The Death of Vivek Oji(37)

“Lovers.”

“Yeah.”

Vivek watched her face for a moment. “But she’s your girlfriend,” he said. “Shouldn’t you trust her?”

Juju rolled on her back, turning away from him. “Let’s talk about something else,” she said. She and Elizabeth didn’t talk much about their relationship. They were girlfriends, yes, but who could they even go and say that to? And if you didn’t tell other people, was it real or was it just something the two of you were telling yourselves? Sometimes Juju found it easier to think of them the way other people did, as close friends. So the question for her became, did she have to tell her close friend about that morning with Vivek? It was just a kiss, it didn’t count as anything, so Juju kept quiet.

“Okay,” Vivek said. She could feel his gaze on her cheek. “What are you not telling me?”

Juju stared at the ceiling until her vision blurred with tears. “My dad’s having an affair.”

“What?” He shifted closer to her and put his hand on her braids. “How do you know?”

“They’ve been fighting and shouting. And I saw him today in the market with his . . . his other family, Vivek. With this woman and a little boy.” The tears slipped out of her eyes and ran down the sides of her face, spilling into her ears. Vivek wiped some of them away.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “Come here.”

Juju wrapped her arms around his neck, sobbing into his shoulder. “I feel like a mistake,” she said, her voice muffled and thick. “He always wanted a boy. Maybe if I’d been a boy he wouldn’t hit Mama so much.”

“Shh, don’t say that. It’s not true.”

Juju tried to stop crying, but she couldn’t. “He hates us,” she sobbed. “He went and replaced us and he won’t let Mama go home and her teeth are falling out and he keeps beating her and I can’t do anything, Vivek, I can’t do anything.” Her voice choked on itself, knots of pain clogging up her throat, and Vivek just held her tighter, whispering to her, locking her body against his. Juju wept in his arms for hours, as the afternoon crawled into evening and the light outside dimmed and the sun set and Vivek held her the whole time.





Sixteen



Ebenezer was good at his job.

He’d been a vulcanizer for fifteen years, fixing tires at the same junction the whole time. He was quick with his hands and reliable. Even customers who could have gone to a vulcanizer closer to them would come all the way to Chief Michael Road just to do business with him. All the okada boys in the area preferred him over the other vulcanizers because he never tried to overcharge them; sometimes, if business had been bad for them, he would do repairs on credit. They called him Dede, and when his competitors tried to make trouble for him, the okada boys intervened and there was no more trouble.

Okada drivers were a pack, as anyone who knocked one of them down on the road soon discovered. The boys would surround the car and prevent the driver from escaping, smashing windows and denting doors if they saw fit. Ebenezer liked them, though. They were loud and rough, but they were boys and they reminded him of his junior brothers.

His wife, Chisom, was a trader at the market just down the road, selling fabric and sewing goods. They had been married for six years, but they had no children, which in the past year or two had become a problem. Ebenezer’s family blamed Chisom, saying that she was barren or cursed, that something she’d done had blocked her womb. They never liked her because she had managed for herself before she married Ebenezer.

“Be careful of women like that,” one of Ebenezer’s brothers had told him. “They start feeling like they’re men, and before you know it they’re trying to run the household themselves, as if you’re their houseboy.”

Ebenezer had ignored them. He wanted a woman with some business sense, not someone who would be sitting in the house every day waiting for him to provide everything. Besides, she didn’t mind the scar on this face, didn’t think he was ugly. Someone like Chisom would concentrate on her business, he knew, because that’s what she’d always done. Even if—no, when—they had a baby, Ebenezer already knew Chisom would tie it to her back, like the other women at the market, and just continue. He saw himself building a family of hard workers, pulling themselves up in the world, but the absence of a child was obstructing this vision. Everywhere the walls were decked with posters and advertisements about family planning, trying to convince people to slow down on having children, and here they were struggling to have even one. It was humiliating.

Once, after they’d quarreled about it, Chisom had thrown her hands up.

“Every time it’s me going to a doctor. Ah-ahn! I don tire. You sef, why don’t you go and see if the problem is with you?”

Ebenezer had recoiled in shock. Before he could even reply, she turned over in their bed and pulled her wrapper to cover her, pretending to fall asleep. He sat there for a few minutes, and by the time he thought of something to say, it seemed childish to wake her up, so he went to sleep, too. When he mentioned the conversation to one of his brothers a few days later, his brother laughed.

“Shey I told you?” he said. “Na so she dey blame you because say her womb dey dry. You see wetin you don start?” He went and told the rest of the family, and from there everyone got involved in condemning Chisom and telling Ebenezer what a useless wife he had.