by Noire
The element of surprise mighta had me shook, but Miss Thang was all up on her toes. Bobbing and weaving and ready to knock me right out. She grinned at me, then bust out laughing.
“Mink, you say?” She glanced at Barron and nodded. “Oh, so this the chick you was telling me about, huh? Well, hey, Mink! I’m Dy-Nasty. Capital d, capital n, with a dash between the n and the y.”
I blinked my eyes at her like she was crazy, and she moved up on me and gave me a quick wink and whispered, “But you can call me Sable.”
Stepping back, she took a deep breath and looked around the room with a real big smile. “Wooo-hooo! Damn this joint is laid! Hey ere’body!” She waved her arm and then pumped her fist high air. “It feels good to be home!”
That stupid-fuck Barron musta told the whole damn family to come over to the mansion so he could show Dy-Nasty off. Pilar had shown up with her fat-head fiancé Ray, and Uncle Digger even came over too. Barron went around introducing Dy-Nasty to everybody as the long-lost Sable, and the whole time he was busy showing her off he kept grinning at me over his shoulder and shooting me some real slick looks.
“It’s Dy-Nasty,” I heard the girl tell Pilar. “Capital d, capital n, with a dash between the n and the y.”
Pilar’s whole face frowned up when she asked, “Sweetie, are you dyslexic or something?”
“Listen everybody,” Barron said as he pulled her into the center of the room and got everybody’s attention. The spotlight was shining real bright on Dy-Nasty, and she started primping and posing like a camera crew was standing off to the side snapping glamour shots.
“I know this looks crazy, and somebody is gonna have a whole lot of explaining to do to the police later on, but I’ve found our Sable,” Barron said and pointed at Dy-Nasty. You could tell his ass was a lawyer just by the way he tried to get in everybody’s head. “I got a tip from a private investigator that she was living in Philadelphia, so I found out where she was and went to talk to her for myself. Trust me,” he said, and gave everybody the honest-john face like he was in the courtroom about to close a case, “I’ve done my homework and everything she’s told me about her past lines up perfectly. And best of all, her DNA test came back a perfect match for Sable’s.”
All I could do was look down at my feet. The truth was out. The game was over. My scam had been exposed. I knew damn well I was the one who’d been lying, but I didn’t know how to walk that shit back or how to get my ass up out the door without getting arrested and thrown under a hot Texas jail.
“But hold up.” Dane got in it, shaking his head. “Wasn’t Mink’s DNA test a match for Sable’s first? And everything she told us was solid too. Plus, Mink is from New York where Sable was kidnapped. You said you found this girl somewhere in Philly, right, Bump? So how does that line up?”
“We moved!” Dy-Nasty blasted all over Dane, drenching him in about twenty gallons of ghetto juice. “We used to live in New York when I was little,” she said with a nasty dip to her bottom lip, “but then we moved! Can’t people move around? Damn!”
“Yeah, people can do a whole lot of shit,” Dane beefed back at her. “Especially when they’re tryna to get their hands on somebody else’s money!”
I just sat there looking stupid as hell in the face. I was burning on a thousand inside, but Selah was the one who was really pissed. All this time she had been laid out moaning, rocking back and forth, and crying out stuff like, Oh my God . . . Jesus have mercy, what is this world coming to? My baby . . . my child . . . how could anybody in their right mind be so damn cruel?
But now she slung that ice pack off her head and stood up and got on her Brooklyn tip. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here,” she shrieked and put her hands on her hips. She was mad as hell and tears were running down her face as she locked me and Dy-Nasty together in a real icy glare. “But somebody is lying. This is no kind of joke to be playing on people! It’s a serious situation and the police call it identity fraud!” Her face crumpled in as she fought to hold back her tears. “You just don’t play like this when it comes to people’s children and their hearts! I don’t know what’s going on, but one of you is a liar!”
She grilled me like, You better come clean with this shit! and I felt my chest cave in a little bit as I got scorched by the heat shooting outta her eyes.
“What you looking at me like that for?” I blurted out. “Give her the look!” I pointed my thumb at Dy-Nasty. “Shoot, I was here first!”
