Diamonds in the Shadow

  And even that was a guess. Why give Dad another burden that might not even exist? Jared had to decrease the demands on his father. God, help me out here, he prayed. How'll I do that?

  “Jared, darling,” said his mother, as if she were God, answering. “I think Alake's had enough middle school. She needs to go to high school with you and Mattu.”

  Jared said to God, Come on. I wanted you to handle it.

  God waited.

  Jared sighed. “What do you say, Alake? Want to be a junior?”

  Alake could have been a photograph of herself, for all the response Jared got.

  “Great. That's settled. Come on, Alake.”

  In the guidance office Jared explained who Alake was, and that she hadn't talked yet, and that her records, such as they were, were at the middle school, and asked whether Alake could come to class with him for the day.

  Nobody commented on the fact that Alake's supposed brother had gone straight from the bus to that same class without helping his supposed sister get registered. Of course, now that Jared thought about it, any normal brother would wear dark glasses and adopt an alias before he'd help his weird younger sister enroll.

  “Hmmm,” said the guidance counselor. “I think since Alake is a girl, we need a girl escort. Bathrooms and stuff. How about Tay? She's in your first two classes.”

  Tay was not only out of Jared's league, she was a million miles from the crazy silent world Alake inhabited. “Sounds like a plan,” said Jared, who figured the plan might last twenty minutes.

  Tay was summoned. She bounded in so full of zest that Jared was reminded unpleasantly of Mrs. Lame. Tay flung her arms around Alake and kissed her on both cheeks, while Jared repeated Alake's history for her. “What a privilege. Wow, what a dramatic haircut, it looks fabulous on you. Don't worry about the whole not-talking thing, Alake, I talk enough for both of us.” Tay turned her smile on Jared. He was immediately hypnotized and willing to spend his life at her feet. “See you in class, Jared. We're hitting the girls' room first.”

  In American history, Mrs. Dowling had returned to the subject of Internet communication with other refugees. Speaking clearly and loudly, she explained again to Mattu how the Web worked. “I have found several sites,” she said, enunciating carefully, “—a site, Mattu dear, being a specific place online where you find information—where people from Africa who have come to America try to find relatives. This will get you started.” She held out a sheaf of papers.

  Mattu stared straight ahead. “You are kind. But I have too much knowledge of the past. I do not want the past to follow me. Please do not continue in your effort.”

  Mrs. Dowling stuck the papers in his face. He did not take them.

  She set them down on his desk. He folded his arms across his chest.

  Several kids snickered.

  Jared had a feeling that nothing good could come of this. Mrs. Dowling had offered a gift and Mattu had publicly rejected it. Mrs. Dowling was one of the mean ones, blind to her own cruelty because of her conviction that she was one of the nice ones.

  Tay waltzed in. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Mattu's sister, Alake. Eat your hearts out, because I am her assigned escort. Kelsey, shove over. I need your chair for Alake.”

  “Where am I supposed to sit?”

  “My lap,” said Hunter.

  “Eat your heart out?” Mattu whispered to Jared, horrified.

  “Just an expression. It means, I bet you're jealous of me now.” Jared had to laugh. Mattu so visibly could not imagine being jealous of anybody saddled with Alake.

  “Alake has chosen not to talk,” said Tay, “so don't expect feedback.”

  Chosen? Jared had never considered that possibility.

  “Mattu, what happened to your poor sister?” everybody said, aghast and curious and pushy.

  Mattu stiffened.

  “Leave him alone,” said Jared. “He just told you the past is too awful to talk about. I read online about this region in Africa called Darfur? And not only do thirty percent of the people from Darfur live in refugee camps—almost two-thirds of them watched somebody in their family get killed. That's probably what Alake went through. She'll be fine one of these days,” he added.

  He couldn't imagine why he had said that. That was Mopsy's line, or his mother's. Jared did not believe that Alake was going to be fine.

  A few classes later, Alake once again sat next to Tay, who used her finger to point out each word in the book she held. The students were taking turns reading poems out loud, finding the rhythm, leaning on the rhymes.

  The poem Tay read was about a horse traveling through the woods in snow. Alake had just encountered snow. She had never seen a real horse, but she had looked into New England woods for almost a month now.

  “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” read Tay.

  “But I have promises to keep,

  And miles to go before I sleep,

  And miles to go before I sleep.”

  The poem was beautiful. Now the miles ahead of Alake seemed a little less frightening. She could almost imagine traveling on, although she could not believe that she would arrive somewhere lovely, dark and deep. The words echoed gently in her mind, comforting her.

  Tay bundled Alake on to gym, where the girls were playing basketball, which Alake had seen on television, because Mr. Finch and Andre liked it.

  The gym teacher put an arm around Alake. “We're going to do some exercises, class. Alake and I will do them together.” With Alake at her side, the teacher ran lightly and easily around the court. She bounced the big orange ball in a steady rhythm, with the flat of her hand. When it was Alake's turn, it was harder than she had expected. But how vibrant the ball was, as though it loved bouncing and yearned to sail through the air.

  The class divided into four teams and played two half-court games of basketball at the same time, while Alake and the teacher kept circling the perimeter, dribbling.

