Chapter 10 Neha
I stood at the sink cleaning cabbage I was preparing for dinner.
I wasn’t in the best mood. Since everything went down, I felt like I was walking on eggshells.
I could barely eat or sleep. To make matters worse, Nayelli was mad at me.
She’d barely spoken to me. She preferred for Dinah to take her to school.
I didn’t get the hugs and kisses I normally would.
To top it all off, I barely heard an “I love you” when I was used to getting them every day.
The night she found out about Kerrion, she asked me why I didn’t tell her about her father. I couldn’t tell her the real reason. The only thing I could say was she wouldn’t understand.
“I hate you!” she yelled at me.
“Nayelli—”
“You kept my daddy away from me! All my friends had their daddy, and I wanted mine. You were wrong. I’ll never forgive you!”
She’d run upstairs and slammed her room door.
I didn’t go after her. There was nothing I could say to make this better for her.
That night, I cried my eyes out in my sister’s arms. I felt like shit.
While my actions may have been extreme, my fear justified them.
Nayelli didn’t know about her biological grandfather.
She didn’t know what her granny, her aunt, and I endured in that house, so she would never understand why I was so afraid all those years ago.
Kerrion was already making an effort to be a part of her life.
Begrudgingly, we’d exchanged numbers. When I got home the day after he popped up here, there was a box on my doorstep addressed to Nayelli.
Inside was a phone. The note said it was so they could keep in contact and that he was taking care of the bill.
Since then, she’d been on the phone with him every morning when she woke up, after she came from school, and before she went to bed.
I could hear her laughing and talking with him. Sometimes they did video calls, and I could hear her doing that baby talk with her little brother. While she was barely speaking to me, she told Dinah everything, and I heard it because I was within earshot. I could tell she loved him already.
The sound of the doorbell ringing broke me from my thoughts.
“I got it!” Nayelli yelled, rushing downstairs.
She damn near flew to the door. Dinah came down just as she opened the door. There stood Kerrion and his son with smiles. I frowned. He didn’t tell me he was stopping by yet again.
“Hey, Mr. K!” Nayelli said, excitedly.
He scooped her up effortlessly with one arm and hugged her.
“Hey, baby girl. I missed you.”
“I missed you too. Hey, KJ!”
Her little brother grinned and cooed at her. I still couldn’t get over how much he looked like Nayelli as a baby. He was absolutely adorable.
Drying my hands, I walked into the living room.
“A heads up would have been nice,” I said, crossing my arms.
“Sina haja ya kukupa kichwa kuona binti yangu au yeye kuniona mimi au kaka yake.”
He told me that he didn’t need to give me a heads up to see his daughter or for her to see him and her brother.
It took a second for me to catch on because I hadn’t heard him speak his grandmother’s native Swahili tongue in years.
Her family was from Kenya and migrated here when she was five.
He told me that she taught him and his siblings to speak the language.
In turn, he taught it to me while we were dating. He’d spent countless hours giving me lessons until I was damn near fluent in it. Whenever we didn’t want anyone to know what we were talking about, we spoke Swahili.
I responded with “Huwezi tu kuonekana nyumbani kwangu,” telling him that he couldn’t just show up at my house.
We went back and forth for a minute before my sister stepped in.
“I don’t know what y’all are saying, but don’t y’all start in front of these kids,” Dinah warned. “Kerrion, y’all can have a seat in the living room.”
“I wanna go outside,” Nayelli said.
“Did you finish your homework?” I asked.
She huffed and turned to Dinah. “Auntie Dinah. I finished my homework. Can I go outside?”
Dinah frowned. “Nayelli. I understand you’re upset with your mother, but I’ve had about enough of this attitude with her. Show respect and answer her when she’s talking to you.”
Much to my surprise, Kerrion stepped in. “Your aunt is right. You can be upset, but always respect your mother. Even at my big age, I don’t disrespect my mama. She doesn’t play that. Apologize.”
Nayelli looked at me with sad eyes. “I’m sorry, Mom. I finished my homework. May I please go outside to play with Mr. K and KJ?”
I pursed my lips but nodded. Kerrion placed her on her feet and grabbed her hand.
“Lead the way.”
They brushed past us, and I stared after them.
“What the hell was that?” Dinah asked.
“Swahili.”
“Since when do you know Swahili?”
“He taught it to me in college. His grandmother is from Kenya.”
She shook her head. “Y’all were really locked in back then, huh?”
“Yeah, . . . we were.”
I headed back into the kitchen to finish preparing dinner. From where I stood, I could see the three of them on Nayelli’s jungle gym. She climbed to the top of the slide, and Kerrion placed KJ in her lap. She held on to him securely as she slid down, and all I saw were his little gums.
They were cute together. Perfect, even. As happy as she’d been, I felt so bad about keeping her a secret.
I knew little girls needed their fathers.
I needed mine. Evan Malone became my world when he married my mother.
