The Glamorous Life 2: All That Glitters Isn’t Gold

By Nikki Turner

From New York Times bestselling author Nikki Turner comes the long awaited sequel to Glamorous Life

Calliope learned at a very early age that if she wanted to survive in this world then she needed to stand on her own. When she and her younger brother are abandoned by their mother, Calliope steps up to the plate and takes care of them both, but really all she really wants is to feel safe and to have a place that she and her brother can call their own. But life takes her down paths she never dreamed and danger always seems to be a hairs breadth away. At her darkest hour, she meets Lynx and her life will never be the same.

Lynx has been released from prison and it should be a fresh start for him and Bambi. But Lynx has discovered an insatiable appetite, for gambling, that threatens to bring both of them to ruin. When he meets Calliope, everything takes a dramatic new twist that will leave everyone reeling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Nov 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781250038852

Nikki Turner

Nikki Turner has been writing urban fiction since her 2003 novel A Hustler’s Wife. After writing more than a dozen books and landing on bestseller lists for Essence, USA TODAY, and The New York Times, she’s been dubbed the Queen of Hip Hop Lit. She resides in a suburb of Richmond, Virginia, with her two children.

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Prologue

Get the fuck out! Shelly screamed at the top of her lungs, then took another deep breath. I said, get the fuck outta here. Nobody moved, and then she gave a look that should’ve intimidated the two little people standing in front of her. When nobody moved, she stressed the word, Now!

Fourteen years old, Calliope stood there listening to her mother (in name only, because God knows she didn’t act like one) talk to her like a dog. But, hell, a dog got more compassion.

I said get the fuck out! Shelly screamed again after not getting the results she wanted the first time. She had that nasty look on her face. The one that said, Don’t make me tell you again.

Compton, only ten, held on to Calliope’s leg for dear life. She’d always protected him, and she wouldn’t stop now.

With tears in her own eyes, Calliope confronted their mother. Momma, please don’t do this to us. Please, she pleaded not even for herself, but more for her brother. I’m begging you, Momma, don’t do this to us … at least not tonight. Please, Momma. The desperation in her voice intensified with each plea for compassion.

Shelly, who was in fact her biological mother, was unmoved by her daughter’s pleas. With no kind of remorse at all, Shelly firmly said with the nastiest demeanor, sucking her teeth so hard that she spat the words out like a spoonful of shit she was trying to purge from her mouth, "What the fuck I tell you about begging a motha-fucka to do shit for you? She snapped her neck and added, And that includes me. Now—cold eyes, as intense and lethal as deadly lasers, stared back into Calliope’s eyes—now, lil’ girl, get the fuck outta here."

Incendiary words, as damaging—if not more so—as a runaway meteor crashing into a metropolitan city.

But Calliope’s feet were Gorilla Glued to the old carpet, and she stood her ground. Face-to-face with her mother, she couldn’t move. She stared into Shelly’s face, thinking a few choice words: Why are you such a bitch, Momma? We’re your flesh and blood and you treat us worse than dirt. Is it because you’re lonely and thirsty for a man’s attention? Or are you just a mean nasty bitch by nature? I can fend for myself, she wanted to say, but Compton is only ten. I don’t need your love. But he does. All those things she wanted to say, but she didn’t. As she always had in the past, Calliope bit her tongue.

Unable to comprehend why his mother would put him out in the cold in the middle of the night, Compton started crying, not wanting to go anywhere.

Shut up, you lil’ faggot! Crying is for the weak, Shelly said to her son. And I don’t raise no weak-ass, pussy-ass, faggot-ass niggas. Matter fact, I should give your sorry ass something to cry for. She raised her hand up in a striking pose as if she was going to hit him, but before she could follow through with the threat the trill of the ringing of a phone snatched her attention and stopped her in motion. With one hand on her hip and the other pointed at Compton, Shelly said, with a deep passion, That crying shit is for pussies! And I should beat the shit out yo lil’ ass fo’ crying, but Compton ignored her and bawled even louder.

The worst part wasn’t getting put out in the rain. Calliope had grown used to her mother’s whimsical bullshit. Numb by it all, she realized at a young age (younger than Compton even) that life wasn’t fair, and her mother damn sure didn’t play fair. But it cut Calliope all the way down to the marrow in her bones to see her brother cry this way, a way that she would never get used to.

