Unzipped: An Urban Erotic Tale (5 page)

S
o as it turned out, two baby girls had been born into the Baines family in the early morning hours of Christmas Day, and both of them were just as beautiful as their mothers.

Pearl had been right about Diamond and the baby girl she’d named Chante. The hospital social worker had filed an immediate injunction suspending Diamond’s parental rights and temporarily transferring them to Irish and Zeta. The only reason Diamond got out of there without getting arrested was because of her age, Irish’s political connections, and the fact that she volunteered to leave the hospital and go straight into a drug treatment program.

Pearl had named her baby girl Sasha, and all her fears about what some nasty disease might have done to her baby flew right out the window the moment she saw her. Sasha was perfect. She weighed six pounds and two ounces, and looked just like Pearl, except her skin was a whole lot lighter.

“That’s just her baby color,” Zeta said as she held her newest granddaughter in her arms. She was full of joy at Pearl’s baby, but that didn’t stop her from worrying like hell about Diamond’s baby, who was upstairs in the neo-natal intensive care unit struggling to kick a cocaine monkey off her back. She held sweet Sasha to her breast and kissed the top of her head. This baby was so much bigger and healthier than the other one. It was just proof of the difference between taking care of yourself, eating right, and getting good prenatal care, versus running the streets, abusing drugs, and drinking beer for breakfast.

Pearl took her baby home to her parents’ house where Sasha was given the utmost love and care. It was several weeks before Chante was strong enough to leave the hospital and go home to join her cousin who the family realized, but never mentioned, was also her sister.

Two active babies made the small house come alive. Irish and Zeta agreed that even though their twins had been young and reckless to get caught up in the street drama and come home pregnant at such an early age, regardless of how and when their granddaughters were born, they loved them with every part of their hearts and would do everything under the sun to make sure that both girls had a good life.

“I’m glad you’re back in school,” Zeta praised Pearl when Sasha was only a few weeks old and Pearl was sitting right back in her high school classes where she belonged. “I just wish we could talk Diamond into going back too. The girl has a mind for numbers that’s borderline brilliant, but she won’t do a damn thing with it.”

Pearl could only nod. Diamond was smart as hell, but sometimes being blessed with book smarts just wasn’t enough out there on the streets. But Pearl, though, knew exactly what was enough for her. Getting pregnant at fifteen was a real wake-up call for
her. She was grateful that her parents had taken both Chante and Sasha into their arms and under their care. Pearl knew other girls who’d had babies and were out there on their own with no man, no family, no friends or nothing to help support them. She felt lucky that she had the opportunity to jump right back into her life like she hadn’t really stumbled at all.

The babies shared a room, and slept in cribs that were right next to each other. The room was decorated in pink and brown, with all kinds of cartoon characters and animated figures taped to the walls.

Being born addicted to crack had made Chante a cranky, sickly baby, but Zeta and Irish got up every night with both girls when they cried, chasing Pearl right back to bed when she tried to take Sasha off their hands or offered to help rock and soothe Chante so they could get a little bit of rest or time alone for themselves.

“Nah,” her father would say, pulling the belt to his bathrobe tight as he fed one of the tiny babies in his big, strong arms. “Gone back to bed. You gotta be fresh for school tomorrow, Pearl. You need your sleep so your head can be right for them schoolbooks.”

It made Pearl feel good that despite being so hardheaded and hot in the ass, her father still had high hopes and dreams for her. Him and Zeta were willing to support her and Sasha and do whatever it took to make it possible for Pearl to make those dreams come true.

But Diamond was another story.

About a week after having Chante, she had snuck out of the drug treatment program and was itching to get back out on the street.

“What the hell did you do?” Pearl had screamed on her sister
when she showed up at the crib in a miniskirt on New Year’s Eve. “You ducked outta the program? I thought the judge said you had to stay for thirty days?”

Diamond had shrugged and rolled her pretty eyes. “Fuck that judge. He don’t know me and neither do those damned counselors in that program. Just because I hit the pipe a few times don’t mean I’m no crackhead.”

She peeped into the crib where Sasha lay sleeping on her side.

