What Tears Us Apart

Chapter 16



January 1, 2008, Kibera—Ita

IT’S REALLY HER.

Kioni is really there, right before his eyes—her diminutive frame engulfed in a black cotton dress and shawl, clutching a laden bag.

Ita is too shocked to step aside, to let her in. So they stand facing each other, equally mesmerized, equally gripped by the bleeding fist of the past.

Kioni, the little girl in his dreams and nightmares, all grown up.

Her eyes brim with tears. She takes the first step, Ita steps back. And then she is in, slipped through the doorway like the shadow of a storm. She winds her arms around his neck, tightening her grasp like a garden snake, and presses her dry nose into his neck.

Then suddenly she goes limp, as if her spine turned to dust. She hangs from him like a collar of chains and he stumbles, trying to hold her weight. Her serrated breath darts in his ear, she’s shaking like a baby bird flung from the treetops. Ita’s eyes close automatically and his mind swerves back through time, remembering the quick, trembling breath of a miniature Kioni dashing after him in the night, thrusting her fate into his hands.


April 19, 1990, Kibera—Ita

“Don’t look back,” Ita says and clasps the little girl’s hand tighter, not sure if he’s talking to her or himself.

The girl is lightning fast, he is glad to note. And she isn’t crying anymore. She speeds after him, barefoot, and Ita is sure she is cutting her feet on the jagged night.

The slobbering men stay on their heels for three turns, enjoying the sport of it, calling out the terrible things they will do when they catch them. Ita’s neck they will snap like a chicken’s, to the girl they will do much worse.

When the thunder of their footsteps slows, then stops, Ita can hear only the panting of the fleeing trio. But they don’t stop. He and the little girl keep after Chege like a family of antelope, squeezing between the houses of sleeping families, ducking under jutting roofs and dukas, leaping over trash piles.

Ita knows where Chege is headed—out past the railroad, to the landfill where they used to sleep when they first met. It is the safest place.

When Chege leads the way into a ravine, he stops so suddenly, Ita nearly tumbles on top of him.

Chege bends over, heaving to catch his breath and Ita puts his hands on his knees to do the same. The little girl, Kioni, collapses to the ground, her body convulsing. When she starts to cry, it isn’t the mewling of a cat, it’s full-size adult sobs of misery that pour from the tiny creature.

“Make her stop,” Chege says in between gasping breaths.

Ita goes to sit next to her. She doesn’t even look over. She’s intent on pouring all her soul into the wailing, as if she wants God to hear, the stars to see, the whole world to know her pain.

Ita feels a prick of fear—her crying could mean more trouble and they are all so tired. Soon, Chege’s fury will turn squarely onto this little girl, and Chege’s rage can be much like her crying in its fervor.

Ita digs into the little pocket on the inside waistband of his pants. His secret hiding place for the only precious thing he owns.

He takes out the necklace—the gold sparrow darting into the humid night air. He stares at the shimmering charm, always rousing the last memories of his mother.

He dangles it inches from the weeping girl’s face, before her squeezed-shut swollen eyes, hoping to dazzle her out of the fit. With a sob, she opens them, and is instantly entranced, her crying corked like a bottle. For a moment, both she and Ita peer at the necklace together, the gold bird suspended between their faces.

Then Kioni reaches out, her tiny fingers yearning for the necklace, a smile curling on her lips.

But Ita yanks the necklace away, more viciously than he intended.

Chege cackles. “You can’t touch it.” He’s been watching them. “He won’t let anyone hold it, let alone sell it, like we should have a million years ago. He rather me knife an old man for his watch.”

“You do that?” Kioni first trains her wide eyes on Ita. When she switches to Chege, then back and forth between them, reconsidering her saviors, the volley churning Ita’s stomach into a cesspool. He can see it—her dawning realization that she’s escaped the horsemen of hell only to meet their messenger boys.

Chege crosses his arms over his chest and huffs, making full use of his towering position over her. “He smart. He different. But what use we have for you, huh?” He looks at Ita. “She won’t last a month.”

Ita hangs his head. He looks at the necklace in his hand. “It was my mother’s,” he whispers.

Kioni peers into his palm, too, as though trying to read his future. “My mother’s gone, too,” she says, not because he hasn’t guessed as much—a half-starved shoeless girl alone in the night—but more like she hasn’t said it enough times yet to make it real. He knows the feeling too well. “Do you really do those bad things?”

She doesn’t meet his eyes as she asks, and Ita avoids hers, as well. They both sit staring at the necklace until Ita folds his hand shut and tucks it out of sight into its hiding place. Kioni has her answer.

“Only when you have to,” she says.

Chege’s head cocks sharply, his face switching from ire to approval, and Ita feels a wave of nausea.

But it is settled. Kioni is one of them.


January 1, 2008, Kibera—Ita

Ita snaps back to the present when he hears Michael come up behind them in the courtyard, staring at the disheveled woman in Ita’s arms, his eyes widening and narrowing with the rampant fluctuations of child emotions.

With Kioni still wrapped around his neck, Ita lumbers toward the stool. He sets her down, gently disentangling himself from her hot, dusty limbs. He nods at Michael and the boy padlocks the gate.

Slipping a finger under Kioni’s chin, Ita lifts her head softly to peer into her eyes. They are exactly the same as he remembers—pupils big and shiny as an oil spill. When his gaze shifts to the scar beneath her left eye, he feels his stomach clench. Everything about her presence makes his body stiffen like a corpse.

“What happened, Kioni? Why are you here?”

She holds his gaze, her lips pursed as if her next words have been rehearsed, likely a thousand times or more in her journey from her faraway home. But under Ita’s eyes, her courage turns to leaves curling in a fire, her words crackling embers that singe his skin.

“They burned everything,” she says. “The school. My house. Everything. And what the men did to each other...and to children.” She shakes her head at the images seared into her mind. “I took a bus as far as the money lasted. And then I walked. I’ve no one else—nowhere else to go.”

Kioni gives out, like an exhausted battery. Ita can only imagine what she went through to get here.

But the thought of her being here, staying here, being so close to him—it makes Ita recoil, makes him want to throw himself to the dirt or jump into a fire.

But we are already in the flames, he thinks. And Kioni is where the fire started.

He has outrun the blaze all this time, thinking he could avenge his regrets with a good life, but that was a lie. Divine retribution doesn’t follow man’s rules. He will pay for his mistakes, his failures. If Kioni has nowhere to go, then she has not made a family. In the fourteen years since she fled, grew into a woman, she has not found a husband. And if that is true, whose fault is it but his?

Ita nods at the night sky, knows the stars are watching, his payment due.

“You’re safe,” he tells her. “You will stay here with me. With us.”

He turns to Michael. With a reassuring smile and a wave of his hand, he sends the boy back to his room.

The decision is made, was made long before she got here. “Thank you,” she says softly.

Fetching another stool, he sits, not too close and not too far.

“Ita?”

“Yes?”

“Where’s Chege? Is he okay?”

His teeth clamp together, it feels impossible to force the words through them. “I don’t know where Chege is.”

She looks down at the ground, at the bag by her feet, snatched as she fled a smoldering life. Finally, the tears spill down her cheeks. There is no sound, just tiny rivers dripping off the cliff of her chin.

Ita scoots his stool closer. When he rests his arm around her shoulders, he can’t help but think of the days and nights and years they huddled together like this, against the rain, against the dogged hunger, against injustice and hopelessness and a horde of constant threats. But instead of giving comfort, touching Kioni now makes his insides squirm like worms in mud.