What Tears Us Apart

People passed each other the way cats do, touching, brushing skin, sliding off one another in the sweaty heat. Personal space was an oxymoron and as soon as Leda put words to the thought it made her recoil, dodging this way and that to avoid contact in the swarming crowds. She saw she would have to form new habits in Kibera, new ways of moving through space.

Women streamed by in bright dresses, in business attire, in jeans and flip-flops. Men streamed past in athletic jerseys and ragged South Park T-shirts and button-downs. All on a mission, edging doggedly in one direction or the other.

Chickens and stray dogs darted through the two-way parade with a bravado Leda wanted to admire. But the smoke searing her eyes and the jagged rays of sunlight darting through the metal turned the path ahead, behind the bobbing suitcase, into an obstacle course of certain peril.

Eventually, the suitcase stopped.

It dropped to the ground and revealed Samuel heaving to catch his breath so he could announce the obvious.

“We’re here,” he said, and pointed at a small, hand-painted sign tacked to a towering wall of corrugated metal. Triumph Orphanage.

Most of the maze of houses and shops were single-roomed, and could be seen right into if the bedsheet doors weren’t drawn. But they’d passed several tall metal partitions, walled-off spaces, which the orphanage seemed to have, as well. Leda tried to get a sense of how big the structure was and poked her head around the corner.

The metal wall spoke to her. Rather, it laughed.

The hair on Leda’s arms stood up. The laugh was a sound like midnight thunder rolling across the sea. Leda shut her eyes. From the moment she’d entered Kibera with Samuel, winding through the dust, through the throngs of smiling children and scowling mothers, through the smells and jolting clamor, whenever it seemed too much to bear, Leda had blinked her eyes long enough to see the smile from the website. A smile full of calm and certainty.

Leda would bet her soul that the laugh on the other side of that wall and the smile were one and the same.

When Samuel banged on the door with his fist, the laugh snuffed out. Leda’s eyes shot open.

A section of the metal wall slid open.

And there it was—the smile that belonged to the laugh.

“Leda,” the smile said, wide and shining.

“Ita,” she said, feeling the grin tug at her lips, a sensation as rare as it was delicious. For once, she wasn’t politely mimicking—the smile sprang from inside, as though freed from a cage.

Samuel looked back and forth with a curious expression. “Have you met before?”

Ita smiled wider, shaking his head. “We have now.”

Leda laughed, enchanted by the simple confidence he radiated like a lightbulb. Feeling breathless, she looked down at her dusty feet and had another vision of standing by the sea—watching in wonder as the sand, the shells, her whole body was drawn in by the tide, magically pulled by the moon. Leda looked up and took another gulp of seeing Ita’s lit-up face. Then she turned to Samuel and held out her hand. “Thank you, Samuel. I wish you well.”

Samuel snapped free of the moment and nodded. “Good luck, Leda. Good luck in Kibera.”

Ita held out his hand, too. “Samuel. Asante sana.”

Samuel shook Ita’s hand, craning to peek inside the orphanage with the same urgent curiosity Leda felt. Ita stood firm with his smile, blocking the view. Samuel nodded once more. “Karibu. Kwaheri.”

Leda watched her guide disappear around a corner and then turned back, which left her and Ita alone across the divide of the entrance. She found herself close enough to be struck by the smoothness of his skin. It was flawless, reminding Leda of a hand-dipped cone. Imagining that it would feel like velvet to the touch, Leda lurched forward for her suitcase handle, letting her hair swish over her face.

“Please, let me help you,” Ita said. He took the suitcase from her and swung it through the doorway in one fell swoop, opening a new world to Leda. The orphanage.

Leda got a two-second glimpse at a horseshoe of shadowy rooms around a dirt courtyard, before the view filled with children, bumping like bees as they swarmed past Ita to greet her. Six boys, Leda counted—toddler to preteen—as they tugged her inside, chattering competitively in Swahili. One boy, the oldest, watched her intently, walking backward like a guard dog. Leda tried to smile at him.

Inside, she stepped into a battle of smells. To the left, cardamom and clove fought pepper and cumin for control of a stew. Leda sniffed the spicy smoke the same way she inhaled Amadeus’s fur after a grooming, but stopped short when she was bitten by Kibera’s sharp endnote of sewage.

