The Death of Vivek Oji

by Akwaeke Emezi

  De Chika turned to me. “How is Nsukka?”

  “It’s going well. School is all right. “

  “Your mother says you have a girlfriend there. You know, your father was your age when he got married.”

  “Don’t mind that boy.” My father’s voice was derisive behind the pages of newsprint. “Play, play, play, that’s the only thing he knows. No real responsibility.”

  “You have a girlfriend?” That was Vivek.

  “It’s not serious,” I said.

  “Your mother says it’s serious,” said De Chika.

  “Chika, you and my wife gossip like old women.” My father shook his head. “Shouldn’t she be having those conversations with your wife?”

  “Kavita doesn’t find these topics interesting. I do. If you don’t want to take an interest in your son’s life, that’s your own business.” De Chika grinned at my father; he always took a particular pleasure in irritating his senior brother. My father rolled his eyes and returned to his newspaper, but I knew he was still listening.

  Aunty Kavita came back into the room with a plate of akara. “Eat this, the akamu is warming.” Vivek accepted the plate and started tearing the akara into little pieces, occasionally putting one into his mouth. His mother beamed at him and went back to the kitchen.

  “So, is it serious?” Vivek asked.

  I was starting to get annoyed. “It’s none of your business,” I said.

  “You know I’ll be your best man at the wedding. I think it’s my business.”

  “That’s a good point,” De Chika said.

  I could tell he was happy to see Vivek talking. I didn’t want to ruin it. “I’m just getting to know her,” I said. “That’s all.”

  It was all a lie. There was no girl in Nsukka. I’d made her up on a call with my mother once, and her happiness was too great for me to deflate it with the truth. Instead, I pretended to be private about it so I could avoid the questions. It allowed her imagination to construct the perfect daughter-in-law, and I didn’t have to talk about anything else; she could carry the whole conversation just based on that alone.

  “What’s her name?” asked Vivek.

  “Jesus Christ, Vivek. Mind your own business!”

  My mother shouted at me from the kitchen. “Osita! Did you just take the Lord’s name in vain?!”

  Vivek winked at me and I felt a surge of anger pierce through. “Sorry, Ma!” I called out, then I stood up. “I’m going out,” I said.

  “Your cousin is visiting and you’re going out?” My father gave me one of his looks and I stared right back at him.

  Vivek laughed. “It’s fine, Dede. Let him go. I’m irritating him.”

  “Irri-what? My friend, if you don’t sit back down!”

  Aunty Kavita walked into the room and gave Vivek a bowl of akamu with a spoon suspended in it. “Actually, Ekene, do you mind if I send Osita to run some errands for me? Mary and I want to do some cooking later in the day.”

  My father glowered but allowed it, and I left the house with a shopping list and a chest full of relief.

  At dinner, Vivek was subdued, eating his rice in small bites with his head bent. NEPA took light shortly after we ate, so I lit a kerosene lamp and went to my room to read a book. An hour later, Vivek came in, closing the door softly and kneeling beside the bed to light a mosquito coil. I kept my eyes on the page as the match rasped into fire, through the breath he released to extinguish it. The lamp made my book glow a dull orange that spread faintly to the walls. The rest of the room was halfway in shadows, swallowing Vivek in grayness as he pulled off his shirt and folded it, then took off his jeans and hung them in the wardrobe. I kept reading as he sprawled on the bed in his boxers and stared at the ceiling. Eventually his breathing settled. I put down the book and climbed into bed, leaning over to blow out the lamp. The room fell into black.

  I listened to the crickets outside and the hum of our neighbor’s generator. My eyes adjusted slowly, and I could see how the moonlight was coloring the inside of my room.

  “So why did you lie?” asked Vivek, his voice close to my ear.

  “About what?”

  “The girl in Nsukka. There’s no girl in Nsukka.”

  I scoffed. “Who told you?”

  “Nobody had to tell me anything. You’re a very bad liar.”

  I turned my head to look at him and his eyes were bright in the dark. “Mind your business, bhai.”

