Unzipped: An Urban Erotic Tale (14 page)

“Man, just tell me you ain’t going back to Harlem!” Cole exploded. “Tell me you ain’t going back to get with that niggah Menace! Damn, girl! Just tell me that.”

Pearl gave him a look so cold it sent a bullet through his heart.

“I don’t know how you was brought up down there in Brooklyn, Cole, but Irish and Zeta Baines raised me better than that. I already told you about how Menace got down with Diamond. No matter how grimy my sister trolled behind me, I don’t
fuck
behind my sister. So don’t put it on me if you’re used to slummin’ with guttersnipe feather flyers in the BK with no morals or no character, because that ain’t me.”

Pearl wasn’t moved an inch by the look of pain on Cole’s face. She had decent love for him and would always appreciate what he had done for her, but there was no room for love or softness or gratitude in Pearl’s heart right now. Today, her heart was ice-cold and her mind was already hundreds of miles to the north, squarely in the city of New York. Right in the heart of a gritty little town called Harlem. A place where cutthroat killers raped and tortured women and terrorized and burned up innocent little kids who were tied to their beds. A place where violent wars were waged and good men suffered brutal deaths.

A place of retribution, reprisal, reckoning, and revenge.

Harlem, USA.

D
.C. didn’t have shit on Harlem in the summertime. Somehow, if it was ninety degrees in the nation’s capitol, it was damn near a hundred on 125th Street. It was like that with the other boroughs too. Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, even the Bronx. Out of all the hot spots in the city of New York, Harlem was always the hottest. In temperature and in the level of crime and drama that played out on the urban streets.

Flying into a New York airport was nothing like it used to be. Instead of finding Irish and Zeta there holding hands with Sasha and Chante, Pearl was all alone as she looked out into a moving sea of strange faces.

Keeping her head high and her emotions in deep check, Pearl walked briskly through the corridors and past baggage claim, then exited the airport and caught a taxicab and gave the driver a Harlem address.

She sat back as the New York streets sped past in a blur, grateful
for the small stream of almost-cool air that wheezed from the car’s vents. Pearl was keeping it low profile today. She had pulled her hair back into a simple but stylish bun and wore a pair of black slacks and a plain pullover cotton shift. The back of her arms stuck to the taxi’s plastic upholstery and Pearl fanned herself with her crumpled boarding pass. Harlem summers had always been back-alley humid, and the intense heat kept tempers high and corner boys, winos, and crackheads amped up and fighting mad.

When the taxi pulled up outside the address Pearl had given him, it was a long moment before Pearl could make herself get out of the man’s cab. A big knot of fear had formed in her chest, but when a child’s painful voice cried out in her mind, Pearl fought to slam the voice straight out of her head as she begged her wounded heart to shut down and go ice-cold.

Pearl paid the driver then retrieved her small suitcase from the trunk. She stood looking down at the sidewalk, hating Harlem. She hated all of New York. Her world had ended here, and if it wasn’t for the commanding voice of her father she would have never stepped foot back on these foul, dirty streets.

Pearl raised her eyes and forced herself to take in the devastation as she stared at the scorched remainders of her family’s small empire. It had been burned down to the ground. There were still traces of an acrid smell coming from the gutted house and pieces of yellow crime-scene tape stuck to a pillar on the porch. A few stray beams and some melted roof tiles were scattered about, and the foundation was still there, but everything else was gone. Either it had been destroyed by the fire, washed into the gutter by the firemen’s hoses, or picked over by the human vultures who crept by in the dark of night to see if there was anything left of value to steal.

Pearl just stood there, transfixed by the sight.

Mommy! Mommy! Help me, Mommy!

And then she lost it. Her heart exploded in grief as she sank down to her knees right there on the busy sidewalk. She wailed out loud as thick plumes of smoke seemed to snake up her nose and a blurry vision of her mother’s tortured body and her daughter’s burned flesh filled her mind.

Get up, Pearl!
a loud, strong voice commanded in her head. Harlemites were walking past her on the sidewalk, most of them so used to seeing strange shit on the regular that they didn’t even give her a second glance.
Get your ass up, Pearl! You’ve got work to do, baby. You got a grind to get on!

Crouching on the sidewalk, Pearl breathed deep gulps of car exhaust–tinged air into her lungs. She fought the terror and grief that was trying to cripple her, and hung on to her father’s commands with every ounce of strength she had.

Oblivious to the traffic and the pedestrians, Pearl’s body shook with sobs until she was depleted and could cry no more. And when she finally rose to her feet, her back was straight and strong and she was filled with her father’s love and his presence.

She dried her tears. Daddy’s Pearl had business to handle. With a resolute look in her eyes, Pearl pulled her suitcase along the cracked sidewalk littered with trash, broken bottles, and crushed beer cans, and prepared herself to get shit done.

Pearl had fully expected her father’s rehabilitation and outreach center to be closed and shuttered with its solid metal grille, but to her surprise the doors to No Limitz were standing wide open and several young men were inside seated at computer stations.

