What Tears Us Apart

Chapter 19



December 18, 2007, Amboseli Community Campsite—Leda

SAFARI WAS MOTHER Earth’s best photo shoot, it was seeing her in her prime. Their first game drive coming to an end, Leda marveled at acacia trees basking in the sunset, branches waving to the sky, thanking it for warming their tops as the evening cooled off.

From their perch in the jeep, Leda and the group watched all kinds of animals following the trees’ lead—enjoying the end of the day, tucking in for the night. They passed hippos slathering themselves in a mud pond like gossiping women at a Roman spa. Esther belly laughed at the sun dipping behind a family of giraffes, babies nuzzling their parents’ knobby knees. The sweeping gold plains waltzed with the blazing sky. Birds swooped and surfed the wind. Zebras lollygagged like teenagers at the mall.

As the travelers gazed in wonder, Ita drove them, zipping along the red earth road back to camp, racing against the setting sun.

* * *

Ita built them a campfire before he went off to prepare dinner. Leda settled comfortably into the chair he’d unfolded for her in a prime spot with the best view of the mountain. Again, he refused to let her help with the meal preparation. She would have protested more, except that she was wiped out from the drive, and he seemed so happy to pamper her. She figured they’d have more sandwiches from that big, lit wooden building over past the showers.

Other groups could be heard merrymaking nearby. Campfires dotted the grassy hill they occupied. But no amount of human flame could blot out the stars that twinkled above them. It was like viewing a sea of diamonds from beneath the surface. Leda floated happily on the vision.

As Esther and Martha chattered sleepily to each other, the father/daughter pair sipped hot tea, and the couple discussed the restrooms, Leda wrapped herself up tight in the red Maasai blanket Ita had given her and imagined it smelled like him, the same earthy scent of the blanket on her metal table/bed at the orphanage.

“How many hippos would you say that was, Sarah?” the father asked his daughter.

“A thousand?” she replied and everybody laughed.

“But it did seem like that many, didn’t it?” Esther said. “And those hyenas. Wretched little creatures, lying about in their own mess, cackling the day away. They remind me of my husband.”

“And those zebras,” Martha broke in. “Like a Missoni fashion show...” Around and around they went, discussing their impressions of the day’s sights, until Sarah dozed off and her father saved her mug from spilling out of her lax hand just in time.

Leda was feeling as though she might doze off herself when Ita reappeared. He carried an enormous tray of plates piled with steaming food.

“Would you look at that spread!” Esther said, licking her lips and getting up to help Ita serve the food.

Leda took her plate, surprised at the gourmet meal that was to replace her expectation of sandwiches. Each plate held a cup of soup, pan-fried chicken and vegetables, and mashed potatoes on the side.

Esther was right—this was luxury camping. Everyone dug in with a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs.” Leda slurped up some heavenly soup—homemade celery and onion, creamy and buttery.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Ita watching her expectantly.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Did you cook all this?”

Ita grinned and nodded, then he turned and headed back toward the kitchen, leaving her stunned.

“A gourmet chef to boot,” Martha cooed. “I do believe I’m in love.”

When Leda’s spoon splashed down in her soup, Martha looked over and caught her blushing. “Too bad he’s taken,” she said with a wink.

Ita returned with beverages. “Anybody need anything else?” he asked. He handed out the sodas, then put his hands over the fire to fight the evening’s dipping temperature.

“Oh, no, dear,” Esther said. “Lordy no. Look at all this grub. You just sit your skinny arse down, it must be foundered.” She shivered, so Leda guessed she meant Ita’s skinny arse must be cold.

Martha pointed at Sarah fast asleep in the chair next to Leda. “Reckon you can take her seat. Tuckered out, that one.”

Sarah’s father took the hint and scooped his daughter from the chair into his lap.

Ita smiled and sat down shyly next to Leda. They weren’t fooling anybody.

Martha piped up. “There is one more thing we need, dearie. You can tell us a story. A story fit for a campfire.”

“Like a fairy tale?” Ita asked.

Esther swallowed a loud gulp of soda and smiled. “You must know plenty, what with the lads you tuck in every night.”

Ita nodded. “You want to know how elephants came to be?”

“Yes!” Leda said, too loudly.

Ita cleared his throat. “One day,” he began, “a poor man heard of Ivonya-Ngia, which means ‘The one who feeds the poor.’”

Leda watched his face as he spoke, envisioning the boys at the orphanage enchanted by his voice.

“He set out to find him, and did, discovering a land of green pasture that held a million cattle. Ivonya-Ngia offered the poor man one hundred cows.”

Leda imagined Ntimi trying to picture a hundred cows, let alone a million.

