And now Ita has to decide. Morality doesn’t always allow for deliberation, it happens in instants. Which is the choice that will save him and which is the choice that will kill him slowly, for the rest of his life?
When the fingers appear, Ita doesn’t fire.
When the foot appears, he takes a breath.
When the foot becomes half a leg in jeans and a knee, Ita squeezes the trigger.
The choice is made. The sound of the bullet pinging off the metal rings through the air. He missed on purpose. The foot and fingers vanish with a thud and a yelp.
It takes a few seconds for Ita to realize that the yelp was not a man’s, but a boy’s. And that the sandal was blue. Familiar.
Jomo.
The rifle in Ita’s hands is a hose turned into a serpent. He casts it to the ground. Then he drags a stool over to the wall, climbs atop it and peers over.
Jomo is heaped on the ground, clutching his ankle and rocking himself. He’s hurt.
“Stay there!” Ita says and Jomo looks up at him, terrified. “I’m coming to get you.”
Ita runs around the side of the orphanage, scoops Jomo up into his arms. His heart races as he carries him inside, disgusted with himself for what could have happened. Jomo doesn’t say a word. Ita wishes he would yell at him, but no, the boy bites down on his lip to quell his tears, tucked silently in Ita’s arms as he speeds through the courtyard into the medical room.
Ita sits the shaking boy down on the metal table. “Are you okay? Is it your ankle?”
Jomo nods, clutching his right calf. Ita slides his jeans up and sees that already the ankle is hideously swollen. Please don’t let it be broken.
“Okay,” he says, “I’m going to turn it around, very carefully. You tell me when to stop.” He slips off Jomo’s sandal and straightens his leg. He proceeds to turn the wounded ankle slowly, 360 degrees. Jomo sucks in a wincing breath, but Ita makes it the full circle without him calling out. A sprain then, most likely. Ita sighs.
“What were you doing?” he snaps. “Why didn’t you knock? Where’s Mary? Jomo, I almost—”
But Jomo’s face is like a beaten puppy’s. Something is very wrong, not just the ankle. His long fingers grip the edge of the metal operating table, the rest of his body is quivering.
“Jomo, what is it?” Ita is aware he’s making it worse, scaring the boy by his tone. He tries to soften his voice, imitate how Mary talks to them, soothingly. “You can tell me. What is it, angel?”
This was the wrong thing to say. Jomo’s silent whimpers switch to muted sobs. His shoulders shake so violently Ita worries he will make himself sick. Not knowing what else to do, Ita takes the boy into his arms and hugs him tight.
Miraculously, Jomo allows it. His dusty head tucks underneath Ita’s chin. Ita feels his dread start to fade away.
Then suddenly Jomo recoils. He scoots to the other side of the table, leaving a cold hard space between them.
“Jomo.” Ita gives him a long look. “Tell me.”
Jomo’s eyes dart to Ita’s hands. “The necklace,” he says.
The necklace? Ita looks at the boy in confusion.
“Necklace,” Jomo repeats.
He wants to see the necklace? Ita reaches inside his pocket and takes out the broken sparrow necklace. The severed links of chain dangle from his fingers. Jomo’s eyes fix on the necklace and grow wide, wider.
“Where did you find it?” Ita asks, watching the boy’s tear-smeared face. But maybe that is the wrong question. “When?”
“That night,” Jomo whispers.
Ita feels a drumbeat in his stomach, the heartbeat of a monster growing within. “Tell me, Jomo. Tell me now.”
“I saw—” Jomo halts.
“You saw what?”
“Everything,” he answers, looking at the floor. “I saw everything.”
Chapter 31
December 30, 2007, Kibera—Leda
AS LEDA RAN toward the mob, she fixed her eyes on Jomo, on the flickering glimpse of him between ankles and legs. But once she dove into the crowd, all clarity vanished.
The pain was shocking enough. Elbows jarred, feet kicked, weapons nicked her flesh. Instead of falling, she was lifted and carried forward, her toes dragging in the dirt. Men growled and screamed in her ears, spit peppered her face. A shoulder jabbed her in the jugular. They chanted, they bobbed in unison, they shoved each other in fervor. They were a train she’d climbed aboard, speeding down the dirt artery of the slum.
