“Ma, you need to leave.”
Kennedy shoved a finger in her face. “You need to move before I drag you down these front steps. You aren’t even supposed to be here.”
“What’s going on here?” Uncle Clive asked, stepping onto the front porch. He slid Adrienne to the side and took her place in front of me. Kennedy poked his chest with her pointy nail.
“Didn’t I tell you and my sister my kids weren’t allowed over as long as the bitch was here?”
“She is your daughter, Kennedy. Don’t disrespect her like that.”
She scoffed. “Disrespect? You wanna talk about disrespect. None of you have respected my wishes when it came to her. She is dead to me. You hear me? Dead. That means she’s dead to every single one of you, too.”
Uncle Clive shook his head. “I’ll be damned if I turn my back on this child. Now, I get that you don’t want them around her, but they’re her sisters, Kennedy. They’re my nieces, and if they want to come over here, I’m not going to turn them away when they come to my door.”
“Clive, until you produce a child, you don’t get a say in anything dealing with these two. You and Penny want Alayah so bad? Keep her. Just keep that murdering whore away from my children.” She grabbed Adrienne and Amiyah by the arms and snatched them to her. “What did I tell you? Huh? Didn’t I tell you not to come over here? You think you can just do whatever you want, no matter what I say?”
Adrienne snatched away from her. “You can’t tell me what to do, Kennedy. She’s my sister, and you can’t keep me away from her.”
“Like hell I can’t. You live under my roof—”
“Then maybe I won’t live under your roof anymore! Anyplace is better than being with you.”
When Kennedy drew back and slapped her, I sprang forward and stood between them.
“What do you wanna do, bitch?” Kennedy asked, squaring up at me. “I told you what would happen the next time I caught you anywhere near my kids.”
“I don’t wanna fight you, Kennedy, but you aren’t gonna be putting your hands on her.”
“Who’s gonna stop me? You? What, you’re gonna put me in the grave, too? I would love to see you try that shit. You’ll be back in lockup before you can blink.”
“You would love to see me locked up again, wouldn’t you? Tell me the real reason you went out of your way to make me look like the aggressor. You painted this false narrative of me and ran with it. I’m your daughter, Kennedy. Even if you can’t stand the sight of me, some motherly part of you should have had my back. You should have believed me. You should have known what that man was doing to me.”
“He never touched you,” she screamed.
“Yes he did. I tried to tell you, and you wouldn’t listen to me. Why would I lie about something like that? That bastard came into my room at night for years, and plenty of times while you were in the house. How could younothave known? Where did you think he was going when he snuck out of bed and was gone for too long? How could you miss the way he looked at me—the way he made me uncomfortable when he touched me? My God, Kennedy. You didn’t even know that that man got me pregnant.”
“You’re nothing but a liar.”
She slapped me so hard that I tasted the blood as it pooled in my mouth. Adrienne and Amiyah gasped. I could see the vein in Uncle Clive’s neck straining as he yelled at her, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Anger flooded my core as I touched my lip. The sight of the bright red blood on my fingers only fueled that anger.
Kennedy was yelling back at my uncle, and the girls were trying to pull her away. When she slapped him, too, something in me snapped. I drew back and reached around him, slapping her so hard that she almost took a tumble down the front steps. If Adrienne and Miyah hadn’t caught her, she would have hit the ground. The passenger-side door of her car opened, and a tall, dark-skinned man got out, briskly making his way to us.
When Kennedy realized that I’d hit her, she tried to get at me.
“You’re going to jail, bitch. You wanna put your hands on me?”
The unknown man grabbed her around the waist, holding her back.
“Baby, come get in the car,” he tried to reason.
I shook my head. He’d sat there the whole time watching this madness unfold and done nothing.
“Let me go, Anthony.”
“You’re making a scene. I told you not to come over here. You could have handled this in the privacy of your home.”
He snatched her back, towering over her as he spoke lowly to her. She kept looking around him at me. The snapping of his fingers seemed to make her focus her attention on him.
“Go get your ass in the car,” he finally said, loud enough for us to hear.
