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.
Fucking foreigner, thinking he could take whatever he wanted. No man had touched him since Vivek died, and the way Osita felt now, perhaps no man ever would again.
He rested his head on Kavita’s shoulder. She patted his cheek. “Try and sleep,” she said, “there’s go-slow.” Osita closed his eyes, and they made the rest of the drive back to Ngwa in silence.
* * *
—
The charm Kavita was looking for had been a gift she’d received from Dr. Khatri when Vivek was still a baby. It was made of silver, in the image of Ganesh, and it hung from a thin silver chain. “Give it to your son,” he’d said. “Never let him take it off.” Kavita could still remember the warmth of her uncle’s hands as he pressed it into hers, the octagon of the pendant cutting slightly into her palm. “Promise me, beti.”
Even though Kavita had converted to Catholicism, even though the charm was an idol, she had agreed. She kept it for several years, afraid that Vivek would swallow the pendant as a toddler and choke. On the day she finally gave it to him, when he was six, Vivek looked at her with his serious dark eyes and insisted on putting it on himself. His hands moved like a ritual as he lifted the chain over his head and let it drop. From that day on, Ganesh rested just below the hollow of Vivek’s collarbone, but it was missing when his body turned up by their front door. After the burial, Chika decided that it must have been stolen, of course it had been stolen—it was silver, real silver, after all, not that plated nonsense. But Kavita didn’t want to hear it. It couldn’t have been stolen, couldn’t have been lost. He must have removed it and put it somewhere.
“He never took it off, woman.” Chika hadn’t bothered to rise from the bed as he said it, his eyes following her as she rummaged through her dressing table. “Why would it be there? You’re being ridiculous.”
“Shut up!” she shouted. “You don’t know. You don’t know what happened. You don’t know where he put it! If you don’t want to help me, then leave me alone.” Chika shook his head and turned over, backing her, leaving her to her madness. Futility had pressed him flat.
Kavita didn’t have time to talk to her husband. His friends had been calling the house to see how he was doing; even Eloise called a few times to check on him. All Kavita could think about was finding that necklace. She kept hoping Osita would know where it was.
“You can stay as long as you like,” she said when they reached the house. “Help me search his room for the pendant. You know which one I’m talking about? The silver one?”