Leda lost sight of Jomo and couldn’t hear if Ita had come after her. She couldn’t see or hear anything clearly at all. Shadowy glimpses of sweat, blood and metal flashed before her as she squinted, trying to form an exit plan.
When a man to her right shoved another man to the left, creating a pocket, Leda’s feet hit firm ground and the crowd spit her out on a corner.
Leda flattened herself against a storefront, the sheet of corrugated metal cool against her shoulders. She looked down at her arms and saw they were scrawled with bleeding scratches. In the street, the mob started to circle, thrusting their fists in the air. No Raila, no peace, they chanted. No Raila, no peace! Someone hurled a burning stick, set two men aflame. A man shoved his neighbor crashing through a front door. A woman inside screamed, children ran out, wailing.
She had to move. She had to get back to the orphanage. But she was so disoriented, she had no way to get her bearings. And she had to find Jomo.
A man in the crowd stood still suddenly. He looked at Leda, his squinty yellow eyes glittering. He nudged the man beside him, pointed.
Move. Now.
Her back to the metal, Leda edged the way she thought she’d come, eyes down, praying for invisibility.
Suddenly she pitched backward into empty space, a narrow path between a row of shacks. She turned and ran as fast as she could. Her feet sloshed through a stream of sewage and debris, until one of her shoes slipped off. Leda cursed under her breath as her toe sliced down on something sharp. The stumble brought her to her knees, her skirt soaking up the mud, adding weight.
As she struggled to her feet, she heard voices enter the alley. And footsteps. She didn’t look back. She ran.
Until someone grabbed her elbow and yanked her backward.
Leda careened into the man’s chest hard enough to topple them both. She landed sitting on his stomach, bewildered and terrified. The man wrapped his arms around her middle so she couldn’t get up. Her feet pawed in the mud while her hands grasped at air. A river of urine and filth coursed over them both.
His friends caught up, skidded to a stop, and for a second they were silent, as if they were as shocked as she. The man let go and Leda scooted as far away as she could. Her breath came in sharp fragments. When she tried to stand, her feet snagged her skirt and she fell back down. Sobs tore through her throat and snot poured from her nose.
The men stared at her. “No Raila, no peace!” one of them yelled suddenly and thrust his machete into the air. Short, spiky dreadlocks stuck out of his skull like nails.
The other three teenagers followed suit, one holding a hammer, one a kitchen knife.
For a second, Leda thought they would move on. She scuttled away, close to the ground, like a crab. But as they plucked their friend from the mud, one of the men turned sharply to Leda and pointed.
“Kisasi!”
That word Leda knew. Revenge.
The men looked around the empty alley, out of sight of the mob. They looked at their weapons, their thoughts uniting as plainly as rain falling into the sea.
The kid closest to her reached out.
Leda clawed the ground, trying to rise, trying to run away. But her elbow was caught in rough fingers that gripped hard enough to pull her shoulder from its socket.
No. Please. Please, world, God, fate, don’t let this happen.
Chapter 32
January 11, 2008, Kibera—Ita
ITA LISTENS IN terror as Jomo speaks, stringing together more words in his first rushed sentences
than Ita has heard him utter in the months since he arrived at the orphanage.
“I was scared. I was hurt. I ran through the streets. I hid in a shack.” The words dart from Jomo’s pinched mouth.
As a horror show takes shape in Ita’s mind, he begins to understand, get a glimmer of what happened that awful night.
December 30, 2007, Kibera—Jomo
Jomo crawled out from beneath the mob. He ducked into the closest alley, sure he’d broken every bone in his body. As he surveyed his bleeding skin, his swollen limbs, he heard men’s voices approaching. He was petrified, there was no time to escape. The way back to the orphanage was in the direction of the voices. Peering through the darkness and the smoke, Jomo searched for a place to hide. He tried one door—locked. At the next, a woman’s voice hissed for him to go away. Mercifully, a third door gave way when he pushed it open. Inside, the shack was empty. Jomo dashed in as the voices came closer, more of them now—a gang.
