I Ain't Me No More (17 page)

I ended up calling Dino the very next day. I didn't think the same bugaboo rule applied to women that applied to men. The one about not calling a woman the same day, or even the day after, she gives a guy her number.

Just like it was when Dub and I first started dating, Dino and I talked on the phone for hours. I was even reminded of one of Dub's and my early times together; one I had completely forgotten about. Dub had come and tapped on my bedroom window in the middle of the night because he missed me and wanted to say hey and it was too late to call my house. I thought that was the sweetest and most romantic thing. I'd almost forgotten about those times, with so many bad times outweighing the good.

I met Dino on a Sunday, I called him Monday afternoon, and we talked for hours. I was abusing my phone privileges at work, while Dino said he was off work from the Honda plant. All I remember was thinking,
Yes! He's got a job . . . and a good one.
I knew dudes who would have killed to land a position at the Honda plant. It was like working for GM. They made good money. So in turn, any girl would love to have a dude who worked at the Honda plant. That meant that when they went out to dinner, he could afford to pay for the meal.

While I was on the phone, getting to know Dino, one of the office secretaries kept coming over to my desk, asking me stupid stuff just to be nosy. She would smack her lips about me still being on the phone. I knew then that I better end my phone sessions with Dino for the day . . . at least while I was at work. That particular call started at noon, the beginning of my hour-long lunch period, and ended after two. But before hanging up, Dino asked me out to the movies that night. I eagerly accepted. I couldn't remember the last time Dub had taken me to the movies or if we'd even gone. And I was sure if we had gone to the movies, I was the one who had flipped the tab.

“Nana, is it okay if I leave Baby D here asleep tonight while I go catch a movie?” I asked her once I got home from work. Baby D was seven and in second grade now, and was not nearly as much of a handful as he had been when he was a toddler. Nana could handle him even if he woke up during the night.

“Movie? On a Monday night? Who in the world goes to the movies on a Monday night?” Nana replied.

“I met this really, really nice guy last night, while I was out, and he invited me.”

Nana frowned. “Go on. Baby D can stay here and sleep. But I don't get you girls today.” Nana shook her head. “I mean, I've gone out in my days and met some really, really nice guys. But I ain't never met one where I wanted to just jump up and go out with him the next night after meeting him.” Nana left the room, almost in disgust.

Perhaps she was right. Perhaps I should have at least taken that entire week to get to know Dino. He could be a psycho for all I knew. I mean, after all, looks could be deceiving.

 

 

The next two weeks I spent almost every single day with Dino. I started slacking off on my schoolwork. I even got called into my college counselor's office, and he warned me that if I didn't maintain decent grades, I would lose my grants and scholarships. I couldn't believe I was starting to mess up in my senior year. I'd come too far, but my real concern seemed to be how far Dino and I would go.

With Dub, I had used school as an escape—anything to get away from him. With Dino, though, the time I spent at school and on schoolwork I wanted to spend with him instead.

Rather than going out to the club with my girls, I'd go with Dino and we'd dance the night away. It was so fun, because club hoppin' wasn't something Dino was used to. He'd been out the night I met him only because he had agreed to join his friend from work to celebrate his friend's birthday. But me, I was a pro on the club scene.

I'd always thought going to the club with a guy was like taking sand to a beach, but I had never had more fun in my life than I had dancing the night away with Dino. He was everything his smile suggested he was. If he stubbed his toe and needed stitches, he'd still be smiling. Nothing could get him down. He never got upset or raised his voice. Not even when a guy at the club bumped into him and made him spill his drink all over himself.

“That's all right, partna,” Dino told the guy. Even when the guy offered to buy both Dino and me another drink for our troubles, Dino refused, replacing his own drink himself. I knew there was nothing I could ever do to make Dino get upset with me and yell at me, degrade me, let alone beat on me, like Dub had done for so many years. I had had no idea a man like this even existed. There was a God, after all, and He'd sent me an angel.

When I was spending time with Dino, I truly felt as though I was in heaven. I introduced Dino to all my family, and everyone loved him. Absolutely everyone, even Baby D. Close to three months into my and Dino's relationship, Baby D and I spent more time at Dino's one-bedroom apartment than we did at Nana's big ole house. We even started spending the night there.

