The Death of Vivek Oji

by Akwaeke Emezi

  Tobechukwu didn’t stop me when I reached for the waist of his shorts and unbuttoned them, leaving his belt on. In fact, he adjusted his legs a little so I could reach in and pull him out, heavy and long against my palm, soft and smooth. I looked up at him and saw him watching me with a cool curiosity, his arms hanging relaxed by his sides. He reminded me of the senior boys from when I was in boarding school, their complete assurance that it was well and right for me to provide them with pleasure, an assurance so solid that nothing they did shook up who they believed themselves to be: boys who could not be broken, boys who broke other boys and were no less for it. The difference was that Tobechukwu seemed indifferent, not threatening. If I stood and walked away, I knew he wouldn’t stop me, but I didn’t want to leave. He waited and his pulse beat along my palm. He only closed his eyes when I took him into my mouth, his hand sliding to the back of my head, fingers caressing my hair, tangling in it. So this was why: he liked how I looked, he’d come to see if he was right about me, and he was. I sank my fingers into the backs of his thighs and he tugged at my hair, groaning softly in the back of his throat as he slipped into the back of mine. He felt like a stranger. He felt perfect.

  After a few minutes he pulled away, trailing saliva from my teeth. He was still soft. I watched him tuck it in and zip up, then reach for the stub of the joint and take a final hit before stubbing it out on the concrete.

  “Thanks,” he said, then walked away as if nothing had happened. I stared at his back, and in one beat I was alone again in the boys’ quarters, the taste of his skin still inside my cheek, the moon above, and desire reverberating emptily in me. I laughed. I couldn’t help it—there was nothing else to do. Everything had stopped making sense a long time ago. I lay back on the concrete and let the mosquitoes eat me up in a thousand little lovebites, feeling so terribly lonely. At least, I thought, he and I were even now.

  Thirteen

  Osita

  My mother gave up on De Chika and his family. She was convinced Vivek was possessed by something that would take them all down, and us too if we allowed it.

  “I have told Kavita that she should bring the boy back for deliverance, but she doesn’t want to hear.” Her voice rang harsh with condemnation. “Leave them.”

  It was hard to watch, the way she severed her love for them. When I finally decided to pay them a visit, it was easy not to tell my mother. I wasn’t sure about my decision; it was months after we were all at the village house together, and I hadn’t spoken to them since. Still, when Aunty Kavita opened their back door, she didn’t seem surprised to see me.

  “Vivek’s not here,” she said, hugging me.

  I kissed her cheek. “He’s not?” I’d been expecting to find him shuttered away, playing the recluse that he was in my imagination.

  “He’s probably at Maja’s house, visiting Juju.” Aunty Kavita smelled like lemongrass and curry. She wiped her hands on her skirt and smiled at me. “You remember their house, right?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Make sure you save me some curry, they don’t feed me at home.” Her laughter floated behind the screen door as it drifted shut.

  It was the start of the dry season; the air was clear and sharp as I walked down the street to Juju’s house. Aunty Maja’s gate was unlocked, so I pushed it open and walked through the garden, up to their front door, and rang the doorbell.

  Juju opened it, and I stared. She’d braided her hair, and the tails hung over her bare shoulders, brushing against the pink dress she had on—she looked nothing like the lanky, unfriendly girl I’d known growing up. I could see glimmers of her mother in her face now, hiding in the clear dark honey of her skin.

  “Hey,” I said, and she stared.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Just like that?” I joked. “You can’t even say hello?” We hadn’t seen each other in years. She smiled and kissed my cheek, but the smile was halfway and the kiss was perfunctory. “I wasn’t expecting you, that’s all.”

  “Nsogbu adịghị.” I brushed my cheek against hers, doubling the greeting. “I’m just looking for Vivek.”

  Juju’s face closed up. “Oh. Actually—”

  I raised a hand to stop her from having to come up with a lie. “I just want to see him, Juju. He’s my cousin.”