  When Alake was little, she had known the meaning of hospitality. Her family had taken everybody in. That was the reason for a dwelling: to take people in. They slept in your rooms and you gave them gifts when they departed, and knew that soon you would visit them.

  Hospitality had been killed by the civil war. The only people who came during war were the killers.

  Now Alake was in the midst of hospitality again. A family had opened its home, its beds and its refrigerator—what a marvelous thing the refrigerator was. A church congregation had opened its doors and supplied clothing and food and jobs and doctors. A school had opened its classrooms, and now this girl, Tay, had opened her arms, and so had the gym teacher, and even the basketball.

  The gym teacher cried, “Good job, Alake!”

  At dinner, the American parents asked their children what they had done all day long, and no matter what the children said, the American parents cried, “Good job!” Teachers cried, “Good work!” Counselors, “Good choice!” Even the art teacher had exclaimed, “Good color!”

  And of course, the minister talked about good too. But the minister meant something else; something Alake was not and could never be.

  The high school lunchroom looked just like the one at middle school, except bigger. Tay walked to a table where girls shifted chairs to let Alake and Tay sit together. Alake was puzzled by their laughter, which seemed to have no cause.

  They were welcoming her.

  Alake could hear them. She could see them. She sat carefully in a chair. She could feel its chilly plastic. She could smell the soup they were eating. She was alive.

  Jared dragged over a chair from another table and sat down. “Come on, Alake. Eat something. It's a sandwich, is all. It's good.”

  Jared is good, thought Alake. All the Finches are good. They are so innocent.

  Imagine a house where you do not even have shutters to bolt at night. A house where you laugh if you forget to lock a door. A house without weapons.

  I want to be happy like these girls, thought Alake. I want to chatter the wa
y they chatter, and have a friend. I want to sleep without nightmares and eat without gagging.

  “Good job,” said Tay, when Alake lifted the sandwich. “Now bite down.”

  Alake wanted to breathe the snowy, chilly air. To read with Mopsy. To do arithmetic. Drive a car. Fill brown paper bags with groceries.

  She wanted not to be evil.

  She had been twelve years old. Now she was a thousand. She could never get those years back. She would be a thousand years old as long as she lived.

  The walls of the cafeteria were covered with student art projects in a thousand colors, like the church with its color-shot windows. That church where they spoke of forgiveness. But Alake could not be forgiven for the things that she had done.

  She put the sandwich down without eating it.

  In the last class of the day, Mattu was dressed for gym and out of the locker room before Jared had even undone the snap on his jeans. Jared's jeans were perfect now, because he'd been wearing them for five days. He hated that first five minutes when his freshly washed jeans were all crisp and irritating. He always had to go into protection mode to keep his mother from snagging the nice soft jeans and throwing them into the laundry. He peeled off the jeans and threw them toward a locker, and something fell out of his pocket and skittered across the tiles.

  Hunter bent down to retrieve it for him and then laughed. “You collecting gravel these days?”

  The diamond. Jared had gotten used to its tiny bump. He hadn't even remembered it was in there. His mother could have found the diamond if she'd gotten hold of his jeans. Would she know what a rough diamond was? It was always difficult to guess what his mother might know. She was a combination of totally out of it and totally aware.

  Hunter took aim at a distant trash can, threw the pebble overhand and made the basket. Cheering himself, he jogged out of the locker room.

  I don't even know yet if it's a diamond, thought Jared. But if it's lost in that trash, I not only don't have it, I can't put it back.

  I'm Brady Wall, he thought.

  His tongue felt dry and swollen. His heart felt old and creaky. He upended the trash container and kicked the contents around the floor. The assistant gym teacher came in. “I fell over it,” said Jared. “Don't worry, I'm cleaning it up.”

  “I'll help,” said the guy, which was the last thing Jared wanted. Then he saw the pebble under filthy gym shorts somebody had probably thrown out rather than lugging them home to wash.

  It was warm and familiar in his hand. It was a diamond, he knew it was.

  Mrs. Dowling sat at her home computer.

  Poor Mattu was in need of friends. His own kind. People who would understand him. Mrs. Dowling could not trust a lazy slug like Jared to use her careful research. And poor Mattu was superstitious about the Web.

  Mrs. Dowling took action. She compared the various sites she had turned up. She chose the most active. Then she posted a kind and detailed description of Mattu Amabo and all she knew of his family.

  IT HAD NOT OCCURED TO Mattu that he might love his American family. He was grateful and he ate their food, but he had not planned to love them.

  The skinny, rushing, constantly talking mother had been so tiring at first, with her relentless pushing and doing and her countless activities. But the minister and the church committee faded away, while Mrs. Finch continued to believe that all problems could be conquered, all hurt souls rescued and all hands reattached.

  The father was gone so much, working to pay for this amazing house and the family's cars and computers. He was visibly sad and exhausted. But when Mr. Finch was home, he offered his good suits and ties for Mattu to wear in church and patiently gave him driving lessons.

