The Death of Vivek Oji

by Akwaeke Emezi

We were young, we were boys, the years rolled by in the heat. Later, much later, I wondered if I should have told his parents what was going on, if that would have helped him, or saved him a little.

  * * *

  —

  Two years before I finished secondary school, I finally gathered enough courage to approach Elizabeth. She was taking the SAT classes with us and I toasted her the same way we all toasted the girls we liked—I bought her FanYogo after class and escorted her to the gate when her driver came to pick her up.

  Vivek watched me and laughed. “You’re finally chyking this girl?” he said. “Thank God. At least you didn’t wait until graduation.”

  After a week of sending her letters and carefully writing down the lyrics to the hottest love songs for her, Elizabeth finally agreed to be my girlfriend. She saved the letters, all written on sheets of foolscap paper torn out of my exercise books, and wrote me notes telling me how romantic I was. I visited her house in Ngwa a few times—I already knew I could never bring her to Owerri.

  One weekend, she suggested traveling down with me when I was going home.

  “I have an aunty who lives there,” she said. “And my parents know your aunty, so they’ll allow me to go with you. You know how the Nigerwives are.” She was starting to get excited about the idea. “We can take the bus together!”

  I refused. I didn’t want to chance anyone seeing us together at the bus stop in Owerri and reporting me to my mother. She had already warned me about having girlfriends during a rant about the sins of the flesh, when she told me that if she ever caught me masturbating, she would throw me out of the house. I couldn’t believe she was the one talking to me about that instead of my father, but my mother didn’t care. By then, she was a hardened pillar of religious fervor and prayerful discipline. When De Chika told me stories about the cheerful young woman my father had married, the one he used to sit and gist with in the kitchen, I couldn’t recognize her as my mother. The mother I knew was a straight-mouthed person who held nightly prayer sessions, always kept her hair wrapped in a scarf, and quoted her pastor in every second breath.

  Meanwhile, my father was staying longer each day at the office and I was spending more weekends at Vivek’s house, even when we didn’t have SAT classes. My mother noticed this immediately, of course. How could she miss it when we were all she had? She complained to my father about his absence, and when he continued to stay late at work, she decided he had a mistress. It was a fear fed to her by the women in her church. Why else, they reasoned, would he stay away from his family? No, he had to be keeping some girl in a guesthouse somewhere. On the nights I was home, I sometimes heard the shouting from their room as she threw accusations at him in tight, balled-up words.

  “You think you can just go and take another woman, ehn?! And me, I will fold my hands and allow it? Tufiakwa! You will tell me who she is, Ekene—today today! You will not sleep until you tell the truth and shame the devil!”

  “Mary, lower your voice,” my father said, his voice tired and level. “The boy is asleep.”

  “Let him hear!” she said, her voice punctuated with claps. “I said, let him hear! Is this how you want to shame me in front of everybody? Oya now, let us start with our son!”

  I covered my head with my pillow to block the sounds.

  “Your mother wants you to spend more time here,” my father told me the next morning over breakfast. “This is your home. Not your uncle’s house.”

  I kept my mouth shut and ate my cornflakes, even though I wanted to tell him that he was just as guilty as me. He was never there. He was the one leaving me alone with my mother, who felt like a hammer instead of a person. So I stayed away from home when I could, making up an impressive roster of excuses: De Chika was sick and they needed me around the house. The road from Ngwa to Owerri was plagued with armed robberies and it wasn’t safe to travel. If my mother had simply told De Chika that she wanted me home more, he would’ve sent me along immediately, but she never brought it up and he didn’t notice how often I was around. I think my mother kept quiet because she didn’t want it to look as if she and my father couldn’t handle me.

  Aunty Kavita had told me once that my mother had wanted more children, but that she’d stopped trying after several miscarriages. I couldn’t imagine what she’d gone through—how much of my mother’s life I missed because I was a child—but I wondered if that was what changed her. She must have prayed so much in those years. Maybe that’s where the bright, high-spirited woman De Chika talked about went; maybe she’d been sanded down into dullness by grief and prayers that went unanswered.

