Diamonds in the Shadow (18 page)

Jared texted his father.
miss u where r u?

“Eat fast,” said Celestine. “You have to catch your bus.”

“I can't eat fast,” said Mopsy. “I don't know how. I'm a slow eater.” Carefully she buttered her waffle so the exact right amount of butter melted in each little square.

Celestine and Mom heaved identical sighs.

How strange was the structure of this new family of eight: Celestine adored and wanted to be just like Mom, while Mom loved molding Celestine in her image. The two of them were surging forward. Andre, as if attached by his mitten cords, was not lost and floating but learning everything, poised on the edge of a life in which he too could participate; a life with hands.

Maybe it was Dad who was lost and floating.

Dad answered the text message immediately.
Left early.

I'll say, thought Jared. He read the rest of the message.
Hold the fort i lv u.

Jared poured syrup on his waffle. A minute earlier, he'd been ready to tell Dad about the diamonds. But the message troubled him. Maybe what Jared needed to do was
empty
the fort instead of holding it. Drew Finch had to earn a living and support everybody and their hobbies. He was required to save the church, the world, a man without hands and a girl without speech. Did he really need to worry about smuggled blood diamonds as well?

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 way 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.