by E. N. Joy
I started gasping, as if I was underwater. It was all psychological, though. My eyes saw gushes of water rushing toward me, immediately signaling my brain to fight to breathe. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. One I’d never forget.
Once the doctor, with the nurse’s assistance, flushed both my eyes, he examined them and assured me that everything would be okay. One of the particles of glass had bruised my eyeball, causing a permanent brown mark on my eye. But the doctor said that my vision would not be affected.
“Now, how did you say this happened?” the doctor said once he’d done his duty. Now it was time for him to investigate the situation, to see if he was obligated to act in any other manner; like reporting the incident to the police.
“Uh, I, uh . . . ,” I stammered. I looked up at the doctor, and then I looked over at Dub.
Dub’s eyes were pleading with me. He was pleading with me not to tell that doctor the truth. “I promise that if you don’t report this, I’ll never hit you again. I’ll never hurt you again. If you tell them the truth, I’ll go to jail. Don’t put me in jail.” Although he spoke not a single word, his eyes said it all.
The look on Dub’s face was so serious, so sincere. But I’d heard it all before. So many similar promises made by Dub had gone unkept. So many times he had promised not to ever put his hands on me again, promises that might have lasted a month or two at the most.
I looked away, thought for a moment, and then turned to Dub one last time. This time I was able to read between the lines of the expression on his face. “And if you don’t lie, I promise you that I will hunt you down one day and kill you!”
Now, that promise I believed.
I allowed my attention to go back to the doctor. I took a deep breath and told him exactly what Dub had told the nurse when we had arrived at the hospital. “We were driving, and the next thing we knew, someone threw a brick or something at the window, and bam, the glass shattered everywhere, right into my eyes,” I lied.
There was a gust of wind as Dub exhaled. His shoulders fell as he relaxed.
His actions were so obvious, though, that even the doctor took notice, which prompted him to continue to drill me. “So what street were you driving down?”
I paused. I was prepared to tell only one lie.
Realizing that I was unequipped to make this charade believable, Dub answered for me. “Cleveland Avenue,” he said confidently. “We were driving down Cleveland Avenue.”
The doctor looked at me for confirmation. I said nothing. It had been hard enough telling the one lie. I couldn’t part my lips to tell another, so I just gave the doctor a look, as if to say, “Yeah, what he said.”
“Did you get a look at the person who threw the brick?” The doctor was still looking at me.
I simply shook my head.
“It was too dark,” Dub added for effect.
“Well, where is the brick?” The doctor was now looking at Dub, since he seemed to be the voice for me.
Now Dub was stuck. Looked like he hadn’t been prepared to take the lie that far, either. I guess he never figured this white, upper-class doctor would give a darn about a girl from the hood. But he was wrong.
“It must have just fallen onto the ground.” Dub shrugged.
“Hmmm.” The doctor’s tone was laced with disbelief, but based on the information we were telling him, his hands were tied. I could tell he didn’t believe my story. I could tell he could see right through Dub. I could tell that he could tell I was scared, as he leaned in close to me and, with a very serious expression, asked, “Are you sure if I report this to the police, you couldn’t identify the person who did this to you?”
So there it was. Another door of escape was opening, which I just refused to walk through. I was so paralyzed with thoughts of what Dub would do to me if I told the truth. I pictured him locating a scalpel and cutting my throat while we waited for the police to arrive. I pictured him doing the same to the doctor for interfering. I looked down at the doctor’s hand while I bit my bottom lip out of nervousness, noticing his wedding band. Why should his wife have to live without a husband or, if he had children, his children without a father all because of me? I couldn’t have his blood on my hands. I just couldn’t.
“I’m sure,” I told the doctor, fighting off the tears in my eyes. Tears of anger. I was angry at myself. If only I’d known then the scripture Psalms 27:1. “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” If only I’d known then that God had not given His children the spirit of fear, I would have stood up and declared my freedom. Instead, I chose to walk out of the hospital that night still a scared prisoner.
About four days later, while I was standing in the mirror, looking at my bruised pupil, the entire incident played back in my mind. I saw Dub’s foot coming at me, the glass shattering, the glass in my eyes. I felt the pain all over again. The next thing I knew, I was downtown, on the seventh floor of the courthouse, in the prosecutor’s office, pressing charges against Dub.