Unable to stop it before, Calliope had witnessed firsthand her mother whip Compton unmercifully until she got tired of swinging the belt for things so small as him dropping a piece of noodle on the floor. At times Calliope even jumped in front of the belt, and it was brutal. That was something that Calliope didn’t want to happen to him again. The thoughts of such uncalled-for brutality toward an innocent child compelled Calliope to bend to her brother’s height and comfort him with a hug.

Shelly put a hand on one hip and pointed with the other and said, You best shut that lil’ motherfucka up and do what the fuck I say before I put my foot up you and that lil’ fucka asses. She reached for the phone, and the look she lobbed in their direction was more effective than a live grenade in a field of battle. Immediately Compton swallowed his cries, but the poor child’s tears still poured down his dispirited face uncontrollably.

Wrapping her arms around him was all that was left for Calliope to offer for comfort for her brother. The embrace felt good, and she prayed that it felt as good to him as it did to her. After the hug she took her brother by the hand and slowly led the way out of the house, onto the long covered back porch.

The porch stretched the width of the house, encased by a rickety screen and a roof that had no chance of keeping the rain off them.

This wasn’t the first time that Shelly had made them sleep outside on the back porch (sometimes it was kind of fun), but this was the first time that it was pouring down rain, thunder-storming, and flashing lightning, with the weatherman and every citizen of Miami, Florida, anticipating a hurricane.

A few minutes passed with Calliope and Compton sitting on the porch, hoping that their mother, or Mother Nature, would somehow have a change of heart.

Then, through the pregnant raindrops whistling and whipping every which way, Calliope saw a big, red, shiny long Cadi bend the corner and park in front of the house.

The Cadi belonged to Big Jack, her mother’s current boyfriend, and he hated kids.

Reality set in; she knew they were really going to be out back, figuratively as well as literally. She thought about what kind of man or human would allow a woman to put her two kids out of the house.

A selfish-ass nigga with control issues, she concluded. One that when she got older, she would positively not tolerate in her life.

*   *   *

Inside, Shelly opened the door for Big Jack with a wide coquettish smile and wearing a tight red dress. I thought you wasn’t going to make it—with the weather and all. She graciously accepted the brown paper bag Big Jack offered her—an open bottle of Hennessy, her favorite Cognac.

She was brick-house thick and her hair was long, black, and naturally curly, and she had a complexion that resembled raw gold. Shelly wasn’t always so needy for a man. In high school she could’ve had any guy she wanted. But she only had eyes for a new guy who transferred in from California, Compton Sr., who revolved in and out of her life but was her children’s father, and who she thought was her soul mate.

Silly Shelly.

Too bad that saying that everybody plays a fool, no exceptions to the rule, was true.

He left her with two kids and a ran-down house with major repairs that he promised to fix, but it was now barely worth half of what she had paid for it. At least she still had her Coke bottle figure though, and she thanked God every day for that.

All she ever wanted and dreamed of was to be loved and rescued by a decent man. And most men, the ones she met anyway, weren’t in the business of raising another lion’s litter. That, especially, was the case with Big Jack. Though he had paid for a babysitter for tonight, he hated kids and made it clear that he wanted them out of sight. Shelly had used the money to help get her hair, nails, and lingerie tight. Big Jack wasn’t going to make some jacked-up bitch his wife, she reasoned with herself. So she had to get creative when it came to finding a place for the kids to stay.

A handful of her left cheek in his right palm, her butt cozying between his cupped fingers, Big Jack gave her that satisfied smile, the one that promised that, if only for tonight, he was her man.

The rain poured from a pitch-black sky, and Calliope knew she couldn’t worry about Big Jack or Shelly. The only things on her mind were survival and keeping her and her little brother safe and out of the storm.

Trees were bending to their limits, looked like they would be uprooted under the strong, penetrating force of the wind. Clutching Compton’s hand, she said, We’re gonna have to make a run for it, meaning the outhouse.

The shed in back of the house was old and dark but constructed with cement blocks, so structurally it was safer than the dilapidated wooden porch they were on.

