by Sheela Chari
“But don’t you remember them by the way they look? Spelling’s the same way.”
I wasn’t sure. Like, wasn’t spelling all about Greek and Latin roots? But for the first time I realized Cheetah thought about words as much as I did. I don’t know why I never saw that before.
“Are you going to sleep in your new bed?” he asked.
I glanced at the clock on his desk. I was supposed to be at Peter’s. I knew he was dying for me to get there. Even so, I let myself slide down onto the floor next to Cheetah. “I don’t know.”
“But you’re not so scared of heights anymore.”
Was Cheetah right? But how did he know these things about me? I scooted up my legs and tucked my arms around them. “Maybe. But I’m still a weirdo.”
“I don’t think you’re weird.”
“Yeah, well.” I thought for a moment. “Cheet, this morning, what did you mean when you said you remember everything I say? I mean, you can’t remember everything.”
“Mom and Dad are busy,” he said. “They don’t have time to hear everything we tell them.”
“And you do?”
“It’s not like that. It’s more like . . . you don’t say a lot, but you still want people to notice you. So you leave clues. Like your wall.”
I sucked in my breath. I wasn’t sure I entirely liked that my little brother, who could barely watch a Harry Potter movie without getting scared, could say things with such certainty about me. So I said, “That’s not true.” I paused. “Well, it’s not completely true. And anyway, what about you? Don’t you want people to notice you, too?”
He shook his head. “Not really.”
I watched him as he sifted through his spelling word sheets. Some of the words flashed at me: “segue, seminary, sequester.” All these words he has mastered in his quiet way. And he didn’t want to be noticed for it. “‘The Great Irony.’ Like Dad and Mom say.”
“Not really.” He looked up at me. “You want to hear a secret? I lied about spelling my name wrong.”
“What?”
“I knew how to spell my name already in preschool. But my favorite book was on cheetahs. Mom was reading it to me then. Seriously, I’m going to write my name wrong when I’m four?”
Um—didn’t most four-year-olds not know how to spell their names? But he wasn’t like most four-year-olds. Now that I thought about it, I wondered why Mom and Dad didn’t catch on sooner. “You wrote Cheetah instead of Chetan on purpose?” I asked in surprise. “Why?”
“Because I wanted to be called Cheetah!”
He’d lied? And let Mom and Dad tell their story over and over again? I grinned. It was seriously the most awesome thing I’d ever heard.
“You’re looking for the diamonds now, aren’t you? With Peter.”
“Wh-wh-what?” I wondered if I’d ever be able to lie to him now that I knew he was the world’s greatest liar. I shook my head. “I’m not even going to answer that.”
Cheetah was looking at me in a strange way. “What’s so great about Peter?”
“What do you mean? Peter’s great because . . . he’s my friend.” Then this thought came to me. Could Cheetah be jealous? But why? It wasn’t like Peter was going to be my brother. “A lot of bad stuff happened in his family, Cheet. He needs people to be nice to him. He’s a good guy.”
Cheetah watched my face carefully. Then he nodded, almost to himself.
When I got up, he was bent over his sheets, his thick, wavy hair an unkempt mess like Dad’s, his legs splayed like a marathon runner stretching for the big race. It’s weird, but he seemed like a different person. Or maybe I was the one seeing him differently.
Myla called it a skeleton key. It was heavy and long, with a cloverleaf pattern at the top.
As we went upstairs, I remembered last week when Ma asked me to help her with the attic door. But I didn’t want to get up from my bed, I wanted to sit there and sink into a pile of sadness. Randall and I shared a room as long as I could remember, and here I was with two beds and no Randall. So I said no. A few minutes later I heard her dragging our suitcases down to the basement. And we both forgot about the attic. Until now.
“What do you think is up there?” Myla wondered.
“Well, it isn’t Scottie Biggs. We know where he still is!”
Myla inserted the skeleton key in the lock and the door opened easily. Inside, the wooden stairs were covered in dust. As we went up, I don’t know what I thought I’d see—cobwebs, creaky floors, a dark room that looked like a coffin. Certainly I didn’t expect bright sunlight. The attic was bathed in gold, the afternoon sun blazing through windows unblocked by trees and houses.
