by E. N. Joy
After about an hour into the party I had the DJ stop the music so that I could make a toast to Dino.
“First, I just want to thank everybody for coming out. I know it’s a blizzard out there, but thank you, guys, for pressing your way through. It really means a lot to me, and I’m sure it means a lot to Dino.” I looked over at Dino, who nodded in agreement with a smile. “Dino’s a special guy. That’s why I wanted to throw him this special birthday celebration. If anybody deserves it, it’s my baby.”
“Awww.” Dino playfully blushed and then kissed me on the cheek .
“Y’all know it’s the truth. Dino would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. He’d give you the last bite off his plate if you were hungry.” I looked over at Dino and jokingly rubbed his pudgy belly. “Well, I don’t know about that last one.”
Everyone started laughing.
“No, but seriously,” I continued. “I couldn’t have asked for a more loving, kind, caring gentleman in my life. I can see myself spending the rest of my life with Dino.” I turned and looked into his eyes. “As a matter of fact . . .” That was when I reached into my pocket and pulled out a box. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” I opened the box, which held a beautiful gold band with diamonds around it. “Tarino ‘Dino’ Morton, will you marry me?”
Dino was in complete shock, as was everybody else in the room. I had kept this entire thing under lock and key. I hadn’t told a soul. It wasn’t that I didn’t want someone slipping up and telling Dino. The truth was, I knew darn well I had no business asking this man to marry me, and a real friend would have talked me right out of it. Then I wouldn’t be able to get the “w.”
The whole proposal thing wasn’t something I wanted to share with people. I was almost embarrassed that I was doing this. But I did not want to lose to his baby mama—no way and no how. I refused to take the “l” to any woman. So before he could even think about leaving me to get back with her, I had to lock him in good. Did I love Dino? Yes. Enough to marry him right now? Well . . . But none of that mattered. In my mind, time was of the essence. The clock on the scoreboard was ticking. And before the game ended, I had to make sure I made the winning shot.
And so, just a few short months later, when the minister said, “I now pronounce you man and wife,” Dino was locked in, all right. But even worse, I was now locked in too.
“You going out again?” Dino asked me as I came down the steps, dressed in next to nothing. “And you’re wearing that?”
I had on some thin white pants with a lacy white bodysuit and some white stilettos. Underneath the see-through lacy bodysuit, I wore a lacy Victoria’s Secret bra and a matching thong. I loved dressing like this. I loved showing off what my mama gave me.
“I told you I was going out,” I reminded Dino.
“You taking the car?” he asked. The car I had when Dino and I first met had died on me. It had got so worn out taking both Dino and me where we needed to be, not to mention the way Dub had worn it down as well. A couple, two kids, and no car was not going to work. We needed transportation. I had practically no credit, and Dino’s wasn’t good enough for us to get a nice new car. So we scraped our pennies together and got the best one that we could.
“Lori’s coming to get me.”
Lori was the wife of his baby’s mama cousin, whom she lived with. She was Tabatha’s twenty-seven-year-old cousin-in-law. Ever since the birthday party when I proposed to Dino, Lori had been like my best bud. She wasn’t from Ohio and had no family here. She’d shared with me that she resented Tabatha for moving in with them, along with her baby, and practically taking over their house. If you asked me, there was really only one reason why Lori had befriended me—to get under Tabatha’s skin. It was probably safe to say that I had befriended her for the same reason.
Being a stay-at-home mom, Lori’s five-foot-two-inch, 160-pound frame didn’t get out much. The couple of times she went out with me were her only outlet besides trips to the local grocery store. Her husband, on the other hand, was always out with his boys, so Lori loved the opportunity to switch places with him and have him sit at home and take care of the kids. She said it was like taking a vacation from the person she really was. I could relate, especially on nights like tonight ,when I was going out to kick it, almost forgetting the fact that I was somebody’s wife and mother too.
I looked down at my outfit. “What’s wrong with what I have on? When I wore it to the cabaret that one time, you said you loved it.”
“Yeah, that’s because you were with me. I’m not about to allow my wife to go out of the house, looking like that, without me.”
Had he just said he wasn’t going to allow me to do something? Oh, he definitely had the wrong one. We’d been married for only three months, and if he thought he was going to start telling me what I could and could not do, he had another think coming. And I was about to give it to him. But before I could, the doorbell rang. That negro was saved by the bell, literally.
I rolled my eyes at him and went to open the door.
“Hey, girl,” I said, greeting Lori as she stepped inside our apartment.
“What’s up?” she replied to me and then turned her attention to Dino. “What’s up, Big D?”
“Oh, nothing too much.” Dino stood to greet and hug Lori. “What’s that husband of yours up to?”
“Nothing. At home with the kids so I can go and get my drink on. It’s been a long week with those bey-beys. I need a drink. A strong one.” She laughed and then looked at me. “You ready, girl? You look too cute.”
“Yeah, I’m ready. Thank you,” I replied. “I just have to head up the stairs and get my purse. I’ll be right back.”
I darted up the steps and went into my bedroom closet. I needed to retrieve my little white clutch-like purse. I didn’t want to carry my everyday purse, because it nowhere near matched my outfit and it was too big.
