I Ain't Me No More

by E. N. Joy

  Somewhere along the line, though, I guess I hadn’t done the same by making Dino feel like he was the only man in the world.

  “Y’all was out there cutting the rug,” his cousin’s wife said when we returned to the table after dancing to a couple of songs. “Y’all look so cute together, so in love. Like the perfect couple.”

  “We are perfect.” Dino smiled. “She’s perfect for me, anyway.”

  I lifted my glass of champagne and clinked it with his glass of soda. “Cheers,” I said, then joined him in the toast.

  Before I could even remove my glass from my lips I heard someone say, “Helen, is that you?”

  I turned to face the figure that was standing by the table.

  “Girl, it is you.”

  “Oh, my God! Franklin? Boy, I have not seen you since high school. Look at you.” I stood up from the table and leaned in to give my old high school friend a hug, while Dino sat there next to me. I didn’t think anything of it. It was just a friendly hug with a pat on the back with an old high school friend. There were no sexual intentions involved on either part.

  “Look at you,” he shot back. “Lookin’ good, girl.” I was several pounds lighter than the high school version of me.

  “Thank you.” I looked around. “Who are you here with? You got a girl? Married now? You know you was a playa playa back in school.” I winked and joked with him.

  “Naw, I’m here with Brady and them.” He pointed to the back of the room.

  I turned to see his running buddies from high school. They waved when they saw Franklin pointing and me looking back at them. I waved back with a big ole Kool-Aid grin on my face.

  “You married?”

  “I most certainly am,” I said, just as proud as I could be. I then turned to Dino. “Franklin, this is Dino, my husband,” I said, introducing them. “Dino, this is Franklin. We went to school together.”

  Franklin happily extended his hand to greet Dino. I was shocked when Dino’s usually lively, perky self didn’t even bother to shake Franklin’s hand. He just hit him with a head nod instead.

  It felt like the entire room just all of a sudden stood still while Franklin’s hand was left hanging.

  Franklin cleared his throat at the awkwardness of the moment. “Well, um, I’ma go on and head back with my boys. I just wanted to come check you out.”

  “All right, Franklin. It was good seeing you.” I slid back into my seat, embarrassed as all get out. It had been a couple weeks since Dino had embarrassed me in front of Lori, and now here he was, acting a fool again.

  I tried to change the mood by lifting my champagne glass. “Let’s toast again.” I held my glass up in Dino’s direction.

  “Naw, you cut off.” He pulled my hand down in a quick motion, causing the champagne to spill down my arm.

  “What is wrong with you?” I cut my eyes at him and then took a couple of napkins that his cousin’s wife was extending to me. I began wiping the liquid off my arm while his cousin’s wife began sopping up the table.

  “How are you going to cut me off when this is only, like, my second glass?”

  “Because you’re already drunk,” Dino said. “You must be drunk to sit here and hug some dude all up in my face. You got me sitting here, looking stupid in front of my peoples while you flirting with old boy—”

  “Baby, cuz,” his cousin’s wife interrupted, “it ain’t her that got you sitting here, looking stupid. You doing a great job at that all by yourself.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle when his cousin’s wife and everyone within earshot burst out laughing.

  “Forget this. We out of here!” Once again Dino grabbed me by my arm and pulled me up.

  My poor arm had had enough. I had had enough. I didn’t want any trouble up in there, so I snatched my arm away from Dino and just willingly walked out with him on my own. By the time I reached the car, tears were streaming down my face. As I got in the car, I knew exactly where Dino and I were headed. I was afraid that this was only the spark of something that could ultimately turn into an all-out inferno. I had been down that same path before. Only this time I wasn’t sure if I could go along for the ride.

  Stone Number Thirty-seven

  “What is this?” Dino entered the dining area, where I sat eating a bowl of cereal while staring out the patio door.

  At the sound of his voice I turned to look at him. He was holding up my wedding ring set, which I had laid on the nightstand on his side of the bed that morning.

