I Ain't Me No More (12 page)

“What do you mean, we gotta move out?” Dub spat.

“They found out you were staying here, so we have to move out,” I explained to Dub. It said in the lease that, as with any type of subsidized living, if someone other than the persons on the lease was found to be residing in the dwelling, then it was grounds for eviction.

“Where am I supposed to go?” Dub asked, as if I were his keeper.

“Where are
you
supposed to go? The first thing you should have asked is where I and your son are supposed to go.” I got even more sarcastic. I mean, after all, he was a twenty-one year-old man. By now he should be able to take care of himself. “But since you asked, Nana said that Baby D and I can stay with her until we figure something out. You're just gonna have to stay with your mom.”

“In that little ole place?” he spat.

Dub's mom no longer lived in the house she lived in when I first met him. I had thought they owned the house, and all the while they'd been renting it. For some reason, this last go-round, the landlord didn't renew the lease. I think it was because of all the fighting and arguing that had taken place there. Not just between Dub and me, but between his mother and her boyfriend of the last year, who was only three years older than Dub. Dub's sister and her boyfriend had had their share of fights there as well. With so many complaints from the neighbors, not to mention all the holes in the walls, thanks to fists and bodies being slammed into them, the landlord had cut his losses.

By then, of course, his sister had moved out and into her own place a couple houses down from us. Ms. Daniels had ended up renting a small two-bedroom apartment in the hood. As luck would have it, that second bedroom was available.

One month later, we were all packed up and moved out. Baby D and I were living with Nana, and Dub was living with his mother. I'd finally figured a way out, and this time I knew it would work. I'd lied about the entire eviction thing. My landlord hadn't really put us out. Ever since Dub had bloodied Baby D's nose, I'd been determined to get away from him.

One night I was just lying in bed and the idea to fake an eviction in order to move away from Dub just popped into my head. Or perhaps it was what Oprah Winfrey referred to as a God whisper, which saved, sanctified, and baptized folks would refer to as the Holy Spirit. Either way, the idea to finally get away from Dub came to mind:
Lie and tell him that you've been evicted
.

I wasted no time executing it, either. If I didn't get away from Dub, it would only be a matter of time before I killed myself just to be away from him. I'd tried to kill myself twice before. The first time was prior to finding out Dub was a crackhead.

The night before I tried to kill myself, I made creamed corn for dinner. We ate in our bedroom and put our remains on the round night table next to the bed. After refusing to have sex with Dub so many times, I found myself not only beaten up but also wearing the leftover creamed corn on my head, not to mention the grape Kool-Aid and melted ice that had sat on the night table next to the bed.

Dub had found a new way to humiliate me. And even after all of that, he still managed to take what I wouldn't give him. Afterward, I stood in the shower, crying, as the water soaked my body and my hair. It had to be the most humiliating episode I'd ever endured at the hands of Dub. I needed it to be the last. The next day I took at least twenty sleeping pills. At that moment, I didn't even think about trying to stay around to protect Baby D. He was better off without me. I just wanted to be dead.

When I woke up five hours later, puking my guts out, I cursed God.

“Why? Why are you doing this to me? Isn't it bad enough that you let me be born? And now you won't let me just die already?”

It was a year after that first attempt when I hung myself from the downstairs living-room closet bar. My bare feet were just barely able to touch the floor. I remembered kicking fiercely until the coward in me couldn't take the thought of death anymore and I stood to my feet. I remembered looking down at the blood on the beige carpet beneath me, wondering where it had come from. Then I looked down at my feet and noticed the raw, bleeding wounds where my skin had been rug burned from all the kicking.

Baby D had been with Ms. Daniels during both failed attempts. Those two suicide attempts had failed, but the third time I swore to God I'd get it right if He didn't help me. Lucky Him, my lie to Dub about getting evicted worked, or else I'd be dead right now.