“Look, the Palisades,” Myla said, going near the window. “You can see them better from here than my room.” Then she took a step back. “Yikes, we’re far up.”
“That’s right, you’re scared of heights.”
“No, I’m not.” She looked at the boxes stacked on the floor around us. “Let’s get to work.”
First we had to agree on what we were doing. We couldn’t go through all of Margaret’s and Allie’s belongings. Not unless we thought it would lead to the Om. Which made our search daunting, except for one thing. Every box was labeled.
“Margaret is very organized,” Myla said. “Everything in her pantry had labels.” We glanced through the boxes: Margaret’s Freshman Comp Notes That Helped Her Get an A, Allie’s Clothes to Be Donated If New Diet Works. The rest were labeled in the same bizarre way. My ma barely got our stuff in boxes before we moved out, forget about labeling. But Margaret seemed to understand the exact details of her life with Allie. Still, where did we start?
Then at the far end of the attic, away from the windows, we came across a cardboard box and a suitcase that had no labels. Myla brushed the dust from the box.
“This has to be something important, Peter,” she said excitedly, “because it’s not labeled.” She got on her knees and inspected the box from various angles.
“Hurry up,” I said impatiently.
“I want to take the tape off slow,” she explained, “in case we have to put it back. I don’t want Margaret and Allie to think we’re snooping.”
“Course not. Never mind our footprints all over the place in this dust.”
Myla looked around. “Oh well, we can’t help that. If I do it slowly the tape won’t rip.”
Then I discovered by “slow” she meant something akin to the melting of the polar ice caps. So I turned my attention to the suitcase. I laid it down on its side and unsnapped the clasps. I raised the suitcase lid. “Myla,” I whispered.
There in front of me were clothes—flowered shirts, a peach-colored silky blouse with a ruffle, a blue pin-striped skirt. Each item seemed to make me want to burst a little more. Then I got to the bottom and pulled it out. “Myla,” I said more loudly.
By now she had removed the tape and opened the box. “Peter, the Oms!” she exclaimed.
I turned around quickly. “You found the Om?”
She reached inside the box. “Not just one. Many!” In her hand were several necklaces like ours. “Look, here’s one that says ‘finder.’” She paused. “What about you?”
I held it up. It was heavy, with thick cables, and it still smelled of detergent. That’s what stopped me more than anything. It was the smell I remembered, of my grandma in our apartment, holding me on her lap, her laugh like a clap of thunder. Could a smell do that, take you back in time? “It’s my grandma’s purple sweater,” I said. “This suitcase is full of her clothes.”
The next few minutes we went through the suitcase and box more carefully. The box was filled with Om necklaces. The suitcase was mostly clothes, except for a heavy, rolled-up piece of cloth. When we unrolled it, we found different-size steel bits and discs, and something that looked like a small cylinder with a magnifying lens at one end.
“These must be diamond-cutting tools,” Myla said. She took out something from one of the inner pockets. “Look, a bunch of New York pos
tcards. They have ‘Om’ written on them, and nothing else. And they’re all addressed to Margaret.”
I took them from her. There were six. And Myla was right. They had no return address, no message, nothing but the Om and Margaret’s address—which was this house. “You don’t think they’re from . . .”
“They have to be,” she said. “Who else would send an Om postcard?”
Then I noticed something really strange. “Look at the dates, Myla.” I laid the postcards down for her to see. “The oldest one is eight years ago. But the newest one is from two years ago.”
Myla furrowed her brow. “That’s weird. Is that possible?”
Just then, we heard a noise downstairs. Was my mom back from work early?
We put away everything quickly and went down. We’d just shut the attic door, when we saw Cheetah coming up to the second floor. In his hand, he held the black book.
Nike punched Rosen & Smith into his phone. “Lucky you remembered their name.”
