by E. N. Joy
I looked down at his hands to find him holding a couple of brochures. My question had been answered. It was now clear that the protestors had infected him with their beliefs. They’d wrapped their pro-life doctrines firmly around his conscience, and here he was, trying to contaminate my made-up mind. Just that fast, Dino’s emotional weather forecast had gone from a cool summer breeze to Hurricane Sandy. But I was not about to allow him to enforce his evacuation plan on me.
“Look, Dino, I don’t know what them crazies out there said to you, but I’m not keeping this baby.”
“Look at this!” he screamed at me, holding up one of those brochures in my face. “Look at this dead baby that was sucked out of a woman during an abortion procedure! I’m not going to let you do this to our baby.”
I refused to look at the mutilated baby, keeping my eyes locked with Dino’s instead. “This is my body. You can’t tell me what I am and am not going to do. I am not having a baby by you, or anybody else, for that matter. I’m not about to be some breeding machine for broke men who can’t even afford to keep a roof over their own heads, let alone a baby. Where are we going to get money for milk, diapers, baby clothes, and baby food?”
“You can get on WIC or welfare or something,” he replied.
“Fool, are you crazy? What woman in her right mind has a deliberate welfare baby? Why would anyone want to have a baby that Uncle Sam has to take care of and not the daddy? That’s stupid and selfish, and I’m neither.” I turned away to go back into the room.
“So you’d rather kill the baby than have it and be on welfare? And you don’t think that’s stupid and selfish?” Dino said as he snatched me by my arm and yanked me back to face him.
“Is everything okay?” the nurse asked me, giving me the look. I felt like she had my back like one of the chicks in the movie Set It Off.
“Yes, everything is fine,” I assured her as I jerked away from Dino and turned back to the door.
“My legacy,” he cried. “It’s going to be destroyed.”
I tried to drown out his exclamations the same way I’d done triumphantly with the protestors who welcomed me in the abortion clinic’s parking lot earlier.
“Sorry, Dino, but my mind is made up.” I looked around. “I mean, we’re here now, for God’s sakes. Let me just get this over with already.”
I left a heartbroken Dino outside the door while I went back in the room. The jaunt back to the chair was punctuated with weeping, and it wasn’t coming from me. Through the door I could hear Dino tipping the scale of devastation, defeat. He was just a plain ole hot mess. One would think he was the one who was about to go through the procedure. Once again, I positioned myself in the chair.
“Ready?” the doctor asked.
I took a long deep breath. “Ready,” I replied as I closed my eyes and put a voluntary end to my pregnancy.
Stone Number Twenty-nine
It had only been a week since the abortion, and prior to it I had been staying with Nana on a more regular basis, after discovering the eviction notice on Dino’s door. I’d made up my mind that I was through with Dino, but just like all the times I’d said I was through with Dub, something just kept pulling me back in. I’d felt abandoned and alone so much in my life that maybe I honestly didn’t want to be alone . . . with myself. Perhaps being with myself was the worst of two evils, so I opted to be with a man instead, any man willing to keep me company just so I wouldn’t have to keep myself company.
Nana knew nothing about the fact that I’d had an abortion. She and I were close, but that was not something I wanted to sit and talk to her about over a game of Scrabble. I honestly couldn’t say that I felt a boatload of remorse or shame about the abortion. I hated to admit it, but I truly felt relieved. Men changed. Dub had, and just in case Dino did, I didn’t want to have any ties to him, especially not a child.
Even though prior to the trip to Cincinnati I had stayed with Nana, for the past week, ever since returning from the abortion clinic, I’d stayed at Dino’s every night. The day we drove back to Columbus from the clinic, I ended up staying the night at Dino’s. I had made arrangements for Ms. Daniels to pick up Baby D from school, and since it was Friday, she just agreed to allow him to stay over the entire weekend. I was glad that both I and Baby D had a place to lay our head besides Nana’s. For one, I didn’t want Nana asking me a whole bunch of questions about why I was so drained and dreary, or catching me taking my meds and then questioning why I was on medication. It was just easier that way.
Another reason why I stayed at Dino’s was for his sake. I mean, he was a complete mess on the drive back home. I feared that if I didn’t stay by his side and allow him to continue spilling his emotions out on me, he’d get to calling up all his friends and family and putting our business out there. I did not want my name or business in the streets of Columbus.
Even though he was hurt and upset with me, a couple hours after arriving back home, he managed to pull himself together enough to be the gentleman that he was and cater to me. He put himself and his feelings aside and treated me how he would have wanted to be treated had the tables been turned. He treated me as though I’d just given birth to his child instead of aborting it. He never let anyone or any situation alter his character. Not even me . . . not yet, anyway.
In jus’ a few more weeks you’re dead. Everybody in your family is dead, you whore. I spoke to Baby D on the phone when he spent the weekend over at my mom’s. He told me ’bout that Dino cat you lying up with and got my son around. I can’t believe you whorin’ in front of my son. I’m going to show you what happens to whores when I get out of here. And let this Dino guy know that as a token of my appreciation for him tearing my family apart, he’s a dead man too. I hope when I creep up on y’all, I catch y’all in bed together so I can carve y’all up together. You better let Dino know he better get his last one off with my girl, because when I’m out of here, it’s over for the both of you.
