What Tears Us Apart

by Deborah Cloyed

  He nods. “Yes, but I should go alone. It’s not safe for you.”

  Kioni gives Ita a long look. He hears her silent words in his head. It’s never been safe for me.

  “We’ll go together,” she says.

  * * *

  Kibera looks like a bomb-testing site. “I don’t want to go too far,” Ita says, eyeing the path nervously.

  The streets are still far too empty. That fact alone keeps his defenses up.

  “Okay, you lead,” Kioni says.

  Around the first corner, the phone-charging cart lies empty, abandoned. “Your phone is dead?” she asks when he stops before it.

  “I’m out of card, out of money. So it doesn’t matter.” Staring at the empty shelves, he’s thinking about Leda. Has she tried to call him? Is she okay? The desire to know burns through him.

  “Maybe she’s emailed,” Kioni says softly. “Maybe she has sent money. The boys say—”

  “No,” Ita says. “You don’t understand.”

  “What happened, Ita? What happened to her? To you.”

  Ita looks farther on down the road. “There’s a general store, Nelson’s, around the corner. He might have something left to sell. He knows the boys.”

  When they arrive, however, the little kiosk is shuttered up with scraps of cardboard and metal. Ita frowns and stops, but Kioni moves ahead.

  “Call to them. What did you think, they would put things on display, nice and pretty, for looters?” She goes around the side of the little structure and waves him along.

  Ita raps on a section of metal. “Habari, Nelson. It’s Ita.”

  There’s a moment where nothing happens and Ita glances to the street, realizing how exposed they are here. But then a tiny crack appears between two sheets of cardboard and through the slit of darkness comes a feeble voice.

  “Ita?” It’s a woman—Nelson’s wife.

  “Joyce, are you okay? May I enter?”

  Her hesitation is clear, but she tells Ita to come around to the other side, where the family lives.

  When the door opens, both Kioni and Ita stumble back in shock. There are so many people inside the room, there’s hardly space to put a single foot. Twelve pairs of eyes—women and children—fix on the visitors. Ita looks at Kioni, sees her eyes fill with tears.

  He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a wad of shillings and presses it into Joyce’s trembling hands.

  “Nelson?” he asks as gently as he can.

  But Joyce looks away and doesn’t answer. She tiptoes a careful path through the silent crowd. As she rummages in the corner, Ita digests the fact that he’s the only man in the room, feels the weight of it.

  Joyce is making her way back, carrying a plastic bag. When Ita sees that it holds two tins of tomato paste, three withered onions, and a lump of dried peas, he feels ashamed. “I cannot take this, Mama. You keep the money. For them.”

  Joyce presses the bag into his hands. “For your boys. Please.” Her eyes find Ita’s. “Kenya will need good men now, God help us.”

  * * *

  “What will happen to them?” Ita asks back at the orphanage. Mary has the children with her in the kitchen, leaving him and Kioni alone in his room.

  “They will persevere. As women do,” Kioni says. “You don’t have to save them.”

  His skin prickles at her words. “I can’t save anyone. None of the women I love.”

  Kioni’s head jerks in response.

  “I am a curse,” he says, and leans his head against the dusty wall.

  “Is that really how you see it?”

  He hears the kindness in her voice. But she doesn’t know what happened most recently. He closes his eyes to avoid looking at her, knowing it will only break him if he is finally going to tell her. “The night the violence broke out, Leda was swept away in a mob and Chege found her. He—” Ita doesn’t think he can say it, the word is a piece of glass slicing his tongue. “He raped her.” He hears Kioni’s sharp intake of breath. “I found them, but not in time. I hit Chege and he ran off. The police took Leda away.” Ita opens his eyes. “She isn’t coming back, Kioni. She will never bear to look at me again. I would remind her only of...” Of how I failed her. Same as I failed you.

  “Oh, Ita.” Kioni sighs. “Is that what you think?”

  She knows it is not only Leda he thinks of now. The story will not be silent. It begins to tell itself in the still room—the day when Ita was very sick. When his body shook so hard it knocked his teeth together like a dropped box of nails. When his skin grew so hot and he scratched so hard, trying to peel it off.

