Unzipped: An Urban Erotic Tale (4 page)

All eyes were on Diamond as she spit out the culprit’s name.

“I got it from
Pearl’s
niggah! SCOTCH!”

F
orgiveness had not come easy for Pearl. Young and dumb, she had fallen deeply for Scotch’s gaming lies, and had given her heart and her soul to him, not to mention full and complete access to her beautiful young body. Scotch was slick and fine, and he had sold her a silky bill of dreams by drilling her with tales of how much he loved her, and promises of how he was gonna get her out of Harlem and be her man for life.

Finding out about him and Diamond had been a painful blow for Pearl, but her reaction to their lies and betrayal had actually helped her discover something deep about herself: she could be a monster when she needed to. Pearl had lost her quiet demeanor right along with her mind as the humiliation of Scotch’s deceit pressed down on her. For the first time in her life she allowed rage to consume her as she waited until Diamond was out of the hospital, then ran up on her in the street and kicked her fuckin’ ass!

Diamond didn’t have any wins when it came to her raging sister, either. She took her ass-whipping in stride because she knew she had it coming. Shit, Pearl was done being walked on! Done being scared to stand up for herself and for her proper respect. With her newfound courage she’d shaken off her tentativeness and went after a piece of Scotch’s ass too! She’d taken a nice little slice of his neck meat, and he was lucky she’d fucked around and missed and cut him high when she was trying to cut him low.

Diamond had apologized over and over again, swearing all out she felt like shit for hurting and betraying her twin.

“I’m so sorry, Pearl. Please believe me. I can change. I swear to
God
I can. If you would just forgive me, Pearl, I can
change!”

Pearl was straight disgusted with Diamond. Her sister had gotten down just like a regular Harlem chickenhead, just like the kind of gutter chicks that Pearl had grown to despise and had sworn she would never be. It was hard but Pearl went ahead and gave her sister the forgiveness she needed, but even after Irish Baines had seen to it that Scotch was dealt with in the proper street fashion, the knowledge of what her sister had done behind her back was still embarrassing and painful for Pearl.

But even through all of that, Pearl still loved Diamond. And while there was no doubt that her sister could be low-down and grimy, she knew Diamond loved her too. When they were younger they used to sing a poem of love and affection together every night before they went to bed, and over the years their feelings had remained strong. They had continued to sing their love words out loud, even as teens.

There was nobody in the world who knew Pearl better than her twin, and even though their personalities were very different, their hearts had always moved to the same beat. But that didn’t mean Pearl got down with everything Diamond did, or co-signed the way her sister shit on their parents, disrespected relationships, or cocked her legs open to strange men.

It had been late on a snowy Christmas Eve when Irish got a call that his youngest daughter had been dropped off in the lobby of a hospital because she was in labor. He hadn’t laid eyes on Diamond in over a month, and both him and Zeta were worried about what she was doing out there on those mean streets. Prenatal care was just a joke to Diamond. Doing the right thing for the sake of her unborn child had never even occurred to her. Even though her sperm donor Scotch had been chased out of Harlem months ago, Irish had gotten word on the streets that Diamond had hooked up with some cat from the other side of town who was ten times worse than Scotch had ever been. Diamond had been seen dancing and drinking in all kinds of strip joints and clubs, wildin’ like she wasn’t even pregnant.

But regardless, it was too early for her to be having that baby anyway. Pearl was the one due to give birth any day, and as far as Irish and Zeta could tell, Diamond was only around seven months pregnant.

Worried by the call, Irish had woken up Zeta and Pearl, then bundled his wife and daughter into his late-model Cadillac and driven through the snow-slushed streets to see about Diamond and her unborn child.

When they got to the hospital’s labor and delivery ward, Zeta broke down crying immediately. Pearl put her arms around her mother, and she wanted to cry too. The sight of Diamond was too fucked up for her to put into words. Instead of seeing an image of someone very similar to herself, a youthful fifteen-year-old
expectant mother, Pearl’s twin sister looked like a cold, wet, exhausted dog that somebody had kicked around and starved, then dragged through the ghetto streets for weeks on end.

“What the hell happened to you?” Pearl demanded, rushing over to her sister’s bedside.

Diamond twisted and turned in pain, her hospital gown hiked over her stomach, her slender legs gaped wide-open.

“The same damn thing that happened to you!” she snapped, grabbing her sister’s hand and squeezing it tightly.

“Damn” was all Pearl could say as she looked down at Diamond’s small baby bump. She was naked under her hospital gown and her belly was barely big enough to even say there was a baby in it. Pearl reached for the sheet Diamond had flung off and tried to shield her twin’s nakedness.

“Girl, cover ya ass. Daddy’s standing right there,” she said, eyeing the oddly shaped dark patch of skin directly below her sister’s navel. It was Diamond’s birthmark, and Pearl had one too, a mirror image of her twin’s, in the exact same shape and size, and in the exact same place. It was the one thing they shared that branded them physically, and when they were little kids they used to stand belly to belly, laughing as their birthmarks lined up perfectly, as though they’d been connected in the womb at that very spot.

For years, no one, other than their doctors and their parents, knew about the odd birthmark the twins shared, and the reality of their situation came down on Pearl at that moment. That grimy fuckin’ Scotch knew. He’d been banging both of them, probably kissing and licking Diamond’s birthmark the same way he used to lick and suck and put hickeys all around hers. He’d shot babies up inside both of their young asses, and now Scotch was long gone from their hood, hopefully somewhere dead, and Diamond was about to give birth to her twin sister’s betrayal.