“Oh, Pearl! Look at my little niece. She is just too cute! She looks like me instead of you, though. Yo, you got a few ends I can hold?”

Pearl shook her head. “Nope. All my money gotta go for milk and Pampers. But your daughter is cute too, Diamond. While you busy sneaking up outta places, did you sneak up to the hospital to see Chante? They trying to wean her off that shit you was pumping into her system, you know.”

A look of despair came into Diamond’s eyes and Pearl could see how sorry and despondent her sister was. Their father had made it his life’s business to fight drugs and crime in their community, and Pearl had been around street thugs and addicts her whole life. She recognized that hopeless, helpless look when she saw it, and right now her heart was breaking at the sight of it in the eyes of her twin.

“I don’t know why the fuck I do so much stupid shit,” Diamond muttered softly. She sat down beside Pearl and rested her head on her sister’s shoulder the way she did whenever she had been bad out on the streets and was looking for comfort. “But I can
change
. I know I can! I ain’t gotta lie to you, Pearl. You the only fuckin’ one I ain’t gotta lie to. Even when I was getting high I was hating myself. Maybe that’s the reason I smoke that shit in the first place. Because I hate myself.”

Pearl forced her anger down and took Diamond in her arms. There had been many times over the years that they had done that for each other. Opened up their arms.

“You ain’t gotta hate yourself, Di,” Pearl said. She rocked her sister gently, knowing that truly, no matter what happened, nothing, especially no man, could ever really come between them. “But you do have to get your shit straight, ya heard?”

“I know.”

“Well stop
knowing
about shit and start
being
about it.” Pearl had mad love for her sister, but she wasn’t past telling Diamond when her shit got stupid neither. “And the first thing you need to do is stop all that bullshit talk about changing! You either gonna do right or you ain’t, Diamond. People don’t walk around ‘changing’ every goddamn day.”

Diamond sat up straight and gave her sister a real hurt look.

“You know what, Pearl? You got a whole lotta shit with you! Everybody got something about them that needs working on! Just because you in school and stuff don’t mean shit. I might be a fuck-up but you’re selfish as
hell
, Pearl. It’s all about
you
, all the fuckin’ time. You’s the type of chick who is strictly out for self. But you ain’t no better than me, Pearl! We both got pregnant by a loser, remember? I didn’t do a goddamn thing that you didn’t do too! So instead of riding me for all the shit I do wrong, there’s a lotta things you might wanna check and ‘change’ about your goddamn self.”

Pearl listened to her sister vent and waved all that noise off. “Kill that drama, Diamond. This ain’t about me and what I’m doing, it’s about you and what you
ain’t
doing! Don’t try to flip the switch on me, because I’m living right and there ain’t shit I need to change about the way I get down. But if you wanna be around your daughter then what
you
need to do is get your ass
back to that damn program and stay there until your head is right and those people tell the judge you can leave.”

Diamond had softened under the truth and nodded. “Yeah, I know. It’s just that it’s New Year’s Eve and everybody else is gonna be out there partying and shit … all my friends …”

“What
damn friends?” Pearl stood up and demanded. “You mean them trick bitches who hit the pipe with you while you was in labor then dropped you off at the hospital and left you by yourself?
Those
damn friends?”

“You know what I mean, Pearl. You ain’t gotta put so much drama into it, damn.”

“No, that ain’t drama, Diamond. Drama is you wanting to get out in the street a week after dropping a damn baby! For real, girl, you got on a short skirt up the ass and your coochie ain’t even closed up tight yet! That stank thang is still wide open! And look at your freakin’ shirt! Your titties is still leaking milk!”

It took another fifteen minutes, but Pearl was finally able to talk Diamond into going back to the treatment center. Diamond had begged Pearl to just let her climb in her own bed and go to sleep, but Pearl wasn’t having it.

“Hell, no! You ain’t the one tired.
Mommy and Daddy
are drag-ass tired! They been up at that hospital day and night worrying about Chante, then coming home and trying to help me with Sasha too. The last thing they need is to find out you snuck outta rehab. Don’t be giving them shit else to worry about, Diamond. They have enough on their shoulders. Just take your red ass back where you belong, and don’t come back here until you got your head right.”

