by Noire
Her legs were stroking, she was moving like a track star, and when she turned the corner and glimpsed her house, thick smoke and vicious flames were already shooting from the windows. Getting past the firemen was real easy in Pearl’s dream. She moved in slow motion and she took two of them down without breaking a sweat. The po-po were something else though. She fucked the young one up real good, the one who had Tasered her first. The second one got more than a broken nose for touching her fuckin’ hair, and Pearl left him on the ground trying to push his eyeball back inside of his skull.
She was almost at the front door, but moving in dream speed. She felt the heat and the smoke but she wasn’t gonna let it stop her. She reached for the white-hot door handle and felt bits of her palm flesh sear off and stick to it, but she yanked it open anyway and fled inside, pushed on by the desperate sound of her little girl’s cries.
She passed by her father Irish in the living room, and hesitated only briefly when she saw that he was beat down and bloody and hogtied to a chair. Pearl’s legs were long and strong as hell in her dream, and she bound into Sasha and Chante’s room in just three steps, yelling for the girls through the smoke as loud as she could.
“I’m coming, Sasha!” Pearl screamed to her dream daughter. “Hold on baby! I’m coming!!”
But just as she rounded the corner and burst into the blistering pink-and-brown room whose walls were already scorched black, Pearl stopped short, frozen in grief by what she saw.
Sasha stood next to her burning bed tapping one flaming foot on the floor. Her melted eyes were narrowed and her arms were crossed defiantly in front of her. She was pissed off and burning, and loose flesh was sliding off her like thick candle wax.
“You got time for every goddamn thing except me,” Pearl’s dead daughter accused her from a mouth that was held together by crispy, burnt lips. “Why you running your ass up in here now? You shoulda been here for me the whole time, Pearl. But you left us here to die ’cause you was too busy thinking about yourself.”
Then right before Pearl’s eyes, Sasha’s whole body began turning to liquid. It started at her feet and she melted to the floor, first to her knees, and then up to her waist, and then her shoulders and finally her head. The entire time her little girl was screaming, “You left me, Pearl! You made sure you got outta the hood, but you left me here to die!”
Pearl cried out and fled from the dream room as Sasha’s lips still moved accusingly in her puddle of human wax. She heard Irish moaning as she ran toward the front door and stopped when she saw her mother’s brutalized body near his feet. Zeta was dead. Streaks of blood were on her thighs. Her beautiful mouth was busted; bloodied and torn apart. Irish was strapped to a chair and he was on fire. Flames were coming out of his mouth, his nose, and his eyes.
“Them muthafuckas got us!” her father gurgled in her dream, spitting fire as he tried to shake the flames from his head. Pearl screamed again and ran toward the door.
“Get ’em back!” she heard Irish yelling behind her. “You get ’em back, Daddy’s Pearl! You pay them muhfuckahs back!”
Pearl screamed out loud and bolted upright in the bed for real. She was sweating and crying and could have sworn she tasted burnt flesh in her mouth. Her heart ached with grief, and the rage in her baby girl’s bubbling eyes and the ringing of her father’s last words in her ears caused her more pain than she had ever imagined possible.
She called out for Cole and found that she was alone in his apartment. He had left a note beside her on the bed saying he’d gone out to get something to eat and would be right back.
Pearl was alone and she knew what she had to do.
There was no way in hell she could live like this and there was no other way to end it.
She reached under Cole’s pillow and found his service revolver where he always left it when he was off duty. She thought about sticking the barrel in her mouth and eating some lead but she just couldn’t do it. That shit was too foul. Brains would be spattered all over the walls; blood and goo would be everywhere. Somebody would have to come behind her and clean all that shit up.
The same thing went for cutting her wrists or jumping off a roof. Too much fuckin’ drama. She wasn’t about leaving a whole bunch of mess behind for some poor fool to deal with. Pearl eyed the medicine vials on her night table. The FBI psychiatrist had prescribed the pills for her but they hadn’t done a damn bit of good. Her muscles were weak, but she managed to open both canisters. She shook out almost all the tablets from each one. She poured the tablets into her mouth and chewed them into a foul-tasting goo.
