Clearly the Africans considered this insane. Nobody moved toward the dinner table, because they couldn't breathe, never mind chew, with all that darkness staring at them.
Mom, who had solutions for everything, went and got sheets, which she thumbtacked over the windows.
Andre was now clad in Dad's bathrobe. It was pale gray terry cloth with elbow-length sleeves. His stubs were hideously visible, shiny and swollen and pitted. Evidently Andre didn't care about people seeing the stubs. He didn't realize that in America, anything ugly about your body, you hid or solved, whether it was buck teeth or a birthmark.
“This is like Thanksgiving,” said Mopsy happily. “Although for Thanksgiving, you can't have some mountain of rice, I wonder who brought the rice, you have to have mashed potatoes. Which are better,” she added, like some future Mrs. Lame, forcing everybody into her own lifestyle and choice of carbohydrate.
Dad bowed his head to say the blessing.
Jared never closed his eyes during prayers. He lost his balance if he closed his eyes. Plus it signified a degree of participation Jared refused to make. He listened but didn't pray. Alake didn't close her eyes either, but that didn't matter, since she didn't see to start with.
“Father, we thank thee for our new friends, who have arrived safe and sound.”
Jared wasn't so sure. Alake did not seem sound in mind or body.
Jared's dad paused, as if wracking his brain to come up with some other blessings, and to Jared's amazement, Andre took up the prayer. “Father in heaven, we thank you that we are safely under this roof. We thank You for this fine food you have put on the table before us. You have blessed us.”
Andre, who wasn't able to eat with his fingers, never mind his fork? Andre thought he was blessed?
“Dear Jesus,” added Celestine, “we thank you for Drew Finch, Kara Finch, Jared and Martha, and for the minister of your church, who protected us.”
There was another pause, as if people thought that somebody else—Jared, for example—would also pray. They were wrong. Finally Dad said, “Amen.”
“Thank you for remembering my name is Martha,” said Mopsy.
“Your name is Mopsy,” said Jared. “Only mature women can be called Martha.”
“Don't bicker,” said their mother.
Celestine spooned rice into Andre as if he were a child in a high chair. When a grain of rice got stuck to the side of his mouth, she cleaned it off with her spoon, the way you would with a baby. Jared wondered how Celestine helped Andre in the bathroom, since Andre also couldn't use toilet paper or brush his teeth. He shuddered.
Dad glared at him.
Jared shrugged. What other reaction could a person have but a shudder?
Andre reached forward with his uneven stubs, gripped his water glass and tilted it up to drink. Only about half of it spilled.
“Well, the first thing we're doing,” said Mom with the certainty that always made Jared want to live elsewhere, because when she talked like that, there was no way out, “is getting started on prosthetic hands for you, Andre. I'm calling Yale–New Haven Hospital in the morning.”
This would be her new passion. Like when she started the adult day care; she'd spent a million hours getting that going. Now she was going to spend a million hours getting metal claws stuck to Andre's stumps. The only thing worse than sitting at dinner across from a guy with no hands was going to be sitting at dinner across from a guy with hooks.
Alake just sat there, in Mopsy's old fleece bathrobe with the yellow duckies appliquéd to the pockets. She must have been starving, but she didn't eat. And although Celestine fed Andre, she didn't seem to consider feeding Alake.
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.
JARED WOKE UP STARVING TO death. He arrived in the kitchen to find all four Africans already at the breakfast table. Alake was sitting there not drinking her orange juice and not touching her Cheerios. Jared tried to see Cheerios through African eyes but failed. He waved a jelly doughnut in front of Alake's eyes.
“Jared, don't push,” said his mother, as if there were any other way to get Alake going.
Mattu examined the selection of bagels, cinnamon raisin toast, blueberry and apple muffins and plain and sugar cereals. He chose one of everything and ate as if he really were starving to death.
