Dirty Rotten Liar

 

 

Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless
(with Kiki Swinson)

 

Maneater
(with Mary B. Morrison)

Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

Thank you to the Father above for super-charging my pen and blessing me with a creative mind. Big thanks go out to Black, Reem, Missy, Jay, Ree, Man, and my entire crew for keeping the train running smoothly on the tracks. Much lub to my UETBC fam and all my loyal readers and friends for riding the train every time it rolls into the station. Lub y'all! Muahhhh!

 

Noire

This here ain't no romance;
It's an urban erotic tale
Mink is out for moolah
And she's straight-up raising hell
But Dy-Nasty's greedy ass is throwing salt up in the game,
Double-crossin' tricksters like she just don't have no shame!
Sneaky little tongues,
Forked and slithering like a snake
Puttin' in mad work as they try to get that cake!
Someone's telling lies
Knowing damn well they ain't true
Is it low-down dirty Dy-Nasty?
Or rotten Mink LaRue?

W
atching your mama take her last breath was a hurtin'-ass thang.

Especially when you had a mannish hater flappin' her gums in your ear and talking trash right over her dead body!

It had all happened so fast. One minute I was chillin' down in Texas tryna pull off the flimflam of a lifetime with Uncle Suge, Bunni, and a skanky chickenhead from Philly named Dy-Nasty, and the next thing I knew, Bunni's brother Peaches was on the phone telling me my mama was about to die!

“The nursing home called and said your mama had a stroke,” Peaches had said. “I'm sorry, sweetie, but they don't think she's gonna make it.”

With those words swirling around in my head I busted straight up in the Dominion mansion and lied my ass off! I told them rich fools that my boss had just caught a stray bullet in a kick-door robbery, and then I hopped my ass on the first thing smoking back to New York City to see about my sick mama!

I made it up to the hospital just in time to catch the last few minutes of Jude Jackson's life, and I almost blacked out from grief as I stood beside her bed feeling helpless as hell as Mama pursed her twisted lips and reached out to me with her crooked hands like she was tryna tell me her deepest, darkest secret. “
Shhhlll . . . Shhhlll . . . Shhhlll . . .
” she had squinted up at me and gasped. “
Shhhlll . . . Shhhlll . . . Shhhlll . . .
”

I tried my best to make out what she was tryna say, but Mama died before she could spit it out. And now, as I stood next to her body shaking with grief, my bald-headed aunt Bibby clocked me with some wild shit that dropped me right down to my knees!

“There was two of y'all, you know. Somewhere out there in the world you got yourself a sister, Mink, 'cause you was a twin.”

My head jerked up in surprise as I squatted down with my ass touching the floor.

“C-c-come again?”

“You heard me,” Aunt Bibby snapped. “Ain't nobody stutter! Your mama shoulda been woman enough to tell you the truth straight from the jump!”

“You dirty bitch!” I spit real softly as tears ran from my eyes. Mama's spirit hadn't even left the room yet and this box-shaped bitch was already hatin'! “How the hell you sound talking bad about my mama?”

“How the hell I said it?”

My aunt put her hands on her stud hips and stared me down. She was grilling me with a killer look, but I could tell she wasn't really tryna cut me with no slick talk the way she was known for doing bitches out on the street.

“You're a twin, Mink. You can believe it baby, because it's true.”

I wiped my eyes and then smirked at her real shitty-like. Uh-huh. I knew what time it was. Aunt Bibby used to fuck with duji real bad back in the day, and her ass musta been playing with the needle again.

“See there,” I told her. “You need to stop shootin' that dog food in ya veins, cause with all that bullshit you talking you
must
be high.”

“Ain't nobody getting high and ain't nobody bullshittin' neither, Mink! My brother Moe had
two
daughters, baby. And like I said, you got you a twin!”

I stared down at my mother's still body.

Me? A
twin
?

That shit was impossible!

But then . . .

That guttersnipe's name exploded in my brain and my heart skipped about five beats! I looked at Aunt Bibby again and all of a sudden the room got real hot and my head started buzzing. I couldn't hardly get no air in my lungs. I tried to say something but it felt like glass splinters were sticking me all in my throat.

All I could think was,
What if that Philly heffa was my goddamn sister?

I could feel the possibility of it all down in my bones, but I damn sure didn't wanna believe it.
That trifling trick could actually be my fuckin' sister!

“Uh-uh.” I shook my head and slung snot everywhere. “You's a liar, Aunt Bibby!” I moaned as I keeled forward and hit my knees, ready to deny that shit with my last breath. “You ain't nothing but a big-ass bald-headed
liar
!”

“Mink!” Aunt Bibby barked in her jailhouse voice. “Why don't you stand up and face the truth for once in ya life! Everybody in this
room
is a goddamn liar! But the biggest liar of us all”—Aunt Bibby pointed down at the body in the bed—“was your
mama
! Jude Jackson wasn't nothin' but a
lying sack a' shit
!”

Her eyes flashed and Aunt Bibby crossed her muscled-up sailor-looking arms over her tatted-up titties and grilled me. “Now, there! I done said what the fuck I had to say, and I ain't taking none of it back neither!”

I stared at her mannish ass with my nostrils flaring like a racehorse. I wanted to
bite
that bitch! I wanted to shove my fist down her throat and make her choke on her lying-ass tongue!

