Even Sinners Have Souls

by Joy, E. n.

  "Dang," Nailah said and poked out her lip. "Vince and all them endorsements. Jerrard better get up on it." She walked around with an attitude for the rest of the night and didn't start to act right until Sharita gathered all the women in the downstairs family room for a little private girl talk.

  "Okay, Big Mama is 'bout to take y'all little babies to school, ya heard?" Sharita said, cigarette in hand.

  Porsche was embarrassed half to death. She sat there feeling stupid as Sharita started giving the young wives graphic instructions on how to sex whip their husbands and keep them happy in bed.

  "Ohhh!" Telisha hollered as Sharita used a Sprite can for demonstration purposes. "I ain't never seen nobody do it like that!"

  Mica, Nailah, and Jarrie were fixated on Sharita as she showed them how to dip their chips and booty pop while laying on their backs. Jarrie had the nerve to whip out her Sidekick and take a few notes.

  "Your moms is all the way live," Nailah called and said the next day. "I tried a few of those double-jointed moves on Jerrard last night and he won't be going nowhere today. Dude is straight wore out."

  Porsche couldn't even front. She always used Sharita's moves on Vince, and he always seemed to love them.

  A couple of months later, on a Friday evening, , Vince was just about to leave for training camp. Porsche's pregnancy was almost over. Sharita held up a lock of Porsche's hair and studied the ends. Then she peered into her daughter's eyes and frowned.

  "Every afternoon I bring you a cup of hot tea and tell you to lay down and take your behind a nap. What in the world do you be doing in there when I close that door? Partying? You can't be getting no rest because you got dark circles all around your eyes. Looking like a freaking raccoon. And your hair? I know you ain't taking your vitamins like you supposed to, 'cause your ends are busted. Porsche, baby, you know soft hair like ours gotta be trimmed every four weeks. When's the last time you went to the beauty shop?"

  Sharita planned a day for them, and bright and early the next morning, a limo was waiting in their circular driveway.

  "Can we take Mercedes with us this time?" Porsche asked as Sharita came down the grand winding stair- case. Porsche's sister was sitting cross-legged in the living room facing away from the mega-screened television that nearly covered a whole wall. Sharita might have walked out on her kids when they were small, but once they came back to live with her, she made it her business to keep her girls looking like winners instead of Harlem hoodrats.

  Ever since they had gone to live with her, Sharita had gotten up early every morning to give Mercedes a bubble bath and comb her hair. The pipes in their old building had been real sometimey in the winter. A lot of mornings there was no heat and she had to boil pots of water to get Mercedes washed, but she did it. It was important to her that her girls looked like money, even when they didn't have a dime, and Sharita made sure their hair was always fly and their clothes were always decent.

  This morning she had dressed Mercedes in a pair of tight, black jeans and a cute winter-white sweater. The jeans gripped her phat behind like a glove, her glossy hair hung down her back, and she was finer than Sharita and Porsche put together. But no matter how good she looked, people could tell Mercedes was different. She hardly ever opened her mouth and she hated for anybody to touch her anywhere. Most times she kept her head down and refused to look anybody, except Porsche, in the eye.

  "Yeah," Sharita said. Mercedes shrank back as her mother reached out to fix her hair. "She can come."

  An hour later, the three of them were back in the hood, sitting side-by-side in a Harlem beauty parlor while their limo waited outside. Porsche got her hair trimmed and wrapped, and Mercedes let her sister hold her hand while the stylist wrapped her hair too. Next, the driver whipped them over to a spa in midtown, where Sharita and Porsche got manicures and pedicures. Mercedes sat alone because she didn't want any- body to touch her feet.

  Porsche had paid for everything and was just about to walk away from the counter when her mother had another idea. "Don't even bother to put that away," Sharita said as Porsche tried to slide her platinum American Express card back inside her wallet. "Girl, we 'bout to burn that baby up. I ain't hardly ready to go home yet. I think I'll get one of them body wraps. A massage too. Then we can go shopping. You go sit over there and keep Mercedes company until I'm finished."

