Wake up, Patson,” Grace whispered into my ear. “The diamond fields are close now. Just over that elephant-head mountain.” My eyelids were gently prised open, and my sister’s face came into focus. For a brief moment, I saw hints of my mother in her eyes. But then it was all Grace, poking my cheek with her finger, her breath warm and soft on my skin. “You’ve been sleeping too long, big brother.”

My disorientation ended when my head bumped painfully against the window as the driver swerved to avoid one pothole only to hit another. Here in Zimbabwe everyone says that if a man drives a straight line down a road, he must be drunk. Outside, the sun rested above the thorn trees and the air filled with amber dust. I must have been asleep for a couple of hours. I remembered closing my eyes and wishing we had never left home, angry with my father for having no money, hating the Wife for the power she had over him. Even my perky sister’s positive nature had irritated me. We had been driving for fourteen hours across the dry plains of Matabeleland, over the Runde and Munyati rivers and through the hills of Masvingo Province, and I longed to get out of this cramped car and go for a heart-pumping run.

My father says that a journey should always change your life in some way. Well, when you have nothing, I suppose a journey promises everything. As long as we arrived at a place better than the one we had left, I would be happy. I had known for some time that my family was heading downhill and something had to change. I could see it in the drawn, worried face of my father as yet another day passed and there was no food in the house. I could hear it in the shrill, hysterical voice of the Wife, who ranted and wept as she hid from the neighbors out of shame. And I could feel it when I hugged my little sister, with her bones now so fragile in my embrace. I knew we were poor but what I couldn’t understand was why, after every month that passed, our situation only got worse.

My father leaned over from the front seat and handed me a water bottle. “Grace is right, son. We’re almost at Marange.”

Before I had a chance to drink, though, the Wife snatched the bottle away. “I’m thirsty,” she said. “Joseph, ask the driver how much longer before we get there. My legs are stiff and my back is in a knot. I want to pee. Tell the driver to stop. Tell him to stop right now.”

“Yes, Sylvia, but I don’t think—”

“I mean it, Joseph. Tell him to stop now.”

The driver looked at my father’s wife in the rearview mirror and shook his head. “We can’t stop here. In another thirty minutes we stop.”

“You stop now. Or I mess in your car.”

The driver was no match for the Wife. He was about to protest, but my father turned to him and shrugged his shoulders. The driver understood.

“Two minutes. Okay? Just two minutes. It’s dangerous here,” he warned, checking the road behind him before pulling off the highway. “The police check every car that stops on the side of the road.”

The Wife insisted he open the trunk of the car.

“Joseph, I asked you to pack toilet paper,” she berated my father, her hands on her hips. “Did you pack it? I should have done the packing myself. I can’t trust you to do anything. This bag is a mess.”

Because you’re not looking, I wanted to say, and you do nothing but complain. Instead, I got out of the car and left them to fuss over the Wife and her toilet.

“I’ll help you, Amai. I know where it is.”

As always, Grace came to the rescue. My sister seemed to have a built-in early-warning system when it came to the Wife’s moods. She would appear, sometimes magically, when the Wife was about to lose her temper, to smooth out an awkward moment or distract her from turning on my father. Somehow Grace was always able to restore the peace. As she did now by pulling out a small bag from the back of the car, quickly finding the toilet paper, handing it to the Wife with a smile. The driver, meanwhile, swore under his breath, anxiously glancing up and down the road, while my father fussed and fretted, doing the Sylvia-dance to keep his wife happy.

Grace’s elephant-head mountain was really only a mass of boulders that rose above the distant flat-topped fever trees and towered over the surrounding smaller hills. I imagined myself running to the top to look out over the bush, east to Mozambique, at South Africa to the south, and back toward Bulawayo in the west. Inviting wisps of cool clouds hung below its highest point.

Something moved in the grass on the other side of the road. At first I thought it might be shy impala darting through the bush, but three boys cautiously emerged. They stared straight through me. Had they been there the whole time, watching? Perhaps it was the trick of the fading light, but their legs and arms, and even their faces, appeared to be dusted a light gray. We stared silently at each other, the tarred ribbon of the road between us. Then one of the boys lifted both his hands and slowly moved them together until his index fingers and thumbs met to form a diamond shape in front of his face.

Was he signaling me? I could not read his expression framed by the tight space between his fingers. Did he want me to do something? I shrugged and lifted my arms, not knowing what to say. He nodded abruptly at the space he had shaped with his fingers. Then the boy to his right pulled something out of his pocket. He was offering it to me, as he gently tapped his outstretched palm with two fingers of his other hand. The third boy stepped back a little, glancing furtively around. His eyes seemed to be pleading, as if I was his last hope.

“Where did those boys come from, Patson?” Grace was at my side, her hand slipped into mine.

“I don’t know.”

“Why are they so gray?”

“I’ve got no idea.” I stepped forward to speak to them.

“No! Get back in the car. Now!” The driver grabbed my arm, pushed me back to the car, shoved me into the backseat, and slammed the door. He scooted Grace back to her seat and shouted at the boys across the road, but they had gone, disappearing into the tall yellow grass.

“Who are they?” I asked as the driver started the car and pulled away in a cloud of dust, gunning down the highway.

“They are mailashas—smugglers—signing their death warrants by sticking their necks out like that. They’ll be dead in a week. This road is littered with their bones.” He drove fast, straight over the potholes, fleeing this place of gray ghost-boys.

“What did they want from me?”

“Money. Money for diamonds.” He lifted his hands from the wheel to make the diamond shape with his thumbs and index fingers pressed together. “Now is the safest time of day for them to sell their stones, when army patrols are blinded by the setting sun.”

“But they were just boys,” said my father.

The driver nodded. “Gwejana. Children diamond miners trying to sell their stones. They are gambling with their lives by becoming thieves and smugglers.”

“I didn’t see anything. Why doesn’t anyone ever tell me what’s going on?” complained Sylvia. “What are you talking about?”

I opened the window and the Wife’s words were lost as I leaned out to study the bush flitting past. The orange glow in the sky sank slowly behind the distant hills but I could no longer see the boys. The driver was talking quickly, strangling the steering wheel.

“The closer we get to the mining fields, the purer the stones become and the more we are in danger,” he said. “Those mailashas take the diamonds they find and try to sell them outside of their syndicate. They think they can fool the members and take the money for themselves. But there are spies everywhere and if those boys are reported to the syndicate bosses or the police catch them selling diamonds… well, let’s just say that I’ve heard some terrible things.”

“My brother, James, says there are diamonds for everyone,” said the Wife. “And he runs the best mine in Marange, so he should know. I’m sure you are exaggerating.”

“James Banda hates mailashas,” muttered the driver, glaring at me in his rearview mirror. “You don’t talk to these boys. Ever. You understand?”