The boys patted her clothes and skin as they tugged her toward a woven mat in the courtyard. Leda focused on not tripping over them. She felt woozy after her voyage through Kibera, as if she’d stepped off a merry-go-round. But now, inside the orphanage, if such a thing was possible, it was actually louder, more closed-in, more overwhelming. The kids swirled around her legs like water in a tide pool and Ita followed, the herder.

“We’ve been waiting for you!” he shouted over the tops of their heads. “They are very excited. We have prepared many things for your arrival.”

Leda swam in the most human contact she’d had in years. Maybe ever. Estella had renounced her past and whatever family it may have contained, so Leda hadn’t grown up in proximity to anybody other than her mother. She’d sat alone in school, then spent evenings watching children on television, trying to comprehend them in their freeness. Leda always felt as though she’d been born eighty years old.

Now here she was being mobbed by children, her breathing shallowing. Estella’s judgments rang in her mind—she was not made for this. Was she crazy to have come here?

And then, just as Leda nearly went down in the mosh pit, Ita saved her. His eyes met hers, a knowing look in them that made Leda feel as if she’d found a wall to lean against. His eyes, dark brown with golden supernovas, stayed locked on Leda as he called out in Swahili to the children. A series of commands, sold with a smile but sure as a sunrise. The children reacted like little soldiers. They took their places on the mat, sitting cross-legged with their hands in their laps.

Leda exhaled and Ita laughed.

“We’re happy today. To meet you, Leda.”

“Oh, me, too,” she rushed out, hoping she hadn’t just come across as rude. “Just tired, I think, from—”

“A tsunami of children? Yes. Cannot hear yourself think, is that it?”

Leda nodded, amazed. Yes, that was exactly it. Ita stepped closer. “Lunch is almost ready. Should I show you your new home?”

She looked around the orphanage, at the concrete walls crumbling to the dirt floors, at the open doorways and one wooden door. Shyly, she followed him as he walked briskly to the left of the courtyard. First, he pointed at a closed door, crooked on its hinges. “My office,” he said, and walked on. Then he turned, with a wink Leda might have imagined, and said, “And my bedroom.” The next room was open and Ita stepped inside, waving her after.

Leda didn’t understand what she was seeing. A closet? Shoes lined the edges of the room, in a square around another huge woven mat. She lifted her foot to step forward, but Ita put his hand on her arm. It was warm and soft.

“This is where the children sleep. You may sleep here or—” Ita stepped out of the room “—with Mary.”

Mary had been the other name on the website, but hadn’t been linked to a picture. Leda’s stomach burned with curiosity. “Is Mary here now?”

“Who did you think was creating that delicious smell?” Ita ducked his head under a wooden beam and Leda followed him into the kitchen. A wood fireplace formed the rear of the room, and the rest of it, apart from smoke, was filled with pots and pans and plastic bowls towering off the ground.

Bent over a cauldron that hung above a fire was a sizable woman’s backside, wrapped taut in a patterned sarong, brighter than a bouquet of flowers. At Ita’s voice, the woman straightened and Leda saw she was old, though to guess her actual age would be tricky.

Leda felt relief gush through her, and she laughed at herself when she realized why. When she’d read the listing online, she had thought perhaps the man and woman mentioned were married or a couple. Now, she knew she’d been hoping that wasn’t the case.

Did women shake hands? Leda wasn’t sure, so she said, “Hujambo. Habari ya asubuhi,” the words piling up in her mouth like cotton balls.

Mary smiled kindly, her face wrinkling like a cozy bathrobe. “Karibu,” she said.

Welcome. Leda did feel welcome. She’d never had anyone make such a fuss over her presence, or anything she did, really. Except maybe Amadeus.

Next, Ita showed her where the toilet was—toilet being a very loose term. There were two stalls with two hanging sheets. When Ita pulled back the first sheet, Leda’s eyes traveled down to the square of concrete. In the middle was a piece of wood with a handle on it, and Leda could only guess that underneath was a hole. The second stall was exactly the same.

“Shower,” Ita said of the second stall.

When Leda remembered to breathe again, she met Ita’s eyes and saw that they gleamed with pride.

So Leda looked again and tried to see it through different eyes. She remembered how Samuel had said everyone paid to use a latrine and to bathe. This was a luxury. An achievement. He should be proud.

