Ita feels a prick of fear—her crying could mean more trouble and they are all so tired. Soon, Chege’s fury will turn squarely onto this little girl, and Chege’s rage can be much like her crying in its fervor.
Ita digs into the little pocket on the inside waistband of his pants. His secret hiding place for the only precious thing he owns.
He takes out the necklace—the gold sparrow darting into the humid night air. He stares at the shimmering charm, always rousing the last memories of his mother.
He dangles it inches from the weeping girl’s face, before her squeezed-shut swollen eyes, hoping to dazzle her out of the fit. With a sob, she opens them, and is instantly entranced, her crying corked like a bottle. For a moment, both she and Ita peer at the necklace together, the gold bird suspended between their faces.
Then Kioni reaches out, her tiny fingers yearning for the necklace, a smile curling on her lips.
But Ita yanks the necklace away, more viciously than he intended.
Chege cackles. “You can’t touch it.” He’s been watching them. “He won’t let anyone hold it, let alone sell it, like we should have a million years ago. He rather me knife an old man for his watch.”
“You do that?” Kioni first trains her wide eyes on Ita. When she switches to Chege, then back and forth between them, reconsidering her saviors, the volley churning Ita’s stomach into a cesspool. He can see it—her dawning realization that she’s escaped the horsemen of hell only to meet their messenger boys.
Chege crosses his arms over his chest and huffs, making full use of his towering position over her. “He smart. He different. But what use we have for you, huh?” He looks at Ita. “She won’t last a month.”
Ita hangs his head. He looks at the necklace in his hand. “It was my mother’s,” he whispers.
Kioni peers into his palm, too, as though trying to read his future. “My mother’s gone, too,” she says, not because he hasn’t guessed as much—a half-starved shoeless girl alone in the night—but more like she hasn’t said it enough times yet to make it real. He knows the feeling too well. “Do you really do those bad things?”
She doesn’t meet his eyes as she asks, and Ita avoids hers, as well. They both sit staring at the necklace until Ita folds his hand shut and tucks it out of sight into its hiding place. Kioni has her answer.
“Only when you have to,” she says.
Chege’s head cocks sharply, his face switching from ire to approval, and Ita feels a wave of nausea.
But it is settled. Kioni is one of them.
January 1, 2008, Kibera—Ita
Ita snaps back to the present when he hears Michael come up behind them in the courtyard, staring at the disheveled woman in Ita’s arms, his eyes widening and narrowing with the rampant fluctuations of child emotions.
With Kioni still wrapped around his neck, Ita lumbers toward the stool. He sets her down, gently disentangling himself from her hot, dusty limbs. He nods at Michael and the boy padlocks the gate.
Slipping a finger under Kioni’s chin, Ita lifts her head softly to peer into her eyes. They are exactly the same as he remembers—pupils big and shiny as an oil spill. When his gaze shifts to the scar beneath her left eye, he feels his stomach clench. Everything about her presence makes his body stiffen like a corpse.
“What happened, Kioni? Why are you here?”
She holds his gaze, her lips pursed as if her next words have been rehearsed, likely a thousand times or more in her journey from her faraway home. But under Ita’s eyes, her courage turns to leaves curling in a fire, her words crackling embers that singe his skin.
“They burned everything,” she says. “The school. My house. Everything. And what the men did to each other...and to children.” She shakes her head at the images seared into her mind. “I took a bus as far as the money lasted. And then I walked. I’ve no one else—nowhere else to go.”
Kioni gives out, like an exhausted battery. Ita can only imagine what she went through to get here.
But the thought of her being here, staying here, being so close to him—it makes Ita recoil, makes him want to throw himself to the dirt or jump into a fire.
But we are already in the flames, he thinks. And Kioni is where the fire started.
