Dirty DNA (G Street Chronicles Presents) (27 page)

I wiggled every way I could, trying not to
fall over in the chair I was bound to. It was useless. I wasn’t
getting out of those restraints. I was panicking. I could hear the
footsteps above me moving around again, they sounded like they were
getting closer. A door opened, and I heard heels clinking down what
sounded like wooden steps. The person was approaching from behind,
so I could not see who it was. I tensed up knowing that whoever it
was meant me no good. I know it was her. She had found me. I tried
to strain my neck to see who it was. A mixture of curiosity and
fear washed over me. I wanted to know who she was. I also wanted
whoever it was to let me live.

The mystery woman stopped inches behind me.
Her presence, coupled with my vulnerability; made the hair on the
back of my neck stand up. I could smell her perfume. It was
familiar. I couldn’t quite place it, but I knew the scent.

“Who are you?” I asked in a weak tone.
“Look, if it is money you want, you can have it all. Just don’t
hurt me!” I pleaded.

Nothing. She didn’t respond. Instead I could
hear her walk away to the far corner of the room. The light came on
and I blinked trying to focus on anything. I was looking to see if
I could recognize where I was. I saw what had been crawling around
by my ankles and feet. It was rats. They scattered all about when
the lights were turned on. I wish I were with them. I wish I could
run and hide with them.

The fresh tears formed at the corners of my
eyes. I started to babble. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m pregnant!” I
cried. I heard the heels come up behind me fast. She grabbed my
hair and yanked my head backwards.

“I don’t give a fuck about you or that bitch
ass baby of yours.” She laughed.

I couldn’t believe whose voice I was
hearing. It was NiQue.

She had twisted my hair into her fist. She
yanked me backwards, harder this time. We were eye to eye for the
first time. I could see the hatred in her eyes. I knew she was mad,
but I didn’t think she was mad enough to go as far as she was
going.

“NiQue, I know we haven’t been ourselves
lately. We can work this shit out.” I tried to reason.

She let my hair go and walked in front of
me. She didn’t look at me, she stared through me. “I have never
been myself YaYa.” Her face was blank. She looked crazed. I didn’t
know what the fuck she was talking about.

“That’s the problem, I don’t know who the
fuck I am. For years I thought I was NiQue. Then I found out that
was far from the truth.” She blinked as if she were trying to get a
grip on reality. “It is amazing how relaxed people are when they
think their skeletons are hidden deep in the closet. Until…someone
uncovers a few bones.” She said.

“What bones? NiQue we talk about
everything?” I was trying to talk her off of the deep end. I didn’t
know what planet she was visiting, but it damn sure wasn’t
Earth.

“You are used to getting whatever you want.
Whatever nigga, whatever car, and whatever YaYa wants…she gets!”
She suddenly screamed. “Now, I am gonna get what I want.” Her voice
had returned to that airy spacey sounding tone.

“NiQue, I don’t know what is wrong with you,
but if this is about Dread, you can have him. Ain’t no nigga worth
this shit. I thought we vowed never to let a nigga come between
us.” I said boldly hoping that she would let me go.

She turned her back to me
and began laughing. “You are so fucking stupid YaSheema! This has
nothing to do with you giving him to me, although, I will have him
when I am through with you.” She said wickedly. She turned around
and she was holding a box cutter. I was praying that she was going
to use it to free me from my restraints. I had feeling that she had
other plans though. Her eyes had gone back to the wild-eyed,
glazed-over, drugged-up look from before. She was there, but she
wasn’t
all there
mentally. I couldn’t help but think that the drugs she had
been shoveling into her system over the years had finally fucked
her up.

“Look NiQue, whatever you’re mad about, we
can work this shit out.” I said, never taking my eyes off of the
box cutter in her hands.

“I want to tell you a little story.” NiQue
said.

She backed up from me and retrieved a chair
from the far left corner of the dank basement. She pulled the chair
along with her until it was positioned right in front of me. She
retracted the blade on the box cutter and let it fall in her lap. I
started to calm down a bit when she put her weapon down, but I was
still on edge because she still had the upper hand. She started
doing that stare through me thing again and I knew NiQue had left
the building. At least mentally.