With all that aside now, my vendetta against God and my past suicide attempts, everything had worked out as planned. I now enjoyed peaceful nights, a peaceful sleep, and energetic mornings without the likes of Dub around. But sometimes fear would creep up on me. I worried he would somehow do some type of investigation and find out the truth.

“For all I know you're probably lying to me,” Dub had once growled at me through his teeth. “There probably never was an eviction in the first place. This was probably just a way for you to get away from me.”

You think?
I thought to myself, but I never dared allow the words to escape my lips. Still, every now and again I'd tremble inside just thinking about the consequences I'd face if Dub ever did find out the truth. I'd even lied to Nana, telling her we'd been evicted, in order to get her to let Baby D and me come stay there. The only reason I fed the lie to Nana, as well, was that I never wanted her to be around Dub and have the truth accidentally slip out.

“
Zephyr
is not a word!” I declared to Nana, who was sitting across from me at the Scrabble board. We played Scrabble almost every night. Living with Nana was a breath of fresh air. I'd almost forgotten all about the suffering I'd endured for almost five years.

Baby D was a lot happier now too. He had finished his last year of preschool and was ready to go into kindergarten. We'd been staying with Nana for about four months, and the only time we had to see Dub was when he picked me up and dropped me off at work and school.

“I thought you had your own car,” one of the temps at my job said one day, when she saw me waiting in the parking lot for Dub, who was already about twenty minutes late.

“I do,” was all I said to her, not that it was any of her business, anyway.

Dub had always driven my car more than I did. Even before I moved in with Nana, he had often taken me back and forth to work and school. While I was trying to make money to support us, he was off lollygagging all day. Then he'd come pick me up, and sometimes he'd keep the car afterward too. I didn't mind. It kept the peace between us. If he didn't have transportation to rip and run the streets, then I knew he'd be up under me, bothering me, trying to see what I was doing. I'd be playing Scrabble with him instead of Nana. I was willing to be stuck at home all day and night if it meant Dub was out of my hair. Besides, playing Scrabble with Nana all night wasn't bad at all.

“
Zephyr
is too a word,” Nana argued as she got up and went to the living-room side table drawer.

Oh, Lord, she's getting the dictionary,
I thought.

She slipped on her reading glasses and flipped through the little red Webster's dictionary she'd retrieved. “A gentle wind,” she read. “Light woolen or worsted yarn.” She pointed and showed me.

There it was in black and white. And there it was. I'd just lost the second game in a row to wise old Nana.

She celebrated her victory as the loser, me, began to clean up the board. That was when we heard repeated hard knocks on the front door. Nana gazed at me curiously after looking at the clock, which read 10:00 p.m. No one came to Nana's house unannounced that late, not even her own children.

We both silently crept to the door, Nana in the lead. She looked through the peephole, then turned to me and said, “It's Dub.”

I wasn't expecting to see Dub until the next morning, when he showed up to take me to work. Dub showing up at ten o'clock at night, unannounced, was not a good sign. Nana unlocked the door. Before she could even say hello to him or ask him what he was doing there, Dub barged in.

“Help!” he exclaimed. “Help!”

Just as soon as he entered and I got a good look at his arm, I could feel the vomit clumping in my throat. There were at least seven deep slashes in his left arm. The wounds were so deep that when he moved his arm, it looked as though his arm had lips that were trying to speak. No words poured out, though, only blood.

“Oh, my God! What happened?” I asked.

“They cut me!” he yelled. “They cut me.”

By this time, Nana had disappeared from the room. I was fixated on the bloody sight before me, so I had no idea where she had gone. At first I thought she might have gone to call 911, but when she returned to the room, ripping a towel she had retrieved from the hall closet into shreds, I knew better.

“Here. Let's tie this around your arm,” Nana said as she began tying the strips of towel around Dub's wounds. I was so glad that Baby D had fallen asleep and was not awake to witness this scene. I was a grown woman and I could barely stand it. I couldn't imagine how a child would react.

“That will stop the bleeding for now,” Nana assured Dub and then looked at me. “But he needs to get to the hospital.”

