The Death of Vivek Oji

by Akwaeke Emezi

  “Oh, Osita!” Aunty Kavita hugged me tightly. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I applied to some universities here just in case. Those ones went well. My father wants me to go to school in Nsukka.”

  She smiled and patted my cheek. “Well, at least you’ll be close to home. Vivek is starting his applications soon. Fingers crossed for next year!”

  My mother interrupted us, gathering the family to take a group picture. Her eyes met mine briefly, and I wondered how much she had overheard, how much she was hiding. I wasn’t interested in digging up her secrets. We stood next to each other for the photograph; I still have it now. I’m wearing deep blue robes and looking sullen, a tassel hanging over my face.

  Vivek isn’t even looking at the camera. His eyes are cast off to the side and his chin is lowered. Aunty Kavita has her arm around his waist; she only reaches his shoulder. My father and uncle are standing next to each other, brother by brother. My mother is smiling so widely you can’t help but look at her, like she’s determined to crack her face in half. We fit easily in the frame, all of us together.

  After I started attending university in Nsukka, my trips back to my home in Owerri grew less frequent. I didn’t go to Ngwa either. A full year passed, maybe two, before I saw Vivek or his parents again. I wrote them letters, even called a few times after they installed a landline in their house, but I missed Vivek’s graduation, his eighteenth and nineteenth birthdays, and it was only later I found out that he never went to America. No one told me why. According to my mother, he enrolled at Nnamdi Azikiwe instead. One term later, De Chika pulled him out—and still no one would tell me what was going on.

  “Since when did you start caring about your cousin?” my father said when I asked. I flinched at the censure in his voice. He’d never commented on our rift, but clearly he’d noticed, and it sounded like he blamed me. I wanted to argue, but my father walked away without waiting for my answer, leaving me ashamed in his wake.

  “Don’t worry yourself,” my mother said. “Focus on your books. The boy will be fine. His parents are just spoiling him.”

  “But what’s happening?” I asked. “Why did they remove him from uni?”

  She hesitated, then flapped her hand in a vague gesture. “He’s not well, but don’t worry. God will take care of it.”

  By then, my father had reduced his hours at work so he could spend more time at my grandmother’s house in the village. “I’m getting old,” he said, as if that explained everything, and maybe it did. The house had been renovated into a duplex and he’d put in a phone line. My mother and I joined him some weekends, like small holidays away from Owerri. The village was expansive—a world of land and farms and nature, not like the towns or cities, where everything was cramped and loud. We were finding escapes everywhere.

  One evening at the village house, I picked up the phone in the upstairs parlor and heard De Chika speaking to my mother. I should have hung up, but instead I lowered myself to the floor next to the sofa, pressing my back against the leather and covering the mouthpiece with my hand so they wouldn’t hear me breathing.

  “You know Osita came down with us,” my mother was saying. “Maybe it’s a good time to bring Vivek around. You remember how close they were as boys.”

  “Mary, I don’t know. I don’t know what is happening to my son.” De Chika sounded worried. “Do you know he stopped cutting his hair? If you see him now, just looking like a madman . . .”

  “We will pray for him,” my mother countered. “The forces of darkness will not triumph! No, he is not lost. He cannot be lost.” I could already feel her beginning to whip herself up into a holy frenzy.

  “I’m not worried about his soul, Mary,” De Chika snapped. “I’m worried about his mind. Kavita has stopped sleeping. She keeps checking his bed, but the boy doesn’t even sleep there anymore. He wanders around the house. He goes and lies down on the veranda with the dogs. Sometimes he climbs the tree in the backyard and just stays there.”

  “Ah-ahn!” My mother was surprised enough to pause the spiritual momentum she’d been gathering. “Have you asked him what exactly he thinks he’s doing? You can’t just leave university to come and behave like this.”

  “He said he can’t sleep. That the dogs don’t disturb him and he can feel breeze better from the tree, some rubbish like that. When we asked him to start making sense, that’s when he stopped talking. Mary, I don’t want the neighbors to see him like this.”