But instead I stayed right there crouched down on my knees as my aunt continued to lay the cold, naked truth on me.

“Now, don't get me wrong,” Aunt Bibby said quietly. “I loved me some Jude, but that heffa didn't have a truth-bone in her whole damn body! Why you think she drove her car into that goddamn river with you sitting right there in the front seat next to her, Mink? Huh? Why you
think
, stupid girl? Not even the lowest, raggediest, black-hearted
trash-ass
mama does no crazy shit like that!”

I grilled Aunt Bibby through a watery haze of tears. Oh for true, for true, I was 'bout to clock this big beefy bitch! Just wear her ass
out
for calling my dead mama outta her name! But before I could come up off my knees Aunt Bibby nailed me with another gut shot when she opened her big mouth and said, “And while ya bullshittin', Jude didn't even give birth to y'all right there in Harlem Hospital like she said, neither.”

“What?” I squeaked. “How you know? How the hell you know something like that?”

“ 'Cause Jude
told
me!” Aunt Bibby barked. And then she glanced over at my scandalous-ass, welfare-queen grandmother, who sat in the corner styling her stolen Gucci gear with her long pretty legs crossed all proper.

“Tell her, Mama. Tell Mink the goddamn truth!”

My grandmother wagged her leg and nodded. She twisted up her lips like she was still twenty-five and fine and said, “Bibby's tellin' it right, Mink. You got a twin sister, baby. You was about three years old when Jude first brought you around here. She told everybody she went down south and had twins and put one up for adoption. So I guess you do got yourself a sister out there somewhere in the world, baby. I just wish Jude woulda told you how to find her before she drove off in all that cold water and fucked herself up!”

I was freezing inside. All the way down to my trembling bones. All I wanted to do was go somewhere where I could get warm and block out the pain and the noise, but no matter how hard I igged her, my best friend Bunni Baines just wouldn't leave me the hell alone.

Instead of flossin' fly and fancy in a big mansion down in Dallas, Texas, me and Bunni were right back home in the gritty town of Harlem. I was laying on my little cot in her bedroom with my face turned toward the wall and my eyelids squeezed tight. I was sniffling into a boogered-up snot rag I had pressed up against my stuffy nose, and the top of my head was banging like a drum. My breath felt hot and stank as I breathed through my mouth, and my bottom lip trembled as I slobbered and cried into my pillow.

“C'mon now, Mink,” Bunni begged me for the two millionth time. “You gots to get up outta this bed, boo! You gotta get your ass
up
.”

I shrugged her off, wishing she would just leave me the hell alone. Bunni was barking about how I needed to get my shit together and get back on my game, but I kept tryna tell her I didn't have no fight left in me. It was gone. All the grime, all the hustle, and every drop of my love for the con game.
Poof
. It was all gone.

“Madame Mink,” Peaches jumped in with his deep, baritone voice. “Me and Bunni know what you going through right now, baby. But the funeral is gonna be starting in an hour, darling! Now, I'ma need you to get up out that bed and get yourself dressed, sugar, and ready to roll!”

I laid there and igged the hell outta Peaches too.

Shoot, I wasn't thinkin' about him, and I wasn't thinkin' about Bunni, and I damn sure wasn't thinkin' about going to Mama's funeral neither!

Bunni sighed real loud, then crawled underneath my blanket and snuggled up behind me like she used to do when we was kids. She wrapped her arms around me and spooned me, rocking me back and forth as she tried her best to convince me that I needed to stand up on my feet and face what was left of my shitty little life.

And it was definitely shitty too. Just when I thought I was at the top of my game and everything flowing through my hood was damn good, I'd been blasted with a major shot to the gut that took my feet out from under me and sat me right down on my plump apple ass.

“It's been a whole damn week, Mink,” Bunni said from behind me, “and, girlfriend, you ain't put enough food in your stomach to feed a fly! Hmph. You ain't combed your hair or brushed your teef.” She backed off of me a lil bit. “And you ain't took a damn bath neither!”

I still didn't say shit. I just laid there in igg mode.

“I don't know why you be listening to that old crazy-ass Bibby
anyway
.” Peaches jumped back in with a whole lotta bass in his voice this time. “Jude was your
mama
. And no matter
what
the hell she did, or how she did it, she was still your
mama
!”

“Jude was a
liar
!” I screamed into my pillow. My whole chest ached from Mama's lies and her low-down betrayal. “She was a goddamn
liar
!”

“Ermmm herrrm,” Peaches said agreeably, and even without looking at him I could tell his lips was twisted.

“Yeah, that's right. She was a liar. But so are
you
, Madame Mink! Lying is what schemers like us
do
! So get your ass up outta that bed so we can get down to that funeral home and make sure they send your lying-ass mama off right!”

Deep in my heart I knew I had to go pay my last respects to the woman who had given birth to me but I still didn't wanna move.

So I laid there on my shaky lil cot in Bunni's junky room and thought about the next moves I was gonna make in my life. I had always been the type of slick, carefree diva who flounced around flossin' like everything in my life was all Hennessy and weed, but for the first time in a real long time I was forced to take a real good look down the gutter road that I had traveled. I
made
myself remember all the shit I had tried to erase from my mind. All the shit that I had been running from for so many years. The kind of shit that had been way too painful for a thirteen-year-old girl to live with, so she had fought like hell to forget it.