Selfish, mean, and nasty thoughts entered my head. Why did I have to take him to the hospital? Why couldn't we just let him bleed to death? The last time I saved this man's life, I lived to regret it.

As if my nana could see the hesitation in my actions, she looked at me strangely. “Did you hear me? If you don't get this boy to the hospital, he's going to die.”

I'd heard her, all right, and her last comment had sounded pretty darn tempting, but not wanting to disappoint Nana, but still not wanting to save Dub's life, I felt like I had no choice in the matter. “Come on. Let's go,” I said, sucking my teeth quietly.

Dub handed me my car keys; then he and I headed to my car. I started the engine, but before taking off, I looked over at Dub, who appeared to be getting weak and entering a state of shock.

“Lord, don't let me regret this,” I mumbled as I once again headed to Doctors Hospital North.

That night at the hospital had been like déjà vu. For the second time Dub had been injured, and for the second time when the police arrived to talk to him about it, he asked me to leave the room so that he could talk in private.

I, of course, excused myself and stood outside the door, blowing off steam. “I'm the one who brought your sorry tail here, and now you want to give me the boot?” I seethed to myself. “Ain't this about a . . .” I went on and on, talking to myself, while Dub talked to the cops on the other side of the door.

Dub knew it bothered me too, because every time I asked, “How's the arm?” I had such disdain in my tone. He knew I had my suspicions about the entire incident, which he seemed to be keeping hushed. I had to admit that it surprised me one night, about a month after the incident, when out of the blue Dub decided to speak about it.

“You know that night last month,” Dub said to me as he sat next to me on the couch at Nana's. He'd decided to hang out for a minute after dropping me off after work one day.

“What night?”

“No one cut me. I really did that myself. I didn't want to live anymore. But then I thought about you and Baby D and how much I love y'all, and I knew I had to live for y'all. I couldn't bear the thought of you living without me.”

There was something about Dub's last line that didn't sit well in my spirit. How I understood it was that this man was at a point in his life when he really wanted to die, but he couldn't handle the thought of me still walking the earth without him overseeing my every step. His next words confirmed my interpretation.

“I couldn't leave this earth knowing someone else could possibly have you.” He shook his head, looking as if just the thought pained him. “No, I couldn't leave this earth without you coming with me.”

That chilling thought was a centipede through my veins.

“I just didn't want to live, though,” Dub reiterated.

My concern shifted to Dub's self-imposed injury. What could be so bad that he would inflict on himself seven wounds that would surely be life threatening had he not gotten to the hospital and gotten stitched up?

“Why'd you do it?” I asked. “What was going on that was so bad that you inflicted such pain on yourself?” I cringed at the thought of self-inflicted stab wounds to the arm.

Dub looked at me, his eyes such a dark brown that they looked black. He opened his mouth but then decided against saying whatever it was he had initially intended to say. “I can't tell you. If you knew what I was going through, you wouldn't care. You wouldn't try to help me. You'd just leave me, and I can't live without you. You are my life. It's the thought of not having you and Baby D that made me change my mind that night and want to live. And since it was you and Baby D that were on my mind so heavily, that's what led me to you that night. I needed to see you and him, y'all's faces, just in case I didn't make it.”

I began to feel sorry for Dub. I didn't want to. After all he'd done to me, how could I? But there those feelings sat, doggy paddling in my heart. But I'd never seen him this hurt and vulnerable in my life. If pain could be seen and not just felt, it would look like Dub looked at that very moment.

“What is it, Dub?” Not only did I feel sorry for him, but my curiosity was piqued as well. It was clear that something heavy was on Dub's mind. He wasn't the dominating warrior I'd grown to fear over the years. He was now a man who couldn't even look me in the eyes as he sat there with his leg doing a nervous bounce. It was apparent he was holding so much inside that he wanted to explode. Every time he opened his mouth, on the verge of telling me his truth, he would slam it shut and would then shake his head.