  His teeth gleamed in his smile. “The part I don’t understand is why you’re lying to them in the first place. You know your mother won’t let it go until she’s planning your wedding to this imaginary girl.”

  I looked back at the ceiling. “She’s not imaginary,” I said. I was already building her up. Her name would be Amaka. She’d be a nurse, or maybe a teacher.

  “When you’re hiding something,” he said, “don’t cover it up with something weak, something that can be blown away easily. You need to protect your secrets better.”

  I propped myself up on my elbows. “Bros, I’m seriously tired of hearing this nonsense. What secrets?”

  “Maybe it’s not a woman you’re seeing in Nsukka,” he said. “One of my friends at boarding school used to lie like you. He even had one of his classmates’ sisters pretend to be his girlfriend.” Vivek turned his head to me. “Do you have a backup girlfriend?”

  I stared at him through the gray light.

  “That’s fine if you don’t,” he continued. “I’m just saying you need a better story.”

  “Wait.” I felt as if my head was stuffed with surprise. “If it’s not a woman, who else would I be seeing in Nsukka?”

  Vivek looked at me, and there was a pause before I realized what he meant. I sat up, furious. “Are you mad? What’s wrong with you?!”

  I saw alarm flit through his eyes; he hadn’t expected this anger from me.

  “Ah, no vex,” he said, sitting up and reaching for my arm.

  I pulled away and jumped off the bed. “Don’t touch me. You think I’m like your friends? Or like you? Is that why you decided to start looking like a woman, ehn? Because you’ve been knacking men? Biko, I’m not like you—forget that one, now-now!” I slapped the palms of my hands against each other, as if dusting off the contagion of his thoughts.

  Vivek looked up at me, his back hunched and his legs lean and straight on the bedsheets. His hair had come loose from the bun and it spilled down his shoulders. “So you think I look like a woman?”

  My chest was thudding. “What?”

  “Is that why you avoided me all day? Because I resemble woman to you?” He laughed and pushed his hair back, off his chest. “You dey see breast?”

  I shook my head. My stomach was knotted and painful. “You are really not okay. They should actually be praying for you.”

  “All of this because I said maybe you have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend? It’s not that serious.”

  “You think that’s normal? You think you sef, that you’re normal? None of this is normal, Vivek! What kind of people have you been around?”

  “Why are you so afraid? Because something is different from what you know?” My cousin folded his arms and leaned his back against the headboard of the bed. “I’m disappointed, bhai. I didn’t think you’d be one of these closed-minded people. Leave that for your mother.”

  “Fuck you,” I said, and grabbed my pillow off the bed.

  He laughed again. “Oh, you’re going to sleep in the parlor? Let your mumsy find you there in the morning, then you can tell her why you didn’t sleep in your room. Or I can tell her for you if you like.”

  I wanted to hit him. I felt like we were thirteen again, the way he was worming his way under my skin and making me want to itch it off. “I’m not one of those,” I told him.

  “One of what?” Vivek put up his hands. “Actually, never m
ind. I don’t even care. I’m going to sleep. Do what you like.” He lay back down, turning away from me.

  I stood in the dark, holding my pillow and slowly feeling like an idiot. Finally I threw it back on the bed and lay down with my back to him. What a bastard. I lay there with the anger simmering in me for a long time before I fell asleep.

  At some point in the night, NEPA came back and the ceiling fan whirred on. I stirred and woke up. I was lying on my back with an arm thrown out; Vivek was scattered beside me, his leg touching mine and his hair drowning my arm, the silver chain and pendant gleaming against his collarbone. I could almost see the lines that marked Ganesh. Vivek sighed and his eyes opened into slits.

  “Sorry, bhai,” he whispered, and drifted back to sleep. There was a tendril of hair lying on his cheek that I wanted to move aside, but I was too afraid to touch him. I lay still and looked at the ceiling until sleep collected me again.

