Chapter 17 Kyleigh
I didn’t think I had another Christmas crowd in me so soon. But Aziza had looked at me with those big eyes and said, “Mama, please, they got a cocoa walk tonight. It’s like Ruston but at home. Daddy says they’re going to light up some of our trees,” and I fell for it. Again.
And I needed it after today. I’d woken up in Jabali’s arms, showered with him in my ensuite, where he’d proceeded to try to fuck me through the stone of the shower. We’d had breakfast after, and while Serena took the girls out to play, he’d dragged me back into my room and handed me my phone.
“Here,” he’d said. “Call them.”
I knew who he meant. I stared at my phone so long my eyes burned. Before I could talk myself out of it, I called my daddy. He picked up on the third ring and proceeded to crack my world in half.
“Hey, pumpkin.”
“Hey,” I said, settling onto my bed. “Are you alone?”
“I can be. What’s wrong? Is Aziza okay?” His tone changed immediately.
I exhaled shakily. “She’s fine. I’m not, though.”
There was a pause, then the sound of a door closing in the background.
“Alright. Talk to me,” he said.
“I talked to Jabali last night.” I was starting with what I needed to know. There was no use prolonging this.
Silence. Then a slow sigh. My heart pounded even harder than it had been.
“Okay.”
“I told him what you told me after the baby came. About how you went to him and he said I was just a fling. How he didn’t want to be tied down. How he was good on me.”
Daddy didn’t answer.
I went on. “I told him about the recording. How you played me his voice saying all of that.”
“Kyleigh…”
“No,” I cut in. “Don’t ‘Kyleigh’ me. He remembers that day differently. You tried to give him money to stay away, Daddy? You… you said if he cared about me, he’d realize it was best to leave me alone. You said that, Daddy? Knowing I was at home with our baby w—”
He cleared his throat, spoke in a rush. “You were headed to Brown, Kyleigh. Brown University. Your dream school—”
But I didn’t wanna hear that. “He said he walked away because he believed you when you said I was happy.”
“Kyleigh, listen to me.”
I was beyond listening as the reality of what he had done began to settle over me, my heart breaking.
My hands gripped my comforter, like I was scared to ask what came next because I was.
“He also remembers not saying a single disrespectful word about me. So, I’m going to ask you exactly once. Did you lie to me?”
On the other end of the line, my father was quiet. When he spoke again, his voice had changed, got all flat and cool, like it did when he was about to present data in a lab.
“I edited. We edited.”
My stomach dropped. “What does that mean?”
“I recorded our conversation. I always recorded anything that might be… complicated later. He didn’t know.
He was frustrated and angry. He did say he had plans.
He did say he wasn’t going to let ‘some rich man’ buy him off.
” He sighed, a tired sound. “Your mother and I took pieces. We spliced them. We had access to other clips. We put together something that made the point we needed it to make,” he admitted.
“The point you needed,” I repeated. My voice did not sound like mine.
“Sweetheart, you were nineteen and brilliant with a baby. We didn’t send you to Emancipation for that, but we could tell it was coming when we visited for Thanksgiving.
Hadn’t seen us in months but could barely make time for us, trying to run out and be with that boy.
There you were a year later—you couldn’t even attend your first semester of college.
A mind like that, possibly going to waste.
You were alone in Houston. You had a baby and a broken heart and more pressure than any girl that age should have.
We saw you drowning. We saw how you looked when his name came up.
You were ready to run right back into something we believed would break you. ”
“So, you broke me first,” I said.
He exhaled audibly. “We protected you. We protected your future. You have to understand; we grew up with boys like him. Talented. Charming. Dangerous. They pull girls in, and those girls never get out. We were not going to lose you to that.”
“Y’all didn’t even know him, Daddy.”
There was a rustle and I realized my mother must have taken the phone.
“Kyleigh. Baby, listen to me.”
“I’m listening,” I said.
“We did what we thought was best. We watched your grandmother’s heart almost give out when you told her you were pregnant.
We watched you bleeding in that hospital bed.
We watched you cry every night the first year back in Houston.
Your father would come home from work and find you on the floor with that baby sleeping on your chest and your eyes swollen.
” She took a breath, blew it out. “We decided that if he really loved you, he would fight through anything. We decided if a little manipulation was all it took to keep him away, then he didn’t deserve you in the first place. ”
My chest felt tight, like somebody had pulled a belt around it.
