The Death of Vivek Oji(13)

“I know, Aunty. I’m sorry.” He hugged her in the humming silence of Vivek’s empty room, holding her as she cried.



* * *



—

Down the corridor, Chika listened to his wife’s swelling sobs, his phone beside him, lit up with missed calls. He didn’t move from their bed.





Six





Vivek



I kept the book for the title, for how it was spelled. Beautyful. I had no idea why that spelling was chosen, but I liked it because it kept the beauty intact. It wasn’t swallowed, killed off with an i to make a whole new word. It was solid; it was still there, so much of it that it couldn’t fit into a new word, so much fullness. You got a better sense of exactly what was causing that fullness. Beauty.

Beauty.

I wanted to be as whole as that word.





Seven





Osita



I spent my last year of secondary school avoiding Vivek’s house, not wanting to see his eyes or deal with the shattering in his voice. I didn’t see Elizabeth either, but everything felt so spoiled with her; I couldn’t imagine fixing it. I avoided the sports club, convinced she’d be there if I came, swimming slow laps in the pool or heading to the squash courts, her legs moving apart from my own.

My mother was quietly delighted that I was spending so much time at home. The deadlines to apply for universities abroad came and passed. Aunty Kavita might have reminded her, but the reminders never made their way to me. I wondered if I should follow up, but after my fight with Vivek, it felt easier to just let it go. I told myself that it had always been more of Aunty Kavita’s dream, anyway. It was a strange thing for my mother and me to be accidentally united on—this idea of a foreign education dying like an unwatered plant in a dark corner. Instead I applied to universities in the country, those closer to home. Vivek’s family had been selling us dreams I was no longer buying; my father was right, they were not my home.

Vivek came to my graduation with his parents. He and I acted like everything was fine when we met, but we avoided each other for the rest of the day. Before they left, Aunty Kavita came up to me.

“How come we haven’t been seeing you around, beta? Did you hear back from the American schools? I sent your mother the application forms. You sent them in, yes?”

I had no idea what forms she was talking about; I’d never seen them. “Sorry, Aunty. I didn’t get into any of the schools.” I tried to look ashamed, which wasn’t very difficult. “I was afraid you’d be disappointed in me.”

“Oh, Osita!” Aunty Kavita hugged me tightly. “What are you going to do now?”

“I applied to some universities here just in case. Those ones went well. My father wants me to go to school in Nsukka.”

She smiled and patted my cheek. “Well, at least you’ll be close to home. Vivek is starting his applications soon. Fingers crossed for next year!”

My mother interrupted us, gathering the family to take a group picture. Her eyes met mine briefly, and I wondered how much she had overheard, how much she was hiding. I wasn’t interested in digging up her secrets. We stood next to each other for the photograph; I still have it now. I’m wearing deep blue robes and looking sullen, a tassel hanging over my face.

Vivek isn’t even looking at the camera. His eyes are cast off to the side and his chin is lowered. Aunty Kavita has her arm around his waist; she only reaches his shoulder. My father and uncle are standing next to each other, brother by brother. My mother is smiling so widely you can’t help but look at her, like she’s determined to crack her face in half. We fit easily in the frame, all of us together.

After I started attending university in Nsukka, my trips back to my home in Owerri grew less frequent. I didn’t go to Ngwa either. A full year passed, maybe two, before I saw Vivek or his parents again. I wrote them letters, even called a few times after they installed a landline in their house, but I missed Vivek’s graduation, his eighteenth and nineteenth birthdays, and it was only later I found out that he never went to America. No one told me why. According to my mother, he enrolled at Nnamdi Azikiwe instead. One term later, De Chika pulled him out—and still no one would tell me what was going on.

“Since when did you start caring about your cousin?” my father said when I asked. I flinched at the censure in his voice. He’d never commented on our rift, but clearly he’d noticed, and it sounded like he blamed me. I wanted to argue, but my father walked away without waiting for my answer, leaving me ashamed in his wake.

“Don’t worry yourself,” my mother said. “Focus on your books. The boy will be fine. His parents are just spoiling him.”

“But what’s happening?” I asked. “Why did they remove him from uni?”

She hesitated, then flapped her hand in a vague gesture. “He’s not well, but don’t worry. God will take care of it.”

By then, my father had reduced his hours at work so he could spend more time at my grandmother’s house in the village. “I’m getting old,” he said, as if that explained everything, and maybe it did. The house had been renovated into a duplex and he’d put in a phone line. My mother and I joined him some weekends, like small holidays away from Owerri. The village was expansive—a world of land and farms and nature, not like the towns or cities, where everything was cramped and loud. We were finding escapes everywhere.