  By the time they got back to Jersey later that after- noon, Porsche was exhausted and Vince's credit card was so hot it was about to melt.

  "Over here," Sharita told their driver as he struggled to carry all of her bags full of shoes, hats, jewelry, and clothes inside the house.

  Porsche walked through the house looking for Vince and found him in their theater room deep into a game of Wii boxing with Jerrard. Vince and Jerrard had been tight since their college days together, but Porsche wasn't really feeling him all the way. There was no particular reason why; just something about him didn't sit well with her. Her father used to tell her something about a spirit of discernment. Kind of like a gift of intuition from God or something.

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" Vince was punching and hollering at the screen, but when Porsche walked in the room, he dropped the controls immediately, held out his arms, and met her halfway.

  "What's good, Lady P," Vince said with a big smile for his woman. He rubbed her stomach then gave her a juicy kiss on her lips. "You been gone all day, girl. I missed you. Y'all got your shop on, huh? You good now?"

  "Mommy is good. She's the one who spent all the money. Me and Mercedes are just tired." Porsche turned and spoke to his friend. "Hi, Jerrard. How you doing?"

  "I'm straight, Miss Porsche. How's everything with you and my lil' godson over there?"

  "How you know it's not a girl?" Porsche asked, hands on hips.

  "'Cause my man needs a junior tyke to follow him on the playing field. What it gon' look like when you got a gorgeous little girl laying up there holding a football in her hands?"

  "Man, it don't even matter," Vince said. "Boy or girl, either way my seed is playing some ball. Hut! Hut! Hut!"

  Sharita sashayed into the room laughing. "I know my cute little granddaughter-to-be ain't gonna be playing no football." She dragged two full shopping bags over to her son-in-law. "Vince," she squealed as she held up a box full of new jewelry. "Honey, look at all the stuff you bought me."

  Nudging Porsche aside, Sharita held a pair of sparkling two-carat diamond earrings up for Vince to admire, then pressed one to each ear and turned her chin left and right, head modeling them for him. "Baby, Mami is gonna look good in these! They got a phat tag on them, but you know me. I can't help it if I got expensive taste."

  Vince grinned. "You sure can't. Those are hot though. Real hot." He picked the controller back up and continued playing his game.

  Sharita smiled even wider. "Yep. And thanks to you," she leaned over and gave him a fat kiss on his cheek, "they're gonna be looking real hot on me."

  "Uh-oh," Vince laughed, eyeing his boy Jerrard and touching his cheek. "I just kicked me a field goal. Watch out now! That's another point scored for Big Vince!"

  ***

  Porsche stretched out in her king-sized bed with her hands on her round stomach. The sheets were crisp and smooth, and she loved the way they felt against her skin. Sharita had talked Vince into hiring them a maid, and Porsche grinned and admitted to herself that her mother was right. Ironed sheets sure felt good on the body, especially when the body was as oiled, and pampered, and massaged as hers was.

  They were living the good life and they owed it all to Vince's talent and his generosity. There was nothing they could ask him for that he wouldn't give them. As the most celebrated rookie in the league, he was foot- ball's answer to LeBron James. Vince had signed endorsement contracts coming and going, and he begged Porsche to forget all those bad memories she had of living in Harlem and waking up freezing cold in the winter and going to bed hungry every night.

  He begged her to forget one bad memory in particular. The one that had
been haunting her since the summer she turned nine years old and was visiting her mother. The memory of being dragged, screaming and fighting, up to the roof of Sharita's apartment building by a grown man who liked the way she looked in her little Guess jean shorts. She had been so frightened; scared to death.

  "That's all in the past, baby," Vince had promised her. He put his big strong arms around her and then kissed her chin, her neck, between her breasts, and down to the small roundness of her stomach. "Big Vince is protecting you now. Nobody else will ever hurt you, and you and my baby ain't gonna ever go without a thing."

  Porsche felt safe with Vince. Safe and protected. He was a big, strong man. Both in his size and in his heart. He might have signed a lucrative professional contract, but he was still a child of the ghetto and could get it started if crossed on or off the field.