  She exhaled heavily and stared at me. “I have to check,” she said. “Wait here.” The door closed behind her, leaving me out on the veranda, staring at her mother’s cattail flowers. A tight knot of anxiety crept up between my shoulder blades. I’d been trying so hard to not think about why I was there, why I was trying to see Vivek. I knew the reason—of course I knew—but to admit it was more than I could handle. I had to pretend, otherwise I would turn and walk back through the hibiscus-lined path and out of that gate and drive back to Owerri and never come back. So I counted the cattails to keep me from running away. I’d reached fifteen when Juju opened the door.

  “He said it’s fine,” she told me, stepping aside to allow me in.

  “But you don’t agree,” I said, watching her face.

  At first Juju didn’t reply, simply leading me upstairs to one of the bedrooms. At the door, though, she paused. “I don’t even know why he wants to see you after the things you said to him in the village,” she said. “But if he says it’s fine, I suppose it’s fine.”

  My face heated in shame. “He told you about that?”

  Juju’s stare didn’t waver. “Yeah, he did. And he’s different now, Osita, very different. So be careful. If you’re going to say something like what you said before, it’s better that you just go home now, ịnụkwa?”

  “I’m not going to say anything like that, I swear. I just . . . I need to see him. I want to know if he’s okay.”

  She stepped aside, still watching me, and as I turned the door handle, she put a hand on my arm. “I’m asking you. Take it easy.”

  “I hear you. I’m not going to do anything.” I pushed open the door and closed it behind me, Juju hovering on the other side as the wood clicked shut into the door frame.

  Vivek was standing at the window, leaning against the wall, his fingers curled softly around the iron bar of the window protector. I sucked in a quick draft of air, my heart thudding against its own membrane. My cousin had lost even more weight; his hair was down to his waist. I stared at his wrists, his slender ankles, the white caftan he was wearing. Vivek turned his head as he heard me enter, and I saw both the bruised shadows under his eyes and the soft red of a lip tint staining his mouth. He didn’t move.

  “Osita,” he said, and his voice was a stream of memory, my oldest friend. Seeing him hurt my chest. He looked as if he was dying. “Juju said you would look different,” I said.

  Vivek smiled. “I look worse, I know. Don’t worry, I’ve just been sick. But I’m getting better.”

  “Okay,” I said. “And . . . the lipstick?” There was no point pretending I didn’t see it. He lifted a shoulder, then dropped it, indifferent. He was watching me, curious to see how I would react. “You know it makes you look—”

  Vivek laughed. “It makes me look like what, bhai? Like a fag? Like a woman?”

  I waved a hand, embarrassed. “No, no, that’s not what I meant. I was going to say it makes you look different, that’s all.” Even me, I wasn’t sure if I was lying. I wasn’t sure what I thought. My cousin folded his arms and smirked, which annoyed me. “Come on,” I said. “It’s not as if I would lie to you.”

  “How’s that your girlfriend?” Vivek asked, pushing some of his hair behind his ear. I flinched, and he smiled. “You know, the one in Nsukka. You never managed to tell me her name.”

  There was something different about him, and it had nothing to do with how he looked on the outside. It was something more insidious, something coiled in his eyes that I’d never seen before. For the first time, I felt afraid around him. It didn’t feel like I was standing in a room wi
th my cousin, with the man who was as close as I was ever going to get to a brother. Instead it felt like I’d fallen into the orbit of a stranger, like I’d stumbled across worlds and now I was here, out of breath and off balance.

  “There’s no girlfriend,” I said. In the face of my confusion, I fell back on the truth.

  Vivek lifted his chin, mild triumph flashing in his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Does it feel good to not lie anymore?”

