The Death of Vivek Oji

by Akwaeke Emezi

  “‘Did Vivek reach safely?’” Kavita repeated, mocking her voice. “Yes, he just got here—and he showed me what those bush people at your church did to him!”

  “What?”

  “My friend, stop pretending. I saw the welts on his body. You allowed them to flog him?”

  “Kavita, I’ve been trying to reach you from since to tell you what happened. It’s not him they were flogging, ịghọtala? It was the demon inside him.”

  Kavita stopped in shock. Mary couldn’t be serious. “What did you just say?” she asked, hoping she’d heard wrong.

  “The demon inside him,” Mary repeated. “Yes o, that’s what Pastor said. The boy is possessed by a very, very wicked spirit, a strong demon. It’s what has been causing all of this, the long-hair thing, the wasting away of his physical body. Supernatural forces are feeding on him—on your child! Pastor said we must cut his hair because they are drawing their power from it, like the locks of Samson. This is one of the sources of their strength. But when one of the deacons approached him with scissors, the demon started to fight back!”

  Kavita listened in mounting disbelief. Surely this couldn’t be the same Mary she’d known all these years? Impossible. She’d always been religious, but this was something different, something that smelled like rotten meat or madness.

  “It wasn’t your son,” Mary continued blithely. “Pastor was saying it, and even everyone in the congregation, we could see it as well. It was the demon fighting to not lose its power. They tried to hold him, but he had the strength of many men. That’s how you know it was the demon. No mortal man could have thrown off all the ushers who were trying to hold him. Eh hehn, so then Pastor said we must subdue the demon at all costs, and so we were praying and binding and casting it, and he brought out his cane to lash it, because you must lash it with holy fire and his own is like the staff of Moses—”

  “Stop, stop, stop.” Kavita pressed her fingers to her forehead. “You’re telling me you allowed this pastor to beat my son while you stood there and watched?”

  “Kavita, you’re not hearing me. That was not your son.” Mary was starting to sound irritated. “Should I just relax while the devil is using my nephew? I was praying with them, na! Praying for his deliverance, for his spirit to be purged of the evil overtaking it, but I’m telling you, the thing was too strong. He threw off the hands of the people holding him and he ran out of the church, piam! We tried to look for him at the house but he had already collected his things and left. That’s why I’ve been trying to reach you, to make sure that he arrived home safely—because the deliverance was not complete. You and Chika must bring him back, ehn? Pastor says it is very crucial that we finish the deliverance, now that the demon knows we have exposed it. Time is of the essence.”

  Kavita pulled the receiver away from her face and stared at it as if its black plastic would help any of this make sense. As she put it slowly back to her ear, Mary’s voice poured out again.

  “Tomorrow if possible. Are you there? Are you hearing me?”

  Kavita struggled to find the words. It felt like there was a stone in the back of her throat; she wanted to reach her fingers in, pull it out, and use it to bash in Mary’s head, over and over. The feeling surprised her. “Don’t come near my son again,” she managed to choke out.

  “Ehn? What did you say?”

  “Don’t ever come near my son again,” Kavita repeated, her words clearer this time, sharper. She heard Mary’s intake of breath as if the woman was standing behind her, but she would not stop. “You and your pastor are crazy. You stay away from my family, you hear? Otherwise I swear, I will show you pepper!” Kavita’s hands were trembling again.

  “Ah-ahn. You’re talking like this to me? A whole me?”

  “Before nko? Is there another Mary who went to church to go and abuse my son?”

  “As I’m trying to help you and your son, this is how you want to treat me, ehn, Kavita? Out of the goodness of my heart I asked Pastor to help him, and this is how you’re behaving? Do you know how many people beg Pastor to come and lay his hands on them? I even made extra offering on Vivek’s behalf. Only to be rewarded with this your ingratitude.” Mary sucked her teeth. “Why am I even wasting my time with you people?”

