Diamonds in the Shadow

  Bribery, he supposed. A way of life in Africa.

  George understood. If his kids were trapped in war and famine, and he had a chance to get them out, he'd pay anybody anything.

  George had never sent a refugee back. He didn't want to start now. He had a queasy moment of post-9/11 rage at immigration officers who had let nineteen killers into the country. But the Amabos weren't dangerous. They were defeated.

  Wasn't that what America was about? Giving people a chance to recover? And perhaps George was being unfair to the silent, sluggish girl; perhaps she was actually behaving well, having been raised in a world where speech and action belonged to her elders.

  At last the X-ray detour was over. The guards seemed a little embarrassed to have raised so much commotion over the ashes of grandparents. They escorted the Amabos and George back to Passport Control.

  Mr. Amabo's eyes ceaselessly scoured the hundreds of people inching forward in the long lines. He and his wife were visibly afraid. It was George's job to comfort them, and he had failed.

  The fifth refugee was the last passenger off the plane. His eyes raked the crowd. The other four refugees were nowhere to be seen. It had never occurred to him that they might get separated. Disbelief turned to rage.

  The fifth refugee could read but had not used this skill in years. He did not glance at some woman holding a sign until the woman actually dared pluck at his sleeve. “Are you Victor?” she said, beaming. “I'm here to escort you to your next flight.”

  He stared at her. “I do not take another plane. I stay here. New York City.”

  “No. According to your paperwork, you're headed for Texas.”

  The woman actually took his arm. He could not imagine a situation where he would allow a woman to lead. He shook her off. “I go with the Amabo family who got off this plane ahead of me,” he said, raising his voice to make her understand.

  The vast space was suddenly less full of passengers and more full of men and women in uniform, standing in the bored but grim way of soldiers. They began drifting toward him and he had visions of being turned back to Africa. He of all people could never go back.

  The woman walked Victor to another gate. One of the soldiers ambled along next to him. Victor could easily overpower one man, and take his weapon, but there were other soldiers all around. And he did not know this building, or how to get out of it, or the landscape around it. Most important of all, he did not know where the Amabo family was.

  The fury that always seethed inside Victor increased. He yearned to wrap his hands around the woman's throat or around the barrel of that gun.

  This could not be happening.

  They could not be forcing him to leave New York. He had to be here!

  But neither could he attract more attention.

  Victor was helpless, a thing that had not happened to him in many years.

  People would pay for this.

  At the final check, Mrs. Amabo held out a fat packet of refugee paperwork. Immigration went through each page. Photographs were studied. Questions were asked.

  Mr. Amabo said nothing. The girl said nothing. The boy clutched his ashes.

  George said a silent prayer for the Finch family. They were going to need all the help they could get.

  The immigration officer straightened up the papers and slid them back into their envelope. Then he smiled at Mrs. Amabo. “Welcome to America.”

  THINGS WENT WRONG FROM THE start.

  Jared's mother routinely took hundreds of photographs, which she e-mailed to everybody whether they cared about the Finch family or not. She loved to chronicle her children's lives. Jared figured half the reason Mom wanted to host a refugee family was to start a new scrapbook, plus flood the church Web site with a million photos.

  The four Africans had assembled on the sidewalk on the departure level. They stood with their backs to each other, wild creatures keeping watch in every direction. They were so fearful that their eyes flared open, as if they were gazelles scenting a predator.

  I'm comparing these people to animals, thought Jared.

  The mother was statuesque in her colorful wrappings, while the father was bent and cringing in a faded sweatshirt. There was a son—Jared's age, lanky and athletic, with extraordinarily black skin. The daughter, much lighter in complexion, was deathly thin, her hair wild as jungle vines.

  Mom lifted her digital camera.

  The African mother raised her hands in the universal gesture for “No!” and repositioned her family until they were too far apart to be in one shot. “No photographs,” she ordered. Her accent was thick and soupy; and if she had not been pointing at the camera, Jared would not have figured out the word “photographs.”

  “It's for the scrapbook!” cried Jared's mother, speaking clearly so they would grasp the importance of her hobby.

  Jared wanted to fall through the sidewalk. Like Africans cared whether Kara Finch kept a scrapbook. These people had been trying to stay alive, not position photos on a page.

  “Great,” whispered his dad. “We haven't even said hello yet and we've already tripped over some tribal taboo.”

  Maybe a hundred years earlier. Even twenty. But in the television, Internet, digital-camera era? Jared doubted it.

  His mom flushed and dropped the camera into her purse.

  The African mother was equally embarrassed. She bowed slightly, and then they all bowed, as if it were suddenly 1800 and the Finches were used to bowing. Mom recovered. Throwing her arms around this large, impressive African woman, Jared's mother said, “I'm sorry about the camera. I'm Kara Finch and you're part of our family now. You'll be living with us. Welcome to America.”

  The woman was shocked. “Living with you?”

  “I know you expected your own apartment, but that didn't work out after all. We'll have lots of adjustments to make,” said Jared's mother happily, because she loved adjusting, whereas everybody else hated it and wanted everything to stay the same. “I know we'll be best best friends.”

