What Tears Us Apart Read online

  But then she remembered the morning—traipsing around after Samuel through the maze—all the jagged metal, the haggard faces, the roar and the stench, heaps of garbage, the images leaping out like rabid dogs.

  Leda forced herself to breathe from her belly as she looked at her feet. She saw now where she and Ita had walked carefully around the perimeter of the courtyard. The dirt in the interior was swept clean. The children’s sandals were lined up like ducks around the mat. The concrete in the bathrooms was new, the sheets clean. She remembered the touch of Ita’s hand, felt the lingering calm he exuded. She was safe. Leda felt sure of it. Inside the orphanage, she was safe.

  But Ita noted her silence and saw how she looked at her feet. “I have an idea.”

  He walked back to the room he’d said was a hospital. He slid open the metal that looked like a wall and waved Leda over. She was amazed to see a metal table, and walls covered in posters of anatomy and the periodic table.

  “It is our secret, this room,” Ita said, looking at the stacks of medical supplies on a table in the corner, and Leda thought she understood. In a place like Kibera, where health services were rare and precious, a room like this would have to be kept secret lest the whole slum descend on it. “You would like your own room. What do you think?”

  Did he mean the metal table? Leda could only think of blood and episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, until she pictured the foam on Mary’s floor and found herself saying, “Yes, if it’s okay, this is perfect.”

  Ita nodded and smiled. “Good. I will bring the foam and blanket. Are you ready now to meet the children?” Ita looked past her at the kids when he said it, and the love that radiated toward them landed on Leda, too, like wrapping her hands around a cup of morning tea. She felt glad for the boys, then noted the lump in her throat.

  As she gazed after them, Mary appeared out of the kitchen, struggling under the weight of the steaming pot.

  “Michael, msaada,” Ita called, and the word was followed by more Swahili that Leda figured meant the boy should help Mary with lunch.

  Michael, not only the tallest boy by a foot but owner of the only serious expression of the bunch, stood and grabbed the pot’s handles. He called out and two other boys obediently headed for the kitchen.

  As she watched them go, Leda realized Ita wasn’t watching the boys, he was looking at her. She felt his curiosity digging into her again, and realized for the first time that she must seem as strange to him as all this was to her.

  “Let’s eat,” Ita said.

  The remaining children wiggled with excitement as Leda came closer.

  “Karibu!” one of the middle-sized boys called out. He put his hand out like a little salesman. “Ntimi,” the boy said, indicating himself. He had a smile almost to match Ita’s—full of strong white teeth and a joy one can only be born with.

  Leda sat next to him. “Leda,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Timmy.”

  It was Ntimi who named the other boys, from Thomas to Christopher, ending with Michael. Then Ntimi scooped up a toddler and plopped him into Leda’s arms. “Walter,” he said, and everyone laughed as Walter tried to wiggle free.

  Michael was the only one not laughing. Leda had a hunch he was a person she would have to win over slowly. “Thank you for having me here, Michael, for letting me into your home.”

  Michael nodded with a solemn maturity that made Leda want to smile, but she held it back.

  Ita, watching closely, doled out a look of approval that warmed her belly.

  “Jomo,” Ntimi said as he pointed toward a sheeted room by the door, a room that hadn’t been on the tour. Leda took it for a guard post of sorts, or a storage space. She squinted. Did Ntimi mean a guard?

  “He new,” Ntimi said in a quieter voice, just as Leda made out two skinny legs showing from under the hanging sheet.

  Another boy. Boy number seven.

  “Will he join us for lunch?” Leda asked, though the answer was obvious.

  Mary handed Leda a yellow plastic bowl filled with murky water. Leda studied it, unsure what to do. Was it soup? “Wash,” Ntimi said, and Leda wanted to hug him.

  She wet her hands in the lukewarm water, then passed the bowl around for the children to do the same.

  Next, Mary brought her a bowl heaped with rice from the pot. She handed Leda a spoon.

  Leda said thank you and waited for everyone else to be served. But Mary didn’t go for more bowls. They all seemed to be waiting and Leda wondered if guests ate first.

