Sexy Little Liar

by Noire

“I’m good, baby. Chillin’. But Pops ain’t doing so hot,” Dane said. “He got real sick again right after you left town. It’s been pretty touch and go with him ever since then, but the hospital called this morning and said he just took a big turn for the worst and he definitely won’t be running the company anymore. Hell, he can’t even communicate with us no more. The whole family is about to hop on the jet and get down to Houston, and I just thought you should know.”

  “Oh my goodness,” I said forcing a rush of fake sympathy into my voice. I didn’t give a damn about Viceroy Dominion! That rich old man scared the shit outta me with his one-eye self. Viceroy had been drifting in and out of a coma for months now, and when I had visited him in the hospital with my play-mother Selah, I felt like that old hustler had put his one good eye on me and seen right through my pretty smile and straight into the heart of my devious grind.

  “I’m real sorry to hear that,” I told Dane. “How’s your mo—” I clamped my teeth down on my stupid tongue. “I mean, how’s Mama Selah doing? Is she holding up okay? I been meaning to call her and stuff . . .”

  “Mama’s hanging in there. You know how she is. Always trying to make things work out for the best. But I’m telling you, Mink. You might wanna think about coming back down here real quick. The shit is about to hit the fan, baby. Barron is tryna make some real grimy power moves. He’s about to call a board meeting so he can take over Dominion Oil. And you know what that means.”

  “Uh-uh, Dane.” I shook my head. I didn’t understand none of that oil board stuff and I didn’t want to. If it didn’t involve some money greasing up my pockets then it didn’t have shit to do with me, and I didn’t wanna have shit to do with it neither. “You know I love me some Uncle Suge,” I told Dane, “and you’s a real chill nigga too. But I can’t come back down there right now. It ain’t nothin’ personal, but Texas just ain’t my bag.”

  Shit, Texas was way too damn hot, and for a New York City slicksta like me Dallas was way too slow. What I really wanted to tell Dane’s ass was that the only way those Dominions was getting me back down there is if they were willing to drop another hundred grand in my bank account so I could pay Gutta off and save my damn life.

  “Oh, so Texas ain’t your bag?” Dane asked with a chuckle. “Not even if it means you’ll get Sable’s share of our multimillion-dollar trust fund?”

  Cha-ching! My eyeballs had mad dollar signs stamped on them as they rolled around like little pinballs in my head.

  “You mean that trust fund thing is back on the table?” I blurted out. “That’s the three-hunnerd-grand hustle, right? I thought y’all said we had to wait until your father was dead and buried before we could get our hands on some of that?”

  “Pops has to be dead or declared permanently incapacitated, and that’s why Barron is calling for a meeting. Pops is sliding and sliding fast. If his doctors say he can’t understand what’s going on around him, or he can’t think straight enough to handle his own affairs, then our trust fund gets activated and Barron steps in and takes over the company.”

  “Barron?” I twisted my lips. I couldn’t stand his ass! “Why does he always get to make all the damn decisions?”

  “Because,” Dane said simply. “He’s the oldest. He knows the oil bizz better than everybody else besides my father, and he’s gonna do everything in his power to make sure we don’t lose a dime of what Pops worked so hard to build.”

  “Well ain’t no need in me coming, then,” I told him in a huff. “Because there ain’t no way in hell your brother is gonna give up a dime when it comes down to me.”

  “He doesn’t have to give it up, Mink. You’re already entitled to it. You passed a DNA test, remember? That trust fund belongs to every last one of us, and that includes you. But the way Bump is trippin’ we all might get fucked. We might not see a dime of that money if he gets in there and convinces the board to let him change the trust’s terms. Barron has all of Pop’s old friends in his pocket, and believe me, he’s gonna try to short us. Me and Uncle Suge got a few things on the burner, though. We’re tryna to stack us a heavy team so we can vote against Barron and make sure he doesn’t fuck us outta our money.”

  “So what do y’all need me to do?”

  “We need you to vote with us, Mink. We’re about to get Jock and a few other board members on our side. But we need your vote too, nah’mean?”

  I was trying real hard to understand. “And all this voting stuff is so we can get that three hunnerd grand every year, right?”

