The diamond explorer, p.1
The Diamond Explorer, page 1
Dutton Children’s Books
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
First published in the United States of America by Dutton Children’s Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2024
Copyright © 2024 by Kao Kalia Yang
Interior art © 2024 by Camelia Pham
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
Ebook ISBN 9781984816344
Cover art © 2024 by Camelia Pham
Cover design by Kristin Boyle
Design by Anna Booth, adapted for ebook by Andrew Wheatley
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Dedication
Prologue: Malcolm
Part 1: “The Hmong Boy”
Chapter 1: Kindergarten, Ms. Johnson: 2010–2011
Chapter 2: Niam, Lia
Chapter 3: First Grade, Ms. Stacey: 2011–2012
Chapter 4: Txiv, Lue
Chapter 5: Second Grade, Mrs. Bird: 2012–2013
Chapter 6: Tus Muam Hlob, True
Chapter 7: Third and Fourth Grades, Ms. Stacey: 2013–2014 and 2014–2015
Chapter 8: Tus Tij Laug, Fong
Chapter 9: Fifth Grade, Ms. Stacey: 2015–2016
Chapter 10: Tus Muam Nrab, Linda
Part 2: Malcolm
Chapter 11: Pog
Chapter 12: Malcolm: 2016
Chapter 13: Malcolm: 2016
Chapter 14: Malcolm: 2016
Chapter 15: Malcolm: 2016
Chapter 16: Malcolm: 2016
Chapter 17: Malcolm: 2016
Chapter 18: Malcolm: 2016
Chapter 19: Malcolm: 2016
Part 3: Our Dead Talk
Chapter 20: Pog
Chapter 21: Pog
Chapter 22: Ying
Chapter 23: First Uncle Blia
Part 4: Meeting Yourself
Chapter 24: Malcolm
Chapter 25: Malcolm
Chapter 26: Pog
Chapter 27: Malcolm: 2016
Epilogue: Malcolm
Acknowledgments
About the Author
_148165251_
For Hwm, our diamond explorer
Prologue
Malcolm
The white house on the prairie was my first house. It remains the site of my childhood dreams.
I loved the sunny, windswept days. I remember when the warm sweeping breeze carried the wispy clouds across the blue sky, a vast backdrop for planes and birds. I remember when the clouds, in the arms of the mighty wind, dared to block out the shine of the sun and showed me what courage can do.
* * *
I remember my father and me, him a taller and straighter version of me, and me a smaller, rounder version of him, on the John Deere riding mower. He’s seated behind, supporting me. The steering wheel is a moving thing pressed against my chest as I lean on him.
Each time we looked across the stretch of the prairie, the uncut grass bending and moving like waves, the tall blades, proud and green on one side, pale and shy on the other, we’d both release the air in our chests at once. It was our breathing place, the Minnesota prairie.
* * *
It seems now that all those days stored the air I’d need to pull me through all the moments to come when my breath was in danger of stopping.
How many times have I imagined my father and me elsewhere?
* * *
As we mowed, I pretended that we were on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Father and I fishing for sharks, parched with thirst, searching the map in our hearts for traces of home.
Home was an island that could not be found on a map, an invisible speck on the stretch of the horizon, that clean line of sky and sea. The rainbows of light leaping off the water.
I still feel the warmth of his chest against my head. Eyes closed in pretend slumber, I’d thump my head into the flesh and bone of the man who was my father. My small hands held fast to the round muscles on his arms and moved when they moved. We were a song then, the two of us together, caught up in the rhythm and melody of the sky and the earth and all that lived in between them.
* * *
A memory:
My father and I are mowing into the stretch of prairie grass, weeds and flowers growing in wild bounty.
“Why do you cut the grass around the house first?”
“So that I can kill all the ticks in the grass, so they can’t get you when you come out to play,” my father answers me.
When my father talks to me, he slows time. His words melt into each other like many-colored liquids meeting, melding, merging.
I am once again on a boat in the flow of his words; my father becomes the timeless ocean, home to the sharks, the hopes of my fishing line, my child’s heart.
He gestures toward the green underneath us. “The lawn mower is very strong. Its metal blades move in a circle. The ticks will try to hold on to the grass, but they can’t. There’s a tornado made of metal above them.”
I imagine myself as a tick.
I’d be a cute tick. I’d wear a tuxedo. My eyes would be huge. My antennas short. My teeth would be sharp as vampire fangs.
I let air into my mouth and swoosh it around like mouthwash. I open one side of my mouth and pretend a fan is blowing at me. My top teeth chomp down on my bottom. My own arms are holding, holding, holding fast to the blades of grass that are my father’s arms. The whorl of storm, wind and metal, makes me scream from fear, “Ahhhhhhyahhhhhhhh!”
