What Tears Us Apart

Chapter 11



December 12, 2007, Kibera—Leda

LEDA WOKE IN the morning to her noisy new home.

She heard scampering feet and giggles outside the door, trailed by Ita’s rich laugh. Pots and cups. Brooms and flapping wet clothes and splashing water. The clinking, clattering routine of a new day. It was a palpable difference from her home in Topanga, where the birds and the wind competed to be the noisiest, and neither was louder than the classical music on Leda’s laptop. And Estella’s house, where she’d grown up, was glass and sky and sea, and anytime one of them spoke they made the other jump.

Leda lifted herself to an elbow on the metal bed. The skin on her neck and arms screamed in protest, and the memory of the previous night, with Ita and Chege, came back to her in the little room. The tube of cream still sat on the table.

She looked at the half-empty tube and thought of Ita’s strong, smooth hands on her skin, moving across her chest above her breasts, sliding down her arms, encircling her wrists with the cool, slippery cream. Remembering, she felt her nipples harden under her shirt.

“Hodi!” a little voice squeaked, making Leda jump.

The stampede of little footsteps had halted outside the door.

A whisper came next, Ita’s, something Leda couldn’t make out.

“May—” the little voice started.

Ita’s whisper again.

“May...we...come in?”

Leda smiled. “Karibu! Come in!”

The door slid aside and light flooded in, sparkling, but not as bright as Ntimi’s smile. “Habari ya asubuhi. Hujambo, bibi.”

Bibi was a term of respect, for a lady. “Hujambo, Ntimi.”

“Good morning,” Michael said. But more instructional, for the boys, than as a greeting for Leda.

“Good morning, Michael,” she said and smiled as widely as she could manage.

Michael held a tray with both hands. He stepped around Ntimi and toward Leda until she saw what it held. A cup of tea and a chunk of bread on an orange plastic plate.

Leda scooted over and Michael set the breakfast down on the blanket.

Ntimi beamed. He motioned with his hand, a grand invitation that Leda was happy to oblige. She picked up the cup carefully and sipped the tea under the many little eyes, making a loud slurping noise on purpose. “Deee-licious!” she proclaimed and the boys laughed. And it was. The tea was milky and spicy sweet. It would be difficult to ever go back to Earl Grey.

When she looked up, Ita was watching her with a look sweeter than the tea. The haunted look from last night was gone, as if it had never happened. “So,” he said. “You lived.”

“Not funny,” she said.

“No, it isn’t funny.” His lips settled into seriousness. “I will have to apply the cream many times, at night, so you heal properly.”

Leda almost spit out the tea. Was that as naughty a glimmer in his eyes as she thought? She got turned on again, seeing it. “Yes, doctor,” she said, finally.

Ntimi figured out what they were talking about—though hopefully not the subtext—and he came over to inspect her burns. “Pole, pole,” he said as studied the blisters.

Ita cleared his throat with a cough. “Well, we will let you get dressed,” he said, followed by, “Kwenda, kwenda”—go, go—as he herded the boys out the door.

Leda watched them go, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust as they went.

Then Ita reappeared. “Can I get you anything? Anything you need?”

She looked at his face, full of kindess and a wriggle of worry that Leda suspected was about whether she was comfortable there, if she was happy with the room and the food. She looked longer at his soft, full lips. She thought about it—if there was anything missing, anything she needed. She knew the answer in her bones.

“Not at all,” she said. “I am...complete.”

And as his smile bathed her, before he turned and gently slid shut the door, Leda felt how true it was, what she’d said. The lingering shadows of the night—Chege’s nasty comments, the awful handing over of the money—Leda knew she shouldn’t ignore them, but she didn’t want to chase away the new feeling settling inside her.

Happiness.

* * *

The feeling carried Leda through the day, as if she’d boarded a hot air balloon to float high above the usual malaise of mental chatter.

After the boys left for school, Mary took Walter with her to run errands, so Ita and Leda were left to build bunk beds alone.

As they stacked piles of wood and counted out the nails, a giddy anticipation hung between them, as if they were waiting in line at an ice cream truck. The sweat and labor of it became harmonious, the passing of nails and wood a duet like slow dancing.

When Leda stepped outside to get more wood, she realized what was different today. Her mind, usually racing off on a desperate hunt for answers, certainty, seemed to have found whatever it was searching for or happily given up. Even the anticipation with Ita felt warm and buttery, not something to fret over, but to relish. Leda paused before going back into the boys’ room. She put a hand on her chest. No tightness, no vise to unscrew. She stepped back inside and Ita’s eyes were waiting for her, calm as the feeling above her heart.

“Is this enough?” she asked, holding out the wood in her arms.

“Definitely,” he said, and waved her over.

“So, how do we fit four bunk beds, that is the question, right?”

“Four?” he asked. “I thought two. Don’t you think the boys will like to sleep side by side, two or three together?”

Leda smiled. All her American notions were challenged here. “Back home, people are so concerned about privacy.”