  “Damn right,” Dane said. “Every goddamn year. Now you can stay up there in New York and let Bump pocket your share of the family’s cash, or you can bring your ass back down here to Dallas and help me and Uncle Suge get you a slice of that sweet green pie. Either way, you got a decision to make.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Decisions, decisions, decisions!

  Me and Bunni damn near broke our necks tossing shit into our designer suitcases as we beat feet outta Harlem. Once again Peaches had come up outta his bra to give us some money, and as hardheaded as I had been I was almost ashamed to take it. But I did. I bought us the last two seats on a red-eye flight outta JFK that was stopping all over the damn place before it finally landed in Texas, but we didn’t care. We coulda had a layover in West hell someplace, but were gonna have our butts on that flight regardless.

  “Slow the hell down, girl!” I fussed as Bunni stuffed her clothes all down in the corners of her suitcase. “Luggage don’t fly for free no more you know, so we can only take one bag each this time, okay?”

  Bunni stared at me like I was tryna sell her some bad crack. “One bag? Mink how the hell we gonna fit all our stuff into one bag? You got more gear than me, so tell me how the hell we gonna do that?”

  “Easy. All we gotta do is pack real light. We only take the stuff we really, really need.”

  “I don’t know about you and your stuff,” Bunni said as she dragged another suitcase out from under her bed, “but I needs all minez, okay?”

  “Uh-uh, Bunni! We ain’t getting outta no taxicab lugging thirty suitcases behind us like we did the last time we went down there! We’re part of the family now, so let’s roll up in that mansion like we got some sense this time. Whatever we don’t take with us, we can shop for when we get there. Remember, the Dominions got accounts at all the fly malls, and as long as I sign my name on the account we get to buy anything we want, okay?”

  I could tell Bunni wasn’t cool with leaving none of her outfits behind, but she had no choice but to go along with my program. I picked through my stuff and chose only my very best gear to take with me, and I made sure I had the right accessories to match every single stitch too. I packed my wigs in a separate carry-on bag and stuffed about ten pairs of cute summer shoes in there too.

  Peaches had borrowed his friend’s car to take us to the airport, and since our flight wasn’t leaving until late that night and we had plenty of time to kill during the afternoon, I asked him to give me a ride to the nursing home where my mother lived. I couldn’t stand hospitals, and just thinking about going up in one had my head in a bad space. Wasn’t nothing good or glamorous about a place where sick people laid around waiting to die, and visiting my mama here was always a mood buster for me.

  I had ditched all my makeup and I looked real regular as I jumped in the car with Peaches. There was absolutely no designer labels on my ass today. I had on a pair of navy blue sweats and a plain white T-shirt. Instead of my usual six-inch fuck-me pumps, I had slid my feet in a pair of regular old Nikes. I had ditched my Glama-Glo too. There wasn’t no reason to plop no outrageous wig on my head and make my scalp get all sweaty. Instead I styled my own hair, and brushed it down my back in soft shiny curls.

  I had been coming to the nursing home to see Mama for a long time, but no matter how many times I visited I would never get used to seeing her looking so hopeless or helpless. I was only thirteen when my mother got up one morning and drove her car straight into the Hudson River. She had been
trapped in her seat belt under all that cold water, and by the time a bunch of strangers were able to pull her out she had gone without oxygen too long and she suffered some brain damage. My aunts and cousins liked to talk a lotta shit and say Mama had brought her situation down on herself, but I wasn’t tryna hear none of their high-and-mighty project blab. Who the hell was they to judge her, and where the hell was they when she was down in the gutter and coulda used a little help?

  “You straight?” Peaches asked as he stopped the car and let me out near the front door of the rickety old nursing home. “I ain’t gonna have to come in there and put my foot up nobody’s ass, am I?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “Nah,” I said softly. “I’ma be good today.”

  Back in the day I used to raise all kinds of hell every time I went to the nursing home to see my mother. I didn’t give a damn what Jude Jackson had done, or why she had ended up all twisted up in that bed the way she was, she was still my mama and I couldn’t stand to see her being disrespected and ignored by the workers who got paid by the state to take care of her. It used to fuck my heart up to have to pull off her nightgown and change her grown-woman diaper while she cried and looked embarrassed, and the only way I knew to express the helpless rage I was feeling was to get all loud and start a knockdown drag-out fight with one of her attendants.

