The Death of Vivek Oji(21)

Kavita slammed the phone down, her skin itching. She wished Chika was home, but it was just her and her son. She went to the door of Vivek’s room and stood there, staring at the wood. Of course he didn’t want to talk to her, she thought, not after she’d sent him into that. Kavita sank to the floor and leaned her back against the wall, the linoleum cool under her feet. She pressed her forehead into her palms and cried.



* * *



—

Kavita didn’t tell her husband what happened, not at first. Chika wasn’t surprised by Vivek locking himself in his room; it was normal at this point, so he didn’t ask any questions. Kavita, however, walked around with rage pounding through her, wondering how she could have failed to see what Mary had become, if it was her own carelessness that had resulted in Vivek getting hurt. There was no one she could talk to about it.

The next morning, Rhatha called her. The Nigerwives were convening an emergency meeting around Maja. “She just found out Charles has been keeping a second family,” Rhatha told Kavita, her voice low and scandalized. “Can you imagine? Poor darling. We’re all heading over there this afternoon.”

The news briefly distracted Kavita from her own anger. “Is he still in the house?”

“Goodness, no. She kicked him out, and good for her! It’s one thing to have an affair, or even a mistress, but a whole family?” Rhatha clicked her tongue. “Are you going to come?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. I’ll see you there.” As soon as she hung up, Kavita grabbed her purse and left for Maja’s house, though the meeting wouldn’t begin for hours. Maja was her best friend; it was ridiculous that she was hearing this news through the grapevine—from Rhatha, of all people.

Maja burst into tears as soon as she opened her front door. Kavita dropped her purse, pulling her into a hug.

“Oh, my dear! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Maja sobbed against her neck. “It’s just—you have so much going on with Vivek, I didn’t want to disturb you. . . .”

“Shh.” Kavita stroked the woman’s hair. “I’m here now. It’s going to be okay.” She pulled back and wiped the wetness off Maja’s face. “Come sit down and you can tell me everything.”

The story was even worse than Kavita had expected. Charles not only had another family, but his child with the other woman was a boy, his first and only son. And it wasn’t just an affair: he wanted to marry the woman, to take a second wife.

“You can’t mean it,” Kavita said, aghast.

“He’s serious.” Maja dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “He says I can’t blame him, that no one would blame him for taking another wife when his first one has failed to give him a son. The woman’s child is his namesake.”

Kavita covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, Maja, I’m so sorry!”

“He agreed to leave because I was making such a scene, but he says he’ll be back, Kavita. He says he’s going to bring the woman into our house. That I can’t do anything about it. I told him I’d take Juju and leave, and he said I should try it.” Tears tracked down her swollen cheeks. “I would leave, I really would, but I can’t find our passports. I think he’s hiding them. And I don’t even know how to tell my parents, you know, because they warned me. They warned me African men were like this, and they told me it was foolish to come here with him, to bring Juju here. He said Juju is not enough, that she’s not a boy. What if she heard him say that? As if she means nothing, as if she’s nothing?”

Kavita held Maja’s hand tightly. “Have you told her yet?”

“No!” Maja’s voice was spiked and loud. She pulled it back down, shaking her head. “No, I can’t tell her. I have to figure something else out. She can’t know he did this, that he’s like this. It would destroy her, and he’s already caused enough damage. She thinks he’s away on a business trip.”

Kavita wasn’t sure what to say. She didn’t approve of secrets, but she also knew it was dangerous to tell another woman how to raise her child. She’d barely survived an argument in her own family when she and Chika decided not to tell Vivek that he was born on the same day that Ahunna died. The convergence had made his birthdays difficult—the way everyone kept trying to smile past the grief clotting inside them. They didn’t want to tell Vivek because they didn’t want him to think it was his fault they were always sad on his birthday, as if his arrival had caused her death. Kavita had thought the pain would fade over the years, but it had multiplied instead, like a load getting heavier and heavier on your head the longer you walked with it.

Finally, when Vivek was seven or eight, Ekene challenged them over it. “He deserves to know,” he insisted. “This is his history, our family history. He needs to know what happened!”

“Is that so?” Kavita had folded her arms and glared at her brother-in-law. “How do you explain something like that to a child?”

Ekene fell silent.

Strangely, it was Mary who did it—Mary, before she became the woman she was now. She’d sat down with Vivek on her lap, his little legs kicking idly through the air, his hair dropping into his eyes. They hadn’t started cutting it short yet, that came with secondary school.