Ha, ha, ha. I can see your face now while you’re reading this letter. I bet you forgot all about me, didn’t you? I bet you even thought I forgot all about you. Well, you may have forgotten about me, but I didn’t forget about you, whore.
You thought you could just play me, kick me when I was down? You once said if I ever went to jail, you’d leave me. Well, I guess you held true to your word, but now I’m going to hold true to mine.
Dub
Dub was right; I had forgotten about him. For the past five months I’d been consumed with Dino’s and my relationship. Then there was the pregnancy issue, which, ironically, ended up bringing Dino and me even closer.
The night we got back to Columbus from Cincinnati, we’d lain back and talked. I’d apologized for putting him through everything.
“I can’t explain why I am the way I am sometimes,” I had admitted to Dino. Maybe it was the painkillers I was on, but I was truly opening up to Dino. “Half the time I don’t even think I’m mad at the person I’m lashing out at more so than I’m mad at myself.”
“But why? I don’t get it,” Dino had said as he lay next to me in bed and stroked my hair.
I thought for a moment before answering, searching for the right words to describe feelings that I could hardly explain to myself. “Sometimes I just hate myself. I hate the world, even. I feel like I just got dumped off in a life that I didn’t ask for . . . and I’m mad.” I went as far as slamming my fist down on the bed.
My mind went back to my childhood, and I shared with Dino the lie my family had lived as far as my true paternity was concerned. I thought about how my biological father hadn’t stayed around and fought for me, fought to have me in his life. I thought about how much, growing up, I had hated my skin because it was so different from everyone else’s in my family. I thought about how I had got teased because of it. I thought about how I had settled for crazy instead of love in the form of Dub because I didn’t feel as if I deserved any better than that. Even worse, that maybe I didn’t want better than that. Perhaps I just wanted
someone to want me, someone to fit me into their life willingly, and if that came with a few kicks, punches, and scratches, then so be it. There was so much stagnant pain there, so much stagnant hurt.
“Sometimes I just don’t want to be the only one hurting,” I admitted to Dino, tears spilling from my eyes by now.
“It’s okay,” Dino said to me, his eyes watering. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to love you unconditionally, for exactly who you are.” He then kissed me on the forehead and said, “Things will get better. I promise.”
For the first time since we’d met, we confessed our love for one another. My heart was filled 100 percent with love for Dino, or at least what I thought was love. He didn’t give me butterflies in my stomach or anything like that. But our relationship was fairly new. There was time for the butterflies to free themselves from their cocoons.
We said that someday we would get married and everything would be all right.
“I talked my landlord into giving me more time,” Dino said. “I promise everything is going to work out.”
“I know it is,” I said to Dino, wanting so desperately to believe that myself. I even managed to convince him that God would give us our baby back once we were married and ready to take care of it, just like the woman in the clinic had believed. But if Dub had anything to do with it, the only thing Dino and I would be doing together was getting buried.
After reading Dub’s letter, which had been waiting for me at Nana’s house after work, I allowed it to fall from my hands and onto the floor. I had to admit I was in shock. How could I have so easily forgotten about Dub’s threats? And, even worse, how could I have gotten Dino all mixed up in this mess? Now, though he didn’t know it, his life was in danger. So was my entire family’s.
“Helen?” Nana said as she entered my bedroom. Her voice tore my mind from my dismal thoughts.
I jumped and grabbed my chest.
“What is it?” Nana asked as she walked toward me, noticing the letter on the floor. She asked with her eyes if she could read it as she knelt and picked it up. With my eyes and a nod of my head, I replied in the affirmative.
The room was dead silent while Nana read the letter. I watched the expression on her face do a dance of confusion, disgust, and even fear, although she tried to hide the last of her emotions. Nana was scared for me, for Baby D, and, more than likely, even for herself.
I didn’t know what I expected Nana’s reaction to be, but I guess I didn’t expect what came out of her mouth next. “Come on. Grab Baby D and let’s go,” she ordered me as she exited the room to retrieve her coat, purse, and keys.
“Where we going, Nana?” I asked, ready to follow her to the moon if it meant Dub would not be able to get to us.
“To the police.”
Stone Number Thirty
Nana drove me to the Columbus Police Department, where officers directed us to the Franklin County Courthouse after we informed them of the reason for our visit. Until Nana told me, I honestly had had no idea that Dub sending me threatening letters was even a crime.
At the courthouse we were steered to the prosecutor’s office. After waiting two hours, we were called into the back by a prosecutor’s assistant. Nana waited in the lobby with Baby D while I went in the back.
“So what is it we can try to help you with today?” the assistant asked, sitting at his desk with his hands clasped together.