“Helen, Baby D tells me that you all sleep on the couch and the floor at Dino's,” my mother said to her dismay as we sat in her living room one day. “I don't like that.”

“Mom, you make it sound like Dino and I are
sleeping
sleeping together . . . like we are having sex with Baby D right there or something. That does not go down. Believe me.”

“Well, I just don't understand why with all those beds at Nana's, you are staying at this guy's place, on the floor. You haven't even known him that long.”

I could understand where my mother was coming from, but that still didn't change my mind about wanting to be up under Dino all the time.

By now, Dino and I had become sexually involved, our first time being just a month after we met. I was so nervous that the first time he actually tried to sleep with me, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

“I can't,” I'd said, pushing a naked Dino off of me before he even had a chance to penetrate me. My body had been trembling, like I was about to be raped instead of made love to. I guessed that was just what I'd been used to.

“I understand,” Dino had said, putting his clothes back on. And he really did seem to understand, never trying to initiate sex again. A week after that, it was I who ultimately initiated our intimate encounter, which was something I'd never done with Dub.

I have to admit, with Dino, it was so different. It didn't feel like he was taking me. I felt as though he was giving me a part of him. It was safe to say that I had gotten my mojo back when it came to sex.

Dino was only the second man in my life who I'd been with, and he was nothing like the first. He was twenty-one, two years younger than I was, but he worked it like a vet! Dino was the glory to outweigh all the suffering I had been through with Dub. I felt like the children of Israel when Pharaoh finally let them go. But then, just like for the children of Israel, the journey toward the promised land was nothing like I thought it was going to be.

One day I decided to go visit Dino on my lunch break and surprise him with lunch. I stopped by Roosters and grabbed us some chicken before heading to his apartment. Once I arrived at his door, prepared to knock, I couldn't help but notice the piece of paper that was stuck to Dino's front door.

I sat the food down that was in my hands and tenderly peeled the paper off the door and opened the note. I just knew it was going to be from some other chick.
Yep
, I told myself,
I knew he was too good to be true. He's probably got broads all over town, and now one is throwing salt in his game by calling herself leaving him a love note.

I began to read the letter and realized that it wasn't a note from some other woman at all. It was an eviction notice. My mouth formed a capital letter
O.
Eviction notice? But he worked at the Honda plant. He made good money. He'd been treating me and Baby D to dinner and movies and skating and everything. He had money. There had to be a mistake. Perhaps the landlord had inadvertently placed it on the wrong door. I double-checked the address printed on the letter, and it matched Dino's.

I placed the note back on the door and picked up the food, even though I'd just lost my appetite. I couldn't eat, let alone think, until I got to the bottom of this.

Dino opened the door, all smiles, after I knocked.

“What are you doing here?” He embraced me with a big smile on his face. “Ooh, and you brought lunch.” It wasn't unusual for Dino to be home during the day, because he'd told me he worked the evening shift. There were some occasions when he worked the day shift, and usually it was those times when Baby D and I would spend the night at his place.

“And it looks like someone else brought you a little something too.” I nodded toward the door.

Just then Dino looked up at his door, and his face flushed with embarrassment. He didn't have a look of wonderment, but a look that told me he knew exactly what that letter hanging on his door was. He peeled it off as he stepped aside and allowed me to enter. There was complete silence as he debated whether or not to discuss the letter with me.

When he looked at me and saw me standing there, waiting for an explanation, he knew I wasn't going to let him enjoy a good meal until he started talking.

“I had hoped I'd have my settlement before it got to this,” he said as he shook his head and sat down on the couch.

He'd mentioned to me early on in the relationship that he'd gotten hurt on the job. He had hired an attorney and had been going to therapy and everything. He was expecting to ultimately receive a big payoff.

“So what's up?” I just came right out and asked. “Why would you be getting an eviction notice, unless you haven't been paying rent?” The look he gave me let me know that he hadn't been. “You haven't been paying rent?” I needed to hear him say it.

He shook his head.

“Why not, Dino? Did you expect them to let you live here for free?”

“I expected to have my settlement by now.”

“Why didn't you pay them with the money your job has been paying you?”

“What money? My job hasn't been giving me any money.”

Okay, now I was stunned. I didn't know anybody nowadays who went to work at a job but didn't get paid. “Then where have you been getting money?”