Selah’s lips were real tight as she cried silently and stared back and forth at both of us. “Barron,” she said quietly, “you’d better go check out that goddamn DNA lab! Something flaky is going on in there and I want to know exactly what it is!” She pointed at me and Dy-Nasty. “As for you two, both of you will have to be retested, and we’ll find an independent lab to verify your results. Until that happens, I just don’t know what to think or who to believe. But trust me, we’re gonna get to the bottom of this. The truth is going to come out sooner or later, and when it does I’m going straight to the police so one of you better watch out.”
“Don’t worry, Mama. I’ll take care of the lab,” Barron said. “I tried to call them on my way in but they’re closed for the Labor Day weekend. But like I said, don’t worry. I plan to be there when they open for business first thing Tuesday morning.”
“Oh, we both gonna be there,” I assured his tight ass and blasted him with a heat round from my eyes.
“All three of us!” the Philly skank piped in, grilling me like she wanted some.
“Cool,” I said, heating her ass up right back. “All three of us then!”
I walked over to Selah and reached out for a hug. She didn’t even move. She just looked at me. “I’m sorry, Mama Selah. I don’t know who this girl is or how any of this happened. But please believe me. I’m telling you the truth. Please don’t be mad at me.”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Dominion,” one of the housekeepers spoke up and interrupted us before Selah could respond. “Which room should we put Miss Dy-Nasty in?”
Stick her ass out back in the pool house! I wanted to scream.
But instead, I got punched dead in the stomach when Selah glanced at the housekeeper, then turned and said with a big sigh, “Take her upstairs to the west wing. Put her in the guest suite right next to mine. That’ll give us a chance to get to know each other a little better.”
CHAPTER 16
“That bitch is really Sable!” I whispered to Bunni as we stood locked in my bathroom with the doors to our suites closed up tight. “That’s her!”
Bunni nodded with her eyes all big and wide. “I know, girl. Ain’t that some shit? But you and her look just alike. You think y’all might be related or something?”
“Hell no!” I shook my head. “Everybody got a twin somewhere in the world who looks just like them. Her people probably came up outta the same grimy Louisiana swamps as the LaRues.”
“Well, mami got her a real DNA test!”
“I know. And ya fuckin’ pain slut Kelvin at the lab better act like he know! I paid him good money and he better not bust us out!”
“Don’t worry, I got his freaky ass in check. But how in the hell did that broad find out about the money?”
I shrugged and boosted myself up on the edge of the sink. “Probably the same way we found out about it. She saw Sable’s picture somewhere and did a little digging around, and bam. She bumped into the same shit on the Internet that we did. Damn! Why that dusty bitch had to turn up right now?”
“I’on’t know,” Bunni said, frowning, “but did you see that critter’s feet?”
“Crusty!” I blurted. “Straight crusty!”
“And the heels on them turned-over shoes?”
“Kickstands! Lean wit’ it, rock wit’ it!”
“So what we gonna do now? They ain’t gonna give that money up to both of y’all, and we sure as hell can’t take our asses back to Harlem broke!”
I thought about Gutta laying in a New York cut and r
eady to strangle me, and I shook my head. No, hell nah we couldn’t go back broke. We just couldn’t.
I slid down off the sink and started pacing the floor. They had put Dy-Nasty in a suite that was right off of Selah’s, and it pissed me off that she might be up there sticking her dirty tongue all down in Selah’s ear.
My mouth was dry as shit and my stomach was in knots as I tried to come up with a whammy. I didn’t know how the hell I was gonna get outta this one but the look in Selah’s eyes made me think my lil con number was definitely up.
Me and Bunni were deep in scheme-mode and burning up our brain cells when Dane hit me on my cell and told us to meet him in his crib. “I figured this shit out,” he said as we got lit and smoked some hash in his bedroom. Dane’s get-high was exactly what I needed right now because my ass was totally shook. Selah had called him and Barron upstairs to her suite and I couldn’t wait to hear what he had to say.
“Bump is tryna fuck you up,” Dane told me as he passed me a straight shot of gin. “He’s tryna fuck both you and DyNasty up.”
