The Death of Vivek Oji(47)

Juju stood up and hugged me when I got to their table. She held me for a little too long and I saw Elizabeth’s eyes narrow. “Thank you for coming all that way,” she whispered. I had stayed in Owerri after Aunty Kavita collected me from Port Harcourt. I couldn’t go back to Vivek’s house, but the grief had stretched to mine anyway. My mother cried a lot, though I never knew if it was because he’d died or because she’d let him slip out of her hands. I never asked. My father walked around, age drawing down the skin of his face, barely even talking to my mother. I knew he wanted to be there for Uncle Chika and it was killing him that their wives had dug this gaping gutter between them.

“We are brothers,” he had said once, when I asked how he was, wonder and disbelief in his voice. “We are still brothers, yet he won’t talk to me.” I almost said I knew how it felt to lose a brother, but it was too complicated a feeling to put into words, so I kept it inside my chest.

“You said it was important,” I reminded Juju as we broke our embrace.

Juju sniffed and wiped her nose. “It is. We’re just waiting for the others.”

“Elizabeth,” I said in greeting, nodding at her.

“Osita.” She flicked her eyes at me and smiled tightly with her lips closed, her tone spiked. “Glad you could make it.”

By then, I figured Juju must have told her about my relationship with Vivek. I wasn’t surprised by her hostility, and I didn’t care enough to make noise about it. What was there to fight about? The boy was dead. I sat down and waited, glancing over at Juju. She looked exhausted. She’d taken her light brown hair out of its usual braids and tied it into a rough bun; she had bags under her eyes, no lip gloss, and yet she was the most beautiful I could remember seeing her, even looking like she was about to break. It was strange—the next thought I had was, Vivek would want me to take care of her. “How have you been?” I asked.

“She’s fine,” Elizabeth snapped. I almost snapped back at her, but then Somto and Olunne arrived and we were all greeting one another, rearranging chairs, passing around menus. Juju and Elizabeth had to move their chairs closer to make room for Somto and Olunne, overriding the little force field between them, and in that absence they fell back into their old comfort, their voices lacing together like one fabric. We put in our order with the waiter, then Olunne turned to Juju. “Okay,” she said. “What’s this about? Why did we bring Osita all the way from Owerri?”

Juju and Elizabeth looked at each other and Elizabeth gave her a small nod. “Show them,” she said.

Juju reached inside her bag and pulled out a colorful envelope, bright stock-photo faces smiling all over it. “I got this developed the other day from Vivek’s camera,” she said, handing the envelope to Somto, who was sitting next to her. “I—I think we should give them to Aunty Kavita.”

Somto opened the envelope and inhaled a soft, quick breath. She looked at Juju, upset.

“You took pictures of him like this?”

Juju’s jaw tightened. “He wanted them. Was I supposed to tell him no?”

Somto closed the flap of the envelope without looking at the other photographs inside it. “So you mean the people at the photo place also saw these?”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Use your brain,” she said. “Of course they did. And so what?” Olunne reached across the table and took the envelope from her sister. “You’ve already seen them, Elizabeth?”

“I went with Juju to pick them up.”

Somto looked furious. “You shouldn’t have taken these pictures, Juju. I don’t care if that’s what he wanted. What if someone finds them? What if someone at the photo place made their own copies?”

“Didn’t you hear her?” Olunne was sifting through the pictures; her voice was gentle, almost amused. “She wants to show them to his mother.”

“You dey craze,” Somto said to Juju. “Do you hear me? Your head is not correct. Aunty Kavita must never see these. Can you imagine what it will do to her?”

“I think she should know.” Juju sounded uncertain, afraid.

Elizabeth put a hand on her arm. “You knew him best,” she said.

“He’s not here!” shouted Somto. Elizabeth glared at her and she lowered her voice. “He’s not here,” she repeated. “They buried him already. What’s the point of showing her these?”

Olunne handed me the photographs and I took them, my heart beating fast. I already knew what I would see, that it would hit me in the chest like a lorry. I hadn’t seen a picture of him since the burial.

“You don’t see what she’s like,” Juju argued. “She’s been asking questions all the time. She won’t stop. She wants to know what happened to him.”

“We don’t know what happened to him,” said Olunne.

“Well, she thinks we do. Or at least that I do, just because he was at my house last.”

“She was coming to our house, but she’s stopped,” Somto said.

“Yes, because it’s me that she’s disturbing!” Juju retorted. “Do you know she and my mother quarreled about it? Mumsy even said she shouldn’t come to the house anymore—after all these years they’ve been friends. So now she just calls our landline all the time, begging me to remember something that I’m not telling her.”