A few feet away, sitting at the kitchen counter, Mrs. Wall and Mrs. Finch talked softly.
Alake sat on the floor next to them, stroking the soft, sweet ears of her puppy. He had a whole separate smell from the dog food, a warm, furry smell. He was exhausted from his big day, and when he finished his supper, he crawled contentedly onto her lap.
“You come to church with me this Sunday, Emmy,” said Mrs. Finch. “Sit beside me. I'll tough it out with you.”
“No. I'm going back to Wisconsin.”
“Wisconsin? You've lived here twenty years!”
“And now I'm leaving. I can't face people.”
This made sense to Alake. For three years, Alake had been among the people she had wronged, and never once had she faced them. Had never looked up, never spoken. She wondered where Wisconsin was and whether Mrs. Wall could face people there.
Dear God, prayed Alake, help Mrs. Wall.
Alake felt God listening.
Her prayer actually traveled to God, and he was glad to hear from her.
Alake looked carefully at Mrs. Wall. Will I be able to see God helping her? Will it be in her eyes?
The puppy whimpered, sensing that Alake's attention was not fully on him. Alake buried her face in his wonderful fur.
Jared listened to his mother and Mrs. Wall.
He had had a sort of argument with Tay in school while they were waiting for their respective Africans to finish up at the guidance office. “I don't see you guys in church anymore,” he had said casually, because he would have loved to see her every day of the week.
“We don't go anymore. My parents are furious about that theft. They gave their hard-earned money to the church and what happens? A deacon steals it. Church is supposed to improve people, but it obviously doesn't.”
Jared was not sure that self-improvement was the purpose of church. But he said, “My parents are furious too.”
“People who go to church are such hypocrites,” said Tay. “They dress up in their fine clothes and carry their matching handbags and plump down in some pew and sign up for committees and pretend to be religious, but really they just want the attention.”
Jared had often laughed at his mother's need for handbags that matched all her outfits. And of course she loved attention. Who didn't?
But she signs up for committees hoping to do good in the world, he thought. She believes that's what God expects of her. She believes.
“But nobody believes any of that stuff anyway, not for real,” said Tay.
My mother does. Andre. Celestine. Maybe Dad. I'm not sure about Dad. He's so shaken. And me? What about me?
“Don't pack for Wisconsin yet,” insisted Mrs. Finch. “Come to church Sunday.”
“Impossible,” said Emmy Wall.
“Possible,” said Kara Finch.
That is the difference, thought Alake. In Africa, everything is impossible. But in America, everything is possible.
THE PUPPY HAD A SOFTENING effect on everybody. Even Dad kept saying to Alake, “Talk to your puppy. Jopsy has to get to know your voice.” Jared thought the puppy might do a better job of keeping Dad home than his wife and children were doing.
Alake looked ready to talk. But she couldn't quite get there.
“Jopsy has to learn to sit, stay and heel,” Dad told her. “But above all, he has to learn not to beg. You feed Jopsy one more time from the dinner table and you're both sleeping in the garage.” But he was smiling when he said this. And it seemed to Jared that a smile trembled on Alake's lips too—that she was ready to be happy.
When the doorbell rang, for once the Amabos did not act as if someone had thrown a grenade. But it was Kirk Crick, and he had in fact come with a grenade.
“I've found an apartment,” he said briskly. “It's in Norwich. Forty-five-minute drive northeast of here. Nice and cheap, because Norwich is a depressed little city. The apartment's not very big and it's not very clean, but we can get volunteers to help scrub and furnish it. The high school, the Norwich Free Academy, is excellent. There's another Super Stop and Shop there, Celestine, and I've already called the managers and they're happy to switch you to that location. Mattu, I can't do anything about your new part-time job, but you can hunt for another one. The important thing is, Mattu will have his driver's license soon. With the donated car, the Amabos have their own transportation, and that will give them real freedom. The current tenants are moving out today, and we can get you in there by the middle of next week.”
Celestine glowed. Her jaw was set at a determined angle and she sat straighter.
Andre lifted sparkling eyes. His lips moved as he thanked the Lord.
It occurred to Jared for the first time that a refugee must hate being a refugee.
Who wants to be on the receiving end of charity? Nobody. And in their own home, no matter how sad the city or how shabby the space, the Amabo family would not be refugees.
“They're not ready!” cried Mopsy.
“It's like learning to swim,” said Kirk Crick gently. “If somebody always holds you up, you never learn. But once you're in over your head, you start paddling.”
“Or drown,” said Mopsy.
Kirk Crick smiled at Celestine and Andre. “They won't drown.”
Jared knew he was right. Celestine was as driven to pull off her new life as any high school honor student was to get into a great college. Mattu would absorb knowledge in any school. Andre would get his hands and swim with the best of them. As for Alake, she would be lost with or without Mopsy.
Their own apartment. Where they would build their new lives. A new high school, with the lovely name Free. Where they would be free of everything, including the past and the Finches and their overwhelming kindness.
Kirk Crick explained how to register the donated car.
I am the only driver, thought Mattu.