  The night before, while we drove home from the cabaret, I’d made my decision to get out of a marriage I should have never gotten into in the first place. I knew that after being with Dub, I hadn’t taken the time to get rid of all the junk that had built up inside me over the years. There was so much pain and hurt. I thought it was almost intentional that I went from one man to the next. That way I was able to carry the hurt and the pain, which had become permanent fixtures in my life, into the next relationship.

  I was apprehensive about letting the pain and the hurt go because they were all I ever knew, and I guess I was afraid of the unknown. The pain and suffering were comforting because I knew how they felt and how to act with them. I had to be honest with myself and admit that this was one of the reasons I had made the decisions I had made throughout my life to keep going back to men and to remain in situations I wasn’t pleased with. Plain and simple, I was afraid to be happy.

  “What does it look like?” I stated plainly and then directed my attention back to my bowl of cereal.

  “I know what it is, but what does it mean?” Dino sat down in the chair next to me.

  “Dino, I should have never married you,” I began. “It was too soon, and it was for all the wrong reasons. We didn’t even get a chance to know each other. I mean, to really get to know each other, to learn each other’s ways.”

  “But, Helen, I don’t care about your ways. I love you. I love all of you. The good, the bad, and whatever else there is to come. I meant those vows.”

  I was listening but still eating my cereal.

  “I’m in love with you. I’ve never felt this way about another woman in my life. Don’t I show you that? I mean, I know I’ve snapped a couple of times here lately, but that’s just because I love you so much. I don’t want to lose you. I try to lavish you with all the love and attention possible so that you don’t feel the need to seek it elsewhere. That’s why I snapped about the outfit that night. I know how women are. They wear certain things to get attention, to get noticed. They feel like that validates them as a woman. So I got a little pissed because it made me feel as though my validation wasn’t enough, that you needed to go out there and be validated by everybody else.”

  Again, I just listened. And, I admit, he had made some very valid points. He was right; I did have this need for validation from men. Maybe it was because my own biological father had never validated me that I needed this stamp of approval from men. Though I had never thought about seeking out my biological father to get his side of the story, to question him as to why he didn’t play a part in my life, perhaps buried somewhere deep within me was that abandoned little girl. A little girl who needed her biological father to know that just because he didn’t want her didn’t mean other men didn’t.

  I didn’t know. My life was full of so much mess, I hardly ever thought twice about my biological father, about the whys and the what-ifs. But what I did know was that eventually that need for validation would land me in a really dark place. But for now, with Dino, the sun was about to set, and that was dark enough.

  “And then, when dude at the cabaret came over . . .” Dino shook his head. “I know I was acting like Martin Lawrence said in one of his stand-up routines—crazy and deranged.” He chuckled. “But I get it now. I get that you are my wife. That we took vows. That the piece of paper that says we are married is more than just a piece of paper. It’s more valuable than any notes of currency in the world combined, and that’s good enough for me.”

  My
eyes filled with tears. Dino was saying all the right things. He was saying exactly what the leading man in any bestselling romance novel would say. He was saying exactly what any leading man in a “happily ever after” fairy tale would say. I’d always dreamed of hearing those words from the man in my life, namely, my husband. But this was all wrong. I was not the woman whom Dino should have been saying those words to.

  I had thrown fate a curveball when I proposed and married Dino. It wasn’t written, but I had still decided to pencil it in. Well, now it was time for me to face the music, be a big girl, and pull out my eraser to erase it all. I knew it was going to hurt Dino, but he would be better off. I’d already wronged him by marrying him just so his baby mama couldn’t have him. To stay married would have robbed him of his true destiny. I had to let him go.

  I finally spoke, placing my spoon down in my bowl. “I hear you, Dino. And I know with every fiber of my being that you mean every word you are saying.”

  I turned and looked at him. I could see the pain in his eyes, and it hurt me. It hurt me that I had robbed him of what felt like the longest year plus of his life. Dino was still in his prime, though. He was still ripe like a banana. He could and he would find someone deserving of him.