A huge plaque hung in the entryway, and reading it helped Pearl feel her father’s presence:

Irish had placed the plaque there on the day the center opened, over fifteen years earlier. He had cut the wood, sanded it, and engraved the words himself, and every black or Latino kid who had ever walked through his doors had been made to recite and memorize the words and strive to understand and internalize their meaning.

Pearl stood in the doorway staring as a tall, gorgeous dude with a deliciously buff body and smooth cocoa skin walked up and down between the rows of terminals and chairs, stopping to answer a question here and there or to give technical computer support as needed.

He was a fifth-degree black belt, a tournament-winning elite martial artist, and one of the strongest, finest men she’d ever seen. Pearl knew from experience that he was an intellectual when it came to business, a powerful and unselfish lover in the gushy, and a straight-up gorilla out there on the streets.

Menace Brown had come to No Limitz at the age of fourteen under her father’s guidance. Irish had taken the young criminal under his wing when he was just a pup, and Menace had pledged his loyalty to Irish and looked up to him like the father he’d never had.

Three years older than Pearl, Menace had once been a studious corner boy who slung trap for a major kingpin in Washington Heights. His mother had died from the AIDS virus when he was ten, and he’d never even known his father.

As young as he was, Menace had taken care of his mother all by himself in her final days. He’d fed her soup from a spoon, washed her gaunt, feverish body, brushed her thin wisps of hair, and prayed with her for strength and salvation.

Even though they’d been poor and couldn’t afford the basic necessities, Laila Brown had loved her boy, and what she couldn’t give him in material things she made up for by fortifying him with her love and her wisdom. It was Menace’s father who had infected her with the virus while she was pregnant with him, and ever grateful that her baby had not been infected, Laila had used the tragedy of her hard life to teach her son what it meant to be a real man.

But her death rocked the boy off his foundation and left him angry and filled with rage. Alone and left to fend for himself, Menace had become one of those fearless, hopeless street kids who ran rampant through the projects kicking up chaos as he struggled to deal with his anger and survive the only way he knew how. With a stomach that was always on empty and the courage of a grown man, he pulled stick-ups, kick-doors, and shakedowns every chance he got, and even the baddest old heads agreed that he was a true menace to society.

Laila had done her best to instill the proper values in her son during her short lifetime, but the streets were cold and hard, and despite her many life lessons, when she died there was no mama in the hood to guide or discipline him. Menace ran with a crew of several other street kids and all of them got on the grind for the local kingpin and started slinging rock from various city corners.

By the time he was fourteen Menace had earned the best territory out of all the young pups on the trap. He’d amassed a stable of regulars who liked to cop from him because he was quick and discreet, two valuable traits on the trap. He worked tirelessly but was quiet and serious, and didn’t drink, smoke, fuck hood-rats, or hang out with a crew unless stacking gwap was involved. As a result, he turned high profits and earned enough cream to stack some of it away for a rainy day.

It was a hot summer night when the jakes rained down in a
major drug bust, sweeping through the dank streets and rolling corner boys left and right. Menace followed procedures exactly the way he usually did. He had just re-upped his supply and turned over his doe, and when the jakes jumped outta their cars, Menace took off running to his usual drop spot, where he always stashed his weight until the coast was clear.

But shit didn’t go the way it usually went. He had just loosened a brick on the side of the house and slid his package into the gaping hole when three grown men jumped on him from behind. They were a bunch of roscoes who had been casing his spot for a while, and knew exactly where he went to stash his shit during a raid.

Menace was a big, strong kid, but he was still just a kid. He fought furiously, scoring big blows, but eventually they got the cuffs on him and it was a wrap. The next thing Menace knew he was locked up with a bunch of other felonious young heads, and the cops were trying to pin about twenty other crimes on him. He’d stayed cool under questioning and kept his gangsta up, because the lowest thing you could be was a snitch, and Menace was far from that. He
was
a minor though, so he bided his time and waited for the authorities to slap him on the wrist and send him back to foster care. But the judge was tired of seeing him rolling in and out of his courtroom, so he got clever and sentenced Menace to a youth-outreach program instead.

Irish Baines showed up in court to collect young Menace, and instead of being the old do-gooder community activist Menace had expected, he was a big, killer-looking nig who looked like he had once been quite a menace to society himself.

Irish had taken him to a local group home and set about trying to reprogram the hood life out of the boy while there was still time.

“Two rules,” Irish had told him after making sure he got
something to eat and showing him to his bunk. “Stay away from them drugs out there and finish school. You somebody’s son, young man. Somebody’s black prince. There ain’t no limitz on a soul emboldened and a mind inspired! I don’t know what your story is or where you been, but I’m sure your mama didn’t raise no fool to be wildin’ in the streets and wrecking shit like no animal.”

Irish was no nonsense and had a legendary rep, and Menace respected that shit. More than that, he respected the way Irish walked the streets, all man, yet he rapped about progression and education instead of pimping bitches and slanging blow, and somehow all that positivity coming out of Irish’s mouth was exactly what Menace needed to hear at that stage in his life.

He dug in and went to school and actually studied and learned. For the first time in his young life Menace had an older male influencing his mind in the proper manner, and along with the lessons that Irish was forever laying on his young pup, there was love and respect flowing between them too, something Menace had never gotten from any man before.