He, Mattu, was crucial to the family's survival. He would fill that car with gas and groceries; he would take Celestine to her job and pick her up afterward; he would drive Andre to his job, when Andre got hands. And Mattu would get an after-school job in this new town and bring in money.
They would not, however, be free from the threat of the fifth refugee.
We won't get a regular telephone, Mattu decided. A phone means a public listing. A street address in print and online. I'll have a cell phone instead, and that way nobody can find us.
The instant he thought of that, another solution sprang to Mattu's mind. He knew what to do about the diamonds.
Mopsy was the only one of the eight members of this temporary family who wasn't ready. “Norwich is too far away for us to help easily. Alake still needs us.”
Kirk Crick brushed this away. “Every school system in the state has a special-ed program. A counselor will deal with Alake. Which reminds me. The apartment building doesn't allow pets.”
Alake had never come across the concept of a pet. She would never have believed that grocery stores had an entire aisle for pet food. Now that she had a pet of her own, she could not believe that in this country where people would do anything for you, she could not keep her pet.
Kirk Crick said he would telephone Tay and tell her to come get the puppy.
Life was sweeping forward like a broom, and Alake was rubbish.
She would be rubbish in the Amabo family too. They had been brought together to carry Victor's diamonds. Victor had bought and threatened and killed his way through the veil that tried—and sometimes failed—to protect America from the wrong kind of person.
They didn't call them blood diamonds anymore, because the West was squeamish and didn't like to hear about bloodshed. Americans liked to pretend that bad things weren't really happening. They called them conflict diamonds—as if after a brief argument, shiny stones changed hands. But in Victor's case, Alake thought, these were blood diamonds. And nothing changed hands. The hands were cut off.
In a camp with thousands of possible fake daughters, why had Victor chosen Alake?
No doubt beca
use he had once given her an order and she had obeyed. He might need her obedience again. She remembered Victor forcing Mattu to kiss the edge of his machete. Obey me, Victor explained, or end up handless like Andre. People always obeyed Victor.
“Find a different apartment,” said Mopsy to Kirk Crick. “Alake loves Jopsy. She needs Jopsy.”
“Compared to what they went through, losing a puppy is nothing.”
“This is America,” said Mopsy. “You get to keep your puppy. That's the point. That's why they came here.”
“Puppies are not on the list of reasons to come to America. And the Amabos don't have enough income even for this rundown apartment. They'll have to be subsidized. Once Mattu gets an after-school job and Andre is employed, they'll make it. But they sure won't be buying dog food.”
Mattu was not quick with Internet research the way Jared was. It took hours for him to come up with four possible phone numbers. At school, he lied to Mrs. Dowling and pretended he was expected at the guidance office. But Celestine had given him ten dollars in quarters for the pay phones outside the boys' locker room. Jared and Mopsy always checked the caller ID on their phones to find out who was calling before they said anything. If people in Texas had caller ID, they would not know it was Mattu calling and they could not make any connection with a family named Finch.
The first refugee agency Mattu called in Texas listened to his request. But they did not have a refugee named Victor among their current clients. The second agency had no one named Victor. But the third number was answered by somebody who said, “We can do that for you, but wait. First the—”
Mattu hung up. He was sweating with the horror of being a telephone line away from Victor. Even though he'd looked up Texas on a map and used Mr. Finch's ruler to multiply the scale and figure out the number of miles between him and Victor— almost two thousand, which seemed like enough—he was talking to a person who had talked to Victor.
It took hours to calm down.
Then he reexamined his plan.
It was still brilliant.
Victor wasted precious time going in the wrong direction on the wrong turnpikes in places called Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He wasted time sleeping and eating. He was down to only a few days. He used the stolen cell phone from the dead woman's purse to call the New York number. And this time, the dealer answered. Yes, he was in the city. Yes, he remembered the fine diamonds Victor had shown him. Yes, he would pay Victor in cash.
They would meet, he said, at the clock at Grand Central Terminal. It was not safe to transfer gems and cash there. The station would be full of policemen and guards. They would go for a walk together and the transaction would occur elsewhere.
Victor assumed that in such a place he could kill the buyer, keep the diamonds and take the cash.
All he needed now were the diamonds.
On Saturday, donated furniture was rounded up and delivered to the Finches' house. Boxes of donated dishes and pots and microwaves were sorted; Americans always had some amazing extra thing they weren't using. Cleaning materials and canned goods were purchased. These were loaded into a borrowed van, which would sit in the driveway until moving day.
Alake had stayed out of the way. She clung to Jopsy. She prayed that Tay would never come, or that Mopsy would coax Mr. and Mrs. Finch to let Alake keep living here. But of course that was not going to happen, any more than Alake was going to erase her past.
Then it was Sunday, and Emmy Wall did come to church, making too many people for one pew. Mopsy, Mrs. Finch, Emmy Wall, Jared and Mr. Finch sat in a row. And so, for the first time, the four Amabos sat in a separate pew, as if they were a family.
Alake thought that the other three were a family. Mattu was becoming a son to Celestine and Andre. They needed him, and he was proud and excited to be needed. And he was everything a son should be: tall, handsome, intelligent, athletic. They would form a family and make a home and share a life.
