was a three-walled room with a metal roof and another identical mat spread out. “This is for study, and for eating when the rains come.”
The next room had a sheet drawn tight across it. “Mary!” Ita called across the courtyard, followed by a question in Swahili that Leda couldn’t understand.
Mary’s answer boomeranged back and Ita gently tucked the sheet to one side. “Mary’s sleeping space,” Ita said, but respectfully, he didn’t enter.
Leda hesitated.
“It is okay. You may look,” Ita said.
Leda ducked her head inside. This room was much smaller. A mat still covered most of the dirt floor, but this time sported a narrow strip of foam and a folded sheet on one half.
When Leda poked her head back out, Ita watched her expectantly.
“It’s...” Leda wasn’t sure what he wanted to hear, and her head was starting to spin with the dawning realization that these were her accommodations for the month. “Great.”
“So you will stay with Mary,” Ita said, satisfied.
Leda looked out to where the children sat, playing quietly, waiting for their lunch. She put a hand out, feeling for the wall, something solid.
Ita’s voice was different when he spoke next, with an edge of self-consciousness that was new. “I’m sure where you live is very different.” He remained with the sheet in his hand and straightened. “The bed might help you become accustomed.”
Leda realized he meant the piece of foam in the little room, but she could no more imagine stretching out next to Mary and having any hopes of sleeping there for an entire month than she could imagine coping with any of it—the toilet, kitchen, the sheets for doors. She would be surrounded at all times. Forget hearing herself think, she wouldn’t even be able to feel herself breathe. As if in response, her breathing came quicker.
But then she remembered the morning—traipsing around after Samuel through the maze—all the jagged metal, the haggard faces, the roar and the stench, heaps of garbage, the images leaping out like rabid dogs.
Leda forced herself to breathe from her belly as she looked at her feet. She saw now where she and Ita had walked carefully around the perimeter of the courtyard. The dirt in the interior was swept clean. The children’s sandals were lined up like ducks around the mat. The concrete in the bathrooms was new, the sheets clean. She remembered the touch of Ita’s hand, felt the lingering calm he exuded. She was safe. Leda felt sure of it. Inside the orphanage, she was safe.
But Ita noted her silence and saw how she looked at her feet. “I have an idea.”
He walked back to the room he’d said was a hospital. He slid open the metal that looked like a wall and waved Leda over. She was amazed to see a metal table, and walls covered in posters of anatomy and the periodic table.
“It is our secret, this room,” Ita said, looking at the stacks of medical supplies on a table in the corner, and Leda thought she understood. In a place like Kibera, where health services were rare and precious, a room like this would have to be kept secret lest the whole slum descend on it. “You would like your own room. What do you think?”
Did he mean the metal table? Leda could only think of blood and episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, until she pictured the foam on Mary’s floor and found herself saying, “Yes, if it’s okay, this is perfect.”
Ita nodded and smiled. “Good. I will bring the foam and blanket. Are you ready now to meet the children?” Ita looked past her at the kids when he said it, and the love that radiated toward them landed on Leda, too, like wrapping her hands around a cup of morning tea. She felt glad for the boys, then noted the lump in her throat.
As she gazed after them, Mary appeared out of the kitchen, struggling under the weight of the steaming pot.
“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