Dirty DNA (G Street Chronicles Presents) (21 page)

“You sneaky bitch!” I yelled as I jumped on
her, reigning blow after blow. She fought back wildly. Dread tried
to separate us, but I guess we proved to be too much for him and we
got around him. I shoved NiQue to the floor and sat on her,
delivering punch after punch like we were never friends. The only
thing that saved her no good ass was Dread pulling me off of her
and dragging me out the front door.

“What the fuck is this shit you are trying
to pull YaSheema?” He said through clenched teeth.

“I thought I told you to stay away from me.
I ain’t want no parts of whatever shit you are twisted up in.”

He let me go and pushed me towards the steps
leading to the front entrance of his building. Tears began to
stream down my battered cheeks. I walked down the steps defeated. I
turned to try and fix it with Dread. I tried to say what my heart
had been leading me to say all along. I wanted to tell him the
truth about what was going on, and I wanted to tell him I was
falling in love with him. Before I could open my mouth, I saw NiQue
standing behind him with a smile plastered across her bruised red
face, and it made me re-think what I was about to say.

She was gonna be dealt with. It was war
between her and me at that point. There was no use in fighting a
battle with her right there when it was clear I wouldn’t be the
winner. She and I were going to face off eventually for her
betrayal, my betrayal, and a lot of other things in between.

People started to open their doors to see
what all the commotion in the hallway had been about. Before I had
to face their questionable stares, I left. The only good thing that
had come from my trip to visit Dread, was knowing that Neko hadn’t
been with NiQue finding out his sister really wasn’t shit. I
straightened out my clothes and got in the car. I looked in the
rear view mirror at my reflection and couldn’t believe that NiQue
and I had let our friendship turn so ugly. We were fighting like
niggas in the street. I was sick of the life I was leading. I was
tired of running from an invisible ghost. Too much happened to go
back. So it was time to eliminate all of the problems in a whole. I
would just go, but not before closing up all my loose ends. I
started my car, backed out of the space, and headed back to the
place it had all begun. I headed home.

I sped up 395 trying to calm my nerves not
knowing what would be waiting for me. I rolled through the streets
of DC until I got into Georgetown and slowed only because the
police in this district didn’t take to kindly to uppity black
folks. I moved in and out of traffic and through back streets until
I reached my home. It looked cold and uninviting. It didn’t look
like the place where I had made so many memories; good and bad. I
pulled up into the driveway and couldn’t help but notice the yellow
police tape by the garage. I tried to shake the nagging feeling
that I should not be there out of my mind, and shut down my engine.
I walked up the drive and for a moment I swear I could hear nothing
but the gravel crunching beneath my feet. My hands were sweaty as I
moved up the walkway.

I opened the front door and the pain flooded
my heart. It was the second time that day that my heart had been
abused. I looked through the empty foyer and saw my childhood. I
saw me as a child rushing down the steps to greet my father when he
would come home. I saw visions of us as a family, gathering our
things to head out to have daddy-daughter time. The visions would
not stop flowing through my mind like a raging river.

My mind was trying to process all of the
memories that were flowing through it. I saw my mother invade my
memories. It was the time before she really let the drugs take over
her. She was beautiful, and her grey eyes sparkled. She truly
looked like she was happy. She looked like she loved her life. In
that instant, I saw her and my father embrace as if they were in
love.

I shook my head trying to clear the memories
from my mind. It was too late to try and get the past back. They
were both gone. For the first time, I regretted killing my mother.
I wished she could have been the mother I needed, the mother I
wished she could be. I wanted her to love me more than she loved
crack. I wanted her to put me first like a real mother should.
Other children had their mothers to be there during their first day
of school, when they started to like boys, to celebrate Mother’s
Day and birthdays. I wanted that. My father tried to give me
whatever I wanted, but he could never give me a mother. He could
never give me that normalcy I so longed for.

It was true that I had any and everything I
could have wished for material wise, but I secretly longed for a
real stable family with bonds that could not be broken. I didn’t
ask for drugs, money, murder and mayhem. I never asked for any of
the shit I was dealt. My father bred me to want those things that
had hurt so many. He taught me chaos. That was all he knew. He
didn’t know his teachings were going to be his downfall and the
downfall of all the ones he loved so dearly.

The fresh hot tears streamed down my face. I
was lost in a world I had not wanted. I didn’t want my father to
grow to hate my mother; and because he did, I did also. I wished
that I could forgive her. Instead I had followed his lead and hated
her for what she had become. Instead of helping her through her
addiction, he threw her out of not only our home, but out of my
life.

I braced myself against the banister leading
up the stairway. I was feeling so lost in a place that should have
been so familiar. Being in my father’s tomb, my home was
overwhelming. The more I tried to fight the demons surfacing, the
more I was faced with them.

Flashes of the day I reunited with my mother
were so bittersweet. I had dreamed of that day all my young life.
Silly as it may have seemed looking back, I longed for my mother to
come home to us clean and sober and ready to be a mother. Instead I
got her back more strung out than ever, and ready to take away the
only thing she gave me that appeared to be a gift; my brother Neko.
She had brought him to us and then wanted to take him from me and I
hated her for it. It was like she was on some get back shit. I had
taken her place as the woman in my father’s life, and she would
take away the one thing I wanted more than ever, a semi-normal
family.

I shook off the visions and walked up the
stairs towards my room. I stopped in my tracks when I heard noises
coming from Neko’s room. I slipped my hand in my purse and pulled
Chase out of it. I pressed my back against the wall of the hallway
and moved silently. I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew no one
should have been in my house.

