What Tears Us Apart

Chapter 9



December 31, 2007, Kibera—Ita

MORNING’S COME, WHETHER Ita can believe it or not.

Lying on his foam mattress, he feels like he’s been strapped to train tracks all night, pounded by steel wheels. His skin is hot and itchy, a wool suit he wishes he could peel off.

First thing he sees when he opens his eyes—his bloody clothes on the chair.

So then it is real. Everything really happened. The devil has taken the reins.

After another moment, he gets up, stacking himself like broken dishes. He looks at his phone. Leda is still in transit. He can’t call her. But she’s safe, returning to her world where things are white, clean and quiet.

And Ita is here, the metal wall the only thing separating him from hell. He listens. There’s none of the normal din of morning. He hears a roar like military trucks in the distance. He hears whistles and shouting, popping noises like gunfire. He can make out chanting. The protesters are out there.

Protesters. Ita thinks about the word. We have plenty to protest. But what he saw last night was murder. Rape. Betrayal. Mayhem. Men peeling off their humanity to let loose their darkest demons.

Before he is forced to picture Chege again, Ita thinks instead of all the children out there, in the front lines to violence. The rioters—they were innocents once. But after a lifetime of Kibera’s picture show of injustice, they have all the emotional fuel they need now to set the world on fire.

He recognizes the scent in his nostrils. Not the cooking of breakfast, but billowing towers of smoke.

People are fleeing. Ita heard them in the night, the frenzied commotion of flight. People are running back to the country, to their homelands.

But we have nowhere to go.

An orphan watching over seven little orphans.

The boys.

He rolls his broken body out of bed and drags himself to their room. Eyeing the smoke in the sky, he scans the sounds of violence. But inside the orphanage—only silence.

Ita pulls aside the sheet to their room and looks in. They’re awake, he can tell, but glued to their bunk beds, pretending to sleep out of fear.

“Morning is here. I’m here.”

Ita watches them weather the same process of waking up, swallowing the new reality. But when they turn, one by one, and peer at his broken face, they lose the words on their lips.

“Michael,” he says and leaves the room.

Moments later, Michael stands before Ita in the courtyard, squinty, but alert enough to be wary.

“You must keep them quiet. You must keep them calm. Understand?”

The boy nods in his solemn way, a priest at confessions. “How long will you be gone?”

Ita doesn’t know the answer to that. “As short a time as possible. I must go with Mary to see her family. And if I can find it, we’ll need food, supplies—” Ita stops. Why worry him more than necessary? “I’ll hurry.”

“Be careful, too.”

Ita smiles at him and puts a hand on his shoulder. How long have they been a family now? Seven years? Seems impossible. But long enough for Michael to know what family means, finally. For both of them to know the meaning, Ita realizes. “I promise.”

Ita crosses to Mary’s room. Before he can open his mouth, Mary’s voice comes from behind the sheet. “I’m ready.”

He waits and Mary opens the sheet and passes him. She turns back. “The tea is on the fire and the bread is on the plates, covered. Do you think they can manage? Are you sure we should leave them?”

His heart swells with her worry for the children, sees the warring emotions on her face for her two families. Finally, he nods. “They are safe. Enough. Michael has my gun.”

Their eyes lock. There’s only one gun. Safe enough, Ita thinks. What does that mean? No one is safe in Kibera anymore.

“Let’s go,” he says. “I will bring some medical supplies.”

Mary’s face loses some of its bravery as she turns toward the courtyard and the entrance to the orphanage.

Ita walks in the sun beside Mary, his bruised limbs protesting every step. The streets are quiet, a strangled silence like a hand clamped over a mouth. But he hears the roar of a mob not far off, the crackle of fire. The smell of smoke is strong, burning his nose and throat.

They wind their way through the back alleys, expecting the worst to arrive at any minute.

The phone-charging man is nowhere to be seen, his kiosk barren. As Ita expected. His cell will die this morning, his bridge to the outside world burned up like everything else.