Ita looked at her softly. “Because they are raising children to be alone.” He paused and the hum of the slum outside made his point. “What would be the point of that here?”

She stood in the doorway and thought about it, about having been raised to be alone. That was the right way to put it, she realized. She’d just never thought about it like that. She stared off, thinking of America’s individualistic society, designed to raise individuals.

“Leda,” Ita said with a grin. “Where do you go when you do that?”

She blushed, caught. It was funny, most people never noticed her daydreaming, let alone whether or not she wasn’t in the room anymore. “I’m back,” she said. She set down the wood slats on the ground and knelt next to Ita.

For the next two hours, they attacked the project of the bunk beds, all the while chatting like chess players in the park—easily, for the joy of it. Ita asked her about her studies, her house, her neighborhood, neighbors, Amadeus.

Leda answered everything, politely and happily, but she felt like bread in a toaster, burning with questions of her own.

“How did you meet Chege? What was he like?” she asked, taking the hammer from Ita. “It’s hard to imagine him as a child.” If Chege was his friend, there had to be a reason. Something had brought them together.

After Leda banged in both nails, though, Ita remained silent.

She looked up. He met her eyes, and his thoughts were clear. He’d heard the judgment in her voice. “I-I’m sorry.” Leda stammered. “I didn’t mean—”

“Is it easy to imagine me as a child?”

She smiled. “Yes.”

He didn’t return the smile. A storm of emotion clouded his face. “Kibera is a difficult place to be a child. In the way that you mean it. A difficult place to be innocent. Good.”

She quashed the urge to change the subject. “What did you do?”

Ita looked as if she’d pinched him. Then he set his jaw and looked at her evenly. “Begged. Stole. Robbed. Hurt people.” He stared, testing her. Daring her to condemn him.

Her palm around the hammer grew sweaty. “I’m sure everything you did, you had to. It’s different when you do something bad to survive.”

“That is what Chege would say.”

Ita straightened, took the hammer from her hands and lifted a frame into place, leaving Leda huddled on the ground, her empty hands trembling. She’d failed the test, disappointed him, she knew. Watching him—his purposeful hands, his regal posture, his skin smoothed over his beautiful face, she had the strangest thought. I know how Chege must have felt. Why he wanted to help Ita, protect him.

“Well, it was for a reason,” she said. “Look what you’ve accomplished. The orphanage. The safari business. School. Tell me about school.”

Ita’s shoulders had dipped, relaxed as she mentioned the orphanage and safaris. At the word school, his muscles tensed again. “Finishing grade school was a miracle. Then I got sponsored by a family in Nairobi. Who wanted to help a slum kid with...”

“Promise,” Leda finished.

He shook his head with a smile, remembering. “It was like a dream, starting at the University of Nairobi.”

“I’m sure you were the perfect student.” She pictured him on the campus grounds, suddenly ensconced in marble and grass.

“It was perfect. So perfect I should have known it couldn’t last.” He hammered a nail into the wood.

Leda’s smile faltered and fell. “What happened?”

He didn’t answer, hammered four nails, one after another, hard.

Not easy things to talk about, she realized, mad at herself again. She fumbled for a way to change the subject but before she could think of anything he started speaking again.

“Everything fell apart, like Kibera homes when the rains come. My sponsor family lost their fortune, but no one told me until it was too late. I asked the doctors at the clinic, foreigners I knew, for help, but...talk of money makes people curl up like bugs in a fire.”

Ita struck a nail as forcibly as squashing a beetle. Leda looked at the blisters on her wrists, remembered last night’s argument with Chege, how she thrust the money at him and kicked them both out of the room.

“The university sent me a letter. It was over. That’s when Michael arrived.”

Leda couldn’t take her eyes off the blisters on her hands. So ugly, marred. Her calves shook from squatting. She was furious at herself for upsetting Ita, upsetting their lovely afternoon. It was hard for him to talk about it. But he wants to. Each time, she realized, he’d hesitated, then told her the truth. Her legs stopped shaking. She moved closer to him, helped position the wood he’d picked up.

Ita noticed her hesitating, staring at him. “What?” he asked.

“That female doctor at the clinic, something she said about you. I keep remembering it.” She paused and lost a little nerve, having him so close she could smell him, feel the heat coming off his body. Ita looked at her, waiting. “She said imagine what someone like you could have done with money and privilege.”

“Someone like me?”

She lowered her eyes, so she would say it. “Someone driven, brilliant. Someone deserving.”

He sighed. “And does the world care what people deserve and what they get?”

Leda swallowed hard. No, she thought. The world has a shitty accountant. People like her get too much and fall short and people like him—

She could feel the ease slipping away for good. She couldn’t be the one that drove it away. Her mind came up with Americans’ favorite daydream game. “What would you do with a million dollars?”

He was surprised, but he took the bait. With no mulling, he said, “I would build a bigger orphanage and a big school. I would hire good people to run it and then I would go back to school, myself.”

“No cars or houses?”