  I frowned. There was an undercurrent in his voice that I didn’t like. “Are you angry with me?” I asked him. He huffed and looked away, walking to the bed and sitting on it, his bare feet against the patterned carpet.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” Vivek threw his hands up and let them fall against the sheets. “Fuck. Yes.” He looked at me and his eyes were holes in his face. “I’m angry with you because you abandoned me, you know? You just . . . threw me away.”

  I flashed on Vivek, sitting on the landing of the boys’ quarters, teary and apologetic as I walked away. “We were children,” I said, the words weak.

  My cousin laughed. “We haven’t been children in a long time. I didn’t hear pim from you after the village. I thought you would reach out after that.”

  The room was heavy and silent. He wasn’t making any accusations, not yet, but I could feel them anyway, like pinpricks against my skin. “I didn’t mean to just disappear,” I said, but then my voice trailed off.

  “Well, it felt like you didn’t want to see me. I thought maybe you were disgusted.”

  “Vivek . . .”

  “You sounded disgusted by me.” A corner of his mouth twisted. “Trust me, I know what that sounds like coming from you. I’ve heard it before.” The way I’d looked at him after the incident with Elizabeth: he was right, I’d been disgusted then, but only because I had lost Elizabeth.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “It wasn’t your fault, what happened at the boys’ quarters. You couldn’t control what was going on with you.”

  “That sorry is late,” Vivek replied. “I don’t need it anymore. I know it wasn’t my fault.”

  He sighed and looked at me. “Why did you come here? What do you want?”

  Now I was ashamed. I hadn’t come to see if he was okay; I’d come because I needed him, and it was only now dawning on me how incredibly selfish that was. “I’m an idiot,” I said out loud. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have come here.” I began to turn away, but Vivek stood up.

  “Wait, wait. I didn’t say that. Seriously, I want to know. Why did you come?”

  I didn’t turn back to him. It was easier to tell the story if I wasn’t looking at him, if I was looking at the wall and the window, the trees outside it. “It’s stupid,” I said, and was horrified to feel tears sharp behind my eyes. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Osita.” Vivek’s voice was a ruler, flat and hard. “Tell me.”

  So I told him, my voice unstable and small: About the small, dark club I’d been in the previous weekend, the young university student who leaned in to kiss me in a smoky corner, and the way I allowed it, allowed him even though anyone could look and see us; allowed his tongue to push into my mouth, even kissing him back before I came to my senses and pushed him away and left. About how he tried to talk to me about it the next day, bright-faced and eager, how panicked I felt because I didn’t know what he thought I could give him, what world he thought we lived in where it was safe to do something like that. About how I lied when he brought it up, claiming I couldn’t remember what happened, blaming it on whatever we’d been drinking. About the way his face collapsed in hurt and a fresh aloneness.

  “You were the only person I could tell,” I said to Vivek, looking down at my hands. “So I came here.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Why did you need to tell anyone?” he asked, finally. “Why didn’t you just keep it a secret? Isn’t that what everyone does?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it again because I didn’t know how to explain it—the thing that the kiss had exhumed in me, the way it was loud, the way it wouldn’t be quiet. I had to do something, to give it room to unfurl, and Vivek was the only place I felt safe.

  “So that’s why you came here?” he continued. “Are you ashamed? You don’t want to be like that?”

  I scoffed, still not turning to look at him. “How am I supposed to answer that? You want me to stand here and tell you that I don’t want to be like you?”

  Vivek’s voice turned cold. “If it’s true, why not say it? What’s your own? You didn’t have a problem saying it before.”

  I kept quiet.

  “Do you even know what I’m like?” His voice was shadowed with contempt now; he was disgusted by me. “In fact, forget that one. You came here so that—what?—I can make you feel better about yourself? Even after how you treated me, so I can tell you, Oh don’t worry, Osita, it’s okay to be like that?” His voice came closer but I kept my eyes on the wall. Vivek shoved me in the middle of my back. “Is that why you came? So I can fix it for you?”