  Kavita slammed the phone down, her skin itching. She wished Chika was home, but it was just her and her son. She went to the door of Vivek’s room and stood there, staring at the wood. Of course he didn’t want to talk to her, she thought, not after she’d sent him into that. Kavita sank to the floor and leaned her back against the wall, the linoleum cool under her feet. She pressed her forehead into her palms and cried.

  * * *

  —

  Kavita didn’t tell her husband what happened, not at first. Chika wasn’t surprised by Vivek locking himself in his room; it was normal at this point, so he didn’t ask any questions. Kavita, however, walked around with rage pounding through her, wondering how she could have failed to see what Mary had become, if it was her own carelessness that had resulted in Vivek getting hurt. There was no one she could talk to about it.

  The next morning, Rhatha called her. The Nigerwives were convening an emergency meeting around Maja. “She just found out Charles has been keeping a second family,” Rhatha told Kavita, her voice low and scandalized. “Can you imagine? Poor darling. We’re all heading over there this afternoon.”

  The news briefly distracted Kavita from her own anger. “Is he still in the house?”

  “Goodness, no. She kicked him out, and good for her! It’s one thing to have an affair, or even a mistress, but a whole family?” Rhatha clicked her tongue. “Are you going to come?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. I’ll see you there.” As soon as she hung up, Kavita grabbed her purse and left for Maja’s house, though the meeting wouldn’t begin for hours. Maja was her best friend; it was ridiculous that she was hearing this news through the grapevine—from Rhatha, of all people.

  Maja burst into tears as soon as she opened her front door. Kavita dropped her purse, pulling her into a hug.

  “Oh, my dear! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” Maja sobbed against her neck. “It’s just—you have so much going on with Vivek, I didn’t want to disturb you. . . .”

  “Shh.” Kavita stroked the woman’s hair. “I’m here now. It’s going to be okay.” She pulled back and wiped the wetness off Maja’s face. “Come sit down and you can tell me everything.”

  The story was even worse than Kavita had expected. Charles not only had another family, but his child with the other woman was a boy, his first and only son. And it wasn’t just an affair: he wanted to marry the woman, to take a second wife.

  “You can’t mean it,” Kavita said, aghast.

  “He’s serious.” Maja dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “He says I can’t blame him, that no one would blame him for taking another wife when his first one has failed to give him a son. The woman’s child is his namesake.”

  Kavita covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, Maja, I’m so sorry!”

  “He agreed to leave because I was making such a scene, but he says he’ll be back, Kavita. He says he’s going to bring the woman into our house. That I can’t do anything about it. I told him I’d take Juju and leave, and he said I should try it.” Tears tracked down her swollen cheeks. “I would leave, I really would, but I can’t find our passports. I think he’s hiding them. And I don’t even know how to tell my parents, you know, because they warned me. They warned me African men were like this, and they told me it was foolish to come here with him, to bring Juju here. He said Juju is not enough, that she’s not a boy. What if she heard him say that? As if she means nothing, as if she’s nothing?”

  Kavita held Maja’s hand tightly. “Have you told her yet?”

  “No!” Maja’s voice was spiked and loud. She pulled it back down, shaking her head. “N
o, I can’t tell her. I have to figure something else out. She can’t know he did this, that he’s like this. It would destroy her, and he’s already caused enough damage. She thinks he’s away on a business trip.”

  Kavita wasn’t sure what to say. She didn’t approve of secrets, but she also knew it was dangerous to tell another woman how to raise her child. She’d barely survived an argument in her own family when she and Chika decided not to tell Vivek that he was born on the same day that Ahunna died. The convergence had made his birthdays difficult—the way everyone kept trying to smile past the grief clotting inside them. They didn’t want to tell Vivek because they didn’t want him to think it was his fault they were always sad on his birthday, as if his arrival had caused her death. Kavita had thought the pain would fade over the years, but it had multiplied instead, like a load getting heavier and heavier on your head the longer you walked with it.

  Finally, when Vivek was seven or eight, Ekene challenged them over it. “He deserves to know,” he insisted. “This is his history, our family history. He needs to know what happened!”