He laughed. “How much is a million? I’m sure it is enough for cars and clothes and a house.” He looked off into the distance. “And I would go places. I would see the sea. I would go the places you have gone.”

His lack of bitterness made her feel queasy with guilt. “You see? You deserve it. You would do good things.”

“So would you, since you are here,” he said. “Your turn. What would you do with a million dollars?”

Leda looked away, startled. But of course that’s the question he’d ask next. She’d been careful so far, when she spoke of Estella, of her life in California, not to say anything too specific. Why? Why was she hiding her wealth from him? For safety, she probably would have said. But no, it was that same feeling causing her stomach to churn. Guilt.

Ita was still smiling, but he wasn’t stupid. He saw he’d struck a nerve. His next question was softer. “Would you have a family?”

She felt a golf ball roll to a stop in her throat. “I’m not so good with them.”

“With families?” She knew he wanted to understand, but that he wouldn’t press too far. He would wait a million years until she was ready.

“With relationships,” she said. “Not like you are, I’m sure.”

“I’m not good with relationships,” he said, surprising her with his change in tone.

She looked at him, reconsidering. Ita was around her age and single. That wasn’t so strange in California, but it must be here. There had to be a reason. There had to be hurt there. Maybe relationships just haven’t been good to you.

Ita snapped back from wherever he’d gone off to. “But I’m good with kids.” He was trying to make light. “Before it’s too late, before they become too—”

“Damaged,” she said. “Haunted?”

He shook his head. “They are those things,” he said heavily, and Leda could hear his unspoken qualifier—in Kibera.

Suddenly there was a rattle of metal and a thump, and they were both on their feet. They were headed for the door when they heard the footsteps running toward them.

Ita yanked aside the sheet. “Jomo! What are you doing?”

Jomo stood where he was, his chest heaving like a bird fallen from its nest. He didn’t answer, just looked at them both, blocking the entrance to the bedroom, first in confusion, then in suspicion. What are you up to? his narrowed eyes asked.

“Bunk beds,” Leda said.

She watched the boy’s face grow curious.

But Ita’s face was tinged with anger. “Jomo. Answer me. Kwa nini si wewe katika shule?”

Why aren’t you in school? Leda translated slowly. But Jomo’s eyes traveled to the dirt at his feet, his mouth showing no plans to answer. Her heart went out to him, remembering being yelled at as a child for sneaking off, for being quiet and wanting to be alone. It was like looking in a mirror. She would have the same body language as Jomo now—drawing pictures in the dirt with his sandal, mind off on a mission elsewhere.

“Come in, Jomo.” She waved him inside. “You just wanted first pick, didn’t you? Pretty smart,” she said and tapped at her temple. But she stepped aside so Jomo could enter the bedroom with plenty of space.

Jomo’s eyes went wide as he surveyed the beds, almost finished. He walked to one of the bunk beds. The top bunk was just above his head. He put out a hand to touch the wood.

“Ladders,” Ita said. “Ngazi. To climb up.” He pointed at the mat, where they had almost finished the first ladder. “Want to help?”

Ita knelt down and picked up a slat of wood that would be a rung. He used the measuring tape and pencil to mark off the right spot. Then he turned the ladder up sideways, lined up the slat of wood and struck a nail to hold it firm. After, he put the ladder flat and held out the hammer to Jomo. Leda held her breath.

The boy took the hammer. He knelt down on the other side, across from Ita. He picked up a nail with his slender fingers. Jomo chewed his lip as he held the nail in place and then whacked it repeatedly, stopping when the nail was all the way in. With a tiny nod, he reached out for the measuring tape. He’d been paying close attention. Jomo took the pencil and marked off the spot for the next rung.

Leda watched Ita as he watched Jomo with gentle, approving eyes. She could tell that he was holding himself still, not wanting to break the moment. She felt such a tenderness for them both that she had to put her hand to the door frame to steady herself. The love Ita showed these boys who came to him broken and bruised touched a deep part of her she’d almost forgotten about, the part of her that had once believed she could trust, love, without shielding her heart.

“Very good, Jomo,” Ita whispered and Jomo froze. “I bet you will be an engineer. Mhandisi.”

Jomo understood. He didn’t smile, but his lips lost the grimace he carried around all the time. The boy flipped the ladder over with a thunk onto the mat, buoyed with new confidence.

When he finished the rung, he didn’t look up. He looked at the mat and seemed to be waiting.

“Jomo,” Ita whispered. “What would you do with a million dollars?”

Leda inhaled.

Jomo looked up, uncomprehending.

“What would you do with five dollars?” Leda asked slowly, compromising with his frame of reference.

Jomo looked at her. His expression was shy, but he was no dummy. His eyes searched her face.

“Movie,” he said, serious as can be. The first word he’d spoken to her.

Leda couldn’t help it, she laughed aloud. Then she asked earnestly, “Is there a movie theater in Kibera?”

Ita snorted. “Of course.”

“Friday,” she said, slowly, “ljumaa,” looking at Ita to see if her translation was correct. He nodded, smiling. “It’s a date.”