He paused, then took a deep breath. “Well, at first, my job was paying me for being off—”

“Being off?” I interrupted. “But you haven't been off.” My eyes pleaded with his that it wasn't so. But when his eyes were downcast, I knew my gut feeling was correct. This fool had been faking going to work

“Then, when I went to their doctor,” he continued without verbally confirming the fact he'd been lying about going to work, “he said there wasn't nothing wrong with me. But my doctor's report was different, so my doctor wrote me off work. My job told me if I didn't come to work, then they were firing me.”

“So you let them fire you?”

“My doctor wrote me off work. So I let them fire me, and then I started getting unemployment. When that ran out, I got extensions, but now the extensions have run out.”

“Let me get this straight. You've been living here all of this time and not paying your landlord a dime?” I sighed. “I can't believe they ain't put your black tail out before now.”

“My landlord has been really cool. I had explained the situation to him, showed him my paperwork and everything.”

“So your landlord has been letting you slide on rent, thinking you were going to get this huge settlement and just pay everything in one lump sum?”

It was as if Dino realized at that moment just how stupid everything sounded, how he'd been living on a hope and a dream that wasn't guaranteed. That adorable, kind, and loving smile that had attracted me to him in the first place now looked like a big, stupid grin. It was probably that same big, stupid grin that he'd used to convince his landlord to let him get away with not paying rent. I had to give it to Dino: that smile of his had gotten him a long way, but now, as far as I was concerned, it was at a dead end.

“Look, I have to get back to work.” I headed to the door with so much disgust, I couldn't see straight.

Nana had always told me that if something seemed too good to be true, then it was. Dino was just as broke as Dub had ever been. At least Dub had been real about his destitution. He had never put on a front or pretended he had two nickels to rub together. Dino had been acting like everything was good. He had had me fooled. But at that moment, I knew I wasn't going to be the fool anymore.

It wasn't that I was a gold digger or anything, but I'd spent seven or eight years with a man who was broke. Romance without finance was a nuisance whether you were getting beat on or not. I felt that I'd been through so much in my last relationship that I deserved a man who could do all the things the last one couldn't. I had dreamt of this fairy tale; a fairy tale that consisted of me being wined and dined, taken out on the town, on trips and vacations. You name it. And now Dino had pinched me and woken me from my dream.

Dino didn't even try to stop me when I walked out his door that day. He could see disappointment written all over my face. When I stepped out his door, I had made up my mind that I wasn't coming back.

 

 

“Pregnant? You're pregnant?” Dino said with excitement.

I just sat there, looking at him like he was crazy. I'd sworn I'd never set foot in his apartment again, but I had to tell him the news face-to-face. Besides, by now his phone had been turned off.

I did not expect the reaction I got from him. What man in his right mind would be excited about a girl he had picked up at the club and had known for only four months being pregnant? And although usually Dino's smile and excitement elicited the same type of reaction from me, they certainly didn't this time.

“I just don't understand how in the world I let this happen,” I said, burying my face in my hands and shaking my head. “What was I thinking? What were
we
thinking?”

I knew darn well I wasn't on the pill. I had stopped taking the pill months ago. I knew I wasn't going to have sex with Dub anymore, and I had never imagined in a million years I'd ever have sex with another man. That was just how much Dub had made me hate the entire act of sex. I'd vowed that I'd never let a man inside my body again. But somehow I had got caught up in the whirlwind romance with Dino and all of that went out the window, and now here I was, paying the piper.

“Why do you look so sad? I mean, this is a life growing inside of you.” Dino came and sat down next to me on the couch in his living room. “There is a little me or a little you inside there.” He smiled and rubbed my stomach.

For the first time in the four months we had been together, his actions, his happiness, were ticking me off. This was not the time to be happy.

“What's wrong with you?” I pushed his hand off my stomach and stood up. “Do you really think I'm about to have this baby? You are out of your mind.”

The look on Dino's face said it all. It was as if he didn't even recognize me. He'd never witnessed me poppin' off like this before. “Baby, I know you're not thinking about doing what I think you are.”

“What else is there to do?” I shot back. “Have a baby by a man who is not my husband? No way, Jose. No more babies out of wedlock for me.” I shook my head.

He jumped up, as if he'd just had the brightest idea he'd ever had in his life. “Then let's get married.”

