Chapter 9 Jabali
I didn’t go straight home after we dropped the tree off.
Kyleigh stood in the foyer with her arms crossed, pretending she wasn’t low-key freaking out about the size of that thing, while Aziza ran circles around us talking about lights and donuts and glitter ornaments.
I helped Mr. Benton get the tree through the door and into the stand, let my daughter high-five me like we’d just pulled off a heist, then got out of there before I said or did something that’d set everything back on fire.
Instead, I ended up where I always did when my head was too loud—the house I grew up in.
The Christophers’ place smelled like Katelyn’s kitchen: onions and bell pepper, something roasting low in the oven, and those damn cinnamon pinecones she bought every year.
Christmas lights framed the front windows, a normal-sized tree blinked in the corner, and the TV in the living room was murmuring a game on low.
My pops was at the kitchen table, glasses low on his nose, flipping through some paperwork. He looked up when I came in, taking me in with one long, assessing glance. That man had never missed a thing in his life.
“You ate?” was the first thing out his mouth.
“No, sir,” I said, dropping into the chair across from him.
He stood without comment and I didn’t say anything either. There was no use. My dad had been fixing our plates sometimes since we were little. I looked at the roasted chicken, cabbage, potato salad, and cornbread. These people stayed ready.
“Your mama out back. She been wearing a groove in that deck thinking about this granddaughter she ain’t met yet,” he commented.
My chest tightened. “She mad?” I asked.
“Oh, she hot,” he said easily. “At everybody. At Kyleigh, at you, at me, at the Lord for not CC’ing her on the situation. But she’ll cool down. We’ve both had time to sit with it. Right now, she mostly… excited.”
He said the last part soft, letting me know he was excited, too. He waited till I took a few bites before he really looked at me again. “So, how is she?”
I knew who he meant. Both of them.
“Aziza’s… amazing.” The word felt too small for my little girl. “She smart, mouthy, sweet. Got her own ideas about everything. I don’t even know how to explain it. She just… feels like mine.”
He nodded slowly. “And Kyleigh?”
I blew out a breath, leaned back in the chair. The kitchen light felt too bright all of a sudden. “She’s complicated. Same as she always was. Just richer and more stressed.”
He let me sit in that for a second. “You wanna take this somewhere your mama can’t come in and start preaching?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I admitted.
We ended up on the back porch, cold air hitting my face, the yard lit up by the soft glow from the house. He eased himself into one of the chairs, joints popping a little. I leaned on the railing, hands shoved in my pockets, staring at the dark outline of the trees.
He let the silence sit a minute before he spoke. “A’ight,” he said. “Tell me what’s really going on in that big hard head.”
I laughed, but it came out more like a choke.
“I don’t even know where to start. One second I’m at a tree lot stopping myself from choking a kid, really, barely twenty, probably.
Next second, I’m watching my daughter hug on a damn pine like it’s her best friend, thinking about all the times she wanted to do that and couldn’t ’cause I ain’t been there. ”
My voice roughened on the last part. I cleared my throat, but it didn’t fix it.
“I missed everything, Pops.” The words were sharp, jagged on the way out, and they hurt like they were.
“First steps. First words. First time she fell off a bike. First day of school. All the little stuff that don’t seem like nothing at the time but it’s…
it’s everything. I ain’t even know her name.
I was out here diving out of planes and kicking in doors for people who don’t give a damn about me, and my child was up the road, pressed against a fence talking about lights. ”
My hand hit the railing harder than I meant it to. The wood rattled.
He watched me, face calm, eyes not missing a thing. “You mad,” he said.
“Hell yeah, I’m mad,” I snapped. “I’m mad as hell.
I think about her being born, and I wasn’t there.
I think about Kyleigh in some hospital room by herself, scared out her mind, and I wasn’t there.
I think about all the times that little girl asked where her daddy was and got some half answer, and I wasn’t there. And none of it was my choice.”
My voice broke on the last word. I hated it.
“I would’ve come home,” I said, quieter now. “I would’ve done anything for that girl. For both of them. You know that.”
“I do,” he said simply.
I dragged a hand over my face. “And then I look at Kyleigh,” I went on, “and I want to shake her. ’Cause she made a decision that took all that away. She decided for me. For my mama. For you. She decided we wasn’t part of our own blood’s story. That ain’t small, Pops. That ain’t nothing.”
“No, it’s not,” he agreed.