I tossed the gin back real fast and almost peed on myself when all that pure alcohol burned a hot trail of fire down my throat. “What you mean?” I said, coughing hard with tears coming outta my eyes. “What the hell you talkin’ about?”
“Bump’s a strategist, Mink. He’s a real slick lawyer. He’s setting both of y’all up. Tryna play y’all both into a trap. That nigga don’t care which one of y’all is really Sable. He don’t give a damn about none of that. But what he does give a damn about is that trust fund and control of Dominion Oil.”
I wiped my eyes and shook my head. “What does all that got to do with me and Dy-Nasty? Why would he bring that dusty trick all the way down here if he thought she was lying?”
“Because,” Dane said, tryna break it down to me. “He’s gonna try to take both of y’all down at one time. Check it out. If he can prove to the board that Dy-Nasty is really Sable, then two things happen. One, it knocks you outta the fight for the trust fund, because obviously if that chick is really Sable, then you ain’t. And if she is Sable, well, c’mon. Y’all saw what she looked like. Like he snatched her up right outta Strip Clubs R Us. He’s probably got pictures of her swinging off a pole and everything. Mama might not care about none of that, but the board damn sure will.”
“That slick-ass dog,” Bunni said, toking real hard on the stick of hash. “He’s tryna catch y’all in a cross-con, Mink. You know how that shit goes. He’s gonna use you and Dy-Nasty to cancel each other out!”
I sat there with my head spinning. I needed me another shot. And another joint too.
“So how the hell are we gonna get around him?” I asked Dane, praying he had some answers. I was way too pressed out to come up with anything. My scheme bag was bone dry.
“That’s easy,” Bunni said. “All you gotta do is make friends with Dy-Nasty. Be nice to the bitch.”
I gave her a shitty look. “Make friends with her? Bunni put that hash down! That chickenhead got a major attitude problem. Me be nice to her? You must be trippin’.”
“Damn,” Bunni said, shooting me a look of disgust. “I gotta get you outta all this Texas heat, Mink, because your brain done got fried. It don’t matter whether you like DyNasty or not, you gotta make friends with her. At least for a little while.”
“Why?” I demanded. I didn’t see where Bunni was going and I wasn’t feeling her logic at all.
“Because,” Bunni said simply. “We might be able to use her ass one day. You know how that shit goes. You gotta keep your friends real close, but your enemies even closer.”
Everybody was real excited at breakfast the next morning. Everybody except me. Bunni had started snoring like a truck driver the minute her head hit the pillow, but I had stayed up tossing and turning and worrying like hell for half the damn night. All I could think about was the three-hundred-grand pay day that was about to slip through my fingers. Dy-Nasty had come pissing in my territory at the worst possible time, and unless I came up with something to convince Selah and the rest of the family that she was the fraud and I was telling the truth, everything I had worked for was gonna go up in smoke.
I had started to go upstairs and climb in the bed with Selah and order in breakfast the way she liked me to, but I felt kinda funny inside, and the way she had fronted me off in front of everybody made me wonder.
Instead, I waited around for the cooks to start banging the pots and pans. Everybody in the family showed up for the grits, pancakes, sausage, and egg breakfast that Miss Katie had cooked, and the only person who was missing was Pilar’s boyfriend, Ray. I had planned on getting a seat at the table right next to Selah’s, but by the time I got downstairs Barron was already sitting on one side of her, and Dy-Nasty had stolen the seat on her other side. The seat that was supposed to be mine.
I ended up sitting between Bunni and Fallon, and when I glanced down the table at Selah she was so busy listening to Dy-Nasty run off at the mouth that she didn’t even look at me.
“Let’s go ahead and bless the food,” Barron said as soon as the maids had set all the serving trays out. We all held hands and bowed our heads, but I was peeking outta one eye the whole time he prayed.