“I can't,” he said as his eyes became moist.

This was deep. It was driving me crazy. I needed to know what was going on inside that head of his. “You can tell me,” I said patronizingly.

“No, I can't!” he was quick to say, standing to his feet. “You won't understand.” He paced. “I got a serious problem going on, and I can't tell you about it. It's a problem that's making me do stuff I never imagined me doing.”

It was at that very moment that I knew exactly what he wanted to tell me. It was something that deep down inside I already knew, but still, I wanted him to confirm it. I wanted him to confirm what Konnie had already told me months ago. That was why I'd never mentioned the rumors to him. I just wanted to hear him say it. I wanted it to be from the horse's mouth, so I pressed, trying to sound more convincing.

“What's the problem, Dub? What's so bad that you cut yourself up?”

I ended up hearing what I wanted to hear, not from Dub's mouth, but from his body language. I watched him agonize over whether or not to tell me he was addicted to crack cocaine.

Without him saying a word, I came to my own conclusion that the night he showed up at Nana's house, he'd just done something so humiliating for a crack rock that he could no longer live with himself. I knew that if I sat there and pressed long enough, I could probably get to the bottom of everything. I could probably even get him to confess exactly what it was that he had done that night that made him not want to live. I didn't, though. And I was glad I didn't.

Some things only God needed to know. Some things were just too much for a person to be able to handle. I knew picking at Dub that night would have been like picking fruit from the tree of knowledge. I wouldn't have been able to handle knowing what Dub kept submerged within. Deep down inside, I knew that I didn't want to know. To this day I still had no idea what it was. I could only imagine.

 

 

“Is Dub there?” I asked Ms. Daniels through the phone receiver.

“He's still not here,” she replied.

I had been calling him all night long, and now it was early morning. I hadn't heard from him since he picked me up from work in my car the day before. His possessiveness still had him checking in on me often, even though he had my car and knew I couldn't get around town. But when he hadn't checked in, something told me that when it came time for me to go to work in the morning, I'd have to hunt him down.

“Did he happen to say where he was going when he left yesterday?” I asked.

“He borrowed twenty dollars from me before he left. Said he was going to lunch with TJ.”

Two things about what she'd just said didn't sit well with me. One, he'd asked to borrow twenty dollars. We had enough drug addicts on both sides of the family to know that when a person constantly borrowed twenty dollars, it wasn't a good sign. Secondly, I recalled Dub mentioning when he and Boyd first started their hustle, that TJ, an old classmate of ours, was on crack. He'd learned that from being on the streets. As a matter of fact, he'd even stooped so low as to sell his friend crack to support his growing habit. So why would he all of a sudden want to start hanging out with a crackhead?

“Thanks, Ms. Daniels,” I said, defeated. “If you hear from him . . .” My words trailed off, because just then there was a knock at the door. With phone in hand, I looked out to see who it was. Lo and behold, it was Dub. “Never mind, Ms. Daniels. He just got here.”

I let out a sigh of relief and ended the call.

“Dude, I'm going to be late,” I said as I opened the door. “Where have you . . .” Once again, my words trailed off. Something was wrong with this picture. Something was missing. I looked over Dub's shoulders in an attempt to find what I was looking for. Dub was standing on the porch in front of me, but my car was nowhere in sight. “Dude, where's my car?”

“They stole it. They stole it.” Dub charged past me and into the house. He began pacing nervously.

That was not what I was trying to hear. Tell me it got a flat or that it ran out of gas or something. But not that it had been stolen.

“What do you mean, they stole it?” I panicked. “Who stole it? What's going on?”

“Man, they stole it,” was all he kept repeating, and the more he repeated it, the angrier I got. That wasn't telling me anything. I wanted to know who, when, where, how, and why.

“Well, we need to call the police.” The phone was still in my hand, so I raised it to my ear.

“No, wait!” he shouted, snatching the phone from my hand. “Let me think.”