“Awesome!” Leda said, and knew immediately she’d overdone it.

But Ita laughed at her effort, not wounded in the least, and led her by the elbow to the other side of the orphanage.

The ease with which Ita touched her—it was unnerving. Even more distracting was how her skin felt under his fingers—tingly, pliant. Usually, she grew stiff under a stranger’s touch. In her fairly limited sexual experience, Leda had always felt clumsy at best, but more often raw and exposed. But as she walked with Ita, she had a lightning-flash vision of Ita’s warm hands on her skin. She bet it would be different with him—gentler, yet sexier, urgent.

Leda’s head shot up, her eyes darting to Ita as if he’d heard her thoughts. She felt the blood stampede her cheeks. She coughed to try and combat a full-on blush.

Ita paused before the back wall of the orphanage. He looked at her strangely, and she wondered if she was hurtling pheromones at him so hard he felt it. Get a grip, Leda.

“There is a room behind here. It is our medical room, our secret hospital.”

He must have known how strange that sounded. But at the same time, she noted the same pride as before that lifted his chin. “Are you a doctor?” she asked.

Ita smiled. But when his eyes moved to the door, his confidence faltered. “No. I study.” Now he looked embarrassed. “Not like you have studied. Impressive, your education.” Leda had sent him her résumé, as if applying for a job. Now she felt stupid about it. “I want to know all about it,” he said as he walked past the room.

On the other side of the orphanage, the back half was a three-walled room with a metal roof and another identical mat spread out. “This is for study, and for eating when the rains come.”

The next room had a sheet drawn tight across it. “Mary!” Ita called across the courtyard, followed by a question in Swahili that Leda couldn’t understand.

Mary’s answer boomeranged back and Ita gently tucked the sheet to one side. “Mary’s sleeping space,” Ita said, but respectfully, he didn’t enter.

Leda hesitated.

“It is okay. You may look,” Ita said.

Leda ducked her head inside. This room was much smaller. A mat still covered most of the dirt floor, but this time sported a narrow strip of foam and a folded sheet on one half.

When Leda poked her head back out, Ita watched her expectantly.

“It’s...” Leda wasn’t sure what he wanted to hear, and her head was starting to spin with the dawning realization that these were her accommodations for the month. “Great.”

“So you will stay with Mary,” Ita said, satisfied.

Leda looked out to where the children sat, playing quietly, waiting for their lunch. She put a hand out, feeling for the wall, something solid.

Ita’s voice was different when he spoke next, with an edge of self-consciousness that was new. “I’m sure where you live is very different.” He remained with the sheet in his hand and straightened. “The bed might help you become accustomed.”

Leda realized he meant the piece of foam in the little room, but she could no more imagine stretching out next to Mary and having any hopes of sleeping there for an entire month than she could imagine coping with any of it—the toilet, kitchen, the sheets for doors. She would be surrounded at all times. Forget hearing herself think, she wouldn’t even be able to feel herself breathe. As if in response, her breathing came quicker.

But then she remembered the morning—traipsing around after Samuel through the maze—all the jagged metal, the haggard faces, the roar and the stench, heaps of garbage, the images leaping out like rabid dogs.

Leda forced herself to breathe from her belly as she looked at her feet. She saw now where she and Ita had walked carefully around the perimeter of the courtyard. The dirt in the interior was swept clean. The children’s sandals were lined up like ducks around the mat. The concrete in the bathrooms was new, the sheets clean. She remembered the touch of Ita’s hand, felt the lingering calm he exuded. She was safe. Leda felt sure of it. Inside the orphanage, she was safe.

But Ita noted her silence and saw how she looked at her feet. “I have an idea.”

He walked back to the room he’d said was a hospital. He slid open the metal that looked like a wall and waved Leda over. She was amazed to see a metal table, and walls covered in posters of anatomy and the periodic table.

“It is our secret, this room,” Ita said, looking at the stacks of medical supplies on a table in the corner, and Leda thought she understood. In a place like Kibera, where health services were rare and precious, a room like this would have to be kept secret lest the whole slum descend on it. “You would like your own room. What do you think?”

Did he mean the metal table? Leda could only think of blood and episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, until she pictured the foam on Mary’s floor and found herself saying, “Yes, if it’s okay, this is perfect.”

