to the States so she and the baby could be safely cocooned in their enormous house until the danger had passed. She would harangue Charlie until she got what she wanted. Waverly could be astonishingly stubborn. Well, so could Charlie. No, she decided, she would not consult Waverly. This was her mess, her decisio
n.

  Placing a hand on her stomach, Charlie asked softly, “So, pal, what do we do?” In response there came a flutter, quick and delicate like a minnow darting through a stream. She froze, marveling at the sensation. It was the first time she had felt the baby move.

  “Hello,” she murmured, forgetting all else for a moment in the wonder of feeling the little person inside of her. She poked her belly where she’d felt the movement. The baby moved again, a tiny motion that felt a little ticklish and a little queasy. She had not imagined it, then. She laughed, delighted. She felt nothing more, but it didn’t matter. He was in there. He was really in there. The knowledge both amazed and terrified her. She was aware of a growing responsibility for him, and a new, fierce desire to keep him safe. She’d never felt this way about another human being before. She was his guardian, his protector.

  “Do you have any idea how to fix this mess?” she asked aloud, but there was no response. Charlie tapped her fingers on the cold stone of the railing, trying to think rationally and logically, trying to ignore the icy lump of fear lodged high in her belly, right above the hard swell of the baby. What was best for the baby, for her, for the rescued women? It was a muddle. Could one solution fix all three? It seemed unlikely.

  The safest course of action would be to simply slip away as Monica had done, run from Budapest, keep silent and disappear. She could take a leave of absence and return to the States until the baby was born. Waverly and Andrew had enough money and clout that she had no doubt she would be safe. She would probably lose her job, but she would ensure the safety of both herself and the baby. And yet she found the notion distasteful. It didn’t feel right, to run to safety and leave the girls to face their traffickers alone. It felt cowardly. What if her testimony really did make the difference between very bad men being put behind bars or being allowed to continue preying upon vulnerable young women? There could be serious implications if she did not testify. Didn’t she have a moral obligation to speak up?

  Charlie pictured the young women that night in Serbia—the beam of her flashlight illuminating their terrified faces, Kinga shrinking from her touch, a far cry from the carefree girl of a few months before with her dreams of a job in Germany. Charlie saw again the chain of cigarette burns ringing Gabi’s neck, the thick white plastic zip ties binding Simona’s wrists, pulled so tight they left ridges in her skin for hours after she had been freed.

  The images made Charlie nauseated, the fear sparking up in her gut quick as a struck match. It brought back other memories too, ones she had thought long buried, ones she had worked hard to cover and control. The taste of grit ground into her lips and rasping against her teeth, the bruise on her windpipe for weeks afterward, purple and ugly and big as a fist. They rose to the surface now, leaving her heart pounding in her ears. She glanced behind her, as though afraid the past was creeping up at her back. The stone archways were empty and glistening with rain. The question of what she would do was inextricably linked to her own past. Her current dilemma had nothing to do with her years in South Africa and yet everything to do with them too.

  Charlie closed her eyes, shutting out the golden glow of the magnificent parliament building, its massive Gothic Revival dome rising over the Danube, the shimmer of lights reflecting on the dark river through the misting rain. She swallowed hard and wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stop trembling, but she could not seem to get warm and she could not stop the shaking. The memories she’d tried so hard to suppress were rattling her bones, rising in her mind like ghosts resurrected. They would no longer keep silent. She had to let them speak.

  CHAPTER 15

  Seventeen years earlier

  Johannesburg, South Africa

  Charlie had never intended to travel to Africa and not return. It had been an almost spontaneous trip, born out of longing and a long-held grief. When the girls’ trust funds were finally released to them on their eighteenth birthday, Charlie looked at the number of zeros in her bank account and felt at a loss as to her next step. She could go anywhere now, do anything. The world was open to her.

  “So what do you want to do?” Waverly had asked, standing at the yellow counter in Aunt Mae’s kitchen, neatly cutting out circles of biscuit dough with a crimped cookie cutter. She had already applied for and been accepted to the Culinary Institute of America. Her path was chosen. In a few months she would leave for New York.

  Charlie twirled an ice cube in a glass of iced tea and considered the question. What did she want to do?

  All she knew was that she wanted to see the place where her parents had died. There had been no remains to repatriate, no coffins at the funeral. Robert and Margaret Talbot had vanished from the earth in the blink of an eye, or so it had seemed to Charlie at the time. In that moment her life had veered drastically from its expected course. She didn’t know how to move forward now, but perhaps if she started from the place where it all had ended, she would be able to see a way.

