- Author: Akwaeke Emezi
- ISBN: B081Y41ZXX
- Language: English
- Genre: Contemporary Literary Fiction, Romance Literary Fiction, Literary Short Stories,
- Format: PDF/ePub
- Size: 1 MB
- Page: 256
- Price: Free
They burned down the market on the day Vivek Oji died.
Two
If this story was a stack of photographs—the old kind,
rounded at the corners and kept in albums under the
glass and lace doilies of center tables in parlors across
the country—it would start with Vivek’s father, Chika.
The first print would be of him riding a bus to the village
to visit his mother; it would show him dangling an arm
out of the window, feeling the air push against his face
and the breeze entering his smile.
Chika was twenty and as tall as his mother, six feet of
red skin and suntouched-clay hair, teeth like polished
bones. The women on the bus looked openly at him, his
white shirt billowing out from the back of his neck in a
cloud, and they smiled and whispered among themselves
because he was beautiful. He had looks that should have
lived forever, features he passed down to Vivek—the
teeth, the almond eyes, the smooth skin—features that
died with Vivek.
The next photograph in the stack would be of Chika’s
mother, Ahunna, sitting on her veranda when her son
arrived, a bowl of udara beside her. Ahunna’s wrapper
was tied around her waist, leaving her breasts bare, and
her skin was redder than Chika’s, deeper and older, like a
pot that had been bled over in its firing. She had fine
wrinkles around her eyes, hair plaited into tight
cornrows, and her left foot was bandaged and propped
up on a stool.
“Mama! Gịnị mere?!” Chika cried when he saw her,
running up the veranda stairs. “Are you all right? Why
didn’t you send someone?”
“There was no need to disturb you,” Ahunna replied,
splitting open an udara and sucking out its flesh. The
large compound of her village house stretched around
them—old family land, a whole legacy in earth that she’d
held on to ever since Chika’s father died several years
ago. “I stepped on a stick when I was on the farm,” she
explained, as her son sat down beside her. “Mary took
me to the hospital. Everything is fine now.” She spat
udara seeds from her mouth like small black bullets.
Mary was his brother Ekene’s wife, a full and soft girl
with cheeks like small clouds. They had married a few
months ago, and Chika had watched Mary float down the
aisle, white lace gathered around her body and a veil
obscuring her pretty mouth. Ekene had been waiting for
her at the altar, his spine stern and proud, his skin
gleaming like wet loam against the tarred black of his
suit. Chika had never seen his brother look so tender, the
way his long fingers trembled, the love and pride
simmering in his eyes.
Mary had to tilt her head up to
look at Ekene as they recited their vows—the men in
their family were always tall—and Chika had watched her
throat curve, her face glowing as his brother lifted up the
tulle and kissed her. After the wedding, Ekene decided to
move out of the village and into town, into the bustle and
noise of Owerri, so Mary was staying with Ahunna while
Ekene went to set up their new life.
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