What Tears Us Apart

“Is that silly?” she asked. “I’m sure there are other things they need first—”

He laughed. “They will love bunk beds. You know how to build them?” He hoped he did not sound discouraging. He was just trying to picture her wielding a hammer.

Now it was Leda’s turn to laugh. “I have a house in the mountains. I’ve discovered that I like building things. Flower boxes and a doghouse.”

“You have a dog?”

“Amadeus,” Leda said, and now Ita knew a way to win a smile from her.

“Mozart. Eine kleine Nachtmusik, the boys like. For me, Requiem—breaks my heart.”

She gasped. But when she smiled, Ita knew she must love the music as much as he did.

“Okay, bunk beds,” he said. “We will need wood and nails.”

She looked down but her voice was even when she spoke. “I would like to donate all the supplies, please.”

A feeling welled up in him that was hard to place—gratitude, excitement, giddiness at the rare taste of money—

“Do the boys like to paint?” she asked.

Surprised again. “Like on paper?”

She smiled. “The walls! We could all paint the orphanage walls together. Would they like to decorate their home? Maybe elephants and birds, rhinos, all the animals from your safari trips.”

The boys had never been on safari. But he was sure they would love painting animals on the walls. Ita liked to draw, too, though how long had it been since he had done it? “They would like that.” A lump rose in his throat and he turned away. He was moved, imagining Leda lying in bed, dreaming up these plans. “Should we get the supplies today? Wood and nails. And paint. We will have to get someone to help us carry them back.”

* * *

The day stretched on that happy way, now that they had a united mission. They found the paintbrushes first, but had to go elsewhere for the paint. They laughed as they discussed their plans, designating zebras their place by the kitchen and monkeys in the bathroom.

On their way to get the wood, Ita couldn’t help himself from tossing questions at her like chicken feed. He wanted to know everything at once. But she didn’t answer. Before his eyes, she caught herself, breathed in and said coyly, “You first,” with a little smile. But Ita would bet it was a practiced defense, that smile no man would deny.

“I grew up here,” he said, watching passersby stare as they walked. “I tried to leave, I wanted to become a doctor. I was on my way, starting school, helping out at a clinic here, but then the orphanage came to be and—” Ita put out his hand to help Leda over a creek of dribbling brown water. The touch of her skin sent shivers through his arm.

Leda caught his eye and looked quickly away. Did she feel it, too, the electricity? “And?” she asked, her voice high in pitch and a little shaky.

“And what?” he said, his hand still closed over hers.

Leda slipped out of his touch and bounded a step ahead, leaving him feeling embarrassed. He was acting like a schoolboy in love. The realization brought him back to Earth and he remembered what he’d been talking about. Broken hopes. How time steals them away. “And days became years,” he said. Could she know what that meant? Dreams dashed, time squandered on poverty, years that raced by as he dealt with one pressing problem at a time? It hurt Ita to speak of his dream, getting further and further away now, of being a doctor.

“I know what you mean,” she said softly.

Ita believed that she did, somehow. He felt the questions returning, piling up—

“But how does an orphanage just come to be?” she asked, and he laughed in spite of himself.

“With a Michael.” He looked to see if she’d learned the children’s names yet. “The tallest boy, the oldest.”

“The protector,” she said simply.

Ita missed a step to look at her. “Yes. That’s Michael.” He pointed out a shadowed walk-through, but stopped before entering so they could catch their breath. “A friend brought him to me. She was sick, and she was out of time. Back then, my dream was dying, too, slipping through my fingers—” Leda was watching him with her wide green eyes. She had this way of making him feel as though they were alone in a quiet room, not in the midst of Kibera traffic. “It seemed like a sign from above. How could I say no?”

Ita looked to the sky, remembering so clearly the four-year-old boy with the serious eyes, hiding behind his mother’s spindly legs. “I thought I would take him to an orphanage, but no one would take him.”

“Why not?”

Ita sighed, feeling the old anger bubble in his blood. “His mother died of AIDS and people thought her child must have it, too. They didn’t want a sick child. One who would die or infect others.”

Leda chewed on her bottom lip. “So you took him in.”

“Yes,” Ita said and smiled, remembering. “I took him everywhere, delighting in everything he did. People saw that I loved him, clothed him, fed him, and—” Ita meant to laugh, but it came out like a sigh, remembering the rainy season after Michael arrived, after Ita had to quit school “—then people started leaving children at my door like flowers.”