  Eight

  Kavita thought it was a phase—that Vivek was just going through something and it would pass. So she prayed and said countless rosaries, rubbing the color off the beads with hundreds and hundreds of Hail Marys until she thought her hands were actually full of grace. She took him to the cathedral to see Father Obinna, the priest who had baptized him and fed him his First Communion. When Vivek came out from their conversation, his forehead was wet with holy water. “Pray some more,” the priest told them, and Kavita believed him, trusted him. If there was something more, something spiritual, wouldn’t the father have seen it? She wasn’t sure. “The Catholic Church can’t do anything,” Mary told her over the phone. “You should allow him to come to Owerri, so I can take him to my own church. They fight these things with holy fire.”

  “I don’t know,” Kavita said. “He’s been doing a little better since we got back from the village, you know? He’s eating again, sleeping in his own bed.”

  “Has he cut that hair?”

  “I don’t think that’s important—”

  “Ahn! Kavita. You know how things are here. It’s not safe for him to be walking around Ngwa looking that . . . feminine. If someone misunderstands, if they think he’s a homosexual, what do you think is going to happen to him?”

  Kavita’s stomach dropped. The thought had worried her, too, but it was different—more terrifying—to hear it put into words. Vivek couldn’t end up like those lynched bodies at the junction, blackened by fire and stiffened, large gashes from machetes showing old red flesh underneath. Most of them were thieves, or said to be thieves, but mobs don’t listen, and they’d say anything afterward.

  “He’s going to be fine,” she told Mary. “He was born here, raised here. People know who he is.”

  Mary laughed bitterly. “You think it matters? You don’t know Nigeria. People have killed their neighbors and burned down their houses. He’s not safe, I’m telling you.”

  Kavita started to get upset. “Why are you putting that into the world? Vivek isn’t doing anything to anyone.”

  “I know it’s hard to hear,” Mary said, softening her voice. “But you know how these men are. The boy is slim, he has long hair—all it takes is one idiot thinking he’s a woman from behind or something, then getting angry when he finds out that he’s not. Because, if he’s a boy, then what does it mean that the idiot was attracted to him? And those kinds of questions usually end up with someone getting hurt. Ekene doesn’t want Chika to cut the boy’s hair out of wickedness, you know. We’re trying to look out for him. Just because he’s half-caste doesn’t mean he’s going to get special treatment forever, not the way he’s behaving. You’re his mother. It’s your job to protect him. I’m telling you, bring him to Owerri. We can help him at the church here.”

  “Let me talk to Chika about it,” Kavita answered. It was an excuse she used when she wanted to end a discussion, pretending that she couldn’t make a decision without her husband’s input, and Mary, like everyone else, stopped bothering her as soon as she said it. They said good-bye, got off the phone, and Kavita went into the parlor, where Chika was reading a newspaper. “Your sister-in-law is getting on my nerves,” she said, sitting in an armchair and crossing her legs, pushing her braid over her shoulder, the black of her hair now silvered with age. “She keeps trying to get me to bring Vivek to her church.”

  Chika didn’t look up from his paper. “Mary means well,” he said, his gold-rimmed glasses balancing on his nose.

  “She said Vivek’s not safe, that he looks—” She paused. “That people might try to hurt him.” Her voice warped hesitant, unwilling to say out loud the possibility of worse.

  Her husband sighed and dropped the newspaper into his lap before turning his head to her. “Well,” he said, “is he?”

  “Chika!”

  “It’s a fair question, Kavita. Look at how he presents himself.”

  “My God, it’s just hair! It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Chika gave her a gentle but knowing look. “Is it me you’re trying to convince, or yourself?”

  They stared at each other for a few seconds, then Kavita dropped her eyes. “What if it’s something we did, Chika? What if we made a mistake somewhere and that’s why he ended up like this?”

  Chika reached out a hand and caressed her knee through the silk of her trousers. “Don’t blame yourself,” he said. “The boy has his own life, and we can’t control every aspect of it.”

  Kavita nodded, pulling herself together. “You’re right. Besides, he’s getting better. He’s even going out.” She looked up at him. “Soon he’ll be able to go back to school and everything will be normal again. You’ll see.”