He has outrun the blaze all this time, thinking he could avenge his regrets with a good life, but that was a lie. Divine retribution doesn’t follow man’s rules. He will pay for his mistakes, his failures. If Kioni has nowhere to go, then she has not made a family. In the fourteen years since she fled, grew into a woman, she has not found a husband. And if that is true, whose fault is it but his?
Ita nods at the night sky, knows the stars are watching, his payment due.
“You’re safe,” he tells her. “You will stay here with me. With us.”
He turns to Michael. With a reassuring smile and a wave of his hand, he sends the boy back to his room.
The decision is made, was made long before she got here. “Thank you,” she says softly.
Fetching another stool, he sits, not too close and not too far.
“Ita?”
“Yes?”
“Where’s Chege? Is he okay?”
His teeth clamp together, it feels impossible to force the words through them. “I don’t know where Chege is.”
She looks down at the ground, at the bag by her feet, snatched as she fled a smoldering life. Finally, the tears spill down her cheeks. There is no sound, just tiny rivers dripping off the cliff of her chin.
Ita scoots his stool closer. When he rests his arm around her shoulders, he can’t help but think of the days and nights and years they huddled together like this, against the rain, against the dogged hunger, against injustice and hopelessness and a horde of constant threats. But instead of giving comfort, touching Kioni now makes his insides squirm like worms in mud.
Chapter 17
December 18, 2007, Kibera—Leda
LEDA WATCHED THE safari tourists sniff out the orphanage.
It was a brilliant business move on Ita’s part, she thought. Let them see where their money was going.
But it made her feel strange, wondering what her role was now, the day after their perfect lunch and their steamy kissing and groping session in this very courtyard that now held six waddling tourists (five adults and one child) making wide eyes at the open-fire kitchen, the single room for seven boys, the outhouse space for bathing.
Leda sized them up from the sidelines. There was an older American couple, fiftyish, dressed head to toe in safari-themed gear, as though chosen excitedly from a catalogue. There were two women from Dublin—loud, exuberant best friends in their forties. Leda would have expected herself to shy away from them, but somehow she knew they would be her favorites. Last was an English father and his ten-year-old daughter, an awkward pair, as if maybe the father wasn’t her primary caretaker, perhaps a birthday present from an estranged parent, one not thought out too well. The girl snuck peeks at the boys waiting on the mat, and they eyed her back, just as curious.
The tourists followed Ita dutifully on the tour, asking polite questions about the orphanage, like a group visit to a museum or worse, a zoo. Exactly how she must have looked when she first arrived, Leda realized.
And how strange she must seem to them. Ita introduced her as a volunteer, but the looks the adults gave her made her think it was clear as day that she and Ita had been making out like horny teenagers and couldn’t wait to do it again. A hundred-and-fifty percent true, Leda thought with a grin. If this group weren’t here, they would wave the children goodbye, off to school, and send Mary on an errand a hundred miles away.
Ita looked over from his tour and winked. Nearly melting off her stool, Leda uncrossed and recrossed her legs.
Finally the group came over to meet the children. The boys had obviously been through these tours before, likely coached in Ita’s thorough way on the importance of their role. Ntimi shook hands like the perfect gentleman and wished them lots of lions on their safari.
Mary asked if they would like some tea.
So, for the next bit of morning, everyone piled onto the mat and sipped milky chai, asking each other questions that made both sides of the divide laugh at their strangeness. How many toilets do you have in your house? You boys have never been in a taxicab? What is a hamster?
It made Leda realize how much she felt at home here now, how the strangeness had worn off and become appreciation. But some of the questions were for her.
“Are you a journalist?” the father asked.
“She’s a photographer, a chef, and she has three degrees,” Ita answered for her.
“How long are you here, dear?” one of the women asked.
“If the children had it their way, forever,” Ita said.
“You’re pretty,” the little girl said.
To this, Leda said, “Thank you,” and Ita looked at her as though she was a sunset over the Serengeti.