A man knocked Ita’s shoulder, snapping him back to the present. It wasn’t safe to stand still like this in the back paths of the slum. Better to keep moving. “You never know, right?” He started toward the shadowy corridor.

“Know what’s coming next?” She stepped into a ray of sunshine.

Ita slipped into the alley. “Never know when you’ll meet the person that will change the path of your life.”

The corridor was only wide enough for one person at a time. A man squeezed past Ita, then jumped when he saw Leda entering the passage.

“Hujambo. Habari ya asubuhi,” she said and wriggled past him, so formal and adorable it made Ita want to kiss her.

He turned around, and as though fate meant to grant his wish, she was watching her feet and ran right into him. It threw him off balance, and they ended up pressed against the mud wall. Ita had just a moment to feel her slender frame, the down on her arms brush against his skin.

She looked up at him, her breath retreating across her pink lips.

“You’re right,” she whispered.

Ita looked at her, a feeling of wonder washing through him.

“You never know,” they both said in unison, then laughed shyly and slipped apart.

Chapter 5

December 30, 2007, Kibera—Ita

GOD’S BEEN RAINING kerosene.

Ita watches the flames clawing the night sky. When he tries to force air into his iron lungs, ash coats his tongue, clogs his throat. He doubles over, hands on his knees, and feels his body heave with vomit. But when he opens his mouth, it’s blood that drools onto his foot. He coughs, and blood splatters the dirt. Ita wonders if his wounds will prove fatal after all.

He must make it back to the orphanage. He must find a hold on the present. All is lost for him, but the boys deserve a chance.

He nearly faints from the pain of standing, but grits his teeth and thrusts one foot in front of the other. He’ll keep to the alleys—he can hear the rioters out on the main paths. He creeps unsteadily between the homes, his back scraping along the mud shacks. From inside them, he hears the chorus of whispers—plotting, pleading, praying.

One more corner and he’ll be there. The fire is behind him; it hasn’t reached their neighborhood. He realizes, with a pang of shame, that he dreads seeing the children. He dreads their questions, their tears, their bulging eyes. Ita doesn’t have any comfort to give. He’s afraid if he opens his mouth, he might tell them the truth.

The life we have been building, the one I wanted to give you, planned so carefully—it’s over.

When Ita knocks quietly on the door, there is an instant rustle.

A tiny whisper asks who’s out there. Michael.

As soon as Ita answers, the door slides open.

Michael’s eyes go wide as cashew nuts, and Ita realizes he must look as monstrous as he feels.

“Jomo?” Ita asks.

Michael nods.

Ita sighs. He is safe. Jomo is inside and safe. Ita drags his swollen body inside.

Michael watches with his ancient eyes. “All the children are in bed. Mary, too. I told them they must stay there until you returned.” Pride peeks through Michael’s scared voice. Ita sees that the boy is clutching Ita’s rifle. He floods with tenderness for this boy whom he has promised so much.

“You did very well, Michael. I knew I could count on you. You must sleep now. I will need your help in the morning.”

“But—” Michael darts another look at Ita’s wounds.

Ita puts out his hand, takes the rifle. “I’ll be okay. I can fix it.” He nods toward the secret room. But he has no idea if he can fulfill that promise, if he can fix anything this night has destroyed. “Go on,” he says in a voice he knows Michael will obey.

Michael sighs, the same old man’s sigh he had when he was five years old. “Lala salama, mpwenda baba.” He says it so softly as he turns to leave that it takes Ita a moment to realize what he’s heard.

Goodnight, dear father.

Ita watches him enter the bedroom, then begins the painful trudge toward the room with the medical supplies. Leda’s room.

There are footsteps again in the courtyard at his back, scurrying, urgent.

“Ita—” Mary’s whisper hisses into the night.

Ita turns. Mary’s face is crinkled paper, soggy in the creases.

Her family, he realizes with a pang. The orphans are not her family, not like they are for Ita. Mary’s kin is out there, in the chaos, in the fire. Her daughter, Grace, lives by the railroad tracks with her husband, with Mary’s grandchildren. But Mary is here. She stayed. “Thank you, Mary. Thank you for staying with the boys. What can I do? Do you need me to go check on your family?”

