I Ain't Me No More (21 page)

Things really started looking up for Dino and me after Dub was sent back to jail. I couldn't say the same about myself and school. With all the drama going on in my life, my grades suffered tremendously. I ended up losing all my grants and scholarships. That really hurt, especially since I had only one semester to go in order to graduate. If I wanted to complete that final semester, I'd have to pay for it out of my own pocket. Considering that I was going to a private Lutheran college, I hardly had the money to do that. So I just put college on the back burner.

As a matter of fact, I put lots of things on the back burner . . . or should I say in the back of my mind? It was like I had this new life. After years of emotional and physical abuse, I had managed to completely disconnect myself from that life. I pretended as though it had never even taken place, that it had all been one bad nightmare, and now I was living a dream.

For the first time since I could remember, I felt free. There was no longer this imminent threat from Dub. Don't get me wrong. I knew I was definitely still on Dub's radar. If Dub had wanted to kill me before, I could only imagine how badly he wanted to see me dead now. I couldn't imagine spending all that time in jail and then, the day I thought I was going to go free, being rerouted to court on charges filed by my ex, and then being sent straight back to jail . . . for another year!

Hopefully, the judge was right and those sixteen months would be long enough for Dub to cool down . . . and maybe even forget about me altogether. But whatever twisted ways to kill me and my family that sprouted up in Dub's head, I'd never know about them, as the judge had made it very clear in his orders that Dub was not to contact me via phone, mail, skywriting, or by any other means, at any location.

“I still wish you hadn't felt the need to go public and had just come to me first,” Dino kept saying the first couple of weeks after the Dub ordeal.

“Baby, I am truly sorry if what I did made you feel like less than a man, but in my heart, I'm not sorry for the route I took,” I explained on one occasion.

All that stress with Dub made me appreciate more and more Dino and his good qualities, all of which Dub lacked. Strangely enough, the ordeal with Dub sort of lit a fire up under Dino to step his game up as a man and become a provider.

“Guess what?” Dino said before Baby D and I had barely made it through his apartment door one day.

“What is it?” I asked. His contagious joy and excitement had me sporting a mile-wide grin.

“I went out and got a job.”

“Get out of here,” I replied.

“Seriously. I start tomorrow. I realized that a settlement from my job is not realistic right now, so I went out and got a job.”

“I'm so happy for you,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck and planting a kiss on his cheek.

“You and my landlord.” Dino smiled. “He was the first one I told. I worked something out where I'm going to get him all paid up.”

Although I'd never met him personally, Dino's landlord had to be a saint, his kind heart prohibiting him from putting Dino on the streets.

“The only thing about this job is that my hours are funky. I go in at nine at night and don't get off until three in the morning.”

“It's only part-time?” I tried to maintain my excitement after hearing he'd be putting in only six hours of work. Looking on the bright side, if the job paid well, then perhaps six hours was all he needed to put in in order to get a decent check.

“Yeah, but it's better than nothing. I had to get a job.” Dino's last statement almost made it seem that someone had stuck a gun to his head and had told him to go out and get a job or else.

“Yeah, you're right,” I agreed.

“Do you have to wear a uniform?” Baby D interjected. “Like police and mailmen do?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Dino said before disappearing into his bedroom. He returned with his uniform over his arm. “See, here it is.” He held it up, showing it off to Baby D. It consisted of dark blue pants and a blue- and white-striped shirt. There was a picture of a little redheaded white girl with pigtails on the corner pocket of the shirt.

“Cool,” Baby D replied, touching it. “Does this mean we can all get free Frosties? Because I like . . .”

Baby D was talking, but I wasn't listening. I was still stuck on the fast-food restaurant uniform Dino was so proudly showing off. I had to do a double take. Was this big, overgrown man really excited about the fact that he'd just landed a job at a fast-food joint? I mean, if he were a teenager looking for a job to support his tennis shoe addiction, that would be another story, but this man was only two years younger than me, which made him twenty-two . . . and not only was he a man, but he was my man! I couldn't wrap my brain around it in order to get excited.

“Burger King, huh?” was all I could say.

“No, Mom. Wendy's,” Baby D said, correcting me, rolling his eyes.

I guess Dino saw the disappointment on my face. “Look, Helen, I know it's not much. It's not office work in corporate America, like you're doing, but it's a job. You never know. I could end up becoming a top manager.” He smiled and placed the paper hat on his head.

