just kidding. You can sleep. Just don’t die.”
* * *
Sun’s going down again when Ita next wakes up. His mind is clearer. He understands he can die now, if he wants to. Or not. Because he saw what the psycho named Chege was sitting on—the backpack.
“Inside.” Ita isn’t sure if the words came out or not. “Medicine.”
“I saw. Which one?”
“Pill. Orange.”
Ita’s mouth feels orange, stuffed with Kibera dust.
“Got it. Here. What’s it for?”
“Infection.”
“How do you know?”
“My mother. Sick. A long time. I learned—”
“You Kikuyu, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, too.”
Ita doesn’t answer.
“It your mother’s fault, then, that Kikuyus not take you in. She go with men? Get money? She got that sickness—”
“Shut up.” Ita rolls up to his elbow, ignores the lightning strikes of pain, blood frothing in his mouth. “You shut up, you—”
“Shhh. Hey. I no judge. Your mother love you so much, she do it for you. That makes it okay.”
Ita sees his mother’s face, a skull painted brown, her trembling bone fingers giving him her necklace, the gold sparrow sparkling in the setting sunlight, her voice, scratched raw, saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, forgive me—
“No, it doesn’t,” Ita says and blacks out, back into the in-between.
* * *
Two more days, and Ita doesn’t take any more of the pills. Best to save them. When he finally sits up, Chege nods in approval, and they sit on the field of trash where no ground is visible.
“You live here?”
Chege hears the judgment. “Now you do, too.”
“Why?” Ita asks. He is genuinely curious—why choose to live in a trash heap?
“Because here you won’t run into those guys again. Because here you can sleep, even if you stink like a cockroach.”
The backpack is zipped, sitting between them. Ita opens it up. It’s all there. The books, even the food. He looks at Chege in surprise.
Chege twists away. When he swivels back, he holds out a crooked carrot and a mushy tomato. “Eat these.”
Ita knows he must have been saving them. “How’d you get them?”
Chege shrugs. “I stole them from an old woman.” He pats the machete resting across his knees.
Ita looks at the food in his hands. If he eats it, he will break the promise he made his mother, and himself. The promise that he would try to be good, die if he must, but not die shamed, like her.
“What did you do to the guys that attacked me?”
“They not coming back, don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried. I want to know.”
Chege’s face is blank, placid, cracked dried blood still visible on its skin. “Just eat.”
Ita looks at the tomato. The pang in his stomach tells him he’s starving, his body desperate. He pops the tomato in his mouth. The skin splits and the mush bursts in his throat like rotten flesh. He almost chokes, but gulps it down.
“Why are you helping me?” he asks Chege, and chomps the carrot, so dry and old it’s furry on his tongue.
“I’m not!” Chege huffs. “I’m leaving. I just didn’t think you should die yet.”
Ita looks at Chege’s face, staring straight ahead.
“You smart,” Chege says quietly then. “You read books. There just some things you didn’t know yet.” He picks up a bottle cap and chucks it. “Now you know.”
But Chege doesn’t get up. He doesn’t leave. He sits, huddled over, feet dug in. Anchor to the ship thrashing in a storm.
December 30, 2007, Kibera—Ita
Ita wrings the rag out over the bowl of water and studies his face in the cloudy mirror.
He knew the terrible things Chege was capable of, but to betray him like he did tonight, to do that to Leda...
How could you, Chege?
Hatred pumps to the rhythm of Ita’s blood. His reflection, staring back—the monster in the mirror—a mis-sewn Frankenstein’s creature, everything about him grotesque and misshapen, distorted by the electrifying visions that won’t stop coming. He sees Chege on top of Leda. Sees her white legs in the red dirt, rows of scratches like lions tried to devour her. He sees the look in Chege’s eyes. Guilt. Pure and clear. Guilt and regret bubbling out as Ita lunged at him with his fists. Good. Ita remembers the blood spouting from Chege’s nose. If you don’t die from guilt as you should, I should kill you. You are poison. You take everything that is beautiful—
Now it’s a different memory vying for Ita’s mind. A memory more than a decade in the past, but somehow sharper with time. That look, sick and shamed, twisting across Chege’s face—Ita’s seen it before. That was Chege’s face the day he loomed above Ita as he wrapped his arms tight around a different, trembling, sobbing girl, the smell of fear mixed with the scent of her blood and sweat. I’m sorry, Ita whispered into her hair. I’m so sorry.
Ita covers his face with his hands, trying to blot out the images, but it makes them grow stronger and louder.
He opens his eyes, stares at the monster in the mirror. You see? You knew. You knew Chege would betray you again. What he did to Leda is your fault. You let him get close. Close enough to covet her, to hate her.
Ita remembers how Leda scrambled away in the dirt, her face stained in tears. He remembers her screams. She screamed while the men beat him. Screamed at the world, at fate, sobbing and screaming until she collapsed and pulled Ita’s head into her lap, rocking him until the police dragged her away.
Now she’s gone. And she’s never coming back.
Ita hears a noise outside. His engorged body turns to iron. The sound swells like the roar of a charging animal. It’s a pack of men—tearing through the alley. They stop at the house behind the orphanage. Without the thin metal wall, Ita could touch them. The men rip a door from its hinges. Women scream—
Ita grabs the rifle. He must get to the front door.
Then he hears a noise behind him. Inside. In the courtyard, at the door.
He grips the rifle with both hands and spins around.
As the shouting outside turns violent, fists thudding against skin and bone, the door to the hidden room scrapes open.
Ita aims the rifle, holds his finger on the trigger.
But what appears in the crack of moonlight is Ita’s nightmare memory come to life. Ita’s childhood self, misshapen, a child-sized Frankenstein’s creature come back to haunt him.
The little monster blinks, eyes wide and watery.
Ita lowers the rifle, gasping.
“Jomo.”
The boy’s face is swollen, bruised and taut, as if it will split open. Blood is crusted in his eyelashes, still wet under his nose.
“My God, Jomo, come here.”
Jomo looks like he will take a step, but the roar outside changes again. The women screech, outrage at its highest pitch, until a new sound follows the fists—the