I Ain't Me No More (5 page)

Studies showed that most abusive relationships started out with verbal insults and put-downs before they ever got to the level of physical abuse. That was true when it came to Dub's and my relationship.

“You got to be about the sorriest person I've ever met. What good are you? I don't need you. Shut up and go on out of my face. You didn't even finish high school, so how you gon' finish raising a baby? You so stupid!”

This wasn't even half of the insults I flung at Dub whenever I could, even in front of others. I couldn't have cared less about offending his manhood in front of his boys, his family, or mine. My angry words would pierce him with daggers that bore his name.

So much anger had grown inside me. Wounds had formed, wounds that had gone untreated for years, bleeding on everyone who crossed my path. Unfortunately, Dub had crossed my path, and he had Rochelle to thank for the introduction. And on top of that, we now had this colicky baby who did nothing but cry at ungodly hours of the night. This was hard work and a job that stole from me a typical teenager's life.

I loved Baby D and was glad he was here. But would it have been so bad to have just waited until the time was right? But nooo, Dub had to talk me into having sex, so I placed a great deal of blame on him for the predicament I was in. This only added to the anger and resentment I harbored.

“I swear if you talk to me out of the side of your neck one more time . . . ,” Dub threatened as we sat on the couch in his bedroom. Three-month-old Baby D lay asleep on Dub's bed, which sat across from the couch.

“What?” I spat. “You gon' what? Nothing. That's what you gon' do. All you know how to do is nothing. You don't go to school, and you don't even have a job.”

“I dropped out of school so that I could take care of the baby while you finish school, remember?” Dub reminded me.

“You were flunkin', anyway, dummy, and half going to school as it was, so don't try to act like you were doing me a favor. Besides, so we know why you ain't in school, but why ain't your sorry tail working?”

Dub just sat there, his manhood being chipped away by my sharp words.

I was hurting Dub the same way I had felt hurt when my cousin's words destroyed the life I once knew. I was hurting Dub the same way I hurt when I had to give birth to a baby at the age of sixteen and give up a normal teenage life.

“I don't even know why I had a baby by you in the first place,” I muttered, continuing my tirade. “What kind of man—”

I guess Dub had had enough. I guess months of my inexcusable tantrums had finally gotten the best of him. The sting across my face demonstrated that.

“You hit me!” I said in shock, holding my face. “You hit me!”

“I . . . I . . .” Dub stammered. “I'm sorry.” His eyes were sincere. “I'll never do it again.”

I believed him because he had never done it before. I could tell he had never hit a girl before. I could tell he wasn't used to hurting people much at all. Someone like myself, who was much better trained and knew how to throw a low blow, didn't have the look on their face that Dub had on his after they hurt somebody. He had a look of sadness and remorse, instead of a slight grimace. He had a look of horror, instead of a look of triumph. He had a look of regret, instead of a look of honor.

“I'm so sorry,” he said, continuing his apology. “I'll never put my hands on you again. I promise.”

I accepted Dub's apology. He kept his promise . . . that is, until the day he decided to break it, and in the worst way ever.

 

 

I wondered how many parents had teenage daughters who got up and went to school every day as if living the normal life of a teenage girl. Sometimes their boyfriends picked them up and drove them to school. They hung out at lunch with their boyfriends. They went out on dates with their boyfriends. Talked to and texted their boyfriends until the wee hours of the morning. Took pictures and went to school dances and proms with their boyfriends. How many of these parents were none the wiser that their teenage daughter was a victim of domestic violence?

Everyone was clueless as to what I was enduring at the hands of Dub, everybody but God. I'd learned in church that God was an all-knowing God. I could not understand for the life of me why He knew yet did nothing. Wasn't that calling the kettle black? I knew and did nothing too. But I was just little ole me. He was God, this wonderful and powerful being who had a son who supposedly saved us from hell. My hell was right there on earth, so why wasn't He saving me? That was when I began to lose some of the little bit of faith I had in this almighty creator.