“‘I want no charity,’” Ita said in a booming voice, imitating the poor man’s refusal of the cows. “‘I want the secret of how to become rich.’” He looked around the circle as he spoke and began to mime the story. “Ivonya-Ngia answered by taking out an ointment. He told the poor man, ‘Rub this on your wife’s upper teeth. When they grow, sell them.’ The husband persuaded his wife to comply. Her canine teeth grew into tusks as long as his arm. He pulled the teeth and sold them and they had lots of money. But—” Ita paused for drama “—the next time his wife’s teeth grew, she would not let her husband extract them. She gained weight, her skin grew thick and gray. One day she left for the forest, where she gave birth to their son, who was also an elephant. The husband found her in the forest, but she would not come back to him. She was happy, she said, being an elephant.”

Be careful what you wish for, Leda thought. Or was it money isn’t everything?

“Was that a Kikuyu story?” Sarah’s father, Tom, was intrigued. “It sounds like a story I read.”

“It’s from the Kamba,” Ita replied. “They are a similar tribe to Kikuyu. Neighbors. They share many stories and religious similarities.” He looked into the fire as he spoke.

“Are you Kikuyu, Ita?” Tom asked, craning forward over his sleeping child. “I’ve been following the elections. The sitting president, Kibaki, is Kikuyu. Do you think Kibera residents care more about politics or tribe? Would a Kikuyu consider themselves Kikuyu first? Or from Kibera?”

Ita squirmed in his seat, all eyes on him, but differently than a moment before, when he was their handsome storyteller.

“I am as Kikuyu as I am Christian,” Ita said softly as he stood to tend the fire, obviously wanting to be done with the conversation.

Tom laughed. “Touché.”

While the rest of the group pondered Ita’s statement, Tom kept at it. “You mean tribal affiliation is complicated, just like religious identity is...everywhere.”

Ita sat back down, straight backed. “I meant that tribal identity is woven into a person’s soul from birth, the same way a child is exposed to religion—through holidays, rituals and formative memories. It is not something you think about until it is threatened or viewed by an outsider.”

Ita didn’t look directly at Tom, but his audience was clear what he meant. Leda was proud of him. And impressed.

“Indeed.” Tom looked at Ita appreciatively, too. “Well, I would love to hear more folklore. Anyone else?”

“If Ita wants to indulge us, yes, please,” Esther said.

Leda looked at Tom and the Irish ladies, smiling in the glow, and decided they weren’t very skilled at social cues. Ita sighed, almost imperceptibly, but Leda felt it. As if suddenly remembering who was footing the bill, he resumed the role of obliging guide.

“Kikuyu means fig tree, fertility,” he said, and Esther and Martha poked each other, watching Ita’s handsome face in the firelight. “Kikuyus call God Ngai, The Apportioner, because God gave gifts to all the nations of the earth. Kikuyus received the skill of agriculture. God controls everything, including the rain and the thunder, which he uses to punish evildoers.” Ita looked to the sky ominously.

He’s a natural, Leda thought.

“Every person has a spirit, ngoma,” he continued, gazing around the circle, “which after death becomes a ghost. The ngoma of a murdered man will hunt his murderer until he confesses, preferring prison to the relentless ghost.”

The chill in the air made a ghost story all the more fitting for their campfire. Esther made a wooooo sound in Martha’s ear, making her jump.

Ita lowered his voice another notch. “Burial rituals must be observed, because spirits are to be feared. They live in the trees, and you must feed them—”

Leda recalled piles of food she’d seen one day in Kibera. Too tidy to be scraps. Offerings, Ita had said.

“—or else Ngai will punish you with lightning. But—” He broke off. His gaze landed on Leda. “Kikuyus believe that a man’s character is decided by God. He cannot help what he is. And his life—rewards or punishments—is predestined.”

Leda looked back into Ita’s eyes, hypnotized by the shadows dancing over his face. How handsome he looked, bathed in the fire glow. But haunted. Leda could sense the ghosts that swirled around him, followed him. She shivered and wrapped her arms tighter around herself to listen to his next tale about destiny.

Eventually there were no more requests from the sleepy audience. The group splintered off for bed, in pairs, to their tents. Leda had her own tent, as did Ita, far off somewhere, apart from the group’s circle.

Ita made the rounds, making sure everyone was comfortable, had everything they needed, while Leda slunk nervously off to her tent.

She stepped in and sat down, breathlessly debating what to do. Undress? She’d worn matching lace panties and bra under her safari clothes all day, but, come on, it was freezing. Her skin prickled with gooseflesh as she deliberated. All day, she’d been waiting, all night, waiting to touch him, kiss him, feel those hands run over her skin again.

Finally, Ita’s footsteps stopped outside her tent. “Everything okay? Anything you need?” he asked loudly.

Leda smiled. She poked her head out, and he looked down at her.

“Later,” he whispered. He looked left and right, before placing a warm, soft kiss on her forehead. “Soon.”

She zipped up in her tent and endured the longest wait of her life, all thirty minutes of it. Nervousness unfolded in her stomach like tulips shivering in a breeze. Ita was so tender, it disarmed her. The electricity she felt around him raised every hair on her body, but it was about to set her on fire. Whoever first said the thing about the butterflies, Leda decided, they weren’t a genius. They were stating the obvious.

