What Tears Us Apart

Chapter 27



December 27, 2007, Kibera—Leda

CHEGE’S LIPS, CLOSED over hers, were softer than she would have imagined. He stroked her tongue with his, gently, like he knew her, understood her, knew what she wanted. He tasted like smoke, like a bonfire, he tasted like the air that safari night when Ita told stories around the fire.

Ita.

Leda’s heart dove into her throat and began to thunder. The effects of the changaa evaporated like dew in a desert. As she jerked free, air pricked her wet lips and her mind picked up speed. What had she done?

Chege watched her implode, smiling like a Cheshire cat, his lips spreading wider by the second, enjoying Leda’s collapse. His smile curdled her stomach, sour vomit rose in her throat. She scuttled away from his grin, struggling to get her brittle legs beneath her.

As she staggered to her feet, she looked around at the world caving in like a crumbling cliff. In the distance, in the kitchen, she registered the clinking and clattering of the boys. The thought of facing them made her ill. She looked to the door behind her, imagined she heard Ita returning with Mary.

Flashes of the fallout whipped through her mind. Chege telling him what happened. Ita’s eyes turning on her. He wouldn’t believe it at first. But then he would look into her guilty face and he would see. He would see her for the monster she really was.

The whole time, Chege’s eyes never left her. Leda felt his gaze crawling over her skin, enjoying himself. When she dared to look at him, he met her dead-on, yellow eyes glittering like a cat in the darkness. “Run,” he whispered.

Leda staggered backward, her mind reeling. What should she do? What could she do?

She had to think. She had to get away from Chege.

Leda dashed to her room. Inside, she panted, her mind whirring like a blender, thoughts whipped into madness. She would say that Chege tricked her. That it was all a mistake. He took advantage. She was drunk—

Her heart sank. It was hopeless. She’d taken the drink. She’d let him kiss her.

With tears blurring her vision, Leda started to pack her things. She snatched up items and stuffed them into her suitcases—medicine, toiletries, cameras, clothes. Suddenly she stopped.

She looked at all her things. She took the memory card out of the camera and set the camera back down. Then she reached for her money belt, and stood up. She fastened the carrier under her waistband, lowered her shirt, and left the room.

The courtyard was empty. She could hear Chege with the boys in the kitchen, clearing her an exit ramp to the gate. Her heart was still torn, thinking of leaving the children like this, but the second she pictured anew Ita coming home, Chege rushing to meet him, telling him—

Leda hurried across the courtyard, slid open the door, and left.

* * *

As soon as Leda checked back into the hotel, she stumbled into the room of white walls and mahogany furniture and collapsed onto the bed.

She watched the ceiling spin. She imagined she could smell Chege’s scent on her, like smoke, and taste the liquor on her breath. She ran to the bathroom and threw up, three times in a row. She realized she hadn’t even left a note for Ita.

But Chege would tell him. Wasn’t that why he’d done it—to kill their relationship and send her away? Leda clawed at her face, climbed back into bed and smothered her head under a pillow. She was a monster.

Chege hadn’t tricked her. What he’d done was demonstrate his point. She didn’t deserve Ita. He was right.

And now Chege could tell him as much, with proof. Throw it in Ita’s face.

God, she was such a fool. Her little speech on Christmas. She shuddered, remembering his face. He does so much every day, mending souls and climbing mountains. Then she comes in with a trust-fund checkbook and a self-satisfied smile.

All the hopes and good intentions she’d brought to Kenya sucked out of her, she wrapped herself in guilt and slept. And as she drifted off, she dreamed of sparrows.

Two sparrows, soaring and dipping, weaving in the sky.

Sometimes the sparrows were black, dripping paint. Sometimes they looked real. Sometimes they were made of gold.

Leda woke up, gasping for air, her hand on the necklace still linked around her neck, burning into her flesh like the henna had. She could still feel Ita’s hands rubbing her skin with cool cream and the warmth of his smile—a memory a million miles away.

As she drifted back off, she went in and out of a twisted dreamworld. Sparrows soaring over the rusted rooftops of Kibera, carving figure eights in the clouds.

Soul mates in the sky.