The beauty shop on the corner is gone, reduced to sizzling rubble, the ashes of sacrifice. Ita’s gut twists into knots. Fire can spread ten blocks in two minutes in Kibera. He looks at the smoking hole where the beauty shop stood and hears Mary take the same breath as he. Death stood right here, looking over their shoulders while they slept.

They move on.

As Ita scours the burning structures for any food kiosk intact, images of Chege and Leda flash before him, making his feet stumble over the rocks and debris. His body shudders uncontrollably, both at the images of destruction before him, and the images aflame in his mind.

Once they turn a corner, the next block comprises only rubble and hastily restacked shacks—sheets of metal or wood strapped to rickety sticks. Bedsheets drawn tight over any open spaces, windows or doors.

Ita thinks back to Friday, two days and an eternity ago, when the sheets flapped open, people milled in and out—a barbershop, a butcher, a CD store inside. He curses himself for not stockpiling supplies when the election drama began to build. For not anticipating that this would happen. For allowing happiness to let him forget the first lesson in Kibera—bad times are coming.

The eerie calm makes his skin prickle. Just as he becomes aware of it, two young men duck around a nearby corner. One carries a bow and arrow, the other a machete. Mary’s gaze drops to the ground. Ita sees her muscles grow sinewy across her old bones. But the men never look at them. They’re laughing. Ita’s stomach churns at the sound.

A burning pile of tires and metal blocks the next turn. Ita stops. He leans uneasily against a mud house. The flames are high, menacing. And they’re new—men must be close.

Ita strains his ears, listening with his whole body. Inside the house, he hears a woman shushing her children, a rushing mix of mtoto, mpendwa, pole pole sana. Dear child, so sorry. Ita grits his teeth. This is the morning all parents feel that they have failed their children.

An old man looks out from the house across the alley. He stares at Ita, a brave face atop shivering knees, then relaxes when Mary reaches Ita’s side.

Off to their left, unseen, there comes a shout, No Raila, no peace! A rally cry. No peace! Voices echo back.

Instead of turning, the old man and Ita look into each other’s eyes. Ita recognizes the same, tired look he feels in his heart. He has no stomach for war cries. Kibaki’s arrogant speech accepting his rigged reelection—what did he think would happen? Did he know that men would gore each other in the streets?

The old man ducks back inside his home and Ita and Mary move on.

Ita should never have agreed, should never have invited someone like Leda to this place. He remembers the mob last night. Men in the street, barking and howling, thrusting their machetes into the smoking air. Human flesh cut like wood for fire, thwacks on the legs of women and children as they ran screaming.

And Chege. Sprawled atop Leda like a clawing predator, a monster, a depraved, starved demon in the night—

Ita tries to shake the image from his head. He can’t think of it now. Mary is too vulnerable out here. They still have blocks to go. He twists his torso and feels blood he missed, dried now, cracking on his back. He must focus. They must get to the house.

They slink down an alley to the right. The houses on both sides are quiet, too quiet. How many people are hiding? Prisoners in their own homes.

But around the corner, they hear it. A wail. A second voice surrounds the first, trying to comfort and contain, trying to quell the woman’s cry. But the wail comes from a deep spring in the human soul, one that can’t be stopped, Ita knows.

Mary gasps and takes off past him. A mother knows her daughter’s cries.

He rushes after Mary, as she calls out her daughter’s name. He catches up to her at the door and they tumble inside.

Ita takes in the frantic scene—children piled up in a corner, tears on their faces that erupt anew the second they spot their grandmother. Grace is on the other side of the room, bent over a form on the ground. The smell of blood saturates the air with foreboding.

Grace looks up, her eyes glassy with grief. She sees her mother, but when her gaze shifts to Ita, she looks to the sky. “Sweet Jesus, we are saved!”

Ita steps closer, surveys the man’s crumpled body on the floor. Her husband, Paul Omolio. He’d just seen him at Christmas. Now he’s a mass of blood and bruises, beaten nearly unrecognizable. Ita stoops down just as Paul’s eyes flutter open.

The man’s foggy eyes register who’s crouching over him, and widen like a bush monkey’s. “Out! Out, devil!” The words drool from the man’s lips, blood frothing at the corners.

