I Ain't Me No More

by E. N. Joy

  Lynn stood there, waiting for my reply.

  When I lowered my head, not uttering a word, Lynn got her answer. I was, in fact, pregnant. After having sex with Dub a total of only three times, I was in a state of disbelief. All I had wanted was love, attention, and validation that someone of the male species actually loved me. Feeling that way had led to sex, which ultimately had led to sex that resulted in a now unwanted pregnancy.

  “Oh, my God,” Lynn whispered. “What are you going to do?” She stood there looking at me through the bunk bed’s wooden rails. The rails were there to keep the top bunk recipient from rolling onto the floor. I had to admit that I had had thoughts of removing them in hopes of “accidentally” rolling onto the floor. Losing the baby naturally would be cheaper than the plan I had in mind.

  Without even stuttering, I told my sister, “Abortion. I’m going to get an abortion.” She could tell by the conviction in my voice that having this baby was not a possibility.

  At the time of my pregnancy, it was 1986 and the abortion laws had changed. A girl couldn’t get a life sucked out of her without the consent of an adult. Lynn knew this very well, as she’d already preceded me in this dilemma, having turned up pregnant her tenth grade year of high school as well.

  “Yeah, but who are you going to get to go with you?” Lynn questioned. “I won’t be eighteen for four more months. By then it will be too late.”

  That part I really didn’t have all worked out yet. My first prospect, though, had been Dub’s mom. She was cool, one of those moms who let her kids do what they liked and come and go as they pleased. Her kids didn’t even have to go to school if they didn’t feel like it. But even with that being so, and despite the free spirit that abided in her, abortion was a sticky subject in their family.

  When I’d shared my plan with Dub and discussed the possibility of his mother taking me to get the abortion, he informed me that that probably wasn’t a good idea. He’d said that Ms. Daniels had already done the abortion thing with his older sister, Kelice. She had forced Kelice to have an abortion when she turned up pregnant at the age of sixteen. Kelice had wanted desperately to give birth to the life that was growing inside her belly, but Ms. Daniels was the boss of her. Under any other circumstances, her children were unrestricted, but in this particular situation, Ms. Daniels put her often concealed authoritative third foot down and forbade her teenage daughter from embarrassing the family with her pregnancy.

  Dub said that Kelice had never forgiven Ms. Daniels. He recounted many of arguments that had taken place between the two of them, always ending in Kelice making their mother cry by reminding her how she had made her kill her baby. So the last thing I wanted to do was add another brick to the wall of guilt and regret Ms. Daniels had already built around herself. Asking her to have the blood of not only her daughter’s unborn baby on her hands but her son’s to boot might have been the brick that brought the wall tumbling down on top of her.

  “I don’t know who I’m going to ask to go with me,” I told Lynn and shrugged.

  I didn’t really know who else to ask. I had jumped into the ocean of Dub headfirst, leaving everybody who had been remotely close to me back on shore, waving their hands, trying to get my attention. Begging me to come up for air. But it was too late. I had already drowned.

  “Even if you do find someone to go with you to get the abortion, how are you going to pay for it? You don’t have a job.” Lynn was bound and determined to tear my plan to shreds.

  I couldn’t see where my big sister was being any help at all. She was adding fuel to the fire. But I’d started the fire. Not only had I started it, but then I’d stood there and watched it. So no wonder I’d gotten burned.

  “I don’t know. I’ll think of something.” The conviction I’d had in my tone only minutes ago was now gone, replaced by a sense of pure defeat. From the moment I missed my period last month and took that store-bought pregnancy test, I’d known what I wanted to do, which was to get rid of my baby. Now I didn’t know exactly how I’d accomplish this. The frustration and defeat built up until they spilled out of my mouth in the form of the following words. “I’ll kill myself before I have this baby,” I said, more to tell myself than Lynn. But I meant it. I meant it from the depths of my soul. If I couldn’t figure out a way to kill the baby, I would kill myself. I’d kill two birds with one stone.

  The certitude was back with my last statement. I think it must have scared Lynn, because her tone got even more serious. “Didn’t I tell you I’d take you to Planned Parenthood to get on birth control when you first started kickin’ it with that boy?” she scolded.