December 18, 2007, Kibera—Ita
Ita loved almost every part of safari, but sometimes this—the drive to get started—was his favorite. He had the tours down to a science, a routine that gave him both the comfort and confidence needed to be a good guide.
After the boys left for school, Ita shepherded the group out of Kibera, shuffled them into a matatu and got them safely to the car-rental place where he hopped into the beige safari jeep that would take them the rest of way.
This part, with a full tank of gas and the road before him, was when he began to breathe deeply again and relax. Still, he must focus. He must be charming and knowledgeable, must establish a position of authority, dazzle them with information about Nairobi, Kenya, and their voyage ahead.
They would arrive at Amboseli Park by late afternoon, but for some reason, even after studying their maps, tourists never seemed to expect the land to open up so soon to the golden savannahs and Maasai children tending cattle in bright clothing under a blue sky.
It never failed to make Ita happy—the tourists’ gasps and clicking cameras as each of them was forced to scoot aside their gritty mental pictures of his country to make room for the vistas of red coffee-berry bushes and the lushness of the Rift Valley.
His second favorite part was getting to know the travelers. It was a fun game, trying to fit their conversation puzzle pieces about their homes and lives with the encyclopedic facts he’d read about their countries’ politics and statistics.
Sometimes his charges napped or read, sometimes they asked him endless questions about himself and the children, sometimes they talked only to each other and ignored him completely. No matter their behaviors, Ita liked to sit and drive and soak it all in, storing away the tidbits about small towns, towering cities, the phrases they used, the dynamics between fathers and children or sisters and sisters.
Just now, the Irish ladies snapped pictures of Maasai herdsmen, the father instructed his daughter coolly on the history of Maasai warriors, and the couple wielded phrases entirely new to Ita, like “holy moly” and “god blarnit.”
But today was definitely different.
Today there was Leda.
The whole time while the Irish women said funny things in their funny accents, overpowering the conversation of the reserved father and daughter from London, and even the loud couple from a place called Houston in Texas, Ita let them be without interjecting his tour guide script.
Because all he cared to do was stare at Leda.
She seemed to be using the same method—sitting back and observing these strange creatures unnoticed. He could tell by her posture that she was listening, but she faced forward in her seat, eyes turned to the window, seeming to find the easy chatter of families and lovers even more unfamiliar than he.
Her stories about her home and childhood—they didn’t tumble out of her like the two Irish women or countless travelers Ita had met. Leda’s stories came terse and meager, as though she was more interested in not remembering than in telling. But yesterday, she had revealed much, and Ita pictured a life strung together of silence and solitude and a secret suspicion that her mother hated her. Of course, now she was a woman in her own right, who had built a life in a mountainous place called Topanga, and filled her mind with knowledge Ita esteemed. That she could smile at the stars over the slum and laugh as she bounced Walter on her lap meant that she was happy here. Certainly, she brought sunlight to all at the orphanage. That is why glimpsing her sadness made Ita want to wrap her in his arms and hold her there forever if it meant she would never be sad again.
Now he admired her long brown hair cascading in layers like eagle feathers. He knew if he stared too long she would meet his eyes, smile at him longingly and mean it, and that would send Ita back into a replay of yesterday, remembering the taste of her lips against his, how she felt and sounded as his fingers slipped inside her—memories that had kept Ita tossing awake half the night.
He turned his eyes back to the road.
“I’m glad you came,” he said softly so only she could hear.
“Me, too.”
He looked straight ahead, but he couldn’t help himself from smiling as he felt her eyes stay on him.
December 18, 2007, Amboseli Park—Leda
Leda watched the lushness give way to the dry expanse of the reserve as the jeep pulled into the entrance to the park. She stayed in the vehicle with the crew while Ita went to pay the fees and fill out all the paperwork.
“Golly gee, my bum may not be the same after this trip,” one of the Irish women, Esther, said to the other.
“Our bums haven’t been the same in years, Esther m’dear. I think it quite smart we added the extra padding,” her friend, Martha, replied with a wink. “Leda, on the other hand, we best find that gal a pillow, no?”
