I walked to the main road. I knew she was still standing there, alone under the light, watching me leave her behind.
At the bus stop, I bought a sachet of pure water and drank it slowly. It was stupid to worry about her, I told myself. She’d been coping just fine before I showed up, just like all of us. As if Vivek’s parents’ lives hadn’t stopped, at least in every way that was important, even as they had to wake up in the morning and watch the sun move across the sky. Maybe we were all pretending to be fine because the world gave us no other option.
Suddenly I felt exhausted, completely sapped. I sat on a bench and stared out at the busyness around me. My bus came and went and I sat there, the conductor’s calls of Owere! Owere! ringing in my skull. After its lights disappeared into the night, I reconciled myself to the fact that I’d made a decision, and I took an okada to Aunty Maja’s house. It dropped me off outside the floral fence and I used the section near the gate that didn’t have things growing all over it to jump the fence. I texted Juju from the back door: I’m downstairs. It took only a few minutes before the padlock clicked as she unlocked the iron protector and opened the door for me.
“Take off your shoes,” she whispered, as she locked up again. Holding them, I tiptoed after her and we climbed the stairs, barely breathing until we were safe in her room and she’d locked the door behind us. “I’m glad you came back,” she said.
I didn’t reply. I was looking around the room, wondering why on earth I’d thought that Uncle Chika’s house would be too painful a reminder of Vivek when the other memories were here in this house. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” I said.
“Well, it’s too late.” She climbed into the bed, wearing a cotton nightgown that ended above her knees. “You might as well get some sleep while you’re here.”
I hesitated. “What about the guest room?”
Juju sat against the pillows and wiped her face with her hand. “Osita. Please. I can’t—” She opened her palms and collapsed them onto the bedspread. “I just can’t.”
Her eyes filled and I stepped out of my trousers, unbuttoned my shirt, and climbed into the bed in my singlet and boxers. Take care of her. She looks so lonely. “I’m sorry,” I said, pulling her against my chest. “Shh, it’s okay. I’m sorry.”
She broke into sobs, muffling them against me so they wouldn’t slip under the door and crawl into her parents’ room. I didn’t say anything. I just held her as she shook with grief, and I cried, too, but quietly, my tears wetting her hair. It was impossible not to miss him when I was with her; it was as if someone had driven a shovel into my chest, then levered it out again, taking up all it could hold, leaving a screaming mess behind. The pain thickened until I was sobbing as well, trying to shove it in the space between her neck and shoulder, my arms wrapped around her as if to save myself, not just her. I lost time inside it, plagued by the memories of the three of us there, when he was alive and happy; even of Olunne and Somto and Elizabeth there with us, when we’d all played Monopoly and Vivek cheated; when he taught us how to play solitaire with real cards; when he danced and the girls danced with him and I thought, God forgive me, I really love him, I really do; when he was bright and brilliant and alive, my cousin, my brother, the love of my sinful life.
* * *
—
It was deep into the night when I came out of it with a hiccup. We must have cried ourselves to sleep, or into some sort of stupor. Juju sniffed and sat up, her face streaked and her eyes red.
“You look terrible,” I said, sitting up next to her.
“Your father,” she shot back, wiping at her face.
I smiled and smoothed back some of her hair. “Are you okay?”
She leaned her head against my shoulder. “I’m fine. I haven’t cried like that for him in a long time. Since I first heard.”
“I hadn’t cried like that for him at all.”
She looked up at me. “Really?”
I nodded. There wasn’t much else to say. Juju put her arm across my chest