  Instead, she held on to her faith with a stubborn kind of bitterness, as if it were all she had left—a trapped and resentful love. Who could stay bright and bubbly after losing baby after baby? What do you do when you’re not allowed to be angry at God? I could see why she made everything so heavy, but I still ran from her, all the way to the boys’ quarters at De Chika’s house and to Elizabeth, who made me never want to go back to Owerri.

  “I don’t like to be in my house either,” she told me. Her family didn’t have a lot of furniture, and although Elizabeth said it was just the style, I had heard my aunt and uncle talk softly about her father. He was a quiet man, gracious, always with a handkerchief in his suit pocket, but from what I’d overheard, he was also a drunkard. His carpet store was always in danger of closing—he spent their money as if it was water—and Aunty Ruby had to hide what she made at the daycare center from him. Elizabeth never talked about it and I never asked her. She let me come over when he wasn’t home, but she preferred to visit me at De Chika’s house, in the boys’ quarters.

  “I like it here,” she said, twirling around the room. “It’s like our own little world.” My heart pounded as I gazed at her arms and legs, so long and brown, sticking out from her clothes, ending in narrow hands and sandaled feet. There had been one or two girls at school that I’d knacked before, but Elizabeth was the first girl I’d brought there, to that small room and the dusty-pink bedsheets. She never stayed more than an hour or two; Vivek came looking for me there after his piano or French lessons, and she would always straighten her clothes and leave before he returned. I spent what time we had in disbelief that this person—the same one I used to watch as she cut through the air running—was here, choosing to be with me. I remembered in exquisite detail how, each time she won a race, her face would light up, her lips parted as she panted for breath, her eyes bright with victory. I wanted to re-create that look. I wedged the door to the boys’ quarters shut and pushed up against her, and she giggled under my hands and mouth. “Don’t stop,” she sighed, as I kissed her neck. Her skirt was starched and green and pleated. I slid my hands up her thighs, but she pushed them away, so I just held her waist instead.

  One afternoon we were making out on the bed, our hips grinding through layers of clothing, when Elizabeth pulled her head back and searched my eyes with hers. “Touch me,” she whispered, and I froze, wondering if I’d heard her correctly. She let her legs fall open and arched her hips up toward me. “Touch me,” she said again, and I obeyed, reaching under her skirt. We fucked right there on the mattress—the sweat of her body against mine, her legs around my waist—and it was like a better life. My hair was short then, but I kept it in little twists like I was trying to start dreadlocks. She slid her hand into my hair and tugged on it, and the pain in my scalp was electric and perfect. I had to strip the sheets afterward to hide where I’d pulled out and spilled all over them.

  Two hours later, I lay on the bare yellow foam of the mattress and told Vivek about it, about the noises she made and how she felt inside. He was standing by the window in a green T-shirt, leaning on the wall, eating chocolate Speedy biscuits from a purple packet he held tight in his hand.

  “You didn’t use a condom?” he asked, making a face.

  I shrugged. “Abeg, I wasn’t prepared. How I fit know today was the day the b
abe go gree?”

  “That’s stupid,” he said, his voice flat.

  “Small boy,” I sneered, a little stung by his comment. My cousin was a virgin and I knew it. He scuffed his foot and looked out of the window. There was a dark bruise around his right eye. I sighed and changed the subject, gesturing at his face. “Oya, who was it this time?”

  “That Tobechukwu idiot from next door. Feels he can just open his mouth anyhow and talk rubbish.” He flexed his skinned knuckles and ate another tiny biscuit. It had been years since he’d chipped my tooth, but Vivek still fought a lot, just with other people now. He had a temper like gunpowder packed into a pipe, a coiled-up strength that had developed with time, and because he was thin and quiet, no one expected the violence to explode out of his frame the way it did. I had seen a couple of his fights, and they were worse than when he used to fight me. At first, I’d tried to break them up, but I stopped after I arrived late once and saw Vivek beat the living hell out of the other boy. He didn’t need my help.

  “Where did the two of you fight?” I asked, surprised he hadn’t gotten into trouble.