But they would not share it with Alake if they could help it. Celestine's real daughter had been murdered and Alake had been substituted. As if any mother could accept a substitution. At first she'd have to—Kirk Crick and the Finches would check on the Amabos. But they wouldn't check forever—or even for long.
The congregation sang a hymn. The melody was beautiful and the words were sad.
“Jesus walked this lonesome valley.
He had to walk it by himself.”
Alake was frightened by it. Walking by yourself was the worst punishment on earth. The last verse was even worse.
“You must go and stand your trial.
You must stand it by yourself.”
Surely the whole point of Christianity was that you did not have to stand your trial by yourself. God would be there. Why did they sing this horrible hymn that contradicted the Good News?
Because it's true, thought Alake. I have to stand my trial by myself. I have to live with people who hate me. I cannot keep my puppy. I have to walk alone.
Alake had listened so carefully to everything. How to fasten a seat belt. How to use double coupons, a credit card, a vending machine, a revolving door, the Internet.
But what good was any of it, if you had to walk alone?
Jared sat next to his dad on the not-soft-enough cushion of the pew and watched his father not listen and not pray.
Dr. Nickerson's announcements went on and on: a baptism, a wedding, names of the sick, crucial meetings and finally, the joyful news that an apartment had been found for the refugees.
We're all refugees, thought Jared. We all want a safe house. A place with strong walls between us and trouble. My father's two safe houses—home and church—stopped being safe. And now Mom is even making him sit in church with the wife of his enemy. How Christian and how annoying does it get? Jared began laughing silently. “I've decided I kind of like church,” he whispered to his father. “It's so crazy.”
Dad did not seem cheered by this revelation.
Theirs was not a family or a church that publicly embraced. Occasionally the order of service required people to offer each other the Peace of God. Everybody hated it. You were supposed to hug and get all friendly and everything, but shaking hands was the max for anybody here. Today Jared did something he had never done in church. He put his arm around his father's shoulder and pulled him in tight.
Dad's stiff spine relaxed. His tight shoulders sagged. His set jaw softened. He hugged back.
Jared could not help thinking of Alake, who was never hugged, and perhaps never would be—and who was about to lose the one creature she herself could hug.
They sang a mournful old folk song, not at all Dr. Nickerson's style. Probably some old person's request. It gave Jared a sick feeling, as if it forecast his future. He would walk alone in some lonesome valley.
“You must go and stand your trial.”
Mrs. Wall sobbed once, out loud, and caught herself.
Was the hymn about court trials, though? Or about everyday trials, like sharing your bedroom or finding diamonds in the ash?
“Nobody else can do it for you.”
His mother took Mrs. Wall's hand. She had the opposite slogan. Somebody else could always do it for you, or at least with you.
Jared whispered in his father's ear, “What do you bet Mom goes straight from giving refugees a home to escorting wives of felons to court?”
“I'll bet everything I have,” his father whispered back, laughing.
“Jesus tells us,” said the minister, “that if you have done a good thing for the least of his people, you have done it for him.”
I am the least, thought Alake. Every person in this church is better than I am.
Celestine and Andre and Mattu did not know exactly what Alake had done or how often or under what pressure, but it did not matter. She could not be part of the family they were going to make in this town called Norwich, and one day Mattu would put Alake in his car and drive to some distant place, perhaps even the great void that was New York, open the door and tell h
er to get out. At the end of the service, the congregation sang a soft little song to say good-bye to each other.
“Go now in peace.
Never be afraid.
God will go with you each hour of every day.
Go now in peace, in faith and in love.”
Alake did not know what peace was. There had been none in her life. And faith? What was that? Nothing Alake possessed. But she had been given glimpses of love: the love of this family who had taken her in, the love of this church and the love of her puppy.
You have to walk it by yourself.
If I have Jopsy, thought Alake, I can walk anywhere. I have to walk now, before they take my puppy away from me.
In Africa, you could just keep walking and find others who were just walking, and with them, you could sleep by the side of the road and hope for rescue or death. But in America, that did not seem to happen. For Alake to vanish in America, she needed money.
I have a Social Security number, she thought. We all had to get one. Legally I'm too young to work, but at Celestine's job at that motel, half the girls in housekeeping didn't have papers or were too young. I can get a job somewhere and earn money someday. But to take care of Jopsy right now, I have to have money.
Diamonds are money.
MONDAY MORNING WAS AS CHAOTIC and confusing as the first day of school, when none of the Amabos had known how to open the sealed carton of orange juice or why the phone rang. Alake held Jopsy tightly. If only she could be in somebody's arms, held this tightly. If only holding something tightly meant that you could actually keep it.
Because Celestine had the privilege of working extra hours that day, Mr. Finch was dropping her off early. They were already gone.
Mrs. Finch was taking Andre to some distant city called Boston for something called a second opinion. She was shouting questions: Did everybody have their homework? Did they have lunch money? Were their cell phones charged? Would Andre please hurry up and get in the car?