IF THESE STREETS COULD TALK

ANIYAH

Kairo was standing in the middle of my kitchen with one shoe on, one shoe missing, and a spoonful of cereal paused halfway to his mouth when my father called me for the first time in eleven months. I knew it was him before I looked at the screen. Nobody else could make my stomach draw tight from a ringtone. His name sat above the same photograph I had used for years, a picture from his fifty-second birthday where he had been looking beyond the camera instead of into it, his mouth holding the beginning of a smile. I stared long enough for Kairo to lower his spoon. “You gon’ answer Granddaddy?” he asked. I slid my thumb across the screen and lifted the phone. “Hello?” Silence answered first. Then my father breathed my childhood nickname into my ear. “Niya.” His voice sounded scraped raw. “I need you to come home.”

I turned away from Kairo and faced the window over my sink. Morning sun covered the quiet row of townhouses behind mine. A woman in pink scrubs walked a small white dog along the sidewalk. Somebody’s sprinkler clicked over a patch of grass. My whole life here looked ordinary, which was exactly why I had built it three hours away from Carver. “What happened?” I asked. “You sick?” “I’m alive.” “That ain’t what I asked.” He exhaled like I was already exhausting him, but there was no familiar irritation behind it. Fear sat where his impatience usually lived. “There are things you should’ve known a long time ago. Things I should’ve told you myself.” A cabinet closed on his end. Metal scraped wood. “I need you here before dark, and I need you to come by yourself.”

My eyes found Kairo again. He had climbed onto the counter instead of looking for his other shoe and was eating cereal with his knees drawn up beneath his oversized school shirt. At seven, he had already learned how to make stillness look suspicious. His thick brows were pulled together while he listened to my half of the conversation. His face carried pieces of a man he had never met: the wide-set eyes, the serious mouth, the small dent centered in his chin. Some mornings the resemblance struck me so hard I had to look away. “Why by myself?” I asked. “Because I’m asking you to trust me one last time.” The words landed wrong. “Daddy, who’s there with you?” “Nobody right now.” Right now. I stepped farther from Kairo. “Call the police.” “Police can’t fix this.” “Then tell me what I’m walking into.” He went quiet again before saying, “I have something that belongs to you. And I owe you the truth about that boy’s daddy.”

Every muscle in my body tightened. My hand flattened against the cool counter. For eight years my father had refused to say Kenai King’s name unless he was reminding me why I had been better off without him. He had called Kane dangerous, selfish, poisoned by the same streets that killed his brother. When I found out I was pregnant, Daddy promised to deliver my letter himself. He returned two days later with my envelope opened and my hope crushed beneath three sentences: Kane knew. Kane wanted nothing to do with the baby. Kane had chosen his life. “What truth?” I whispered. “Come home.” “You don’t get to call me after all this time and dangle him over my head.” “I know.” Something bumped heavily in the background. My father’s breath stopped. “Daddy?” “Before dark, Aniyah.” The call ended.

I called him back twice. Both attempts went directly to voicemail.

“Is Granddaddy okay?” Kairo asked.

I placed my phone face down. “I don’t know yet.”

“You going to Carver?”

“Just for tonight.” I walked over and wiped a drop of milk from his chin with my thumb. “Auntie Brielle is gonna pick you up from school. You can spend the night with her and Micah.”

He studied me in the patient way that always made me feel like he was waiting for the adult version of the answer. “Why can’t I come?”

“Because I have grown-up business to handle, and you have that science test you swore you were ready for.”

“I am ready.”

“Then you better get down and find your shoe.”

He hopped from the counter but caught my wrist before leaving the kitchen. “Mama?”

“Yeah?”

“If you see my daddy there, are you gonna tell him about me?”

The question slipped beneath every wall I had spent years stacking around that subject. Kairo did not ask about Kane often. When he was four, he wanted to know whether his father had my phone number. At six, he asked if his father had other children he loved more. I had shown him one photograph last year because I got tired of watching him search his own face for a missing half he could not name. In the picture Kane and I were seventeen, sitting on the hood of his first car. His arm circled my waist. I was laughing at him instead of the camera. He looked at me as though the whole city ended wherever I stood.

“I don’t know if I’ll see him,” I said carefully.

“But if you do?”

I kissed his forehead. “Find that shoe, Kai.”

His disappointment followed him down the hall.

By eight fifteen, I had delivered him to school, packed an overnight bag, and called Brielle. She complained for four straight minutes about me driving into Carver alone. I let her because arguing would have taken longer. She knew enough about my father to understand why I could not ignore him and enough about Kane to understand why my voice had changed when I mentioned him. “Keep your location on,” she ordered. “And call me the second you get there.” “Yes, ma’am.” “I’m serious, Niya.” “I know. Kai’s blue inhaler is in the front pocket of his book bag. He hasn’t needed it in months, but—” “I know how to care for my godbaby. You worry about getting back to him.”