“Once upon a time there was a little girl
named NiQue” She started. Her voice had changed to that of a little
girl. I couldn’t believe the bitch was as crazy as she was. Her
eyes were red and they were fixated on me. I got the feeling she
was looking through instead of at me. She was actually going to sit
there and tell me a story. I sat quietly though, because I wasn’t
sure how crazy NiQue really was. She might really try and harm me.
I kept my eyes on the box cutter in her lap and tried to pay
attention to what she was trying to say to me.

“ShaNiqua grew up with her brother in
Northeast, DC. Her brother took care of her as best as he could,
until one day NiQue found out that her brother wasn’t her brother.
She was supposed to be out shopping with her best friend, but
instead she had stayed home. Unknown to NiQue’s brother, NiQue was
in her room with her ear pressed to the vent listening to a very
important conversation. This was her way of learning all that she
could about her brother’s business ties, by spying on his
conversations.

It was a conversation about money. There was
nothing abnormal about that since that NiQue had heard her brother
argue about who owed him cash on more than one occasion. But that
time was different though. The conversation ShaNiqua’s brother was
having was more about blackmail. He knew something, and the person
he was talking to did not want anyone else knowing the information
her brother was aware of. Needless to say, no one knew NiQue heard
the conversation until many moons later.

Because of her eavesdropping, NiQue found
out that her brother was not her brother ,but a paid imposter. He
had no blood ties to NiQue at all. She also found out that the
stories he had told her growing up about her mother and father were
untrue. Just a fabrication from a paid imposter. She learned many
things that day with her ear pressed firmly against that vent. She
learned that her whole fucking life was a lie!

NiQue held in what she had learned for a
very long time, not wanting it to be the truth. She held on to the
things she heard until one day while having an argument with her
“brother” she snapped. She told him that she knew he was not her
real brother and that he was paid to be her babysitter and the
keeper of the truth.

At first her brother denied it, but NiQue
let him know that her real father was rich beyond her imagination,
that she had heard the argument about money, and that there was
nothing he could do to stop her from confronting her Dad about what
she had found out. Well, to make a long story short, she confronted
her father and he rejected her. He denied all of the questions she
asked. This enraged NiQue and it made her angry and spiteful. She
wanted to know why her father could love one of his children but
not the other.

NiQue harbored ill feelings for the man who
helped give her life. She dug up as much information as she could
on who she was, and low and behold she found out not only did she
have a sister, but a brother too. YaYa, do you see where I am going
with this?” She asked cutting her story short. She looked at me
trying to see if I was following the story.

My mouth was wide open. I
knew what she was saying even though she had not said it yet. She
was
Pajay
. I was
too stunned to speak. I just nodded my head up and down. I didn’t
want to do anything that might cause her to attack.

“You see Daddy dearest knocked your gutter
ass mother up and mine too. He decided since Christa beat my mother
to the punch with telling him that she was pregnant he would keep
her junkie ass instead. He dropped my mother like she was nothing
and continued to cater to Christa. Apparently, after I was born my
mother could not handle the pressures of raising a baby on her own.
She left me on my father’s doorstep and from what I could find out
she killed herself. She was already ashamed for getting knocked up
by her sister’s man! She couldn’t handle the rejection.

Instead of him raising me as his child, he
paid one of his goons to play Daddy. They set it up that his goon
would act as my brother and take care of me as long as Daddy paid
the bills and made sure I didn’t need anything. What Daddy didn’t
know is that my “so called” big brother had a thing for young
virginal pussy. He raped and molested me every chance he got, which
was often, because he was all I knew and all I had. He would
threaten me and tell me things like, Child Protective Service would
take me away and that bad things would happen to me if I told
anyone what he was doing to me.