A tear winds crookedly through the wrinkles of Mary’s face. Ita realizes he has never seen Mary cry, not even close. She’s looking at his battered body. “You cannot. Look at you. What did they do to you? Where is Leda?”

“She is gone.” But Ita has no words for what happened to him, because it is linked to what happened to Leda, to what Chege did. He wonders when he will be able to say it aloud, if ever. Dizziness rolls over Ita like fog. He pitches forward, his stomach heaving into his throat.

Mary scuttles toward him, grips his shoulder.

Ita recoils from the pain. He must stand. He must reassure her, if he wants to be alone. “It’s okay. In the morning—”

“No, I must go now. My daughter—”

He shakes his head firmly. “No. You cannot go out tonight. It is not safe for women.”

More tears seep into Mary’s scrunched face.

But Ita must be firm on this. He cannot go back out there now and hope to protect an old woman. “Does Paul have a phone?” Ita asks of Mary’s son-in-law, taking out his cell phone.

Mary shakes her head.

Ita nods. “I’ll go with you tomorrow. We will walk in the sun, in the light that has to follow this darkness. Grace will be all right. She’s strong and brave. Like her mother.”

Mary understands. Ita has decided. She stops her lip from trembling. Then she reaches up and puts her hand gingerly to the side of Ita’s face. He closes his eyes and the scratchy parchment of her hand on his cheek brings the flicker of a memory, decades old. A mother’s touch. If he doesn’t open his eyes, he will disappear into the sensation, spiral into the void, searching for solace in memories lost and drained away.

His eyes fling open when Mary’s hand slips away. Without another word, she turns and shuffles off to her room to spend a sleepless night.

The moment of comfort evaporates, and Ita knows he might collapse any minute. He hastens across the courtyard to the hidden room.

Inside, he lights an oil lamp. He sees the pile on the floor, but wrests his mind away from thoughts of Leda, of the memories in this room. Instead, he looks at himself in the small mirror.

At the first glimpse of his face, Ita sees a statue glued back together all wrong. His eyes, nose, jaw—everything’s in the wrong place and wrong proportions. The swelling—that explains why his vision is so distorted, why his head pounds like a pump about to blow.

The only other time he has ever seen his face like this, a mangled toy to be thrown away...

The only other time was the day he met Chege. The day one life ended and another began.

Ita soaks a rag in a bowl of water. He presses it to his forehead, covering his eyes, covering the vision, and tries not to remember.

But everything—the blood coating his teeth, the pain in his limbs as though they’re clenched in a lion’s jaw, the hopelessness flooding his veins—it’s all so much the same that Ita can’t help but remember...

September 22, 1989, Kibera—Ita

Ita hears them, the boys, he hears them coming, but he doesn’t care.

After two weeks on the streets, he is already tired. He’s tired of running, tired of begging, tired of trying to hold on to a life that’s bent on wriggling out of his fingers like a worm. So, let it. Let it all go. Mother. Home. School. Hope. He hears the boys tearing down the alley, their footsteps the sound of his plans being trampled.

When the boys turn the corner, Ita sees they are older than he’d expected. Teenagers.

There is a moment where they stop and Ita looks up and they look at him and there is still a thread of time in the fabric of fate when they might just move on.

But then one of them spots Ita’s backpack. And when he nudges the boy next to him, that boy looks at Ita’s shoes. And then the third boy, the tallest, with a tattoo freshly done, he rallies them all with a certain look. Seconds later, as though choreographed, they all jump Ita.

The tall boy is the fists. He likes it, Ita can tell. He likes beating him, likes beating anyone, probably, maybe because he’s holding in the same bellyful of seesaw emotions as Ita. This way, when his knuckles crack on Ita’s cheekbones and his knees make Ita’s ribs pop, some of the feelings can get out and away, and leave space for him to breathe again.

That’s what Ita hears the loudest—the boy’s breathing, heavy in his ear. But that doesn’t mean he can’t hear the other boys unzip his backpack. He can hear them celebrating the spoils, tossing out the books as they find the food and clothes, the medicine. Ita can hear, just barely he can hear them tell the tall boy to stop, that it looks like he’s dead, stop, he isn’t moving, he’s—

The next thing Ita hears—it must be a dream. There is a new voice. It is a madman shouting. A madman shouting in a kid voice like a whistle.

