Diamonds in the Shadow (8 page)

Mopsy got back to her questions. “Mattu, were you a child soldier?”

The rice fell off Mattu's fork. “I was
not
a child soldier. It is not a good thing to say of anybody. The child soldiers were more vicious than grown soldiers ever were.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. Perhaps they did not have enough time with their mother and father or aunts and uncles or grandparents to learn about goodness. But do not ask more, I beg you. I am here to look ahead.”

Shouldn't he say “we are here”? thought Jared.

“Celestine, has Alake been to school?” Mopsy asked.

“I went to mission school for six years,” said Celestine, “and Andre attended for nine.”

Interesting, thought Jared. She didn't answer Mopsy's question, and that wasn't what Kirk Crick said about how many years they went to school.

What's the matter with me? he asked himself. Am I actually trying to catch them out on something?

Since nobody else seemed to have noticed Alake's empty plate, Jared filled it with the same food Celestine had chosen for herself and Andre: rice and chicken. Then he picked up Alake's fork and tried to put it in her hand, but her hands remained in her lap.

Mopsy spoke with her mouth full. “Mattu, what's in your boxes, anyway?”

“The ashes of my grandparents.”

Jared's mother gasped. “Your parents, Celestine? Or yours, Andre?”

There was such a long pause that everybody stopped eating. It seemed like a simple question.

“My parents,” said Andre at last.

“How did they die?” demanded Mopsy.

“The rice gets cold,” said Celestine. “And also the chicken.”

They're not going to discuss the past, thought Jared. They don't even seem to
know
the past.

Mopsy finally noticed Alake. About time, because Jared wasn't taking her on. It was enough to have Mattu and a pair of dead grandparents in his room.

“Don't you like rice, Alake?” said Mopsy. “I can fix you something else. How about ice cream? When I'm upset, I like a big bowl of ice cream. I leave it out for a while, so it gets soft and friendly.”

This was the kind of remark that made Jared want to leave for college a year early. Why did Mopsy always have to sound like a three-year-old? Why was she not struggling to become worth something? Every single marking period, her teachers would write “young for her age” on her report card, and every single time, she failed to improve.

“Mint chocolate chip?” suggested Mopsy. “Mocha swirl?”

Alake was silent.

With an insight Jared had not expected his sister to have, Mopsy said, “Why don't Alake and I eat in the other room?” She picked up Alake's plate, took her hand and led her into the little TV room off the opposite side of the kitchen. It contained a small sofa and their
old television, and it was used only when people wanted to watch different shows at the same time but didn't want to go to their bedroom because then they'd be too far from the snacks.

The doorbell rang.

Celestine flung her chair back. Andre leaped to his feet, as if he planned to run somewhere. Mattu's huge eyes got huger.

“It's okay,” said Jared's mom, “it's just the doorbell.”

If anything, Andre and Celestine were more horrified. Like, who were they expecting? The front door opened, because Jared's parents hardly ever locked it until bedtime. “It's me,” yelled the minister.

“Come on in, Pete!”

Dr. Nickerson came bounding in, looking very unministerish in his oldest tracksuit. He loved running up Prospect Hill and did it all the time; he wasn't even breathing hard. “How's everybody doing?”

Everybody—if by this, he meant the refugees—had sagged down in their chairs like stabbed balloons.

The minister held out his hand to the closest refugee, who happened to be Andre. “I'm the minister. Pete Nickerson. We're so glad to have you.”

Then he saw the arm stubs.

Mopsy was glad to leave the room. She couldn't stand that Andre had no hands. Mopsy had always loved God with her
whole heart, just the way they told you to in Sunday school. But shouldn't God have come down from heaven and stopped Andre from having his hands chopped off? What else had he been doing that he couldn't manage that?

I mean, how busy could you be? she asked him.

Mopsy shut the door to the little TV room and pulled down the blinds in case Alake knew it was dark out. Then she eased Alake onto the old sofa. She lifted a spoonful of rice toward Alake's face. Alake took the spoon in her own hand and licked off a single grain of rice. “Excuse me,” said Mopsy. “Who in the history of the world ate one rice at a time?”