I kept it all to myself, afraid that I would
lose my brother. The only family I thought I had, not knowing that
he wasn’t my brother at all. He was just a paid child molester
employed by my father to keep me out of his hair while he played
Daddy to you. Then I heard that conversation, the one that changed
everything. I was disgusted that my father didn’t want me. He left
me. He let a grown ass man rape me over and over so he could make
his precious YaYa comfortable, while he left me in hell to fend for
myself.”

I could not believe any of the shit I was
hearing. She had to be making that shit up. There was no way that
Daddy would leave his children out there by themselves. It just
didn’t make any sense. I finally responded to her version of
events.

“There is no way Daddy would have left one
of his children behind like that. I don’t believe you NiQue!” I
said.

She began to laugh hysterically. “What do
you mean he wouldn’t do it? What do you think he did to Neko? He
knew about him. He never tried to even take him off the streets. He
just let Christa ruin the boy. He didn’t give a fuck about Neko or
me! All he cared about was your ass.” She said getting heated all
over again.

I wasn’t trying to upset her, but it was a
lot to take in. I was trying to make sense of it all and that was
like finding a needle in a haystack. The key players weren’t around
to question about the moves they had made. They were all dead.
NiQue stood up and took a few steps closer to me. She held the box
cutter in her hands. The blade was still retracted.

“You see, Daddy never anticipated me finding
out about his lies and betrayal. He just thought that he could keep
paying my “brother” to raise me and all would be fine. He didn’t
think I would figure out that it was a lie. After the conversation
he and Mike had about getting more money to keep Daddy’s dirty
secret, I waited until Mike left out of the house and went through
all of his shit.

I went through everything I could get my
hands on to see if there was anything left behind who I really was.
Then I found it. I found my birth certificate listing Darnell
Clayton as the father and Donna Reynolds as the mother to one baby
girl born on November 17,1986. I knew it was mine because they
never switched up my birth date. They just changed my name to
ShaniQua Watkins to match Mike’s last name. My mother had named me
Pajay Clayton.”

I was trembling in my chair. I was trying to
wrap my mind around all of the information NiQue was laying on me.
Not only had Daddy hidden Neko from me, he was sleeping with
Christa’s baby sister, Donna. That was the reason he had hidden
NiQue. Not because he didn’t want her, but because of the affair he
was having with Momma’s sister. My head was spinning. I couldn’t
believe that because of the generational mistakes our parents had
made, my unborn child and I were the ones who were paying for it. I
was floored at all of the things she was telling me. My head was
swimming. I was confused. I didn’t even know what to call her.

“NiQue, did you kill Daddy and did you say,
‘Donna Reynolds’ as in my mother’s sister?” I asked her wanting
clarification.

She laughed a psychotic laugh. “But of
course I killed his trifling ass! He had to go! When I confronted
him, he pushed me away and told me he would kill me if I told
anyone about his infidelities. So, like any Clayton, it was kill or
be killed. He had to go! You had already done me the favor of
getting rid of that whore of a mother of yours. I actually owe you
one for that. I didn’t even have to get my hands dirty fucking with
her.”

She was walking around the chair in a circle
like a mad dog. “Just so you know, your shit is fucked up too. Your
father was fucking your aunt and your mother. I am your sister and
your cousin!” She laughed. She was getting a kick out of making me
sick.

I just sat dumfounded. There was nothing
else I could do. My stomach started to turn. She was going to kill
me and there was nothing I could do to stop her. She had the upper
hand. My mind thought back to all the times we went out and did our
dirt. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I had slept with that
crazy bitch! I had actually laid down with her and we had had sex!
I had fucked my own sister!

“NiQue, did you know all of this before we
slept together? I mean, did you know we shared a father before we
had sex?” I questioned.

She continued to walk around my chair in
circles laughing. “Of course I knew you were my sister by then. I
just wanted to see how you would treat me afterwards. I wanted you
to accept me. I knew you got down with girls from time to time.
Hell, you told me yourself that you and Corrine had done the nasty.
I just wanted to know if you could accept and love me the way I
wanted to be loved. All I wanted was my family to love me and treat
me the way I was supposed to be treated.”