B-But snakes in there, Compton stammered.

Just because she’d never seen any snakes in the shed, personally, didn’t mean Compton wasn’t right in his assumption.

You are bigger than any little ol’ snake, she told him. It’s going to be a lot safer in there than out here in this storm. Besides, there are going to be snakes that walk on two legs in this world. Though she was only a month shy of her fifteenth birthday, Calliope had seen a lot. We can’t be scared of them. We just gotta prepare ourselves the best way to deal with and protect ourselves from them.

Compton was slow taking in the jewel his sister had given him because he was too preoccupied with the storm. He watched in awe as the trees jerk danced to the music of the ferocious wind and buckets of water fell from the sky. Do you think the wind will blow it away? He meant the shed, not the trees. Calliope didn’t know the answer.

I don’t think so, she said honestly. But I do know that as long as we’re together, nothing in this world can blow us apart from each other. Lightning struck, illuminating the sky, then the rain started coming down even harder. Though she wanted and tried to be as tough as she could, the hard-hitting hail coming down on the roof of the porch made Calliope scared as hell herself. She was sure that the possibilities of the porch caving in were very high and knew they had to move, because when it did collapse, the very place where they did not want to be was under that awning. She said to her brother, Okay. I need you to be a big boy and to run as fast as you can.

He sucked in air, poking out his chest, and said, Okay. Don’t worry, I’m not scared. Super Compton will protect you from dem snakes, he boasted, ready to run, ready for whatever, as long as he was with his sister. Super Compton is ready for takeoff.

The siblings streaked across the lawn like two bolts of lightning. Both reached the ancient shed at the same time, milliseconds before an actual jiggered sphere of electricity lit up the blackened Miami sky. Immediately following the light show, a clap of thunder shook the ground. Calliope, still holding tight to Compton’s hand, asked, Are you okay?

He nearly jumped out of his tennis shoes. I’m f-fine, he said, but he was still shaking.

The shed had been there long before they’d moved in to the small Monopoly-style house, before either child was a thought, even before Shelly was born.

It was dark, no lights, and had a strong mildew smell. Besides that, the shed wasn’t too bad. Even so, Calliope wanted to burst out in tears, but thought better of it. There was no need to—what was crying going to do? What was it going to solve? Absolutely … nothing! She had learned a long time ago that crying wouldn’t get any results. Besides, the sky was crying enough for everyone that night.

The cold and their soaking wet clothes didn’t help at all. Luckily, there was an old blanket they could use to wrap up in. It had previously been used to cover up an antique-looking dresser. But at that moment they needed it more than any piece of furniture did. Although the comforter smelled horrible, they were warmer than they’d been before, so they would tolerate the foul odor.

While they waited for the storm to burn out, Compton fell asleep in Calliope’s arms, but she stayed awake thinking how messed up their life was and how when she had kids she’d never do anything like this to her children. She’d only fill their life with lots of love. As she sat there watching her brother sleep so peacefully, all that was left for her was to look up at the sky, to God, to humbly ask for help and answers but most of all for strength to endure it all.

With prayer seemed to always come tears.

And as the rain cascaded down, she wished it would wash all her worries away, especially the hate and the deep-rooted animosity for her mother that she had trapped inside of her. Once the downpours stopped, so did the tears. And somehow, not ruling out God, the rain brought her strength to move on past this moment. To fight and to endure the inevitable pain life would bring her way.

Also it gave her heart and the guts she needed to navigate through the world. Not to mention the courage to make the decision that on everything that she loved, from that moment on it was fuck Shelly and she’d take care of herself and her brother. By any means necessary, or God have mercy on her soul.

1

The situation would get worse—so much worse—before it got any better. So bad that at times Calliope wished that she was dead, but would quickly take it back, asking God to forgive her for her evil thoughts. The problem with that was if she was dead, who in the world would take care of Compton? Honestly, there was no one—no aunts, no uncles, no grandmothers, no grandfathers, neighbors, friends, teachers, or anyone who even cared. No one! The truth of the matter was that they were all each other had, and no matter what the circumstances were—bad, good, happy, or sad—there was no doubt about it, they had to stick