  The first mouthful occupied Leda mind and body, with a collision of flavors she’d never tasted before. Sweet, salty, spicy all at the same time.

  Suddenly Leda saw all the eyes on her. She jabbed her spoon back into the rice and felt her cheeks start to burn.

  Activity commenced. Mary left and brought back bowls for herself and Ita. Then she set down the big bowl of rice on the mat, the boys huddling around it. Their little hands went to work, rolling little balls of rice and transferring them to their mouths fast as they could carry. Leda looked and saw Ita and Mary dig in with their fingers, too, employing the same technique.

  Leda watched, thinking first of hygiene, then suffering a guilty replay of all the food she’d left on her plate or thrown away in her lifetime.

  Leda looked at her spoon, glinting in the sun, and set it down on the ground. Watching Ntimi’s nimble fingers, she imitated him, rolling the food into bite-size pieces with her hands. Ntimi smiled at her.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Leda saw the sheet flutter. She looked and saw that it was pulled just a crack to the side.

  On impulse, Leda stood up and started over. Ntimi stopped and looked up in worry. Michael shook his head ever so slightly. But she went anyway.

  Stopping in front of the sheet, she held out her bowl. “You like to eat alone, that’s okay,” Leda said gently.

  No hand reached out for the bowl, but Leda could hear the boy breathing, with a slight wheeze of asthma that made her heart leap. Dangerous out here with no medicine. Lucky he has Ita, she thought, just as she heard Ita stride up behind her.

  “How much English do they understand?” Leda asked, glossing over the fact that she still held out the bowl of steaming food.

  “All Kenyan children learn English in school,” Ita said. He glanced at the sheet when he added, “But many of our children have missed much school.”

  Leda’s heart sank. “So they don’t understand me.” Of course not. “Good way to practice my Swahili, I guess.”

  Ita spoke into the crack in the sheet. When only silence followed, he spoke again in the same even, coaxing voice.

  Nothing happened.

  “They will understand some, if you speak slowly and use easy words.” Ita saw the look on Leda’s face. “Don’t worry, they already love you. They are so excited you have come all this way for them. It is hard for them to believe.”

  Suddenly the sheet opened and a small, lanky boy stepped into the sun. He wore a WWF T-shirt, shorts and a scowl like a guerilla rebel.

  Ita knelt down and spoke to him, as if he was explaining why the sky is blue or the dirt orange. Leda already loved this manner of his, a solid gentleness much like what she loved about the trees at home—cheerful but sage.

  Jomo stood but he didn’t meet Ita’s gaze. Instead his eyes found something just off to the side and locked on. His face took on a blankness Leda recognized with a shiver. She looked down and saw what Jomo was doing with his hands. He picked and picked at the edges of his thumbs, beside the nail beds. Leda looked down at her own hands, similarly mutilated. It was an embarrassing habit, but one she’d never been able to conquer. Estella thought it was disgusting. Doesn’t it hurt? her school guidance counselor had asked. But the pain was the point. It grounded her. In public, whenever Leda felt anxious, when she wanted to flee or scream, the picking gave her something to do, something to keep her from losing control, something to control. The only other thing she’d ever found that calmed her, gave her a buffer against the world was
—

  “Hey, Jomo,” she said, reaching into her pocket and startling both Ita and the frowning boy. “Want to see something?”

  Leda took the camera from her pocket. It was her favorite—small enough to take out and tuck away quickly, with the manual control to shoot without a flash. It put a lens between her and the loud crazy world, let her compose it, control it, record it from one step away. Cameras gave Leda a way to interact with the world without...interacting.

  Jomo’s attention snapped toward the camera lying flat in Leda’s hand. His yearning was more apparent than he would have liked, she was sure. She set down the food and knelt across from Ita, close to Jomo, and turned the camera on. She didn’t press it into his hands; she just started to demonstrate how it worked. Zoom like this, she mimed, frame with the screen, and take the picture. She pointed the viewfinder toward Ita and snapped.

  Jomo grunted, a small slip of amusement.