He looked around, there was a low bed frame that he could maybe fit beneath. He tucked himself under and pulled in rumpled clothes to hide himself from view. Jomo braced himself. He could hear the men, louder, taunting. When Jomo peeked, he could see through the open door. He cursed himself for not shutting it, locking it.
But then there came another noise, whimpering. A woman. Jomo saw her, a shadow running past, just as a man’s hand reached out and grabbed her arm.
Jomo peeled aside the clothes, started clawing his way out.
The men had Leda.
Chapter 33
December 30, 2007, Kibera—Leda
EACH MAN’S HANDS on Leda’s skin felt like desert sand. Hot. Gritty. Rough as splinters of glass.
She ricocheted around their circle, a lotto ball in the air mix machine, fate holding its breath. Behind the lunging silhouettes of the men, the slum exploded—fire licking and climbing, spitting at the world. There was another sound, too, mixed with the whooshing sound of the inferno. Wood, metal, bodies, children—all crumbling, cracking, hissing and screaming in the flames. A symphony of loss.
The men, who were boys really, yelled incomprehensibly, but Leda knew their intentions.
They ripped the buttons on her shirt.
They yanked the hem of her skirt.
A cloud of reddish dust rose from their feet, as though trying to hide her. But the dust dashed away as Leda was flung to the ground.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then it was like vampires at the sight of a wound. The men converged—kicking, poking, laughing. They tugged at all her protruding parts. Leda was a centipede in the dust, trying to fold in one hundred legs. Trying to protect the things that mattered, the things that could not be undone.
Maybe they will just beat me and go away. This is not my fight. I came to help. Leda wanted to shout in their faces. I came to help.
But then she heard it, jumbled with the clatter of their words. Ita. Another one said it. Ita.
So they knew who she was.
She was a fish flopping, a tree fallen. A spider in the wind.
She was Ita’s love.
For an instant, Leda thought it would save her. But as their voices rose, she knew it had doomed her instead.
When the boy dropped down on top of her, the force of it was like a metal roof pinning her in a hurricane.
Instantly, all Leda could smell was him—sweat and dirt, but rancid, like musk and cheese rusted over with blood. He used his trunk to flatten her into the ground, his rib bones stabbing into her sternum, her bare skin ground into the rocks and trash. His legs and hands scrambled for Leda’s flailing limbs. The man-boys above laughed and hollered.
All she could do was flail and scream.
Leda called out for the man she loved, the only person who’d ever really loved her.
Chapter 34
December 30, 2007, Kibera—Jomo
WHEN HE HEARD her scream for Ita, Jomo knew what he had to do. He would have to run faster than the wind. Once he got out that door, he would circle around. He would jump over houses if he had to. He would make it to Ita in time to come save Leda. It was up to him.
Jomo dug forward, until his head then his shoulders poked out from under the bed. His fingers scratched at the dirt, he was stuck, trying to wriggle himself free.
But then Jomo heard a new voice, and allowed himself a sigh of relief. It was a welcome voice. Chege.
Chapter 35
December 30, 2007, Kibera—Leda
LEDA CALLED FOR Ita with all her soul.
But it was the devil who arrived instead.
Ita’s beloved monster, Chege.
Chege’s voice arrived first—a low growl, a familiar snarl. It was the battle cry of an unchained wolf, at home in the darkest of times.
Chege was above her. His dreads closed over Leda and her attacker, a curtain of night.
“Help me,” Leda said. Did Ita send him?
As Leda tried to decipher Chege’s spitting words, he yanked the man off and her body took a breath. The rancid smell, his clawing zipper, the pain in her lungs—it all disappeared into the racket above and for one second Leda felt light as a sparrow in the sky. She allowed herself to breathe. There was mercy in Chege’s heart after all. He would save her. At least for Ita’s sake.
But then Chege’s eye flickered, a flap of emotion like blinds shuttering the daylight. His hand shot down and wrapped around her throat, a coiled python, and her breath was lost. His other snapped the necklace from her neck. The gold necklace Ita had given her, the sacred chain that was everything to him.