“Dear Heavenly Father, thank You for all the blessings You have bestowed upon this family. Thank You for our health, our wealth, and the many gifts that You have seen fit to allow into our lives. But most important, bless You for allowing me to meet Dy-Nasty so that our lost little sister could finally come home to her family. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
I coulda put my foot straight up Barron’s ass! Instead, I sat there with a brick in my stomach and mad attitude steaming in my chest. I couldn’t even move as everybody started reaching for the platters full of food and fixing their plates. I took two sausage links and a spoonful of grits. Bunni piled her plate up. She picked up her sausages with her hands and tore them in little chunks, then mixed everything together, the sausage, cheesy eggs, grits, and hash browns, all in one nasty-looking lump.
“Y’all got any hot sauce?” she asked one of the servers. The old lady nodded and went to get it, but when she came back holding out a bottle of Texas Pete’s to Bunni, Dy-Nasty jumped her ass up and snatched it right outta the old lady’s hand.
“Ooh! Hot sauce!” Dy-Nasty shrieked like it was a bottle of tequila and tomato juice. She shot Bunni a slick hater look and then opened it up and started shaking the sauce all over her food. That chick shook for a good minute too. By the time she was done her whole plate was swimming in that mess and half the bottle was empty.
“Yum,” she said, setting the bottle down way on the other side of her plate. I frowned as she dug into her food like her fork was a snow shovel. This trick ate worse than Bunni did, who was sitting next to me burning on fire and still waiting on her hot sauce.
“Pass the damn hot sauce!” Bunni barked, and Barron had the nerve to turn his nose up and look at her like, Damn! Have some manners!
Pilar was the first one to dig up Dy-Nasty’s ass and she didn’t treat her no better than she had treated me when I first came to Texas. “I don’t know about you guys,” she said, holding a piece of buttered toast in her hand, “but this just seems so crazy to me. You know, like it’s déjà vu and we’ve all been in this situation before.” She put her toast down and picked up a sausage link. She took a real tiny bite off the tip and then pointed it straight at Dy-Nasty.
“So, what’s your story, Dy-Nasty? I mean, we’ve got two of you sitting here claiming to be Sable and no doubt going after her share of the trust fund, but at least we know a little bit about Mink. Who the hell are you?”
“I already told you,” Dy-Nasty rolled her eyes and said all funky-like. “I’m Dy-Nasty. Capital d, capital n, with a dash between the n and the y.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Pilar waved her sausage around in aggravated little circles. “You’ve got your name down pat. We already got that part. But where did you come from?”
“From my mother’s
wound!” Dy-Nasty snapped. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“Ay,” Dane said. He reached over and play-punched her on the shoulder and grinned with his mouth full of food. “It’s all good, baby D. The fam is just curious, that’s all. Ain’t nobody jumping on you, they just asking a few questions, okay?”
Dy-Nasty took a quick peek at Barron. She did it so quick, and with such smooth slickness that nobody else mighta saw it. But I sure as hell did.
“Well what else do y’all need to know? I’m Dy-Nasty. I’m twenty-one, I grew up in Philly, and I’m an only child.”
“So what made you decide to go after the money?” That was Bunni for you. Getting all in it when she wasn’t even family herself!
I was surprised when Selah cut in real softly before DyNasty could answer. “Are your parents still alive, Dy-Nasty? You took a DNA test, but what made you think you were Sable? Surely your mother never told you that she kidnapped you, did she?”
I wanted to toss my damn plate up in the air when that trick tried to bust my old move.
“No, she didn’t never say nothing like that, but umm, I always knew I was different from the rest of my family.”
“Hey! I already said that!” I reminded Selah. “I’m the one who said that first!”
“But did you ever think,” Selah igged me and continued questioning Dy-Nasty, “that your mother wasn’t your real mother? Did you ever get the feeling that you belonged with someone else?”
Barron had been coaching this chick. I could tell by the questioning little looks she kept sliding him on the sneak tip. His ass had already schooled her on exactly what she needed to say.
“Yeah,” Pilar jumped back in. “If you are Sable, and if your mother really did steal you from that drugstore, then she needs to go to jail and answer for her crimes!”
I just knew this trick was gonna keep biting my flow and monkeying my moves, but she shocked me when she stared into her grits and got all emotional and shit.