So, my dad was out of my life for well over a decade. When I was about 25, I bumped into him, on the humble one day, visiting my grandmother. Yes, I know … Sounds a little dysfunctional, right? … bumping into my dad on the humble … but as this blog progresses, my personal story will manifest itself. Things weren’t bad for me at the time, in my head, but, if my memory serves me correctly, I had been displaced for almost 2 years. A very humbling experience, I must say! At any rate, after catching up for hours, he said, “Go to this address and knock on the door, some people will be waiting to meet you, I’m not even going to call!” He smirked his smirk that became so symbolic. Turns out, he had really good secrets, but they weren’t really secrets people just think that they are or thought that they were – his reason for always smirking.

One project building sat on a corner in New York City’s East Village. That’s where the apartment was. A real project building, right in the middle of where residents are paying more than a thousand dollars for their studio, where people own condos and lofts, where tour buses host tourists, where people come to party, where Law & Order shoots, and where celebrities wander after shopping in Soho, only 4 blocks away.

When I knocked on the door, someone looked through the peephole, but they didn’t open the door. Instead, they came back and looked again. A moment later, I heard them slide the chain-lock. Quietly, they unlocked the top lock, and the last the little bottom lock, which was a simple little click. It was very, very dramatic and I was a nerve wreck. The drama unfolds as the door slowly creaked open to reveal three star-struck teens. My step-brother and two step-sisters.

“Oh my god,” the boy breathed giving us everything … He bent his knees, he had his hand over his mouth, his eyebrows were raised. When I say everything, he gave it all. With a tear in his eye, he looked me dead on, the girls were statued, and he said, “It’s you. You’re his daughter!” Still giving, he turned to his sisters and said, “It’s BruShonna.” Why couldn’t there have been a camera man? He grabbed me first, but they all, thirstily, buried themselves wherever they could, fit. I still hadn’t said a word, but I was crying. I had no clue who these teens were, but I loved them instantly, and when I say they loved me, I just had to figure out what was the situation.

Turns out, my dad raised them. They were his girlfriends children, but they honored him like he was the man! In that house, my dad was like the king … sure, they tried to over throw him a couple of times, as did I, but he always came out on top. I hung around till the next morning, then again till the next morning, then again and again, and next thing you know, I’m on my way out for coffee and he says, “You know ‘Little One’, seems like you always been here.” I just smiled really hard. Six months had flown by and I was having the time of my life.

My dad was a different kind of smart. His smartness was so smart, he would say something or respond to something and it would leave you stuck on stupid for up to 17 seconds while your brain processes and registers what he meant. Meanwhile, he’d be sitting there with that smirk, watching through you as if he was watching your brain trying to figure itself out because the moment it does, the moment all of the wheels start moving in the direction of his riddle, he’d let out a boisterous laugh! Laughing from the gut, it take him forever to choke out this one sentence, “Hey! Hey! Hey ‘Little One’!” By now he’d be dying with laughter, “I didn’t write that!” He had some kind of inside joke with himself, that tickled him silly. I could still hear him laughing at me, laughing at his girlfriend and her kids, his friends, everyone, he would get this joke off on. “I didn’t, I didn’t write that!” Laughing so hard, sometimes a tear would drop.

One day, we were debating back and forth. I was getting tired of him laughing at me, talking in riddles, always having these really genius answers but claiming he got them from somewhere else. The smirk, I was sick of it! If he got all of these mind-blowing “jewels” from another source, refined enough to smirk confidently, then I knew it was obtainable for me too. I wanted a smirk, so I could do to others what he has done to me. When I saw the smirk starting to build, I felt my blood begin to boil. A year and some change later, he was still on top using references from an unnamed source. “Hey ‘Little One’! Hey, I didn’t write that!” I’d had enough!

“Well who’s writing this stuff then Daddy?!” I was being very demanding and serious, but the seriousness of it was overshadowed by me no longer believing he had a secret source of knowledge. “Did one person write this? Or is this just a collaboration of things that you have read? Where do you get these ideas from, Daddy?!”

“The Bible.”