“Get away from him!” the voice is screaming. “Get away or I kill you. I kill you all.”

Ita bargains with his eyelids. They weigh more than two rhinoceroses, but they must open. Open and I will let you close for good. Before I go, before I die, I want to see the madman.

Ita’s eyes open to glimpse a dreamy sliver of absurdity. The teens, they’re frozen, frozen in place by the owner of the whistling voice.

He’s the skinniest kid Ita’s ever seen. His hair looks like he cut it with a broken bottle. His eyes shine like he swallowed a flare. He’s standing atop an overturned jerrican, and he’s still barely taller than the shortest of Ita’s attackers.

Doesn’t look like he has got a lot going for him, Ita thinks.

But he does have a machete.

The attackers don’t seem to notice; they’ve begun to thaw. They giggle, Ita doesn’t see which one starts, but now they’re all hyenas, cackling in the dust. The tallest boy, he zips up Ita’s backpack and slings it over his shoulders. He laughs as he walks toward where Ita lies. Ita’s eyes are about to close, having upheld their end of the bargain.

But he fights himself to watch the tall boy come slip the shoes off his feet, and to see the incredible thing that happens next.

The miniature madman makes a sound. It cannot be called a scream—it hardly fits the description of any human sound Ita’s ever heard. He waves his machete in the air. When he brings it down, it whacks into his own forearm until blood squirts out in the shape of a rainbow, splattering Ita’s attackers. With the bubbling blood, the madman smears his cheeks, like war paint.

The last thing Ita sees is the blood-smeared kid spring from the jerrican and charge, roaring like a hound let loose from hell.

The last thing Ita hears is the backpack drop in the dirt beside his head. But then his senses are extinguished, replaced by the sound and color of nothingness.

* * *

When Ita comes to, it’s nighttime, the most dangerous time in Kibera. He struggles to cobble together his thoughts, rocks tumbling into a river.

“Good. You not dead.”

Ita looks, and the machete-wielding psychopath is sitting just beside him in the dark.

“Chege,” the psycho says.

It will hurt to speak, Ita imagines. “Ita.” He was right.

“Go back to sleep, Ita. See you tomorrow.”

* * *

In the morning, Ita wishes he was dead. Still might happen, he consoles himself. Everything hurts. Everything.

“Morning,” the psycho says brightly.

Ita wonders if maybe he is a spirit, a spirit guide into the other side. Should he talk to him? Can he ask questions? Like...where is my mother? Is she here? She’s dead, too. She just died two weeks ago—

“Hey, you okay? You eyes rolling back into your bones again. How much longer you expect me to sit here?”

Ita’s ears normalize for a moment. They’re near the tracks, he can hear the trains. So they’re in the landfill. Now Ita can smell it and his stomach turns.

“I’m just kidding. You can sleep. Just don’t die.”

* * *

Sun’s going down again when Ita next wakes up. His mind is clearer. He understands he can die now, if he wants to. Or not. Because he saw what the psycho named Chege was sitting on—the backpack.

“Inside.” Ita isn’t sure if the words came out or not. “Medicine.”

“I saw. Which one?”

“Pill. Orange.”

Ita’s mouth feels orange, stuffed with Kibera dust.

“Got it. Here. What’s it for?”

“Infection.”

“How do you know?”

“My mother. Sick. A long time. I learned—”

“You Kikuyu, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Me, too.”

Ita doesn’t answer.

“It your mother’s fault, then, that Kikuyus not take you in. She go with men? Get money? She got that sickness—”

“Shut up.” Ita rolls up to his elbow, ignores the lightning strikes of pain, blood frothing in his mouth. “You shut up, you—”

“Shhh. Hey. I no judge. Your mother love you so much, she do it for you. That makes it okay.”

Ita sees his mother’s face, a skull painted brown, her trembling bone fingers giving him her necklace, the gold sparrow sparkling in the setting sunlight, her voice, scratched raw, saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, forgive me—

“No, it doesn’t,” Ita says and blacks out, back into the in-between.

* * *

Two more days, and Ita doesn’t take any more of the pills. Best to save them. When he finally sits up, Chege nods in approval, and they sit on the field of trash where no ground is visible.

“You live here?”

Chege hears the judgment. “Now you do, too.”

“Why?” Ita asks. He is genuinely curious—why choose to live in a trash heap?