  “Down the road.”

  “You’re lucky his mother didn’t see you. What did your mumsy say when she saw your face?” I knew Aunty Kavita would have been upset.

  “She hasn’t seen anything,” he snapped. “Fashi that one. Gist me about Elizabeth. How many times?”

  I grinned. “Back to back,” I boasted. I didn’t tell him how it had felt when she gasped my name into my ear, her fingers digging into my back—like in that moment I was a whole entire world.

  Vivek rolled his eyes. “It’s here you’ve been bringing her?”

  “Yes, but it’s just today we did that,” I said.

  He glanced down at the speckled foam of the mattress. “Is she going to come here again?”

  “Maybe. What’s your own?”

  Vivek ran a hand over his shaved head, the skin like burnt gold. “I want to watch next time,” he said, lifting his chin at me.

  I sat up on my elbows, my chest bare, still smelling of her and sex. “Wait, wait,” I laughed. “Repeat yourself.”

  He raised an eyebrow and kept quiet. I flopped back down on the mattress.

  “You dey craze,” I said, looking up at the popcorn ceiling. “Watch for where?” I sucked my teeth.

  “I’m serious,” Vivek said. “Unless you want me to tell my father what you’ve started doing back here.” I sat up fully and stared at him, but he was holding back a smile and laughed when he saw the alarm on my face. “I’m not going to report you, abeg. I’m just saying you should include me small.”

  “Why do you want to watch?” I asked. “Is it that you like her or what?”

  He scoffed. “I just want to see what all the noise is about. You people that keep talking about this knacking, knacking, every time knacking.”

  “Ehn? So you want to just collect a chair and sit in a corner folding your hands while you watch us?”

  He gave me a sneering look. “Nna mehn, don’t be stupid. I can just see through the window.”

  “And if someone catches you standing outside, nko?”

  “Who’s going to see me with all those bushes outside the window? I can just stay behind them.”

  Vivek ate another handful of biscuits casually, as if he was suggesting something normal. I lay back and stared at the discolored walls, trying to imagine Elizabeth being there again, her short hair rubbing against the mattress in rhythm with my thrusts, except this time with a pair of eyes pressed against the torn mosquito net of the window.

  “It’s not as if you’ll see me,” Vivek said impatiently, as if he’d read my mind. “Just pretend I’m not there.”

  I gave in. I actually knew some friends who did things like this. They’d rent a hotel room and some of them would sit and drink on the room’s balcony in the dark, watching as the girl got fucked inside, laughing quietly behind the glass of the sliding door, hidden by sheer curtains and the lack of light. We were men together and we liked to show off, so I agreed.

  The next week, Elizabeth came back. We sat together on the mattress, my back sweating. Her collar was unbuttoned, showing the stretch of her neck.

  “How are you?” I asked, stroking the palm of her hand with a finger.

  She smiled at me. “I’m fine. Happy to see you.”

  “I wasn’t sure if you would come back after last time.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “Why not?”

  “Maybe I didn’t do a good job.”

  She gave me a look, and in that second, I saw that she was nowhere as innocent as I’d imagined. I had assumed she was a little inexperienced because she was quiet and played hard to get, so it had felt satisfying to be the one with her on that mattress when we fucked. Like I was accomplishing something. But the way she looked at me made me think maybe I knew less about what was going on than she did.

  “If you didn’t do a good job, you think I’d be here?” she said, and gave me such a cocky smile that my voice left me for a few minutes.

  “So you’re just using me for my skills, abi?” I managed to joke, and Elizabeth laughed, throwing her head back.

  “Don’t worry yourself,” she said. “Just enjoy. What’s your own?” She leaned in and kissed me and I stopped thinking. I unbuttoned the white cotton of her shirt with my pulse pounding, not looking at the window in case I’d see Vivek’s face behind the thin curtains. He’d insisted I replace the sheets on the bed (“Are you mad? You want to fuck her on just foam?”), and that I use a condom (“I don’t care if it makes her think you’re expecting sex. You are expecting it. And what if she gets pregnant?”). So we washed the pink sheets and dried them out on the clothesline, and now my palm was pressed against them as I tugged at Elizabeth’s underwear with my other hand.

