The Death of Vivek Oji - Akwaeke Emezi Page 0,1
a white bungalow with flame-of-the-forest growing by the gate and guava trees lined up by the fence, and Chika visited them there. These would be the happy pictures: Mary smiling in her kitchen; Mary plaiting her hair with extensions and singing with her full throat in her church choir; Mary and Chika gisting in the kitchen while she cooked. Ekene had no patience for talkative women and he wasn’t the jealous type, so he didn’t mind that his junior brother and his wife got along so well.
As for Chika, the thing boiling inside him took on a new heat whenever he was around Mary. It sang and bubbled and scalded him where no one could see. He joked to his family that he just liked being in a house with a woman in it, rather than his empty bachelor flat, and Mary believed him—until one afternoon when he stepped behind her as she was cooking and put his mouth on the back of her neck. She whirled and started beating him with the long wooden spoon she was using to make garri.
“Are you mad?” she shouted, flecks of hot garri spitting off her spoon and burning the forearms he’d raised to block her blows. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Sorry! Sorry!” He dropped to his knees, bowing his head under his arms. “Biko, Mary, stop! I won’t do it again, I swear!”
She paused, breathing hard, her face confused and hurt.
“What’s your problem, ehn? Why must you try and spoil everything? Ekene and I are happy, you hear? We’re happy.”
“I know. I know.” Chika stood up slowly, one reversed knee at a time, keeping his hands up and looking into her eyes. “I know. I don’t want to spoil anything. Please, forgive me.”
Mary shook her head. “You can’t continue coming here if this is what you’re coming for.” Chika wanted to reach out to her, but her knuckles were tight around the spoon.
“I know,” he said, keeping his voice soft.
“I’m not joking,” she said. “Don’t come back with this nonsense.”
Chika looked at the tears hanging wet inside her eyes and he put his hands down.
“I hear you. I swear, from now on, you’re just my sister.” He felt her eyes on him as he reached for his car keys. “I’m going. I’ll see you next week. Please, let’s just forget today, okay?”
Mary said nothing. She just watched as he left, her fingers relaxing against the curved wood of the handle only when the door closed behind him.
* * *
—
For the next several months, Chika kept his distance from Owerri. He got a job as an accountant at a glass factory in Ngwa, the market town he had moved to when he left the village. The company doctor there was Dr. Khatri, a pale Indian man with shocks of gray hair at his temples. Sometimes, Dr. Khatri would bring in his niece, Kavita, to help with administrative work. The first time Chika met her, he’d gone in to see the doctor about a cough and Kavita was at the front desk with files heaped around her, frowning as she flipped through them. She was a small woman with dark brown skin and a thick braid of black hair hanging past her waist. That morning, she was wearing an orange cotton dress; she looked like a burning sunset, and Chika knew immediately that his story would end with her, that he would drown in her large liquid eyes and it would be the perfect way to go. There was nothing boiling in him, just a loud and clear exhale, a weight of peace wrapping around his heart. Kavita looked up and smiled at him, and somehow Chika found the liver to ask her to lunch. It surprised them both when she said yes, as did the affection that unfurled between them in the weeks that followed.
When it became apparent how serious their courtship was getting, the doctor invited Chika to their home, where Kavita served them tea and small bowls of murukku. Her wrists were delicate, and her dark hair rained off her shoulders. Dr. Khatri told Chika how, after her parents died, Kavita had passed into his care, eventually coming with him all the way from India to Nigeria. “We had some . . . family problems back in Delhi,” he said. “Because of her father’s caste. It was better to make a fresh start.” Chika nodded. That was the same reason he chose not to live in the same town as