  But I was past all that useless fighting now. Mama’s care was something that I couldn’t do a damn thing about, and even though I still wrote letters to the state sometimes and I barked on the staff when I needed to, for the most part I had learned to roll with it and hope for the best.

  But there was some different kind of shit waiting for me at the nursing home today, and I got the shock of my life when I came around the corner and walked into Mama’s room.

  “What the . . .” I muttered under my breath as I froze in the doorway. My mother had company. In the eight damn years that she had been laying up in here I could count the number of visitors she’d had on three damn fingers, and when I saw this chick sitting on the side of Mama’s bed and brushing her hair it messed me up and sent hot sauce shooting through my veins.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I spit as the light-skinned woman with the buzzed stud haircut and the plaid dress shirt leaned over Mama and wiped some dribble from the corner of her mouth.

  “Sup, Mink,” my aunt Bibby LaRue said real casually, like me and her had just been hanging out together yesterday. She was my father’s favorite sister, and the last time I’d seen her was four years ago when the cops was dragging her manly ass off to jail. “How you doing, baby?”

  “Don’t worry about how I’m doin’,” I snapped. I knew my moms and Aunt Bibby had been real tight back when I was younger, but after my father died all of that had changed.

  I walked up on her real close. “Why you up in here alone with my mother?”

  She glanced at me. “What you tryna say? Jude is my friend. I can’t come see her?”

  “You ain’t been coming.”

  I was posted up ready to defend my mama with my last damn breath. And I needed to be too, because Aunt Bibby was cutthroat and would pop off on your ass in a Harlem minute. Back in the day she was known to be good with a straight razor. She had carved up plenty niggas on the streets of Manhattan, and right now she looked kinda aggravated, like she was tryna keep herself from getting slick with me. But instead of jumpin’ funky, all Aunt Bibby did was grill me a little bit. Like I was still some kinda child she could whip with an extension cord, or a roach that she could smash with her house shoe.

  I grilled her right back. I wasn’t scared of Aunt Bibby but I didn’t trust her ass neither, and just like the rest of Harlem’s “Bad News LaRues” I didn’t want her hanging around my mother. At least ten of my aunts, uncles, and cousins still lived in a three-bedroom project apartment with my grandmother, and every last one of them grimy fools had blamed my mother for causing my father’s death.

  Aunt Bibby shrugged. “I just got out the joint not too long ago and I wanted to see Jude,” she said. “That’s all.”

  “You wanted to see her for what?”

  Even though my lip was poked out I couldn’t help but notice how much the two of us favored. We had the same light complexion, the same soft hair, the same big smile and the same hazel eyes. It was a LaRue thing. We got our looks from my grandmother, except most of the females in our family were shaped up like wide-bottom Coke bottles, and Aunt Bibby and all the dudes were big and tall and built like battleships.

  “Chill out, little girl.” Aunt Bibby shrugged her man shoulders. “Mama told me Jude be laying up in here by herself all the time. I just figured somebody should come by and check on her.”

  “I don’t know how Granny told you that lie,” I said, swelling up as I stepped to her, “because I’m always up here checking on my mother!” I didn’t give a damn how many niggas Aunt Bibby had carved up on the streets! She didn’t put no fear in my heart and I was ready to get at her mannish ass when it came down to my mom-ski!

  “Oh yeah?” she said like I was just a barking lil pup. “Well that ain’t what I heard.”

  “Well you heard wrong then! My mother don’t need none of y’all to do shit for her! Ain’t none of y’all been coming around to see her, so I don’t know why you all of a sudden coming up in here now.”

  “Like I said, I just got out the joint and I wanted to show some love to Jude,” my aunt said calmly. “I been knowing your mother for a long time, Mink. We was friends long before you showed up on the scene. Me and Jude go way back, and there’s a lotta shit I could hip you to if you wasn’t so damn grown and hardheaded and quick with your goddamn mouth.”

