Page 45 of Steel
He left me standing in the middle of the room, my fists clenched at my sides. It had been a long time since I’d been that angry. Even longer since I’d beat someone to death with my bare hands. I looked back at the body at my feet and spit on him.
“Rest in hell, pussy ass nigga.”
Grabbing my gun from the floor, I left the room.
I stoodat 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.