Diamond had left to go back to the rehabilitation center that night, but Pearl wasn’t stupid enough to put any money on where her sister had really gone. What she did know for sure is that over
the next couple of years her mother and father gave her a series of opportunities that she just couldn’t refuse. They encouraged her to put all her time and energy into school and to live her life just like any other young teenager who had college instead of dick on the brain.

Not only did Pearl study hard and get top grades in all her classes, she ran track, played basketball, and joined the school debate team too, and her parents bent over backward to make sure she had room in her life to do all the things that interested her without making her feel guilty as they raised her baby.

“Gone, Pearl. Go on and enjoy your life while you can. If we can take care of one,” Irish would say, nodding at Chante, “then we can take care of two.”

On weekends Pearl would try to make it up to them by doing laundry for the girls, washing and braiding their hair, and entertaining them on Sunday mornings while Zeta cooked a big dinner and Irish put on his glasses and sat at his desk going over work for his center.

Those were Pearl’s special times alone with her daughter and her niece, and she loved watching them play and grow. Both of them were gorgeous, but Pearl’s daughter Sasha was taller, and the quieter of the two. Despite what Zeta had predicted, she never did get much darker than her birth tone, and actually did look a lot more like Diamond than she did like Pearl.

Chante was still kinda tiny, but she was fast and bright and always into something. The girl was so quick you had to watch her or she’d be pulling stuff outta drawers, playing in the toilet, or putting something in her mouth that didn’t go there. She was as cute as she could get, and the family found it funny that she looked just like her aunt Pearl.

Neither one of the girls looked like their daddy, Pearl noted with relief. She had stared into their cute little faces for hours,
glad to see that Scotch’s trifling ass was nowhere to be found in either of them. She still burned up just thinking about all them fuckin’ shots and pills she took trying to get rid of the venereal disease that bastard had infected her and Diamond with. Their babies could have been born blind, twisted, deformed, all fucked up, or even dead! That shit had been so humiliating and embarrassing that Pearl had sworn she would never let another dick slide up in her raw until she was married, and so far she had kept that vow. Scotch mighta been her and Diamond’s grimy sperm donor, but the Baines genes were strong as hell and that niggah hadn’t contributed hardly a damn thing to his offspring.

The girls’ baby years flew by, and before Pearl knew it she was graduating from high school. There had been a lot of cute dudes who tried to get her train to jump off the tracks, and she’d gone out a few times and gotten her sex thang rocked and her back knocked outta joint real good. Pearl attracted men like ants to a slice of watermelon and there was never a shortage on dudes who were eager to please her. She had a preference for dark-skinned guys with killer white smiles and hard bodies and could spend hours in bed on one sex session. Pearl didn’t get her swerve on that often, but when she did get it she pulled all-nighters. She liked it slow, hard, and nasty. She had mad respect for a guy who could hold out a long time. Long enough so she could cum at least three times. Oral sex was a must for her too. If she went through the whole process of making sure a dude was good enough to get up in her stomach, she was damn sure gonna get her pussy licked first. That was a requirement!

But sex always took a backseat when it came to her family or to her education. For the most part Pearl had done her best to ignore the call of the streets and stay on point as she finished high school, and her reward had come in the form of a full academic scholarship to the University of Georgia.

“You doing the whole damn neighborhood proud,” Irish had beamed and told his daughter. Him and Zeta had thrown Pearl a big-ass party at Studio Sass, and all the nigs from No Limitz had turned out to see his baby girl off to college. They had catered ribs and wings and buckets of potato salad from a local joint called Nastee’s up the block, and even though Irish didn’t tolerate no drugs, there was plenty of Krug and Cristal flowing, and of course chicks was sneaking all up in the bathroom hitting lines and blowing sticky like crazy.

Diamond was at the party too. Even though she was brilliant in school and had a damn-near photographic memory, there was no way in hell she could have graduated on time with the small amount of credits she’d earned. School had never interested Diamond much, although she was practically a genius in math. She’d gotten high almost every day between classes, dropped out after completing less then two years, and began living on the streets shortly after that.