other girls nodded in agreement. What Somto said made sense. That was why they’d kept it from their parents, to protect Vivek from those who didn’t understand him. They barely understood him themselves, but they loved him, and that had been enough.
Osita met them outside the gate of Chika and Kavita’s house, where he was leaning against the fence with his hands digging into his pockets.
“Good,” said Somto. “You’re here.”
He pushed himself off the fence. “Before nko? You have the pictures?”
Juju held up the envelope in response.
“Okay, let’s go.”
“Wait,” said Olunne. “Is your uncle at home? I thought we were telling only Aunty Kavita first.”
“He goes to the sports club every Sunday afternoon,” said Osita. “He’s started doing it again. You know he was refusing to leave the house before.”
“It’s good that he’s there,” Juju said. “My popsy said they were meeting for a drink.”
Olunne nodded in relief. It was one thing to show those pictures to Aunty Kavita, even as unstable as she’d been behaving, but it was another thing completely to show them to Uncle Chika. Who knew how an Igbo man would react at seeing pictures like that of his first and only son? It was better to meet only with his mother. It was safer that way.
* * *
—
Kavita sat them all down in the parlor without offering them anything, because they were children and they were there about Vivek and she had long since given up caring about niceties. Something in her knew that whatever they were coming to say would be a culmination of the weeks she’d spent harassing them for answers. It seeded a small anger in her. When she had told Chika they were lying, when she told their parents the children were lying, no one had believed her. Yet here they all were—even her own nephew—lined up on her sofa with their guilty faces, holding secrets behind their lips. She wanted to slap them.
The girls looked around at one another, uncertain of who should speak first. Osita was sitting apart from them in an armchair, arms folded over his stomach, looking down at the carpet. Juju felt the task should fall to her; Elizabeth and Somto would be too brash, and Olunne would be too gentle. Besides, Juju was the one holding the pictures. The envelope was hot in her hand, dragging her arm down with its weight. She rested it in her lap and turned to Kavita.
“We have something to show you,” she said. “But first I want to explain why we didn’t tell you about this before.”
“Well, Vivek told us not to,” said Somto, under her breath. They all glared at her and she raised her hands in apology, falling silent.
“We were trying to protect him,” continued Juju, “and we were also trying to protect you and Uncle Chika.”
Kavita was sitting with her back straight, perched on the edge of her seat cushion. Her eyes fell to the envelope Juju was holding and she put a hand on her chest as if she could calm her heart. “What’s inside there?” she asked.
Juju looked at the envelope. There wasn’t much point in words; the photographs would tell Kavita better than she could. She held the envelope out, her hand shaking a little. Kavita stared at it hovering in the space between them, then reached out and took it. She didn’t open it at once. How could she? You can chase the truth, but who could avoid the moment of hesitation when you wonder if you really want what you’ve been asking for? Kavita knew that what the envelope held had power, enough to scatter her, enough for them to have held together against her for so long, even in the face of a dead child, even against her grief.
She opened the flap and pulled out the photographs. The first was a picture of Vivek in pale blue traditional, a caftan that swallowed him. His eyes were lined in black. That didn’t surprise Kavita much; she’d seen him dress like that before and assumed he was mimicking the Northerners. Chika hadn’t liked it and said as much, making snide remarks at the breakfast table, but Vivek had ignored them. Chika would have said more, done more, if he wasn’t a little afraid of his son and his strangeness. Kavita scolded him later, after their son went out, telling him there was nothing wrong with a little eyeliner. “It starts with eyeliner,” Chika had said. “Where is it going to finish? I