“Because here you won’t run into those guys again. Because here you can sleep, even if you stink like a cockroach.”

The backpack is zipped, sitting between them. Ita opens it up. It’s all there. The books, even the food. He looks at Chege in surprise.

Chege twists away. When he swivels back, he holds out a crooked carrot and a mushy tomato. “Eat these.”

Ita knows he must have been saving them. “How’d you get them?”

Chege shrugs. “I stole them from an old woman.” He pats the machete resting across his knees.

Ita looks at the food in his hands. If he eats it, he will break the promise he made his mother, and himself. The promise that he would try to be good, die if he must, but not die shamed, like her.

“What did you do to the guys that attacked me?”

“They not coming back, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried. I want to know.”

Chege’s face is blank, placid, cracked dried blood still visible on its skin. “Just eat.”

Ita looks at the tomato. The pang in his stomach tells him he’s starving, his body desperate. He pops the tomato in his mouth. The skin splits and the mush bursts in his throat like rotten flesh. He almost chokes, but gulps it down.

“Why are you helping me?” he asks Chege, and chomps the carrot, so dry and old it’s furry on his tongue.

“I’m not!” Chege huffs. “I’m leaving. I just didn’t think you should die yet.”

Ita looks at Chege’s face, staring straight ahead.

“You smart,” Chege says quietly then. “You read books. There just some things you didn’t know yet.” He picks up a bottle cap and chucks it. “Now you know.”

But Chege doesn’t get up. He doesn’t leave. He sits, huddled over, feet dug in. Anchor to the ship thrashing in a storm.

December 30, 2007, Kibera—Ita

Ita wrings the rag out over the bowl of water and studies his face in the cloudy mirror.

He knew the terrible things Chege was capable of, but to betray him like he did tonight, to do that to Leda...

How could you, Chege?

Hatred pumps to the rhythm of Ita’s blood. His reflection, staring back—the monster in the mirror—a mis-sewn Frankenstein’s creature, everything about him grotesque and misshapen, distorted by the electrifying visions that won’t stop coming. He sees Chege on top of Leda. Sees her white legs in the red dirt, rows of scratches like lions tried to devour her. He sees the look in Chege’s eyes. Guilt. Pure and clear. Guilt and regret bubbling out as Ita lunged at him with his fists. Good. Ita remembers the blood spouting from Chege’s nose. If you don’t die from guilt as you should, I should kill you. You are poison. You take everything that is beautiful—

Now it’s a different memory vying for Ita’s mind. A memory more than a decade in the past, but somehow sharper with time. That look, sick and shamed, twisting across Chege’s face—Ita’s seen it before. That was Chege’s face the day he loomed above Ita as he wrapped his arms tight around a different, trembling, sobbing girl, the smell of fear mixed with the scent of her blood and sweat. I’m sorry, Ita whispered into her hair. I’m so sorry.

Ita covers his face with his hands, trying to blot out the images, but it makes them grow stronger and louder.

He opens his eyes, stares at the monster in the mirror. You see? You knew. You knew Chege would betray you again. What he did to Leda is your fault. You let him get close. Close enough to covet her, to hate her.

Ita remembers how Leda scrambled away in the dirt, her face stained in tears. He remembers her screams. She screamed while the men beat him. Screamed at the world, at fate, sobbing and screaming until she collapsed and pulled Ita’s head into her lap, rocking him until the police dragged her away.

Now she’s gone. And she’s never coming back.

Ita hears a noise outside. His engorged body turns to iron. The sound swells like the roar of a charging animal. It’s a pack of men—tearing through the alley. They stop at the house behind the orphanage. Without the thin metal wall, Ita could touch them. The men rip a door from its hinges. Women scream—

Ita grabs the rifle. He must get to the front door.

Then he hears a noise behind him. Inside. In the courtyard, at the door.

He grips the rifle with both hands and spins around.

As the shouting outside turns violent, fists thudding against skin and bone, the door to the hidden room scrapes open.

Ita aims the rifle, holds his finger on the trigger.

But what appears in the crack of moonlight is Ita’s nightmare memory come to life. Ita’s childhood self, misshapen, a child-sized Frankenstein’s creature come back to haunt him.

The little monster blinks, eyes wide and watery.

Ita lowers the rifle, gasping.