Alake looked down at the plate, took it in her hand and ate like a person.

Mopsy was content. She made an executive decision and went and got Alake a can of Coke. Coca-Cola was sold worldwide, so maybe Alake would recognize the logo and feel safe with it. Mopsy yanked the pop-top and handed the fizzing can to Alake, who took a sip, swallowed, shivered and swallowed again.

Mopsy thought about taking Alake to school in the morning.

All her life, when teachers wrote reports on Mopsy, they would finish, “Young for her age.” When she was eight, they said she acted five. When she was eleven, they said she acted eight. Last year she'd actually been sent to a counselor. Mopsy was humiliated. She never acted up or talked back. Didn't pick on anybody, skip homework or fail tests. What was everybody annoyed about?

Mopsy took Alake's hand in hers. Alake's fingers were
beautiful—long and elegant. The double colors of her hand fascinated Mopsy: dark and warm on top, soft and pale on the palm.

Mopsy planned how she would introduce Alake to the sixth grade, and help her talk again, and laugh, and be American.

When Dr. Nickerson had recovered from the shock of finding no hands at the bottom of Andre's arms, and Andre had reassured him that it was all right, the minister fell into Mopsy's seat. Mom offered to fix him a plate. “No, thanks, Kara, I've lost my appetite.”

Andre bit his lip.

“I'm sorry! I didn't mean you, Andre! I've lost my appetite because we have problems in the church that…” He gave up without explaining.

Jared, who never stepped into church conversations, said, “You guys want to talk in the living room? I can take care of Mr. and Mrs. Amabo.”

His parents and the minister took him up on his offer and left the room. Jared hoped the church situation hadn't gotten even worse, because he was willing to help once, but he sure wasn't willing to do it twice.

“Please, Jared,” said Andre. “It will be our church too. May we know what the problems are?”

“A guy everybody trusted stole all the money.”

“Ah,” said Andre. “Only God can be trusted.”

“You
can't trust God,” said Jared irritably. “God let this nightmare happen to you to start with.”

“You confuse God with man,” said Andre.

Jared so didn't want to talk about God over dessert. He stuck two pies, a cake, a pan of Rice Krispies Treats and two half gallons of ice cream on the table.

“What is that?” asked Celestine, pointing to the ice cream.

“God's gift. You're gonna love it.”

The fifth refugee was met by a seventy-four-year-old volunteer who would drive him to the tiny apartment he was to share with two young men from Sudan. She enjoyed her refugee work, because she loved chatting, and all the Africans she had encountered spoke English. But this refugee was different. His rage was palpable. He did not want to chat. She couldn't imagine him chatting.

She almost bought him the return ticket to New York that he was demanding.

Instead, she paid his taxi fare so that she would not be alone with him.

Then she telephoned the two young men from Sudan to let them know their new roommate would be arriving momentarily.

She almost told them that she was afraid of him, but she did not want to judge.

Jared was hardly ever ready for bed. He always had another hour of TV in him. But Mattu was asleep sitting up. Jared shook Mattu's shoulder and they trudged upstairs.

In the bathroom, Mattu admired his new toothbrush as excessively as Mopsy would have, which put Jared over the edge. He ran downstairs to find his parents in the kitchen, cleaning up. “What'd Dr. Nickerson have to say?” he asked.

“He wants to kill Brady. We all want to kill Brady. But it's not your typical church activity.”

Jared laughed. “And how is everybody's refugee?”

“Celestine and Andre love their room,” said Mom. “They especially love how the shades pull down and that there's a night-light in the bathroom. But,” she said uncertainly (Jared's mother, who was never uncertain), “they just shut the door and went to bed. They didn't check on the children.” Mom was a double-checking kind of parent. Triple, sometimes.

“They checked on their kids enough to keep them alive through a civil war and get them to America,” Dad pointed out. “That's pretty serious checking. And maybe these kids don't need to be tucked in. You'd grow up fast in their world. Maybe at fifteen and sixteen, they're grown-ups.”

But Jared thought there was a different possibility.

Celestine and Andre were not behaving like parents.

So maybe they weren't.

Maybe Alake and Mattu were not the children of Celestine and Andre.