  The Africans were stunned by this conviction.

  So was Jared.

  “Thank you,” said the African mother dubiously. “I am… Celestine Amabo, and I am happy to be in your country.” She did not look happy. She was breathing fast and shivering.

  Dad, meanwhile, was trying to shake hands with the father, but the man kept bowing instead. “I am Andre,” he said. “I thank you because you take us in. God be with you.”

  My turn, thought Jared, who totally did not want a turn. He faced his future roommate. “I'm Jared,” he said reluctantly.

  The boy was taller than Jared, willowy and hard, like men who win marathons. Handsome. Hair trimmed so short it was hardly there. He held two containers that didn't look as strong as cereal boxes.

  “I am Mattu,” said the boy. He hardly glanced at Jared, his gaze still swinging in all directions. How could he have such huge eyes? Wasn't eye size pretty regular among human beings?

  “If he's Mattu,” Mopsy cried, “then you're Alake! Am I saying it right? A lake? Is that who you are? I'm Mopsy! You're going to share my bedroom! We'll have the best time. I love sleepovers. We've got all new sheets and blankets for you!”

  The African girl didn't even see Mopsy, let alone hear her—a skill Jared would have loved to possess. He had the awful thought that the girl was blind.

  Dad's hand still hung in the air. He was staring at Andre's sleeves. The wind flattened them.

  “He has no hands,” said the mother softly. “The rebels chopped them off.”

  That little detail had not shown up in the grainy, above-the-shoulders black-and-white photo. Since they'd had no idea what skills, if any, the adults would have, Jared's dad had gone ahead and found work for Andre at the Quick Lube, vacuuming cars, on the theory that anybody could manage that.

  Wrong.

  The refugee officer was just standing there, looking worried. Yeah, thought Jared, I'd say sponsoring a guy without hands is something to worry about.

  Repositio
ning his boxes, Mattu extended his right hand for Jared to shake. His grip was firm. Jared tried to imagine life— Andre's life—without any grip.

  “Andre, how terrible!” cried Mopsy. “It must have hurt so much! Does it still hurt? Who would do that, anyway?”

  Jared would have said a guy without hands had nothing to smile about, but Andre Amabo smiled at Mopsy. “In a civil war,” he said gently, “people forget that they are people. Next they forget anyone else is a person. They forget how to be kind. They learn to hurt. In our wars, they might execute you, but usually they chop hands off, so that you suffer before you die. If you live, you are helpless and must depend on others.”

  “You can depend on me,” promised Mopsy.

  It had never crossed Jared's mind that the Africans would actually converse, and certainly not about important things like suffering. I'm a total racist, he thought. I figured they'd have a ten-word vocabulary: “car,” “shoe,” “food.”

  Since Mopsy couldn't take Andre's hand, she took Celestine's, as affectionately as if this African woman had already become her favorite aunt. “The Refugee Aid speaker told us there are no good guys. This is what he meant!” said Mopsy, hanging on to Celestine and pointing to Andre's sleeves. “But why didn't you bleed to death, Andre?”

  “I ran away with my arms up in the air, to try to stave off that fate. When I got into the bush, I found my wife and she bound up my wounds.”

  Andre's pronunciation was not easy to follow. Jared had to decipher the words, say them correctly in his head and then dope out the meaning.

  “What kind of bush is big enough to hide in?” Mopsy asked.

  “‘Bush,'” said Andre, “is our word for…”

  “Wild places,” supplied Mattu.

  “Is that when you got your scar, Mattu?” said Mopsy, who would ask anybody anything. “What happened? Who attacked you?”

  Mattu could not get his bearings. There seemed no way to depart from these four people named Finch. Mattu had known that a counselor would be here to explain things. But a mother and a father? A son and a daughter?

  He had expected to walk off the plane and be beneath the famous skyline: the tall, jagged profile of Manhattan. If such a place was nearby, he could not see it. How could he lose himself in the city of New York when New York did not seem to be here?

  They were standing outdoors, yet there was no outdoors. There was a forest of buildings and roads and churning traffic. Hundreds of people scurried by and vanished. Mattu tried to focus on the bouncy, bubbly little girl. “It's from a machete.”

  “Oh. What's a machete?”

  A person her age did not know what a machete was?

  Mattu tried to figure that out, but it was difficult to think about anything except that the fifth refugee had not caught up to them. Victor must still be in one of the lines. Perhaps his paperwork was not acceptable. Perhaps they were not telling Victor “Welcome to America.” Mattu could not imagine being so lucky. Any moment now, Victor would come hurtling toward them.

  But what if he didn't?

  “Everybody's shivering,” said the American woman. “Let's pile into the van, turn up the heat and get going.” She began to herd them toward a large white vehicle.

  Mattu and Celestine looked at each other for a long moment.

  Mattu considered the Refugee Aid Society officer. It was dangerous to trust anyone. But Mattu had no other source of information. Very softly, Mattu said to George Neville, “The other refugee on the plane does not come with us?”

  “Oh, right, I was chatting with the woman meeting him. She's with some other service. Refugees get distributed all over America, you know. Wherever there's a sponsor. She was flying him to another destination. Texas, I think. Is he a relative? I can try to track him down.”

