Deborah Cloyed - What Tears Us Apart

“Michael, msaada,” Ita called, and the word was followed by more Swahili that Leda figured meant the boy should help Mary with lunch.

Michael, not only the tallest boy by a foot but owner of the only serious expression of the bunch, stood and grabbed the pot’s handles. He called out and two other boys obediently headed for the kitchen.

As she watched them go, Leda realized Ita wasn’t watching the boys, he was looking at her. She felt his curiosity digging into her again, and realized for the first time that she must seem as strange to him as all this was to her.

“Let’s eat,” Ita said.

The remaining children wiggled with excitement as Leda came closer.

“Karibu!” one of the middle-sized boys called out. He put his hand out like a little salesman. “Ntimi,” the boy said, indicating himself. He had a smile almost to match Ita’s—full of strong white teeth and a joy one can only be born with.

Leda sat next to him. “Leda,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Timmy.”

It was Ntimi who named the other boys, from Thomas to Christopher, ending with Michael. Then Ntimi scooped up a toddler and plopped him into Leda’s arms. “Walter,” he said, and everyone laughed as Walter tried to wiggle free.

Michael was the only one not laughing. Leda had a hunch he was a person she would have to win over slowly. “Thank you for having me here, Michael, for letting me into your home.”

Michael nodded with a solemn maturity that made Leda want to smile, but she held it back.

Ita, watching closely, doled out a look of approval that warmed her belly.

“Jomo,” Ntimi said as he pointed toward a sheeted room by the door, a room that hadn’t been on the tour. Leda took it for a guard post of sorts, or a storage space. She squinted. Did Ntimi mean a guard?

“He new,” Ntimi said in a quieter voice, just as Leda made out two skinny legs showing from under the hanging sheet.

Another boy. Boy number seven.

“Will he join us for lunch?” Leda asked, though the answer was obvious.

Mary handed Leda a yellow plastic bowl filled with murky water. Leda studied it, unsure what to do. Was it soup? “Wash,” Ntimi said, and Leda wanted to hug him.

She wet her hands in the lukewarm water, then passed the bowl around for the children to do the same.

Next, Mary brought her a bowl heaped with rice from the pot. She handed Leda a spoon.

Leda said thank you and waited for everyone else to be served. But Mary didn’t go for more bowls. They all seemed to be waiting and Leda wondered if guests ate first.

The first mouthful occupied Leda mind and body, with a collision of flavors she’d never tasted before. Sweet, salty, spicy all at the same time.

Suddenly Leda saw all the eyes on her. She jabbed her spoon back into the rice and felt her cheeks start to burn.

Activity commenced. Mary left and brought back bowls for herself and Ita. Then she set down the big bowl of rice on the mat, the boys huddling around it. Their little hands went to work, rolling little balls of rice and transferring them to their mouths fast as they could carry. Leda looked and saw Ita and Mary dig in with their fingers, too, employing the same technique.

Leda watched, thinking first of hygiene, then suffering a guilty replay of all the food she’d left on her plate or thrown away in her lifetime.

Leda looked at her spoon, glinting in the sun, and set it down on the ground. Watching Ntimi’s nimble fingers, she imitated him, rolling the food into bite-size pieces with her hands. Ntimi smiled at her.

Out of the corner of her eye, Leda saw the sheet flutter. She looked and saw that it was pulled just a crack to the side.

On impulse, Leda stood up and started over. Ntimi stopped and looked up in worry. Michael shook his head ever so slightly. But she went anyway.

Stopping in front of the sheet, she held out her bowl. “You like to eat alone, that’s okay,” Leda said gently.

No hand reached out for the bowl, but Leda could hear the boy breathing, with a slight wheeze of asthma that made her heart leap. Dangerous out here with no medicine. Lucky he has Ita, she thought, just as she heard Ita stride up behind her.

“How much English do they understand?” Leda asked, glossing over the fact that she still held out the bowl of steaming food.

“All Kenyan children learn English in school,” Ita said. He glanced at the sheet when he added, “But many of our children have missed much school.”

Leda’s heart sank. “So they don’t understand me.” Of course not. “Good way to practice my Swahili, I guess.”

Ita spoke into the crack in the sheet. When only silence followed, he spoke again in the same even, coaxing voice.

Nothing happened.

“They will understand some, if you speak slowly and use easy words.” Ita saw the look on Leda’s face. “Don’t worry, they already love you. They are so excited you have come all this way for them. It is hard for them to believe.”

Suddenly the sheet opened and a small, lanky boy stepped into the sun. He wore a WWF T-shirt, shorts and a scowl like a guerilla rebel.

Ita knelt down and spoke to him, as if he was explaining why the sky is blue or the dirt orange. Leda already loved this manner of his, a solid gentleness much like what she loved about the trees at home—cheerful but sage.

Jomo stood but he didn’t meet Ita’s gaze. Instead his eyes found something just off to the side and locked on. His face took on a blankness Leda recognized with a shiver. She looked down and saw what Jomo was doing with his hands. He picked and picked at the edges of his thumbs, beside the nail beds. Leda looked down at her own hands, similarly mutilated. It was an embarrassing habit, but one she’d never been able to conquer. Estella thought it was disgusting. Doesn’t it hurt? her school guidance counselor had asked. But the pain was the point. It grounded her. In public, whenever Leda felt anxious, when she wanted to flee or scream, the picking gave her something to do, something to keep her from losing control, something to control. The only other thing she’d ever found that calmed her, gave her a buffer against the world was—

“Hey, Jomo,” she said, reaching into her pocket and startling both Ita and the frowning boy. “Want to see something?”

Leda took the camera from her pocket. It was her favorite—small enough to take out and tuck away quickly, with the manual control to shoot without a flash. It put a lens between her and the loud crazy world, let her compose it, control it, record it from one step away. Cameras gave Leda a way to interact with the world without...interacting.

Jomo’s attention snapped toward the camera lying flat in Leda’s hand. His yearning was more apparent than he would have liked, she was sure. She set down the food and knelt across from Ita, close to Jomo, and turned the camera on. She didn’t press it into his hands; she just started to demonstrate how it worked. Zoom like this, she mimed, frame with the screen, and take the picture. She pointed the viewfinder toward Ita and snapped.

Jomo grunted, a small slip of amusement.

Ita watched the two of them studying the image of him and he laughed. She bristled and felt Jomo do the same. But it wasn’t Ita’s fault, she realized. He wouldn’t understand. He wasn’t daunted by life. He danced happily with the world. He wouldn’t understand the comfort of a camera on the sidelines.

But Leda also knew Ita wanted Jomo to be happy, he was ecstatic at the merest glimpse of joy in the glowering boy. She hoped Jomo would know this soon, too. She tucked the camera away, picked up the bowl and settled it into Jomo’s hands before he saw it coming. Then she stood up and walked pointedly back to the mat.

When Leda sat down, the children settled back into a ring around her. On Ntimi’s cue, they began clapping their hands and rapping on their knees, and while Leda watched, a little taken aback, they began to sing.