  He pushed me again and I stumbled forward, catching myself against the glass of the window. I couldn’t avoid him; there was nowhere to go, so I turned to face him. My cousin was furious. His eyes were hard and glittering, his mouth was tight. I could understand his anger—after the things I had said to him in the village, for me to come and admit that in the end I was exactly what I’d denied, it must have felt like a betrayal. I had kicked at him, only to come crawling back, asking him to see me. I thought about backpedaling, I could claim the boy at the club had been mistaken, but it was too late: both of us would know I was lying, and as much as Vivek would despise me for it, I would hate myself even more.

  “You have no shame,” Vivek spat. “What do you want from me?”

  I used to know the answer to that. I had just wanted to talk to someone who would understand, but now, faced with him and the fatigue bracketing his mouth, I shocked myself. I watched my hand wrap around his wrist, my fingerprints marking his skin as I surged forward and kissed him so hard that my teeth knocked against his, the way I’d wanted to ever since I’d seen him sitting on my bed at my parents’ house, since I’d woken up that night with his hair on my arm and his body so close to mine. Vivek’s pupils flared as my other hand knotted behind his head. He hit my chest with his free hand, trying to get away, but I couldn’t let him go. Our eyes were locked, two swirling panics, and he wrenched his face away. I was still holding the back of his head and his wrist.

  “What are you doing? What are you doing?”

  His voice was shaking. I should have let him go—I should have let him go, but I didn’t.

  “I don’t know.” My breath was falling on his face, he was so close. I couldn’t look away. His eyes flickered, picking apart the fear in mine. “I don’t know,” I said again. I was starting to get very afraid of the line I’d just crossed. I slowly released his wrist and slid that hand past his ear, into his hair, cupping his head with both hands. It felt as if hot ants were skittering under my skin, all over my body. I tried not to think of how humiliated I was about to be, when he would step away, when he would look at me with a fresh disgust. I held his head so he couldn’t move, not yet—I was stronger than he was—and lowered my mouth to his again. I don’t know why; I hadn’t intended any of this, planned any of it.

  I kissed him like I wanted to seduce uncertainty away, slow and gentle, filling my mouth with a plea and pouring it into his. He smelled like grass and wind and clothes that had been dried in the sun. Gradually, I felt him relax and relief overwhelmed me. His mouth softened under mine and then he was kissing me back, his hand like a dropped flower against my chest, petal-light and trembling as if there was a breeze. I stopped the kiss and released his head, dropping my hands to my sides. He could leave if he wanted, he could go.

  Vivek stood with his hand still on my chest, his breathing uneven. His head was down, black cur
ls falling onto the embroidered neckline of his caftan, against silver thread. He seemed to be thinking, so I stood still, looking down at him, waiting for him to decide. I deliberately kept my mind empty, except for him, because I knew as soon as I started to think again, I might go mad from what I had just done.

  Moments passed. Vivek said nothing; his thoughts were slipping along some invisible course, too far away from me. I braced myself, then slid my right hand along the front of his trousers. My fingers grazed across taut fabric and he gasped, looking up at me in shock. I was relieved to find him so ready, to know that it wasn’t just me. He whispered my name and I stared at him without moving. I took my left hand and pulled his palm to me, pressing it against my jeans so he could feel how hard I was, how much it hurt. My cousin shuddered and leaned into me, into my hand and against me, and my entire body became one loud thrill.

  “You see?” I whispered. I had no idea what I was talking about, just desire maybe, but he nodded like it made sense.

  “Okay,” he said, and stepped away from me. “Okay.”

  Vivek walked across the room and covered his face with his hands, dragging the skin down. “Can we just lie down for one minute? I need to lie down.”

  “Of course.” I tried to sound calm.

  “Okay. Thank you.” He climbed onto the bed and lay on his back, draping his forearms over his eyes. I hesitated before I lay down next to him, then stared at the ceiling. I could hear him beside me, taking long deliberate breaths. He was trying to calm down.

  “Is this real?” he asked.