What Tears Us Apart

Chapter 7



December 11, 2007, Kibera—Leda

THAT NIGHT, AFTER the boys finished their homework, Ita presided over bedtime. Leda used the opportunity to slip off to her room alone. She shut the door behind her, forgetting the lack of electricity, and had to fumble in the dark for the oil lamp.

When she finally got it lit, she sat down heavily on her makeshift bed and found herself breathing a deep sigh of relief. In her earnest effort to fit into this new world, she hadn’t realized how exhausted she was at the constant companionship.

Now Leda realized the enormity of her coming here. It wasn’t just Kibera’s relentless poverty or danger that troubled her. It was the closeness, the suffocating proximity to so many human beings and the emotional vulnerability she felt as a result. Leda knew how to do one thing perfectly—be alone. If there was an award for solitude, she could win it.

Now nine pairs of eyes watched her like a reality television marathon.

And Ita’s eyes—

Ita’s eyes were devoted. They were certain. They were patient.

All the things Leda doubted in herself.

Just as she wondered whether she should put on her pajamas and pretend she’d gone to bed for the night, there was a soft knock at the door.

She straightened up. She smoothed down her blouse and took a deep breath.

The knock came again.

“Coming,” she said, and the word boomeranged around the metal room.

When she slid open the door, she was surprised to find herself face-to-face with not Ita, but Mary.

As usual, Mary spoke a river of words Leda couldn’t fish out a meaning from, but her lilting voice soothed Leda immediately. What would it have been like to have a mother like Mary? she found herself wondering for the second time that day.

When Mary spoke again, this time she waved Leda forward and nodded her head toward the courtyard. That’s when Leda saw that someone else stood out there. A woman in a flowered dress, talking quietly with Ita.

Leda followed Mary into the warm, buzzing night. Apart from the wafting smell of waste, Leda welcomed the air that breezed across her cheeks. When they passed the wash area, she heard giggles and saw the dancing shadows of stragglers still cleaning up for bed.

“Leda,” Ita said, and she noted the easy pleasure with which he said her name.

The woman turned. She was about the same height as Leda, but much curvier.

“This is Grace, Mary’s daughter,” Ita said.

The woman nodded her head. “Good evening, Leda. I’m happy to meet you.” Grace had the same bright voice as her mother.

“So nice to meet you, too,” Leda said, which was true—she was relieved to meet another person who spoke English.

But Mary interjected before she could say anything further. She nudged Grace’s elbow, chattering excitedly and eyeing Leda.

Grace answered with a laugh rich as roux, then turned to Leda. “I’ve come to do my mother’s henna for a wedding. She wants to know if you’d like me to do your skin, too. For fun.”

Leda paused, and Grace noticed. “It’s a Muslim wedding, a tradition,” she explained. “We are Christian. But there are many Muslim friends in Kibera and I have made a little business for myself by learning to do the henna painting.”

“Grace is being very humble,” Ita said. “She is a well-known artist, and Kibera women line up to be her canvas.” Then he added something, probably a translation, to Mary, who beamed.

Why not? Leda thought. “In that case, I would be honored, Grace. Paint me!”


December 11, 2007, Kibera—Ita

Ita watched Leda reclined under Grace’s flurried strokes. If I were an artist, he thought, this is the image that would haunt my dreams.

It was late. Mary had been painted first and had since gone off to bed. Ita held a medical journal in his lap, of which he hadn’t read a single word.

His gaze was like the light of the oil lamp, flickering and lingering over Leda’s face, from her smooth forehead down the narrow slope of her nose, catching at her flower-bud lips, over her delicate chin...

Ita was surprised that when he blinked he’d already memorized her face, the hue of her marble skin, the curve of her cheek. Even her scar he knew, the smudge like a painting left out in the rain. He let his eyes travel to the outstretched arms Grace was adorning. He’d seen Leda pick at her fingernails, but now he saw that she’d scraped off swaths of skin near her thumbnails. The rough, mutilated skin was in such contrast to her sleek beauty, it stung Ita to see it, but made the tenderness he felt for her all the more searing.

Leda’s eyes stayed closed, not peacefully, but squeezed shut. She had shared few details about her mother and childhood, but from them and her other behaviors Ita could glean she was not a person used to people. It was as if she lived in a world all her own and was shocked when someone got close enough that she had to see them, not as decoration, but an entity as real as she.

With a start, Ita realized how Kibera must feel for her, like drowning. She needed space and quiet, this woman, rare commodities, but Ita made himself a promise that he would find ways to give her these things. The boys had taught him much about navigating broken people. Leda reminded him very much of the orphans when they first arrived, little minefields to map out, one careful step at a time.

Grace murmured something. She was finished with Leda’s hands and arms.

Leda opened her eyes and nodded. Grace slipped down Leda’s blouse enough to bare the space above her breasts to the glow of the lamp.

Leda caught Ita watching and smiled shyly. It was too late to look away, so he smiled back. Grace looked over her shoulder and caught him, too. She looked back and forth between the two of them, suppressed a knowing smile, and returned to her work. She painted flowering vines sweeping across Leda’s collarbone, leaves fluttering, blooms dancing in the lamp’s orange glow. Her palm concealed the small cone of dye, so that the black edges of the petals seemed to flow from her fingertips. She was a magic painter.

But Leda was the muse.

Ita couldn’t believe his luck, couldn’t believe she was here, this beautiful woman with her angelic skin, so delicate, like a museum vase, so precious and vulnerable it had to be protected, guarded—

Ita flinched.

Watching Leda in the flickering light, he couldn’t keep out the creeping feeling in his stomach, the queasy sloshing of regret, acid flooding his gut. The last time he’d had thoughts like these, held steadfast intentions to protect fragile beauty, to save a woman he loved, her skin as smooth and inviting as morning tea—

He’d failed. He’d failed himself and failed her.

I haven’t forgotten, Kioni. I haven’t forgiven myself. I never will.