Vivek was sitting on my bed, and he turned his head when he heard me enter. At first, I couldn’t even say anything. I just stared at him in shock, all thoughts of reclaiming my space gone. When De Chika said Vivek had stopped cutting his hair, I’d thought that highest, it would be touching his shoulders. It had always been curly, long enough to fall over his face—we used to joke that if he relaxed it, he would look like he was in a Sunsilk advertisement. He had De Chika’s eyes and lips and hooked nose, even that reddish tinge under the dark gold of his skin, but his hair was as black as his mother’s. Now it was below his shoulder blades, tangled, a little matted against the blue cotton of his shirt. He had lost weight and his neck seemed longer, his face balanced on top of it. His silver chain glinted out from under his collar, the small elephant lying against his skin. He smiled a little at the look on my face.
“Nna mehn, it’s not as if I’m a masquerade. Stop looking at me like that.”
“Have you seen yourself?” I shot back. “Are you even sure you’re not a masquerade? Jesus Christ.” I sat across from him and leaned my elbows on my knees. Clearly, something had seized my cousin. “Gwa m ihe mere,” I said. “I want to know. I can see that you’re not okay.”
Vivek laughed. “You sound like my mother.”
“I’m serious. This one that your parents brought you all the way to the village.”
“You know your mother tried to pray over me already?”
“Deaconess Mary. What did you expect?” I peered closer at him. He looked so tired. “You haven’t been sleeping.”
“I see they’re reporting me well,” he answered. “I’m sure everyone has received the complete details.” His lip curled as he spoke.
“Maybe my parents, but not me. I’d rather hear it from you anyway.”
“Ah, Osita.” He squeezed out a small smile. “It’s a very long story.”
I tried to smile back.
“You grew a beard,” he said, reaching out to touch the tight coils on my face. I shrugged. I’d been shaving my head, the same way he used to, and the beard balanced it out. I liked the way my cheekbones cut above it, how dark my eyes looked. Vivek stroked my head, feeling the skin slide under his palm, still dappled with sweat from my run. “You know your father ordered me to either cut or wash my hair before I come back out?”
I snorted. “I wasn’t going to even mention that one. You look homeless.”
“I am homeless,” he said, then shook his head. “Don’t mind me. Can I take a bath, or do you need to go first? I can smell you from here.”
I sucked my teeth at him. “I don’t blame you. Biko, let me go first before you come and block the drain with all that your Bollywood hair.” He grinned at me and stood up when I did, stepping forward to give me a hug. He was almost my height, and smelled faintly of a spice I didn’t recognize.
“Thank you,” he said, as we thumped each other on the back.
“For what?”
“Not treating me the way they treat me.”
My hands brushed against the tangle of his hair as we pulled apart. It felt soft. I stepped away from him and wiped my hands on my shorts. Vivek kept looking at me, but I couldn’t meet his gaze directly. He was stranger than I was admitting to either of us, and it made me uncomfortable.
“Go and baff,” he said, sitting down on the bed again.
I stepped away as if he’d given me permission to move, and once in the bathroom I locked the door. I used a bucket of water to wash myself, scrubbing and rinsing quickly, trying to get rid of the unsettled feeling that had entered me. When I came back out, with a towel wrapped around me, Vivek was still sitting on the bed, staring at the bars of the window in front of him, his back to me. I opened my wardrobe and got dressed. He didn’t move. I stood for a moment before interrupting his aloneness. “Vivek. The bathroom is free.”
He started and turned to me, some of his hair falling into his face. “Okay, bhai,” he answered—brother, an old nickname he had for me. We were both our parents’ only children, their only sons, more like brothers than cousins was the joke. It always made my chest tighten when he called me that. “Tell them I’m coming out soon,” he added, dismissing me from the room. I nodded and closed the door behind me as I left.
My mother had laid out a late breakfast on the dining table, tins of Milo and Bournvita next to Nido milk and a flask of hot water, bread and guava jam—I knew Aunty Kavita had brought the jam, because she was the only one who ever made it—along with a bowl of boiled eggs, another full of akara.
“There’s akamu on the stove,” my mother said. “Go and help yourself.”
Aunty Kavita hugged me. Even with her hair twisted up into a bun, she didn’t reach my shoulder. “How is he?” she whispered.
“He’s okay,” I said. “He’s washing his hair.”
My father snorted and sat down, my mother fluttering over his shoulder as she put food on his plate. “He better be washing that hair. Chika, you should have made him cut it as soon as he entered your house.”
De Chika shrugged and drew back a chair for Aunty Kavita. “What can I say, Ekene? It’s not as if I could sit on him and shave it off by force.”
“Then you should have thrown him out! What nonsense is that?”
“That’s enough, Ekene.” Aunty Kavita’s voice was soft but firm. “He is my son, my only child. I am not turning him away, especially not when he’s sick.”
My father looked as if he was about to say something more, but my mother put her hand on his shoulder as she poured more coffee for him, and he subsided.
I went to the kitchen and spooned thick, glutinous akamu into my bowl, then went back to the table and added a layer of sugar. De Chika took the sugar bowl from me and added two teaspoons to his coffee. At least he wasn’t drinking beer for breakfast anymore. I let my akamu cool off a bit—I liked it when it was a little congealed and starting to form a skin. For a while we ate together in silence, spoons clinking against bowls and coffee cups, until my father leaned over and turned on the radio, the new sound buzzing softly through the room.
“Amma!” Vivek’s voice rang out from my room, and Aunty Kavita’s head whipped up. Even De Chika looked mildly surprised to hear his son’s voice. “Amma!” Vivek called again.
“Yes, beta?” she replied, already getting up from the table, her voice shaking a little. “What is it?”
“Can you come and help me with my hair?”
Aunty Kavita lit up at the request. “Of course, beta! I’m coming.”