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Chapter Two

SORAYA ‘YAYA’ CRAWFORD

“I’m just not understanding the tears. What the fuck are the tears for?

You, and Law have been in court for almost a year.

Yaya, you knew this was coming, and if this wasn’t something that you wanted, you had plenty of time to back out of it, and work on your marriage with him,” my mom flared at me.

I had been having a heart felt conversation via facetime with my twin sister, Shai, when my mama suddenly hopped her ass on the call.

I expected this to be my mom’s rection. She was tough.

She’s always dished out tough love. Last year, she retired as a correctional officer.

She’s been in that line of business since me, and Shai were two years old.

She raised me and Shai to have thick skin.

She didn’t coddle us because she always told us that the world wouldn’t do it, so by her coddling us, it would be her doing us a disservice.

“I don’t know, ma. Give Shai back the phone,” I replied through sniffles.

I knew that my twin sister would allow me to have my moment over the phone without judging me and calling me out on my bullshit like my mom had been doing.

I need gentleness right now. I didn’t need tough love at the moment.

I needed someone on the opposing side to see that this shit was hurting me.

I needed them to understand that reality had finally hit me that I was no longer a married woman, and that I was now single.

Granted, I knew that this day was coming, but when I walked in the house after being in court this morning, and judge Bowden had finalized our divorce, that’s when everything felt like it had unfolded.

“You want to talk to Shai because you know that Shai is going to entertain the bullshit, and I’m not.

When is he supposed to be coming over to get the cars?

” she asked, changing the subject. For her to have known about Law coming over to get his cars, that just let me know that she had been standing around the whole time that I had been on the phone with my sister, telling her everything that took place in court.

My mom loved Law. She’s known him since he was eight years old.

We moved right next door to him when I was six.

Before we became lovers, he was my friend.

My best friend at that. He would come over my house, and we would be out in the backyard playing in the mud together, getting in the pool, and just everything that kids our age would do.

At eight years old, his little ass had game out of this world.

He would always bring me stuff over to the house, whether it be candy, food, or toys that he knew I would like.

We were kids, and he would tell me that he was in love with me, and at the time, I thought that all boys were gross, but for him, I’d made an exemption and just decided to make him my best friend.

By the time I was eleven though, I felt like my innocence was leaving my body because I started looking at him in ways that were different than him just being my best friend.

I started having one on one conversations with my sister, and my friends, telling them that I thought Law was cute.

By the time I turned twelve, he had become my boyfriend.

Don’t judge me when I say this next part, but I lost my virginity to him when I was only thirteen years old.

Here I was, a 36-year-old woman, and that has been the only dick to ever slide inside of me, even though I would get mad at him, and get in my feelings, threatening him that I was going to go out, and fuck other niggas, but I’ve never done it before.

Because of the history that him and I shared, it caused him to have a great relationship with my mom, and my sister.

They both loved Law. You couldn’t tell my mom that Law wasn’t her son.

Almost a year ago, when I came to her, telling her that I didn’t want the marriage anymore, for the life of her, she couldn’t understand it, but she knew the pain that the marriage was causing me after the death of our daughter, so she understood, and she supported my decision.

“I guess he’s going to be here soon because when we were leaving court, he kept asking me if I was going to go home,” I explained, as I flopped down on my bed, lying on my back, and I gazed up at the mirror that was on the ceiling.

We’d had this mirror placed in the ceiling probably five years ago.

When we were married, and on good terms, Law and I could fuck the sheets off the bed, and we were both beautiful people to look at, and really loved to see everything that we were doing while we were fuckin, so it was him that suggested we add mirrors to the ceiling, and I’d just gone along with it.

“You want me to come over there while he’s there?

Law knows not to play that shit while I’m around,” Shai threatened, and I laughed.

My sister didn’t give a damn, and she would insert herself in the middle of my marriage any chance that she could.

It wasn’t to the point that it was overbearing, and Law had to check her about it over the years because it hadn’t gotten that extreme.

She was just one person that didn’t play about me, and she would make it known any chance that she could.

Growing up as twins, we were overprotective of each other.

If one fought, we both fought. I cannot tell you the amount of fights that I’ve been in with Shai.

We’ve been beating bitches ass since we were in the kindergarten.

It was our mouth that the girls couldn’t handle, but Shai’s ass was worse.

Sometimes, it felt like she would go around, just looking for problems.

“It’s okay. I can handle it,” I let her know.

“Okay. Ima come over later. You going to cook, or you want me to bring dinner? You know what? You had a long morning. Don’t worry about cooking.

I can pick up food. What you want?” she asked me, and I could tell that she knew I was down, and her suggesting to bring dinner was just her way of trying to cheer me up.

“Whatever you bring is fine. I trust your judgement,” I let her know.

We talked for a little while longer, and then we eventually hung up.

I tossed the phone down on the bed, and I grabbed one of the throw pillows that was at the head of the bed, turned my body on my side, and rested my head on the pillow.

So many things started running through my mind right now.

I started thinking back to the very beginning.

Around the time that I was five years old.

Specifically, the time that our front door was kicked in, in the middle of the night, where damn near twenty officers/ ICE swarmed our apartment, and I just remember standing in the middle of the hallway, watching my dad be tackled down to the ground, with hand cuffs placed on him.

At the time, I was just a little girl, who didn’t have any understanding as to what all of this meant.

I just knew that our dad was taken away from us, and they’d sent him somewhere that was far away.

That was my child version of the story. The adult version is that my father was here illegally, and that he had been heavily into credit card fraud.

Because it was his first offense, the fraud that he’d done wasn’t some crazy amount in the hundreds of thousands, and he’d cooperated, owning up to the shit that he’d done, and he’d took a plea, so he was only given three years.

At a young age, I thought that my dad would just have to serve his three years, and he would come back home with us, but they hit his ass with what’s called a ‘permanent bar’, meaning he would never be able to legally enter the U.S again.

My sister and I were daddy’s girls, so when he left us, that crushed me, and Shai.

I mean, crushed us to our core, and that explained why our kindergarten year, we were always getting into trouble, fighting, and shit.

Because of the extent of the crime, and because my mom was working in corrections when it happened, she almost lost her job behind that.

She fought to keep her job, convincing the higher ups that she didn’t have any criminal involvement in the things that my dad was doing, and she didn’t know that he had been here illegally.

If you see my dad in person, and you look at that handsome face, that gorgeous smile, those deep dimples, and his kind eyes, I could see how he had been able to convince my mom and sell her a story about being born here in the U.S, knowing that he’d come here illegally.

According to my mom, she’s always known that my dad was making money.

She did know about the credit card fraud, but again, she didn’t have any involvement in it.

I guess her only involvement would have been reaping the benefits like the shopping sprees, and the way he would spoil her rotten.

It crushed her as well once my dad was deported.

My mom loved my daddy down, okay! That was her man.

Once he was released from prison, we would take trips to the D.R to visit him, along with our other family that we had out that way.

Those trips stopped by the time me and my sister were in the 5 th grade.

Somehow, my mom found out about the bitch that he had out there, and she stopped messing with my dad on that kind of level, and in return, she stopped the trips that we would take out there.

We still talked to him over the phone every day, and two years ago was the last time that I’d gone out there to see him. I’d gone with Law, and our boys.