snapped free of the moment and nodded. “Good luck, Leda. Good luck in Kibera.”
Ita held out his hand, too. “Samuel. Asante sana.”
Samuel shook Ita’s hand, craning to peek inside the orphanage with the same urgent curiosity Leda felt. Ita stood firm with his smile, blocking the view. Samuel nodded once more. “Karibu. Kwaheri.”
Leda watched her guide disappear around a corner and then turned back, which left her and Ita alone across the divide of the entrance. She found herself close enough to be struck by the smoothness of his skin. It was flawless, reminding Leda of a hand-dipped cone. Imagining that it would feel like velvet to the touch, Leda lurched forward for her suitcase handle, letting her hair swish over her face.
“Please, let me help you,” Ita said. He took the suitcase from her and swung it through the doorway in one fell swoop, opening a new world to Leda. The orphanage.
Leda got a two-second glimpse at a horseshoe of shadowy rooms around a dirt courtyard, before the view filled with children, bumping like bees as they swarmed past Ita to greet her. Six boys, Leda counted—toddler to preteen—as they tugged her inside, chattering competitively in Swahili. One boy, the oldest, watched her intently, walking backward like a guard dog. Leda tried to smile at him.
Inside, she stepped into a battle of smells. To the left, cardamom and clove fought pepper and cumin for control of a stew. Leda sniffed the spicy smoke the same way she inhaled Amadeus’s fur after a grooming, but stopped short when she was bitten by Kibera’s sharp endnote of sewage.
The boys patted her clothes and skin as they tugged her toward a woven mat in the courtyard. Leda focused on not tripping over them. She felt woozy after her voyage through Kibera, as if she’d stepped off a merry-go-round. But now, inside the orphanage, if such a thing was possible, it was actually louder, more closed-in, more overwhelming. The kids swirled around her legs like water in a tide pool and Ita followed, the herder.
“We’ve been waiting for you!” he shouted over the tops of their heads. “They are very excited. We have prepared many things for your arrival.”
Leda swam in the most human contact she’d had in years. Maybe ever. Estella had renounced her past and whatever family it may have contained, so Leda hadn’t grown up in proximity to anybody other than her mother. She’d sat alone in school, then spent evenings watching children on television, trying to comprehend them in their freeness. Leda always felt as though she’d been born eighty years old.
Now here she was being mobbed by children, her breathing shallowing. Estella’s judgments rang in her mind—she was not made for this. Was she crazy to have come here?
And then, just as Leda nearly went down in the mosh pit, Ita saved her. His eyes met hers, a knowing look in them that made Leda feel as if she’d found a wall to lean against. His eyes, dark brown with golden supernovas, stayed locked on Leda as he called out in Swahili to the children. A series of commands, sold with a smile but sure as a sunrise. The children reacted like little soldiers. They took their places on the mat, sitting cross-legged with their hands in their laps.
Leda exhaled and Ita laughed.
“We’re happy today. To meet you, Leda.”
“Oh, me, too,” she rushed out, hoping she hadn’t just come across as rude. “Just tired, I think, from—”
“A tsunami of children? Yes. Cannot hear yourself think, is that it?”
Leda nodded, amazed. Yes, that was exactly it. Ita stepped closer. “Lunch is almost ready. Should I show you your new home?”
She looked around the orphanage, at the concrete walls crumbling to the dirt floors, at the open doorways and one wooden door. Shyly, she followed him as he walked briskly to the left of the courtyard. First, he pointed at a closed door, crooked on its hinges. “My office,” he said, and walked on. Then he turned, with a wink Leda might have imagined, and said, “And my bedroom.” The next room was open and Ita stepped inside, waving her after.
Leda didn’t understand what she was seeing. A closet? Shoes lined the edges of the room, in a square around another huge woven mat. She lifted her foot to step forward, but Ita put his hand on her arm. It was warm and soft.
“This is where the children sleep. You may sleep here or—” Ita stepped out of the room “—with Mary.”
Mary had been the other name on the website, but hadn’t been linked to a picture. Leda’s stomach burned with curiosity. “Is Mary here now?”
“Who did you think was creating that delicious smell?” Ita ducked his head under a wooden beam and Leda followed him into the kitchen. A wood fireplace formed the rear of the room, and the rest of it, apart from smoke, was filled with pots and pans and plastic bowls towering off the ground.
Bent over a cauldron that hung above a fire was a sizable woman’s backside, wrapped taut in a patterned sarong, brighter than a bouquet of flowers. At Ita’s voice, the woman straightened and Leda saw she was old, though to guess her actual age would be tricky.
Leda felt relief gush through her, and she laughed at herself when she realized why. When she’d read the listing online, she had thought perhaps the man and woman mentioned were married or a couple. Now, she knew she’d been hoping that wasn’t the case.
Did women shake hands? Leda wasn’t sure, so she said, “Hujambo. Habari ya asubuhi,” the words piling up in her mouth like cotton balls.
Mary smiled kindly, her face wrinkling like a cozy bathrobe. “Karibu,” she said.
Welcome. Leda did feel welcome. She’d never had anyone make such a fuss over her presence, or anything she did, really. Except maybe Amadeus.
Next, Ita showed her where the toilet was—toilet being a very loose term. There were two stalls with two hanging sheets. When Ita pulled back the first sheet, Leda’s eyes traveled down to the square of concrete. In the middle was a piece of wood with a handle on it, and Leda could only guess that underneath was a hole. The second stall was exactly the same.
“Shower,” Ita said of the second stall.
When Leda remembered to breathe again, she met Ita’s eyes and saw that they gleamed with pride.
So Leda looked again and tried to see it through different eyes. She remembered how Samuel had said everyone paid to use a latrine and to bathe. This was a luxury. An achievement. He should be proud.
“Awesome!” Leda said, and knew immediately she’d overdone it.
But Ita laughed at her effort, not wounded in the least, and led her by the elbow to the other side of the orphanage.
The ease with which Ita touched her—it was unnerving. Even more distracting was how her skin felt under his fingers—tingly, pliant. Usually, she grew stiff under a stranger’s touch. In her fairly limited sexual experience, Leda had always felt clumsy at best, but more often raw and exposed. But as she walked with Ita, she had a lightning-flash vision of Ita’s warm hands on her skin. She bet it would be different with him—gentler, yet sexier, urgent.
Leda’s head shot up, her eyes darting to Ita as if he’d heard her thoughts. She felt the blood stampede her cheeks. She coughed to try and combat a full-on blush.
Ita paused before the back wall of the orphanage. He looked at her strangely, and she wondered if she was hurtling pheromones at him so hard he felt it. Get a grip, Leda.
“There is a room behind here. It is our medical room, our secret hospital.”
He must have known how strange that sounded. But at the same time, she noted the same pride as before that lifted his chin. “Are you a doctor?” she asked.
Ita smiled. But when his eyes moved to the door, his confidence faltered. “No. I study.” Now he looked embarrassed. “Not like you have studied. Impressive, your education.” Leda had sent him her résumé, as if applying for a job. Now she felt stupid about it. “I