“Oh, Sasha,” Pearl moaned as she went into the bathroom, then climbed into the dry tub and stretched out flat. She was weak and exhausted and all she wanted was for the nightmare that had become her life to finally end.
“My baby,” she muttered, her heart aching and grieving as she visualized her dead daughter. “Oh God … my baby.”
Tears rolled from Pearl’s eyes as she closed them and waited for the drugs to take effect. “I’m so sorry, baby girl,” she whispered. “Chante. Daddy. Mama. Diamond. I’m sorry y’all.”
Cole walked the rainy streets of D.C. without an umbrella or a hat.
From the moment he had asked Pearl to be his woman for life, nothing but clouds had hung over their lives. He didn’t even feel the rain as it slid off his head and rolled down his neck. He was a big dude, and his feet kicked up waves in the puddles of the cracked pavement as he walked through the hood trying to figure out what to do about Pearl. He had to find a way to bring his baby back to life so she could start acting right again and they could get on with their relationship.
He stopped in a local pizza joint and got two hot slices and an order of buffalo wings to go. He stuffed the bulging paper bag under his jacket as he walked back out in the rain and headed to his small apartment where Pearl was waiting. He was tired as fuck, but there was no slowing down in sight. Ever since Pearl’s family had died there had been no fun, no hanging out, no home cooking, and definitely no fucking.
Cole was a brother with needs, and the sooner Pearl came out of her funk and got her shit together the sooner he could get them met. The past few weeks had been real hard on him. He worked a twelve-hour shift every day then rushed home to take care of Pearl, who mostly cried her days away. She slept on and off, screaming from nightmares so loud that it scared the shit outta his neighbors.
It was all that crying that had gotten her sent home from the job.
The Bureau had given her two weeks of bereavement leave to bury her people and take care of bizz up in New York, but two weeks didn’t even put a dent in the amount of time it looked like Pearl was gonna need to get back on track.
For one thing, her sister Diamond had been missing since the night of their birthday, and now that she had been found at the county landfill just two days ago, Cole was hesitant about hitting Pearl with the devastating news about her twin. What good would knowing do her? Nah, Cole wasn’t with it. As bad as Pearl was grieving, hearing about Diamond’s death would fuck her head up even more and push her completely over the edge. Wasn’t no telling how long it would take her to get over that shit. After the way she had spazzed out at the funerals, Cole wasn’t about to lay no extra trip like that on her.
“Yo, Diamond is dead,” the dude calling Pearl’s cell phone had said flatly. Immediately, Cole had gotten swole and sought to protect Pearl. From the devastating news about her sister, and from the ass-clocking muhfuckah delivering that shit.
“Shawty caught a bad one,” the dude went on. “They holding her body at the county morgue. They had to ID her through dental records, man, ’cause there wasn’t enough of her left to get a fingerprint from to find out who she was.”
There was a long pause on the line, and Cole saw no reason to fill it, ’cause even though he felt real sorry for Diamond, Pearl was his baby. He wanted her on her feet living life, not wrecked out and crying all day in no bed. Pearl had told him all about this slimy cat Menace and how h
e had been fucking Diamond over the years. Fuck this niggah! Cole was strictly out for Pearl. Let this punk on the line look out for the twin he had been jocking for.
“They said she was all fucked up, man,” Menace said finally. “But even in her bad condition they could tell she had broken bones all in her neck … some niggah musta strangled her or something … somebody’s gonna have to go claim her body so she can be buried. I guess Pearl needs to know that.”
Cole smirked. “Why the fuck do Pearl need to know?”
“What?”
“I said, why Pearl gotta know? She’s already pressed the fuck out. She don’t need no more bad news.”
“Man, what the fuck is you talking about? That’s her sister layin’ in the morgue dead, yo! Her fuckin’ twin! They pops raised them to be tight, niggah! To look out for each other! Hell yeah she needs to know!”