  Ita watched the two of them studying the image of him and he laughed. She bristled and felt Jomo do the same. But it wasn’t Ita’s fault, she realized. He wouldn’t understand. He wasn’t daunted by life. He danced happily with the world. He wouldn’t understand the comfort of a camera on the sidelines.

  But Leda also knew Ita wanted Jomo to be happy, he was ecstatic at the merest glimpse of joy in the glowering boy. She hoped Jomo would know this soon, too. She tucked the camera away, picked up the bowl and settled it into Jomo’s hands before he saw it coming. Then she stood up and walked pointedly back to the mat.

  When Leda sat down, the children settled back into a ring around her. On Ntimi’s cue, they began clapping their hands and rapping on their knees, and while Leda watched, a little taken aback, they began to sing.

  It was a song they’d planned, obviously, because everyone from youngest to oldest joined in at once.

  Leda let the harmony wash over her and blinked her eyes. When she didn’t have her camera out, she would blink to record the memories she wanted to hang on to, to replay later for comfort. She’d had no idea what to make of her first day in Kibera, but just then she wanted to savor the warm feeling wrapped around her like afternoon sunshine on her porch in Topanga. It wasn’t the feeling of serenity she felt there with Amadeus, however. This was something new.

  A loud banging on the metal door stole Leda’s train of thought and took the warm feeling with it.

  The children stopped singing but sat obediently, not looking overly perturbed, though Jomo ducked back behind his curtain. Leda tried to calm herself—visitors to the orphanage must be common.

  Ita walked over to the door and she heard the voice that filtered through, sounding more like a low growl than a man.

  Reluctantly, Leda thought, Ita slid open the door. But he blocked the gap, so Leda couldn’t see who was outside.

  She turned back to the boys, but the mood had shifted one hundred and eighty degrees. Leda glanced up to see if clouds had moved in. No, the sun was still beating down like a radiator.

  The door scraped ajar and a tall, wiry man darted through to jab Ita and cackle. When the man’s yellow eyes scurried over Leda’s skin, she shuddered and averted her gaze. When he turned to converse with Ita, Leda looked again.

  At first glance, Leda might have called him handsome, with his angular face and cat eyes, but beside Ita, she decided, definitely not. The man was a praying mantis, creeping along on folded pincers. Dreads snaked down his back, trembling as he shuffled closer. Dangling, bouncing from his belt, was a battered machete. When he sneered in her direction, Leda recoiled at two rows of stained teeth. Then she saw that his face was covered in scars, several of them burns like hers.

  Her hand went to her scar while her mind filled with fifty thoughts at once. The man was clearly a gangster, yet seemed to be Ita’s friend. There was a word at Leda’s lips, a scary word. Mungiki—what the guidebook named Kenya’s vicious mafia and more or less warned to look out for dreadlocks. Mungiki ran the slums—extortion, female genital circumsion, beheadings.

  “So, this is the volunteer?” The man stopped at the edge of the mat, close enough that he cast a shadow over Leda. “You the woman Ita can’t stop talking about, two weeks now?”

  Ita’s face blanched. Wary? Or apologetic?

  “Chege!” Ntimi jumped up. The other children greeted him with enthusiasm, too.

  Chege turned to Ita and laughed his hyena cackle again. “She speak?” He looked down on Leda meanly, his eyes on her as he continued in a growl before she could answer. “Funny, nah? Here Ita been talking ’bout this educated white woman, smart, rich, talking up a summer storm.” Chege smirked, he flickered his eyes over to Ita then back to Leda. “Lot to live up to, this man a big dreamer. He dream big beautiful things. Like an angel come from America, come save everybody.”

  “I’m not—” Leda said, but Ita interrupted.

  “Kuacha, Chege,” he growled. He held out his hand to Leda and tugged her up to stand beside him. “This is Leda. She is my guest.”

  “Leda,” Chege purred. “Welcome to Kibera, Leda.” He put out his hand and she took it reluctantly.

  Ntimi interrupted. “You bring gifts, Chege?”

  Ita shook his head and steered the boy back to the mat.