I shrugged. “When Bernie told me at the coffee shop, I was thinking Rosen sounds like my grandma’s name, Rose. And Smith is well . . . Smith.”
“West Forty-Seventh. We can walk forty blocks, right?”
This was Nike talking. For him, forty blocks was nothing. But I didn’t have a choice, so I said fine, and we started down Fifth Avenue.
“So I want to know,” Nike said, “why you switched tags. Om is your pop’s tag, not yours.”
I stopped to trace a tag with my finger on the side of a bench. LONESTAR11. I liked the way the “L” was done, loopy like a shoelace. “I’m still Mighty,” I said. “But I paint Om to keep my pop’s memory alive. And also, to remind the Fencers they can eat dirt.”
Nike nodded. “Because you think they dissed him.”
We started walking again. “It’s more than that. Now I think they killed him.” Saying that out loud for the first time sent a shiver through me. It made the world scarier. And more unforgivable.
Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if Pop were still alive. Like maybe we’d be walking together in the city checking out tags. Or he’d think I was old enough to join him on his runs. He’d see I could PK sure enough as anybody else. Maybe he’d be proud of me. Maybe he’d say, quit hanging with that loser, Tops.
It was strange having this convo with Nike about Om, because I’d had a similar one with Pop years ago. We were lying on the couch. It was soon after Grandma Rose was dead. Pop wasn’t himself. He sat staring into space when he thought no one was around, or wrote in his black book, which he stored in his blue duffel bag under the bed in his and Ma’s bedroom.
So when he told me to take a look at what he was writing, I jumped at the chance. I didn’t know much about tagging, though I’d seen him spray-paint a city wall when he didn’t know I was watching. “Why Om and not Omar, Pop?” I asked. “What’s Om?”
“It’s a way of thinking of my ma,” he said. “It’s a way of talking to her.”
I thought of his words now. It was true I was tagging Om to get back at the Fencers in my own way. But I also hoped that my pop would know I was talking to him, too.
Nike was quiet. “We’ll get to the bottom of it, Mighty,” he finally said. “You and me.”
We walked and walked, block after block, the sun beating down on us. Then finally we were there. There were two posts on either side of Forty-Seventh Street, with metal diamond shapes on the top. At the corner was a store with a window display of rings of every size, and necklaces strapped on blue velvet boards. Past that, the street was lined with stores with names like “Diamond Exchange” and “Gold & Platinum Inc.”
Nike whistled low. “The Diamond District. Where dreams are bought and sold.”
Maybe. But now I was feeling queasy. “I can’t do this,” I said.
“What do you mean? We’re here.”
“Look at this place. Don’t you see?”
Nike scanned the street. “See what, the boogeyman? I don’t see nothing.”
“You see anyone like us? We’ll be thrown out soon as we set our bony feet on the sidewalk.”
Nike let out a groan. “Seriously, Mighty, it’s a new century.”
“You weren’t chased by a cop two days ago.”
“You were doing something illegal, dude. This isn’t illegal. We have the right to walk inside a store, just like anybody else. I’m tired of the same sad convo I hear from all of you—the Points and MaxD. How nobody’s giving you respect. Well, nobody’s giving you respect, unless you own it.”
I wanted to tell him he was wrong. I had my whole life to prove it, the respect I didn’t get from my school, from my mother, from anyone. There’s only that fraction of time and space when you get a piece on the wall, when you exist. And everyone who walks by knows you do. Until somebody else writes over your piece, or an a-hole washes it away. Then your moment is over. But that’s the only respect there really is.
Nike started down the street. “Don’t you want to find out what your grandma did here?” And though I didn’t agree with what he’d said, I found myself following him anyway.
We saw the sign at the same time: ROSEN & SMITH, EST. 1948, PROFESSIONAL DIAMOND CUTTERS. Inside, it was dark, with a video camera pointed at the entrance, and an old guy sitting behind a glass, his body stuffed inside a uniform. He slid the glass open. “Can I help you?”
“We wanted to talk to Rosen or Smith,” Nike said.
“You have an appointment?”
Course we didn’t have no appointment.