  “Sometimes things happen to people,” Kioni says softly. “Bad things. And sometimes people make choices. Bad ones. But the choices belong to them. Not you.”

  Her words are distant, less real than the memory rising in the space between them.

  Kioni was thirteen, her spindly arms holding Ita, trying to keep him still, to calm his shivering. Chege paced circles around them, beside himself.

  “You don’t remember how sick you were,” she says. “You would have—”

  “Died,” he finishes. “I do remember. I remember the day I should have died.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I remember better than anyone.”

  “No,” Kioni says, “you don’t.”

  She gets up off the bed, crosses to the wooden stool and sits, allotting space for the truth to be told. He feels dread bubble up like acid in his stomach.

  “You were in death’s embrace. I could see her icy fingers clawing at you, making you tremble like that. Chege could see it, too. God was planning to take you from us, clear as day. If we were going to keep you, we couldn’t ask God for help anymore. We were going to have to take it up with the devil.”

  June 28, 1992, Kibera—Kioni

  Chege’s eyes are wild, so wild they frighten Kioni. Instinctively, she backs away from him.

  “It is the only way we can get that kind of money,” he says. The kind of money they need to take Ita to a hospital, he means. The kind of money that can buy medicine.

  “Please,” she says. She knows that, before, she offered this bravely, but now that it has come down to it she begs for some other way. Something terrible that Chege can do, instead of her. She has a desperate thought. “The necklace?” she squeaks. But she knows they won’t—can’t.

  In her heart, she knows it’s too late anyway. They need a sure thing. In Kibera, if you have drugs, you sell them. If you have guns, you rob. If you are a woman...

  She tries to keep from crying. She is a woman, now, isn’t she? Thirteen. Same age as Ita, same as Chege.

  “He’ll die,” Chege says. “And we’ll die, too, if that happens.”

  She can hear Ita moaning. He’s calling for her. She lifts her chin to meet Chege’s eyes fully. She nods her head, once, and it is decided.

  She goes to Ita, pulls him into her arms again while Chege goes to make arrangements.

  A half hour later, he returns.

  Kioni nestles Ita best she can into a halved cardboard box. It will hide him, if not exactly shelter him. She makes a pillow out of plastic bags and winds others over his feet to insulate any warmth that remains in them. He is barely conscious. His eyes roll back to the whites, fluttering, while he mumbles and groans.

  Chege whispers that they must leave now. Kioni rises. She kisses Ita’s forehead, tastes the salt of his fever on her lips. “I’ll be back soon,” she whispers to him. “Very soon.”

  As they walk away, Chege stops so that Kioni nearly runs into him. “He will never forgive me, will he?” he asks.

  “Nor me,” she replies.

  It doesn’t occur to either one of them that Ita will blame himself.

  Kioni follows Chege as best she can, but she’s already weak from fear. Chege turns back often, but never catches her eye. He knows what is coming as well as she does.

  When they arrive, a man sits on a stool outside the shack. He looks Kioni over and nods, reaches back and knocks on the slatted wood door. Kioni lo
oks at the slits of light peeking through and feels her knees knock together.

  Chege puts his hand across the door frame, blocking her. “Ganji,” he says to the man, making his voice deeper than it really is. Money.

  The man looks Chege up and down and laughs. He laughs hard enough that she can smell his rotten breath. And see his brown teeth.

  The man takes some money from his pocket and puts it in Chege’s hand. Chege counts it with his eyes, his head jerking up sharply.

  “More,” he says. “She a virgin. And pretty.”

  Kioni’s stomach heaves at the words. So much hatred swells in her, she hopes Chege feels it like a knife in his back.

  The man’s eyes roam over her body, sizing her up, licking his lips, making her skin crawl. He thrusts more money into Chege’s hand, then raps loudly on the door.

  The door swings open. A man takes up the whole doorway, the light behind him, so Kioni can’t see his silhouetted face.

  Chege’s skinny arm is still blocking the doorway, looking ridiculous across the man’s wide midsection. As if he sees that himself, Chege lowers his arm.