“Oh, God! You scared me,” I said as I went to exit the closet with my purse in hand. I hadn’t even heard Dino come up the steps. He was just standing there in the closet doorway. “What’s up? You need something before I leave? There is leftover meat loaf in the fridge and—”
“I don’t need no food.” Dino cut me off with a sharp tone. It surprised me because Dino had always been soft-spoken, except for that time he went off about that abortion. “But what I do need you to do for me before you leave is to change up out of that outfit.”
I looked at him for a moment like he was crazy, then let out a chuckle. “Boy, you crazy.” I went to brush by him, but he grabbed my arm. I looked up into his eyes and knew he was not joking around. There was this look in his eyes. I’d never seen it before. Correction. I had seen it before, but not in his eyes . . . in Dub’s.
I immediately snatched my arm out of his grip. “Dino, you trippin’.”
“No, you trippin’ if you think I’m going to let my wife leave out of this house in all this see-through crap. You’re practically naked. Some of my boys might be out and see you. I ain’t gon’ let you embarrass me, running around looking like a stripper.”
“Oh, really? So that’s how you feel now?” I was truly stunned by Dino’s words. He’d never questioned what I wore before. Of course, this was one of the most risqué outfits in my closet, but still, I’d never seen him act so possessive. Was this the married Dino versus the “just kickin’ it” Dino? I knew I had to get out of there before things got crazy, so I walked over to my everyday purse and started taking out the things I needed for the night and putting them in my white purse. I pretended as though Dino wasn’t even standing there. I was just going to do what I needed to do and get out of there.
The next thing I knew, Dino yanked both my purses away from me and threw them across the room. My stuff went flying everywhere.
“Are you crazy? What has got you buggin’, Dino, for real?” I marched over to get my stuff together. I was still determined to just get on out of there and enjoy my night.
“Did you hear
what the freak your husband said?” Dino threw his big body in front of me. It was like a brick wall, stopping me in my tracks.
Now, Dino rarely got fly at the mouth like that. Again, I stared at him in nothing but complete shock. Who was this dude, and what had caused him to act this way?
“An outfit? You are really losing it over an outfit? Dino, seriously, I look good. No matter what I throw on in that closet, dudes gon’ be checkin’ for me regardless, so let’s just keep it moving.”
As soon as I brushed by him and started to pick up my stuff, I once again felt Dino grab my arm. This time he slung me back so hard that I landed on the bed but rolled off onto the nightstand. The nightstand toppled over, and everything on it crashed to the floor.
“Are you crazy?” I shouted, shocked as all get out. I had never expected in a million years that Dino would ever, ever put his hands on me in an aggressive manner.
This mess was like déjà vu, only instead of Dub, it was now Dino. I didn’t know what was about to go down. I was just glad Baby D was with my mom and not at home to witness it, but what I forgot was that there was still a witness.
“What is going on? Is everything okay?” Lori looked horrified as she stood in the doorway.
“Everything is okay,” I said, getting up off the floor and brushing myself off. “I just need to get my purse so we can go.” I tried to play the scene down, but Lori knew something was up. I could tell by the concerned look on her face.
“So you just gon’ act like I didn’t say anything?” Dino snapped.
I ignored him and just gathered the items I needed and shoved them into my white purse. “Come on, Lori. Let’s go.”
“You can go after you change up out of that ho-looking outfit,” Dino said, jerking me by my arm and pulling me back into the bedroom and over to the closet.
“Dino, stop it!” Lori and I said to him in unison.
Our words fell upon deaf ears, as he bear hugged me and dragged me over to the closet and began pulling out random items of clothing. “You can wear this. And what’s wrong with this?”
“Dino, stop it!” I cried, trying to squirm out of his arms. He had me in a death grip. I felt suffocated. All of a sudden I just started having flashbacks of Dub and all his abuse. I couldn’t breathe. I needed to break lose at all costs. The next thing I knew, my hand rose and I decked Dino right in the face. Now he was the one who was stunned. He released me and then drew his fist back out of instinct. I looked at him with such fear. I thought he was going to lay me out. He was looking back at me with the same fear I had in my eyes. He, too, thought he was going to lay me out. That scared him. Dino knew as well as I did that he wasn’t that type of guy.
Dub hadn’t been that type of guy when I first met him, either.
Oh, no. Was I about to create another monster? Why hadn’t I just changed the stupid outfit? Maybe now that I was in a much healthier relationship than the one with Dub, the challenge was to accept boundaries.
Stone Number Thirty-six
I walked in the apartment after my night out with Lori, during which we did nothing but talk at the bar about Dino’s and my fight. Dino was sitting there, waiting on the couch in the dark. I knew that might look bad to the average person, but I knew Dino. He wasn’t sitting there, waiting to pounce on me. He was sitting there, waiting to . . .
“I’m sorry,” he wept.
He’d been waiting to apologize.
He got up from the couch and raced over to hug me. “Baby, I’m so sorry. I have no idea what got into me.” His shoulders were heaving up and down.