  For the last few weeks, though, her man had been kinda edgy. His temper was short, too. The pre-season was over and the real thing was about to kick off and Vince was spending more and more time at mandatory team practices and off-the-field meetings. He came home late every night wiped out and mentally drained. Porsche knew her man had a lot of pressure on him because he practically carried his whole team. So even though she was getting close to her due date, she tried not to complain about anything because Vince needed to keep his head in the game and she respected that.

  Besides, she didn't wanna risk Vince getting too stressed out. He might start making stupid decisions. Something big had gone down during Vince's second year of playing college ball, and even though Porsche had put it way in the back of her mind, she hadn't been crazy enough to forget it. Still, that was in the past. Today she couldn't be any happier.

  They were just a couple weeks deep in the football season when Porsche woke up one morning and realized all her dreams were about to come true.

  "All right now. Just play it cool," Sharita said, squeezing Porsche's hand.

  "Call Vince!" Porsche begged. "The baby is coming. Call Vince!"

  Sharita stroked her daughter's face. "I already did. He's on his way home, honey. Just get yourself together before he gets here, okay? You don't want him to walk in and see you looking all crazy, do you?"

  The pain was indescribable and Porsche couldn't care less about looking crazy in front of her man. But Sharita cared. She bathed her daughter like she was as helpless as Mercedes, then oiled Porsche's skin and massaged her lower back. By the time Vince got off the field and made it home, Sharita had styled Porsche's hair with some Pink Oil moisturizer, touched up her polish on a few chipped fingernails, and dressed her in a mint green, satin maternity shift and put a matching bow in her hair.

  "Check you out." Sharita smoothed the crisps sheets down over Porsche's contracting belly. They could hear Vince's car pulling up outside and Sharita warned her daughter quickly. "This is how you wanna be looking when your man walks in and catches you in labor. You gotta look like you got it together. Sexy. In control. And don't even think about asking him to come in the delivery room with you while you got your legs gapped wide open and pushing your butt hole inside out. It's gon' look like a football is tryna come outta your stuff. He don't need to see all that. It'll make him cool on going down on you forever."

  Tears were rolling down Porsche's face when Vince burst through their bedroom door. She was so happy to see him that she cried out and her water broke at the same time.

  "Help!" Porsche screamed and snatched the sheets off and tried to sit up and look between her own legs.

  "Girl, stop with all that drama," Sharita yelled, yanking the sheets back over her.

  Porsche slapped at her mother's hands and rolled all over the bed. She screamed and got up on her hands and knees. She wasn't even trying to keep it together. This baby was killing her and she wanted it out.

  Vince rushed over and held her in his big arms. He was sweaty and covered with dust from the practice field, but Porsche didn't care. She felt like her savior had just arrived. Vince kissed her forehead. Then he stared into her eyes and spoke to her in a calm voice that was full of love. "Easy, baby. I know you hurting. Take deep breaths, Lady P. Hold on tight to me and just breathe."

  At the hospital, Porsche was almost ready. Time went rushing by in a blur as she clutched at Vince and moaned in pain. But two hours later the pain was gone and joy had come into her life. And that's exactly what her and Vince decided to name their new daughter, too; Joy.

  "You did real good, girl," Sharita told Porsche as she held her granddaughter in her arms and grinned. "She's pass cute. She's got a rich daddy, my green eyes, and your good hair. Little Miss Thang is already set for life."

  Joy was a beautiful baby, Porsche agreed. But all the rest of that other stuff Sharita was talking didn't mean a thing. God had blessed her with a good man, a healthy baby, and a wonderful life. Her family was well-taken care of and the future looked bright. And that was the only thing that mattered.

  Chapter Three

  "You need to stop spoiling her," Sharita said as she watched Porsche pace the floor with Joy early one morning. The baby had been up crying for hours, and Porsche was looking busted and exhausted.

  "That chick is rotten, Porsche. I can smell her from here. You can't put her down and can't nobody else pick her up. That's why you looking so dragged out now. You spend all your time fussing over her instead of taking care of yourself."

