Page 49 of The Death of Vivek Oji

On the day the market burned, I had gone to Juju’s house to look for him. She told me he’d gone out again. I had shouted at her, unfairly, as if I didn’t know she couldn’t stop him. No onecould stop him—we had all tried already, many times. I went out, jumped on an okada, and set out to look for him. I knew he liked to visit one woman near the market who sold puff-puff, so I told the okada man to go down Chief Michael Road. We had just passed the first junction when we heard the noise and saw the crowd in the distance. My okada swerved to the side of the road and stopped.

“Commot, commot!” shouted the driver.

“You’re not going again?” I asked.

“You dey craze? You no dey see riot? My friend, commot, make I go. Keep your money sef.”

Grumbling and cursing, I got off and he sped away. I sighed and looked around and that was when I saw Vivek a few blocks down, unmistakable in that dress. I called his name but he didn’t turn around and so I ran to him, pushing his shoulder when I reached him.

“You don’t hear your name?!”

My cousin turned and looked at me calmly. “I’m Nnemdi,” she corrected.

I wiped my face with my hand. Today of all days. “Okay, sorry, Nnemdi. Please, can we go back to Juju’s house?”

“No problem. But I want to get some puff-puff first.”

I stared at her, then gestured to the mayhem ahead of us. “You want to enter that? For puff-puff?”

She looked at the crowd and her face wavered. She was twisting her hands together like she did when she was nervous. “It won’t take long. Can we go after I buy it?” she said.

I wanted to shout at her, but the last time I did that inpublic, she had threatened to punch me in the face, then ran away. I wasn’t able to chase her—it would’ve looked too somehow—so I went back to Juju’s house and waited till she came back on her own. This time, I gently held her shoulders and looked into her eyes. The cotton of the dress was soft under my palms. “Nnemdi,” I said. “I’m sure even the woman selling it has packed her things and gone already. She won’t be there. Everyone is going, see.”

A plume of smoke was rising against the horizon from the market. The road beside us was packed with speeding vehicles, buses and taxis and private cars. A trader carrying folded yards of cloth piled precariously around her zoomed past on an okada. It was weaving through the other vehicles, and as it passed us, it swerved to avoid a pothole and some of the cloth fell off, landing in a cloud of sand. The woman shouted at the okada driver to stop, but he didn’t, shouting back at her as he continued to speed away from the brewing mob.

“We have to go,” I told my cousin. “Biko, before something happens to you.”

She glared at me. “Why is it me you think something will happen to? You nko?”

“Please, don’t start this now. You know it’s not even safe for you to be going out of Juju’s house like this, let alone in this area, let alone in this situation! Don’t act stupid. Let’s go!”

“I see.” Her face had settled into coldness. “So now you think I’m stupid?”

“Nnemdi, please. You can fight me when we reach Juju’s house. Let’s just go. Biko.”

“You’re ashamed of me,” she said, her voice surprised. “That’s why you don’t like me going out like this. It’s like you’re always ashamed, Osita. First of yourself, then of us, now of me.”

“Jesus Christ. That’s not true. Abeg—”

“No, it’s true. You don’t mind anything when we’re inside and nobody can see us, but that’s why you don’t like me to go outside like this. You don’t want anyone to see me. Or is it that you don’t want them to see me with you?”

I groaned and clutched at my head. We didn’t have time for this. What would happen if someone looked too closely at her, someone holding a machete and buffeted by a mob? How quickly they could hurt her, kill her. I grabbed her arm and started to drag her away. “We don’t have time to be quarreling on the road!”

She tried to pull away and started hitting me. “Let me go! Hapu m aka!!”

I lost it. “We have to go now!Do you know what they’ll do to you?”

Nnemdi gasped and wrenched away from me with all her strength, breaking my hold. I was startled by the pain in her eyes, surprised that the truth could hurt her so much. She pulled herself away with such force that she stumbled, and her heel caught on a stone, and she fell. It happened so fast. I saw her head strike the raised cement edge of the gutter at the side of the road. I saw her body slump, eyes closed, blood pooling into the sand within seconds.

I screamed.

“No no nono!” I ran and knelt by her, sliding one handunder her neck to lift her head up. “Nnemdi. Nnemdi!” Maybe she wouldn’t recognize that name after hitting her head. “Vivek,” I whispered. “Vivek, open your eyes. Please, bhai. Open your eyes.” My hand was now wet with blood—there was so much blood. Panic was a vulture inside my body, trying to get out, pecking and flapping wildly at me. I looked around and scrabbled to get the cloth that had fallen from the okada. I ripped off the plastic covering and lifted her neck again, using the cloth to try and stop the bleeding.

Hospital. I needed to get her to a hospital. No one around me was paying attention; everything was chaos; people were running all around us. I lifted Nnemdi and carried her against my chest, using my upper arm to cushion her head. I stood at the side of the road and an okada skidded in front of me. The driver was, unexpectedly, a woman.

“Wetin happen?” she asked, staring at Nnemdi.

“She fell down. Please, can you take us to a hospital?”