Jared hadn't done any homework, because going to the airport had taken the whole day, not to mention the time he'd lost due to the shock of getting refugees to start with. The high school would totally accept refugees as an excuse for staying home, and he was planning on a long, happy breakfast and a little TV.
Mopsy was the kind of person who couldn't bear to miss school. She still loved her teachers, something Jared had outgrown in second grade. Maybe first. Now that he thought about it, he hadn't been all that fond of his kindergarten teacher.
Mopsy said, “Alake goes to school with me today.”
“But what can she do in school?” asked Mattu. “She just sits. Will the teacher not be angry?”
“No, they'll try to make her comfortable,” said Mom, as if Alake were dying in hospice, “and then do some testing.”
Jared wanted to know how testing was going to work on a person who was mute and blind, but he let it go.
“And since Alake is happy with Mopsy…,” Mom began.
Alake doesn't do “happy” any more than she does “unhappy,” Jared thought. Alake is just there.
“… and since hanging around the house would be boring for poor Alake…”
Jared rolled his eyes. What does Alake know about boring? It's all boring if you're unconscious.
Mopsy, predictably, clapped her hands and danced in a circle around Alake, who did not notice. Alake was wearing yesterday's yellow pants and faded cotton T-shirt, washed and pressed by Mom. “She needs something better to wear,” said Mopsy. “This isn't pretty and it has no style.”
“Raid my closet,” said Mom. “She's my height.”
“Your stuff is middle-aged, Mom. First days of school are very important, even if you're from Africa. Maybe especially if you're from Africa. She has to look good.”
“She looks better than good,” Mom pointed out. “She's beautiful.”
This was where most American parents would chime in. Always compliment: that was the American rule. But Andre and Celestine remained silent.
“Are we also going to school?” Mattu asked Jared. And then in a whisper, as if praying, he breathed, “I would love to go to school.”
Fine, they'd go to school. Grumpily, Jared picked out decent clothes for Mattu. Jared liked his clothing baggy, so it was not that hard to fit a person several inches taller. He wanted Mattu w
earing exactly what everybody else wore. Jared was actually a little worried about the reception an African might get in a school nearly all white. He could think of quite a few guys who were always trolling around for somebody to pick on. The British accent helped, but the right clothes would stack the deck in Mattu's favor.
Mopsy replaced Alake's shabby outfit with a sleek lime green sweater and crisp black pants. Since Alake was starvation thin, the clothes hung as if Alake weren't even in them. Mom kissed Alake good-bye, which Alake noticed no more than she would the wind, but when Mom kissed Mattu's cheek, he stepped back and gaped at her.
Mom giggled. “Have a lovely first day of school,” she said, because she was the kind of person who actually believed that first days of school could be lovely. “I'll be taking your parents shopping for clothes and shoes and handbags.” Mom cared deeply about handbags, which she changed to match every outfit, but her real love was shoes. She had an entire closet for shoes.
Mattu put his hand to his cheek where Jared's mom had kissed him. Jared thought he was kind of happy about it. But maybe not. Jared went outside. Mattu stepped out with him and immediately froze like a cartoon, eyes flickering left and right, peering through the trees. Jared almost said, What? You think man-eating lions are hanging out in the hemlocks? But he restrained himself and looked back to see how Mopsy was doing. She was going to have a seriously weird day, presenting a girl from Africa who didn't speak and wasn't going to lift a pencil.
Mopsy was literally pulling Alake out the door. Good thing Jared didn't have to take Alake. If he showed up shoving some girl into school, they'd probably arrest him.
Celestine and Andre did not say good-bye, wish their kids luck or give them a hug. So Jared's guess was right, and these were not Mattu and Alake's parents… or they were the parents and didn't like their kids… or African families were really different from American families.
It was still early in the morning and very chilly, but the slanted rays of the sun were strong. When Alake turned her head from the bright light, her eyes narrowed. She looked hard and scary and used up. She had no shape under the clothing, and no stranger could have said whether she was a girl or boy, whether she was ten years old or twenty.