The Death of Vivek Oji - Akwaeke Emezi Page 0,18

was like me. The last time she tried to slap me, I caught her wrist and forced her arm down. It was only through the veil of my anger that I finally saw the pain and fear in her eyes.

“Tufiakwa!” De Chika said. “How can? No, it’s just the way he looked at her after she slapped him, as if he hated her. And I mean really hated her, from the bottom of his heart. And then the thing just went away, fiam! His eyes became as empty as a bucket—that’s how she said it. She started crying and crying and he just continued looking at her.”

My mother tsked over the phone. “Chai, you people are suffering! Oya, come and stay with us and maybe the air here will clear his head. You know that’s why Osita likes to come also. He says everything is cleaner here than in Owerri, that the air is fresh.”

“Ọdịnma. We will drive down tomorrow morning. Greet Ekene for me.” De Chika hung up, then so did my mother and so did I. A few minutes later, she called me downstairs and assigned me a list of chores to prepare for their arrival.

* * *

—

That evening, we all sat around the dining table, eating garri and oha soup.

My father poured himself a glass of Guinness. “What time are they arriving tomorrow?”

“They said they will leave Ngwa early,” my mother answered, spooning out more soup for him. “So unless they meet traffic, around nine a.m.?”

“Did you prepare the guest room for your aunty and uncle?” he asked me. “Your cousin will share your room with you.”

I nodded. He glared briefly at me before turning to my mother to mutter something about how children of nowadays didn’t know how to use their mouths and talk to their elders. I molded a ball of garri in my hand and thought about the last time Vivek and I had been in the village together. It was maybe five years ago, before the thing with Elizabeth, when he came back from his boarding school for Christmas. They had shaved his head while he was up there, and I joked that he looked like a refugee from Niger, one of those children always begging in the markets. We went to the river to swim, and when he took off his shirt, there were small round scars dotting his ribs. I asked him what happened, and he looked at me as if I wanted to fight him. Cigarettes, he said. From the senior boys. And then he jumped into the water and splashed me even though I was still dressed. We swam until my clothes dried on the banks.

Now, it felt like something that had never happened.

I went out running the next morning, before Vivek and his parents arrived. My shoes were filled with sand by the time I got back, so I emptied them outside the door, then entered the house in my socks. My parents were sitting in the parlor and my mother was holding Aunty Kavita’s hands, praying quietly but urgently. De Chika was pouring a bottle of Star beer into a glass, even though it was still early. My father was drinking coffee. I bent my head and mouthed a greeting that De Chika acknowledged silently as he waved for me to move on. We all knew not to interrupt my mother’s prayers.

I paused at my door, guessing that Vivek would already be inside, and wondering if I should knock. A quick irritation flared through me: Wasn’t this my own room, inside my own parents’ house? Abeg. I opened the door and walked in, tossing my shoes into a corner loudly, steeling myself to see my cousin for the first time in years.

Vivek was sitting on my bed, and he turned his head when he heard me enter. At first, I couldn’t even say anything. I just stared at him in shock, all thoughts of reclaiming my space gone. When De Chika said Vivek had stopped cutting his hair, I’d thought that highest, it would be touching his shoulders. It had always been curly, long enough to fall over his face—we used to joke that if he relaxed it, he would look like he was in a Sunsilk advertisement. He had De Chika’s eyes and lips and hooked nose, even that reddish tinge under the dark gold of his skin, but his hair was as black as his mother’s. Now it was below his shoulder blades, tangled, a