Chapter 5 Jabali
(The Present)
I stood on my sister Zahara’s porch a second, looking at the pretty white lights wrapped around the railing.
She had a wreath on the door, red bows everywhere, and plastic reindeer in the yard that I knew my cousin Loyalty had already tried to tackle at least once.
Emancipation loved Christmas. Apparently, that included my little sister.
She had invited me and all of our first cousins on our Pops’s side to dinner.
If I hadn’t agreed to come earlier, I would’ve stayed at home, sat with my feelings about seeing Kyleigh again.
Even cold as ice, she was so fucking pretty and brown and juicy in a way even those rich woman clothes couldn’t hide.
I wondered if those plush lips still felt soft and smooth and silk.
I wondered if she’d warm in my arms, let all that ice melt for me.
I wondered if she’d soften, let go of that attitude if I made her cream all over my dick. I wondered—
Hell, I was wondering the wrong thing right now.
Here I was, ten years since I’d seen her, nine years since I’d set foot in this town watching Emancipation’s holiday lights blink like nothing had ever gone wrong here. I thought I was coming back just to humor Ms. Ola Kate and check on family.
Then my aunt said her name.
“The town’s having some difficulty with Ms. Grindley… her granddaughter, Kyleigh, the Grindley who stole Christmas…”
Everything in me remembered that girl.
Everything in me loved that girl.
I had done what Mrs. Amanda told me to do. I built a life, kept moving, made something of myself. But standing there in my aunt’s office, listening to her talk about Kyleigh like she was some storybook villain, I knew one thing for sure.
I might have left Emancipation… but I had never left Kyleigh.
I shook my head to clear it. I knocked twice before entering the code Zahara had given me and walking in like family, because I was. Zahara’s house smelled like fried chicken, cinnamon, and one of those bougie candles she had always loved.
“Close my damn door, boy!” she yelled from the kitchen. “Heat cost money!”
I kicked it shut and flipped the lock. “Nice to see you too, Zah.”
She popped her head out the doorway, curls in a puff, towel over her shoulder. “You late. Late people wash dishes.”
“I’m the guest of honor,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “Boy, please. Bring ya ass on.”
The living room was cozy as hell. They had a medium-height tree in the corner, branches loaded with Santas, glitter stars, and an angel leaning to the left.
Old-school R&B Christmas music played low, and I smiled at the Temptations singing “Silent Night.” Nothing announced Christmas in a Black household quite like the Temps.
Truth was stretched out on the couch with a plate already in his hand.
Zahara had a soft spot for him, always let his ass dig in before the rest of us.
His sister Honesty sat on the floor with my niece Zoriah, helping her glue candy to a gingerbread house on the coffee table.
Loyalty, Truth and Honesty’s brother, was near the TV, controller in hand, arguing with the game.
“I told you not to start ’til I got here,” I said.
He glanced over his shoulder. “And I told you be on time. Look at both of us not listening.”
Braeden came out the hallway in an apron that said, “Kiss the Cook If You’re Brave,” carrying a hot pan.
“Look who finally made it. Our tragic hero,” he said.
“Don’t worry about me. Just know if that mac not right, I’m telling Aunt Tamika,” I warned.
“Please do. She the one taught me. Can’t wait to hear how she cussed you.”
His sister Akeira walked out carrying something covered in foil. “Jabali, you be so out of touch, you forgot I’m the chef? You know damn well he had help!”
Her husband Ajani stepped out behind her, wiping his hands. He gave me a chin lift. “What’s up, Jay?”
“Cooling,” I said, dropping into the armchair. “House smell good.”
“Thank you,” all three of them said at the same time.
Zahara came in, folded her arms, and leaned on the arm of my chair. “A’ight,” she said. “We got food, we got music, we got Jesus birthday lights in the window. Go ahead and tell us how Ms. Kyleigh Grindley dragged you down that long driveway.”
The room went just a touch quieter.
I stared at the lights outside for a second, then exhaled. “Y’all ain’t even gon’ let me get a roll first?”
Honesty did not look up from the gingerbread. “Nope.”
Truth smirked. “You walked in here knowing what time it was.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face. That frosted glass door flashed in my head and her voice, all cool and flat.
“It was rough. Soon as she came to the door, I said, ‘Hey, Ky,’ and she hit me with, ‘It’s Ms. Grindley,’” I admitted.
“Ooh. Yeah, she still mad, mad,” Zahara said.
Loyalty paused his game. “That’s the ‘I’m not yo’ little friend’ level right there.”
I shook my head. “Shiii. That was just the warm-up. She let me know that was her home, not an office, and you do not make appointments at people houses. Corrected me on boundaries like she was gon’ give a pop quiz later.”