Why was this sounding like that old McDonald's commercial where the whole neighborhood was proud of Calvin for getting a job at the fast-food restaurant?

“So, just hang in there with me, all right?” Dino rubbed my cheek and smiled.

That darn smile of his made me smile, and the next thing I knew, I said a cheerful and meaningful “Okay.”

For the moment, I was glad that Dino would have a little somethin', somethin' in his pockets. His working at Burger King—I mean Wendy's—couldn't be too bad, that is, as long as no one found out.

 

 

“Did I see Dino working at Wendy's?”

It was almost shameful when a girl from work came over to my desk and asked me that question. Folks had seen Dino drop me off and pick me up from work a couple of times. I'd allowed him to use my car while I was at work so he could go look for work. Never had I imagined that he would find work at a fast-food joint and that my coworkers would spot him.

I wanted to melt like the Wicked Witch in
The Wizard of Oz
when Dorothy threw water on her. Instead, I simply replied with the truth. “Yes, he works there now on the side.” Well, almost the truth. Wendy's wasn't his side job. It was his
only
job, but I'd led her to believe it was just a second part-time job he'd picked up for extra money.

“I was just making sure, because my boyfriend and I stopped in there and I told him, ‘I think that's the guy Helen's seeing, the one she brought to the Christmas party.'”

“Yep, that was him.” I hated saying it once again, forgetting all about the fact that Dino had accompanied me to the office Christmas party. He had put on such a show with his old-school dance moves, I imagined he was more than recognizable to my coworkers, even in his work getup.

“Well, girl, at least you got a man that's willing to work. I can't get my boyfriend off the couch,” she joked.

We each laughed, and I immediately felt more at ease. Here, I thought she was coming over to rub in my face the fact that I was dating someone who worked in a fast-food joint, and she'd ended up confessing that her man didn't even work at all. I could tell she was real people. And that right there was the start of a new friendship.

Bianca, the girl from work, and I exchanged phone numbers and started hanging out. We had so much in common that it wasn't funny. Although she had her friends that she'd hung out with since high school and I had Synthia and Konnie, she and I were more alike than anybody. We even shared the same birthday.

She and I ended up doing stuff together almost every day, and that was easy since we worked together. But we even found reasons to hang out after work. I'd invite her to all my family's events, and she'd invite me to hers. My family took to her immediately. And, of course, Dino liked her. Dino liked everybody. That was another quality he had that I admired: he saw the best in everybody. Even me, go figure. I had a hard time seeing anything good in myself. The way I saw it, anything good that might have been in me, Dub had beaten out.

Hanging out with Bianca brought out another side of me. She was full of fun and full of life. She had this shine about her, a shine that made all those around her want to shine too. I had never laughed as much as I did when I was with Bianca. Since Bianca didn't have any kids, she kicked it nonstop, and soon enough, so did I.

“You going out again?” Dino asked as I began getting dressed after putting Baby D to bed.

“Me and Bianca are just going out for a quick drink,” I replied, ignoring the tone in Dino's voice, which sounded a little disappointed about the fact that I was about to leave. “You know I don't drink all like that, so I won't be long.”

“But it's the middle of the week. And it's my night off.”

“And?” I said, slipping my sheer, long-sleeved black bodysuit on over my Victoria's Secret black lace bra.

“Are you going out for a drink, or are you going out to get dudes to buy you a drink?” Dino looked my outfit up and down. “And why are you wearing that out with Bianca? You and I used to go out all the time together, and you never dressed like that when you were with me.”

I simply shrugged and slipped on my black dress pants.

“How did you know I didn't have plans to go out?” Dino nodded toward the room in which Baby D was sound asleep. He was hinting at the fact that if he had had plans, there would be no one at home to watch Baby D. “How did you know I wasn't going out to have a drink with one of my boys?”

“Because you always broke,” I spat. “Where would you get money to go out? But if leaving Baby D here is a problem, just let me know. I can take him to Nana's.”

Baby D and I hadn't been to Nana's since Dub went back to jail. Appreciating Dino all the more, I had stayed up under him.

After meeting Bianca, though, that all changed. I discovered that I could be a different person when I was out hanging with her. When I was out with Bianca, we always seemed to attract attention; we were like magnets to a good time. I had had no idea how popular Bianca was in the streets. Not because she had a bad reputation or anything, but because she was just so fun and likable, everybody knew her. All the popular people I recalled hearing about in high school, even those who didn't attend my high school but were from one of the main high schools in Columbus, Bianca knew.