It took me a minute to warm up to him, but when I did, we were locked in for life.
I was his baby girl. Even at my big age, I was still his big baby.
After turning the cabbage down to cook, and seasoning my pork chops, I washed my hands and pulled out my phone to call my father on FaceTime. He answered on the second ring with a smile on his face.
“Baby girl.”
“Hey, Daddy.”
Dinah came over and stuck her face in the camera. “Hey, Daddy! I miss you.”
He chuckled. “I miss you, too, my love.” His eyes studied my face. “What’s with that look? You okay?”
“I’m fine—”
“She lying, Daddy,” Dinah said.
“Dinah!” I exclaimed.
“Don’t Dinah me. Tell him the truth.” I went to speak, but she didn’t give me a chance. “She ran into Nayelli’s father.”
My father frowned. “What? When?”
I sighed. “A few weeks ago.”
I gave him the story from beginning to end. While he wasn’t happy about the way Kerrion rolled up on me, he reminded me that this was the consequences of my actions coming back at me.
“You said he’s there now?”
“He is. They’re out back.”
“How are you feeling, baby girl?”
“Like shit.” I sniffled. “She’s so mad at me, Daddy. I know I owe her this experience, but I’m scared.”
“You need to have a conversation with him, Neha.”
“How? The man barely wants to talk to me. He looks at me with so much disgust. I tried to explain when he first came over here, but he wasn’t trying to hear me out. I don’t want to provoke him.”
“You two share a child. He can be as mad as he wants to, but he has to communicate with you. If he wants a healthy co-parenting relationship, he’s gonna have to have the hard conversations with you.
You were wrong, but at the end of the day, you are the mother of his child.
You two have to find a way to work together without all the bitterness. ”
“I don’t know what to do, Daddy.”
“This is a fresh wound. Give him some time to calm down and try again.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“Now, put a smile on that pretty face and tell me what else has been going on.”
I spoke with my father while I finished cooking.
Talking to him or my mother always lifted my spirits.
I was feeling a little lighter by the time the food was done.
That all ended the moment Nayelli walked in with Kerrion and KJ behind her.
They’d been outside the whole time. At one point, they were sitting at the picnic table, looking like they were having a serious conversation.
Kerrion looked at her so lovingly, even though I could tell whatever he was saying was serious and stern.
When they came through the door, Nayelli came over to me and wrapped her arms around my waist in a hug.
“I’m sorry for being a brat, Mommy,” she said softly.
I hugged her back and kissed her forehead. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. You’re my mom, and I should respect you. I promise I won’t do it again.” She reached for my face and kissed my cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, baby.”
“Can Mr. K and KJ stay for dinner?”
I looked up at Kerrion, who stared at me with a blank expression.
“If he wants to.”
Nayelli looked over at him, and he smiled.
“We’d love to have dinner with you, baby girl.”
I didn’t miss the emphasis on “you.” I didn’t say anything, though.
“Nayelli, why don’t you help me set the table?” Dinah said, going to the cabinet for the plates.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The kitchen grew quiet as the two of them left, leaving Kerrion, KJ, and me alone. He stood there glaring at me. His stare was so intense that I could feel the anger radiating from him.
“You made a nice home for her,” he finally said.
I sighed as I put the cabbage into a serving dish. “I tried.”
“It’s the least you could do,” he mumbled.
“Kerrion, I don’t want to fight with you for the next eight years. You’re here, we’re here. Let’s just make the best of this.”
He chuckled, but I knew nothing was funny. “The best of it. You took the best of it away from me. I’m picking up the pieces and starting ten years too late.”
I rested my hands on the counter and stared at him.
“What do you want me to do? Get down on my knees and beg for your forgiveness? Build a time machine and go back to the day I found out I was pregnant? I can’t.
Okay? I made a mistake, and obviously, I can’t talk to you about it because you won’t hear me out.
If you aren’t going to let me explain myself so you can at least understand where my head was, I don’t wanna hear shit else about it. ”
“I don’t need to know shit. Ain’t nothing you can say to justify keeping me away from my child.”
“Okay, Kerrion.”
I picked up the serving dishes of rice and cabbage before walking past him into the dining room. When I returned for the pork chops and cornbread, he was still glaring at me. Little KJ was looking around, oblivious to the tension between his father and me.
“You just gonna stand there or come sit and eat?” I asked.
He didn’t say anything, just made his way into the dining room. I left out a final time to get the drinks, and Dinah followed behind me.
“More tension?” she asked quietly.
“More tension.” I sighed heavily and hung my head. “I don’t know how we’re gonna get through this.”
Dinah wrapped her arms around me in a hug. “It’ll take some time, but eventually, things will be better. He can’t stay mad at you forever.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I just know I’m not living like this forever.”
I meant that. I’d take my father’s advice and let Kerrion calm down some, but one way or the other, he was going to have to talk to me. He needed to know the part he played in all of this. Maybe it wasn’t all his fault, but he absolutely played a part.