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.
It was a song they’d planned, obviously, because everyone from youngest to oldest joined in at once.
Leda let the harmony wash over her and blinked her eyes. When she didn’t have her camera out, she would blink to record the memories she wanted to hang on to, to replay later for comfort. She’d had no idea what to make of her first day in Kibera, but just then she wanted to savor the warm feeling wrapped around her like afternoon sunshine on her porch in Topanga. It wasn’t the feeling of serenity she felt there with Amadeus, however. This was something new.
A loud banging on the metal door stole Leda’s train of thought and took the warm feeling with it.
The children stopped singing but sat obediently, not looking overly perturbed, though Jomo ducked back behind his curtain. Leda tried to calm herself—visitors to the orphanage must be common.
Ita walked over to the door and she heard the voice that filtered through, sounding more like a low growl than a man.
Reluctantly, Leda thought, Ita slid open the door. But he blocked the gap, so Leda couldn’t see who was outside.
She turned back to the boys, but the mood had shifted one hundred and eighty degrees. Leda glanced up to see if clouds had moved in. No, the sun was still beating down like a radiator.
The door scraped ajar and a tall, wiry man darted through to jab Ita and cackle. When the man’s yellow eyes scurried over Leda’s skin, she shuddered and averted her gaze. When he turned to converse with Ita, Leda looked again.
At first glance, Leda might have called him handsome, with his angular face and cat eyes, but beside Ita, she decided, definitely not. The man was a praying mantis, creeping along on folded pincers. Dreads snaked down his back, trembling as he shuffled closer. Dangling, bouncing from his belt, was a battered machete. When he sneered in her direction, Leda recoiled at two rows of stained teeth. Then she saw that his face was covered in scars, several of them burns like hers.
Her hand went to her scar while her mind filled with fifty thoughts at once. The man was clearly a gangster, yet seemed to be Ita’s friend. There was a word at Leda’s lips, a scary word. Mungiki—what the guidebook named Kenya’s vicious mafia and more or less warned to look out for dreadlocks. Mungiki ran the slums—extortion, female genital circumsion, beheadings.
“So, this is the volunteer?” The man stopped at the edge of the mat, close enough that he cast a shadow over Leda. “You the woman Ita can’t stop talking about, two weeks now?”
Ita’s face blanched. Wary? Or apologetic?
“Chege!” Ntimi jumped up. The other children greeted him with enthusiasm, too.
Chege turned to Ita and laughed his hyena cackle again. “She speak?” He looked down on Leda meanly, his eyes on her as he continued in a growl before she could answer. “Funny, nah? Here Ita been talking ’bout this educated white woman, smart, rich, talking up a summer storm.” Chege smirked, he flickered his eyes over to Ita then back to Leda. “Lot to live up to, this man a big dreamer. He dream big beautiful things. Like an angel come from America, come save everybody.”
“I’m not—” Leda said, but Ita interrupted.
“Kuacha, Chege,” he growled. He held out his hand to Leda and tugged her up to stand beside him. “This is Leda. She is my guest.”
“Leda,” Chege purred. “Welcome to Kibera, Leda.” He put out his hand and she took it reluctantly.
Ntimi interrupted. “You bring gifts, Chege?”
Ita shook his head and steered the boy back to the mat.
When Leda tried to retract her hand, Chege held tight and pulled her closer to him. She squeaked, desperate to escape his calloused grip, but he peered into her eyes and whispered, “Don’t tell him you no angel yet. American rich lady come save Africa, and have a little fun.” He nodded his head in Ita’s direction.
Leda’s eyes flickered over to Ita. Were those his words?
“But what if—” Chege’s voice rose, pulling Ita from the children into their huddle “—what if us