The Death of Vivek Oji(41)

Ebenezer waded through whole sections of the market, now in ruins, the air full of smoke from the parts that were still burning. The muddy alleys were strewn with bolts of colorful fabric trampled by many feet; vendors scrambled about, trying to salvage them from the muck, crying and swearing and afraid. The smoke was worse by the time he got to Chisom’s shop, where she sold buttons and needles and sewing machine parts and thread. This area was already deserted. Some of the stores had been locked in haste, as if that could protect them from fire. Others had goods tossed about in front of them, discarded by traders who had tried to carry their merchandise away but found their arms overfull. He reached the wooden door to Chisom’s shop, with its flaking light blue paint, and coughed as he called her name. Particles of soot had settled on the white fabric draped for sale in the doorway.

“Chisom!” he shouted.

“Ebenezer?” She emerged from the back, her face marked with dried tears, but calm. “You came!”

He rushed forward and embraced his wife, who stood numb and shocked in the circle of his arms. “You came all this way,” she said, disbelieving.

“Are you all right?” he asked, patting her face.

Chisom nodded. “I was packing up the things as fast as I could.”

“Forget the things, jo! Can’t you smell the smoke? You want to stay here and wait for the fire to reach you?”

“I’ve almost finished. I just didn’t know how to carry them out. We can’t afford to lose the merchandise.”

Ebenezer looked at his wife and the determination hammered into her face. Her tenacity, he realized, was something he could learn from. How to stand in the face of actual fire and not run, how to do what it took for them to survive because she’d decided to. She could have been hurt, could have been killed, but she had done it anyway. Ebenezer felt ashamed at how hard he’d been fighting her about seeing a doctor. She had packed up the things, not knowing how she could carry all of it, simply because she was ready to handle that part when the time came. Now the time had come and he was there, as he should have been, as he always should have been. Why should she be carrying anything by herself when he was her husband?

“I’m here now,” Ebenezer said. Chisom gave him a small, unsure smile and he embraced her one more time. “Let’s go,” he said. He carried most of the Ghana-must-go bags she’d packed and they made their way out of the market, stumbling slightly but together. They flagged down an okada who recognized Ebenezer, and together they climbed aboard, balancing the bags awkwardly as they left the market behind.

Most of the market burned to the ground that day. It was years before the government got around to rebuilding it.





Seventeen





Vivek



Here is one of my favorite memories with Osita. We are in my bedroom. My parents are out and we are alone. I am lying with my head on his bare stomach and he’s playing with my hair, pulling on the curls and watching them spring back. Sometimes he rubs my scalp and I turn my head to kiss his ribs.

“I had a dream,” I tell him.

He looks down from the pillows surrounding him. “Tell me,” he says, in that way where I know he’s genuinely interested, he wants to hear my dreams, my stories.

“I dreamt that I was our grandmother,” I tell him. “I looked in a mirror and she was there, just like the pictures, and she spoke to me in Igbo.”

“What did she say?”

“Hold my life for me.” I wait for his laugh, but it never comes. “Do you believe in reincarnation?” I ask him.

“I’m not sure my belief matters,” he says. “If it is, it is, whether I believe it or not.”

“You know what I’m asking.”

My cousin gives me a small smile and twists some of my hair in his fingers. “They talk about you and her in the village, did you know?”

I have never heard this before. I sit halfway up, leaning against his body.

“They talk about how she died the same day you were born,” he continues, “how my father got into an argument with your dad about your name. But you weren’t a girl, so . . .” Osita shrugs, lets the story die off.

“What do you think?” I ask him.

My cousin looks at me with a gentleness he shows to no one else. “Who are we to define what is impossible or not?”

“You’re just saying that,” I tell him.

He shakes his head. “I mean it. You know what’s been happening in your head. You’re the only person who knows. So ask yourself if it feels right, and somewhere, deep inside of you, there’s a compass that will tell you whether you’re right or wrong.”

I smile at him. “Is this how you make decisions?” I tease.

His eyes sweep over both of us, naked on the bed, and he doesn’t smile back. I feel a thrill as his gaze touches me; I know it is a precursor to his hands, his mouth, the marvelous rest of him.

“Only the important ones,” he replies, and then he reaches for me.





Eighteen



Three months after Vivek died, Chika tried to force Kavita to stop asking people about him. She didn’t listen to him, of course. She thought it was a ridiculous thing to ask—as if she could stop, as if there was any reason on this earth why she should stop. Her son was dead and buried in the village, in Ahunna’s compound, next to her grave. Chika had put a concrete slab over the ground where Vivek’s body was; Kavita tried not to imagine it crushing him. She would have spent all her time beside it, but the answers weren’t there. They had carved an inscription into the concrete. VIVEK OJI, it said. BELOVED SON.