Cole just shrugged. He gave a damn about all that. “Yo,” he told Menace, “you was boning Diamond right? Sliding up in that? Then you go take care of her body. Handle that shit. I’m fuckin’ Pearl, and I’ma make sure my baby is straight.”
Pearl! Pearl!
Wake up, Pearl! Stay with us, baby!
It was almost as bad as her nightmare, the pain and confusion that had suddenly gripped her. She was shaken violently, her face slapped by large, rough hands. From a great distance she imagined she heard Cole yelling, then talking to someone frantically, begging them for help.
She was lifted and jostled. Then she was stretched out flat and being bumped along, moving fast. Hands dug deep into her stomach, pressing toward her backbone, and a sharp-tasting liquid was forced down her throat.
Pearl gagged and fought back, but she was weak.
There were lots of people above her. Loud voices. Sharp commands and murmured words of concern.
She tried to turn over on her side. Wanted to sleep. They flipped her onto her back again and jammed a tube up her nose. It scraped the back of her throat and snaked down into her stomach. Cold liquid whooshed quickly through the tube and flooded her insides. The sound of suction assaulted her ears. Pearl choked as she tried to cry out. She couldn’t catch her breath.
She was so tired. Just wanted to sleep. Forever. Forever!
Pearl! Pearl!
Cold fingers lifted her eyelids.
Bright lights pierced her brain. Her stomach lurched and she gagged, spewing up the foul-tasting liquid they’d forced into her belly.
There were so many people around, so many voices floating within her fog, but one voice in particular Pearl heard loud and clear.
Why? a woman asked with deep concern in her voice.
Pearl opened her eyes to the blurry image of an elderly white nurse leaning over her. She had a full head of gray hair and eyes that crinkled in the corners.
Why would such a beautiful young woman do something like this to herself? the lady wanted to know.
Cole’s deep voice washed over Pearl as he answered.
She lost her whole family and she’s been sad, he said. She’s hurting. It’s hard on her … she’s grieving so bad till I guess she just don’t wanna live no more …
Through her haze, Pearl watched as the old white nurse leaned over her again. Somewhere in the background little Sasha cried out for her mother, and Pearl squeezed her eyes closed tightly and willed her soul to fly free from her body.
When Pearl opened her eyes again, it wasn’t the old nurse whose face floated above her.
It was the face of her dead father.
It was that old street niggah Irish Baines, who once upon a time had handled the most vicious of gangstas in a brutal fashion. Irish gazed down at his daughter as she lay on that hospital gurney, racked with grief and trying her best to join her family in death and he told her, “I know it hurts, but you gotta be strong, Daddy’s Pearl. I don’t want you to be sad no more, you hear me?” Pearl listened intently to her father, and the words firing from his mouth caused her to become straight-up unzipped.
“Daddy wants you to get mad now, baby. Daddy wants you to get even!”
Pearl had endured a lot during her hospital stay. She’d been admitted to the psych ward and placed on suicide watch for almost two weeks. After being forced to take antidepressants and sit through endless hours of nuthouse counseling, by the time Pearl was discharged she had developed a new sense of purpose, an objective, and a plan.
Getting rid of Cole had been harder than faking out her psychiatrists. Shaking that clingy niggah off was like trying to kick a tribe of fleas out of a pissy carpet. Carlita had been right about him. Cole was possessive and controlling, and the only thing he gave a damn about was keeping Pearl right next to him so that the next man couldn’t get close to her.
“You need to chill with all that packing,” he had told her as she tossed a few items of clothes into a suitcase. He had followed Pearl to her apartment even though she’d told him she wanted to go home alone. Pearl ignored him and kept on packing. She didn’t know why she was bothering to take most of her stuff anyway. She had paid her rent up for the next two months and she was gonna need a whole new wardrobe for the kind of role she was about to play.
“You got a damn good job here, Pearl,” Cole went on. “You got people here who care about you. Even Carlita thinks you should stay here!”
Pearl nodded. Carlita did want her to stay in D.C. But Carlita had also done everything within her power to make sure that Pearl would be safe and successful when she left. Carlita had used her security clearance to help Pearl access a file on another New York family who had been killed in a crime that was almost identical to hers, and had done countless other things to help her. So, while Carlita wanted Pearl to stay, she understood why her young friend had to go.