“So, when I said I wanted to tell him, you went to him first. You made sure he stayed away. Then you came back and made sure I stayed away.”
“You are our daughter. That’s why we did it. We wanted you to finish school. We wanted you to have options that didn’t involve waiting on a man to choose you,” Mama coaxed.
“Did you ever consider what I wanted? Did you ever consider Aziza, the little girl who spent nine years without her father because two scientists decided to run a social experiment on their only child?”
My father spoke up then. “Of course, we did! We poured everything into her. We gave her the best schools, the best doctors, the best—”
“We gave her everything but him,” I screamed.
Silence sat heavy between us. On my side of the line, the house was quiet, on theirs, I could hear the muffled sound of a TV in the background.
“So that recording. The one you played me. That was fake?” My voice was calmer.
“Not fake,” my father objected. “Edited. Reconstructed.”
I laughed. It was dry, humorless. “You lied to me. To him. On purpose. For years.”
“Yes,” my mother said. There was no way to dress it up anymore. “Yes, we did.”
I closed my eyes, swallowed hard. Jabali came to sit beside me and linked his fingers with mine. He kissed my temple.
“Thank you for saying it out loud,” I said.
“Kyleigh, we love you,” Mama whispered.
“I believe that. That’s what hurts the most.”
I ended the call before they could answer.
For a long moment, I just sat there, phone in my hand, heart beating slow and heavy. Then I tossed it on the bed and pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes like I could hold back the tears.
They had lied. They had admitted it. I guess I should feel better.
I didn’t. Pain just moved from one part of my chest to another.
And grief… I felt so much grief for what Aziza had lost, what Jabali and I may have lost. Under all that pain and anger and sorrow, though, I felt something else. It was quiet and hopeful.
I felt possibility.
Because if the story I’d been told in the past was false, then maybe, the future could be different.
And now here I was, feeling out that possibility with my excited little girl and her father who seemed to be having as many thoughts as I was.
Freedom’s Field glowed under strings of lights.
The little booths of the Christmas Village lining the edges.
A mixtape of R&B Christmas songs played over the speakers.
Kids ran in packs, parents ran behind them, and my nerves were up.
At least I wasn’t alone. Jabali walked on my right, one hand wrapped around his cup, the other brushing mine every few steps like he was trying to hold my hand without making a thing of it.
Aziza walked between us, both hands cupped around her cocoa, cheeks flushed with cold and joy.
Her new knit hat had a ridiculous pom-pom on top that bobbed every time she bounced. My baby looked too cute.
“This cocoa slap,” she announced after a sip.
“You gotta say that about everything you like?” I challenged, kissing my teeth.
She side-eyed me. “Auntie Taniyah said it.”
“Auntie Taniyah says a lot of things you shouldn’t repeat.”
Next to me, Jabali chuckled. “She right, though. This cocoa do slap a little.”
I felt my nose turned up. “Both of y’all on punishment.”
He gave me one of those half-smiles that had gotten him out of trouble since we were teenagers. “You look good out here,” he said. “Lights look better on you than on the hill.”
“You just came up with that?”
He leaned closer. “Nah. I thought it last night, too, when I saw you naked. Them titties in the moonlight... Mm-mm-mm.”
Heat rushed up my neck at the memory. My soft sheets, his talented mouth, my greedy hands. I took a long drink of cocoa so I wouldn’t say something stupid. He smiled.
Aziza pointed ahead. “Mama, look! They got people doing face paint. Can I get a snowflake?”
“You already got cocoa on your face,” I pointed out.
She looked offended. “I can have layers.”
“Definitely my kid,” her father proclaimed proudly. “Come on. We’ll see.”
He steered us toward the little face-paint tent. A woman from church was working with a squirmy toddler, drawing a lopsided reindeer on his forehead. Aziza waited her turn, bouncing in place, talking the agitated artist through every design.
“She gon’ want the most extra option, ain’t she?” Jabali asked.
“Definitely your kid,” I parroted.
We fell into that easy, irritating, wonderful rhythm we used to have.
He stole sips of my cocoa without asking after he drained his.
I pretended to be mad and then held the cup closer.
People stared, but not all of it felt hostile.
Emory waved from a distance, mouthed “You cute” like she approved.
Mr. Hargrove tipped his hat. A couple of kids pointed toward the hill.
“Mama, that’s the tree lady,” one of them whispered.