Ita nodded and smiled. “Good. I will bring the foam and blanket. Are you ready now to meet the children?” Ita looked past her at the kids when he said it, and the love that radiated toward them landed on Leda, too, like wrapping her hands around a cup of morning tea. She felt glad for the boys, then noted the lump in her throat.

As she gazed after them, Mary appeared out of the kitchen, struggling under the weight of the steaming pot.

“Michael, msaada,” Ita called, and the word was followed by more Swahili that Leda figured meant the boy should help Mary with lunch.

Michael, not only the tallest boy by a foot but owner of the only serious expression of the bunch, stood and grabbed the pot’s handles. He called out and two other boys obediently headed for the kitchen.

As she watched them go, Leda realized Ita wasn’t watching the boys, he was looking at her. She felt his curiosity digging into her again, and realized for the first time that she must seem as strange to him as all this was to her.

“Let’s eat,” Ita said.

The remaining children wiggled with excitement as Leda came closer.

“Karibu!” one of the middle-sized boys called out. He put his hand out like a little salesman. “Ntimi,” the boy said, indicating himself. He had a smile almost to match Ita’s—full of strong white teeth and a joy one can only be born with.

Leda sat next to him. “Leda,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Timmy.”

It was Ntimi who named the other boys, from Thomas to Christopher, ending with Michael. Then Ntimi scooped up a toddler and plopped him into Leda’s arms. “Walter,” he said, and everyone laughed as Walter tried to wiggle free.

Michael was the only one not laughing. Leda had a hunch he was a person she would have to win over slowly. “Thank you for having me here, Michael, for letting me into your home.”

Michael nodded with a solemn maturity that made Leda want to smile, but she held it back.

Ita, watching closely, doled out a look of approval that warmed her belly.

“Jomo,” Ntimi said as he pointed toward a sheeted room by the door, a room that hadn’t been on the tour. Leda took it for a guard post of sorts, or a storage space. She squinted. Did Ntimi mean a guard?

“He new,” Ntimi said in a quieter voice, just as Leda made out two skinny legs showing from under the hanging sheet.

Another boy. Boy number seven.

“Will he join us for lunch?” Leda asked, though the answer was obvious.

Mary handed Leda a yellow plastic bowl filled with murky water. Leda studied it, unsure what to do. Was it soup? “Wash,” Ntimi said, and Leda wanted to hug him.

She wet her hands in the lukewarm water, then passed the bowl around for the children to do the same.

Next, Mary brought her a bowl heaped with rice from the pot. She handed Leda a spoon.

Leda said thank you and waited for everyone else to be served. But Mary didn’t go for more bowls. They all seemed to be waiting and Leda wondered if guests ate first.

The first mouthful occupied Leda mind and body, with a collision of flavors she’d never tasted before. Sweet, salty, spicy all at the same time.

Suddenly Leda saw all the eyes on her. She jabbed her spoon back into the rice and felt her cheeks start to burn.

Activity commenced. Mary left and brought back bowls for herself and Ita. Then she set down the big bowl of rice on the mat, the boys huddling around it. Their little hands went to work, rolling little balls of rice and transferring them to their mouths fast as they could carry. Leda looked and saw Ita and Mary dig in with their fingers, too, employing the same technique.

Leda watched, thinking first of hygiene, then suffering a guilty replay of all the food she’d left on her plate or thrown away in her lifetime.

Leda looked at her spoon, glinting in the sun, and set it down on the ground. Watching Ntimi’s nimble fingers, she imitated him, rolling the food into bite-size pieces with her hands. Ntimi smiled at her.

Out of the corner of her eye, Leda saw the sheet flutter. She looked and saw that it was pulled just a crack to the side.

On impulse, Leda stood up and started over. Ntimi stopped and looked up in worry. Michael shook his head ever so slightly. But she went anyway.

Stopping in front of the sheet, she held out her bowl. “You like to eat alone, that’s okay,” Leda said gently.

No hand reached out for the bowl, but Leda could hear the boy breathing, with a slight wheeze of asthma that made her heart leap. Dangerous out here with no medicine. Lucky he has Ita, she thought, just as she heard Ita stride up behind her.

“How much English do they understand?” Leda asked, glossing over the fact that she still held out the bowl of steaming food.