It takes Ita by surprise. Does he have a fever? He puts a hand to Paul’s forehead.

But his touch is a trigger—Paul convulses like he’s having a seizure. His words grow stronger, clearer. “Monster! Kikuyu!”

Grace and Mary flutter to his shoulders like angels.

“He was attacked just this morning,” Grace whispers, her words scurrying into Ita’s ear. “At a protest rally for Odinga. Men dragged him away and beat him.”

“Monsters!” Paul points a finger at Ita. “You—”

“Shhh, my love,” Grace coos and takes her husband’s hand. “Ita’s a doctor. Let him help you. Please.”

In a lower voice, she tells Ita, “Mungiki retaliation. Against us, Luos, for the protests.”

Protests, Ita thinks of the word and how vile it has become. What did they expect? You murder Kikuyus in protest, and think the Mungiki won’t strike back?

“They cut him, Ita,” Grace says, but it is Mary’s sudden shudder of breath that lets on just what Grace means. Ita looks to Paul’s groin, sees the epicenter of blood. The fly to his pants is unzipped.

Paul’s eyes roll back, his body goes slack.

Echoes of preelection chatter boom in Ita’s mind. We cannot have a boy as president, the other tribes said of Odinga. Ita’s stomach somersaults. Uncircumsized Luo men teased about forgoing manhood rituals.

Ita grits his teeth. Paul is right. Monsters do these things to men.

Taking items from his pockets—sutures, antiseptic wipes—Ita scans the room. “Rags,” he says. “Or clean clothes.”

Grace moves quickly, brings him a folded pile.

Ita positions his hands over Paul’s groin.

“Look away,” he says to the women, and gets to work.

After struggling to gingerly remove his pants, Ita gets one quick, stomach-churning eyeful of the damage before Paul comes to life like a man set on fire. As Paul screams at him, his fingers jabbing him in the chest, Ita tries to focus, to assess his other wounds. He counts the machete wounds on his arms and torso, his neck, above his left ear.

But now Paul’s raving pierces his concentration. “Mungiki monsters. Chege—”

Ita’s heart halts in its cage, then hammers the bars. “Paul...did Chege do this?” Careening back on his heels, Ita feels like he’s falling into a black hole in space. Could Chege have done this? How can Ita doubt it, after what he did to Leda, after all that Ita knows he’s done? Chege’s bloody machete, his tall tales of revenge, conquests, always being hunted by the police. On some level, hasn’t he always known what Chege was capable of?

Ita’s going to throw up. He’s certain of it. The regret inside, the horror, it’s bubbling and stewing and it has to come out. It’s too much. He can’t keep it inside.

Paul continues to scream, spittle landing on Ita’s face and neck. Ita struggles to his feet, backs away toward the door, tripping over children, trying to get a grip on time, on his mind. He sees Mary’s twisted face, Grace’s eyes desperate and scared.

But Ita needs air. He needs a second or he is going to lose his mind.

He whips the sheet to the side and stumbles back out into the street, red dust flying around his ankles.

He hears Grace collapse into sobs as he staggers blindly away from the house. Over the wailing of the children, he can’t make out her words. Ita slumps to the ground, his back scraping the sticks. His head drops into his hands, a welcome pocket of darkness to blot out Paul’s accusations. But Ita can’t stop his stomach from roiling, or his head from pounding.

How did everything fall apart? Was there ever a time that things could have been different, for he and Chege both, for everyone? Since the day Chege saved his life—was there ever a day that this wasn’t their fate?

Ita opens his eyes, and like an answer from the heavens, he sees suddenly where he is. Everything is different—the houses, the stores, the streets—but when Ita looks up the hill surrounding Kibera he sees the train tracks, the depot.

This is where they found Kioni. This is where Ita did something right, where he saved her. The place and time where Chege still had the chance to become something different.

With the dusty air filling his throat and the prick of déjà vu running up his spine, Ita lets the shivery trigger of remembrance take hold of him.


