Diamonds in the Shadow (20 page)

Sunday afternoon, the entire Finch family seemed exhausted. Mr. Finch napped in front of the television. Mopsy fell asleep leaning against her father. Jared fell asleep playing a video game. Mrs. Finch dozed over her knitting.

Alake felt brave. All by herself she would go to the bedroom she shared with Mopsy. Americans believed you could start over. Americans believed that even someone like Alake could be a new person with a new future. She would look into that mirror and see
if there were any traces of what she had prayed for: her new self, cleansed of all that had come before.

Alake walked slowly up the stairs. She dared pray to that God, the one who forgave.

But down the hall from the other direction came Andre. Andre had never looked at her, and he didn't look at her now. He knew who she was; they had all known, at that camp.

She was someone not worth speaking to, not worth looking at. Someone who had killed.

If Alake had ever had a message from God, this was it.

You cannot escape what you did, God said to her. Africa is in this house with you. See what Victor's soldiers did to Andre's hands? It cannot be undone.

You cannot be forgiven.

The librarians came through for Victor. They found the information he needed. They were happy about it. So was Victor. Where, he asked them, was this place called Prospect Hill?

They printed a map. They printed driving instructions.

“Is it as far as New York City?”

“Farther. It's past New York. Maybe a hundred and fifty miles north.”

Victor took his maps and left. Driving required a car. Victor went out on the streets to get one.

The snow melted and then froze again that night, coating the roads with ice. Trucks threw brown sand in a lacy pattern, but the hill was still treacherous.

Icy weather was a signal to Mom that cookies must be baked. Jared thought this was a nice habit in a person. He stole a little dough while Mom was showing Celestine the cookie cutter selection.

Dad was giving Andre and Mattu a map-reading lesson. The Amabos didn't come from a world with enough paved roads to bother with maps. Maps were difficult. Andre was struggling to figure out which little lines on the local map were the ones on which he'd ridden his bike.

“And these?” Celestine asked Mom.

“Easter shapes,” Mom explained. “That's a bunny and that's an egg.”

“How do you celebrate Easter in Africa, Celestine?” Jared asked, guessing that Africa had a real shortage of Peeps candy chicks and plastic grass.

Celestine slid her first batch of cookies into the oven. To Jared's amazement, she actually answered a question about her past. “Last Easter, in the refugee camp, when many children had died of diarrhea, there was such sorrow. But we were joyful that Easter was coming.”

“Excuse me?” said Jared. “How could you feel joyful when babies were dying?”

“Because Christ is risen and he is with us in our suffering. On Easter morning, I was at peace over the death of my daughter.”

Mopsy stopped reading.

Dad stopped looking at the map.

Mom stopped rolling out dough.

“We had another daughter,” explained Andre softly. “She is in heaven. We do not talk about her.”

So Alake was just a throwaway kid—the daughter who had survived. Her parents resented her for being alive. There was no rescue from that.

Victor returned to the little apartment to get the various things he had acquired. Some of those were weapons.

The refugee supervisor was waiting at Victor's apartment for Victor to appear. “You made promises when you were accepted for refugee status,” he said to Victor. And then he made a fatal error. “You promised to work and to hold a job. If you are not at work tomorrow, I will have to call Immigration about you.”

Celestine and Mattu stood with their backs pressed against the garage, as if they expected to be shot. “Oh, my God!” Dad kept yelling.

Jared's father never swore. Jared couldn't imagine what had happened.

Dad was so mad he was panting. “Driving back and forth on our driveway is not enough practice for you to take the car, drive across town and get on the highway! You have to have a license, Mattu! What made you go to Stop and Shop anyway? We couldn't fit another Cheerio in this house. And you can't just take my car! Did you hit anything?” he shouted, clearly envisioning streets full of dead toddlers, smashed cats and dented school buses.

Mattu and Celestine exchanged horrified looks.

They
had
hit something.

Please don't let it be anything formerly alive, thought Jared.

“A grocery cart,” whispered Mattu. “When we drove away. It was just there. In the middle of where you park the car. It stuck to us. I couldn't get rid of it. Finally it rolled off.”

Jared began laughing hysterically.

“I wanted to work at that grocery store instead of the motel,” said Celestine desperately. “I telephoned for a job interview, just the way it said to do in our manual.”

“This is fabulous, Daddy,” said Mopsy. “Taking the initiative and testing abilities and exploring unknown territory. It's like a checklist for life. Did you get the job, Celestine?”

“I start Monday,” she whispered.

“Congratulations!” shrieked Mopsy. “I'm so happy for you! Even though I would rather be dead than a checkout clerk.”

“I'm a stock person. I'll put things on shelves. Things to eat.”

Mopsy flung her arms around Celestine and they kissed and
hugged. Dad pulled himself together and patted her shoulder. Then he informed Mattu that driving lessons were over.

“I, on the other hand,” said Jared, “am mature in comparison, and ought to be the one taking driving lessons.”

“Good plan,” said Dad. “The way I'm feeling now, any time I can drive away from here is a good time.”

“But right now,” said Mom, “it's dinnertime. My schedule always trumps your schedule.”

“So true,” said Dad glumly.

Everybody paraded into the kitchen, which is always a family's favorite room and which in this household was really and truly the favorite because that was where all the food was.

Jared was the last to leave the frigid garage and the only one who saw Alake. She had not been part of the action or part of the result. Nobody had hugged her or even thought of hugging her. Maybe hugs were more crucial than food. But Jared couldn't hug her either. “You okay, Alake?”

It was a stupid question.

But she did not treat it stupidly. She looked at Jared with real eyes—the eyes of a person. Sad eyes.

They were home alone, Alake and Mopsy.

Mopsy had a plan. She always had a plan for Alake. She had dragged out another old picture book and was reading aloud to Alake, poking her finger at each word. Inside her fleece blanket,
Alake was shivering with pride. She could read every one of those words by herself. Everything she had learned in Africa, before life went wrong, had come back into her mind. She could read!

Mopsy turned the page. There was a picnic under a tree, and there were happy children with wide curved smiles. Alake had a sudden beautiful memory, untainted by blood and evil: her family, smiling, under a tree.

An ugly rasping sound came from outdoors. Like a motorcycle, but rougher. Alake stiffened.

“It's not our car,” said Mopsy. “It's somebody who needs a new muffler and probably everything else.” She ran to look out the window. “It's all rusted out and beat up,” she reported to Alake. “And old. Longer and flatter than cars are now. Plus an ugly color. Who would drive that thing?”

Alake stood up. Her couch blanket fell to the floor.

She followed Mopsy into the front room, keeping her back against the interior walls and making sure she was not visible from the windows. She rushed to the drapes and looked carefully through the crack. She gave a little moan of horror and then sprang into the front hall before Mopsy could. Every night Celestine double-checked the front door to be sure that the upper knob, which moved a fat metal bolt into the frame, was turned in the right direction. The safe direction.

It wasn't turned. The door was unlocked.

Alake shoved the dead bolt home.