Before leaving, I stood inside Kairo’s room longer than I needed to. Model planets hung from his ceiling on clear string. A framed photograph from his first day of second grade sat beside a clay volcano he refused to throw away. Seven years of his life filled the room in school certificates, mismatched socks, half-built projects, and books with folded corners. Kane belonged to every part of it without appearing once. Kairo’s first serious fever had sent me to an emergency room alone. I taught him to ride a bicycle while Brielle recorded. When fathers joined the kindergarten field trip, he held my hand and pretended not to notice. I had spent years resenting Kane for absences he might never have chosen.

I opened the locked drawer beneath my jewelry box and removed the old photograph. For a moment I considered taking it to Carver, then returned it beneath a stack of birthday cards. Bringing Kane’s face felt too much like expecting to find him. I had survived by expecting nothing. On my way out, I texted my father that I was coming. The message showed delivered without becoming read.

I checked the locks twice, left Kairo’s night-light plugged in even though he would not be home, and carried my bag to the car. The ordinary quiet of my street felt precious once I imagined Carver waiting at the other end of the highway. I almost turned around before pulling away. Then my father’s frightened voice replayed through the car, and I drove.

The highway into Carver had not changed, but the city announced itself long before the green exit sign appeared. Traffic thickened around eighteen-wheelers and blacked-out trucks. Apartment buildings rose beside boarded storefronts. Murals turned dead boys into saints on brick walls, their names painted beneath clouds and doves. Fresh flowers leaned against one corner where no flowers had been the last time I passed through. Carver remembered its dead in bright colors and cheap candles. It remembered everybody except the people who had been smart enough to leave.

I exited onto Calhoun Avenue, where half the businesses were new and the other half had survived by refusing to die. The beauty supply store still occupied the corner beside Mr. Lee’s market. My old high school had a new fence. The yellow house where Kane’s grandmother raised him had been painted dark gray, and two expensive cars sat in the driveway. I kept my eyes forward, but memories climbed into my passenger seat anyway. Kane at sixteen, knocking on my bedroom window with a busted lip. Kane at seventeen, counting crumpled bills across my floor while I lectured him about the police. Kane at nineteen, holding my face between his palms outside his brother’s funeral and promising he would come for me once he handled what needed handling.

Three nights later, my father put me on a plane.

I had called Kane until my phone stopped turning on. I sent messages through people we both trusted. Nobody answered. By the time the pregnancy test turned positive, grief had already made a home inside me. Daddy’s confirmation finished the job.

The gate surrounding my father’s property was new. So were the four cameras mounted along the brick wall and the steel plate behind the keypad. I lowered my window, entered the code he texted me last Christmas, and waited. The gate opened slowly enough for me to notice a dark sedan parked halfway down the block. Its windows were tinted, its engine running. When I looked directly at it, the car pulled away.

My father opened the front door before I reached it. Alton Monroe had always been a large man, broad through the shoulders with a stomach he blamed on age and my late mother’s cooking. He looked smaller than he had at Thanksgiving. Gray covered most of his beard. The collar of his white shirt sat open, and a rust-colored stain darkened one cuff. He pulled me against him so quickly my overnight bag struck the doorframe.

“Thank God,” he said into my hair.

I stood stiff inside his arms before giving in enough to hold him. “You’re scaring me.”

“I know.” He locked the door behind us, then engaged two additional bolts I had never seen. “Your phone.”

“Excuse me?”

“Turn it off.”

“Daddy—”

“Please.”

That word from him unsettled me more than the gate. I powered down my phone and followed him into the living room. The house smelled like coffee and burned paper. Family photographs had been removed from the hallway, leaving pale rectangles against faded paint. A black pistol rested on the end table beside his chair. Another lay on the dining table beside a hard leather briefcase. Ash filled the fireplace even though September heat pressed against every window.

I set down my bag. “Whose blood is on your sleeve?”

He looked at the stain as if he had forgotten it. “Man came to see me this morning.”

“Is he alive?”

“For now.”

The answer reminded me that before my father became a property owner who wore linen to Sunday service, he had been a man people crossed the street to avoid. Childhood had softened my view of him. Distance had made me question what else I had misunderstood.

He opened the briefcase. Property deeds, folders, stacks of cash, and a smaller locked metal box filled the inside. He removed a brass key and pressed it into my palm. A number had been etched into its head. “Private box at Carver Federal. This key and my death certificate get you inside if I don’t make it through the week.”

I dropped it onto the table. “Stop talking like that.”

“Pick it up.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Somebody has been cleaning house.” He walked to the window without stepping directly in front of it. “Men I came up with. Men who helped build half this city before Kane took control of the other half. One disappeared in July. One got found in his car two weeks ago. Police called it natural because his heart stopped before they bothered counting the bruises.”

“And you think Kane did it?”

My father turned sharply. “No.”

