Diamonds in the Shadow

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Because it's important, thought Mopsy. She has written to Tay and Tay has written back.

  Alake read the words, Mopsy could see by her eyes. But just in case Alake needed backup, Mopsy read it out loud. “Dear Alake, this calls for a celebration. I have just the gift for you. I'm on my way. Love, Tay.”

  But of course the first car to pull in the driveway had to be Emmy Wall's.

  Mopsy moaned, printed out Tay's e-mail, handed it to Alake and skittered down the stairs to open the door. “Hi, Mrs. Wall. Mom will be home soon. Alake and I were just going to make hot chocolate. Want some?”

  Alake was halfway down the stairs, holding her e-mail the way the Magi must have held the baby king's treasures. She wants to share it, thought Mopsy. But she doesn't know how.

  Mopsy led the way into the kitchen.

  Under normal conditions, no grown-up would ever want to sit in the kitchen and chat with a sixth grader and a mute African. But Mrs. Wall was desperate. She and Alake sat at the kitchen counter on the tall stools while Mopsy prepared the hot chocolate.

  Jared yelled, “Make enough for us!”

  Mopsy yelled, “Make your own!”

  Since Jared and Mopsy were actually only a few feet away, the yelling was not necessary, except that for brothers and sisters it was always necessary.

  The doorbell rang again. But this time, it was not Alake who almost fell off her stool. It was Mrs. Wall. “I'm scared it'll be the police,” she quavered. “They want to question me.”

  “On TV, the police can't come in unless the homeowner lets them,” said Mopsy. “I'll be the homeowner. So they can't come in. Anyway, it's probably Tay. She's got a present for Alake. Alake, you answer the door. I'm stirring. The chocolate will burn if I stop.”

  Alake gave Mopsy a very readable glance, which said, Are you insane? I'm not answering the door.

  But since they had not locked up after Mrs. Wall arrived, the visitor came right in.

  “Alake,” said Tay, “needs somebody to love. And sometimes a puppy is easier to love than people.”

  Except for vicious slinking mongrels even hungrier than she was, Alake had never encountered dogs in Africa. She did not like dogs. But the orange and brown and white puppy Tay put in her arms was different. How cuddly and warm the puppy was! Its big brown eyes stared into hers. Its little tongue licked her palm.

  It had been years since Alake's arms had encircled another living being. Warmth from the puppy seeped into Alake's heart.

  “We have four collie puppies,” said Tay, “and we have to give them all away.”

  Americans had so much. They gave away food and clothing, houses and cars, kisses and hugs—and now puppies.

  “Aren't the puppies valuable?” asked Mopsy.

  “No, because we aren't sure who the father is. So they're probably not really collies. But this little guy looks like his mother.”

  Alake did not know if she looked like her mother. She never would know, because there had never been photographs. Alake shifted the puppy until they were both comfortable. The puppy licked her. Alake buried her face in the puppy's fur.

  “This is going to work,” said Tay. “Let me get his blanket and bowl from the car and you are all set.”

  “Wait,” said Mopsy. “My mother will say no, because since Zipper died a few years ago, she hasn't wanted another dog.”

  Already the thought of losing the puppy was appalling. Alake began to cry. The tears were hot on her cheek. Her heart began to beat faster. She could actually feel her blood pumping. Her fluids were coming back. Hope floated on the surface. The puppy licked her tears, which was silly and fun, and Alake wept more on purpose.

  “Don't cry!” shrieked Mopsy. “I'll talk Mom into it, Alake, I promise. After all, this isn't our dog. It's yours. You can have the puppy. Don't cry!”

  The Texas police could not locate Victor. This was in part because the photograph they had—the one on his paperwork—was not in fact of Victor.

  The interstate had already taken him out of Texas. The car seemed to fly. The impossible two thousand miles seemed possible after all. He drove through the night. When he needed gas, he waited in the parking lot of a huge roadside restaurant and gas station. He was waiting for a woman with a pocketbook. She put up a fight but not enough of one. Victor used her credit card for the gas.