“Leda,” a whisper came in the night.

She jolted in her tent, trying not to pant. She heard Ita’s shuffling feet on the ground just outside. With trembling fingers, she unzipped a tiny gap in the entrance to the tent, granting herself a breathtaking view of the moon and Mount Kilamanjaro. But even those were dwarfed by Ita’s smile.

“May I come in?” he whispered, hunched over in the dark, cold night like a naughty teenager sneaking out.

She nodded eagerly. As he slipped in past her, she zipped up the tent against the last sliver of the sea of stars.

She scooted on her knees to meet him in the middle of the tent. Gently, he pressed their foreheads together so their smiles could look themselves in the mirror. It was such an innocent gesture, it warmed Leda’s skin in the cold air.

He put a hand to the small of her back and pulled her in. His lips found hers and she dove into the softness. His hands caressed her back and flank, and hers went exploring, too. They kissed, grasping and breathing and stroking, until the desire built up between them like an underground spring.

Leda untangled herself. She lay down, stretched out on the sleeping bag, and Ita snuggled in beside her. He didn’t jump on her hungrily as she expected him to. Or as she wanted him to. He traced his fingers over her face and brushed back the baby hairs from her temples.

“It is as if you came from the stars,” he said.

But she didn’t have a chance to respond, because he kissed her, first her eyelids, then her cheeks, her earlobes, her neck—in a slow procession that made her arch and squirm and moan.

He took his sweet time with her body, his hands taking laps like a runner pacing himself around the track. Off came her shirt, so he could kiss her collarbone, tenderly kiss her healing henna marks. For a moment, he held her hand to his cheek. Next, he kissed her sternum, then just above and just below her belly button. After he tugged off her pants, he kissed each of her hips and her sides and the tops of her knees.

Then he stopped, looking up, pausing to catch his breath, or else for permission. Whichever it was, Leda nodded. Yes. Please.

He pulled down her panties and nuzzled his nose in the uncovered triangle of hair, the most endearing gesture. What he did after that, however, was hardly so innocent. He stripped off his own clothes, giving Leda a view of muscle and girth that made her moan, then he dove down on her, his mouth a magical combination of softness and pressure—urgency mingling with relish.

Leda lay splayed like an anemone and Ita washed over her like the sea. She let herself be nourished, by his touch, by his tongue, by the way he looked at her as if she really was a shooting star falling from the night sky.

And then, after he retraced his path of kisses from her hips to her neck, he kissed her, achingly hard, as he readied himself, then thrust inside her in one deep swoop from tip to base.

Leda cried out beneath his lips. She arched into him, her back like the crescent moon, then curled up her hips, forcing him in even deeper, allowing it, needing it, so thick and so hard her body squealed against the fullness, but begged for it.

Ita groaned. He plunged into her, harder, faster. He grabbed both her hips, pulling her to him. When he reached beneath her, gripping her ass, Leda bit down on her fingers to keep from crying out.

Suddenly, smoothly, he rolled her, pulling Leda on top. With her breasts in his hands, he squeezed shut his eyes and let her ride until she came. The first orgasm was a torrential surprise, the second a cresting wave, the third a rocking hurricane, whereupon she collapsed into his scent and skin, consumed by pleasure. Once she’d exhausted herself, Ita rolled her over again, flipped himself on top.

His eyes searched for hers. Even in the near darkness, she could see his gaze, loving, hoping.

This time as Ita entered her, it was slow as honey drizzling into tea. He kept his eyes locked on hers, in and out, in and out, until Leda felt tears well in her eyes. He put his hand to her cheek, on the side of her scar. First he wiped the tear with his thumb, then he caressed the wizened skin at her jaw, as if he could smooth it away—the memory, the pain, the hurt. By the time he leaned forward to kiss her, by the time his lips closed over hers, they were both coming like the rumble of a crumbling dam, wrapping their arms tight around each other once the gushing broke through and overtook them both.

* * *

Ita lay with her for a long, long time, staring into the dark. Playfully, they whispered little dreams back and forth, each starting with the magical phrase we could.

“We could take the boys on safari,” Leda said, picturing them piled up in the jeep, pointing out elephants. “Or we could go other places in Africa. The pyramids. Egypt. The Nile.”

“We could visit your home,” he said.

She sucked in a breath. It was the sound of the cartoon dream bubble above them threatening to pop. “We could.”

She tried to imagine Ita in Topanga. It wasn’t that hard, actually. She saw him scratching Amadeus behind the ears, looking through her bookshelves, lying beside her like he was now. Maybe he was what had been missing from her home. He would fill the airy rooms with coziness, warmth, laughter. Happiness.

He kissed her earlobe, ran his hand along the curve of her hip. “It is difficult to imagine giving this up now that I have tasted it.”

Leda sighed. You took the words right out of my mouth.