  “I bring out the worst in you, Dino. I make you feel insecure because there is no reciprocity on my end. I just can’t give you what you give me, and you really do deserve that.”

  “Girl, I’ll take what you can give me. Like you said, we really didn’t know each other that well before we got married. But we have the rest of our lives to do that, to get to know one another. Let’s just roll with it. We can get through whatever comes at us, and I’m sure it will only make us stronger.”

  This was hurting my heart. Dino was wasting his words on me. He was wasting his heart . . . on me. I’d rather have stolen his wallet than stolen all this love that he was giving to the wrong person.

  Dealing with Dub had been a nightmare, so meeting Dino had been like this dream come true. I had jumped headfirst into the deep end without a life jacket, knowing I wasn’t that good of a swimmer. Before I got in any deeper, it was time to request a lifesaver and be pulled back to shore. I was drowning. It was one thing for me to jump into the unknown and risk drowning, but it was another thing if I took Dino with me.

  Deep inside I’d always felt that I was the one who turned Dub into a monster. Had it not been for me, could Dub have turned out to be someone other than who he was? Someone sweeter? Someone kinder? I could not take that risk with Dino. He was better off without me.

  “Dino, baby, I do love you, but trust me, you deserve far more and far better than I will ever be able to give you. You are a wonderful person, and that wife God has for you is going to appreciate every morsel of it. But I am not her, and I won’t block anyone’s blessings.” I stood up, kissed him on the lips, and headed upstairs to pack.

  It was back to Nana’s I went.

  “You okay?” Nana asked me as I unpacked my things.

  I nodded, sniffing while I walked over to the closet and hung up some of my clothes.

  Nana just stood there. She knew I’d talk eventually. I just had to catch my breath from all the crying and emotions.

  “You miss him already?”

  I had to be honest with Nana. I shook my head. “Not really, Nana. I miss the lost time. I just feel like I’ve wasted so much time. It makes sense what you used to tell me.” I looked at Nana.

  “That you can never get back time, so you should cherish and value every minute?” Nana said.

  “Yes,” I cried. Now I knew exactly what Nana had meant by that. Not only could I not get my time back, but Dino and I hadn’t even made it six months in marriage and now I’d have to tell everybody about our divorce. I felt like such a failure.

  There were times when Dino would call me and beg me to give our marriage a chance. “I’m not going to let you leave me. I’m not going to sign divorce papers,” he would say. “We can work this out. Baby, let’s just work it out. Come back home, please.”

  I couldn’t tell you how many times I was tempted to just go for it. Who knew if I’d ever meet another man who loved me that much and wasn’t ashamed to tell it, show it, or make it known to the world? But I had to trust my decision on this one. I’d have to trust that someday I would get my fairy tale. That I would appreciate it and be able to be the princess the leading man so deserved. But for now, I had to move out of the way of someone else’s fairy tale in Dino.

  It wasn’t but a couple months after I filed for divorce that I ran into Lori in the grocery store. “You know her and Dino are back together again. She moved out of our place and in with him.” Lori began doing a praise dance. “Hallelujah, finally no house guests. Now me and my husband can finally have sex as loud as we want to,” she joked. Lori never was one to be diplomatic with her words. I was sure when she added that last line, her intentions were to make me laugh instead of cry.

  I laughed, but on the inside I was crying. The sad thing was, I didn’t know why it was so upsetting to hear that Dino and Tabatha had ended up together, after all. Was it because a part of me deep inside really wanted to be with Dino? Or was it because at the end of the day, Tabatha walked away with the “w,” leaving me feeling like the biggest loser ever? Some said that it didn’t matter whether you won or lost. It was how you played the game. I begged to differ.

  After loading my groceries into the car, I climbed behind the wheel, still thinking about Dino getting back with his baby mama. I started to get a little teed at the fact that Dino couldn’t even wait for our divorce to be final before he went crawling back to her. But wasn’t that the whole point of my divorcing him? To give him a chance at true love? Maybe Tabatha was really his true love, and I had just gotten in the way, first by accident and then on purpose.