Nike said, “We’re trying to find out about his grandmother who worked here.”
The security guard looked at us mildly, leaning his fat head on his fat hand.
Then Nike said, “Her name was Rose Wilson.”
And okay, you should have seen Mr. Security’s face after that.
“I haven’t heard that name in years.” He sat up. “Which one of you is her grandchild again?”
“Him.” Nike pushed me forward.
The guard looked at me carefully, and I said the obvious. “She married a black man.”
His face broke into a huge smile. “Oh, I know she did. You’ve grown up. Rose showed pictures of you when you were little.” He held two fingers up to his forehead, one on each side. “Don’t tell me. It’s coming to me.” He squinted, thinking hard. “You’re Petey!”
Nike burst out laughing.
“Shoot, you remembered my name.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“I’m like an elephant,” said the guard.
Nike, the grinning fool, asked, “Can we go in? Petey has questions about his grandma.”
The guard scratched his face. “I can’t let you in. That’s their policy. But maybe I can ring someone down.” He closed the glass and we could see him on the phone. A minute later he slid back the glass. “One of them will be down to see you.”
Nike clapped my back. “Isn’t that great, Petey Boy?”
A moment later a woman with silvery hair stepped out. “Yes, can I help you?”
So we went through the whole spiel, and she let us in through the door. We sat down in some kind of lobby with chairs and a few magazines on a table.
“I can’t tell you much, Peter,” she said. “Rose worked here . . . almost ten years ago? She was a jeweler, but she made mostly artisan jewelry—silver, leather, enamel, that kind of thing. Once she came on board, she learned our craft quickly. No easy thing. Diamond cutting is an extremely difficult and precise job.”
“Did you fire her?” I asked. “Because of Scottie Biggs?”
She looked at me carefully. The ends of her fingers were rough and callused. Grandma Rose’s hands had looked the same way. “Is that what this is about? Look, dear, I didn’t know Scottie. You saw we have security. No one gets in without an appointment. Did he give Rose diamonds to cut? Nothing indicated so, and we never had trouble with Rose before. We do background checks. We don’t let just anyone into our shop. My husband and I are honest people.”
&nb
sp; Nike leaned in. “Are you Smith or Rosen?”
For the first time she smiled. “I’m Smith, he’s Rosen.”
“You think my grandma took the diamonds? You think she was a thief?”
Smith looked uncomfortable. “Rose was eccentric, you could say. But she seemed like an honest craftswoman. If she had cut illegal stones here, we would have known. It’s a small shop.”
There was something I didn’t understand. “What do you mean cutting?”
Smith blinked. “Don’t you know what we do here?”
“You’re diamond cutters,” I said. “But I don’t know what that means.”
Smith looked thoughtful. “Have you seen a real diamond? Like your mom’s wedding ring?”
“She doesn’t wear one,” I said, “but she’s got diamond earrings from her family in India.”
“From India?” she asked. I could see her trying to wrap her head around that. I didn’t look Indian. “I bet they shine beautifully. But those are finished diamonds. Not how they look in nature. When they’re first mined, they’re called roughs. They look like pieces of stone. It takes a diamond cutter to cut the rough so it turns into a beautiful diamond. That’s what your grandmother did.”
“Huh,” I said. “Like with a hammer?”
Smith smiled. “Actually, we have more precise tools than that. But the idea is the same. You take away the bad parts and leave what shines.” She stood up and I thought she was going to tell us to leave, but instead she said, “Wait here.” Then she went back inside.
Nike and I waited.
“What do you think she’s doing?” he asked.
“Calling the cops.”
He sighed. “You’re killing me.”
A few moments later, Smith was back with an envelope in her hand. “Come here, boys, right up to the coffee table.” She opened the envelope and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Carefully she opened it so we could see what was inside. There were three mud-colored stones, each the size of my thumbnail. “Do you know what these are?”
I stared at them a second. “Roughs,” I said.
She nodded. “Good job.”
I couldn’t believe it. They looked like something you’d find in a gravel lot.