Braeden tried to hide his grin. “You ain’t used to that.”
“At all,” I said. “I ain’t argue. I told her I came on behalf of the mayor, asked her to reconsider letting the town use the pines. She told me no. Shorty was calm, polite, used her legal words and all that, but still no.”
Honesty nodded. “Of course, she did.”
Braeden made a hissing sound. “That polite bit different, ain’t it? Hyacinth be bluesing me with that!”
“I tried to ask what it was really about. Not the liability stuff. The feelings stuff. She wasn’t having that at all. Shut me down tighter than that hair on Loyalty’s head.”
He flipped me off over Zoriah’s ponytails. For a moment, Mariah Carey was the only voice breaking the silence.
Zahara sighed. “She got a right to feel how she feel. I just hate that she still messed up over Christmas time.”
“Yeah, I told her I was sorry she was hurting. She told me nothing and nobody in this town can hurt her now. At the end, she said if I or anybody from the town show up again about them trees, she calling the sheriff and pressing criminal trespass charges.”
Ajani let out a low, “Damn.”
“Not ‘criminal trespass’ behind some lil twinkle lights,” Braeden said, a smile flitting across his face.
“She was dead serious. I told her I heard her, that I wouldn’t put her in that spot. Then I left.” I shrugged, like that shit hadn’t bothered me, hadn’t torn open places that had never properly healed.
“How did it feel seeing her?” Akeira asked sympathetically.
I shrugged. “I mean, she looks good.”
Understatement. She was beautiful as fuck, always had been, like a thick, chocolate, dream. That’s why them hoes had hated her so bad in high school. “But she looks like she’s… I don’t know. Something is different.”
Something that looked rooted in pain and distrust.
Ajani tilted his head. “And how you feel walking away?”
“Like I just got put out of a house I used to feel at home in. Like I deserved it. Like walking away was the last thing I wanted to do. Like I still wanted to say everything I been holding ten years and couldn’t,” I said, trying to articulate all the feelings that had been churning inside of me.
Truth nodded. “You did the right thing, not unloading all that on her tonight, though.”
“It ain’t feel right,” I muttered.
Honesty frowned. “So, no tree on the hill this year?”
I lifted my shoulders again. “Looks like no. The town gon’ survive. Her boundaries more important than them twinkle lights.”
The conversation dried up. Zoriah stuck a gumdrop on the gingerbread roof, then popped one in her mouth.
“Poor house gon’ be under decorated,” Honesty teased her.
Zoriah looked up at me. “Uncle Jay?”
“Yeah, Zo?”
“You talking about the lady in the big house?” she asked. “Up the hill? With the tall gate?”
My chest tightened at the mention of that gate. That was new. As introverted as she was, she still hadn’t kept herself caged up and away from everyone. “Yeah, that’s her.”
“That’s my friend house. The pretty girl that lives there. We talk through the fence,” she said proudly.
Zahara frowned. “I’m sorry, you what?”
“What?” Zoriah blinked. “We not doing nothing bad. We just talking.”
Honesty’s eyes narrowed. “How long you been talking to somebody through that fence, ma’am?”
“A little bit. When me and Mama go outside and go walking. Sometimes when my daddy takes me. She be on the other side with Ms. Serena. She got puff balls in her hair, and she got a bunch of reindeer shirts. She funny. She said she wish she could see the lights, ’cause her mama don’t want no Christmas trees downstairs. ”
Zahara stared. “Now, I’ve seen that child, but Zoriah Katelyn Christopher, you never thought to mention talking to your new little fence friend?”
“I did,” Zoriah insisted. “You be on your phone or talking to Ms. Kristy.”
Truth coughed into his fist, failing to hide his laugh. Even I had to smile.
“What’s her name? You ask her?” inquired Ajani.
Zoriah nodded eagerly. “She told me her name Aziza. I call her ZiZi. She call me ZoZo.”
For a second, I thought I heard her wrong. My heart stopped. It just stopped, then slammed back to life.
“Say that again,” I heard myself say. My voice sounded wrong, tight, tense.
“Aziza,” she sang. “Uncle Jay, why you looking like that?”
Every adult in the room was looking at me.
Because they all knew what had me stuck.
My full name was Jabali Azizi Christopher, a name Kyleigh had told me she loved often.
Mama picked that middle name on purpose.
She said it meant “precious” or “beloved,” depending on which book she had.
My pops called it my “name behind my name.” Outside the family, barely anybody knew it, and here it was, flipped just enough to be a girl’s name, sitting on a child on the other side of Kyleigh’s fence?
My mouth went dry. “How old is she, baby?” I asked. I tried, but it still came out rough.