  Although I’d long started my engine, I’d yet to drive away. I sat there so consumed with emotion that I didn’t even know which direction to go in, both figuratively and literally.

  How did I get here in life? I thought it. And then I said it. “How did I get here in life?” And, then, as if some booming voice was going to reply, I waited for an answer.

  Stone Number Thirty-eight

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said to Bianca as I closed the passenger door and headed into Nana’s house. Baby D was still staying with my mother. It was a big help because mentally, I still wasn’t where I needed to be in order to raise him in a peaceful environment. I was not yet at peace with myself.

  I did end up enrolling in school to finish my very last semester. Because I’d lost and exhausted my scholarship and grants, I had to take out a fifteen-thousand-dollar loan. I didn’t have much of a choice. It was either that or let my completed semesters be in vain and never get a degree. But it was hard working and going to school, considering I was back to using public transportation and hitching rides.

  The one thing I hadn’t counted on when I divorced Dino was that he would take the car. So here I was, without my own place, still living with Nana, and now without a car. I felt like a loser in more ways than one.

  “Hey, Helen,” Nana said as I walked in the door. “I’m making your favorite dinner.” She smiled. That wasn’t unusual; Nana was almost always smiling. But something was peculiar about this smile. It seemed feigned, forced even.

  “Spaghetti pie?” That was my favorite.

  “Garlic toast and salad,” Nana replied and then walked over and gave me a hug.

  Now, Nana very seldom greeted me with a hug whenever I walked through the door. Not only that, but the hug was quite long. I thought I was the one who ended up pulling away.

  “Nana, what is it?” I just came right out and asked. I was done playing games . . . with everybody.

  “Why do you think something is wrong?” A nervous chuckle followed.

  I exhaled, placed my purse on the bottom step, and then walked over and sat in the chair next to Nana’s favorite chair. Nana made her way over to her chair. She sat there with her
hands folded in her lap. She fidgeted with them for a moment before finally speaking.

  “Aunt Martha is sick,” she said sadly. Aunt Martha was her older sister and lived out in Florida.

  “Oh, no. That’s too bad. So you have to go see her or something?”

  Nana nodded.

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Next month.” Nana wasn’t looking me in the eyes. She was looking down at her fidgeting hands.

  “Next month?” I asked, confused. “Won’t she be better by then?”

  Nana didn’t reply.

  This overwhelming feeling started to come over me, and then I got this funny feeling in my stomach. “Well, if you’re leaving next month, when are you coming back?”

  Nana swallowed so hard, it sounded like the gulp was coming from my own throat.

  “I’m not,” she mumbled.

  “Huh?” My eyes watered, and I didn’t even try to stop them. I knew what was coming next.

  “Aunt Martha asked me to move to Florida to be with her, and I said yes.” Before I could reply, Nana went into explaining herself. “You know she doesn’t have anyone else to take care of her. Sure Aunt Ann lives in Florida, but she’s too busy taking care of Uncle Matthew. I can’t put the burden of Aunt Martha on her too. Besides—”

  I had to cut Nana off. She was about to work herself up into a heart attack. “Nana, you don’t have to explain your move to me. It’s okay. I get it. If Lynn needed me, I’d do the same for her.”

  Nana exhaled so loudly, I thought the lamp next to her might topple over. “I’ve already talked to a Realtor. The house is being listed in a couple days. You can stay here until it sells.”

  So that was the whammy. That was why she’d prepared my favorite meal. It was kind of like the Last Supper. I was being kicked to the curb.

  “You’re selling the house?” I didn’t understand. Why couldn’t she just let me stay there and rent it from her?

  “Yes. I don’t want to have to worry about it all the way in Florida. Even if I rented it out, I’d still have to worry about the upkeep and maintenance.” She looked around the room. “And this house is just too old for that. Anything can give at any time. Why, it would be too much for you even.”