  She sighed and threw an arm over her face, turning it away from me. I kissed her neck and a breeze from the window made the curtains flutter. I focused on the curve of Elizabeth’s ear and her hand came up to grasp the back of my neck, her palm cool and dry. The sounds she was making must have carried through the spaces between the glass louvers. I briefly wondered what Vivek was doing out there. Was he touching himself or what? Isn’t that what someone would do? And what if De Chika or Aunty Kavita caught him behind the bushes exposed like that?

  Elizabeth wriggled a little under me, dragging my attention back to her open shirt and small breasts cupped in a lace-trimmed cotton singlet. I pulled the neckline down and put my mouth on her nipple, fumbled between our legs, ignoring the condom in my pocket as I pushed and sighed my way into her.

  “Nwere nwayọ,” she warned.

  “Oh!” I braced my hands against the bed and pulled back a bit. “Ndo.”

  She smiled and kissed me, then wrapped her legs around my waist, her skirt falling up to her hips. We moved gently, and when the pleasure started to get too sharp, I pulled out to catch a breath. Elizabeth laughed and touched my cheek—but then she glanced past my shoulder and suddenly screamed, scrambling to cover herself and pushing me away. I turned around and there was Vivek, standing in the doorway, looking over the room, his eyes hooded and unfocused.

  “Jesus Christ!” I leaped off the bed and pulled up my trousers. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  He held on to the door frame and didn’t reply, his fingers digging into the wood. Elizabeth was crying, pulling her clothes back together, her hands shaking. I shoved Vivek and asked again, louder, but he just rocked backward like rippling water, then flowed forward, staggering a little.

  “What is he doing here?” Elizabeth shouted, between sobs of rage. “Get him out!”

  I pushed him harder, then again, out of the room, and he just kept taking it, his mouth slightly open, looking like a fucking mumu.

  “Chineke, what’s wrong with you?” I knew he was having an episode, I knew he was sick, but I didn�
�t care. I was tired of covering up for him, tired of him being sick or strange or whatever was wrong with him. I really liked Elizabeth, you know, and now she was there, angry and crying in a corner of the bed, after he’d been standing in the door watching us for God knows how long. So I pushed him with all the anger I had and Vivek fell off the concrete landing, two steps down onto the ground. He broke his fall as if by reflex, twisting so that his hips and shoulders hit the sand, but his head still rocked from the impact, his eyes were gone, he still wasn’t here. Elizabeth screamed and I ran back into the room, terrified that Aunty Kavita would hear her from the main house, terrified that I’d hurt Vivek by pushing him so hard.

  “Shh—it’s okay,” I said, climbing back on the bed and wrapping my arms around her. “It’s okay.”

  “I want to go home,” she sobbed.

  “No wahala. Come.” I took her hand, then led her off the bed and through the door. Vivek was curled up on the sand below, with his hands pressed to his face, hyperventilating. “Don’t mind him,” I said as we passed. “His head is not correct.”

  I escorted her out to the main road and she entered a taxi without looking back at me, slamming the door so hard that the frame of the car rattled. I watched it drive away, spluttering black fumes from the exhaust. She was never coming back, I thought in that moment; our relationship was over. I dug my hands into my pockets and walked back to the house, dragging my feet.

  When I got back, Vivek was sitting on the landing, his back propped against the door frame.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, as soon as he saw me, trying to stand up quickly. “I don’t know what happened—”

  “You know what happened,” I said. “I don’t even care again. I’m tired. Every time with this your thing.”

  “Osita, please—”

  “I said I’m tired.”

  He ran a hand over his head, distressed. “What do you want me to do? Should I go and say sorry to her?”

  “Don’t fucking talk to her,” I snarled, and Vivek flinched. I shook my head and raised my palms, backing away from him. “It’s enough,” I said. “It’s enough.” I didn’t look back as I walked away. I threw my clothes into a bag, then caught a bus back to Owerri, knowing I’d miss the SAT class the next morning. I didn’t care.