When it became apparent how serious their courtship was getting, the doctor invited Chika to their home, where Kavita served them tea and small bowls of murukku. Her wrists were delicate, and her dark hair rained off her shoulders. Dr. Khatri told Chika how, after her parents died, Kavita had passed into his care, eventually coming with him all the way from India to Nigeria. “We had some . . . family problems back in Delhi,” he said. “Because of her father’s caste. It was better to make a fresh start.” Chika nodded. That was the same reason he chose not to live in the same town as any of his family. Fresh starts were good; that separateness was where you could feel yourself, where you could learn who you were apart from everyone else.
Picture: the young couple in the back garden after dinner, walking along a line of bare rosebushes, Kavita running her fingers gently over the branches.
“I can’t wait for these to bloom,” she said. “I used to hate the smell of roses back when we lived in Delhi, but my uncle loves them, and now—it’s strange—all they do is remind me of home.”
Picture: Chika’s hand covering hers, serrated leaves crushed under their palms, a quiet kiss where their breaths tangle.
* * *
—
Afterward, Chika went to the village and told his mother about Kavita. “I want you to meet her,” he said, avoiding her eyes. Ahunna watched him, his bent shoulders, the way he kept taking his hands out of his pockets and putting them back in. Children never really change, she thought, no matter how much they grow up.
“Bring the girl,” Ahunna said. “Nsogbu adịghị.” She went back to peeling yam, sitting on a low stool in front of the basin holding the tubers, throwing the rind out into the backyard for her goats. Chika stood above her, a dazed smile spreading across his face.
“Yes, Ma,” he eventually said. “Daalụ.”
It was only then he finally felt ready to visit Owerri, to share the news with Mary and Ekene, now that he could go to their house with a clean conscience. He and Mary never spoke of what had happened, that moment of misplaced desire in a sweltering kitchen.
Three months later, Chika proposed to Kavita in the rose garden at her uncle’s house. By then, pink and red blooms filled out the branches and the air was thick with scent. Kavita smiled, blinking back tears as she threw her arms around his clay neck and kissed him yes. A few days later, the families started arguing about the dowry. Chika tried to explain to Dr. Khatri that it was the husband’s family who paid the brideprice, but the old doctor was enraged by the very idea. “We came all the way from India with Kavita’s dowry! It is her inheritance. I cannot let her go without it as if she’s worth nothing to us!”
“And I cannot accept a brideprice from my wife’s father!”
Hearing that word—father—Dr. Khatri teared up, and their argument hiccupped. “She is truly a daughter to me,” he said, his voice thick.
Ahunna rolled her eyes and stepped in. “You men like shouting too much. Just let the dowries cancel each other, and no one pays anything.” Dr. Khatri drew in breath to protest, but she held up a hand. “You can keep Kavita’s dowry for her children. I don’t want to hear pim about this again.”
So that was that. Kavita’s dowry was a small collection of heavy gold jewelry that her mother had brought into her own marriage, passed down through the women before her.
Picture: Chika with Kavita in their bedroom, newlywed, the heavy necklaces and bangles pouring over his hands. “I don’t even know what to say. It’s like the treasure you read about in books.”
Kavita took them from him and returned them to their box. “For our children,” she reminded him, not knowing there would only be one. “Let’s just forget it’s even here.”
Most of the jewelry stayed in that box for the next two decades, nestled against the deep red velvet, gemstones and gold links gleaming in the dark. There were times when Chika and Kavita sold one small piece or another, when things were difficult, but they held on to most of it, planning to use it to send their son, Vivek, to America. But when the jewelry finally came out of the box, it was Vivek’s hands that lifted it.
Picture: the boy, shirtless, placing necklaces against his chest, draping them over his silver chain, clipping his ears with gold earrings, his hair tumbling over his shoulders. He looks like a bride, half naked, partially undressed.
There is another boy in this picture now. His name is Osita. He is as tall as Vivek, but broader at the shoulders, his skin like deep loam. He is Ekene’s son, born of Mary, and his eyes are narrow, his mouth full beyond belief. In this picture, Osita’s face is carved and dark with alarm. He stands with his arms folded, his jaw set against something he cannot predict.
Vivek smiles at his cousin with gold droplets falling into his eyebrows. “Bhai,” he says, with a voice like a bell. “How do I look?”
Osita wished, much later, that he’d told Vivek the truth then, that he was so beautiful he made the air around him dull, made Osita hard with desire. “Take it off,” he snapped instead, his throat rough. “Put it back before they catch us.”
Vivek ignored him and spun around. There was so much light trapped in his face, it hurt Osita’s eyes.
“I would do anything,” he said, after Vivek’s burial, “give anything to see him like that just one more time, alive and covered with wealth.”
* * *
—
The market they burned down used to be just after the second roundabout if you drove down Chief Michael Road, past the abandoned office buildings and the intersection with the vulcanizer, that short man with a scar breaking his right cheek. His name was Ebenezer and he had been working at that junction for as long as anyone could remember. Kavita used to bring their family car to him when the tires needed repair. It was a silver-gray Peugeot 504, which Chika had bought after years of working at the glass factory, replacing the old rundown car he’d been using. As a child, Vivek would place a small palm against the hot metal of the car, balancing from foot to foot as he watched Ebenezer work. The scar was thick against Ebenezer’s skin, a shiny clotted red pushing out from the brown of his face. When he smiled at Vivek, the scar fought the folding of skin and his mouth rose properly on only one side.
“Small oga,” he used to tease, as his hands moved metal wrenches and tubes and force-fed air. Vivek would giggle and hide his face in Kavita’s skirt. He was young then, alive. Kavita could drop her palm and it would fall to the back curve of his boy skull, the soft hair and the warm skin underneath, the formed bone shaping him. Years later, when she found the length of his body stretched out on their front veranda, under four yards of akwete material in a red-and-black pattern she said she’d never forget, the back of his skull was broken and seeping into her welcome mat. Kavita lifted his neck anyway, to press her cheek against his and scream. His hair fell over her arms, wet and long and thick, and she wailed.