  Almost four months ago, when I first told her about my hanging with Dub, Lynn had indeed offered to take me to the clinic.

  “You don’t want to go through what I went through,” Lynn had told me. “It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  I’d declined. Dub was the first boy who I’d ever simply just liked. I had never imagined I’d be having sex with him. Even if I had, not in my wildest dreams would I have thought I’d get pregnant. After all, my mom had neglected to have “the talk” with me. Lynn had told me that once a girl’s period started, she could get pregnant. I somehow had misconstrued that to mean that a girl could get pregnant only if it was actually that time of the month for her.

  Just imagining having sex while bleeding made me cringe, so I remember saying to myself, I’ll never get pregnant then, because I will not be having sex while on my period. If only I’d had a better understanding.

  “Look, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” I rolled over on my bunk bed, turning my back toward Lynn.

  I had a lot of thinking to do. I had to figure out how I was going to get an abortion, and fast, before my mother figured out that I was pregnant. To this day, Lynn had kept her teenage pregnancy from our mother. I needed to be so lucky. I just knew my mom would be pissed to no end if she found out her baby girl was pregnant.

  Never mind that my mother had gotten kicked out of high school when she got knocked up at age sixteen with Lynn. And who said there was no such thing as a family curse? This wasn’t about my mother and her past mistakes. It was about me. Still, I knew my mother would see her mistakes in me and do what she always did whenever she was mad, upset, and disgusted with herself. She’d take it out on us, Lynn and me, by yelling, fussing, and cussing. It was like because we were the results of some of her bad choices in life, she was going to punish us. The mere sight of us reminded her of her mistakes. At least that was how I felt, anyway.

  My mother finding out about my pregnancy ranked last among all the things on the totem pole. My biggest concern was terminating the pregnancy. If I could get rid of the baby, there would be no pregnancy for her to find out about. Believe me when I say I couldn’t terminate this pregnancy fast enough. Not just because I had to keep my mother from finding out, but because I was sick as a dog.

  Just a couple of months pregnant, I was throwing up every time I moved. I couldn’t take it. It was miserable. I couldn’t envision that something that was making me feel so bad while inside of me would make my life any better once it was outside of me. It had to go. Heartbeat or no heartbeat. Brain development or no brain development. Fetus, embryo, or baby. I knew one thing for certain and two things for sure: Somebody was going to die. It was going to be either my baby or us both.

  Stone Number Six

  “He’s so cute. Look at all that hair,” my sister said as she stroked Baby D’s hair. “He looks just like you, Dub.”

  “I don’t know,” my mother countered. “I can see a little of Helen in him too.”

  In my opinion, my newborn baby didn’t look like either one of us. He had my complexion. He had lots of hair. It was coarse like mine, but his facial structure didn’t really favor Dub’s or mine one way or another. But he was mine. He was ours, and we were loving all over his little chocolate self.

  Seven months earlier I had been hell-bent on getting rid of the baby that was growing inside of me.
Now, seven months later, I had to grow up because I had the baby.

  Dub stood next to my sister’s chair, grinning from ear to ear as she held his son, the son I had decided I would not give birth to. But my plan obviously hadn’t been God’s plan. For someone whose business I managed to stay out of, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why He wouldn’t stay out of mine.

  Oh, you can best believe that I had gone to the abortion clinic to initiate the procedure. I’d begged, cried, and pleaded with my aunt Lisa until she agreed to go with me. Between Dub and me, we had managed to scrape the abortion money together. Dub had supported my decision either way, so he wasn’t tripping on the fact that I wanted to get rid of the baby. By the time the nurse at the abortion clinic had explained and demonstrated the procedure to me, I couldn’t bring myself to terminate my pregnancy. I just couldn’t do it.

  “This is the needle the doctor will insert to numb your cervix,” the nurse said, holding up this huge needle and pressing it against a clay model of a woman’s insides. “You will feel a pinch. It will be slightly painful.”

  Sitting there, feeling as if my stomach was making its way up my throat, I had no doubt it would be painful. It looked painful.

