What Tears Us Apart

Chapter 29



December 30, 2007, Nairobi—Leda

AFTER DREAMING OF sparrows for two days in her hotel bed, Leda jolted awake the morning of her flight, with one thought burning clear as a torch in the shuttered room. She had to return to the orphanage.

Oh, how she wished the dreams were an omen, a sign that Ita wanted her to come back. But she knew they weren’t. She didn’t deserve his forgiveness. She didn’t deserve his love. The dreams were meant to torture her, to make her see what she had destroyed, what she was giving up. Leda didn’t deserve anything from Ita, ever again.

But lying there in the spacious room, Leda knew what Ita deserved. He deserved an apology. He deserved his mother’s necklace back. And he—and the boys—deserved an investor.

You no angel. Chege’s words rang in her ears, but she pushed them aside and got out of bed.

After she packed and dressed, she took an envelope from the hotel desk. She wrote out a short note, biting her lip as she did. She tucked all the cash she had into the envelope, but it wasn’t enough. With her heart racing, Leda dug in her suitcase for her checkbook.

Once she’d tucked the check into the envelope in her money belt and gathered all her things, she stood by the door, feeling better, feeling as if she could at least do something to make up for—

Who am I kidding? She wanted to see Ita again. Yearned to see him. Nothing—not guilt or self-loathing—could stop her from wanting what she knew she didn’t deserve. She was returning because she wanted to see him, to say goodbye. She could only hope he would grace her with that.

* * *

Leda’s ankles twisted and bent as she scurried down the dirt path, crossing the sewage pond and skirting through the refuse.

Over the waterfall of her thoughts she could still see how Kibera had changed. She had watched the news at the hotel, she knew what was happening—the protests. The election results still hadn’t been announced. There were accusations of fraud, people were angry. She shouldn’t be here and she knew it.

It will be fast and then I’ll go. Her flight was in four hours. She just had to get to the orphanage quickly. The streets were quiet. The beauty shops and music stores didn’t have the usual crowds out front. At a row of dukas, a lone seller stood nervously. And the children—where were all the children?

Leda squeezed the envelope against her stomach. She looked over her shoulder. If anyone knew how much money she carried...

The road opened up before her. At the far end, she spotted a gang of men huddled together, holding signs in the air. Leda squinted to read them. Black marker on cardboard, scrawled by hand. No Raila. No peace.

No peace. Leda’s skin went cold.

Two men stepped apart and she saw what they circled—a bonfire of rubbish. The men tossed metal onto the pile, hooting and laughing.

Leda darted across the dirt path quick as a rabbit, not looking to check if they’d seen her. Her breath came shorter.

She made it to the orphanage door. She couldn’t help but remember the first day she’d arrived, how she’d stood there with Samuel, no idea the turn her life was about to take. No idea she would be offered a chance at happiness, and that she would ruin it.

She knocked, before she lost her nerve. After it received no response, she knocked again.

“Ita?”

The name stood there in the street with her. This would be last time she saw him, wouldn’t it? If he opened the door at all. With tears in her eyes, she stood and waited, hearing the men around the bend, their voices like clanking metal.

Finally there came a jangling and a welcome but awful scraping noise on the other side of the gate. Leda’s heart waited in her throat.

“Jomo,” she said when a face appeared in the crack.

When the corrugated metal inched back another tiny bit, Leda smiled big as she could manage, fifty different emotions stewing in her stomach.

Jomo’s expression, which wasn’t exactly a smile but definitely not a frown, slid off his face. He looked over his shoulder. Ita would not be happy to see her.

“It’s okay. Hakuna matata. Let me in.” Leda wedged her toe into the opening.

Jomo’s eyes met hers before he looked down at her foot in the doorway. He opened the gate the rest of the way and she stepped over the threshold.

Leda put out her hand as she scanned the courtyard. Jomo’s slender hand slipped into hers at the same moment her eyes met Ita’s.

A moment passed before Jomo’s fingers slithered away.

Leda expected to fall at Ita’s feet, repentant. But she felt something else entirely. Under his gaze, she became a ball of rising bread, music cresting. Her skin tingled. She yearned to be caressed, to feel his hands waltz over her skin in that sweeping way of his. The hairs on the crown of her head stood up like wire coils and then—

He turned off his eyes. Like closing the shutters on a midnight serenade, they went dark. And cold.

Leda’s first instinct was to run. To run out of that place. Not just out of the orphanage where children’s futures balanced on a seesaw. Not just out of Kibera, where the seesaw had tipped long ago. No, her first instinct was to run out of Kenya and away forever.

But as she shifted her weight, she felt the envelope in her money belt, pressing against her stomach. She owed him this. The truth, an apology. And the money.

“What are you doing here?” Ita growled. “Are you here to get your things?”

“No.” God, no. “I want you to have my things, keep it all. There’s medicine in there, and—” The wince in Ita’s eyes stopped her. She was bungling it already. “I came to explain.”

“You disappeared. Now you come back, only to leave again. Why?”

“Ita. Please—” She stepped closer.

“You left,” he said three octaves higher than his growl, near the whimper of a child. “Chege said—”

Leda inhaled.