  At two months old, Joy was a beautiful, plump baby with big green eyes and juicy thighs. She had a fussy personality, though, and cried at the littlest thing. Porsche could barely keep up with the baby. Half the time she was too tired to eat, and she had already lost a lot more than her pregnancy weight. Vince had hired a nanny so Porsche could get some sleep at night, but Sharita was right. Joy was spoiled rotten. She cried like she had colic all the time, and if anybody, other than her mother, even looked like they wanted to touch her, she would scream until her whole body turned red.

  Neither Sharita nor Vince could stand all that noise, even in a house as big as theirs was. Sharita got mad because the constant crying interfered with her beauty rest. Vince was under mad pressure at work that kept him walking on the edge.

  After having a decent pre-season, Vince's team was suddenly on a losing streak. All eyes were on him as he messed up play after play on the field. The press had been butchering him on ESPN every night. Sports writers all over the country were calling him out in the papers and questioning whether or not he actually deserved the lucrative contract he had signed.

  Vince tried to brush the talk off so Porsche wouldn't think the noise was getting in his head. But Porsche knew how bad it hurt him, because all his frustration came pouring out of him in his sleep. Twice he had swung his arm in the middle of the night and almost knocked her deep into the next week. The baby was sleeping between them and Vince had barely missed hit- ting his daughter, but straight up tagged his wife. Even sporting a black eye, Porsche was still grateful. It had been God who had saved little Joy from getting her skull caved in by her own father's powerful fist. Porsche would have taken a broken nose, along with that black eye, if it meant keeping her daughter safe.

  "I said, I'm sorry," Vince had pleaded. He watched Porsche change Joy's pamper then pick her up and carry her out of the room without speaking to him. "I would never hurt y'all, Lady P. I musta been dreaming, yo. I don't even know what happened."

  Porsche had slammed her bedroom door and taken Joy into the nursery where she got in the queen bed that was in the room and cuddled her daughter in her arms. After a few moments, Porsche slowly and carefully pulled her arms from underneath Joy and did some- thing she should have done a long time ago. She got on her knees and began praying, not for herself, but for whatever was holding her husband back on the field, that it would let him go so that him and his team could get over this slump and get their spirits and their lives back in order. She was in the middle of that prayer when the door flew open.

  "What is your stupid behind doing?"

  Porsche looked up, surpri
sed to see her mother standing there looking crazy pissed.

  "Girlll," Sharita practically sang as she twisted her face and shook her head back and forth. "Don't you neverI mean never, as long as you live and three days after your retarded behind is dead, walk outta your bed- room and leave your man in the bed all by himself! You hear me? Not for your baby, not for God, not for nothing! How stupid could you be, Porsche? Just think about what would happen if that man decided to get up and walk out the door! Or worse yet, what if he told you to get out? You wanna see your sister and brother standing out on the cold streets? You wanna take your baby back to Harlem so she can live where you used to live? With no heat or hot water and all them nasty rats coming out the walls and chewing on her little toes at night? Think with your head, Porsche. The head I gave you. Not your daddy's idiot head! I know he the one that had y'all doing all that praying crap, but praying didn't keep him in the league, now did it?"

  Sharita shook her head in disgust as she continued. "You acting like a dummy for real these days. Now you put that whining-behind baby in her crib, turn on that monitor, and mosey your boney self back inside your bedroom. Forget about getting down on your knees to pray. You need to go and get on your knees and give your man what he needs!"

  Porsche had no choice but to follow her mother's advice. And once again, she had to admit to herself that Sharita was usually right. Vince was a good man and he had a lot of weight on his shoulders right now. He had actually cried when she got back in their bed, and they'd stripped naked and became one.

  "Touch down!" Vince whispered, kissing her and handling her body like it was the most precious thing he had ever touched. His back was sweet, hard, and strong. His fingers were everywhere, like he couldn't touch her enough. He brought it to her with heat and love and they wore the bed out until the sheets were on the floor. It was close to dawn by the time they were both satisfied, and Porsche had laid there smiling and thanking God for giving her a man who could not only put his love thang down on her body, but who also filled her up in the heart.