I Ain't Me No More Read online

  “Yeah. He got shot twice . . . in the back.”

  “Do the police know what happened? Who did it? Why?” All of a sudden, I did care to know the answers to these questions. I’d heard of people getting shot before. One day I even listened at my bedroom window while an argument ensued a couple houses down. Moments into the argument I heard a gunshot, I heard the man yelping, and then I heard the ambulance come take him away. But now, for the first time ever, I was seeing a real live gunshot victim, and I wanted to know what type of animal could so easily do this to another animal . . . I mean person.

  “They don’t know too much of anything yet, since they haven’t been able to talk to Dub. He went right into surgery.” A tear fell from her eye. “I just thank God he’s alive.”

  “Yeah, thank God.” I hoped she couldn’t sense my sarcasm. “Where’s Kelice?” I looked around, as if Dub’s sister was perhaps hiding under the bed or something.

  “At home.” And she left it at that.

  At home? I thought. Heck, his own sister didn’t care whether or not he was dead or alive. I should have kept my tail at home. They certainly wouldn’t have been able to talk smack about my presence or lack thereof.

  The doctor walked into the room, followed by what looked like the Verizon Wireless network team. “We need to draw blood and run a couple tests. I’m going to have to ask you all to step out of the room,” the doctor announced.

  “I’m his mother, and this is his wife,” Ms. Daniels said as something of a protest.

  “That’s fine,” the doctor said, “but we’ll still need you to step outside.” He immediately turned his attention away from Ms. Daniels to let her know that the conversation was over.

  I headed out of the room first, still cringing from the fact that Ms. Daniels had just referred to me as Dub’s wife.

  She must have seen the perplexed look on my face, because she asked, “Are you okay?”

  I sat down on a chair in the hall, and she sat next to me. Baby D jumped from tiled square to tiled square.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I began. “But you know that Dub and I broke up, broke up.” I said it in a tone that let her know that this breakup was for real. This was not one of those “we argue, we fight, he goes out, and he comes back in the middle of the night” breakups. No, this was a “for real, for real, it’s over” breakup. I mean, why did she think he’d shown up at her doorstep with two Hefty trash bags full of his clothes? “He was cheating on me.”

  Since Dub had failed to tell her, I needed to. She needed to know that her son had hurt me in more ways than one.

  “Dub wouldn’t cheat on you. In all these years, he ain’t never brought another girl around me. He ain’t never even spoke of another girl. He knows I wouldn’t have that. I love you like a daughter, so you know I’d tell you if he did.”

  Yeah, right. Mother’s did not rat out their sons. No way, no how. It was just an unspoken rule between mothers and sons.

  “I caught him, Ms. Daniels,” I blurted. “I caught the girl naked in my bed,” I said, exaggerating. Well, she was naked, and they had been in my bed. Close enough to the truth.

  She threw her arms around me and let the floodgates open. “Oh, Helen,” she cried. Whether she was taking my side or just being sympathetic, I needed that hug. I was going through a lot in life, and I honestly couldn’t recall the last time someone had just put their arms around me. It felt good.

  Baby D stopped jumping to look at his grandma wail on his mother’s shoulders.

  I just sat there, not really knowing what to do. She appeared to be more hurt about Dub cheating on me than I had been. I hesitantly patted her back until she finally pulled herself away from me.

  In my heart I felt she must have known that it was really over between Dub and me, and that even though she might have loved me like a daughter, I never would be her daughter in any shape or form.

  She sniffled and then wiped her eyes with her arm before saying, “I’m so glad Dub has you as a girlfriend.”

  Now even more confused than ever, I couldn’t help but wonder what part of “Dub and I aren’t together” she had missed.

  “Ms. Daniels—,” I began, but she cut me off.

  “When you heard that your baby was shot, you put all that behind you and came to see about your man. Now, that’s real love. Thank God for you. I know your and Dub’s relationship isn’t always the best, but I know deep down inside you love him and don’t want to see him hurt, right?”

  I was in between a rock and a hard place and a cement slab and a brick wall and you name it. I was stiff, but not so stiff that my head didn’t move up and down to tell that silent lie. I was afraid that if I didn’t tell Ms. Daniels what she wanted to hear, she would break into tears again.