I laugh.
“What’s so funny?” my father wants to know.
“Nothing,” I say.
Later, I will overhear my father tell Fong, my only brother, “Malcolm and I mowed the grass short around the house today. The worst thing would be if someone didn’t like us and decided to set fire to the grass.” I scrunch my nose at the smell of burning grass.
I breathe in. Now, though, the air smells like grass that’s just come out of the washing machine. Still damp and full of the scent of clean.
A single monarch butterfly, with its wide wings, flies around us and lands on the tip of a fuzzy-leaf flowering plant. I watch as it nuzzles into the orange blooms.
I tell my father, “I am ready to get off the lawn mower.”
On the soft carpet of the freshly cut grass, I imagine I am a monarch butterfly. I spread my arms wide on either side. I run as fast as I can in the blue flip-flops on my feet. I curl my toes into the soft plastic of my shoes. They don’t fall off, and together we leave the ground behind, the mowed grass trails, our bit of land, and we fly past the tops of the birch and aspen trees, higher and higher, until we are in the sky.
I become a great American bald eagle. I’m soaring now, looking down with my laser eyes, trying to see frightened rabbits, the small field mice hiding in the clumps of grass, the rise of the molehills that dot the prairie. I am hungry. My talons are ready. My fingers curl in. I wish my mom hadn’t cut my nails. I blow an angry breath into the air. I feel my force against the wind. I soar. I coast. I calm down.
I am an airplane approaching a runway. I feel my wheels tumble against the pavement. I slow, slow, slow, put a brake on my heart, until everything stops. I sway forward but I don’t fall. My breathing is hollow, my eyes are closed, and I feel the sun and the wind heating and cooling me in turn, together, over and over again.
My father’s voice calls out to me, “Malcolm, come back to me!”
* * *
The white house on the prairie—which, up close, is now faded, with peeling paint showing the gray wood underneath—was the house of my beginning. A house of play. A house of possibility. A house where I could leave and always hear the voices of people who love me calling for my return.
Part 1
“The Hmong Boy”
Chapter 1
Kindergarten, Ms. johnson
2010–2011
The Hmong boy was alone again, standing by the wall, his hands behind his back, looking at his flip-flops. All year long, he has been like this. Why can’t he make some efforts to engage with the rest of the class? Today, his face was tilted down so all I could see was his head of spiky black hair.
What kind of parents send their child to sch
Last night, the Hmong boy came to conferences with his mom and sister. It was so embarrassing. I extended my hand first to the sister and said, “Hi, you must be Malcolm’s mother.”
The sister corrected me, “I am Malcolm’s big sister. Hello, Ms. Johnson.” She didn’t shake my hand. She gestured to the older woman behind her in the brown sweater and said, “This is our mother.”
The woman didn’t extend her hand either.
Of course, I had to make the first move again.
There was so little to report on Malcolm. I took them to the table and had Malcolm pull out a chair from a nearby desk for himself. I took a deep breath. “Let’s start, shall we?”
They all nodded. The children’s seats were perfect for them. The mother and sister were hardly bigger than Malcolm. Most of the fifth graders in the school are taller than them.
Bless my heart, I did not say, “You have a very slow kid.”
Instead, I said, “Malcolm is very quiet. He doesn’t bother anyone. He doesn’t say very much to me at all.”
To show the mother and sister that Malcolm and I had a relationship, I tried to make a joke with him. I said, “Malcolm, you are a stoic little man, aren’t you?”
The boy looked up at me but didn’t blink. There was no hint of laughter in his eyes, just serious regard.
I had to say, “A serious little man you have there,” and look toward the sister and mother for confirmation.
Like him, they just looked at me. I could feel my cheeks tightening as I opened my mouth to show them a smile.
“Okay, does anyone have any questions? Before I go over his report card?”
The sister cleared her throat.
She said, “Malcolm says that the other students in the classroom don’t talk to him. If he isn’t bothering anyone, what is the problem?”
I was taken aback by her directness but not surprised. These people are always looking for problems where none exist. I told her and her mother, who was pulling the brown sweater tight across her front, the truth: “The other kids are still getting used to him.”
The sister pushed me, saying in her small, thin voice, “But it has been a full school year.”
I told them what they should already know. “Malcolm is a shy kid. What else can I say?”
The sister turned to the mother and spoke in their language. I took the opportunity to get a good look at the mother.
