The Death of Vivek Oji - Akwaeke Emezi Page 0,67
always wearing it. Are you sure it didn’t fall off at the embalmer’s? Or that they didn’t steal it?”
Kavita’s face was set, hammered hard with pain. “I’m sure, Chika. It wasn’t on his body.” She could tell he wanted to argue, but she knew he couldn’t. She had refused to move from the body after she had found it; she had run her hands over Vivek’s face and wailed with her cheek on his chest. Besides, his body had been stripped naked. If the necklace had been there, Kavita would have seen it.
“He should be buried with it. It looks somehow that he’s not wearing it.”
Kavita agreed and patted Chika’s arm. He needed something to fixate on now that the repainting was done, now that his grief was chasing him from room to room, begging him to spend some time alone with it. They all knew what would happen when that time came: it would slice behind his knees and knock him down and he would fall back into that same dark place he’d gone when Ahunna died.
“We’ll find it,” Kavita said, accepting the fixation with both hands. “It has to be somewhere. He may have taken it off.”
“He always wore it.”
“He might have taken it off to clean it.”
“Yes,” said Chika. “To clean it.”
They stood there, the room empty around them, before the wailers and the mourners arrived, just the two of them with their son.
* * *
—
Ekene had been watching them from the doorway, careful not to intrude, unwilling to break the veil of grief that had woven itself around the tableau. Eventually he left them there and went back to his house, where Mary was.
“You’re not going to the wake-keeping?” he asked her.
“I’ll go later,” she said. “Shebi they’re doing it all night?”
“The relatives, maybe. I doubt Kavita will stay the whole time. It’s too painful for her.”
Mary nodded. “And she won’t like to be around all of them. She and Chika like to keep to themselves.”
Ekene agreed, and it was close to midnight when Mary slipped out and went to join the wake-keeping. Along with the female relatives, cousins of cousins and whatnot, they covered their heads and sang gospel songs till dawn. Kavita and Chika stayed upstairs, drifting in and out of consciousness, weeping in private. One of the women brought up some food, but it stayed untouched on the tray in their room, oil congealing at the top in a lonely skin.
The Nigerwives arrived en masse in the morning, flocking around Kavita like protective birds, extending and interlocking their wings. Chika and Ekene watched them, shaking their heads.
“Maybe she will feel better with them here,” said Ekene. Chika grunted in reply and his brother squeezed his shoulder.
Mary was downstairs coordinating the women who were cooking in the back. The Nigerwives’ children—the ones who had come, the girls who were actually friends with Vivek—were milling about downstairs. It was only when Osita arrived that they followed him into the parlor to see Vivek’s body.
Osita stood beside his cousin’s casket and stared down, the wailing around him like static in the air. He felt Juju slide her hand into his, pressing her shoulder against him.
“I can’t believe this,” she whispered. “Should we say something?”
Osita’s eyes didn’t move from Vivek’s face. “There’s no point,” he said. “He’s not in there anymore.”
“Osita! Don’t say that!”
“It’s true na. What’s the point?” His voice was rough with dammed-up tears, but as angry as he sounded, he didn’t step away from the casket. Juju squeezed his hand and said silent things to the body of her friend. Beside her, Olunne was praying quietly; Somto stood with them, one arm pressed across her stomach, a hand to her mouth, eyes wet.
* * *
—
Out back, Kavita stood on the veranda and watched as a group of men dragged a goat in on a length of frayed rope. She had asked to be called when it was time to kill the animal, and she watched as its legs were tied and a small hole dug in the ground. They laid it on its side and its bleating rang through the backyard. A knife was produced, with an old wooden handle and a sharpened although nicked blade. They pulled back the goat’s head until its neck was curved, then ran the knife, almost casually, across it. Blood spouted, red and thick, pouring into the small hole in the earth. Kavita watched silently as the goat’s sounds faded into gray silence. She thought of the