I wanted to become a doctor. I was on my way, starting school, helping out at a clinic here, but then the orphanage came to be and—” Ita put out his hand to help Leda over a creek of dribbling brown water. The touch of her skin sent shivers through his arm.
Leda caught his eye and looked quickly away. Did she feel it, too, the electricity? “And?” she asked, her voice high in pitch and a little shaky.
“And what?” he said, his hand still closed over hers.
Leda slipped out of his touch and bounded a step ahead, leaving him feeling embarrassed. He was acting like a schoolboy in love. The realization brought him back to Earth and he remembered what he’d been talking about. Broken hopes. How time steals them away. “And days became years,” he said. Could she know what that meant? Dreams dashed, time squandered on poverty, years that raced by as he dealt with one pressing problem at a time? It hurt Ita to speak of his dream, getting further and further away now, of being a doctor.
“I know what you mean,” she said softly.
Ita believed that she did, somehow. He felt the questions returning, piling up—
“But how does an orphanage just come to be?” she asked, and he laughed in spite of himself.
“With a Michael.” He looked to see if she’d learned the children’s names yet. “The tallest boy, the oldest.”
“The protector,” she said simply.
Ita missed a step to look at her. “Yes. That’s Michael.” He pointed out a shadowed walk-through, but stopped before entering so they could catch their breath. “A friend brought him to me. She was sick, and she was out of time. Back then, my dream was dying, too, slipping through my fingers—” Leda was watching him with her wide green eyes. She had this way of making him feel as though they were alone in a quiet room, not in the midst of Kibera traffic. “It seemed like a sign from above. How could I say no?”
Ita looked to the sky, remembering so clearly the four-year-old boy with the serious eyes, hiding behind his mother’s spindly legs. “I thought I would take him to an orphanage, but no one would take him.”
“Why not?”
Ita sighed, feeling the old anger bubble in his blood. “His mother died of AIDS and people thought her child must have it, too. They didn’t want a sick child. One who would die or infect others.”
Leda chewed on her bottom lip. “So you took him in.”
“Yes,” Ita said and smiled, remembering. “I took him everywhere, delighting in everything he did. People saw that I loved him, clothed him, fed him, and—” Ita meant to laugh, but it came out like a sigh, remembering the rainy season after Michael arrived, after Ita had to quit school “—then people started leaving children at my door like flowers.”
A man knocked Ita’s shoulder, snapping him back to the present. It wasn’t safe to stand still like this in the back paths of the slum. Better to keep moving. “You never know, right?” He started toward the shadowy corridor.
“Know what’s coming next?” She stepped into a ray of sunshine.
Ita slipped into the alley. “Never know when you’ll meet the person that will change the path of your life.”
The corridor was only wide enough for one person at a time. A man squeezed past Ita, then jumped when he saw Leda entering the passage.
“Hujambo. Habari ya asubuhi,” she said and wriggled past him, so formal and adorable it made Ita want to kiss her.
He turned around, and as though fate meant to grant his wish, she was watching her feet and ran right into him. It threw him off balance, and they ended up pressed against the mud wall. Ita had just a moment to feel her slender frame, the down on her arms brush against his skin.
She looked up at him, her breath retreating across her pink lips.
“You’re right,” she whispered.
Ita looked at her, a feeling of wonder washing through him.
“You never know,” they both said in unison, then laughed shyly and slipped apart.
Chapter 5
December 30, 2007, Kibera—Ita
GOD’S BEEN RAINING kerosene.
Ita watches the flames clawing the night sky. When he tries to force air into his iron lungs, ash coats his tongue, clogs his throat. He doubles over, hands on his knees, and feels his body heave with vomit. But when he opens his mouth, it’s blood that drools onto his foot. He coughs, and blood splatters the dirt. Ita wonders if his wounds will prove fatal after all.
He must make it back to the orphanage. He must find a hold on the present. All is lost for him, but the boys deserve a chance.
He nearly faints from the pain of standing, but grits his teeth and thrusts one foot in front of the other. He’ll keep to the alleys—he can hear the rioters out on the main paths. He creeps unsteadily between the homes, his back scraping along the mud shacks. From inside them, he hears the chorus of whispers—plotting, pleading, praying.
One more corner and he’ll be there. The fire is behind him; it hasn’t reached their neighborhood. He realizes, with a pang of shame, that he dreads seeing the children. He dreads their questions, their tears, their bulging eyes. Ita doesn’t have any comfort to give. He’s afraid if he opens his mouth, he might tell them the truth.
The life we have been building, the one I wanted to give you, planned so carefully—it’s over.
When Ita knocks quietly on the door, there is an instant rustle.
A tiny whisper asks who’s out there. Michael.
As soon as Ita answers, the door slides open.
Michael’s eyes go wide as cashew nuts, and Ita realizes he must look as monstrous as he feels.
“Jomo?” Ita asks.
Michael nods.
Ita sighs. He is safe. Jomo is inside and safe. Ita drags his swollen body inside.
Michael watches with his ancient eyes. “All the children are in bed. Mary, too. I told them they must stay there until you returned.” Pride peeks through Michael’s scared voice. Ita sees that the boy is clutching Ita’s rifle. He floods with tenderness for this boy whom he has promised so much.
“You did very well, Michael. I knew I could count on you. You must sleep now. I will need your help in the morning.”
“But—” Michael darts another look at Ita’s wounds.
Ita puts out his hand, takes the rifle. “I’ll be okay. I can fix it.” He nods toward the secret room. But he has no idea if he can fulfill that promise, if he can fix anything this night has destroyed. “Go on,” he says in a voice he knows Michael will obey.
Michael sighs, the same old man’s sigh he had when he was five years old. “Lala salama, mpwenda baba.” He says it so softly as he turns to leave that it takes Ita a moment to realize what he’s heard.
Goodnight, dear father.
Ita watches him enter the bedroom, then begins the painful trudge toward the room with the medical supplies. Leda’s room.
There are footsteps again in the courtyard at his back, scurrying, urgent.
“Ita—” Mary’s whisper hisses into the night.
Ita turns. Mary’s face is crinkled paper, soggy in the creases.
Her family, he realizes with a pang. The orphans are not her family, not like they are for Ita. Mary’s kin is out there, in the chaos, in the fire. Her daughter, Grace, lives by the railroad tracks with her husband, with Mary’s grandchildren. But Mary is here. She stayed. “Thank you, Mary. Thank you for staying with the boys. What can I do? Do you need me to go