by BlaQue
I didn’t even see them. I never heard the car pull in behind me. I was too busy trying to control my nerves. I felt the blow to my back first. Before I could even comprehend that someone was hurting me, I felt fists raining down on me. Blow after blow until I fell to the ground. I curled up into a ball and tried to protect my stomach. When I tried to do that, whoever was attacking me began to kick me in my chest, and face until everything faded to black.
Chapter 31
Pentagon City
Arlington, VA
The room around me was dark as I gained consciousness. Restraints bound my hands and legs, containing me; upright, in a chair. I screamed out into the darkness. To no avail. I could hear something moving above me. My guess was that I was in a basement. I could feel something moving around my ankles. Fear overtook me. I tried frantically to get myself out of my restraints. My body was in incredible pain from the beating I had sustained. My upper body was beaten and bruised.. I wanted to scream again, but I decided against it. Whoever had attacked me was somewhere nearby. I had to try and get myself out of what felt like those plastic ties that the police used to keep suspects from moving.
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.”
I threw up all over myself just thinking about what she was telling me. I knew there was something unnatural about the sex that night. It wasn’t because it was with a chick, but it was because I was with my fucking sister!
“How could you do that to me NiQue!” I screamed.
“Stop fucking calling me that! My name is Pajay Clayton! You will address me as Pajay from now on!” She yelled back at me.
She cocked her head to the side and laughed. “Actually, you don’t have that long to live, so it really doesn’t matter.” She taunted.
“Oh my god, did you kill Corrine?” I asked through my sobs.
“Let me hip you to a lot of shit big sis. I owe you the truth since you are gonna die anyway! I set you up over and over again. Each time you managed to get out of the shit – I don’t know how you managed to do it, but you did – from Papi finding you in the club the night we met Dread, to the day Corrine died. It was supposed to be you each and every time. You are just lucky as shit. Papi was sloppy with his own shit. He was caught up in some other shit. Were you really that stupid that you couldn’t see that I was always nowhere to be found when someone was gunning for you?”
I wanted to kick her ass, but there was no way out of the restraints to do so. She knew if it hadn’t been for the restraints I would have been all over her ass. “It was you who killed Daddy and Oscar, but why did you kill Oscar; NiQue?” I asked making a mistake and calling her by her made-up name.
She slid the box cutter to full length and gr
abbed my throat. “I killed that old bag Oscar because he knew I was Darnell’s daughter the whole time. He stood by and let this shit happen. He knew it wasn’t right. Jew Jew and Timmie tried to take him out when they killed our bitch ass Daddy, but he didn’t die. So, I had to make a special trip to the hospital and see to it that he didn’t ruin my surprise. If it helps you feel any better, he died peacefully. A pillow over the face while under the influence of pain medications just may be the best way to die.” She chuckled at a joke that was clearly not funny to anyone but her. I sat there shaking my head back and forth. I couldn’t believe she was so calm and calculated about killing people.
“NiQue, Oscar didn’t deserve to die!” I said crying.
I thought I just told you not to call me NiQue you dumb bitch!” She said holding the blade right up against my throat. Her face was so close to mine I could smell her hatred for me.
“I’m sorry.” I tried to say, but it was too late. She sliced into the left side of my. I could feel the open cut and the blood pouring from it. I refused to give her the satisfaction of screaming anymore. Anything she gave me, I was going to take it like a soldier. She let me go. I wanted to reach up and touch my face to stop the blood from pouring out of the cut.
“You were like family to me Pajay. How could you do this to me? I did nothing but love you?” I said trying to get her to talk so I could at least know why she had done all of the horrible things to the people I cared about the most.
“You didn’t fuck with me. As soon as you got the chance, you fucked the nigga I wanted. I even gave you another chance by fucking you, trying to make you love me and you carried me again. I have to admit, you almost got away from me too.
I had everyone looking for you. Caesar tried to get you to come in to meet with him and you didn’t show. I didn’t know where you had gone until I started to watch Dread’s house and you showed up there. I almost gave up on finding you, but true to my bloodline I stayed on my mission!” She said proudly sticking her chest out.