  “Is that so?” Kavita had folded her arms and glared at her brother-in-law. “How do you explain something like that to a child?”

  Ekene fell silent.

  Strangely, it was Mary who did it—Mary, before she became the woman she was now. She’d sat down with Vivek on her lap, his little legs kicking idly through the air, his hair dropping into his eyes. They hadn’t started cutting it short yet, that came with secondary school.

  “Your grandmother was a wonderful woman, Vivek,” she told him. The boy didn’t look at her, busying himself with a Hulk Hogan action figure he was turning over in his hands. “On the day you were born, she went up to Heaven and became an angel so she could look down on you and protect you.”

  He raised his eyes to her, with those long eyelashes. “She went to Heaven?”

  “Yes, nkem. She went to Heaven on your birthday. So sometimes your mummy and daddy feel sad, because they miss her very much. You remember when you came to stay with us in Owerri for the first time and you missed your mummy and daddy and you were crying?” Vivek nodded. “Well, they feel like that sometimes, too. But they are also very happy because they got you, so it’s a happy-sad feeling, you know?”

  Bittersweet: that was the word for his birthday, though he was too young to know it then. Sweet on the tip of the tongue, sour and bitter notes scraping through the rest of the mouth.

  Kavita and Chika got better at perfecting their smiles until he couldn’t see through them; they pressed down their pain to protect him. What had changed? Nothing, really.

  Kavita looked at Maja, who was doing the same thing, after all. Burying her hurt so her daughter wouldn’t see it, trying to keep her safe. They were all trying to keep their children safe. She sat with her until the rest of the Nigerwives arrived, some bringing food because that’s what they did, because it saved Maja the bother of having to cook for her family, or what was left of it. Kavita stood up and let them flock around Maja, hearing the story again, gasping and clucking and raining curses down on Charles, that useless bastard of a man. Kavita said nothing about Vivek and what had happened at the church in Owerri. It wasn’t the time or the place, and besides, there was a tendril of shame unfurling into a leafy plant inside her. She was the one who had allowed Mary to do this to Vivek, when she should’ve known better. All the Nigerwives liked to make fun of what they called the fanatic Christians, always catching the Holy Ghost and convulsing on carpets, but Kavita had pretended they hadn’t infected her family, as if she didn’t know who Mary was. As if Mary was the same girl she’d known all those years ago when Ahunna was alive.

  A sob caught in Kavita’s throat. Ahunna would have known what to do about Vivek. She would’ve known exactly how to deal with Mary, what to say. Kavita took a deep breath and arranged her face properly. She had spent years learning how to push aside thoughts of Ahunna, of her uncle, thoughts that could paralyze her with grief. She had a child; she couldn’t afford to fall apart. Chika had felt the same way, too, after Ahunna died, after the two of them nearly gave up on being parents and Ekene and Mary had to step in to help. “Never again,” Chika had said, when the worst was over. “We can’t self-destruct like this ever again. We have Vivek now. We have to be stronger.” So Kavita was strong.

  After another hour or two with Maja and the Nigerwives, Kavita went home and walked into the bedroom she shared with her husband. He was changing out of his work clothes, his white vest covering his chest and stomach. Kavita sat at the edge of the bed and told him what happened in Owerri, how Mary and her church members had beaten Vivek. She kept her hands folded in her lap and her voice level the whole time, even as Chika turned to her, a furious incredulity spreading over his face.

  “She did what?”

  Kavita tightened her jaw. “It was part of their deliverance nonsense.”

  “No, no. This has gone too far.” Chika got up, hands on his waist, and paced the room. “You see? When I told Ekene that that church was corrupting her mind, did he listen? Of course not. He always thinks he knows what he’s doing because he’s the senior. Osita stopped coming home because of all that, and still, Ekene won’t hear word. It has gone too far, you hear me? He needs to control his wife! What kind of bush animals beat a young man in the house of God?”