“I don’t need you to try,” I told the assistant. “I really need you to help . . . period.” I pulled Dub’s letter out of my purse, along with the ones he’d written me in the past. I handed them to the assistant, my hand shaking the entire time.
“My, my,” he said after reading the letters and initially being speechless.
“So can you help?” The tone of my voice was desperate. The look on my face was desperate. I was desperate.
“Has he physically harmed you?” the assistant asked.
“No, I mean, yes. I mean no, not while he’s been in jail,” I replied nervously. “But he used to abuse me all the time. That’s how I know he’s going to do everything he says he’s going to do.”
“Is that why he’s in jail now, for hitting you?”
“No,” I was sad to say, but then I perked up upon remembering something. “But he did go to jail once before for hitting me.”
The assistant perked up as well, leaning forward. “And you pressed charges and he got sentenced to jail?”
My excitement fizzled out. “No. I dropped the charges.”
“So there’s basically just an arrest, no conviction?”
I nodded my head, and his gleam of hope seemed to fizzle out.
“So all we have here are these letters, huh?” He sounded as if he had to try a murder case with no dead body, no DNA evidence, only circumstantial evidence. The assistant thought for a moment before raising his index finger and asking me to hold on a second while he went to speak with one of his superiors. With the letters in hand, he exited the room, returning a few minutes later.
Excitedly, he plopped back down at his desk and began rummaging through his drawers, pulling out forms. He began to write on the forms as I sat in silence, watching him. Once he’d finish doing what he had to do with one form, he’d slide it over to me. “Here. Read this and then sign if you agree with everything.”
I read form after form, which pretty much described my complaint. One of the forms contained excerpts from the letters. After I signed each form, the assistant made copies of the letters and attached them to the forms.
“There!” he said, as if he’d just built the most beautiful sand castle on the beach. “This will stop that lunatic!”
I sighed a breath of relief. At the time I didn’t know how all those forms were going to stop Dub, but what I did know was that the assistant hadn’t trivialized Dub’s words, hadn’t characterized them as nothing more than a jailhouse letter from an angry boyfriend.
“These are restraining orders,” the prosecutor said, answering my unasked question. “What these documents will do is prevent Mr. Daniels from sending letters to your home or calling your home. The warden will also receive copies. Miss Lannden, you won’t have to worry about receiving any more threats from Mr. Daniels.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much.” I was relieved as I stood and shook the assistant’s hand. But then something hit me. “But he’ll get out soon and won’t have to write letters anymore. . . .” I knew the assistant knew what I was alluding to. Just because Dub couldn’t write down his threats in letters anymore didn’t mean he wasn’t going to go through with what he’d already written.
“Typically, once guys like him are called out on this type of thing, they eventually get over it and move on. The fact that they know the law is involved is kind of like a wake-up call to them. So not to worry. You should be able to sleep a lot better now.” His warm smile was reassuring.
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” I said again, allowing his words to serve as a dose of comfort.
“No need to thank me. That’s my job,” he said as he escorted me back into the lobby and handed me copies of the filed orders for my records.
“So what did they say?” Nana asked me and stood up.
I showed her the papers. “They helped me file a restraining order prohibiting him from sending me any more letters or calling me.”
“See, I knew there was something somebody could do about his threats,” Nana said as she hugged me.
And just as always, Nana was right. Something had been done . . . for now. But I couldn’t help but think about a case I saw on the news where a woman had been stabbed, along with her children, by her husband. She and her children were pronounced dead at the scene. She, obviously, hadn’t been protected. I could only pray I would never encounter her fate.
“How’s it going, Helen?” Keith, the mail guy at my job, asked me as he approached my desk with the mail cart.
I found Keith’s questioning strange. It wasn’t the question he asked. He always asked everybo
dy how it was going. But today I noticed a different tone in his voice. He asked the question as if expecting a positive response from me to become negative and a negative response to become worse.
“I’m hanging in there, Keith. Why? What’s up?”
Without saying a word, he removed a letter from the top of his pile and handed it to me. He didn’t even look me in the face after that. He just scurried along to complete his mail route.
The letter was already opened, as that was customary at my job. Sometimes customers would address letters to the wrong person or department, so it was the mail room’s job to briefly review any letters not marked “personal” or “confidential” and make sure they were directed to the correct person or department.
I had to look at the envelope for only a second to immediately recognize it as one of Dub’s letters. I’d received one other letter at Nana’s house since filing the restraining order. I figured it had been sent in between the actual filing and Dub being notified of the filing.
My heart began to race as I pulled the letter out of the envelope and read it. It was the most vulgar, threatening letter he’d sent me to date. It was so disgusting, I had to pull my trash can out from under my desk and vomit.
It had been over a week since I’d filed the restraining order. Certainly, he’d been notified by now that he would be violating the order by sending letters. The first paragraph of the letter cleared up my confusion.
Oh yeah, and I got your li’l funky restraining order telling me not to write you or call you at your house anymore. Well, you stupid ho, it didn’t say anything about sending you letters at work or calling your job, so . . . I’ll be in touch. Literally, as I’m out of here in a week, anyway.