Once I reached Neko’s room I mustered up all
the courage I could find and pushed the door open. I froze in
horror watching my father’s most loyal employees rummaging through
our shit. They were bagging up anything they could find valuable. I
reacted to the betrayal and let off round after round into the two
men’s bodies. I didn’t need to ask questions. There was no honor
among thieves. They surely would have taken me out to steal from
me. They knew Oscar was out of commission and they also knew that I
was supposed to be held up in a hotel under the careful watch of
Epps. They must have never suspected that I would return home, and
even if I had returned they would have been long gone with anything
that wasn’t nailed down.

Jew Jew, the bigger of the two men I had
just shot was still moving on the floor. I stood over him. I am
sure he could see the anger and hurt in my eyes. “Jew Jew, why
would you steal from us? Who sent you here to take from my family?
You ain’t smart enough to come up with this shit on your own.”

He laughed and coughed blood. “Bitch, where
you are going you ain’t gonna need none of this shit anyway. We
don’t work for you. We worked for your father not you.” He groaned.
I kicked him viciously in his side with my
Red Bottoms
.

“Why would you steal from me? What were you
looking for in my brother’s room? You might as well tell me because
you are going to die either way! You might as well die with a clean
conscious.” I laughed as the insanity of everything had gripped me
and wouldn’t let me go.

“Bitch, I ain’t no snitch, so you might as
well kill me and figure that shit out on your own ‘cause I ain’t
telling you shit.” He muttered.

I kicked him violently in the spot where I
saw the blood flowing from his wound. He groaned and tried to laugh
as though it didn’t faze him that he was going to meet his maker.
The poor bastard had the nerve to recite Psalm 23:4.

“Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for
thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence
of mine enemies: thou anointest
 
my head with oil; my cup
runneth over.
 
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
forever.”

I had had enough of him
preparing to die and I surely wanted him to rot in hell. I didn’t
want him to repent for his sins in enough time to make it to
heaven. He needed to burn and I was gonna make sure he was going to
do just that. I laughed, being that the whole scene was hilarious
to me. A big ass goon was now bleeding to death on my floor and
praying for his salvation. At least he knew the end was near.
Before I could even deliver another blow to his wounded abdomen he
tried to speak. I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

“Speak up you piece of
shit!” I yelled. I was furious.

“Bitch, you are going to
die and if she gets her way, you will join me in Hell real
soon!”

I stepped up to Jew Jew’s
massive body and placed the stiletto of my
Red Bottoms
right in the wound that
was gushing so much blood. I was sure he was going to die of blood
loss at any moment.

“Arggghhh!” He screamed as
I pushed the bullet further into his body causing him to gasp. I
had to admire the fact that he didn’t – not once during the whole
ordeal – beg for his life. He simply prayed and talked shit waiting
for me to finish him off. Now that is the heart of a real killer
and the essence of a real goon! I almost admired the scum bag piece
of shit. He had a lot of balls. I guess that is why my father
employed him for the past ten years. I stopped thinking of what he
had said. I looked down at him again. His eyes were rolling to the
back of his head. I kicked him again.

“Oh no you piece of shit.
You ain’t gonna die just yet.” He convulsed and his eyes opened
wide like a deer caught in headlights. “What did you mean by, “If
‘she’ gets her way? Who the fuck is, she?’” I quizzed.

He laughed again; this
time it was weak and I knew I was losing time. His life was almost
finished and I feared he would never tell me what I needed and
wanted to know. Obviously he knew who was trying to hurt me and my
family; and apparently it was a ‘she.’ I aimed my gun right at his
temple.

“I was going to leave it
so you could have an open casket funeral, but now I ain’t so sure
they are going to even be able to identify your remains when I am
finished fucking talk!” I screamed.

He started talking in
circles. “Keep ya friends close and your enemies closer. Everything
ain’t always what they seem.” He whispered and just like that, he
was gone.

I was so furious that he
didn’t tell me who was after me, that I emptied the rest of the
clip from my gun into his dome; splattering brain matter and bone
fragments all over the place. I pulled the trigger until the gun
just clicked letting me know the cartridge was empty. The clicking
sound brought me back to reality; letting me know I needed to get
what I had come for and get the fuck out of there.

I backed out the way I had
come in, and I noticed the other goon, Timmie, was holding
something in his hands that I hadn’t been aware of when I had first
come blasting into the room. I stooped down and pried it from his
dead hands. I couldn’t believe he was trying to steal Neko’s birth
certificate. What the fuck did he want that for? I looked over the
document trying to see why it was so important to whoever was
trying to off my entire family. There was nothing out of place,
until I got to the line where it named the father on the birth
certificate. It said Darnell Clayton. I knew that must be a mistake
because I was Daddy’s only child. Surely Christa would have told
Daddy that he had another child. Especially that it was a boy. I
knew I was Daddy’s pride and joy; but he would have loved to have
had a son. There was no way the birth certificate was
real.

At that moment, I had way
more questions than I had come with. Why hadn’t Neko told me that
he knew Daddy was his father? Why hadn’t anybody told me that Neko
and I shared both mother and father? Most of all who the fuck was
walking around that knew all of that shit? I started to let wild
thoughts consume my head. Maybe Christa wasn’t dead and was making
sure she got me back once and for all. I had to find out what the
fuck was going on before I ended up in Saint Elizabeth’s mental
hospital. I was almost ready to check myself in at that
point.

I stuffed the paper in my
purse and walked out of Neko’s room and headed to my own room. I
gathered as much stuff as I could because I knew I would never be
coming back. I made several trips to the car packing the trunk. I
made a trip back to Neko’s room stepping over the bodies that lay
dead on the crimson carpet that was white at one time. I grabbed
anything that looked important to him and shoved it into a luggage
bag. Exiting his room again, I saw a picture of Christa on his
nightstand. She was smiling, like she knew I was slowly going crazy
and she was enjoying it.