  The interstate was a separate world, like the airplane. But on the plane, Victor had had no control. On the interstate, he controlled everything.

  Mattu listened to the house, always so full of sound: the hum of its machinery, Mopsy practicing her flute, Jared singing along to his iPod, sports announcers shouting on the television, Mrs. Finch laughing on the phone, Mr. Finch clattering lightly on his computer keyboard, the wind and weather outside.

  Whenever Mattu listened carefully, he found that he also smelled carefully: the scents of cleansers, the deodorants of which the family was so fond, the last breath of Mopsy's tuna fish or peanut butter, the flowers Mr. Finch liked to bring his wife, the cinnamon sprinkled on the buttered toast.

  “We need to talk,” said Celestine very softly. “Let us go for a walk.”

  They had never talked. Mattu felt a shudder of excitement. He and Celestine were going to do what the Americans wanted them to do: plan for the future.

  The day was mild by Connecticut standards but still shockingly cold to Africans. Celestine put on her puffy new coat and her fat slickery mittens. She looped a long wool scarf around her neck and pulled a knit cap down over her ears. Mattu huddled in his layers. Jared never covered his head or ears with a cap or scarf, and neither did the other boys at the high school. Mattu, however, had found a huge fake-fur hat with earflaps in the church donation box. Jared refused to associate with him when he wore it.

  They went down Prospect Hill and into the village. The piles of recent snow here and there were grimy and ugly. The sidewalks were slippery.

  “Here is what matters,” said Celestine. “My husband is going to have hands again. Or at least one hand—they are relatively sure they will succeed with the right hand. They can fix the mechanism to his wrist and teach him to use the plastic fingers.”

  “Will they be white fingers?” asked Mattu.

  “No. They will match his skin color exactly.”

  “This is an amazing country.”

  “And I will not have our future ruined,” said Celestine. “You must find Victor. Get the diamonds to him.”

  Mattu stopped walking. The thick jacket did not keep him warm. The heavy hat did not protect him. He could not look at Celestine. He could not look anywhere. Fear lodged in his spine, between the bones, right where a knife might lodge.

  “Victor will not work at some ordinary job,” said Celestine.

  This was true. Victor had no skills. Well, actually, he had plenty of skills—he could drive a jeep, point a machine gun, murder children and torch houses.

  “He will want one thing only,” said Celestine. “His diamonds. At the airport, when I realized that we were ahead of him, I thought we could disappear if we moved quickly, and then somehow we were attached to the Finches and there was no way to disappear, and yet we got here, and I thought, Maybe we have disappeared after all. When you study those maps, you see how huge this country is. How tiny and hidden this town is. But Victor will never give up.”

  Mattu stared down the narrow lane where Mopsy had led them the day of their post office lesson. He could see a tiny slice of the little harbor, the cold water gleaming in the weak sun. On the other side of that water was Africa. It seemed impossible.

  Also impossible, Mattu had nearly forgotten Victor.

  Victor had been one of the killers who ran the refugee camp—the officials only thought they ran it. But there were factions and gangs inside the camp just like inside any other prison.

  Some family of four had been next on the list of refugees to go to America. Their name was Amabo. But they refused to cooperate with Victor. They were going to America, they said, and Victor could
rot. He could beg all he wanted, but they were flying away. No, they were not going to help him.

  People did not win arguments with Victor. He did not argue. He killed.

  Victor took the Amabos' papers and found four people to take their places.

  People who were afraid, like the husband and wife who became Andre and Celestine. Victor explained that if the husband did not cooperate, he would lose his feet as well as his hands.

  People who were helpless, like the girl who became Alake.

  People who would do anything to get to America, like the boy who became Mattu.

  The boy knew what Victor had done to the real Amabo family, because everybody except the officials knew. Those people are dead anyway, the teenage boy told himself. I can't help them. But I can get to America.

  He was used to the name Mattu now, although he had not planned to keep it. He was used to Celestine and Andre. Nobody could get used to Alake.