  She booked a round-trip ticket to Johannesburg, intending to stay for two weeks. Once there she hired a guide to take her east to the site of the crash. A few hours into the drive, just before they reached Kruger National Park, the guide veered off the dirt road and stopped the tired Land Cruiser.

  “There.” He gestured across a field.

  “Where?” Charlie shaded her eyes and looked out across the sweeping land. All she saw were rocks, dirt, and trees. It was greener than she’d pictured. She’d imagined a desert somehow, the wreckage of an old charter plane sticking up out of the sand. This was peaceful, bucolic.

  The guide shrugged, his face a blank. “I don’t know. It was a long time ago, miss.”

  Charlie felt a sharp stab of disappointment. “Isn’t there a marker or something? A memorial? Is there anything left?”

  The guide shook his head. “It is all gone now.”

  She looked out across the landscape again, searching for something—a token, a feeling of completion or closure, something to make this trip worthwhile. She was standing so close to where her parents had died and yet she felt nothing. They were just gone, the landscape of her heart as empty as the green plain before her. She got back in the Land Cruiser, disappointed, and headed back to Johannesburg.

  What Charlie had hoped to find at the sight of the crash she discovered quite unexpectedly the next day, when she visited the medical and dental clinic where her father had spent time volunteering each year. Located in a crowded township outside of Johannesburg, the tidy white concrete building sat solidly in the midst of the shantytown sprawl. The receptionist, a young black woman in a crisp white uniform, looked at her curiously when Charlie asked to meet with the administrator.

  “And what is the nature of your meeting?” the young woman asked formally.

  “It’s about my father,” Charlie said hesitantly. “He used to volunteer here when I was a child, but he was killed in a plane crash. It was years ago. I just wondered if there was anyone still here who knew him.” She looked around the clinic, feeling lost and discouraged.

  The young woman gave her a sympathetic look and asked Charlie to sit, then disappeared into a back room. A few moments later an older white woman appeared. She was tall and blond, an Afrikaner, with a short, choppy haircut. She looked Charlie up and down.

  “You’ve grown,” she pronounced. “The last time I saw a picture of you, you were just elbows and freckles.”

  Charlie stared at her, taken aback by the familiarity of this woman she had never seen before. “You know who I am?”

  “Yes, Dr. Talbot was your father, wasn’t he?” The woman cocked her head to one side and surveyed Charlie. “You look like him.”

  Unexpectedly Charlie felt her eyes well up with tears. Here was what she had come seeking, memories she did not have, someone who remembered her parents in a way she could not.

  The woman smiled at her kindly. “I’m Dr. Coetzee. Come back to my office and we’ll have tea.”

  As she followed Dr. Coetzee back through a narrow doorway, Ch
arlie felt it, a flash of closeness. Her father had been here, within these walls. This was one of the last places where he had talked and laughed and breathed. Somehow it felt to her that he was here still. She put a hand out, touching the cool wall, overcome with a sense of familiarity, of things coming full circle. It felt like destiny.

  Charlie came back to the clinic every day for a week, drawn by the sensation of her father’s presence. Dr. Coetzee gave her a cup of rooibos tea each morning and put her to work cleaning out the storage rooms. By the second week Charlie began to notice the people—a pregnant mother with three young children clinging to her skirts; an old man with one remaining tooth coming to have the rotting stump pulled. The steady stream of humanity captivated her, especially the women and older girls. They were strong and gracious, steadfast in the face of immense difficulty and suffering. In the midst of grinding poverty they had dignity and perseverance. She saw what the clinic could offer these women and so many others in need, and she was enthralled. So this is what had drawn her father back year after year. She understood it now, the desire to help with your own hands, the painful truth that you could never do enough.

  When it came time for her return to Ohio, she found she could not tear herself away. Despite the brutality of life in the slums around Johannesburg, the opportunity to help these people called to her. The afternoon of her flight back home she watched a plane cleave the sky over the township, climbing higher and higher as it carried its passengers far away. Then she turned back to the clinic and got to work.

  One month turned into one year and then another. After several years volunteering full-time at the clinic, she started a course of study, earning a degree in public health from the University of South Africa. Two years into her program she got engaged. Shane was a kind and decent man, who worked with an environmental awareness NGO operating out of Johannesburg. He had been sweet, with his long hair and devotion to sustainable agriculture, intelligent and idealistic enough to appeal to her. But it had taken them less than a year after their engagement to realize how ill-suited they really were. He was a dreamer, too soft for Charlie, and she was too practical, too hard and stubborn for him. There was nothing dramatic in their parting, just a dawning mutual understanding that they were categorically mismatched and that the engagement had been a mistake. They ended it amicably enough, although Shane immediately transferred to his organization’s Kampala office. They never spoke again.