Diamonds in the Shadow (5 page)

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.

Repositioning 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.”

Mopsy'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?”

Jared laughed.

“We didn't mean to call her Mopsy,” said Mom. “It just happened. ‘Mopsy' is sort of from the word ‘moppet,' which means rag doll.”

“Which leads to ‘Muppet,'” said Jared. “Half puppet, half moppet. Like
Sesame Street.”

“Is that where you live?” asked Mattu. “Do you grow the seed, the sesame?”

The van was silent. The Americans began to see just how much the Africans did not know.

Dad gave the whole sesame seed thing a pass. “We've left Kennedy Airport, and it hasn't been easy, since I kept missing the exit lane. But we are now on the highway and headed home.”

Mom swept her four guests with her wonderful smile. “You're here! You're really here. You made it!”

Tears slid down Celestine's face. Andre smiled tenderly at his wife and wiped them away. Not with his hand, because he didn't have one, but with the knob of his arm, hidden under the sleeve. Mopsy kind of wanted to see the chopped-off part and kind of didn't.

“Seat belts,” Mom reminded everybody.

Celestine reached around to fasten Andre's seat belt. Mopsy had an awful thought. If Andre's
arms
had been cut off, maybe Alake's
tongue
—

Mopsy decided not to go there.

Since Alake's hands lay in her lap as if they had been sewn down, Mopsy fixed Alake's seat belt. Alake did not react to having this white person lean over and cinch her in. I will save her, thought Mopsy. I will make everything better. She took Alake's cinnamon-colored fingers and curled them around her own.