Is this big ole bear crying like a baby? I asked myself. I couldn’t get past all the tears, snot, and slobbering to get to the actual apology. “Babe, are you drunk?” I asked him.
“No. You know I don’t get drunk,” he said, pulling away and looking at me like I was crazy for even asking that question.
I walked over to turn the lamp on. I looked around the room for any signs that he’d been drinking, smoking, or something. There was nothing. I looked at his eyes. They were red, but not from being high. They were just red and puffy from crying.
“The way I acted was uncalled for. I promise to never disrespect you like that again.” Dino walked over to me and put his hands on my face. “I can’t believe I put my hands on my beautiful, precious wife.” And that was when he broke down again, squeezing me tightly in his arms.
I didn’t know how to receive his apology. Heck, after Dub would hit me or yoke me up, he would never apologize, except for that first time he hit me, of course. After that, there were no apologies, which made me feel like I might have deserved the abuse. Dub would either force me to have sex with him or call me a bunch of vulgar names after he hit me. That was what I was used to. Not this heartfelt, wimpy stuff. Or maybe, just maybe, this was me and Dub all over again, only now it was me and Dino. Would Dino make a habit out of this until it became our new normal?
Did I like getting knocked upside the head? No. But I was used to a little more aggression than what Dino was displaying. For someone as big as Dino, who, by the way, had been getting bigger by the minute, he was acting real soft, which I had discovered was a major turnoff.
“Just tell me you forgive me,” Dino pleaded, wiping the snot from underneath his nose with his hand.
If it means you’ll stop crying, then yeah, I’ll forgive you. I thought that in my head, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by saying it out loud. Call me bipolar, not to make light of those who had actually been diagnosed with it, but sometimes I could snap off in a heartbeat, but other times I just wasn’t up for the fight that I knew snapping off could sometimes lead to. So I just gave him a simple, “Yes, Dino, I forgive you.” I then headed up the stairs. “I’m drained. I’m going to bed.”
Dino turned out the lights and followed me up the steps. He got in bed, while I got my pajamas on and then climbed in bed after him. I purposely lay with my back turned to him. Then he purposely got close up on me and spooned me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, then apologized repeatedly, soft kisses landing on my neck following each apology.
Okay. Now, this was the Dub way. Fight and then be ready to have sex. This was what I was used to, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do. So the same way I used to try to fight Dub off of me, I would do with Dino. Although Dino equaled about four Dubs, I’d been fighting all my life practically, and so I’d at least give him a run for his money.
“Stop, Dino. I’m tired. I’m not trying to do that tonight.”
“All right, baby. I understand.” He gave me one last kiss and then just rested behind me, still spooning me.
I waited for him to start kissing me again, to start rubbing up against me, something. Dub had never relented that easily. Dub had never relented at all. The next thing I heard was Dino snoring in my ear.
What? Just saying no to him had actually worked. I was both ecstatic inside and a little puzzled. Did Dino giving up so easily mean that I wasn’t that attractive to him? That he could take it or leave it? Did it mean that I wasn’t worth fighting for? Because all I knew at that point was fighting.
I didn’t allow the battle to go on in my mind much longer before I fell off to sleep. Even then, my sleep wasn’t interrupted by Dino taking from me what I had denied him. Was I dreaming? I had to be, because this had not been my reality. If I was dreaming, it wouldn’t be long before somebody woke me up out of it.
“It is really jumping in here. There are way more people at this cabaret than there was at the last one,” I said as I looked around the rental hall.
The place was decorated with eight-foot-long tables dressed in black and red tablecloths. There were bottles of champagne in ice buckets at each end of every table, and candles served as centerpieces. This cabaret had a really nice ambiance going on, and the crowd was a slightly older crowd than Dino and me.
Dino had a cousin who would get together with him and a couple of his frat brothers and throw cabarets a couple times a year. We alway
s supported him because the price was right, the atmosphere was right, the food was always on point, and drinks were included in the ticket price. And did I mention the DJ was on point?
“Let’s find us a seat and grab a drink and some food before it’s all gone,” Dino said, taking my hand and walking me around the room. “Hey, there go my peoples.” He pointed to where his cousin’s wife was sitting, along with a couple other members of his family who I had met before.
We made our way over there and greeted everybody with a hug. Folks were already buzzing and feeling right, so Dino and I joined in the fun. We’d been there only about twenty minutes when one of our favorite songs came on.
“Come on, baby. You know I got to go show off my beautiful wife and her dancing skills.” Dino took me by the hand and pulled me out of the seat. He then placed his arm around my waist and escorted me to the dance floor.
Even if I wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the room, Dino always treated me as if I were. He always did everything in his power to make me feel like I was. I guess that was why I never had any doubts about Dino’s loyalty and love for me, never got jealous, never felt a need to check up on him, question him, or anything of that nature. He made me feel so loved and so special that he never gave me a reason to put his love and dedication toward me under a microscope. I wasn’t consumed with thoughts of what he was doing or who he was doing it with. He made it his business to make me feel as though he and I were one. That I was the center of his universe. And even though he was younger than me, he was mature in years when it came to how he was supposed to make his woman feel.