“—you left early, that you didn’t want to hurt my feelings, admit you would never return. You told him you had fun, but you could never be with someone like me, could never stay in a place like Kibera.”

Chege didn’t tell him about the kiss.

Leda felt the dust at her feet turn to quicksand. She was sinking, about to be buried alive by her guilt. Chege didn’t tell him. But it still happened.

She saw the falling look on Ita’s face. He was confused, hurt. He wanted her to deny it.

“No. It isn’t like that. It wasn’t like that. I’m so sorry—” How to start? How to say it? The pain in Ita’s eyes was already too much. Telling him about Chege would double it. Would it be cowardly not to tell him, or merciful? And the children, gathered around, listening, watching—Chege had told them lies, too. Was the truth better than the lies? Leda’s heart sank. Did it matter at all? The truth was she was leaving them. “I came to say goodbye. And to give you something.”

“Will you come back?”

There it was. The question. Leda had always planned to leave. The question was what happened next. Ita’s face was changing back into itself, smoothing, calming. He was processing her reappearance, hoping—

“Do you want me to?” Leda wanted to hear him say it. Instantly, she was ashamed of herself. She was a terrible person. Ita had to know. He had to know who she really was. “I want to come back,” she said. “Desperately. But I have to tell you something first, and you will hate me for it. You won’t want me to come back.”

Ita frowned. “How could I ever hate you?”

The look on his face, gentle and concerned—it sliced through her insides. She would never be good, so unconditionally, absolutely good like that.

The weight of the words in her mouth sawed through the rope that had tugged her there. Determination, courage—they fell from her like bricks. The thought of leaving felt like cutting off a limb to escape. The thought of staying was impossible. But the pain of losing Ita suddenly weighed the most of all and it fell on top of her as if the sky had turned to cement.

“Please—” Leda squeaked and her knees wobbled.

“Please—” she whispered and her cheeks were drawn with tears.

“Please—” she mouthed and Ita caught her in his arms.

He stroked back her hair so he could kiss her forehead three, four, five times in a row, slow as a summer afternoon.

His lips found hers and stopped the world from breathing, stopped the earth spinning, stopped the trees swaying. There were no words for those moments outside time and space. Leda and Ita existed only in and of and for each other.

When their lips parted, Leda took a few seconds to open her eyes. His were waiting.

The children started clapping. They hooted and laughed.

“I’m yours,” Leda whispered. “Yours.” Ita leaned in to kiss her again, but she pulled back and lowered her eyes. “But you don’t know what I am, what I did—”

“Come,” he said, taking her hand and leading her to his room. “Tell me.”

Inside, he pulled her to him again, kissed her deep enough to take her breath away. But this time, kissing him made Leda think of Chege and she yanked herself apart, gasping, and dropped to the bed. He sat beside her, concerned, a tenderness that tore her in two. With tears stinging her eyes, she reached into her money belt and took the envelope out. She pressed it into his hands. “Take this.”

But Ita barely looked at it, he put it aside, on the desk next to his bed. His eyes were locked on Leda—full of compassion, pained to see her pain, eager to listen and comfort her. It broke her heart once and for all.

She took a deep breath. “Voting day, when you were gone—”

“Ita!”

It was Michael, just outside the door. He pounded with both fists. “Ita! Kibaki alishinda!” he shouted. Leda struggled to translate, tried to process the frantic words. The election results had been announced. Kibaki won.

“Outside,” Michael cried. “Look!”

Ita sprung from the bed, turning back to look at her, just long enough to thrust out his palm. “Stay here.”

He left and shut the door.

The wall behind Leda’s head connected to the outside. The roar that rose in the street grew so loud she felt as if people were stampeding through Ita’s bedroom. Men chanting. Women screaming. Children howling. Destruction, as if Kibera were being trampled by a giant. Leda listened with her heart in her throat—people and houses being crushed to the ground, by men bent on avenging all they had been denied, everything they’d had to endure.

Leda sat on the bed and listened until she could stand it no longer. When she opened the door, she could see an orange glow and pillars of smoke billowing into the air beyond the orphanage walls. When she took a breath, ash clogged her mouth and she doubled over, coughing.

Everyone was huddled by the gate. Walter bawled on the ground, no one picking him up, his little face scrunched up so tight, his wailing mouth was all she could see.

She rushed over and picked him up, pressed him to her heart and stroked his hair. Ita looked up in surprise and barked, “Leda, go back inside! Everyone, go with Leda. Now, kwenda—”

But with Ita’s back turned for just that one moment, Jomo had time to open the gate.

The gate to hell.

Through the crack, Leda saw the mob storming past. Machetes thrust into the sky—glinting in the firelight—feet pounding the dirt, howling mouths agape and foaming.

Without warning, Jomo dashed into the mass of men. He was immediately engulfed, swallowed by the roiling froth of limbs and torsos.

“No!” Ita screamed.

For seconds that felt like eternity, they all peered into the chaos.

Then Leda spotted him. Jomo was on the ground, bleeding, men with machetes trampling over him. They would kill him.

Without thinking, Leda ran out into the mob after him.