Was this dude serious? I mean, he couldn't be Mr. Do the Right Thing all the time, especially not now. He couldn't marry me. He had no idea what he'd be getting himself into. But Dino was relentless. He went on and on and on about how we could make this thing work. It was as if I was speaking a foreign language when I reiterated to him that I did not want to keep this baby. The more he pressed, the more I knew I'd have to do something to make him change his mind. I needed him to see the real me. There was no way in the world he'd want to marry the person buried beneath the one I had been pretending to be for the past few months.

“What do I look like marrying, let alone having a baby by, a man who don't even have a job? I mean, look at you. . . .” And that was when it began. It was like history repeating itself. I began to spew the same type of insults I used to chuck at Dub in the beginning, only now they were directed toward Dino.

My insults continued. “You are only a day in court from being put out on the streets. Then what you gonna do? Come live with me at my nana's? Negro, please.” I rolled my eyes and sucked my teeth. “What am I going to do with a man who can't provide for me and the child I already have? I wouldn't have even given you the time of day in the club that night had I known you were dang near homeless. Heck, we could have skipped the movies, and you could have put it toward your rent.”

Dino just sat there, speechless, as I rambled on, string after string of insulting curse words spilling from my mouth. I was so angry, but truth be told, I wasn't angry at Dino. I was angry at myself. I was angry for allowing myself to even be in this position. But unfortunately for Dino, when I was mad at myself, I was mad at the world. And so the world would pay.

“I can't even believe this is you standing here, saying all this stuff to me.” He got up from the couch and walked over to me, as if someone had just punched him in the gut and knocked all the wind out of him. “Helen, baby, it's me.”

He was acting as if I had been knocked over the head and had lost my memory and he was trying to get me to come to. But I'd already come to my senses. I'd come to my senses a week before, when I'd left his apartment after finding out he was jobless and would soon be homeless.

“Look, just forget I ever came. I don't know what I was thinking, coming here, anyway. It's not like you have any money to put on the abortion.”

I grabbed my purse and headed to the door. Unlike the last time, this time Dino stopped me.

“I just want you to know, I do not want you to do this, but since you are set on doing it, I at least want to be there for you.”

“Sure,” I replied nonchalantly. “Let me look into it, and I'll give you all the details. I'll let you know the date and time, and you can come pick me up and take me.”

“That's cool, but . . .” He looked down.

Oh, God, there's more bad news?
I thought.

“My car broke down a couple days ago. The guy who lives a couple doors down from me is a mechanic. He said the car is dead. Engine is shot. So . . .”

“So that means not only are you jobless and homeless, but you're carless too?” I snapped, shaking my head. “And you wonder why you're about to be babyless.”

I left Dino's apartment and went straight home and pulled out the yellow pages. I was going to call and make an appointment at the same place I'd gone when I aborted Dub's baby, which was an act
nobody
knew of, not even Dub. I had actually pushed it so far to the back of my mind, I'd often forgotten completely about the incident.

About two years after having Baby D, I had gotten a double ear infection and had to take antibiotics. When I turned up pregnant, I was shocked because I'd been on birth control pills. The doctor concluded that all the antibiotics in my system had decreased the effectiveness of the birth control.

I knew if I had that baby, I would be making a horrible mistake. Plus, I thought there was a chance that since it was Dub's seed growing inside me, it might turn out to be a monster too. I couldn't let that happen, so I went to the clinic and got an abortion. I felt so bad as I sat in the waiting room, about to kill my baby. But when I noticed the stomach of the girl next to me, which looked as if it harbored a full-grown baby, one that she was about to abort, I didn't feel so bad anymore.

I was home free until Dub found a paper from the doctor's stating that I was pregnant. By then there was no more baby, so I thought fast and told him I'd miscarried. Thinking his unborn child had died tore him up. I told him I knew he'd be hurt, which was why I kept it from him. I didn't want to hurt him. Lucky for me, he bought it.

Unlucky for me, Dub became hell-bent on trying to get me pregnant again. Whenever my period came, he'd beat me for not being pregnant. So I prepared myself to get a beating at least once a month, because I knew I'd never get pregnant. Unbeknownst to him, I was popping birth control pills left and right. I couldn't take a chance on ever getting pregnant again by him. I couldn't risk giving birth to a monster. I'd gotten lucky the first time with Baby D, but who was to say I'd be so lucky the next?