  Victor had passed out any number of diamonds to accomplish his exit. But the hard part was yet to come. He had to enter America. Diamonds did not show up well in X-rays and were not detected by metal detectors. Nevertheless, Victor had not wanted to carry the diamonds himself. A single man in his twenties was always suspect, whereas a family of four would find sympathy. A single man in his twenties might have anything stashed inside the boxes he carried and would receive a thorough search, whereas a girl grieving for her grandparents, a girl thin and wasted and sad—the silly Americans would offer her comfort and not check everything.

  But Alake's fingers and face did not respond to Victor's orders. When he told her to carry the boxes, she failed him. He could not hurt her because the paperwork was for four people, including a teenage girl, and the plane was shortly to leave, and he needed her. So it was the boy who had to carry Victor's boxes.

  The plan had been for the five refugees to land in New York and get past the officials. Then Victor would take his diamonds to the dealer who had promised to buy them, and whatever happened to the fake Amabo family would happen. But it had not worked out that way.

  “He made it your job to deal with the diamonds, Mattu,” said Celestine. “Now you must finish it. Find him before he finds us. Take the diamonds to Victor.”

  No, thought Mattu. I can't. I won't.

  “Do not let him follow you when you leave him,” said Celestine.

  But maybe Victor had slid into being American the way Mattu and Celestine and Andre were sliding—at high speed, with no brakes, stunned and gulping but thrilled and cooperative. Maybe Victor had turned over a new leaf and was busily earning money and using a stove and admiring vegetables.

  And maybe not.

  “If he follows you,” said Celestine, “you cannot come back here. Not ever.”

  Jared had been reading up on raw diamonds. For use as jewelry, a rough diamond was cut at angles, which created the facets that glittered. Diamond cutting was difficult and risky. If you cut wrong, you ended up with diamond dust instead of a valuable gem. Most diamond cutters were in certain cities in Europe, such as Antwerp. Some merchants were in New York. Some traveled back and forth, buying in Africa and selling in America or Europe. Diamond cutters weren't supposed to purchase blood diamonds. If a person wasn't sure about the background of the rough diamonds set in front of him, he wasn't supposed to buy them. An unethical diamond cutter bought good rough diamonds no matter what.

  Jared stared at his possible diamond and considered the other thief in their lives.

  Brady Wall was in jail. He had not been able to raise money for bail because he had stolen from the only people likely to help him in a pinch. There was talk about whether Emmy Wall would go to jail too. She had not stolen. But she had known.

  The Walls didn't have kids. But from his first marriage, Brady had had two children, one a year younger and one a year older than Jared. Church youth groups included a wide range of ages, and when Jared had been in the middle school group, so had both of the Wall kids. They lived with their mom now, and she had remarried and moved away.

  If Jared had been a good person, he'd have e-mailed them and said something nice. Like what? In spite of the fact that your dad's a felon who steals from churches and gambles hundreds of thousands of dollars into the ground, I hope you're doing fine and you like your new school.

  I'm a thief, he thought. The only difference between me and Brady Wall is, I haven't gotten caught.

  He went upstairs to his bedroom. Mattu was in the shower. Mattu could not get over the amount of water that was available to the Finches. He was still impressed by the faucets, and how they never ran out, and how you could have icy cold or burning hot water any time you wanted; how you could press a glass against the fridge door and get ice cubes or frosty water or ice chips. He loved carrying a bottle of water around at school and he loved sipping from the water fountains and he especially loved taking showers.

  Jared opened one of the Tupperware containers and dropped his diamond—or haunted bone—into the ashes, popped the lid back on tight, gave the thing a little shake and stepped away.

  He was still a thief. But he had put it back.

  Since Alake did not talk, she did not pick a name for the puppy.

  “It's bad enough having a puppy,” said Mom crossly. “I'm not having a puppy I can't even yell at!”

  Mopsy took Alake's face in her hands and turned it toward her. Staring into Alake's eyes, she said, “Name. The. Puppy.”

  Alake said nothing.

  “How about Jopsy?” said Tay. “I think it's just right for a collie.”