  “And this is what the doctor will insert into your . . .”

  That was all she wrote for me as I watched the nurse take a tube and place it inside the clay model. I had this vision of my baby being sucked right through the tube, its eyes staring at me before it was completely sucked up.

  I jumped up out of my seat and ran straight to the bathroom to throw up, and it wasn’t because of morning sickness, either. Just the idea of getting an abortion was much different than the visual the clinic was providing. They were showing step by step everything the woman and her unborn would go through in order to complete the procedure so that there would be no surprises causing the patient to lose it right there on the procedure table. I couldn’t handle the mock version, let alone the act itself. I couldn’t do it.

  I couldn’t honestly say that it was more so my conscience than the fear of pain. All I knew was that needless to say, I never returned to that room or the clinic.

  Now that the baby was here, Dub and I were proud parents. Way too young to be parents, but proud nonetheless.

  “He is handsome, isn’t he?” Dub smiled, reaching his hands out, which was Lynn’s sign that her time with Baby D was up.

  “Dang, I ain’t been holding him but five minutes,” Lynn spat.

  “And that’s four minutes too long. Daddy wants to hold his son.” Dub’s arms were still extended.

  “But you got years to hold him. His auntie wants to hold him.” Lynn made cooing noises at the baby.

  “I hate to break up a good argument,” the nurse said, entering the room, “but this little fella has to come back to the nursery with me for a minute.” The nurse lifted Baby D from Lynn’s arms and placed him in his rolling bed after Lynn kissed him on his little white-, pink- and blue-striped hat.

  “Well, I’m coming with you so that as soon as you’re done with him, I can have him.” Dub looked at Lynn and stuck his tongue out as he began to follow the nurse.

  “And I’m going to go have a smoke real quick,” my mother said, trailing Dub. She looked just as proud as Dub and I did. I wasn’t surprised, considering the day I came home from the clinic after deciding against the abortion and told her I was pregnant, the first thing she did was forbid me from having an abortion. That made me all the more comfortable with my decision not to return to that clinic.

  “Just make sure don’t nobody be smoking around my son,” I heard Dub saying to my mother as they left the room.

  “Dub is a mess,” I told Lynn and giggled.

  “Yeah, but at least he’s here.” Lynn smacked her lips. “Look at all the chicks at school who be having babies and the daddies won’t even speak to them in the hallway at school, let alone want to be there for them in the delivery room. Girl, if you were going to have a baby by any boy, looks like Dub was the one.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I halfheartedly agreed. I was only sixteen, now in my junior year of high school. While everybody else had been walking through the school halls, talking about the upcoming games and dances, I had been walking through the halls, talking about having a baby shower. At least I could say that nobody acted funny toward me or seemed embarrassed about a pregnant girl hanging around.

  As far as what Lynn said about other girls being pregnant and their baby daddy not even speaking to them in the halls, I didn’t have to worry about that, because half the time Dub didn’t come to school. He figured he was flunking all his classes, anyway, so why bother.

  Either way it went, whether Dub was a good guy or a bad guy, I didn’t want to be having a baby by any guy. I guess Lynn sensed that in my response as she prepared to ask me a question.

  “So are you glad you had the baby? Glad you changed your mind about getting an abortion? I mean, you were so set on having that abortion, I almost wanted to be like Mommy Dearest and get rid of all the wire hangers.” Lynn began laughing.

  “Shut up,” I said to her, rolling my eyes.

  “I’m serious. I thought you were going to go old school and use a wire hanger to give yourself an abortion.”

  “You stupid,” I said and chuckled.

  “Well, girl, you know I had your back either way. But now that my nephew is here, I’m so happy you changed your mind.” Lynn got up from the chair and kissed me on my forehead. “Almost makes me wish that I had kept . . .” Lynn’s words trailed off, and I knew what she was thinking.

  I grabbed her hand.

  She looked down at me with moist eyes. “I’m just glad you kept yours.”

  I was glad, too, that I hadn’t aborted Baby D. Would every baby that God placed in my womb be so lucky?

  Stone Number Seven

  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.

&nbs
p; 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?