The older woman looked tired. Strands of her hair fell on her face. Half of her hair, combed back into a knot, was gray, small strands of white coming loose. She twisted her small red hands together nervously under my gaze, though she kept her eyes only on her daughter. I noticed how she folded into the chair, a doll bent at the waist. As her daughter spoke, the older woman’s hands moved to her lap, and she wiped them nervously on her blue jeans. Looking at her hands gave me a feeling of pain in my own.
When I finally spoke again, my voice was loud even to my own ears. “It might be a good idea to find a different school for Malcolm next year, one where he won’t feel so alone.”
Both of them looked at me, their faces surprised. The daughter was not so different from her mother at all. Although she was young, her eyes already looked tired, and her black hair fell flat around her shoulders. The young woman’s brows furrowed for a moment as if she didn’t understand my words. I was surprised that it hadn’t occurred to them to transfer their boy out of the school.
I made my voice quieter. “It’s my professional recommendation that you look at a different school for Malcolm next year, one with more kids like him.”
I was afraid the sister was going to cry right there in front of me. But the mother said something in Hmong. The girl said something back to the mother. They whispered, brows rising and falling.
I looked around the bright room with the bubble-letter alphabet lining the top of a wall, the flower pictures by the students hanging around the wide window’s frame. Outside that window, I could see the tulips of spring in bright bloom around the flagpole. The American flag, that familiar red, white, and blue, flew proudly in a sky with no clouds. Malcolm sneezed. I looked at him, but he, like the rest of his family, did not look up at me. He merely sniffed, wrinkled his nose, and settled back in his seat, eyes on his feet. His short legs dangled and he swung his feet, clad in those same blue flip-flops, back and forth.
I cleared my throat to catch the mother and sister’s attention. I pointed to the door where Sam and his mother were waiting patiently. The sister gestured, and the mother got up and extended a red hand to the boy, who took it. The sister said a quiet thank-you, then walked toward the door, the mother trailing behind her, hand holding the boy close.
Malcolm was a strange child. It was clear to me that he understood English well, but he spoke it with a thick accent. Listening to him, one would think he was born elsewhere, but I’ve asked him directly and he said he was born here. I’d clarified, “Here as in the United States of America?” and he’d whispered, “Yes, in St. Paul.”
From the very first day of class, he unnerved me with his lack of movement. Most children move. Humans are supposed to. But Malcolm always sat very still, his hands resting on his desk or on his lap. The only parts of him that moved were his eyes and his head. Those steady eyes followed me around the classroom through the school day. They stared at me when the other kids were playing or talking, those brown orbs following, floating about his tan face. When I looked directly at him, he looked away and pretended that he was occupied, studying the ceiling or the floor. Once when I asked him, “What’s wrong with you?” he shook his head nervously.
Yes, it would be better if the family transferred him to a new school next year.
Chapter 2
Niam, Lia
I was forty-five years old when I had Malcolm. He was a surprise baby. Lue, Malcolm’s father, did not want me to have him. He was afraid that we were too old to raise a child. I felt differently. For many years, I had dreamed of a brother for Fong. Malcolm was my dream come true.
In Hmong, we believe that the way a baby enters the world is indicative of the way they will live life. In this way, Malcolm was a blessing.
Malcolm was born on Thanksgiving Day, the American eating festival. The day was cloud-covered and quiet. I woke up that morning to cold air, fallen leaves, and heavy skies letting go of bits of snow. Lue had gotten a turkey from the factory as a gift that year. The day before, we had set it out in the kitchen sink to thaw. That morning, I was going to salt and pepper it and put it in the oven, but when I walked into the kitchen, I smelled rot. I threw out the bird despite the fact that the children liked turkey on Thanksgiving Day. The year before, Lue had gotten steaks for Christmas and we’d discovered that they were putrid underneath the thick plastic wrap only just before putting them in the pan. I made no fuss cleaning up the mess of the big bird in the sink. I didn’t want Lue to feel bad again—as he had last Christmas, apologizing to the children for not knowing the company had given him bad steaks.
After a quick breakfast of rice with water and ginger slices dipped in salt, I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when I felt the trickle of water run down my legs. I saw that my sleeping gown was wet. I finished brushing my teeth and rinsed, washed and dried my face, combed my hair, tied it back in a knot, and wiped the bathroom sink and the tiled floor before I looked for Lue.
We had just moved to the white house on the Minnesota prairie. The paint was fresh when we first bought the house. Though it was a simple split-level ranch built in the 1960s, it was the biggest and best house we’d ever known. The house was within our price range because it was forty minutes out of the cities, on three acres of tall grassland within a mile of an old landfill that now just looked like a big, flat grass hill. Every morning, Lue got up early to go to the backyard, where, in a copse of young white-barked birch and slender aspen trees, he’d made a chicken coop with wires and the plastic sheets the Americans used for painting.