April 19, 1990, Kibera—Ita

Eleven-year-old Ita crouches in a dark alley, watching Chege delight in dumping out the day’s prize—a woman’s purse. Ita feels the familiar thud in his stomach, imagining the woman screaming, weeping in the street. At the same time, he worries for Chege. “The Mungiki will kill you, you know.” In Kibera, the Mungiki played both perpetrator and police. It was how they maintained their power over the people.

But Chege is quiet, which makes Ita peer harder into the dark for his friend’s face.

“What is it? Did they see you?”

“I talked to one of them. He said...said I good enough to work for them.”

Ita hears the veiled pride in his voice. Bad enough to work for them, he thinks. “Chege, no—”

“Not you. You won’t ever be with them. You go to school, get out of here. It would be easier, with help. But me—what else can I do?”

They hear men shouting in the distance, coming closer. The streets are empty at night, unsafe. Anyone who is out has nowhere to go, like them, or they’re up to no good.

But as they both crane their ears to decide where they should run, Ita hears another noise, closer this time. A sound like a scurrying insect or animal that wakes you in the night. But it carries another sound—a whimper over quick, panting breaths. A girl. Running away from something, and Ita would bet it was from the men they heard.

The patter of footsteps stops and the whimper tucks itself away somewhere.

“Ita, let’s go.” Chege heads away from the men whose words are coming into focus. They’re drunk, angry. “Now.”

But Ita heads toward the quiet noise. He knows where it is hiding. He has used that spot before, too, tucked behind the crates, trying to find a place to read. He ignores Chege’s second call to flee. “I will leave you,” he says. But Ita knows he won’t.

When he’s close to the stack of crates, the little breath stops short.

Flattening himself, he peers behind the wall and there she is. A girl as pretty as any Ita’s ever seen, her hair in tiny braids tipped with colored beads. The tattered pink dress she’s wearing trembles as her eyes go wide at Ita’s appearance. Her face puffy and streaked with tears, they stare at each other without blinking.

“Come on,” he says. “Come with me.”

The little girl shakes her head. Her eyes are so big they scare him, like they might crack open, spill out a river of tears to drown him.

“It’s okay. Hurry. They’re coming.”

“Come here!” The men are close, too close, one, maybe two alleys over. “Where’d-she-go-that-little-bitch-slut?” one slurs, and it’s not hard for Ita to picture a big slobbering giant.

“Ita,” Chege hisses. “What are you doing? Leave her.”

“I’m not leaving her,” Ita says, his eyes never leaving the girl.

Her head darts in the direction of the men, back at Ita, down at her feet. She’s beginning to see what he knows about her hiding place. It’s a trap.

Ita puts out his hand.

The little girl takes it.

“What’s your name?”

“Kioni,” she says.

Her voice is a bird in a thunderstorm, the roar of men a dark cloud rounding the corner.

The slapping of Chege’s footsteps is the rain.

“Kioni,” Ita says and squeezes her hand tighter. “Run.”


December 31, 2007, Kibera—Ita

“Ita!”

Ita jumps at the sound of Grace’s voice.

“I thought you left!” Her face is puffed out like a blowfish.

Still reeling from the memory, he shakes his head.

Grace looks like she is about to say something but stops herself. Looking closely at him, she asks, “You okay?”

He looks up into her eyes. He wouldn’t know how to begin to answer that question.

She nods. “I apologize for my husband. It’s the fever. And the shame.”

But Ita has to know. “Was it Chege?”

Grace looks at him. “No,” she says, eyes soft. Then they ice over. “But it was men like him. They dragged him from the rally, beat him, stabbed him. They used a broken bottle to cut his member. They said they would rape me, rape the children. And Paul—” Grace looks away. “He’s seen you with Chege. With Mungiki. And you are—”

“Kikuyu,” Ita finishes for her. Grace’s last name by marriage is Omolio. Omolio, Odinga. Names that start with an O betray Luos at checkpoints. But what is a name? Ita’s name comes from a man he’s never seen with eyes old enough to remember.

“Ita.”

The tears on Grace’s face swell like a river in the rain.

He looks at her. Women will bear the brunt of this storm, for it is they that are the most vulnerable to both man’s cruelty and their suffering.

Ita pulls himself to his feet. “Let’s go save your husband.”