Eventually, I realized that no matter how many times Dub promised not to ever hit me again, the promise would be broken. I was so busy trying to come across as this strong, dominant girl, there was no way I could let people know I was being abused, belittled. That was like giving up my powers. I decided it was better that only one person on earth other than myself knew how weak I was, versus the whole world. So I remained silent, sure to cover any bruises with make-up, treat any swelling with ice, and wear turtlenecks or even long sleeves in the summertime to cover bruises on my arms if need be. Or I'd just flat out lie and say that Baby D had accidentally kicked me while I was changing his diaper or something. I equipped myself with excuses. By doing so, I was making a conscious choice to be Dub's punching bag. A part of me, though, honestly thought that I'd brought this on myself, that my verbal abuse of Dub had led him to be physically abusive with me. So maybe if I did better, then he would do better. Then we would be better.

By now, my mom had married her boyfriend and was on her second husband. Lynn had just graduated from high school and had moved in with a roommate. My stepdad was a really good guy. He took great care of us. He was a workaholic, so he was rarely home. My dad had long been out of the picture, dragged away in shackles by drugs and on some occasions by the police.

Only a month after Dub had promised me he would never hit me after that first time, that was all he did. The beatings turned into torture and torment, then escalated to rape. I had once controlled him with my tongue, but now he ruled me with his fists.

At first, the hits here and there didn't really bother me. I mean, growing up, I had witnessed my dad beat my mom. Even our neighbor when we lived in a duplex unit got beaten by her husband on the regular. Lynn and I used to hear the beatings through the wall. With every punch, every blow, we'd jump and our little bodies would tense up.

Sooner than later, this type of behavior no longer seemed abnormal. I grew accustomed to it, so much so that instead of Lynn and I huddling together while we listened to our father beat our mother, eventually we could finish a full game of Monopoly without even twitching when glass shattered or a door got kicked off the hinges. So when I, too, became a victim of abuse, it was more like confirmation that I was normal, after all.

“Run and get me a glass of juice right quick,” Dub ordered me, lying back on the bed, kicking up his feet, which were still clad in his boots.

I hated when he put his shoe-covered feet up on the bed, but I'd learned the hard way that voicing this led only to a fight.

“Can you go get it? I'm about to get in the shower.” Duh, it wasn't like I wasn't standing there buck naked, with my pajamas in my hand. I headed toward the bedroom door, planning to dash across the hall to the bathroom real quick. Baby D was in his room, asleep in his crib.

Before I could even get my hand on the doorknob to open the door, I felt a hand around my neck and I was yanked backward onto the bed.

“Get off of me!” I yelled as Dub's hands tightly gripped my neck.

“Shut up!” he yelled before releasing me.

At first I thought my plea had worked, but I came to find out that he had taken his hands off my neck only because he needed to use them to slap me and pull my hair.

“Where's all that mouth now?” Dub loved to say. And he'd have this look of victory on his face whenever he said it. It was as if he'd finally figured out a way to shut me up. And he had. I knew better than to get fly at the mouth with him now, because all it meant was me getting busted in the mouth. But it didn't matter anymore whether I talked slick to him or not. Dub had turned into this person I no longer recognized. He'd haul off and hit me for the littlest thing or for no reason at all. I guess this made him feel like the man I had accused him of not being.

“Why are you doing this?” I cried after Dub's final blow to my head before he got off of me.

“Quit all that crying,” Dub roared. “You know darn well why. The next time I ask you to go get me something to drink, I bet you won't tell me to go get it myself.”

Dub just sat there watching me cry, his eyes lacking any sense of compassion. Where had it all gone? I'd often asked myself. Had the awful things I used to say to him eaten away not only at his manhood, but also at the love and compassion he once had as a person? Eaten away at his soul? Was it possible that I had brought this on myself? Had I taken my hurt, pain, and anger so far that I'd turned Dub into a monster? If I had created this monster, was God punishing me by making me have to live with it?

“Hey, Ma, I'm ready,” I called out to my mom as I lugged both Baby D's and my things to the front door. “Where's your keys? I'll start loading our overnight bags and stuff in the car.”

“On the living-room table,” my mother called from her bedroom as she finished getting dressed.

Lynn had come over to visit. She and Mom were going to head to the movies after they dropped me and Baby D off at Dub's to spend the night.

I was only seventeen, but because Dub and I shared a one-year-old baby, I was allowed to spend more time and do more things with my boyfriend than the normal teenager would have been permitted to do. It was safe to say my mom treated me a little bit more like an adult now that I was a parent. I didn't have carte blanche freedom, but how we saw it, the damage had already been done. It was obvious Dub and I were having sex. We had a baby to prove it. And there wasn't anything anyone could have done at that point to keep us from having it.

It wasn't unusual for me to spend the night at Dub's house during weekends or on weekdays. Sometimes it was easier if I stayed at Dub's house and went to school from there since he kept the baby during the day, anyway. As far as school was concerned, I was right on schedule to graduate with the rest of my class. The school system had set up homeschooling for me once I was eight months pregnant, so I hadn't missed a beat with grades and assignments. Six weeks after having Baby D, I was right back in school.

I was now a senior in high school and Dub kept Baby D while I went to school and then to work immediately after my classes. I'd been hired by a computer company to do some clerical work as part of a school program. I had earned enough credits and had taken all the required courses to graduate, so I had to go to school only for the first four periods. But today was Friday, and Baby D and I were set to spend the entire weekend at Dub's.

His mom saw things the same way my mom saw them: We already had a baby. How could it hurt more if we spent the night together? At least now I was on birth control, something my doctor hadn't wasted any time prescribing me after I had Baby D.

“They got a nice, decent-looking house,” Lynn said to me as we pulled up in front of Dub's house. She had never been to his house before in the two years we had been together. “I'll help you carry your stuff in.”

Once my mom put the car in park, Lynn and I got out and began gathering all my things. I bent over and fought with Baby D's car seat for a minute while Lynn gathered our bags from the trunk.

“All right. Thanks, Ma,” I said as I removed the car seat from the car with Baby D still in it. I then moseyed toward Dub's house.

Lynn was still removing stuff from the trunk by the time I was halfway up the walkway. I heard the trunk slam, then Lynn's feet connecting with the pavement as she whispered my name.

“Helen. Helen,” she called under her breath. “Your teddy is hanging out.”

“Huh?” I asked.

“Your teddy. I can see it,” she said between clenched teeth, then looked over her shoulder back at our mother.

Just then my eyes grew wide. I realized what she was trying to tell me. The little pink teddy that I had purchased from Schottenstein department store for $6.99 and that was two sizes too small was showing. It was one that snapped between the legs. I hadn't tried it on in the store, but it looked like it would fit. Well, it didn't. Evidently, during my bout with Baby D's car seat, it had unsnapped between my legs, and now the tail part was hanging out. I inconspicuously tucked it away, wishing I could do the same with the embarrassment I felt.

“Thanks,” I said to Lynn. “You can just leave the stuff right here on the porch. Dub will get it.” I couldn't even stand for her to look at me one minute longer, I was so mortified.

Lynn headed back to the car and rode off with our mom while I knocked on the door.

Dub opened the door. “What took you so long?” He accusingly looked over my shoulder. “How'd you get here? Who dropped you off?”

Here we go,
I thought. Dub's insecurities were showing themselves. It was no consolation to Dub that he was my first. His main concern had become making sure he was my only.

“Now that you done had a baby, dudes know you give it up,” Dub had said to me on more than a solitary occasion. “Now they gonna be sniffing around you like hounds.”

Dub's jealousy and possessiveness were oftentimes worse than the whippings I took at his hands. The sting from the slaps would go away. The bruises from the punches would go away. But the mental assaults lodged themselves deep within me and wouldn't betray me with abandonment.

“My mom dropped me off,” I assured him nonchalantly. It was no big deal. Of course, my mom had dropped me off. She was the one who usually dropped me off.

He brushed me aside as he stepped out on the porch, looking for any signs of my mother's car. “Where is she, then?” Suspicion laced his tone.

I knew I was in for it. I'd have to have sex with him immediately to prove that I hadn't just had sex with someone else. He'd sniff me, check my panties, and look for any other telltale sign that I'd been with another guy. I'd have to prove him wrong. Usually, proving someone wrong felt good, leaving a sense of victory. But not in this case.

I was only seventeen. I didn't even like sex. I was unlike typical seventeen-year-olds who were sexually active. I hated sex. In all honesty, I was straight on sex after the first time, didn‘t know what the big hoopla was about it, besides the fact that it made me feel grown up because I was engaging in a so-called grown-up thing. But by having unprotected sex, just feeling grown up was superseded by having to grow up fast.

My mom was working for a cleaning company on the OSU campus, so she was working nonstop, which meant there was no built-in babysitter. While all the other kids at school were going to school functions and sporting events, I was at home, taking care of a baby. Sex before I was ready had changed my life drastically, so in my book, it was definitely the enemy and not an act I was fond of.

Sex was something Dub liked. Something Dub wanted. I hadn't bought that teddy for me; I had bought it for him, in hopes it would turn him on to the point that he'd hurry up and climax so I could get it over with. I guess I was about to find out if my little trick would work.

Once we were in the house and settled, Dub took all our things down to his bedroom, which was in the basement. Baby D stayed upstairs with Ms. Daniels. That was usually how the scenario went. Ms. Daniels loved Baby D. He was her first and only grandchild. The minute I'd walk through the door, she'd rip him from my arms and I wouldn't see him again until it was time for us to go home. So while he was a toddler, he didn't get to witness most of the beatings, all of which took place in Dub's room in the basement, where no one could see, where he thought no one could hear.

“You wearing that because you just got done being with someone else, aren't you?” Dub said as he knocked me upside the head.

We hadn't been in his room a good ten minutes before it all started. Unfortunately, that stupid tail from the teddy had popped out again and Dub had seen it. His jealous rage instantly made him think I had been up to no good, instead of trying to do something good for him.

“You ain't wearing that for me,” he spat. “You have never worn anything like that for me. What's his name? Huh? Who is it?” He came charging at me.

“Please, don't!” I cried out. Dub twisted my arm so far behind my back, I thought it would break. Pain tore through my body, and it felt as if every joint connected to the bones in my arm was suffering. My shrill cries were louder than the people's voices on the television. Louder than that rapper's voice blaring from the boom box. These were things he turned on to try to drown out the sound of our fights.

“Shut up!” he warned, balling a fist in my face.

I was afraid, but the pain was just too unbearable. I cried out again as I mustered up the strength to use the weight of my body to try to free myself from him. The next thing I knew, we slammed into his dresser. His lamp fell over with a crash, and his alarm clock hit the floor.

I outweighed Dub by about fifty pounds easily. After having Baby D, I had never got back down to my previous weight. Now I was bigger than I had been before. With the added pounds, when I landed on top of him after our crash into the dresser, the wind was briefly knocked out of him. In that instant, I was able to get away from him, and I immediately hobbled over to his bed and began caressing my arm.

As Dub stood up, he had a look of fury in his eyes I had never seen before. Somehow, when he hit the dresser, he managed to scrape his elbow. He looked down at his bleeding wound and then at me before he touched his elbow with his forefinger, licked the blood that was now on his finger, and then came walking toward me.

His dukes were raised, and I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see it coming. All I wanted to do, all I could do, was brace myself.

“What's going on down here?” Ms. Daniels called from the other side of the door, her voice halting Dub's blow. The knob began to jiggle. She couldn't get in, though, because Dub always closed and locked the door. “Unlock this door,” she demanded.

“Ain't nothing going on, Ma,” Dub said with a disrespectful tone. “Go on somewhere.” Dub's anger relocated from me to his mother.

“Open this door now!” she demanded.