  Now that nothing stands between Kioni and the towering man, she feels as if she might wet herself in fear. She bites her lip. It’s done, she tells herself. Chege has the money. Ita will get the medicine. It is already done.

  The man steps back and the room shines a spotlight on Kioni. All eyes on her as she steps inside.

  The door slams behind her and she looks around the room, trying not to meet the man’s eyes roving over her body. She wonders if he will be kind. Maybe he thinks she is pretty and he will be kind.

  “There,” the man says, pointing at the mattress on the floor.

  Kioni bites her lip, harder this time, and sits down on the thin mattress, her tailbone hitting the dirt beneath. When she looks up at the man now, her breath catches in her throat. He looks like a giant about to burst through the ceiling.

  He looks down on her silently like he is waiting for something. Maybe she is supposed to do something? Undress, she guesses.

  Trying not to cry right away, Kioni tugs at her sleeve, notices that her fingers are trembling. When she’s pulled one arm through, she hears Chege yell. She freezes. Now the man watches her with his arms spread, his knees bent like he will pounce if she tries to run.

  The door bangs open and three men storm through. Chege is behind them, screaming, clawing at their backs, but the man on the stool by the door yanks him out of view and shuts the door again.

  Chege screams and screams and Kioni opens her mouth and screams like the devil is stabbing her with his pitchfork.

  Looking back, Kioni would always weigh that one decision—the decision to scream. Always, she would wonder if it would have been better to seal her lips shut and let the men do what men do to whores they’ve paid.

  Because it is her wail that turns the look on the men’s faces from hunger to fury. And it is then that they rip off all her clothes and take turns on her body, jabbing into any hole they can find, one by one and then even at the same time, splitting her skin at the seams and bloodying them all. All the while beating her to within inches of her life as the man outside knocks Chege unconscious.

  January 10, 2008, Kibera—Ita

  “Stop!” Ita screams. “Please stop. Why are you telling me this?” He claps his hands over his ears. “Don’t you think I’ve imagined it every day since Chege dropped you bleeding into my arms? I would have stopped you, don’t you see? I would have saved you! I would rather have died than for you to—”

  “No, Ita,” Kioni says. “You don’t see. You don’t understand, after all this time.” She peels his hands from his ears. “You don’t always get to save us. Sometimes we get to save you. Sometimes we get to save you.”

  “No. No.” His sobs catch in his throat, choking him. “You should have let me die.”

  Kioni folds him into her arms. They hug each other tight, as they did that terrible night. The night Chege carried her half a mile and collapsed at Ita’s feet, handing over her broken body like a sacrificial lamb.

  “After...the way you looked at me—” She burrows into his neck. “The way you tortured yourself. It was worse than what happened. I knew then that you would never have peace, never forget. Never love me.”

  Ita pulls away and grabs her wrists, forces her to look at him. “I did love you. Even if we were kids. I loved you more than I loved myself or anything in the world.”

  Kioni leans forward and presses her forehead against his. He lets go of her wrists and slips his hands into hers.

  “Ita, do you still love me? Like I have always loved you?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. She presses her lips hard against his mouth.

  Ita mashes his chest against Kioni’s breasts. He wraps his arm around her lower back. He feels the blood rush to his hands, to his groin. He squeezes her tighter. Harder.

  But.

  But.

  But his heart doesn’t soar alongside hers. He feels a surge of emotion, but it is one of regret and hurt, of grief. His stomach doesn’t flutter, rather it sinks. Kissing Kioni feels like spiraling down a bottomless hole.

  Ita’s mind races, chastising his heart. Here is your chance. Your chance to make it right. The boys will have a mother. You will have a home. She deserves it. You deserve—

  But then suddenly Ita finds his lips hovering alone in the air and Kioni staring at him with her wide brown eyes. They peer into his, searching, then suspicious, then hurt.

  She knows. She knows the truth just as he does.

  “You’re not, are you?” she says in monotone words. “You’re not in love with me.”

