The Death of Vivek Oji(11)

The charm had been missing since before the burial, but Kavita hadn’t wanted to look for it properly then. If she found it too soon, she would’ve had to bury him with it; even Chika had noticed it was missing. If she found it afterward, she could keep it for herself. She went through Vivek’s room looking for it after the burial, but it wasn’t there. She called Maja and Rhatha and Ruby and told them to ask the children if any of them had seen it. All of them said no. The only person remaining was Osita, but since Kavita wasn’t talking to Mary, she made Chika call Ekene and ask for him.

“We haven’t seen him,” Ekene said. “We’re even a bit worried. He said he was going to Port Harcourt for work but we haven’t heard from him since. It’s not like him to behave like this. Mary says he was drinking heavily before he left. I don’t know what’s going to happen to that boy.”

Chika had said it was ridiculous to go chasing after Osita. “He’s twenty-three, he’s not a child anymore,” he said. “Leave that man alone.” Kavita ignored him and went to Port Harcourt anyway. She had to find that charm.

Now, standing in her nephew’s hotel room, she felt a little jealous. If she could have run away and fallen apart like this, doing God-knows-what with God-knows-who, she would have done so in a heartbeat. But she had a husband, and useless as he was, he was something she didn’t want to leave, not now.

Kavita heard the water start running from the showerhead, then the louder hiss of her nephew urinating against the inside curve of the toilet bowl. She looked around the room, at the clothes and underwear scattered on the floor, at the empty bottles and condom wrappers, grimacing when she saw a used condom lying next to the bed. Mary would have a fit if she saw this, she thought. Sometimes Kavita missed her sister-in-law, but whenever that pain showed up in her chest, she reminded herself that the Mary of today was not the same Mary she’d known all those years ago. You lost that sister a long time ago; she’s gone, just like Ahunna. The only difference is that her body is still walking around.

The sounds of water from the bathroom turned off, and a few minutes later Osita came out dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Kavita watched him collect his scattered things and stuff them into the suitcase. His embarrassment was palpable as he picked up the condom wrappers and the used condom, tossing them in the wastepaper basket, but his aunt didn’t say anything and so, gratefully, neither did he.

“I’m ready,” he said, zippering the suitcase and levering it upright. Kavita nodded and Osita looked around the room one more time as they left.



* * *



—

    As they drove out of Port Harcourt, Osita rested his head on the window and fell in and out of sleep, slivers of memory glimmering in his head. The fact of the hotel room was strange—he couldn’t remember checking into it in the first place. He’d been relieved to see the condom wrappers, but he only had vague memories of using them. Things had gotten even stranger when his aunt appeared, barely seeming real, but he had followed her as if she was salvation, and now they were going home.

Osita pressed his forehead against the glass of the window as a blurry memory tried to push forward. There had been a man. He rubbed his eyes and tried to place the image. Yes, there had definitely been a man, in that same hotel room. Short and stocky, with hairy muscles. Lebanese. Osita vaguely remembered the man undressing him, then removing his own shirt to expose a firm potbelly. His unfamiliar voice calling Osita beautiful, so black and so beautiful. Osita had been silent, his head swimming, his limbs clumsy. Slivers of memory: The man’s sweat matting the hair on their chests as he ground against Osita, a fog of raised voices. Osita’s cheek pressed into the mattress, a hand forcing the back of his neck down, the man’s hips pushing, seeking. The sound of heavy grunting, a stab of pain, a flare of rage.

In the car, Osita jerked back from the window and looked at his right hand. It was swollen. As he stared at it, dull pain filtering up his arm, he remembered rising up from the bed with a roar, his left hand wrapping around the Lebanese man’s throat, then watching the sneering power drain out of his eyes, replaced by a sickly fear. The man had thought Osita was too drunk to resist, but Osita was much taller than him, much bigger, and powered by senseless grief that was ready to evolve into rage. He’d held the man by the throat and punched his face with his free hand in a flurry of short sharp blows that split the man’s eyebrow and washed blood down his cheek. The darkness came back, and the next memory was of the man stumbling out of the door holding his clothes against his chest, swearing loudly.

Osita had collapsed onto the bed and Kavita had woken him up. It was, now that he thought about it, a very good thing that she’d come to get him when she did. He had a feeling the Lebanese man would have returned—people don’t react well to their power being beaten out of them. He cradled his hand, wondering why he hadn’t noticed it while showering. Then, the pain had been diffuse—everything, inside him and out, had hurt—but now it was concentrated and loud. Kavita reached out and gently examined the injured hand, ignoring his wincing. She rummaged in her bag and handed him some Panadol and a bottle of water. “Take,” she said. Osita swallowed the tablets obediently. The chasm in his chest was riddled with pain, as his mind compared memories of Vivek’s touch with that of the stranger in the hotel room. There had been a party, he recalled now, and all the people had bled away until only the man was left, his greedy hands “helping” Osita to bed. The whole time in Port Harcourt, Osita had fucked only women—it had been like that since Vivek died. It felt safer, as if he wasn’t giving any important parts of himself away: not his soul or heart, just his body, which didn’t matter anyway. The stranger’s assault felt especially violent because of that, and Osita was glad he’d beaten him up.