“All Kenyan children learn English in school,” Ita said. He glanced at the sheet when he added, “But many of our children have missed much school.”

Leda’s heart sank. “So they don’t understand me.” Of course not. “Good way to practice my Swahili, I guess.”

Ita spoke into the crack in the sheet. When only silence followed, he spoke again in the same even, coaxing voice.

Nothing happened.

“They will understand some, if you speak slowly and use easy words.” Ita saw the look on Leda’s face. “Don’t worry, they already love you. They are so excited you have come all this way for them. It is hard for them to believe.”

Suddenly the sheet opened and a small, lanky boy stepped into the sun. He wore a WWF T-shirt, shorts and a scowl like a guerilla rebel.

Ita knelt down and spoke to him, as if he was explaining why the sky is blue or the dirt orange. Leda already loved this manner of his, a solid gentleness much like what she loved about the trees at home—cheerful but sage.

Jomo stood but he didn’t meet Ita’s gaze. Instead his eyes found something just off to the side and locked on. His face took on a blankness Leda recognized with a shiver. She looked down and saw what Jomo was doing with his hands. He picked and picked at the edges of his thumbs, beside the nail beds. Leda looked down at her own hands, similarly mutilated. It was an embarrassing habit, but one she’d never been able to conquer. Estella thought it was disgusting. Doesn’t it hurt? her school guidance counselor had asked. But the pain was the point. It grounded her. In public, whenever Leda felt anxious, when she wanted to flee or scream, the picking gave her something to do, something to keep her from losing control, something to control. The only other thing she’d ever found that calmed her, gave her a buffer against the world was—

“Hey, Jomo,” she said, reaching into her pocket and startling both Ita and the frowning boy. “Want to see something?”

Leda took the camera from her pocket. It was her favorite—small enough to take out and tuck away quickly, with the manual control to shoot without a flash. It put a lens between her and the loud crazy world, let her compose it, control it, record it from one step away. Cameras gave Leda a way to interact with the world without...interacting.

Jomo’s attention snapped toward the camera lying flat in Leda’s hand. His yearning was more apparent than he would have liked, she was sure. She set down the food and knelt across from Ita, close to Jomo, and turned the camera on. She didn’t press it into his hands; she just started to demonstrate how it worked. Zoom like this, she mimed, frame with the screen, and take the picture. She pointed the viewfinder toward Ita and snapped.

Jomo grunted, a small slip of amusement.

Ita watched the two of them studying the image of him and he laughed. She bristled and felt Jomo do the same. But it wasn’t Ita’s fault, she realized. He wouldn’t understand. He wasn’t daunted by life. He danced happily with the world. He wouldn’t understand the comfort of a camera on the sidelines.

But Leda also knew Ita wanted Jomo to be happy, he was ecstatic at the merest glimpse of joy in the glowering boy. She hoped Jomo would know this soon, too. She tucked the camera away, picked up the bowl and settled it into Jomo’s hands before he saw it coming. Then she stood up and walked pointedly back to the mat.

When Leda sat down, the children settled back into a ring around her. On Ntimi’s cue, they began clapping their hands and rapping on their knees, and while Leda watched, a little taken aback, they began to sing.

It was a song they’d planned, obviously, because everyone from youngest to oldest joined in at once.

Leda let the harmony wash over her and blinked her eyes. When she didn’t have her camera out, she would blink to record the memories she wanted to hang on to, to replay later for comfort. She’d had no idea what to make of her first day in Kibera, but just then she wanted to savor the warm feeling wrapped around her like afternoon sunshine on her porch in Topanga. It wasn’t the feeling of serenity she felt there with Amadeus, however. This was something new.

A loud banging on the metal door stole Leda’s train of thought and took the warm feeling with it.

The children stopped singing but sat obediently, not looking overly perturbed, though Jomo ducked back behind his curtain. Leda tried to calm herself—visitors to the orphanage must be common.

Ita walked over to the door and she heard the voice that filtered through, sounding more like a low growl than a man.

Reluctantly, Leda thought, Ita slid open the door. But he blocked the gap, so Leda couldn’t see who was outside.

She turned back to the boys, but the mood had shifted one hundred and eighty degrees. Leda glanced up to see if clouds had moved in. No, the sun was still beating down like a radiator.