What Tears Us Apart

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, I think I liked the zebras the best, too.”

The mother sees Leda’s sullied clothes, sees her mussed hair, the scratches on her neck and arms.

Leda sees the woman’s blow-dried hair, her careful makeup, her attempts to hide her scared eyes, the lines of worry. The mother knows what’s happening beneath them. She can only guess the horrors responsible for the scratches on Leda’s skin and the look on her face, but she knows.

The look she gives Leda is a plea.

Their eyes lock, two women in a world of men gone mad. Leda looks at the boy, who’s around Ntimi’s age. Then she thinks of the youths who attacked her, their teenaged faces hard as wood.

Leda turns away. She obliges the mother with her child’s innocence and her mind returns to the stench of blood cloaking her. She washed her hands in the airport bathroom, but now as her hair falls forward, Leda sees it matted with the stuff. Her stomach clenches when she remembers how, as she cradled Ita’s battered head in her lap, her hair caught in the blood on his face. His eyes could barely stay open, as the fire reflected in them raged all around them. The sorrow in Ita’s eyes quickened the terror in the gazes of the policemen staring down at them.

I’m sorry, Ita. I’m so, so, so sorry.