Page 41 of The Death of Vivek Oji

“I know,” I said. “I’m here for you.”

But he was there, somehow, even if just in our memories of him—he was there because his absence was there. We didn’t mind. He wouldn’t have. He would have smiled that annoying little smile, lain down next to us and watched, happy. How could he be gone when he’d overtaken us so completely while he was here?

Afterward, Juju lay with her head on my chest. “I didn’t tell anyone,” she said quietly.

I turned my head slightly. “You didn’t tell anyone what?”

“That you came looking for him the day he died. After he left here. I didn’t tell your aunt.”

I brought one of my hands in to stroke her shoulder. “Thank you.”

“You didn’t find him, abi? That’s what you told me.” She sounded like a little girl.

I kissed the top of her head, grateful that she couldn’t see my eyes. “No,” I said. “I didn’t find him. Go to sleep.” She snuggled in and I listened until her breathing evened out. Still, I stayed awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering if I was doing the right thing by lying. The darkness stared back at me and said nothing, as always.

Twenty

Vivek

He was right. Of course I watched them—they were so beautiful together. I put my hands on the small of her back and on the solid stretch of his chest. I kissed the sweat of her neck and his stomach.

They were keeping me alive in the sweetest way they knew how, you see.

Twenty-one

Chika repainted Ahunna’s house for Vivek’s burial, a bone white everywhere, drops of it splattering on the soil around the walls. Ekene had since built his own house just down the road, but Chika remained attached to their mother’s house, renovating and expanding it, like a parasite customizing its host’s body. In the years since her death, he had planted hedges and trees in the compound, built a fence and topped it with rolling barbed wire. He chose white even though he knew it would have to be repainted often, as dust from the untarred road coated the walls a dull, gritty red. Chika did all this in a flurry of activity, in the weeks before he collapsed into his bed and succumbed again to the familiar stupor of grief.

They all retreated to the village in those first days, Chika and Kavita and Vivek’s body, Mary and Ekene; it was the only place they could be. The impending burial forced a truce between the women, for which the brothers were grateful. Osita had stayed in Owerri until the last minute, despite a heatedquarrel with his parents. “I won’t miss the burial,” he insisted, but Ekene was so incensed by his refusal to come and help beforehand that he raised his hand to hit Osita, something he hadn’t done in years. Before he could land the blow, though, he caught a glimpse of Osita’s eyes, and what he saw there—complete indifference—bothered him enough to drop his arm and stalk out of the room, his rage bitter and impotent in the back of his mouth.

Once he was at the village, Ekene thought that Chika was doing too much for the burial, but he couldn’t open his mouth, not when his own son was alive. He watched the repainting with grief hot in his heart, watched the bright reddening of his brother’s eyes. Chika had stopped sleeping.

While Kavita lay in bed, her husband stalked through the house, among the paint buckets and brushes, the tarps spread out over the tiled floor, the rolled-up rugs and covered furniture. Everything seemed dead or suspended, everything paused, a long moment of tangible silence to mark his lost child. Vivek was resting at a local embalmer’s, being prepared for his interment, as Chika walked through the night, dust layered over his skin. In the mornings Ekene brought him breakfast and made him eat it, listening as his younger brother rattled on about the burial plans. Ekene said nothing—about the repainting, the clearing of the compound, the preparations for food and music—but he drew the line when Chika mentioned killing a cow.

“Mba,” Ekene said. “You can’t do that.” He folded his arms and stared down at his brother, who glared back up at him.

“What do you mean, I can’t do that?” Chika replied. “Is it not my money? Is anyone asking you to buy the cow?”

“You’re not thinking straight, and that’s understandable, but let me just tell you now, Chika, you cannot kill a cow for your son. It’s not right.”

Chika took a deep breath. “You want to tell me what’s right to bury my own son?”

Ekene sighed and sat down next to him. “He was too young, Chika. To kill a cow is to celebrate a life. That’s what we do for someone who lived their whole life fully, who was not taken before his time. If you celebrate this—with a whole cow—it’s like you’re celebrating something unnatural, when your son died so young. ?gh?tala m?”

Chika sagged back into his chair. “I just want to honor my child,” he said.

“And you can, and you will,” said Ekene, putting a hand on his arm. “You know what? Kill a goat. They will even talk about that sef, but so what? Recognize your son.”

“He was my only child,” Chika continued. “We didn’t kill a cow for Mama.”

“She told us not to,” said Ekene, leaning back and taking his hand off his brother. “Remember how she put it? That if she died in the evening, we should not allow the sun to rise and set on her corpse.”

Chika smiled sadly. “And then she said that if we had a goat or a dog, we should slaughter it, nothing elaborate. A quiet burial. She begged us.”

“And we did it the way she wanted. So how can you go and kill a cow for your son when we only killed a goat for Mama? It will look somehow.”

Chika nodded. “You’re right.”

“Mary was saying she would just go to the slaughterhouse early in the morning and buy enough meat for the people coming.”