Diamonds in the Dust Read Online Free PDF Page A

slit of life that sent Connie’s heart clawing up into her throat.
    “
Selamat pagi
,” she said to the woman. “Hello.”
    The eyes weren’t black anymore; they were drenched in blood.
    “An ambulance is coming,” Connie said quickly.
    The woman’s lips moved, but no sound emerged. The stubby fingers gripped harder, pulling at her, and Connie leaned forward, so close she could feel the moist breath on her ear as she tried to catch the faint words. For the first time since she’d knelt down, she became aware of the circle of people gathered around her in the street. White faces. Sun hats. A ginger mustache. A dark uniform with brass buttons. Voices aimed at her but jumbled together in a blur. With a jolt she realized that there was a young native girl of about sixteen crouched on the other side of the woman, a curtain of silky black hair half obscuring her face, but her eyes were fixed on Connie and her expression was accusing. Behind her stood a tall native youth, his face set hard. He was wearing a waist sarong and a sleeveless shirt from which his fingers were unconsciously tearing a button.
    “Do you know her?” Connie asked.
    The girl stared at her coldly. “She is our mother.”
    “I’m sorry,” Connie said yet again. Empty, useless words. “It was an accident.”
    “White lady.” The English words came in a guttural gasp from the lips of the woman lying on the sidewalk, a flutter of sound that barely reached her.
    “I’m here,” Connie squeezed her hand. “And your children are here.”
    “Listen, white lady.”
    “I’m listening.” Her ear was almost brushing against the struggling lips and there was a long pause, during which the heat of the day seemed to gather itself and launch an attack like a blow on the back of Connie’s neck. “I’m listening.”
    “I curse you. You family. You children. And you. I curse you all.”
    Words sharp as a cobra’s bite, but Connie did not release her grip on the small hand. The blood-filled eyes opened wider, flashed at her full of malice, and then abruptly closed. Her fingers grew limp.
    “No!” Connie cried. “No, don’t go. Curse me again, curse me as much as you wish, call your evil spirits down on my head, but don’t go.”
    A policeman stepped into her field of vision. “Mrs. Hadley, the ambulance is here. They’ll take over.”
    Men in white uniforms gently moved Connie aside. She rose to her feet, tremors grinding up through her body and jamming her mind. Soft voices spoke to her, careful hands guided her, treating her as if she were glass and might shatter. When she realized she was being ushered off the street into the shade of a nearby building, she broke free and searched the crowd for the woman’s son and daughter, but they had vanished.
    “Sit down, Mrs. Hadley.”
    “Drink this, Mrs. Hadley.”
    “You’ve had a nasty shock.”
    “It wasn’t your fault. We have witnesses.”
    Policemen, with questions and notebooks, brandished their sympathetic smiles in her face and told her she could go home, they would drive her home, but she shook her head. It was almost one o’clock.
    “No, thank you. I have to pick up my son from school.”
    The building that had given her refuge was a British bank with thick stone walls to keep out the heat, and a vast, cooling fan that stirred the leaden air with brisk efficiency in the small office where she was seated. The bank manager had a sunburned bald head and a kind smile.
    “Take your time, my dear,” he said. “Take all the time you need.”
    She sat there alone, listening to the sounds in her head. The screech. The crack. The thud.
    * * *
    How do you tell your seven-year-old son that you have killed a woman in the street?
    Connie’s fingers gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles chalk white. She didn’t say anything at all in case the wrong words spilled out of her dry mouth. Heavy insects blundered against the windscreen as she drove out of town with her son, Teddy, on the front