  “Ei-yah! Poor Kavita. So it’s the three of you that are coming, abi?”

  “Yes oh. I can’t leave either of them alone, and she won’t leave him alone. You know she slapped him the other day?”

  “Ehn, she told me. She said she was feeling guilty. I told her a boy who does not respect his mother enough to behave like a normal human being in her house should be prepared to accept some discipline. Didn’t you people beat him as a child?”

  “That was different. He was small, he was obedient. Kavita didn’t tell you she was afraid?”

  My mother perked up. “Afraid? Did he raise his hand to her?”

  I flinched. She was wondering if he was like me. The last time she tried to slap me, I caught her wrist and forced her arm down. It was only through the veil of my anger that I finally saw the pain and fear in her eyes.

  “Tufiakwa!” De Chika said. “How can? No, it’s just the way he looked at her after she slapped him, as if he hated her. And I mean really hated her, from the bottom of his heart. And then the thing just went away, fiam! His eyes became as empty as a bucket—that’s how she said it. She started crying and crying and he just continued looking at her.”

  My mother tsked over the phone. “Chai, you people are suffering! Oya, come and stay with us and maybe the air here will clear his head. You know that’s why Osita likes to come also. He says everything is cleaner here than in Owerri, that the air is fresh.”

  “Ọdịnma. We will drive down tomorrow morning. Greet Ekene for me.” De Chika hung up, then so did my mother and so did I. A few minutes later, she called me downstairs and assigned me a list of chores to prepare for their arrival.

  * * *

  —

  That evening, we all sat around the dining table, eating garri and oha soup.

  My father poured himself a glass of Guinness. “What time are they arriving tomorrow?”

  “They said they will leave Ngwa early,” my mother answered, spooning out more soup for him. “So unless they meet traffic, around nine a.m.?”

  “Did you prepare the guest room for your aunty and uncle?” he asked me. “Your cousin will share your room with you.”

  I nodded. He glared briefly at me before turning to my mother to mutter something about how children of nowadays didn’t know how to use their mouths and talk to their elders. I molded a ball of garri in my hand and thought about the last time Vivek and I had been in the village together. It was maybe five years ago, before the thing with Elizabeth, when he came back from his boarding school for Christmas. They had shaved his head while he was up there, and I joked that he looked like a refugee from Niger, one of those children always begging in the markets. We went to the river to swim, and when he took off his shirt, there were small round scars dotting his ribs. I asked him what happened, and he looked at me as if I wanted to fight him. Cigarettes, he said. From the senior boys. And then he jumped into the water and splashed me even though I was still dressed. We swam until my clothes dried on the banks.

  Now, it felt like something that had never happened.

  I went out running the next morning, before Vivek and his parents arrived. My shoes were filled with sand by the time I got back, so I emptied them outside the door, then entered the house in my socks. My parents were sitting in the parlor and my mother was holding Aunty Kavita’s hands, praying quietly but urgently. De Chika was pouring a bottle of Star beer into a glass, even though it was still e
arly. My father was drinking coffee. I bent my head and mouthed a greeting that De Chika acknowledged silently as he waved for me to move on. We all knew not to interrupt my mother’s prayers.

  I paused at my door, guessing that Vivek would already be inside, and wondering if I should knock. A quick irritation flared through me: Wasn’t this my own room, inside my own parents’ house? Abeg. I opened the door and walked in, tossing my shoes into a corner loudly, steeling myself to see my cousin for the first time in years.

  Vivek was sitting on my bed, and he turned his head when he heard me enter. At first, I couldn’t even say anything. I just stared at him in shock, all thoughts of reclaiming my space gone. When De Chika said Vivek had stopped cutting his hair, I’d thought that highest, it would be touching his shoulders. It had always been curly, long enough to fall over his face—we used to joke that if he relaxed it, he would look like he was in a Sunsilk advertisement. He had De Chika’s eyes and lips and hooked nose, even that reddish tinge under the dark gold of his skin, but his hair was as black as his mother’s. Now it was below his shoulder blades, tangled, a little matted against the blue cotton of his shirt. He had lost weight and his neck seemed longer, his face balanced on top of it. His silver chain glinted out from under his collar, the small elephant lying against his skin. He smiled a little at the look on my face.