  How clearly Jared hated sharing his room, his friends and his time. But it was Jared who watched out for Mattu, tutored him, even stepped in to protect him. As if Mattu—fresh from a world where you needed a submachine gun to defend yourself—cared about some minor bully like Hunter. Jared was reaching out even to Alake, who could not—should not—reach out herself.

  But the real reason Mattu loved his American family was Mopsy. This little girl completely adored the four strangers who had invaded her house with their problems and demands and secrets. When Mopsy spun and danced and clapped over nothing at all, Mattu could almost hear his mother's laughter, back when there had been joy.

  He loved the Finches. But how he had ached to be among black people. He was so glad to be at a restaurant with Daniel's family, who had the same color skin he did. And what a family: the mother a college professor and the father a doctor. He wished he could be alone with them, instead of saddled with Alake, Celestine and Andre.

  The restaurant was filled with fresh flowers, bright colors and soft seats. The food was arranged like art. Mattu had expected Daniel's family to be like everybody else but more so—blasting him with questions about Africa and his past, refugee camps and suffering. He'd been wrong. Conversation was entirely about the future: Celestine's future, Andre's, Mattu's—even Alake's.

  “Daniel is hoping to be a doctor. He's more interested in research than in patient care. Mattu, have you thought about what you want to be?” said Daniel's mother, leaning forward with the same intensity Kara Finch had.

  I want to be safe, thought Mattu.

  He did not try to explain. She was talking about careers and education. Mattu did not want these beautiful people to know the depth of fear and horror that slept with him by night and engulfed him by day.

  Celestine was not sharing Mattu's thoughts about safety. She was actually looking at him the way a mother would look at a son…a son who could become a doctor.

  Daniel's father smiled. “Is it too soon to plan the future, Mattu?”

  Mattu smiled back. “The present is enough for now. I am behind in every class. But I will catch up.”

  “What's your best class?” demanded Daniel's mother.

  “I am not best at anything. In every class, I am at the bottom. There are not always schools to attend when a country is at war. I am deficient in many fields.”

  “But what do you like the best?”

  Doors that lock. Trees that don't hide killers. Plates with food on them. “Math,” he said politely.

  Finding the library took several days.

  The librarians could not have been nicer. They located ten agencies that were licensed to settle refugees in America, but they found no clues about Victor's dear friends, the Amabo family. “We'll keep working on it,” they assured him when the library was closing for the night. “It's a challenge. And how exciting that we may be able to reunite you with your friends.”

  “Celestine has her first checking account,” Mom told Kirk Crick. “She chose checks with a background of wild animals. Would you believe that even though Celestine is African, she has never seen leopards or tigers or elephants? We're thinking of going to the Bronx Zoo this weekend to make up for that. Meanwhile, Alake is now going to the high school, where she has a wonderful buddy assigned to her, and wait till you see her beautiful hairstyle! And we're having such fun with brand preference. They all know the difference now between Pepsi and Coke, Burger King and McDonald's, whole milk and skim. Celestine prefers mint-flavored floss. Andre prefers hazelnut-flavored coffee.”

  Jared hadn't known about any Bronx Zoo trip. There was an area of Manhattan called the Diamond District. If he could get Mom to change her plans and take everybody to the Empire State Building, which was also in Manhattan, he could take off and go into one of those shops and get his pebble identified.

  The other afternoon he had actually stood on the sidewalk in front of Prospect Hill's jewelry store. Its windows were filled with necklaces shining on white velvet throats and engagement rings gleaming on black velvet trays. But the salesgirl inside looked only an hour or two older than Jared, and he didn't think she would even have heard of rough diamonds, let alone been able to identify them. And did he really want to be asked right here on Main Street, a block from his church and half a m
ile from his school, just exactly how he had come by an uncut diamond?

  It crossed Jared's mind that he might not be the only one in this house who would like to find the Diamond District.

  Kirk Crick sighed. “You're treating the Amabos like household pets, Kara. Your task is to give them a boost and shove them out, like birds from a nest. All your projects are way too much. It isn't good for them. They have to do this stuff by themselves.”

  “They can't even drive yet. How are they supposed to do anything without me? They can't get to the store or the bank in the first place unless a church volunteer drives them.”

  The aid worker shrugged. “Public transportation.”

  “There isn't any,” Jared pointed out.

  Kirk Crick put his Amabo folder back into his briefcase. “Then I'll find them an apartment some other place where there is. I'll be back next week.”

  “It isn't time yet! There's still so much to do!” cried Jared's mother.

  “Look, Kara,” said Kirk Crick, heading for his car. “You're the innkeeper. People stay with you temporarily. The good deed is helping them leave.”

  On Sunday, Alake sat beside Mopsy and they shared a hymnbook. The music poured over her like cool water soothing a fever. She loved the hymns and the enthusiastic singing of the congregation. Her feet and heart shivered from the pipe organ's volume.

  “The Lord be with you,” said the minister.

  “And with you also,” said the people.

  And had that happened? wondered Alake. Was the Lord with these people? Was he also with her?

  “Open my eyes, that I may see,” said the first hymn.

  Alake prayed as she had never known a person could pray. Open my eyes! she begged God. Let me see you the way other people see, not through the veil of the bad things I've done.

  “Open my heart,” said the hymn. “Open my mind.”