Bianca and I never went anywhere where she didn't know somebody and where somebody didn't know her. And because of Bianca's status, I soon enough began to know all these people as well. People who I had never imagined hanging out with back in high school, I was hanging out with now. It was incredible. It was like a rebirth, like even though I was older now, I was getting to live out my high school days. While I was being born again and coming into the world, unbeknownst to me, something else was being born as well....

“A baby!” I couldn't believe the words that had just come out of Dino's mouth. I guess he figured I wouldn't believe him, so that was when he whipped the picture out of his wallet and laid it on the table in front of me.

“Her name is Jontay,” he said. “I . . . I . . . wasn't sure she was really mine. That's why I didn't say anything until now.”

Speechless, I just sat there, staring at the picture.

Dino decided to keep talking. “She's four months.”

“Four months?” I finally found my words. “You mean to tell me, all this time we've been kicking it, you've had a baby on the way?”

“Like I said, I didn't know if she was mine or not. My girlfriend from back home and I had broken up. I moved to Columbus, and then she called me, talking about she was pregnant. At first, I didn't even think she was really pregnant. I thought that was just a trick for her to get me back and to let her come here to Columbus with me.”

“So when did you find out that she was really pregnant? Was it before or after you met me?”

Dino put his head down. “Like a couple weeks before.”

“So, you didn't think that during all of our getting-to-know-each-other conversations you could have mentioned that you might have some girl back home in New York pregnant?”

“I still needed to find out if the baby was mine or not. If it wasn't mine, I didn't see why I should even bother mentioning it and risk you not being interested in me. Even when she was born . . . I mean, she looked like me, but I still couldn't be sure. I just stood there outside the hospital nursery and stared at her for a long time, trying to—”

“Wait a minute.” I stood up. “Are you saying that you were there, at the hospital, when this child was born?”

Dino nodded.

“I don't remember you going to New York.”

“Uh, the baby wasn't born in New York. The baby was born right here in Columbus.”

I began to laugh nervously to keep from crying, not tears of pain, but tears of anger. I had promised that if this fool had been so broke because he was living a double life, I would . . .

“She ended up moving to Columbus, anyway, when she was about seven months into the pregnancy. A cousin of hers and his wife live here, so she talked them into letting her move in with them.”

“So let me get this right. For the past few months your maybe baby mama has been living in the same town and you have not said one word to me about this?”

“She's not a maybe baby mama. Jontay is mine. The welfare office made Tabatha seek child support, which involved a paternity test to prove that I was the father. She's mine, Helen.”

Although Dino and I had made it a point not to really talk about our exes, I recalled him mentioning Tabatha's name a time or two, only to talk about how evil and mean she was. Other than that, he never mentioned her, so I assumed she wasn't anybody special, nobody he had truly been in love with and had bonded with. Here, all the while they had shared a bond that he and I didn't have. Then it dawned on me that once upon a time he and I had had a chance to share that same kind of bond, but I'd destroyed it.

“You mean to tell me that knowing there was a possibility you had a baby on the way, you wanted me to have a baby by you too? Ooh, I am so glad I got that abortion, I don't know what to do. God knew all this mess was going on and that you didn't need another baby.”

“God didn't have anything to do with the decision you made all by yourself to get that abortion,” Dino was quick to say. “I was trying to be a man about it, take care of my responsibility, but you were hell-bent on going through with that procedure. The same way I was trying to be a man about taking care of the one that was growing in your stomach, I' m now trying to be a man about taking care of the one that is here.”

“So that's why you all of a sudden became so bound and determined to start bringing in an income that you stooped to working at Burger King?” I spat.

“Wendy's,” he said, correcting me. Dino looked at me with so much hurt in his eyes. “
Stooped?
Is that what you call it?”

I could tell that I'd hurt his feelings with my choice of words, but I was too angry to even care. I think I was born angry. Mad. Mad at the world. Wouldn't know happy if it smacked me in the face, because I probably didn't want to know happy. Not really. Hurt, anger, and pain had become my best friends. They'd feel betrayed if I let happy in, if I let happy get too close to me.

“Well, what else would you call it? A grown man working at a fast-food restaurant? I mean, I could see if you were the store manager or something, but you ain't in charge of nothing but fries. For a minute there I was almost flattered, figuring you'd finally gotten off your butt to do something to earn some money instead of being a leaching bum, but now I realize that you did it for one reason and one reason only, you getting hit by the system. You gotta pay that broad child support, don't you?”

