What Tears Us Apart. Deborah Cloyed
Chege laughed, his smoky breath hitting Leda in the face. “Okay, okay. I play nice.” He dropped Leda’s hand and slung down his knapsack. “Presents!” he called out.
The second he let her out of his grasp, Leda stumbled back and wiped her hand on her pants. She wrapped her arms around herself then, trying to still the wave of nausea and panic. Chege strode past her, chuckling, and crouched down among the boys.
Leda coerced herself into taking one clean, full breath.
Chege dug in his bag and brandished a coconut, winning “oohs” and “aahs” from the children. He untied the machete from his belt, its edge jagged, its blade sticky with congealed brown stains. Leda watched him swipe it across his jeans, telling herself firmly the stain wasn’t blood.
He split the coconut with a single, expert stroke. He sucked down the milk that came spilling out, letting it course over his chin before he dribbled it into the kids’ open mouths, like watering a ring of flowers. The children gulped the sweet juice and giggled. With the machete, Chege carved smaller pieces and handed them out.
Leda watched the whole process in a daze, until Chege ran his tongue over the white coconut flesh, one eye leering sideways at her. She looked away, her cheeks burning.
Ita couldn’t seem to tell anything was wrong. He looked over at her and smiled, the same pure, easy smile.
As all the children sat content with their treat, Chege stood next to Ita. With a flare obviously for Leda’s benefit, he pulled a bulging wad of money from his pocket. “Been a good month, brother.”
Ita looked at the cash and the smile was gone, replaced by steel. “No,” he barked, followed with daggers of Swahili, fervent hand gestures, and a look searing enough to ignite a forest fire.
For a fleeting moment Chege was surprised, he teetered backward on his spindly limbs. He recovered at the same moment Leda saw Jomo edge into the courtyard.
Chege saw him, too, and waved him over. Jomo hesitated, then jutted out his chin and walked over.
Chege peeled off a leaf of Kenyan shillings. “Ita say he don’t want any,” Chege said. “He don’t like where it come from. Ita always think money cares where it come from. Always. Even when we was you age. Course, then he had no choice.”
Chege took Jomo’s wrist. He thrust the money into the boy’s palm. Jomo’s eyes bulged as if he was scared to blink, as if the money might disappear. Now Chege looked up at Leda. “Maybe he think things be different now?”
Leda felt the nausea tip and pour back through her stomach. What had they said about her? What did they think of her here in this place?
“Chege, enough,” Ita said, but Chege put out his hand and knelt down next to Jomo.
“But this boy knows. Every hungry boy knows money have to come from somewhere.” Chege’s coiled stance made Leda think of a feral cat—watching, plotting, waiting. “And somebody always have to give something to get it.”
Leda could tell Jomo didn’t understand the words, but everything Chege did was a cartoon requiring no caption. Ita’s jaw was clenched so tight she wondered how words could possibly escape, but she could see them, piled up behind his teeth, being chosen carefully.
When he opened his mouth, however, Ita’s words were swallowed by banging at the door. Deep voices followed, so loud Leda jumped.
Chege laughed. “For me,” he said with a wink.
Ita’s frown was like a deep etched carving. “Go,” he said and strode quickly with Chege to the door. Leda stayed where she was, holding her breath.
When the gate opened, thugs huddled outside, their words like little firecrackers. Leda couldn’t understand any of it, but the men looked back and forth behind them as if they were being chased by the devil himself. One man took the machete from his belt and demonstrated a whack. With another glance behind him, he tried to dart inside the orphanage.
Which is when Ita started shouting. He screamed at the men, then at Chege, all the while trying to close the metal door on top of them.
But everybody, and time itself, stood still when Chege hollered into the air. With terse, measured words he spoke to the men, who lowered their heads and nodded. He pointed beyond the door and they left.
Chege turned to Ita. A look passed between them and Ita raised his chin. Chege slipped out though the doorway. But as Ita slid the door shut, Chege’s eyes found Leda and sent a chill all the way down into her shoes.
Leda backed away, air locked up in her lungs.
When she sat down on the mat, she found she was shaking.
All the children had scattered off, to their room or to the kitchen. Leda pressed a finger to her scar.
What in the hell had she gotten herself into?
Chapter 3
December 30, 2007, Nairobi airport—Leda
THE SEAT BELT shakes in her fingers, as Leda buckles in and wishes she could likewise restrain her mind. Above the rushing of the air vents, the rumble of the engines, the chirpy chatter of the stewardesses, Leda hears her own horrible sound track on repeat. The sound of fist on flesh, the crack of machetes, the thud of Ita hitting the dirt. Screaming. Leda hears the awful, high-pitched screams, then realizes they were hers.
She sees Ita silhouetted in the doorway of the shack when he discovered them. Sees him hit Chege so hard the blood is like a hose, instant and coursing. Leda could smell it. She can smell it now.
She buries her face in her hands, presses against the small glass window, like she can make the sounds disappear, like she can snuff out the images.
She can’t.
She feels Chege’s wet mouth over her ear, stubble slicing her skin, his arms pinning her, sure as shackles, hissing into her ear in a voice that will never leave her again.
Ita found them, but too late. He found Chege sprawled atop her, grinding into her, her body pinned as though beneath a scorpion’s tail.
She looks down at her skirt, balling it up in her fists, fighting not to cry, wishing among so many other things that she’d changed clothes at the airport. Thirty hours she will have to look at her skirt and remember. Thirty hours she will be imprisoned in memory.
No, forever. Forever is how long she will have to live and relive this night.
Ita hit Chege and the world exploded. In the grand finale of the fireworks show, Chege’s men descended on Ita like bloodthirsty warriors. How many men were there? Leda couldn’t count. She’d covered her face and cried, begging them to stop. If the police hadn’t arrived—
But the police had arrived and they’d dragged her away. Once they’d learned she was already scheduled to fly out tonight, they asked no more questions. They dragged her away from Ita and left him there. As though her life was more precious than his. You don’t know anything! she’d wanted to scream at them as she looked down at his bloodied body in the dirt. Save him, not me! I cannot live with this.
The child in the seat next to Leda is asking the stewardess for ice cream. The stewardess jokes with the boy, looks hard at Leda, as though she’s about to ask her something.
Leda turns farther toward the window in a preemptive response.
How? How is she alive and on a plane? How is the world still spinning? How can the child next to her be deciding between strawberry and chocolate?
Leda thinks of the orphans. What will happen to them? What’s happening to them right now?
She burrows into her seat and tries to breathe.
“I liked the zebras best, mummy,” the little boy is now saying. “And the hippos. But they looked mean. I think the zebras are nice. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes,