Page 20 of Steel

“I . . . I have to tell you something, Dinah.”

She leaned forward, giving me her full attention.

“What is it?”

“I saw him . . . Kerrion. At Nayelli’s school. I almost backed into him, and when I got out to give the person a piece of mymind, it was him. Dinah. I don’t know what to do. He saw me. What’s gonna happen if I run into him again? I can’t just act like I don’t see him.”

She stared blankly at me, not saying a word, but the look on her face spoke volumes.

“Dinah?”

“Neha, I have something to tell you.”

“What?”

She sighed. “I enrolled Nayelli in a self-defense class.”

“What!” I yelled. “Dinah, you know how I feel about fighting!”

“I know, but we can’t be there all the time, Neha. She has to know how to defend herself, because bullying only gets worse.”

“You should have talked to me about it!”

“Shut up and listen to me!” She dropped her head in her hands. “I wasn’t sure when we met the instructor. I thought maybe it was a coincidence, you know? That the world wouldn’t be that small. I brushed it off and took her to her first class Then we got to talking and I asked him his last name and he showed me a picture of his son.”

“His son? What are you saying to me, Dinah?”

“His son looks just like Nayelli as a baby, Neha. He could have been her twin. I’m saying . . . I’m saying her instructor is her father. I wasn’t sure at first. I thought he looked familiar from pictures you showed me, but when I asked his last name, I knew.”

My heart began to race.

Did he see his son in Nayelli?

Did he suspect anything?

My heart began to race. “She can’t go back there, Dinah,” I said.

“She likes it, Neha. It’s the first time I’ve seen her confidence like this in months. Maybe it’s time you talk to him and explainthings. I’ve been telling you this for years, Sis. You couldn’t have moved here and expect to never see that man.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“Don’t get snappy with me, girl! I’m just saying. You loved that man’s dirty drawers back then. I get why you ghosted him, but to this day, I still think you should have explained yourself instead of running.”

I hung my head. She’d lit into my ass so many times over the years about this very thing. I was afraid. I grew up in a house with an abusive father. He’d often get mad and black out, just like Kerrion, and take his anger out on my mom, Dinah, and me. It took years and her almost being beaten to death for her to leave him and press charges against him.

Currently, he was serving a twenty-year sentence for what he did to my mother. My stepdad was the only man I acknowledged as my father. My mom met him when I was fourteen and married him when I was fifteen. It took a lot for me to trust him. Even when he wanted nothing but to love me, I wouldn’t accept it.

Seeing the level of violence Kerrion resorted to at times triggered me. That night took me back to a time when I hid in the closet at my mother’s command because my dad came home drunk and picking a fight.

“Sarah! Where the fuck you at!”

My mother jumped up from my bed where she sat talking to me and Dinah.

“Get in the closet,” she said, ushering me out of bed. She snatched back the covers on Dinah’s bed and rushed her out too. “No matter what you hear, don’t come out. Go!”

Dinah grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the closet. Tears were already streaming down my face. At twelve years old, this had become an all too familiar routine. My mama wasalready sporting bruises from a drunken rage just a few days ago.

My dad came at me about something so small that sent him over the edge. She jumped in to defend me, and they started fighting. The next morning, she was walking around with a bruised cheek and busted lip.