He paused for a moment. “Of course I have to take care of my baby,” Dino replied.

“Oh, no, my brother, don't try to play me.” I shook both my head and my index finger at him. “After getting those results to the paternity test, welfare ordered you to pay them some child support, didn't they? Threatened to take your butt to jail, huh?”

“Even if they hadn't ordered me to do so, I still would have. I don't need no system telling me that I have to take care of my baby.”

“So not only are you dang near bringing in a minimum-wage check, but it's getting hit by child support?” I asked, not expecting an answer. Dino didn't give me one, either. “Wow. This is just too much.”

“I know, but there's nothing I can do about it now. Unlike you, she didn't kill the baby.”

Talk about nails down a chalkboard. Now I was outraged. Even though Dino had made the comment with absolutely no venom in his tone, and the comment was indeed a fact, I still blew up. “Don't you dare try to turn this thing around on me. Don't you even try to refocus the situation on something I did in the past. You are wrong, and you know you are wrong. You lied by omission. You kept secrets!”

Dino threw his hands up. “Okay, so what if I had told you what all was going on? Would that have changed anything between us?”

“I don't know, but at least I'd have a choice in the matter on whether this is something I wanted to entertain or not,” I lied to him, knowing darn well that had I known he had a baby on the way when we met, he would have never had a chance with me. Telling the truth about myself, I was only half a mother to my own son, so there was no way I saw myself as being a mother to some other woman's child.

“Look, I'm sorry,” Dino said, throwing his hands up in defeat. “I'm sorry for not letting you know what was going on before now, but I'm not sorry that Jontay is here.”

All I could do was look at Dino and reply, “Well, I'm sorry too . . . about everything.”

 

 

“Girl, you are lying!” Bianca said as she and I sat in Cheddar's Casual Café for lunch.

I had e-mailed her when I went to work the very next morning after Dino gave me the news about his baby and had asked her to lunch. I'd told her there was something I had to talk to her about. The dude she was dating had a three-year-old son whom his baby mama had been pregnant with when she started dating him. I needed some advice from her about what to do.

“I wish I was lying,” I replied, stirring my Coke with the straw.

“Well, at least in my case I knew what I was getting into. I knew my man had a chick knocked up.” Bianca took a bite of her mozzarella stick from her Triple Treat Sampler, her favorite item on the menu.

“But didn't you worry about him having to spend time going to visit the baby and stuff, which means he has to be around the mama too?”

“Girl, please, whenever he went anywhere near that baby mama, I made sure he took a part of me with him.”

“How so?” I asked, confused.

“I made sure I always sent the baby a gift with him, and I would tell him to tell the baby right in front of the mama, ‘This is from Bianca.' I needed for him to constantly remind her that even though she was the baby mama, I was his woman. Girl, I'd send the baby cards signed by both me and my man. I'd cut out diaper and wipe coupons and tell him to make sure he gave them to her and to tell her that I was the one who thought enough about her wallet to cut them out. I kept my name in his mouth while he was around her. I had to let that chick know that baby or no baby, I wasn't going nowhere.”

“You crazy.” I chuckled.

“Yeah, but I won. She had thought that having that baby was going to bring her and my man closer, that she'd be able to steal all my man's time so that he wouldn't have any left for me. I proved her wrong. He'd tell me about the little comments she'd make about them, hoping they could be a real family once the baby was born. Well, I nipped that in the bud quick, fast, and in a hurry. I was not about to feel like some quitter or loser and give any broad on the planet bragging rights that she'd stolen my man from me. No way, no how.”

Until then, I honestly hadn't looked at things like that. In all actuality, I really had wanted Bianca to back the decision I'd already made to let Dino go. But that was before she started throwing words like
quitter
and
loser
around. I didn't want to be a quitter, and I certainly didn't want to be a loser.

“Look, let me tell you this,” Bianca said. “Whatever you do, don't let the baby mama win. Do not let her get the ‘w,' the win. Do whatever you have to do to make sure she doesn't win.” Those were her last words of advice to me before she demolished her Triple Treat Sampler.

I allowed Bianca's words to get my adrenaline going. From that moment on I was bound and determined to do whatever I had to do not to let Dino's baby mama walk away thinking she'd won by having that baby of hers. But at that moment, I had no idea just what lengths I'd go to, to ensure that I walked away with the “w.”