  Kavita took a deep breath and went over to her husband, resting her hands on his chest. “It’s all right,” she said. “I told Mary to stay away from us. We don’t need that kind of nonsense in our lives. I’ve handled it.”

  Chika removed her hands, shaking his head. “I still have to talk to Ekene. Whatever happened between you women is between you, but my brother and I need to sort this out.” He walked out of the room. Kavita watched him leave, then listened to his raised voice a few minutes later as he and his brother broke things even further. It was how he always did nowadays, pushing her aside gently, not listening to her. Sometimes it felt like he had stopped listening to her years ago, and she just hadn’t noticed. Like they were living in two separate worlds that happened to be under the same roof, pressed against each other, but never spilling, never overlapping.

  * * *

  —

  After Vivek died, their worlds drew even further apart. Chika didn’t want to ask any questions. Kavita, though, was made of nothing but questions, hungry questions bending her into a shape that was starving for answers. They quarreled now, every day, from morning to night.

  “Will it bring him back?!” Chika finally screamed at her one night, after dinner, standing in the kitchen. “All these your questions, what will they do? My son is dead!”

  “Our son!!” Kavita screamed back, throwing a plate at him. He ducked and it shattered against the wall. “Our son! Our son!”

  He had stared at her, then walked out of the room, but Kavita didn’t care. She wasn’t like him. She wasn’t going to give up and sink into whatever trough of grief Chika wanted to fall apart and wallow in. Her questions were real. Who had returned Vivek’s body to their door? Who stripped off her child’s clothes, wrapped him in akwete, and delivered him like a parcel, like a gift, a bloody surprise? Who had broken his head?

  It took the police several days to get around to making any kind of report. They blamed it on the riots that had happened the same day Vivek died, the market coughing black smoke over that side of town. “We had a lot of casualties there, Madam,” the officer had said. “This is what happens when touts take over a town.” He leaned back in his chair, his eyes bloodshot. “My condolences to you and your family. We will continue investigations.”

  “They won’t continue anything,” Chika said dully, as he and Kavita left the station. “Vivek was probably robbed.”

  “Then who brought his body home?” Kavita asked. “How did they know where we lived?”

  Chika turned his flat eyes on her. “At least someone did. At least we have a body t
o bury.”

  He said it as if that was enough. As far as Kavita was concerned, that made him a liar, just like everyone else. Just like the police officer who told her weeks later that there was nothing more they could do for her. Just like Vivek’s friends who kept telling her they didn’t know what happened. It didn’t make any sense. In those last few weeks of Vivek’s life, his friends had been with him almost every day. Someone had to know something. They were just refusing to tell her. Kavita was sure of it.

  She didn’t care if all the Nigerwives thought she had gone crazy, because she wouldn’t just bury her son and shut up. If it had happened to them, they would be behaving exactly the same way. They had no idea what it was like to know in your marrow that someone had an answer to your questions, that someone around you was lying. They had no idea how every breath for her was hell. She was going to find the truth, even if she had to rip it out of his friends’ throats. Someone had to know what happened to Vivek.

  Nine

  Osita

  Iknow what Aunty Kavita wants to know. I want to tell her that she is not prepared for the answer, the same way I was not prepared. That it will hit her like a lorry, spilling its load over her chest and crushing her. But I also know that I’m afraid of what she will find out, if someone will tell her what was happening, if Vivek told someone else what was happening.

  If someone saw me that day.

  Stop looking. I want to tell her to stop looking.

  Ten

  Vivek

  Ifelt heavy my whole life.

  I always thought that death would be the heaviest thing of all, but it wasn’t, it really wasn’t. Life was like being dragged through concrete in circles, wet and setting concrete that dried with each rotation of my unwilling body. As a child, I was light. It didn’t matter too much; I slid through it, and maybe it even felt like a game, like I was just playing in mud, like nothing about that slipperiness would ever change, not really. But then I got bigger and it started drying on me and eventually I turned into an uneven block, chipping and sparking on the hard ground, tearing off into painful chunks.