  “Nna mehn, it’s not as if I’m a masquerade. Stop looking at me like that.”

  “Have you seen yourself?” I shot back. “Are you even sure you’re not a masquerade? Jesus Christ.” I sat across from him and leaned my elbows on my knees. Clearly, something had seized my cousin. “Gwa m ihe mere,” I said. “I want to know. I can see that you’re not okay.”

  Vivek laughed. “You sound like my mother.”

  “I’m serious. This one that your parents brought you all the way to the village.”

  “You know your mother tried to pray over me already?”

  “Deaconess Mary. What did you expect?” I peered closer at him. He looked so tired. “You haven’t been sleeping.”

  “I see they’re reporting me well,” he answered. “I’m sure everyone has received the complete details.” His lip curled as he spoke.

  “Maybe my parents, but not me. I’d rather hear it from you anyway.”

  “Ah, Osita.” He squeezed out a small smile. “It’s a very long story.”

  I tried to smile back.

  “You grew a beard,” he said, reaching out to touch the tight coils on my face. I shrugged. I’d been shaving my head, the same way he used to, and the beard balanced it out. I liked the way my cheekbones cut above it, how dark my eyes looked. Vivek stroked my head, feeling the skin slide under his palm, still dappled with sweat from my run. “You know your father ordered me to either cut or wash my hair before I come back out?”

  I snorted. “I wasn’t going to even mention that one. You look homeless.”

  “I am homeless,” he said, then shook his head. “Don’t mind me. Can I take a bath, or do you need to go first? I can smell you from here.”

  I sucked my teeth at him. “I don’t blame you. Biko, let me go first before you come and block the drain with all that your Bollywood hair.” He grinned at me and stood up when I did, stepping forward to give me a hug. He was almost my height, and smelled faintly of a spice I didn’t recognize.

  “Thank you,” he said, as we thumped each other on the back.

  “For what?”

  “Not treating me the way they treat me.”

  My hands brushed against the tangle of his hair as we pulled apart. It felt soft. I stepped away from him and wiped my hands on my shorts. Vivek kept looking at me, but I couldn’t meet his gaze directly. He was stranger than I was admitting to either of us, and it made me uncomfortable.

  “Go and baff,” he said, sitting down on the bed again.

  I stepped away as if he’d given me permission to move, and once in the bathroom I locked the door. I used a bucket of water to wash myself, scrubbing and rinsing quickly, trying to get rid of the unsettled feeling that had entered me. When I came back out, with a towel wrapped around me, Vivek was still sitting on the bed, staring at the bars of the window in front of him, his back to me. I opened my wardrobe and got dressed. He didn’t move. I stood for a moment before interrupting his aloneness. “Vivek. The bathroom is free.”

  He started and turned to me, some of his hair falling into his face. “Okay, bhai,” he answered—brother, an old nickname he had for me. We were both our parents’ only children, their only sons, more like brothers than cousins was the joke. It always made my chest tighten when he called me that. “Tell them I’m coming out soon,” he added, dismissing me from the room. I nodded and closed the door behind me as I left.

  My mother had laid out a late breakfast on the dining table, tins of Milo and Bournvita next to Nido milk and a flask of hot water, bread and guava jam—I knew Aunty Kavita had brought the jam, because she was the only one who ever made it—along with a bowl of boiled eggs, another full of akara.

  “There’s akamu on the stove,” my mother said. “Go and help yourself.”

  Aunty Kavita hugged me. Even with her hair twisted up into a bun, she didn’t reach my shoulder. “How is he?” she whispered.

  “He’s okay,” I said. “He’s washing his hair.”

  My father snorted and sat down, my mother fluttering over his shoulder as she put food on his plate. “He better be washing that hair. Chika, you should have made him cut it as soon as he entered your house.”