“Think about what? What is there to think about? My car has been stolen, and we need to call the police.” I snatched the phone back from him, and then the next thing I knew, we are both tussling over the phone.

I couldn't believe this guy. It was as if he wanted to protect this criminal who was rolling around in my wheels, making me late for work.

“Just hold up,” Dub finally said, causing me to cease hyperactively jumping to my own conclusions about the situation at hand. “Let me go check into something.” And with that, Dub was gone, leaving me standing there, dressed for work, but with no ride.

“What's going on, Mommy?” Baby D asked as he came down the stairs, rubbing his eyes. “What's wrong?”

I usually allowed him to sleep right up until we were about to walk out the door. All I'd have to do was wash his face and make him brush his teeth. Nana had taught me a trick that had saved me, a single mother, lots of time. I'd bathe Baby D the night before and dress him for the next day, usually in something cotton and comfy so that it wouldn't wrinkle, like a fleece sweat suit or something. Not have to fuss around with dressing Baby D really helped me save time in the mornings. He ate breakfast at school, so I didn't have to worry about that task, either. But who knew that this morning I'd have to deal with explaining to him that Mommy's car had been stolen?

“Nothing, baby,” I told Baby D, even though it clearly showed on my face that something was wrong. “You go on back to bed.”

“But what about school?”

Every time I dropped him off at school, he would whine and sometimes cry his eyes out. He hated school. Now, all of a sudden, when we had no transportation, he was worried about going.

“It's not time yet, Baby D. Go on back to bed.” I ushered him up the steps.

After getting Baby D nice and settled back in bed, I went and called my job. “My car has been stolen,” was what I should have told them when citing my reason for not being able to make it in that day. But something inside of me knew that wasn't the full truth. I might not have known exactly where it was at the moment, but something told me my car hadn't been stolen—not in the ordinary sense, anyway. I could just feel it. Dub wasn't telling me the whole story. There was a missing link, otherwise known as the truth. So until Dub told me the truth, all I could relay to my job was a lie. “My son is sick.”

After hanging up the phone, I just flopped on the couch and cried my eyes out. Nana had gone walking around Northland Mall with a girlfriend of hers. It was something the senior citizens did. Mall security opened the doors to the mall two hours early just for them. The Northland Walkers was what they were called. After walking, they'd usually go to breakfast too, so I knew having her take me to work would be out of the question.

I couldn't understand why things in my life just kept going from bad to worse. Even though I was no longer living with Dub, he still seemed to cause havoc in my life.

After I sat on the couch for an hour, crying not just about the loss of my car, but also about the loss of my soul, my life, my identity, there was another knock on the door. It was Dub, with car keys in hand. This time when I looked over his shoulder, I saw my car parked in the driveway.

I looked Dub dead in his eyes, not even asking a single question while snatching my keys from him. “Never again,” was all I said. He knew exactly what it meant; never again would he drive my car. “I don't have time to take you home. I'm running late,” was all I said before leaving him standing on the doorstep while I went to get Baby D.

I rehearsed in my head what I would tell my job once I showed up at work in spite of having called in.
He threw up and is feeling better,
I thought.
My grandmother is staying home with him.
One of those two lies would work for sure.

Dub must have walked home, because when I came back downstairs with Baby D, ready to go, he was nowhere in sight. Surprisingly, he hadn't even put up a fight. How could he? He knew and I knew he'd done what was becoming very popular for crackheads: they'd rent their car out for a hit of crack. Only, he'd rented my car out. Lord only knows what he had to do to get it back. But he got it back. For that I was relieved, but still, this was only a sign that even though I thought moving away from Dub would make things better, they were bad. I thought maybe me being out of his sight would mean that eventually I'd be out of his mind, ultimately leading him to find another girlfriend to live with and terrorize. Dub had found someone else, all right. Her name was crack. I knew that sooner or later he'd be so caught up in his new chick that he wouldn't even remember my name. But could I wait it out that long?