Not long after KoKo’s diagnosis, I finally stood up to him. I was 24, we were at one of the apartments, and he was about to go to bed with my sister. I was so angry I screamed, “Leave her alone!” I called him an asshole, and I went off on my mother too. I told her, “I can’t believe all of this time you have not been protecting us.” I expected my father to punch me in the face, to knock me out. But he just looked shocked and sat down in silence.
And it hit me: Oh. You’re just a punk. A coward. I realized that I had actually never seen him fight a man. He’d only victimized women and children. And this whole godlike image of him controlling everything just crumbled.
“Where’s my real daddy?”
Soon after Aziza stood up to her father, she broke off all contact. About a year later she regained custody of her three children. Arrishtk was about to turn nine.
AZIZA: When she came back, she started asking me about her father. I didn’t think she was ready. I even made up a story about a fake daddy. But one day she came to me in the kitchen—she was 13—and she’s like, “Tell me the truth now.” And the words just came out: “Aswad is your father. And he’s my father too.”
ARRISHTK: And I was like, “What?”
AZIZA: Actually she said, “I knew it.”
ARRISHTK: Yeah, well. You didn’t need to tell me any more. After my mind processed for a couple of minutes, I started calculating it in my head. I was just like, So that means he is my grandfather and also Daddy, and your sisters are my half-sisters too, and so—
AZIZA: I didn’t want to traumatize her with the hard-core stuff. But I said I was raped.
ARRISHTK: I was also angry. At him. And at Grandma [Aikasha]. Like she didn’t do anything? But at the same time, I felt even closer to Mommy.
AZIZA: We were close, especially then. I was in my twenties, and she was going into her teens, doing all the things I’d dreamed about—friends, school. I lived vicariously through her journey. She’d do her homework with me in the kitchen. That’s how I know my American history. [Laughs.] And then we would sing together, and the other kids would come join. We’d do a lot of En Vogue. I loved this old spiritual, “We Are One in the Spirit.”
ARRISHTK: Oh, there was this song—I hated her singing it, because it was about a man. Who’s it by?
AZIZA: You have to remind me.
ARRISHTK: [Hums a melody.]
AZIZA: Whitney Houston. “Saving All My Love for You.”
ARRISHTK: See! Saving your all love for him! [Both have a good, long laugh.] Our bonding times definitely helped us cope.
Getting justice
Over the next five years, Aziza married (and later divorced), bought a car, enrolled her kids in school, and at one point was juggling three jobs: as a chef in Newark, a hostess in Manhattan, and wallpapering houses on the weekend. It was a lot, but she was starting to live the life she’d always imagined for herself.