“Hold up!” Dub said as he made an attempt at some minor housekeeping to straighten things up a little.

“Now! Before I come through this door!” She began to push her body against the door as she turned the knob.

Dub knew he'd better unlock the door now. He unlocked it and opened it, but just barely. “What?” he asked through the cracked door.

“Since when do you pay the bills around here?” Ms. Daniels asked as she forced her way inside the room. Her natural blond hair was unkempt. Her blue eyes looked around suspiciously. It was obvious Dub favored his black father more so than his white mother. “What's going on down here?” she asked, repeating her initial query.

When neither one of us responded, she looked from one of us to the other. “Y'all been down here fighting? Why is that clock on the floor?”

“No, Ma, we ain't been fighting. Just go on somewhere.” Dub rolled his eyes at his mother.

“Boy, who do you think you are talking to like that?” She snapped her neck.

In frustration, Dub palmed his head with his hands. “Sorry, Mom. But I told you, ain't nothing going on.”

“Nothing's going on, huh?” By now she was slowly walking over to him. “Then what's this?” She pointed to his elbow, having noticed the bleeding scratch when he lifted his arms. “Y'all have been down here fighting.”

I was surprised that the deep sigh of relief I let out didn't blow the two of them over. Finally, someone had detected that he was beating me, and I hadn't told. Initially, pride alone had kept me from telling others what Dub was doing to me. Now, in the back of my mind, I knew that if I told anyone, chances were that wouldn't make him stop hitting me. It would just make him even angrier, and he'd want to hurt me even more. Maybe even kill me.

Then there had been those thoughts about whether anyone would believe me if I told on him. After all, I did outweigh the guy by fifty pounds. I knew all these excuses and reasons for staying sounded weak, but I looked for any reason possible to explain to my own self why I stayed in the relationship. Why I had made a conscious choice not to walk away. Why I had made a conscious choice to not even tell anyone that Dub was abusing me. But now I didn't have to worry about that. Dub's mother was standing there, right in the midst of the battle. She didn't have a choice but to believe her own eyes. And I was glad that someone was finally coming to my rescue.

My hope was short lived, as Ms. Daniels turned from Dub and came marching toward me. “What did you do to my son? Why is he bleeding?”

My mouth opened, but no words fell out. I couldn't believe it.

“You been down here cat scratching him or something?” Now her finger was wagging in my face. “I'm nice enough to let you come over to my house because of my grandson and everything. But ain't gon' be no fighting and carrying on. You understand?” She looked at Dub. “Y'all understand?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he answered.

Now I was surprised that Dub's sigh of relief hadn't blown Ms. Daniels and me over. “It was nothing, though. I'm cool, but could you get me a Band-Aid?” he whined, milking his role as the victim in his mommy's eyes for everything it was worth.

“Sure, baby,” she said to him, then walked out of the room and up the stairs to go get a Band-Aid. She returned less than a minute later. He'd walked out of the room and gone to the bathroom across from the way to rinse his elbow, leaving me sitting on the bed, dumbfounded.

“Thanks, Ma,” Dub said after his mother went into the bathroom and helped him nurse his wound.

“No problem. By the way, dinner will be ready in a few.” She headed back up the steps, but not before cutting her eyes at me as she walked by the bedroom.

I put my head down. I couldn't describe the emotions that were flowing through me, a young teenage girl, at the time. I tried, anyway, and came up with the words
stupidity, alone, left for dead, useless, worthless, pitiful, victim, depressed, miserable.

The closing of the bedroom door and its locking let me know that Dub was back in the room with me. “That was close.” He exhaled. “We almost got busted.”

We?
I thought.
We.
Had I missed something here? Or were Dub and his mother right? Dub had always said that it was my own fault that he put his hands on me, that I made him do it. It wasn't just an excuse anymore. I was truly beginning to believe that in my head. After all, I was only seventeen. I'd met Dub and been under his spell since I was fifteen. This was all I knew. He was all I knew. This was what I was used to.