Leda laughed. It really had been a bumpy ride so far.
When Ita returned, his arms were stacked with boxed lunches.
“Hey, I could’ve helped,” Leda said. She hopped out of the jeep.
“You are on vacation,” he replied. “Your lunch, m’lady,” he said and handed her the top box.
“Such a gentleman,” Esther said, taking a lunch box next. “Should have brought the husband just for a lesson.”
“Oh, Lordy, no, wouldn’t do the lug a bit o’ good,” Martha said. “And then you might have missed the view.” She pointed at Ita’s backside as he strode away from them toward a picnic table.
Leda couldn’t stifle a snigger.
Ita heard and turned. Puzzled, he smiled. “Oh, yes, the view,” he said and motioned into the distance.
Majestic Mount Kilamanjaro towered before them.
The peak—covered in snow above a sea of clouds, above a plain of acacia trees—sucked every bit of air out of Leda’s lungs as she stopped to stare. Ita stood beside her and looked, too. “One never tires of it,” he whispered.
The blue sky, the expanse of clouds, the shadows of animals in the distance—all were stunningly beautiful, but nothing could compete with the vision of the mountain.
On the drive, Ita had told them how centuries of people worshipped the mountain as a god. At the time it had seemed quaint. Now it seemed like the only natural reaction a human being should have. Leda felt like bowing.
“And I never tire of seeing people’s first sight of it,” he said.
After a lunch of turkey sandwiches, potato chips and carrot sticks, everyone piled back into the vehicle, excited for their first real step into safari.
The second the jeep started down the red dirt path, Leda felt her cares vanish into the blue sky. Off to the left, in the not-so-far distance, a line of elephants moved gracefully across the horizon. Ita pointed but said nothing, letting the moment wash over them all. They were getting a late start, so there were no other buses in front of or behind them, and they had the endless expanse all to themselves.
Nothing could have prepared Leda for how it felt. In the modern world of Google satellite maps and travel blogs, there were fe
w things that exceeded expectations or felt like something entirely new. Safari was one of those things.
“You should go up there,” Ita said, pointing. The top of the jeep was open and the group stood on their seats, faces in the wind.
Esther caught Leda peeking. She held out her hand. “Sure, honey!” she shouted over the noise. “Come on up with us!”
Leda moved to the bench seat and stood up between Esther and Martha.
The mix of the wind, sun and mountain view took Leda’s breath away. The peak reigned in the distance, dwarfing jaunty acacia trees and a pack of ten, eleven, twelve antelope, Leda counted. Wide swaths of golden grasses ran up against fields of lush wet green. Up ahead, water shimmered in the late-afternoon sun. As the wind stroked her hair, Leda scanned the land stretched wide like hope, like possibility, like nature’s portrait of freedom.
From her new vantage point, she could see the path winding in front of and behind them. Martha gasped in her ear as they veered to the right. Ita slowed the jeep, and seven gaping tourists stared in amazement at a herd of zebras, striped fairy-tale animals clustered less than twenty feet away.
Once Ita sped back up, Leda, feeling tipsy, tilted her head back and gazed at the sky. It was as if she’d never seen the sky before. Perhaps she’d seen pieces of it in between the mountains or framed by backyards or skyscrapers. She’d seen it hanging out behind the trees or stretching its legs for a sunset. But out here—this was where the sky came to vacation, to show off, to retire and reflect on its legacy.
There was no sense shouting over the roar of the wind, so the travelers all enjoyed their own private magic show, Ita slowing the jeep when animals appeared, but never stopping.
Leda’s whole soul sighed. And beamed. There was no place else she would rather be.
She ducked her head back inside the jeep and said, “Thank you.”
“What?” he called back.
“Thank you!” she cried out. Thank you for this, for everything, for so many other things I wish I could tell you.
What Tears Us Apart Page 15