  De Chika shrugged and drew back a chair for Aunty Kavita. “What can I say, Ekene? It’s not as if I could sit on him and shave it off by force.”

  “Then you should have thrown him out! What nonsense is that?”

  “That’s enough, Ekene.” Aunty Kavita’s voice was soft but firm. “He is my son, my only child. I am not turning him away, especially not when he’s sick.”

  My father looked as if he was about to say something more, but my mother put her hand on his shoulder as she poured more coffee for him, and he subsided.

  I went to the kitchen and spooned thick, glutinous akamu into my bowl, then went back to the table and added a layer of sugar. De Chika took the sugar bowl from me and added two teaspoons to his coffee. At least he wasn’t drinking beer for breakfast anymore. I let my akamu cool off a bit—I liked it when it was a little congealed and starting to form a skin. For a while we ate together in silence, spoons clinking against bowls and coffee cups, until my father leaned over and turned on the radio, the new sound buzzing softly through the room.

  “Amma!” Vivek’s voice rang out from my room, and Aunty Kavita’s head whipped up. Even De Chika looked mildly surprised to hear his son’s voice. “Amma!” Vivek called again.

  “Yes, beta?” she replied, already getting up from the table, her voice shaking a little. “What is it?”

  “Can you come and help me with my hair?”

  Aunty Kavita lit up at the request. “Of course, beta! I’m coming.”

  My father looked up from his plate. “Mary, you can lend her a pair of scissors, abi?”

  Aunty Kavita glared at him as she left the room, and my father sighed. “It was worth a try. Walking around looking like a prophet. Ridiculous.”

  De Chika ignored him and unfolded a newspaper, a slice of bread and jam half eaten in front of him. I dipped akara into my bowl and ate it slowly. By the time I finished my breakfast, Vivek and his mother still hadn’t come out of the bedroom. De Chika finally noticed and asked me to check on them.

  This time I knocked. “Come in,” called Aunty Kavita, and I pushed the door open. Vivek was sitting in the chair by the window and his mother was running a comb through his hair, now untangled and gleaming, draped over her wrist. He was holding an open container of coconut oil between his thighs and his eyes were half closed. “We’ve almost finished,” she said. “It took a lo
ng time to comb it properly.”

  “I can imagine,” I said. My aunt smiled absently.

  “I always wanted a girl, you know. After Vivek. So I could do her hair.”

  “God works in mysterious ways,” I joked, and she actually laughed.

  “Not exactly,” she said. “It’s not as if I can plait his hair.”

  “You can plait it if you like,” Vivek said, without raising his eyelids.

  “Tch!” His mother smacked his shoulder. “Your father would kill me!” She resumed her combing, moving through his hair in slow waves. At this point she was just doing it for the sake of doing it. “No,” she said, almost to herself. “We can’t plait it. I’ll just tie it back so it stops falling into your face. You know that drives your father crazy.” She ran the comb through a few more times, then packed his hair into one hand, smoothing it back from his temples and forehead before securing it with an elastic band at the nape of his neck, twisting it into a clumsy bun. “Manage it like that,” she said. “Your hair is so thick.”

  He tilted his head back and smiled at her. “Daalụ,” he said, and she bent over to kiss his forehead.

  “Come and eat some breakfast. Did you finish eating, Osita?”

  “Yes, Aunty.”

  She brushed off Vivek’s shirt as he stood up. “What do you want to eat, beta? There’s bread, and I brought some of the jam you used to like, and Aunty Mary made akamu but we might have to heat that up again.” He made a slight face at me as they left the room, his mother’s voice washing solicitous over him. I made a face back to indicate he was on his own, then followed them into the parlor.

  “I’m not hungry, Amma.”

  “No, you have to eat something. Let me heat up the akamu.” She went into the kitchen and Vivek sat down, both of our fathers eyeing him.

  “You look better like that,” De Chika said. “With it tied back.”

  I laughed a little. “Ah-ahn, Dede, it’s just hair.” Vivek smiled but we both cleared our faces when my father lowered his newspaper to glare at us.