  “And it’s very evident that Dub loves you too.” She shook her head, dumbfounded. “I had no idea you two had even broken up. He acted like he was bringing all them clothes over to wash. Said something was wrong with y’all’s washer. I guess he knew it wouldn’t be long before y’all got back together. It’s a shame it had to take something like this for you to take him back, but all that matters is that the two of you are back together again.”

  I was confused beyond measure by Ms. Daniels. One minute I thought she understood that her son had cheated on me and it was over. The next minute she was saying how she was happy that I’d put all of that aside after he was shot. Where was she getting all of this? Surely not from me, because I wasn’t saying a thing.... Perhaps I should have.

  Ms. Daniels pulled me into a hug once again. But I couldn’t take it anymore. I was not at the hospital as Dub’s girlfriend. I was there as the mother of his child, seeing about my child’s father and nothing more. I needed to convey this to Ms. Daniels before things went any further.

  “He’s semiconscious now,” the doctor called from Dub’s room as he and the team exited. “You can see him, but only for a minute.” He looked down at Baby D. “Only a minute, please,” he repeated sternly.

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Ms. Daniels grabbed my hand and dang near dragged me into Dub’s hospital room, with Baby D on our heels.

  “Look who’s here.” Ms. Daniels pointed.

  Thinking she was pointing at Baby D, I looked and realized that she was pointing dead at me.

  “Helen’s here. I called her up and told her what had happened, and she came running to see about her man. All that mess that went on between you two before is water under the bridge. She’s back, and now you have to get strong so you can do right by her.”

  Dub couldn’t really talk, so he just looked at me with teary eyes. His eyes were thanking me so much for being there. His eyes were thanking me so much for taking him back in his time of need. For being there by his side, for being his girlfriend.

  I gave a half smile. How could I do it now? How could I leave him now? Dub and his mother sat there as if it was me, not God or the doctors, but me who had his fate in my hands. How could I walk away now? Walking away from my son’s father right now would make me the cold-blooded monster. Looked like the door God had once again opened for me just got slammed in my face before I could even walk through it.

  Stone Number Sixteen

  Somehow, one and a half weeks after being shot, Dub was released from the hospital and allowed to go home under my care. Not under his mother’s care. But under my care. After all, I was his girlfriend. He was my man. I’d put everything behind us and came running to him the night he got shot, or at least that was how it all went down if I let Ms. Daniels tell it.

  Speaking of Dub getting shot, to this day I didn’t know the real reason why Dub was shot. I did know the guy who did it was arrested and put in jail. At first I assumed Dub was out there doing his little hustle thing and someone probably tried to rob him. He told his mom and me, though, that he was just walking down the street. He claimed the shooter shot him when he refused to give him the leather Troop jacket he was trying to rob him of.

  When the cops came to Dub’s hospit
al room to interview him, he made me and Ms. Daniels leave, so we never really got to hear exactly what he told the police. I had a strong feeling that whatever it was he’d told the police was a far cry from the song and dance he had serenaded his mother and me with. All I knew was that wearing his guts outside of his body and having a near-death experience didn’t change Dub one bit. He was still as mean and as cruel as ever.

  Because he couldn’t physically hurt me the way he wanted to, Dub made sure he assassinated me with his put-downs and insults. There were so many times when I just visualized snatching that colostomy bag right off of him and watching him die a slow, agonizing death. I could get him right where I wanted him if I was just that cruel. If only I had the same caliber of cruelty as the girl in Diary of a Mad Black Woman. But I didn’t. Any dignity I had and any chance I had at being a strong black woman had been crushed by Dub. And there was something else that having the colostomy bag hanging from him didn’t change about Dub . . . his sex drive.

  “Dub, I really don’t want to. What if I hurt you?” I said squeamishly as I lay next to him in bed.

  “I ain’t in the mood to play with you, girl,” Dub said firmly as he slowly removed his pajamas.

  I could hear the contents of the bag squishing. I gagged just thinking about it. I mean, it was disgusting. Every time he had a bowel movement, it would just begin to fill the bag up. That was all I could think about as he tugged on me, and his request soon became an order.

