I Ain't Me No More Read online

  My arguing and complaining about Dub’s absence from the home and meager contributions to the home quickly ceased once I realized that as long as he was out there on the streets, then he wasn’t at home, making my life hell on earth. Eventually, Dub got to the point where he wouldn’t even come home for a couple of days at a time. I thought he was probably out there living a double life with some other girl. But soon enough Konnie, who had always managed to have her ear to the street, would let me know the new love of Dub’s life.

  “Crack,” Konnie said through the phone receiver. “Boyd told me that’s why he had to go upside Dub’s head a couple days ago, ’cause Dub was spending all the money on crack for his own personal use, instead of giving my man his share.”

  “What?” I’d heard her, but had I really heard her correctly? Was she sitting on my phone, trying to tell me that Dub was using crack?

  “Dub spent all the money. Boyd is riding on E,” Konnie spat. I could tell Konnie had an attitude about it. To her, Dub not only played her dude, but at the same time took food from the mouth of the baby Konnie and Boyd had just had.

  I could understand her bitterness, if that was in fact the truth. I mean, yeah, I could see Dub not giving Boyd what was owed to him, but what I couldn’t see was him spending the money to buy crack for himself.

  “Yep. He supposed to be taking their cut to re-up,” Konnie explained, as if she was the middle man, “but Dub be spending it right back on drugs for himself... little by little. Or he just uses the product he’s supposed to be out there selling.”

  Dub on crack. My mind couldn’t consume that. Dub was a lot of things, but a crackhead? It was the early nineties, and I personally didn’t know a whole lot about the drug that was dominating the drug game at the time, but I knew it was the worst and most addictive drug of them all.

  “That’s just talk,” I told Konnie.

  “Girl, what I’m doing is talking. What Dub is doing is smoking crack!” Konnie continued her mission of being the bearer of bad news. I couldn’t help but hear a hint of delight in her voice, though. “He called himself testing out his product one day. Now he’s hooked.”

  I was silent, still trying to pick up everything Konnie was putting down.

  With a newfound tone of sympathy, Konnie said, “Girl, I’m not telling you in order to try to start no mess. I’m only telling you so that you can start watching your stuff. Go to the hardware store and buy you some chains and locks or something. Start chaining your stuff down. ’Cause I hear it only gets worse.”

  Konnie was right. Things only did get worse. It started with a so-called break-in at our place, during which all my jewelry was stolen. I had collected some sterling silver jewelry over the years and kept it in a special velvet box I’d picked up at a yard sale. The thieves took only the contents of that box and a fancy corvette-shaped VHS tape rewinder that I’d purchased brand-new at a yard sale. This was easy stuff, a couple days of high. But then other stuff started to come up missing, and Dub, who’d recently been staying out on the streets, now seemed to be hiding from the streets. He’d stay cooped up in our place, acting weird.

  We’d fight over money, bill money. Not about him not giving me any, but about him forcing me to give him the bill money.

  “The gas bill is already overdue,” I said to Dub as he ransacked our bedroom, looking for my hidden purse. “If I give you the money, they are going to shut it off. Then what are we going to do?”

  “Boil water to take baths,” Dub spat back. He literally spat out those words, as spittle flew about my face.

  There was this desperate look of rage in his eyes. Now, I’d seen Dub angry before, but this was different. It was intense life-or-death desperation.

  “Dub, no. I can’t,” I said, shaking my head, trying to brace myself as I noticed him ball his fist.

  “Mom, I want to color this,” I heard Baby D say as he entered our bedroom. He was holding a work sheet he’d gotten from preschool and a box of crayons.

  “Baby D, get out of here!” Dub said, keeping his eyes on me.

  “But I got some coloring homework. I have to stay in the lines,” Baby D said.

  “Baby D, go!” Dub pointed to the door. “Mommy and Daddy are talking.”

  “I just need help staying in the lines.” Baby D was being as relentless with his homework inquiry as Dub was being with his money inquiry.

  Baby D walked up on Dub and tugged his shirt. “Daddy, please. I just want—”

  The next thing I saw was Dub’s open hand slamming against Baby D’s face and then blood pouring out of Baby D’s nose. Baby D was in shock, and so was I. I moved to go comfort him, but Dub blocked me, giving me a threatening look, letting me know that I needed to stay there and finish our business at hand.

  Baby D ran out of the room, crying. It had happened again; someone whom Baby D loved and trusted, someone who was supposed to take care of him and protect him had hurt him. Now everybody in the house was hurting, and like the saying went, hurt people hurt people. Let the pain begin....

  Stone Number Nineteen

  “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 th
e 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.

  Stone Number Twenty

  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.”