  “He is a stranger,” said Mattu. “I did not realize he would go to another place. It does not matter. Thank you for your kind assistance, sir.”

  Victor had killed to get here.

  And now he had not gotten here after all.

  The African mother touched the edge of the sliding door, peered inside the van and then looked nervously back at the airport. Mr. Amabo wet his lips and studied his feet. Mattu balanced on the curb.

  They're afraid to come with us, thought Jared.

  How weird to think of his family as frightening.

  Jared's practical mother interpreted the hesitation differently. “Shall we all go to the bathroom again before we take off?”

  Celestine Amabo seemed to come to an important decision— the decision, perhaps, to trust his mother. What incredible trust in the future it must have taken to get on a plane at all, to leave an entire continent and everything they knew.

  “No, thank you,” Celestine told Mom, and she climbed into the van. Andre lurched in after her. They took the second row of seats, right behind Jared's mom and dad. Mattu followed, bending like a straw in a juice box, carefully managing his ashes. He chose the far rear corner, slumping, as if he didn't want to be seen in a church vehicle.

  Alake—whose name they did not yet know how to pronounce— was still on the sidewalk. Her parents didn't look to see if she got in, never mind if she was happy about it. Mopsy shoveled her into the van and pushed her down in the third bank of seats so that Alake was against the window right in front of Mattu, while Mopsy sat in front of Jared.

  How different was the bone structure on each African face. Andre and Celestine had broad, solid features, while Alake's face was thin and bony, and Mattu looked like a statue of some ancient Greek god, carved from ebony instead of marble.

  Dad turned the heat on high. It was warm for January, about forty-five. But if you lived near the equator, you were probably used to a temperature twice that. More than.

  The van seated twelve and was therefore nearly useless to the church, because even the smallest youth group had thirty kids. But today it was roomy: four Amabos and four Finches. No other committee members had come because everybody assumed suitcases would fill the extra space.

  How American, thought Jared, to expect refugees to have luggage. “So what's in the boxes, Mattu?”

  Mopsy was happy. There was a girl.

  Too old for middle school, but that was Mopsy's fault; she had neglected to explain to God that the sister should be her own age. It seemed to Mopsy that an all-powerful God should be aware of these details on His own, and she was irked, as she so often was, that God needed all this nagging.

  Mopsy studied the girl eagerly. Right in her backyard, she must have had elephants and lions and a hippo or two. Mopsy could hardly wait to hear what it was like to live in the middle of a safari. The girl had lovely skin, coffee with milk; she was a completely different color than her parents, who were brown, or her brother, who was black. To look at them, you would never know these four were related. Of course, you would never know Mopsy and Jared were related either, because he was large boned and dark haired, while she was small boned and blond; his eyebrows were heavy and frowning while hers were invisible over pale blue eyes.

  Mopsy had planned to get rid of her nickname when she started fourth grade, but nobody had cooperated. She had tried again in fifth and failed, and now in sixth grade was once more trying to be Martha, but everybody still said Mopsy. She said to her new sister, “My name is Martha. No matter what anybody else calls me, Alake, you say Martha.”

  Alake did not look at Mopsy. She didn't look out the window either. As far as Mopsy could tell, she didn't look, period. “Alake? Can you hear me?”

  Alake did not move.

  Mopsy leaned forward and tapped Celestine on the shoulder. “Can Alake talk?”

  “She lost her speech,” said Celestine, as casually as if Alake had lost her sunglasses.

  Mopsy's heart broke for Alake. What could be worse than not being able to talk to your friends?

  “We'll get her into therapy,” said Mopsy's mother from the front seat. “When Alake sees that she's safe, she'll begin talking again.”

  Mop
sy's school had battalions of people poised for situations like this. There were counselors and special-ed people, speech therapists and a music therapist, interpreters for the hearing impaired, tutors and referrals to doctors.

  Mom began shouting directions to Dad, who loved everything about his wife except her tendency to give driving instruction, and of course he wouldn't do what she said, and of course she was right, so Dad missed the airport exit and Jared heaved a sigh while Mopsy giggled and Mom said, “Really, Drew,” and Dad said, “Kara, just let me do this,” and they went all the way around a second time.

  Celestine's marvelous head wrap was crushed by the van ceiling, so she took it off. Her hair was glorious—intricately braided and beaded. What a contrast to Alake's hair, which looked as if it hadn't been fixed since the family's escape into the bush. Who didn't want nice hair? Maybe Alake wasn't talking because her hair embarrassed her.

  Mopsy squeezed Alake's hand to let her know that Mopsy was her friend, but Alake did not squeeze back. Mopsy called up to the front seat, “You know what, Mom? Alake should come to sixth grade with me, even if she is fifteen. She might as well not talk sitting next to me. My friends are nice, whereas Jared doesn't even have any friends, and if he did they wouldn't be nice.”

  “Excuse me?” said Jared.

  “I think that's a wonderful idea, Mopsy,” said Mom.

  “Martha,” she corrected.

  Mattu said to Jared, “Aren't mops for cleaning floors?”