  She looked at me like she wanted to backhand me, and then she shook her ugly bald head. “Shit, I know stuff you would pay good money to find out.”

  I smirked and fronted her off. “You don’t know a damn thing about me, Aunt Bibby. And even if you did, there ain’t nothing I need you or anybody else to tell me about my mother, okay? Y’all turned your backs on us when she had her accident and every last one of y’all tried to blame her for Daddy—”

  “Not me,” Aunt Bibby cut me off with a raised hand. “I ain’t never blamed her for what happened to Big Moe! The only thing I ever blamed Jude for was the crazy shit she was responsible for! And that was for not telling you that—”

  “You blamed her too!” I spit. “I ain’t tryna hear a damn thing you gotta say!”

  “A’ight. That’s cool,” she said and stood up to leave. “I could hit you with some knowledge, but cool. Go ’head and stay blind, deaf, and dumb, Mink.”

  “I already got knowledge!” I hollered. “I got all the knowledge I need!”

  She sucked her teeth at me in stank disgust. “Ig’nant ass!” she hissed. “Y’all lil young bitches today wouldn’t recognize a stick of knowledge if it was ten inches long and had cum shooting out the tip.”

  Tears started rolling down Mama’s face as soon as Aunt Bibby walked outta the room. I felt like shit for arguing over her head like that, but I wasn’t the one who had started it.

  “Hey, Mama. How you feeling today?” I asked, and sat back down next to her. She had her eyes closed tight, but with all that water seeping outta them I knew she wasn’t sleeping. I stared down at those closed eyes and admired my moms. I had the LaRue genes so I was the spitting image of my father, but mama was a real pretty woman too. She had soft hair and clear skin in a deep shade of caramel that was real gorgeous and attractive. Her eyes were big and brown, and back in the day when she used to smile a lot, her bright-white teeth would light up a room.

  I loved my mother all the way to the bone, but no matter how hard I tried, I just didn’t get it. I gazed into the sadness of her face and tried to figure out how deep a nigga’s pocket had to be and how low his dick had to swing to make a woman amp out and do the type of crazy shit that my mama had done.

  Run up on Lenox Avenue and tell your daddy to bring his ass home, Mama used to all the time
tell me. Or, Wait ’til your daddy drives past and tell me which ho he got riding around in my goddamn car.

  I watched all the crazy changes she went through tryna keep up with Big Moe LaRue, and I swore all out I wasn’t never gonna love no man the way my mama had loved my daddy. Fuck all that! Let a nigga get sprung and love all over me.

  I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. Even though Aunt Bibby and her shit-talking ass had gotten my temper up, I wasn’t gonna let it ruin my little bit of time with Mama, so I did like I usually did when I visited her. I brushed her hair and put a bunch of colorful, pretty clips in it, and then I took her clawlike hands and straightened her fingers out one by one so I could cut her nails and polish them up real nice.

  The whole time I worked on Mama I talked to her just like she could understand everything I was saying. “Remember the last time I came to see you and I told you I was going down to Texas? Well, I went and it was wild as hell, Mama,” I told her. “I acted a pure fool down there, and them country folks loved me so much they want me to come back again. But this time,” I said, “they’re gonna be paying me a whole lot better.”

  Mama started making that funny noise again. Like she was crying. Her crooked hands shot up in the air and a look of fright rose in her eyes.

  “Don’t worry.” I hugged her and comforted her through her moans. “I’ma tell them nurses they better not let Aunt Bibby back up in here no more, okay? If she brings her big ass around here again I’ma roll up in Taft and wear her out, for real!”

  Mama cried and tried to reach out for me. “You gonna be okay,” I told her. “Texas ain’t that far, you know. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, okay?” I kissed her hands and then her forehead. “Peaches said he’s gonna check on you while I’m gone, and if you need me, Mama, he’ll call me, okay?”

  I kissed her again, and then I got up outta that stuffy little room in a hurry because I didn’t want her to see me crying. I got in the car with Peaches and slammed the door, and I didn’t say a word all the way back to Harlem. All I could do was lean against the car window with tears running from my eyes, and instead of babying me like he usually did, Peaches gave me my peace and let me have my space.