Diamond Lust

Photo by The Glorious Studio

On the way to Beardsley Elementary School, I stopped at 7-Eleven on Robert’s Lane to buy some Archie Salt Water Taffy. I’d already spent my weed-picking allowance at Rollerama, so I took a dollar from Mom’s wallet when she wasn’t looking. 

Standing outside the store were girls from school, huddled around a girl named Sandra. I put my bike kickstand down and joined them. That’s when I saw the biggest, most beautiful diamond in the whole world, sitting all by itself on a circle of gold. It was bigger than Mom’s wedding ring. We took turns trying it on. It was too large unless you wore it on your thumb. 

“Who wants to buy this diamond ring?” Sandra asked. 

The girls laughed at her and went inside 7-Eleven for bubble gum. 

“Can I try it on? I asked. I couldn’t stop starring at the stunning jewel on my thumb. 

“Where’d you get it?” I asked.

“Oh, nowhere special.”

“Is it a real diamond ring?”

“You betcha.”

“How much you want for it?”

“I dunno, how about a dollar?”

“I got a dollar!” I said.

I traded my stolen dollar for a diamond ring. I told Sandra there was no Indian-giving. She went inside 7-Eleven and came out with a huge bag of candy.

My diamond ring wasn’t worth the trouble. Hiding it from Mom was too risky. I couldn’t keep it in my jewelry box. If she saw it, no lie was good enough to get out of that one. Even worse, what if she found out I was taking dollar bills out of her wallet regularly?

I only kept the diamond ring for a week. A girl at school wanted to trade it for a Malibu Barbie, so I did. 

I soon missed my diamond ring. It made me feel grown-up.

When Mom wasn’t home, I snooped in her jewelry box. I tried on her rings, necklaces, and broaches in front of her large mirror. She had a lovely green and gold jade ring that Dad brought back from Japan after the war. I knew my friends would marvel at its beauty, so I took it and hid it under my bed with my stolen Barbies.

The next day during lunch recess, I sat in the clover patch with my friends making flower chain necklaces. I took Mom’s jade ring from my coat pocket and put it on my finger. Everyone noticed it immediately and asked to try it on. I knew they would.

Clover grows tall and thick, buzzing with honeybees. While shooing off a pesky bee, Mom’s jade ring flew off my finger, disappearing into the clover.

The lunch bell rang.

Frantic, I crawled around on grass-stained knees, patting and parting clover in my frantic search for the ring. The problem was, jade is green and hard to see in a field of green clover. 

Mom was going to kill me.

Everyone ran to get in line by their classroom doors. The second bell rang. The playground emptied, except for me.

The vice principal came out to see what I was doing. He shaded me from the hot sun. 

While I cried, I told him I’d lost my mom’s ring in the clover and had to find it, or I was going to be in huge trouble when I got home. He told me to go to class, that I could check the lost and found after school. Someone would find it.

I looked up at him in disbelief. There wasn’t a kid at Beardsley Elementary School who’d turn in something so lovely. Not even me.

Mom didn't realize her jade ring was missing until we moved to Fremont, California, two years later. When she discovered it missing, she came to me, and I broke down in tears, confessing what had happened instead of lying about it. I told the truth that I'd lost her ring in the clover on the playground at Beardsley Elementary School, and I felt genuinely sorry for taking it in the first place. I felt my conscious cleansed.

Mom refused to believe the truth, so I made up a lie she could live with.