The Death of Vivek Oji(56)

“He liked to wear dresses?” Kavita dropped the photograph and picked up the rest, shock building in her face as she shuffled through them: Vivek in dresses of all kinds, sleeveless ones, short tight ones, loud printed ones, his lips painted red or pink or just glossed till they shone, his eyes always lined, sometimes with a bright splash of eyeshadow.

“My God,” she said. “He was dressing like a woman?”

“He said he was dressing like himself,” Somto interjected, her face resolute. “It made him happy, Aunty Kavita.”

Kavita looked up slowly at them. “And all of you knew about this?” They dropped their eyes. “Even you, Osita?” Her voice was frail with betrayal when she addressed him, but Osita looked at her directly, unafraid.

“He wanted it to be kept private, so we kept it private, Aunty.”

“He was sick! And you people all knew this was going on, and it didn’t occur to any of you to tell me or his father? We could have helped him!”

“He didn’t need help,” muttered Elizabeth. Olunne kicked her in the ankle.

“Excuse me?” said Kavita.

“I said he didn’t need help.” Elizabeth’s eyes were fixed and stubborn. “This made him happy, Aunty! He would have been worse without it. It was the only reason he was okay. So, no, we didn’t tell anybody. He was our friend.”

Kavita shook her head in disbelief. “No, I refuse. It must have been you girls! You dressed him up—you took advantage of him! You knew he was sick!”

Elizabeth and Somto looked like they were about to explode, but Juju stepped in gently. “It’s not like that, Aunty. Vivek said it was just a part of who he was, that he had this inside him and he wanted the opportunity to express it, so that’s all we gave him, that opportunity. I know it’s frightening to see him look so different. I was worried, too, when he told me, when he started dressing this way. But he was so happy, it really made a difference.” She smiled faintly at the memory. “I wish you could’ve seen him. He was happier than he’d ever been since Uncle Chika brought him back. Sometimes he asked us to call him by another name; he said we could refer to him as either she or he, that he was both. I know it sounds—”

“Bas!” Kavita raised her hand for silence. “It’s enough. You people will not sit here and tell me my son wanted you to call him she. It’s . . . it’s unnatural.”

“But it’s true,” said Elizabeth. “That’s just who he was.”

“That is not who my son was!” shouted Kavita, throwing the pictures to the floor. “I don’t know what you people did to him, but that was not my son! That was not my Vivek!”

Osita felt his chest hurt but he didn’t know what to say. He was afraid that any words leaving his mouth would emerge dripping with guilt, and he was filled with nauseous relief that Juju had agreed to take out the photos of him and Vivek. Olunne was staring at Kavita with pity. Her sister, however, was furious.

“He didn’t belong to you,” Somto growled, and they all looked at her, appalled. “You keep talking as if he belonged to you, just because you were his mother, but he didn’t. He didn’t belong to anybody but himself. And the way you’re behaving now—that’s why we couldn’t tell you. That’s why he lived the last months of his life as a secret. That’s why he couldn’t trust you. You think you own him, when you didn’t know anything that was going on in his life.”

She sucked her teeth and Kavita’s tears stopped, mostly out of shock at Somto’s rudeness. Olunne pinched her sister’s arm to make her shut up.

“Is it me you’re talking to?” Kavita said, incredulous.

“We were just trying to protect him,” Elizabeth said. “We didn’t want anything to happen to him. We took care of him.”

Kavita turned to her. “Is that so? Where were you on the day he died, then? Where were all of you? Can someone finally answer me that one?”

A silence followed her words, heavy and thick. Then Juju spoke up reluctantly, her voice low. “He was at my house. He had started going out in dresses and I tried to stop him. I told him it wasn’t safe, but he said he was just going down the road, that it wouldn’t take long. Usually he’d come back quickly, but that day—” Here, Juju’s voice broke. “He didn’t come back at all. And there was the riot at the market—”

“And it burned down,” Kavita completed, her voice flat. The akwete cloth over Vivek’s body had smelled of smoke.

Juju nodded tearfully. “I think he walked too far and someone caught him,” she said.

Kavita’s throat clenched. She imagined the scene: Vivek caught in a mob, someone staring too much before shouting He’s a man, bodies pressing around him, tightening like a noose, hands ripping off his clothes, someone throwing a stone that broke open the back of his head. Her boy crumpling to the ground. A sob tore through her and she folded in half to keep it in.

“Aunty Kavita! Are you all right?” Juju reached out to touch her arm.

Kavita dragged herself together, past the pain, and straightened up. “So you think that’s how he died?” She directed the question to all of them. “He went out like this”—she gestured to the photographs sprawled on the floor—“and the rioters caught him?”