The next several hours were hard for Pearl. She sat quietly and watched as her mother comforted Diamond through her excruciating labor pains. Wasn’t no telling what the hell that wild girl had been doing in the streets, or who she had been doing it with. Diamond had probably been drinking, getting high, fucking strangers … Pearl sat there miserably, going back and forth between being mad about all the bad decisions her sister made, and hurting for Diamond as she actually felt her sister’s labor pains. She could really feel them too. Physically. All in her back.

Pearl might have still been mad at Diamond for fucking Scotch, but she was scared too. Scared about what her own labor and delivery would be like, and hoping the doctors were right when they promised that the gonorrhea Scotch had infected her with had been cured in time, and that her baby was gonna be born healthy and strong instead of blind or deformed.

All of her fears and feelings really had Pearl going, and a few hours later, when Diamond was finally fully dilated and was being wheeled out of the labor room and taken into delivery, Pearl forced herself to kiss her sister’s damp cheek.

Diamond grabbed her hand and pleaded with tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Pearl. For real. I am. I can change, Pearl. I can
change
. I love you. I’m sorry for everything, okay?”

Pearl couldn’t say a word. That shit still hurt. It hurt her all over. She was sick of Diamond and all that “change” shit. Her sister always talked the game but she never walked it. Pearl just nodded as they wheeled Diamond through the doors with Zeta following closely behind the stretcher. She felt her father put his arm around her shoulder, then Irish pulled her close to him. His beard was scratchy as he kissed her forehead.

“It’s all right, baby,” her daddy told her. “Your sister fucked up. She betrayed your bond and it’s still paining you. So whatever kind of way you feeling right now, it’s cool. She earned that shit.”

But everything wasn’t cool in the delivery room.

An hour later Zeta came back to the waiting room with a grim look on her face.

“Diamond had a girl and she’s doing fine. She popped that tiny baby out and didn’t even need no stitches.”

Pearl felt her heart banging around in her chest and suddenly she had to pee like hell. “H-how does the baby look?” she asked. If Diamond’s baby was okay, with no deformities or disfigurements from the disease they’d shared, then that meant her baby was probably healthy too. “Does the baby look okay?”

“She’s cute. She’s real tiny, though. A preemie. But it ain’t her weight that’s bothering the doctors right now.” Zeta turned to face Irish with a tear on her cheek. “Just like we figured, Diamond’s been out there getting high. She lied her ass off every time I asked her, but she just admitted it to the nurse in there. She said she was getting high this morning when she went in labor, and the doctors think the baby might have crack in her system.”

For the first time in her life, Pearl saw her father break down.

“A
crack
baby?” Irish said, his eyes brimming with enraged tears. “She told me all she was doing was smoking a little weed every now and then! Here I been busting my ass and fighting drugs in this neighborhood for over ten damn years just to have my daughter sucking on a pipe and giving birth to a
crack baby
?”

Zeta started crying too, and it was at that moment that Pearl knew that no matter what kind of grime her sister was into, there was no way in hell she could turn her back on her precious little newborn niece. Pearl hadn’t even seen her yet, but already she loved her niece with the same fierceness that she loved the baby she carried in her own belly.

“Come on, y’all,” Pearl said, trying to comfort her parents and get them to concentrate not on their pain, but on the important issues at hand. “We gotta focus on the baby now. Diamond can
handle her own damn business. The baby is what’s important. She’s gotta gain weight and get healthy. If she’s got crack in her system then social services won’t even let Diamond take her out of this hospital. It’s all about the baby, y’all. We gotta be there for the baby.”

It would be a minute before Pearl found out that her speculation was right on point, because no sooner than the words were out of her mouth did a big gush of water erupt from her and begin streaming down her legs.

“You all right?” Zeta asked, reaching for her daughter as Pearl grabbed at her lower back and almost lost her balance.

“Dag, I’m wet. I’m peeing. I think my water broke …”

As her mother helped lower her to a chair, Pearl felt a hard knot of pressure swelling in her groin, and the gush of warm liquid drenching her pants was proof that some big things were about to get popping.

“Nurse!” Irish looked scared as he stuck his head out the door and called toward the nursing station. “Yo! Nurse! My daughter! Gimme some help in here!”

The next few minutes were a painful blur for Pearl as she was taken into an examining room right next door to the one Diamond had recently come out of. She held tight to her mother’s hand, just as her sister had done, as she was examined and the labor pains surged through her young body.

Pushing out one baby would be more than enough for her, Pearl had vowed as she fought the wave of contractions that were thrusting her unborn child out into the world. She had locked eyes with her father just as they were taking her into the delivery room and it almost made her cry. She knew Irish had held high hopes and dreams for her. Instead of giving birth to a baby at fifteen, he’d wanted her to go big places and do big things with her life, and above all to escape the street trappings that had claimed
so many people he loved. Pearl stared deeply at her father, and what she saw in his soul hurt her almost as bad as the labor pains.

“One day you’re gonna be proud of me, Daddy,” Pearl whispered as they wheeled her away. “One day I’m gonna make you real proud.”

Irish Baines had smiled down at his daughter and said, “I’m already proud of you, Daddy’s Pearl. I’m already proud.”