  At least someone even wants to have sex with me, I told myself as I pleased Dub sexually. My mind traveled back to that insecure, ugly little black girl whose own father didn’t want her. The little girl who thought no one would ever want her. Well, someone wanted her now. I simply closed my eyes and pretended that it wasn’t Dub.

  Stone Number Seventeen

  “Quit being a crybaby!” I scolded Baby D, who wasn’t that much of a baby anymore. He was now four years old and was in preschool.

  “Oh, don’t fuss at the baby,” Nana said as she walked over to Baby D and hugged him.

  “You wouldn’t let us cry and whine when we were little,” my mother reminded Nana as she sat next to me on Nana’s flowery patterned couch.

  Three generations of women were in Nana’s living room as we prepared to go yard saling. Lynn didn’t come around much these days. She worked and went on trips with her girlfriends. Baby D was having a fit that I was trying to make him go to the bathroom before we left after he’d made several declarations that he didn’t have to go.

  “I did the best I knew how with what I knew then,” Nana told my mother with a hint of regret in her tone. “If I could go back and do things differently, I would.”

  I could see the sadness Nana was trying to hide behind her eyes. And I knew why too. I remembered growing up in Nana’s house while she was a single mother, trying to raise six kids. Even though Nana was as sweet as cotton candy now, back in those days, she was a mean mama jama.

  It was my aunt Angel, the baby girl, who had always seemed to get the brunt of Nana’s wrath. I remember one time Nana was beating Aunt Angel so bad with a broom that she cracked the broom right in half over Aunt Angel’s back. Then there was that time Nana beat Aunt Angel with a Pepsi bottle, back when Pepsi came in tall, sixteen-ounce glass bottles. Aunt Angel was getting beat so bad, she couldn’t catch her breath in between licks. It got to the point where her face turned beet red as she gasped for air. In between her gasping, I remember her yelling, “I can’t breathe. Please stop!” But Nana kept on swinging.

  And now here Nana was, all compassionate to Baby D, who wasn’t getting anything more than a fussing out.

  “Well, ain’t nothing wrong with that boy,” I told Nana. “He cries over every little thing. All he does is cry.”

  Out of nowhere Baby D stopped his fake sniffling and said, “You cry too. You cry when Daddy slaps you.” He said it with such malice. As little as he was, he knew his words would embarrass me. He knew he was telling a secret. My secret. I’d sworn to my mother that Dub treated me well, that Dub hadn’t put his hands on me again. And now Baby D had gone and opened his mouth. I couldn’t describe the anger that rose up in me. I wanted to go over and yank Baby D up, take him in the bathroom, and beat him down good for running his mouth.

  It was a comment that I was certain did not go unnoticed. It was a comment that I knew my mother and grandmother would want me to respond to. How was I going to explain myself now?

  There was literally five seconds of dead silence in the room after Baby D’s comment. Then, all of a sudden, his words became the large pink elephant in the room that everyone walked around and walked right by on their way out the door to go yard saling.

  Neither my mother nor Nana ever questioned me about what Baby D had said. Maybe they wanted to spare me the embarrassment and humiliation that they could see was covering my face. Maybe they just didn’t want to discuss it in front of Baby D. Whatever their reasons, neither chose to speak about Baby D’s comment. I was almost certain, though, that once they got Baby D alone, they would pick his little four-year-old brain. Perhaps they did, but I never knew about it. But what I did know was that Baby D would pay for the humiliation he’d just forced me to endure.

  “Bastard!” I yelled at him. “Stupid idiot!”

  We couldn’t have gotten back home from those yard sales fast enough. As soon as we did, I lit into Baby D. Aside from the few and far between spankings Baby D might have gotten through his diapers, I’d never hit him. But today all the anger inside of me, all the rage, all the hurt and pain—no matter who had been the original source of it—just released itself. Unfortunately, Baby D was the only one around to receive it. The only person around who I could lash out at and know that they couldn’t do anything to hurt me back.