The certainty in his voice stunned me. “You spent eight years telling me he was everything wrong with Carver.”

“I spent eight years telling whatever lie kept you away.”

“Away from him?”

“Away from all of us.”

Anger heated my throat. “You don’t get to turn what you did into protection because you’re scared now.”

“I was scared then.” He dragged a hand over his face. “Kane’s brother had just been killed. People were picking sides. You were nineteen and in love with a boy who had enough grief to set the city on fire. I thought distance would give both of you a chance to live.”

“You told me he abandoned his child.”

My father’s gaze fell to the key between us. “I know what I told you.”

“Was it true?”

He did not answer.

I stepped closer. “Daddy, was it true?”

“He knew you were pregnant.”

Relief never came. His wording left a hole wide enough for another lie. “Did he know Kairo was born?”

My father closed his eyes.

The room shifted around me. “Did Kane know his son lived?”

“No.”

I struck him before I decided to. My palm cracked across his cheek and left his head turned. Pain shot through my fingers. He did not raise his hand or look surprised. He simply stood there and accepted it.

“You let me raise him alone,” I said. “You let that little boy ask me why his daddy didn’t want him.”

“I was trying to keep him alive.”

“From who?”

My father opened his mouth.

The lights went out.

Every machine in the house died at once. The refrigerator stopped humming. The security panel beside the kitchen gave one sharp chirp before its screen went black. My father snatched the pistol from the table and shoved the other one toward me.

“Rear hallway,” he ordered.

“What’s happening?”

Glass shattered near the kitchen.

He caught the back of my neck and forced me down as a bullet tore through the wall above us. Plaster sprayed my hair. The next shot punched through the framed mirror in the hall. My father fired twice toward the kitchen, each blast filling the house with a deafening crack.

“Move, Niya!”

I crawled behind the dining table. The gun felt too heavy and too slick in my hand. A man entered through the kitchen door wearing black from his boots to the mask over his face. My father fired first. The man’s shoulder spun backward, but his weapon continued spraying until his knees struck the tile. Blood spread beneath him. He clawed once at the floor and went still.

Another shape moved behind the wall.

My father leaned around the doorway. A shot caught him high in the side. His body slammed against the china cabinet. Plates rattled behind glass.

“Daddy!”

“Stay down!” He pressed one hand to his shirt and fired with the other.

Footsteps crossed the kitchen. Slow. Certain. The third man who entered did not rush. He wore a dark jacket and gloves, his face hidden beneath a plain black mask. His weapon remained steady when he saw the dead man on the floor.

“Still making other people bleed for your decisions, Ton,” he said.

My father went motionless.

The name belonged to people who had known him before I did.

“You should’ve left my daughter out of it,” Daddy said.

“You should’ve left dead business buried.”

The man’s gaze moved toward the table. I pulled my feet beneath me and held my breath. My father saw him look. He pushed away from the cabinet and fired. The bullet struck the stranger’s upper arm. The man staggered, swore, and returned fire.

The first shot entered my father’s chest.

The second folded him.

I screamed and rose far enough to aim. My hands shook so badly the barrel drew circles. I fired once. Wood exploded from the doorway. The masked man turned his weapon toward me, but sirens sounded beyond the gate, faint at first and quickly multiplying. He looked at my father, then at me.

“That book won’t keep you alive,” he warned.

He disappeared through the kitchen.

I dropped the gun and crawled to my father. Blood soaked the front of his shirt faster than my hands could cover it. I pressed both palms against the wounds. Warmth ran between my fingers and down my wrists.

“Stay with me,” I begged. “The ambulance is coming. Daddy, look at me.”

His eyes struggled to focus. “Box,” he rasped.

“I have the key.”

“Ledger first. Names. Everything.”

“Save your breath.”

His bloody hand closed around my wrist. “Trust Kane.”

I shook my head violently. “You just told me you lied about him.”

“That’s why.” His breath caught wetly in his chest. “He never knew. I told him the baby was gone.”

The front door crashed inward beneath police weight.

My father’s fingers loosened. “I stole his son from him.”

“Daddy?”

His eyes stayed open, but the part of him that recognized me disappeared.

Officers flooded the room shouting commands. Somebody dragged me backward. I fought until my heel slipped through my father’s blood and my body struck the floor. Hands took the gun. Hands pinned my arms. Hands pulled me away from the man who had spent eight years lying to me and died before telling me who made the lie necessary.

Through the blur of uniforms, I saw the leather briefcase lying open beneath the table.

An officer asked whether anyone else had been inside. I tried to describe the voice behind the mask, the old nickname, the wounded arm. My answers came apart between breaths. Somewhere beyond the dining room, another officer confirmed the intruder in the kitchen was dead. Two bodies had entered my life in less than ten minutes, and one of them belonged to the first man I ever trusted.

The cash and property folders remained.

The small metal box was gone.