Page 51 of The Death of Vivek Oji

There was still blood drying on my jeans, but they were dark, so they didn’t show much. I went straight to the bus stop and took a bus to Owerri. When I paid the conductor, some of the notes were stained with blood, but he didn’t even blink.

My parents weren’t home when I reached the house, so I took the key from under the mat and let myself in. I had enough time to take a bath and burn my bloodied clothes with therubbish in the backyard, which I was supposed to burn anyway. I don’t know why I kept the dress, knotting it into that bag and putting it under my bed. I rinsed the necklace and kept it under my mattress, even though I risked my mother finding it if she came into my room. It was unlikely that she would. I couldn’t bury it—I just couldn’t.

I still remember the blood washing down the drain of the bathtub as I poured containers of water over my body, scrubbing myself until the water was clear and then pouring and scrubbing even more, going through buckets and buckets, until I had used all the water in the bathroom drum. I dried myself with a white towel, to make sure that not a drop of my cousin was left on me, then fetched water to refill the drum. Then I left the house, knowing it was only a matter of time before Uncle Chika would call to tell my father what had happened, and I didn’t want to be there to pick the call.

When I came home late that night, my parents were weeping in the sitting room. When they told me, I wept with them as if it was my first time.

I have pretended every day since then. I pretended with the girls and at the burial and with everyone. It was why I didn’t go to see anyone, why I stayed in Owerri. I needed to learn how to behave with this secret dropping petals inside me like this. I helped Aunty Kavita look for the necklace after she got me from Port Harcourt, as if I wouldn’t go home and pull it out, press it against my mouth, and choke back my sobs so that my parents wouldn’t hear.

When we told Aunty Kavita our theory that Vivek hadgone out as Nnemdi and someone must have killed him during the riot, I could barely talk, my throat was swelling up so much. They thought it was grief. “The boys were very close,” my aunt said afterward, finally allowing other people the right to mourn her child. I listened to them wonder what had happened to the dress, knowing the whole time that it was hidden under my bed, soft and stiff. I watched my aunt cry as she imagined the suffering her Vivek had endured. I wanted to tell her that Nnemdi didn’t feel anything from the moment she fell, that she was asleep in my arms when she died, that there wasn’t pain like that, but I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. We had told her as much truth as she could handle. I was keeping the rest for myself.

So there I was with the dress, at the grave, sitting there as the sun washed up in diluted yellow. I didn’t know what time my aunt and uncle would arrive. I felt like I was always running just a few steps ahead of them, holding secrets they couldn’t catch up to. I picked up a hoe that was lying by the back door and dug carefully at the base of the little star fruit tree, deep enough so that rain wouldn’t wash it open, trying to hack the roots apart. I used my hands to dig the rest, around the roots, making small excavations, pouring water into it to soften the soil. When it was deep enough, I took the dress out of the bag. I held it to my face, trying to smell my cousin’s skin, trying not to smell the dried blood. It smelled like nothing much. I put it inside the hole and buried it, then shifted sand and leaves on top so they wouldn’t see that something had been buried there.

“I’m so sorry,” I told the grave. “It was an accident. I wouldnever have hurt you, not in a thousand years. I swear to God. You were my brother and I loved you. I only wanted to protect you.”

I put my hand on the cement and it was cold. “I miss you every single day.”

My voice broke and the grave said nothing back. I knelt there for a long time, and finally I stood up and dusted the dirt off my knees. The sun was stronger in the sky now. I wiped my eyes and picked up the polythene bag. Holding it tight in my hand, I pulled the photograph of us out of my back pocket. I had considered burying it as well, but I couldn’t; I couldn’t let everything rot in that grave with my cousin. I stroked my thumb across the glossed surface before putting it back in my pocket with the necklace. Then I walked away, knowing that I would be leaving, going far away, to somewhere I could put his charm around my neck and wear it every day, and maybe then it would feel like he hadn’t left me after all.

Twenty-four

Nnemdi

Ioften wonder if I died in the best possible way—in the arms of the one who loved me the most, wearing a skin that was true. I watch him grieve and I want to tell him he’s already been forgiven for everything and anything he could ever do to me. I want to tell him that I knew I was dancing with death every day, especially when I walked outside like that. I knew it, and I made my choices anyway. It wasn’t right or fair, what happened, but it wasn’t his fault. I want to thank him for loving me.

My mother has changed the inscription on my grave. She could smell that it was a lie. Love and guilt sometimes taste the same, you know. Now it says:

VIVEK NNEMDI OJI

BELOVED CHILD

I wonder if anyone is pleased that I finally got my Igbo name. If my grandmother, floating somewhere here with me, is happy to be acknowledged at last. I would say it was too late, but time has stopped meaning what it used to.

I don’t mind anymore. I see how things work now, from this side. I was born and I died. I will come back.

Somewhere, you see, in the river of time, I am alreadyalive.