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.
* * *
—
I think you’re great with Elizabeth,” Vivek was saying, his long limbs splayed across Juju’s bed. “Do you think you’re doing a bad job at it?”
Juju rolled over to her side as well, facing him. “I don’t tell her everything,” she said.
Vivek looked at her, and his eyes were soft and dark pools, floating under long lashes. “We don’t tell anyone everything,” he said gently. They were lying close enough that Juju could feel his breath drift against her cheekbones. Suddenly the air seemed full of secrets, an iridescent bubble surrounding them.
“What are you not telling me?” she whispered, keeping her voice inside the bubble.
Vivek reached over and stroked a thumb across her cheek. “I tell you everything,” he said. “It’s other people I don’t.”
“You don’t tell Osita everything?”
His eyes dropped briefly to her mouth. “No,” he said, after a pause, dragging his gaze back up to hers. “Not everything.”
Heat rushed to Juju’s face. She’d thought he’d forgotten—almost thought it was a dream she’d had—what happened the morning after Osita came looking for Vivek at her house. Juju had given the boys their privacy, minding her business, trying not to hear anything that was happening in the room across the corridor. In the morning, she’d woken up early and made some tea, then sat at her bedroom window, looking out at the birds in her mother’s garden. When her door creaked open, she already knew it was Vivek. He’d come up to her window seat, dropping a kiss on the top of her head before he sat next to her, tangling his legs with hers. He was shirtless and he smelled like sex. Juju leaned forward and kissed him for the first time, her mug of tea between them, her breath sharp and sweet with mint. She wasn’t sure if it surprised him, but Vivek had kissed her back, his morning breath sour on their tongues before he broke it off and nipped his teeth against her nose lightly. “Good morning,” he’d said, taking the mug away from her and sipping at it, his hair tousled and dark. He looked out of the window and the morning sun hit his face and Juju wondered why she’d just kissed him. Maybe because he had been hers and now she knew he wasn’t, or perhaps he had never been. But Vivek never mentioned the kiss, and even now Juju wasn’t sure if he was hinting at it or if she was imagining things.
“What do you keep from Elizabeth?” he asked.
“I don’t tell her about you and Osita.”
The corner of Vivek’s mouth tugged up in amusement. “Why not?”
“It’s none of her business, and you know how she is about you.” It had taken Elizabeth a long time to forgive Vivek for what happened in the boys’ quarters with Osita years ago. Juju had to explain the fugues over and over, explain that Vivek hadn’t known what was happening, that he couldn’t even remember it. “And you know how she is about Osita. I just—I don’t trust her to not be somehow about the two of you being . . .”
“Lovers.”
“Yeah.”
Vivek watched her face for a moment. “But she’s your girlfriend,” he said. “Shouldn’t you trust her?”
Juju rolled on her back, turning away from him. “Let’s talk about something else,” she said. She and Elizabeth didn’t talk much about their relationship. They were girlfriends, yes, but who could they even go and say that to? And if you didn’t tell other people, was it real or was it just something the two of you were telling yourselves? Sometimes Juju found it easier to think of them the way other people did, as close friends. So the question for her became, did she have to tell her close friend about that morning with Vivek? It was just a kiss, it didn’t count as anything, so Juju kept quiet.
“Okay,” Vivek said. She could feel his gaze on her cheek. “What are you not telling me?”
Juju stared at the ceiling until her vision blurred with tears. “My dad’s having an affair.”
“What?” He shifted closer to her and put his hand on her braids. “How do you know?”
“They’ve been fighting and shouting. And I saw him today in the market with his . . . his other family, Vivek. With this woman and a little boy.” The tears slipped out of her eyes and ran down the sides of her face, spilling into her ears. Vivek wiped some of them away.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “Come here.”
Juju wrapped her arms around his neck, sobbing into his shoulder. “I feel like a mistake,” she said, her voice muffled and thick. “He always wanted a boy. Maybe if I’d been a boy he wouldn’t hit Mama so much.”
“Shh, don’t say that. It’s not true.”
Juju tried to stop crying, but she couldn’t. “He hates us,” she sobbed. “He went and replaced us and he won’t let Mama go home and her teeth are falling out and he keeps beating her and I can’t do anything, Vivek, I can’t do anything.” Her voice choked on itself, knots of pain clogging up her throat, and Vivek just held her tighter, whispering to her, locking her body against his. Juju wept in his arms for hours, as the afternoon crawled into evening and the light outside dimmed and the sun set and Vivek held her the whole time.
Sixteen
Ebenezer was good at his job.
He’d been a vulcanizer for fifteen years, fixing tires at the same junction the whole time. He was quick with his hands and reliable. Even customers who could have gone to a vulcanizer closer to them would come all the way to Chief Michael Road just to do business with him. All the okada boys in the area preferred him over the other vulcanizers because he never tried to overcharge them; sometimes, if business had been bad for them, he would do repairs on credit. They called him Dede, and when his competitors tried to make trouble for him, the okada boys intervened and there was no more trouble.
Okada drivers were a pack, as anyone who knocked one of them down on the road soon discovered. The boys would surround the car and prevent the driver from escaping, smashing windows and denting doors if they saw fit. Ebenezer liked them, though. They were loud and rough, but they were boys and they reminded him of his junior brothers.
His wife, Chisom, was a trader at the market just down the road, selling fabric and sewing goods. They had been married for six years, but they had no children, which in the past year or two had become a problem. Ebenezer’s family blamed Chisom, saying that she was barren or cursed, that something she’d done had blocked her womb. They never liked her because she had managed for herself before she married Ebenezer.
“Be careful of women like that,” one of Ebenezer’s brothers had told him. “They start feeling like they’re men, and before you know it they’re trying to run the household themselves, as if you’re their houseboy.”
Ebenezer had ignored them. He wanted a woman with some business sense, not someone who would be sitting in the house every day waiting for him to provide everything. Besides, she didn’t mind the scar on this face, didn’t think he was ugly. Someone like Chisom would concentrate on her business, he knew, because that’s what she’d always done. Even if—no, when—they had a baby, Ebenezer already knew Chisom would tie it to her back, like the other women at the market, and just continue. He saw himself building a family of hard workers, pulling themselves up in the world, but the absence of a child was obstructing this vision. Everywhere the walls were decked with posters and advertisements about family planning, trying to convince people to slow down on having children, and here they were struggling to have even one. It was humiliating.