This, Chege knew better than anyone.
He stared at the necklace in his fingers, his eyes bulging, and Leda knew the truth. Chege’s heart wasn’t merciful, it was a furnace of coal that burned only with rage. When both his hands pulled Leda up by the throat, the glint of the gold chain taunted her, the shiny sparrow charm a spark in her peripheral vision as the necklace dropped to the dirt.
Up, up through the dust, Chege brandished her like a chunk of meat.
He’d claimed her. Head wolf gets the kill.
His eyes darted about. Leda saw it when he did—a door ajar. He smiled, baring his brown teeth.
Faster than Leda could scream, Chege kicked her feet to knock her off balance, then dragged her across the alley, to the open door. The boys lapped at their heels, eyes ravenous. Behind them, the fire rolled atop the mud shacks like a river of exploding stars.
Maybe they will burn for this. Maybe we all will.
Chege yanked her into the dark room, kicked the door shut, and all light went out in the world.
Leda screamed and punched and hit. She bit and clawed and shouted Chege’s best friend’s name into the darkness. To remind him. To rebuke him. To make him see himself: an abomination.
And as she fought, like a cat under a crocodile, he thrust his hot, wet mouth over her ear, stubble slicing her skin, his arms pinning her sure as shackles, as he hissed, in a voice that would never leave her again—
“Stop! Stop! Leda, you are safe. I not gunna hurt you. Shhh. You are safe.”
When the words finally penetrated, cut through Leda’s screams and pierced her heart, she went limp beneath him.
A sob formed in her belly and swelled until it was born between them, shaking them both like trees in a tempest.
Relief flooded her veins until she swam in it, tears adding to the torrent. She opened her eyes like an owl in the night, and found herself on a dirt floor, in a one-room shack in a slum on the other side of the world, somehow miraculously, astoundingly alive. Then she found Chege’s almond-shaped eyes looking into hers.
A cry paused on its way up her throat and changed into a sigh that fluttered from her like snow. A fire, kindled by naked flesh pressed together, by the scent of skin and sweat, by the swell of emotion overtaking them both, erupted between them. It was all too much—the terror-filled night brewing past with future, stewing all human feeling into a tidal wave no one could outrun. Too late. Too late to go ba
ck. Too late to escape.
Chege’s mouth clamped down over Leda’s—hot, hungry, desperate—and Leda opened her lips, letting his tongue inside. She let the little monsters win.
Chapter 36
January 11, 2008, Malibu, CA—Leda
IT’S JUST AFTER midnight. The clock in Estella’s dining room is ticking. It’s telling Leda, Time does not erase your sins.
The nurses put Estella to bed tonight, her breath dragging in and out of her body like the sea over jagged rocks.
Now that they’ve gone, Leda is alone in the kitchen. She puts her hand on her stomach. Not entirely alone.
Too late. Too late to go back. Too late to escape what happened.
Leda jumps at a sound overhead, a thud that landed directly above where she sits at the kitchen table.
“Mother?” Leda calls, the chair scraping the floor as she finds her feet, heads for the stairs. “Mother,” she calls again at Estella’s door. “I’m coming in.” As she opens the door to the pitch-black room, light from the hallway filters in. The bed is empty.
She runs in to find Estella facedown, sprawled at an odd angle, a few feet away. She crouches beside her, rolls over her mother’s limp body. Her eyes flutter. She’s conscious.
“I’m calling 911.”
Estella tries to speak, but her voice is slippery, bubbling.
“Shhh, it’s okay. You’re okay. Don’t talk.” Leda’s hand fumbles across the nightstand for her mother’s cell.
She dials 911 and returns to Estella’s side. As Leda recites the address for the ambulance, Estella groans, a distorted rumble of agony that makes Leda’s blood run cold.
She studies her mother’s face. One side of her lip is curled down, the other limp. A stroke? “Please hurry,” Leda says and hangs up the phone. She pulls Estella into her lap and remembers how she did the same with Ita, how her hair draped over his broken face as she pleaded with God not to make him suffer for what she had done. Not to make him suffer for her sins.
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