The Death of Vivek Oji(60)

In the picture, Vivek was wearing the dress, a wraparound tied on the left of his waist. The neckline fell into a V, showing the bone of his sternum. His hair was down and falling around his face. Juju had combed and plaited it with gel into a hundred small plaits, then let them dry and released them into many small waves cascading down his body. He was sitting in my lap with his legs crossed, the dress riding high on his thighs, his torso leaning forward as he laughed into the camera. One arm was around my neck and I was looking at his face. My expression made me cringe. It was, for lack of a better word, adoring. Unfettered. As if there was no danger of anyone seeing me gaze at him like that. As if we were alone and I wasn’t afraid and we weren’t cousins and any of this wasn’t terrifying.

Vivek had shaved his chest and legs—he did that often in those last few months—and his toes were painted a red that matched the flowers on his dress. I remembered the first time I saw him in that dress; I was surprised at its long sleeves and shoulder pads. It would have been almost demure if not for the neckline, which he would cover with his hair. But he spun around to show it off, and for once he looked happy and not tired, not like he was dying or suffering. I couldn’t help but be happy for him. I had surrendered by then, you see, and we were in Juju’s house, in our bubble where everything was okay and the outside world didn’t exist. Sitting on his grave with the dress in my hands, I felt the weeping churn in my chest.

Everything would have stayed okay if he hadn’t left the bubble. If he hadn’t felt the need to start going outside and putting himself at risk. How were we supposed to protect him if he wouldn’t stay inside?

On the day the market burned, I had gone to Juju’s house to look for him. She told me he’d gone out again. I had shouted at her, unfairly, as if I didn’t know she couldn’t stop him. No one could stop him—we had all tried already, many times. I went out, jumped on an okada, and set out to look for him. I knew he liked to visit one woman near the market who sold puff-puff, so I told the okada man to go down Chief Michael Road. We had just passed the first junction when we heard the noise and saw the crowd in the distance. My okada swerved to the side of the road and stopped.

“Commot, commot!” shouted the driver.

“You’re not going again?” I asked.

“You dey craze? You no dey see riot? My friend, commot, make I go. Keep your money sef.”

Grumbling and cursing, I got off and he sped away. I sighed and looked around and that was when I saw Vivek a few blocks down, unmistakable in that dress. I called his name but he didn’t turn around and so I ran to him, pushing his shoulder when I reached him.

“You don’t hear your name?!”

My cousin turned and looked at me calmly. “I’m Nnemdi,” she corrected.

I wiped my face with my hand. Today of all days. “Okay, sorry, Nnemdi. Please, can we go back to Juju’s house?”

“No problem. But I want to get some puff-puff first.”

I stared at her, then gestured to the mayhem ahead of us. “You want to enter that? For puff-puff?”

She looked at the crowd and her face wavered. She was twisting her hands together like she did when she was nervous. “It won’t take long. Can we go after I buy it?” she said.

I wanted to shout at her, but the last time I did that in public, she had threatened to punch me in the face, then ran away. I wasn’t able to chase her—it would’ve looked too somehow—so I went back to Juju’s house and waited till she came back on her own. This time, I gently held her shoulders and looked into her eyes. The cotton of the dress was soft under my palms. “Nnemdi,” I said. “I’m sure even the woman selling it has packed her things and gone already. She won’t be there. Everyone is going, see.”

A plume of smoke was rising against the horizon from the market. The road beside us was packed with speeding vehicles, buses and taxis and private cars. A trader carrying folded yards of cloth piled precariously around her zoomed past on an okada. It was weaving through the other vehicles, and as it passed us, it swerved to avoid a pothole and some of the cloth fell off, landing in a cloud of sand. The woman shouted at the okada driver to stop, but he didn’t, shouting back at her as he continued to speed away from the brewing mob.

“We have to go,” I told my cousin. “Biko, before something happens to you.”

She glared at me. “Why is it me you think something will happen to? You nko?”

“Please, don’t start this now. You know it’s not even safe for you to be going out of Juju’s house like this, let alone in this area, let alone in this situation! Don’t act stupid. Let’s go!”

“I see.” Her face had settled into coldness. “So now you think I’m stupid?”

“Nnemdi, please. You can fight me when we reach Juju’s house. Let’s just go. Biko.”

“You’re ashamed of me,” she said, her voice surprised. “That’s why you don’t like me going out like this. It’s like you’re always ashamed, Osita. First of yourself, then of us, now of me.”

“Jesus Christ. That’s not true. Abeg—”

“No, it’s true. You don’t mind anything when we’re inside and nobody can see us, but that’s why you don’t like me to go outside like this. You don’t want anyone to see me. Or is it that you don’t want them to see me with you?”