“But then… then I remember exactly how bad that girl got hurt. I remember her looking at me by the amphitheater like some trust in her had broken in half. And I think about an eighteen-year-old, humiliated, pregnant, feeling alone, being told by grown folks with money and degrees what her life ‘supposed’ to look like. You know her dad came to me?”
My pops sat up, gave me a hard look. “Hell you mean he came to you? When you were a kid?” he demanded.
I nodded. “Nineteen. Home for Christmas. Hoping she would be, too. He came to me, told me how she had moved on with her life—Aziza must’ve been three or four months old, and he said that shit.
She had moved on with her life, and he and his wife agreed it would be best if I stayed away from her.
He told me how happy she was, that she was settling into her university, enjoying life.
‘Mama told me you still be sniffing around behind her,’ he said.
He told me if I cared about her, I wouldn’t.
Nigga offered me money. I offered to break his face. ”
“You didn’t have to deal with that bastard by yourself. Matthew Grindley got a few dollars and got beside his fucking self. Why you didn’t tell me?” he fussed.
I shook my head. “I believed him. She had blocked me. Refused to entertain me anywhere or anyway. So, I believe him. And she was laid up with my baby. If he would do that, can you imagine the pressure on her? They wanted her to go Ivy League, have some big career. I can imagine how they felt, how they treated her when she popped up pregnant. Ain’t no telling what they were telling her.
I know that. I know it was hard for her. ”
He hummed low in his throat. “So, you mad at her… and you not mad at her.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I’m split down the middle.
One side of me wanna file every paper Zahara can draw up and drag her through court ’til she feel all nine years.
The other side of me sees her in that bed at three in the morning, shaking, trying not to let me see she scared, and I still wanna protect her. ”
“Says the man that broke into her bedroom,” he said dryly.
“I ain’t say I handled it right,” I muttered.
He chuckled. “You never do when your feelings involved.”
That stung ’cause it was true.
“Today at that lot,” I said, staring out at the dark, “watching Zi pick a tree… It hit me. Hard. That’s what I missed.
Just regular stuff. Riding in the truck.
Listening to her ask a thousand questions.
Telling her no about licking pine trees.
That’s the shit I can’t get back. I’m supposed to just… accept that?”
“What’s the alternative?” he asked quietly.
I opened my mouth, then shut it. I didn’t have a real answer. Just noise.
He leaned back, the chair creaking. “Son, I’m not gon’ sit here and pretend me and your mama didn’t feel every bit of what you talking about.
We had our little private funeral for the years we missed.
She cried. I went and beat the hell out of a heavy bag ’til my arms wouldn’t move.
I wanted to find somebody to blame. Kyleigh. Her people. God. You.”
He let that sit. I flinched.
“But at the end of the day, we came to the same conclusion—staying stuck in ‘what we missed’ ain’t bringing a single moment back.
All it does is steal what we still got. And we still got something.
We got a chance to know this baby while she still a child.
To have her in our kitchen eating too much.
To go to her programs, take her on trips, let Ola Kate spoil her rotten. That ain’t nothing.”
I swallowed, looking down at my hands. My fists were tight, ready.
“We chose forgiveness,” he said simply. “Not because what happened was small, but because we’d rather spend the rest of her childhood loving her than the rest of our lives mad at her mama. Me and your mama made that decision together. You gotta make your own.”
“That easy, huh?” I asked, bitter. “Just forgive.”
He shook his head. “Forgiveness ain’t easy. It’s work. It’s a decision you make over and over. But you need a direction first. Right now, you heading nowhere. You got all this anger, all this hurt, and no plan but ‘hit something.’ That might feel good, but it don’t build nothing for Aziza.”
Her name coming out his mouth did something to me. I gripped the railing harder.
“So let me ask you straight,” he said. “You want Kyleigh as your enemy?”
The question landed like a punch. I stared out into the yard. “I don’t know,” I lied.
He gave me that look, the one that said Don’t try me, boy.
I sighed. “No, I don’t,” I admitted.
“Why not?” he pressed.
“’Cause that’s my daughter’s mama,” I said. “I don’t want Zi growing up having to pick sides. I don’t want her scared to say my name in that house or scared to say Kyleigh’s in mine. I ain’t trying to put her in the middle of a war.”
He nodded. “Good. So you know what you don’t want. Now, what do you want? Not just with Aziza. With Kyleigh.”