The Death of Vivek Oji(18)

Vivek looked up at me, his back hunched and his legs lean and straight on the bedsheets. His hair had come loose from the bun and it spilled down his shoulders. “So you think I look like a woman?”

My chest was thudding. “What?”

“Is that why you avoided me all day? Because I resemble woman to you?” He laughed and pushed his hair back, off his chest. “You dey see breast?”

I shook my head. My stomach was knotted and painful. “You are really not okay. They should actually be praying for you.”

“All of this because I said maybe you have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend? It’s not that serious.”

“You think that’s normal? You think you sef, that you’re normal? None of this is normal, Vivek! What kind of people have you been around?”

“Why are you so afraid? Because something is different from what you know?” My cousin folded his arms and leaned his back against the headboard of the bed. “I’m disappointed, bhai. I didn’t think you’d be one of these closed-minded people. Leave that for your mother.”

“Fuck you,” I said, and grabbed my pillow off the bed.

He laughed again. “Oh, you’re going to sleep in the parlor? Let your mumsy find you there in the morning, then you can tell her why you didn’t sleep in your room. Or I can tell her for you if you like.”

I wanted to hit him. I felt like we were thirteen again, the way he was worming his way under my skin and making me want to itch it off. “I’m not one of those,” I told him.

“One of what?” Vivek put up his hands. “Actually, never mind. I don’t even care. I’m going to sleep. Do what you like.” He lay back down, turning away from me.

I stood in the dark, holding my pillow and slowly feeling like an idiot. Finally I threw it back on the bed and lay down with my back to him. What a bastard. I lay there with the anger simmering in me for a long time before I fell asleep.

At some point in the night, NEPA came back and the ceiling fan whirred on. I stirred and woke up. I was lying on my back with an arm thrown out; Vivek was scattered beside me, his leg touching mine and his hair drowning my arm, the silver chain and pendant gleaming against his collarbone. I could almost see the lines that marked Ganesh. Vivek sighed and his eyes opened into slits.

“Sorry, bhai,” he whispered, and drifted back to sleep. There was a tendril of hair lying on his cheek that I wanted to move aside, but I was too afraid to touch him. I lay still and looked at the ceiling until sleep collected me again.





Eight



Kavita thought it was a phase—that Vivek was just going through something and it would pass. So she prayed and said countless rosaries, rubbing the color off the beads with hundreds and hundreds of Hail Marys until she thought her hands were actually full of grace. She took him to the cathedral to see Father Obinna, the priest who had baptized him and fed him his First Communion. When Vivek came out from their conversation, his forehead was wet with holy water. “Pray some more,” the priest told them, and Kavita believed him, trusted him. If there was something more, something spiritual, wouldn’t the father have seen it? She wasn’t sure. “The Catholic Church can’t do anything,” Mary told her over the phone. “You should allow him to come to Owerri, so I can take him to my own church. They fight these things with holy fire.”

“I don’t know,” Kavita said. “He’s been doing a little better since we got back from the village, you know? He’s eating again, sleeping in his own bed.”

“Has he cut that hair?”

“I don’t think that’s important—”

“Ahn! Kavita. You know how things are here. It’s not safe for him to be walking around Ngwa looking that . . . feminine. If someone misunderstands, if they think he’s a homosexual, what do you think is going to happen to him?”

Kavita’s stomach dropped. The thought had worried her, too, but it was different—more terrifying—to hear it put into words. Vivek couldn’t end up like those lynched bodies at the junction, blackened by fire and stiffened, large gashes from machetes showing old red flesh underneath. Most of them were thieves, or said to be thieves, but mobs don’t listen, and they’d say anything afterward.

“He’s going to be fine,” she told Mary. “He was born here, raised here. People know who he is.”

Mary laughed bitterly. “You think it matters? You don’t know Nigeria. People have killed their neighbors and burned down their houses. He’s not safe, I’m telling you.”

Kavita started to get upset. “Why are you putting that into the world? Vivek isn’t doing anything to anyone.”

“I know it’s hard to hear,” Mary said, softening her voice. “But you know how these men are. The boy is slim, he has long hair—all it takes is one idiot thinking he’s a woman from behind or something, then getting angry when he finds out that he’s not. Because, if he’s a boy, then what does it mean that the idiot was attracted to him? And those kinds of questions usually end up with someone getting hurt. Ekene doesn’t want Chika to cut the boy’s hair out of wickedness, you know. We’re trying to look out for him. Just because he’s half-caste doesn’t mean he’s going to get special treatment forever, not the way he’s behaving. You’re his mother. It’s your job to protect him. I’m telling you, bring him to Owerri. We can help him at the church here.”