  “Here, Jopsy,” said Mom.

  The puppy ran right over, not because he knew his name, but because Mom had a dog treat cupped in her hand, left over from when Zipper was alive. It looked like magic.

  But maybe puppy love was magic, because Alake's face was bright in a way Mopsy had never expected to see.

  The mere thought of finding Victor brought Mattu close to vomiting.

  Victor wants to be rich in America, thought Mattu. That's why he needs the diamonds. He wants a house like this, and cars and computers and clothes. Suppose Victor wants these diamonds to pay for more war in Africa? Or what if Victor wants to use the diamond money against America? Victor would not care what war he fought. People who liked violence found each other.

  But in Africa Victor had been a person taking advantage of war, not a person with convictions and interests and politics. Mattu did not think Victor had ever had a plan for or against America. He had planned only for himself.

  Now it was Mattu who needed a plan. A way to get rid of the diamonds that didn't lead to Victor's getting rid of Mattu.

  I was a coward once, thought Mattu. We all were. I could have turned Victor in instead of taking the place of some dead boy.

  But in fact, nobody could have turned Victor in back at the refugee camp, because Victor just bribed his way past and around and out. Another diamond, another step toward America.

  It was a ludicrous position for Mattu to find himself in— heavy with diamonds, desperate to be rid of them, unable to do it.

  Mattu stayed in the bathroom until he heard Jared go downstairs. Then he lay down on his bed, the softest bed he had ever known—in fact, the only soft bed he had ever known. After a while he forced himself to look at the Tupperware containers.

  Little rocks worth a great deal of money. Mattu knew how many dollars were in a gallon of milk and how many dollars were in a gallon of gasoline, but he had absolutely no idea how many dollars were in an uncut diamond.

  A diamond seen through an airport X-ray machine did not cast a shadow. Yet a blood diamond always cast a shadow: the shadow of death.

  Wait! thought Mattu, sitting bolt upright. George Neville said Victor might be going to Texas. I've seen Jared Google. I'll Google. Keywords like “Texas” and “refugees.” “Texas” and “refugee aid societies.” “Texas” and “African refugees.” I can find the agency that sponsored Victor.

  Wild with excitement, Mattu flipped open
his laptop.

  Then he sagged in despair. So what if he did find the agency? Only words crossed the Internet. Diamonds had to be carried. There was no getting around the fact that Mattu would have to hand the diamonds in person to the man he least wanted to see in this world.

  Mattu was living in a house full of snoops and going to a school where attendance was taken in every class. Texas was half the country away. How could he get there? And what about the money required for such travel? Not to mention the real difficulty—if Mattu did find Victor, Mattu would die. Victor didn't let people go. Mattu would be buying a safe future for Celestine and Andre, and ironically, for Alake. But what about his own future? The one Daniel's mother had outlined? The one high school was preparing him for?

  Mattu prayed to the God the Finches worshiped—almost but not quite the same God Celestine and Andre worshiped.

  I want school, he prayed, and that part-time job and the apartment of our own and also to get rid of the diamonds and the past and Victor.

  I'm already an American, thought Mattu. In Africa, you pray for one meal. In America, you pray to have it all.

  Mopsy yelled upstairs, “Dad rented movies and he's heating chocolate sauce for ice cream. You need a break, Mattu. It's so hard on a person to do homework, don't you think?”

  How American, to think schoolwork was hard on a person. Mattu went downstairs for rich, thick vanilla and caramel ice cream with hot chocolate sauce, served in his favorite small, heavy red bowl.

  Mrs. Finch ruined everything by opening a can with a disgusting smell. It was not the kind of smell Mrs. Finch normally allowed in her home.

  “What is that?” asked Mattu.

  “Dog food.” Mrs. Finch spooned some out, put it in a bowl and set the bowl on the floor for Alake's puppy.

  Mattu could not puzzle through one more crazy American habit. He fell into the cushions next to Mopsy, and when the movie began, he fell into the action as well, so there was none of him sitting on the couch and all of him inside the film, and he forgot Victor again.