  Chika looked at his wife, at the hope thrumming out of her eyes, and said nothing. Kavita ignored whatever he wasn’t saying. She knew he wanted the same thing for Vivek, so it didn’t matter. He would see. Everything would be fine.

  * * *

  —

  Vivek kept losing weight, so Kavita took him to a doctor, who checked his blood pressure and pulse, listened to his lungs, and asked him about his meals, frowning at his responses.

  She put aside her notes and looked at Vivek, the collar of her white coat stark against her neck. “You know you’re not eating enough,” she scolded.

  “I don’t have an appetite,” he replied, shrugging. “Everything tastes like nothing.”

  “You have to try,” Kavita said. “Beta, I can see your ribs.”

  Vivek pulled his shirt back on and it hung from his shoulders. “I’ll try, Amma. I promise.”

  “Are you smoking?” asked the doctor.

  “Cigar or igbo?” Vivek quipped, and Kavita smacked his arm.

  “Stop that nonsense.”

  The doctor just looked tired, or perhaps bored. “Either one,” she said.

  “No,” said Vivek. He answered the remaining questions as Kavita gazed at his face, the smudged darkness around his eyes. They drew some blood for tests and the doctor told him again to eat some more before sending them away.

  “Let me take him to my church,” Mary insisted, when she called that evening to ask how the visit went. “It can’t hurt, Kavita. They will try and remove any evil thing that has attached to him. You believe in prayer, I know you do. Your own church has not done anything for the boy. Let us try, biko.”

  Kavita was hesitant but she was, after all, his mother. She couldn’t fold her hands and not try everything. So, that weekend, she sent him to Owerri. She’d wanted to wait and send him when Osita would be there but Mary advised against it. “That boy doesn’t go to church,” she said. “He’ll just convince Vivek against it. We don’t need another thing blocking his deliverance.” So they didn’t tell Osita that his cousin was visiting, and he wasn’t there the weekend Mary took Vivek to her church.

  Late Sunday evening, Kavita was in the parlor when Vivek returned from Owerri, slamming the mosquito-net door open as he came in. “Beta?” she called as he walked
past the parlor. “How was it?”

  Vivek stopped to look at her, and Kavita flinched. She had never seen him so angry, fury just packed into his burning eyes.

  “I’m never going to Owerri again,” he said, his voice tight. “You people can go if you like, but I won’t follow you. You hear?”

  “What happened?” Kavita swallowed down the anxiety. Nothing could have happened. Mary would have called her if something had happened. “Was it the church service?”

  Vivek stared at his mother. “Have you ever been to her church before?”

  “Yes, of course, beta.” She twisted her fingers together. “It goes on for a long time, but it seemed all right. What happened?”

  “No, I mean have you ever gone when they’re doing a deliverance?”

  Kavita shook her head and her son leaned forward slightly, pinning her to the armchair with his unforgiving gaze. “But you sent me anyway.”

  She was starting to get alarmed. “Vivek, what happened?”

  “They are bastards!” he spat. “You think it’s all right to treat someone as if they’re an animal? In the name of their useless deliverance? Mba, wait. They called it an exorcism. Because, apparently, I have a demon in me, did you know? They had to beat it out.” He lifted up his shirt, revealing a swath of dark red welts on his side.

  She gasped and stood up from her chair to go to him, but Vivek dropped the shirt and held out his hand, warning her away. “Don’t touch me,” he said. “And stop trying to fix me. Just stop. It’s enough.”

  After that, Vivek locked himself in his room and didn’t come out for the rest of the night. With trembling hands, Kavita picked up the phone and dialed Ekene’s landline, rage biting inside her. She didn’t understand. How could Mary have allowed them to do that to her son, to Mary’s own nephew? “What is wrong with you?” she shouted when her sister-in-law picked up. “Ehn? Are you mad or what?”

  “Kavita, gịnị mere?” Mary replied, sounding confused. “I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon. Did Vivek reach safely?”