“Just holla if something heavy goes down,” Carlita had told her. “If you need help kickin’ ass I’ll jet to Harlem in a blink, girl. Me and Zoe are both ready to get strapped and get it started.”
Carlita and Zoe were true friends and they were gonna support Pearl regardless, through thick and thin. But Cole’s selfish ass had kept the heat on at his end.
“Yo, Pearl. All that ‘I gotta get away and find myself’ bullshit sounds real suspect to me. You ain’t never been lost, baby. Your life is right here. I’m right here. This is where you belong.”
Pearl was grateful to Cole for standing by her side and holding her up through the funerals and stuff, but gratitude wasn’t gonna stop her from doing what she had to do. Wasn’t nothing in the world gonna stop her from accomplishing the mission that was in front of her, but there was no way to break that down for Cole in terms that would make him understand it.
“This ain’t about you or a job or the FBI, Cole. It’s about me. I already told you that a thousand times.”
“But you ain’t really telling me much of nothing!” he exploded. “Why don’t you try telling me exactly what the fuck I’ve been asking you, Pearl! Where are you going? Who are you gonna be with? Why can’t I come with you? How fuckin’ long are you gonna be gone?”
Pearl scooped up a row of expensive toiletries and perfumes off her dresser and dumped them into a plastic carry bag. She kept her back turned to Cole as she placed her few good pieces of jewelry into a satin travel pouch, then hesitated briefly before sliding Cole’s icy engagement ring off her finger and setting it on top of the bare dresser.
Pearl sighed and refused to answer him. It was Cole’s fault she was leaving anyway. She had been laying in bed beside him as he watched SportsCenter on Sunday night when it hit her. A plan for retribution had rang out in her head just as clear as a bell, and she had Cole to thank for hooking her up with all the important details.
“Aw, man!” Cole had said as the SportsCenter announcers cut to a commercial break. Cole was drinking a beer and shaking his head at something being said on the screen. “Patrick Ewing is hosting a Summer Jam Basketball Classic at the Garden. That’s the kinda shit I miss about New York,” Cole complained. “Every fuckin’ thing that’s hot happens in New Yo
rk in the summertime. I ain’t bitching or nothing. D.C. is working for me and I got you here, but New York is the place to be. LeBron is about to suit up for the Knicks, and Pat’s name is still ringing big bells. The Classic is a major draw. Every high roller in the country is gonna be swarming on the city that weekend. Hell, forget about the game. The pregame and after-game parties alone are gonna be off the chain.”
Pearl had been laying there, listless and uninterested, but suddenly her ears perked up and her curiosity was stoked.
“What you know about the after parties and all that, Cole? What kind of high rollers go to summer basketball games?”
“Yo, girl, my father was a hoop star before he was a politician, remember? I grew up around all kinds of professional sporting events. It ain’t just about the game, Pearl. It’s about the business of the game. The whole atmosphere. The shine. The tricks, the drugs, the betting, point shaving, and game throwing. Nigs be ballin’! There’s a whole underworld of activity going on at major events like these. The Bureau keeps moles on the job trying to tamp that shit down. But it’s hard to infiltrate those circles because the criminal elements are loyal and they grind it like they live it. To the bone.”
Pearl had nodded, and then sat up straight in the bed, listening to him intently.
Ever since her suicide attempt she had been haunted. Not simply by her family’s murder as she once was, but by what her father commanded her to do from the depths of his cold, smoke-filled grave.
Get them muthafuckahs back, Pearl! Irish begged her each night in her dreams. Don’t get mad, Daddy’s Pearl. Get even!
And with her father’s voice urging her on in her head, Pearl stayed quiet and listened as Cole painted a colorful picture of a three-day ballin’ extravaganza complete with big money rollers, sex, drugs, gambling, and some of the slickest hustlers and kingpins in the nation. It sounded like a real good time to Pearl, the kind of place where sleazy muthafuckahs like the men who had deaded her family in cold blood would fit right in.