  Ita considers lying. His mind jolts back and forth, knowing what this is about to cost him. One small lie and he will not be alone. Three words to create a family for the boys, a haven in the violence. And for himself an absolution. Wouldn’t the words be true, in a sense? Of course he loves Kioni. He always has. He loves Kioni as he loves breathing.

  Ita blinks. That’s it. He loves Kioni as one loves breathing, automatically and unconsciously, and nothing more. And she knows it. Sadness rises in his belly like floodwaters.

  Kioni’s eyes spill over like two ponds on a rainy morning. “You are in love with her.”

  Chapter 27

  December 27, 2007, Kibera—Leda

  CHEGE’S LIPS, CLOSED over hers, were softer than she would have imagined. He stroked her tongue with his, gently, like he knew her, understood her, knew what she wanted. He tasted like smoke, like a bonfire, he tasted like the air that safari night when Ita told stories around the fire.

  Ita.

  Leda’s heart dove into her throat and began to thunder. The effects of the changaa evaporated like dew in a desert. As she jerked free, air pricked her wet lips and her mind picked up speed. What had she done?

  Chege watched her implode, smiling like a Cheshire cat, his lips spreading wider by the second, enjoying Leda’s collapse. His smile curdled her stomach, sour vomit rose in her throat. She scuttled away from his grin, struggling to get her brittle legs beneath her.

  As she staggered to her feet, she looked around at the world caving in like a crumbling cliff. In the distance, in the kitchen, she registered the clinking and clattering of the boys. The thought of facing them made her ill. She looked to the door behind her, imagined she heard Ita returning with Mary.

  Flashes of the fallout whipped through her mind. Chege telling him what happened. Ita’s eyes turning on her. He wouldn’t believe it at first. But then he would look into her guilty face and he would see. He would see her for the monster she really was.

  The whole time, Chege’s eyes never left her. Leda felt his gaze crawling over her skin, enjoying himself. When she dared to look at him, he met her dead-on, yellow eyes glittering like a cat in the darkness. “Run,” he whispered.

  Leda staggered backward, her mind reeling. What should she do? What could she do?

  She had to think. She had to get away from Chege.

&nb
sp; Leda dashed to her room. Inside, she panted, her mind whirring like a blender, thoughts whipped into madness. She would say that Chege tricked her. That it was all a mistake. He took advantage. She was drunk—

  Her heart sank. It was hopeless. She’d taken the drink. She’d let him kiss her.

  With tears blurring her vision, Leda started to pack her things. She snatched up items and stuffed them into her suitcases—medicine, toiletries, cameras, clothes. Suddenly she stopped.

  She looked at all her things. She took the memory card out of the camera and set the camera back down. Then she reached for her money belt, and stood up. She fastened the carrier under her waistband, lowered her shirt, and left the room.

  The courtyard was empty. She could hear Chege with the boys in the kitchen, clearing her an exit ramp to the gate. Her heart was still torn, thinking of leaving the children like this, but the second she pictured anew Ita coming home, Chege rushing to meet him, telling him—

  Leda hurried across the courtyard, slid open the door, and left.

  * * *

  As soon as Leda checked back into the hotel, she stumbled into the room of white walls and mahogany furniture and collapsed onto the bed.

  She watched the ceiling spin. She imagined she could smell Chege’s scent on her, like smoke, and taste the liquor on her breath. She ran to the bathroom and threw up, three times in a row. She realized she hadn’t even left a note for Ita.

  But Chege would tell him. Wasn’t that why he’d done it—to kill their relationship and send her away? Leda clawed at her face, climbed back into bed and smothered her head under a pillow. She was a monster.

  Chege hadn’t tricked her. What he’d done was demonstrate his point. She didn’t deserve Ita. He was right.

  And now Chege could tell him as much, with proof. Throw it in Ita’s face.

  God, she was such a fool. Her little speech on Christmas. She shuddered, remembering his face. He does so much every day, mending souls and climbing mountains. Then she comes in with a trust-fund checkbook and a self-satisfied smile.

  All the hopes and good intentions she’d brought to Kenya sucked out of her, she wrapped herself in guilt and slept. And as she drifted off, she dreamed of sparrows.