La mort de Vivek Oji

I felt heavy my whole life.
I always thought that death would be the heaviest thing of all, but it
wasn’t, it really wasn’t. Life was like being dragged through concrete in
circles, wet and setting concrete that dried with each rotation of my
unwilling body. As a child, I was light. It didn’t matter too much; I slid
through it, and maybe it even felt like a game, like I was just playing in
mud, like nothing about that slipperiness would ever change, not really. But
then I got bigger and it started drying on me and eventually I turned into an
uneven block, chipping and sparking on the hard ground, tearing off into
painful chunks.
I wanted to stay empty, like the eagle in the proverb, left to perch, my
bones filled with air pockets, but heaviness found me and I couldn’t do
anything about it. I couldn’t shake it off; I couldn’t transform it, evaporate
or melt it. It was distinct from me, but it hooked itself into my body like a
parasite. I couldn’t figure out if something was wrong with me or if this was
just my life—if this was just how people felt, like concrete was dragging
their flesh off their bones.
The fugues were short absences that I became grateful for, small
mercies. Like finally getting to rest after having your eyelids forced open
for days. I hid them from my parents and grew out my hair, thinking that
the weight dropping from my head would lighten the one inside of me. It
worked—not by making anything lighter, no, but by making me feel more
balanced, like one weight was pulling the other and the strain on me had
been lessened. Perhaps I had just become the fulcrum, the point on which
everything hinged, the turning. I don’t know. I just know that I hurt a little
less with each inch of hair I refused to cut.
Looking back, I really don’t know what I thought it was going to protect
me from.

“Hello?” she called, wiping her forehead. “Is anyone around?”
Footsteps came down the corridor; then Elizabeth appeared, hazy behind
the green mesh of the mosquito net. She was wearing shorts and a singlet,
as tall as she’d ever been. Juju stood with a polite smile as Elizabeth
unlatched the door.
“Good afternoon,” she said, wincing a little at how formal she sounded.
“I’m Aunty Maja’s daughter?”
Elizabeth stared at her for a moment, her face blank, and Juju stared
right back. She remembered Elizabeth’s face, but back then Elizabeth had
been a lanky, dark-skinned child with threaded hair and puffy dresses. Now
she had shaved off her hair, and Juju felt herself staring at all that skin, from
her scalp to her arms and legs, even the smooth cleavage that the singlet
couldn’t quite cover. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Juju blushed.
“Oh, Aunty Maja,” Elizabeth finally said, after a forever of staring
silence. Her voice was deep and sweet. “You’re Juju. Come in.” She moved
aside to make space and Juju tried to walk through the doorway, but it was
impossible to do so without brushing against Elizabeth, who didn’t move.
She just smiled and looked down as Juju squeezed past. “It’s nice to meet
you,” she said, and Juju wondered if she heard a trace of amusement in her
voice.
“You, too,” she said.
Elizabeth latched the door again and led them into the kitchen. “Do you
want something to drink?”
Her question seemed to come from a great distance. Juju had been
watching her legs, the smooth bulge of her calves, the soft places behind her
knees, barely paying attention to what she was saying. She had been
looking at girls that way, with an interest in the texture of their flesh, for
some time, but she was always afraid that they’d catch her and see into her
head, into the places even Juju was a little scared of seeing. So she avoided
Elizabeth’s eyes, in case Elizabeth saw how much she wanted to put her
mouth on the back of her neck. She looked up, down, over at the kitchen
tiles, anywhere but directly at this tall and beautiful girl. Later, once they
were together, Elizabeth told her it was the most adorable thing she’d ever
seen. Juju had expected to collect the guavas and leave, but somehow she
was answering yes to the glass of water and then they were talking and it
was a few hours before she finally left with the fruit.
The next time they’d met, Elizabeth had come to Juju’s house, bringing
jam jars for Maja, who insisted that Juju invite her into her room, thinking
they would become friends.
Elizabeth kissed Juju for the first time that day, quickly, on her way out.
“You don’t need to be so afraid,” she’d said. “I like you, too.”
And that was it, that was how Juju got a girlfriend.

The girl broke into tears and all Kavita could feel was drained. It was
interesting, she thought, how people mourned Vivek. Somehow she felt like
they didn’t have the right to cry in front of her. After all, was it their son
who had died? Was it them that had held that baby on the day he was born?
No, it was just the two of them together in the hospital as Ahunna died, just
Kavita and her child in that bed, all mixed up in love and uncertainty, Chika
beside them like an afterthought. She regretted what had happened next—
the depression that followed, when she pulled away from her child in grief.
She should have held him tighter, as the world was whirling around them. It
had always been her and her baby.
The loss of him felt cumulative, as if he’d been slipping away so slowly
that she’d missed the rift as it formed in his childhood. It was only once
he’d become a man that she realized she couldn’t reach him anymore, that
he was gone, so gone that breath had left his body. No one else could feel
that lifetime of loss. No one else had lost him more than she had, yet they
cried in front of her as if it meant something. They’re still children, Kavita
tried to tell herself, not mature enough to do her the courtesy of keeping
their tears in their bedrooms, among their own complete families. But still
she thought of them as selfish brats without home training or compassion or
empathy, and this in turn made her angry at these girls she knew she still
loved, somewhere under the rage and pain and the grief that she felt
belonged to her and only her.

He said nothing more to Kavita about his shame,
or the new headstone, or the photographs. Kavita said nothing to him when
she took them out of the drawer and arranged them in an album, which she
hid under her side of the mattress. She pored over it for hours when Chika
was out of the house, trying to find the child she’d lost, trying to commit to
memory the child she’d found.

“I don’t mind. It’s nice to have them around, you know? The girls are
turning into lovely young women.”
“And I’m sure Vivek is enjoying himself with them,” added Kavita. Part of
her was hoping that he was like other boys—that he actually was up to
something behind closed doors with the girls. She couldn’t contemplate
another option.
“You know, sometimes I forget that he’s not one of the girls,” said Maja.
Kavita pressed her lips together and kept the annoyance out of her voice.
“Of course. What with that hair. Let me let you go and handle them.”
She put the phone down. She’s only saying that because she’s jealous, she
thought. Because her husband is ruining her life. Because she doesn’t have a
son.