  When my hand slapped Baby D right across his little brown face, he didn’t know what had hit him. He looked at me with such shock, sort of the same way I had looked at Dub the first time he hit me. I hit him again, this time with a closed fist. A cry came out of Baby D’s mouth like I’d never heard before. It was this piercing cry from deep within. I realized that he was crying out in excruciating pain. It wasn’t from the pain that I had inflicted on his flesh. It was a pain I had inflicted on his soul. A pain that, as his mother, I knew I could never assuage. Healing a soul was something only God could do.

  So as it turned out, I’d found a new source to direct my hurt and anger at. The only person around that I could be angry at and have control over. Baby D, the product of the monster. The product of the monster that I felt I had created. The product of the monster who had now created the monster in me.

  Poor Baby D. He had had four and a half years with only one monster for a parent, but now he had two. He’d need God’s hand on him to help him survive all the demons he was locked up with in that duplex.

  Stone Number Eighteen

  Dub, Baby D, and I were sitting in the living room. Dub and Baby D were watching television, while I was reading an assigned book from one of my college courses. Dub had gotten the colostomy bag removed by this time and was back to his mean, horrible self again.

  There was a knock on our back door that sounded like the po-po.

  “Dang, who is knocking on the door all crazy?” Dub said as he got up and went to answer the door.

  “What’s up, man?” Dub greeted the visitor, his boy Boyd, all cool, calm, and collected. He even held his hand out to give Boyd some dap. Boyd dapped him, all right. Right upside his head.

  Dub turned around and said to me with a look of embarrassment on his face, “Helen, let me holler at Boyd for a minute.” His expression couldn’t have matched the look of shock on my face.

  Dub hadn’t hit Boyd back. All those years he’d been beating my tail, I thought this man was a true fighter. But he hadn’t even attempted to return the blow.

  I took Baby D up to my bedroom, where I stood in the doorway and listened intently to the brewing explosion. Baby D was almost five years out of the womb and was al
ready listening to drama go down. He wasn’t the least bit fazed by the commotion going on in our downstairs living room as he sat in front of the television. After all, he’d witnessed fights firsthand. Hearing one had no effect on him.

  “Where’s my money?” It was Boyd’s voice. Then there was a thump.

  “Man, I . . . I . . . I . . .” Dub stuttered. Then there was a smack. “Come on, man. I got you.”

  Dub was whining like a baby. I couldn’t believe it. His pleas were falling on deaf ears, though. The next thing I heard was what sounded like a chair being thrown. I heard tussling and Dub pleading, which meant he was getting the bad end of the fight.

  “Man, come on! Please stop!”

  Crack.

  “Boyd, man, please!”

  Pow!

  There was so much commotion going on down there, a part of me honestly thought that if somebody didn’t get Boyd off of Dub, he would kill him. I was not going to be that somebody. Needless to say, I was not that down chick willing to ride or die for her man . . . not for Dub, anyway. Not the man who ran a close second to Ike Turner. I didn’t care if he was weaker than another man; he was still stronger than me.

  I closed the door and went and sat down next to Baby D, and we enjoyed the show on the television. The fight going on beneath us started to get louder and louder, so loud that I had to turn up the television.

  As I sat there next to my son, a smile stretched across my face that was a mile wide. Vengeance was God’s. I’d never clobbered Dub upside his head, no matter how many times I’d thought about it. God had sent someone else to do it for me. Maybe God wasn’t so bad, after all.

  Lately, Dub hadn’t been around much. Once he’d gotten that colostomy bag removed, he’d been back on the streets. He was what I called a tennis shoe hustler. He made just enough money every night to buy a pair of shoes. For all the hours he stayed on the streets, he still never seemed to be able to pay a bill. At first I’d argued with him about spending all that time in the streets but never having money to contribute toward our home. Heck, even when he got shot, I had to buy all those stupid colostomy bags and stuff to cover his guts up. Talk about not having a pot to piss in. That tired negro couldn’t even afford a plastic bag, let alone a pot. One time he ran out of bags and I didn’t get paid until the next day, so he had to wear a plastic grocery bag. Disgusting. It was just as bad as a baby running out of diapers and having to wear a paper towel instead.