  When Leda tried to retract her hand, Chege held tight and pulled her closer to him. She squeaked, desperate to escape his calloused grip, but he peered into her eyes and whispered, “Don’t tell him you no angel yet. American rich lady come save Africa, and have a little fun.” He nodded his head in Ita’s direction.

  Leda’s eyes flickered over to Ita. Were those his words?

  “But what if—” Chege’s voice rose, pulling Ita from the children into their huddle “—what if us Kikuyu brathas don’t need your help, Leda? Don’t need a volunteer—”

  “Chege,” Ita said. “Stop.”

  Chege laughed, his smoky breath hitting Leda in the face. “Okay, okay. I play nice.” He dropped Leda’s hand and slung down his knapsack. “Presents!” he called out.

  The second he let her out of his grasp, Leda stumbled back and wiped her hand on her pants. She wrapped her arms around herself then, trying to still the wave of nausea and panic. Chege strode past her, chuckling, and crouched down among the boys.

  Leda coerced herself into taking one clean, full breath.

  Chege dug in his bag and brandished a coconut, winning “oohs” and “aahs” from the children. He untied the machete from his belt, its edge jagged, its blade sticky with congealed brown stains. Leda watched him swipe it across his jeans, telling herself firmly the stain wasn’t blood.

  He split the coconut with a single, expert stroke. He sucked down the milk that came spilling out, letting it course over his chin before he dribbled it into the kids’ open mouths, like watering a ring of flowers. The children gulped the sweet juice and giggled. With the machete, Chege carved smaller pieces and handed them out.

  Leda watched the whole process in a daze, until Chege ran his tongue over the white coconut flesh, one eye leering sideways at her. She looked away, her cheeks burning.

  Ita couldn’t seem to tell anything was wrong. He looked over at her and smiled, the same pure, easy smile.

  As all the children sat content with their treat, Chege stood next to Ita. With a flare obviously for Leda’s benefit, he pulled a bulging wad of money from his pocket. “Been a good month, brother.”

  Ita looked at the cash and the smile was gone, replaced by steel. “No,” he barked, followed with daggers of Swahili, fervent hand gestures, and a look searing enough to ignite a forest fire.

  For a fleeting moment Chege was surprised, he teetered backward on his spindly limbs. He recovered at the same moment Leda saw Jomo edge into the courtyard.

  Chege saw him, too, and waved him over. Jomo hesitated, then jutted out his chin and walked over.

  Chege peeled off a leaf of Kenyan shillings. “Ita say he don’t want any,” Chege said. “He don’t like where it come from. Ita always think money cares where it come from. Always. E
ven when we was you age. Course, then he had no choice.”

  Chege took Jomo’s wrist. He thrust the money into the boy’s palm. Jomo’s eyes bulged as if he was scared to blink, as if the money might disappear. Now Chege looked up at Leda. “Maybe he think things be different now?”

  Leda felt the nausea tip and pour back through her stomach. What had they said about her? What did they think of her here in this place?

  “Chege, enough,” Ita said, but Chege put out his hand and knelt down next to Jomo.

  “But this boy knows. Every hungry boy knows money have to come from somewhere.” Chege’s coiled stance made Leda think of a feral cat—watching, plotting, waiting. “And somebody always have to give something to get it.”

  Leda could tell Jomo didn’t understand the words, but everything Chege did was a cartoon requiring no caption. Ita’s jaw was clenched so tight she wondered how words could possibly escape, but she could see them, piled up behind his teeth, being chosen carefully.

  When he opened his mouth, however, Ita’s words were swallowed by banging at the door. Deep voices followed, so loud Leda jumped.

  Chege laughed. “For me,” he said with a wink.

  Ita’s frown was like a deep etched carving. “Go,” he said and strode quickly with Chege to the door. Leda stayed where she was, holding her breath.

  When the gate opened, thugs huddled outside, their words like little firecrackers. Leda couldn’t understand any of it, but the men looked back and forth behind them as if they were being chased by the devil himself. One man took the machete from his belt and demonstrated a whack. With another glance behind him, he tried to dart inside the orphanage.

  Which is when Ita started shouting. He screamed at the men, then at Chege, all the while trying to close the metal door on top of them.