There was just something about staring at myself in the mirror that day that angered me to the point where I wanted Dub to pay for what he’d done—this time and all the other times.
Dub was picked up that very same day I reported the incident, due to my story being corroborated by the hospital. He called me collect and let me know all the gruesome and horrible things he’d do to me if I didn’t get him out of there. The things he said he’d do to me if I didn’t bail him out of jail and then drop the charges, I’d never seen done in horror movies.
Scared to death that he would see all his threats through, shortly after that call, I made it my mission to get Dub out of jail. I withdrew from the bank all the money I had left from my student financial aid after paying my tuition. I hadn’t purchased my books and school supplies yet, but I couldn’t worry about that. I flipped through the pages of the phone book until I found a bail bondsman to get Dub out of jail.
Needless to say, after getting Dub out of jail, I didn’t show up in court, either.
“As long as you don’t show up in court,” Dub had said to me the day I got him out of jail, “this whole thing should just go away and everything will be good.”
I was not about to be forced to be a witness against Dub and have him make good on his threats, so I did as he instructed and didn’t appear as the state’s witness. The arrest still showed up on Dub’s record, though. And that was why now, as Ms. Daniels and I rode in the courthouse elevator, she let me know that the fact that Dub had a previous record, thanks to me, might keep him in jail for quite a while.
I was not the one who put Dub in jail this time, and I sure wasn’t going to be the one who helped him get out, either. God, I said in my head, if you are giving me yet another chance to break free from that monster, I swear on everything, I won’t let you down. I will not pass up this opportunity. Not this time.
It was at that moment that I just felt consumed by a shield of protection. It made me feel so safe that no monster, no devil in hell, could touch me. No devil on earth, either, for that matter, not even Dub.
Stone Number Twenty-three
Helen,
My boy’s been seeing you out at da clubs and stuff. The last time Baby D was at my mom’s, he told me ’bout some dude named Dino you been goin’ out wit’. You’re dead. I promise you when I get outta here, you dead, b*t#! I’m going to kill you and your entire family.
Wait until you see what I do to your nana. I’m going to take a hot curling iron and shove it up her you know what. And it’s all going to be your fault. Your whole family has to die and be tortured because of you. I want you to have their deaths on your conscience, so I’m going to kill you last.
Trust and believe that you are going to pay for playin’ me like this while I’m locked up. You’re dead!
Dub
I had been receiving hateful, threatening letters from Dub at Nana’s house for three months now. That was how long
it had been since Dub got locked up without bail for beating up TJ. The judge thought Dub was extremely violent and heinous for abusing a disabled person, and therefore decided to revoke his bond. As I looked back, I realized that perhaps that was God using His strength and power to dominate my weakness, which probably would have led me to get cash for tin cans so I could pay Dub’s bail and get him out of jail.
So Dub got locked up, and the key was thrown away . . . for eight months, anyway. He had been sentenced to a year but would have to serve only eight months or something like that. I couldn’t recall the exact details. All I knew was that it was plenty of time for me to break all ties with Dub. It was plenty of time for Dub to get over me, to get over the fact that I was a free woman and was moving on in life without him. Evidently, three months hadn’t been enough time, as the letters came nonstop.
I had never known until he started sending me letters from jail how horrible his literary skills were. Only about four out of ten words were spelled correctly, and he’d often use the wrong form of a word. But in between it all, I understood clearly the point that he was trying to get across, which was, enjoy life while you can, live it to the fullest, because when I get out of here, you’re dead.
The day the judge sentenced Dub to jail time for beating up TJ was the day I knew for sure no man could close the door God had now opened for me to walk through and escape from Dub. From day one I refused Dub’s phone calls. My mind was made up. It was over. Dub was now under lock and key. There was absolutely no way he could get to me, not for eight months, anyway. Surely without having contact with me for that long, he’d just let things go between us once and for all. But once the letters started coming, the next even more threatening than the last, I started to doubt my newfound freedom.
Those letters were so tormenting that they gave me nightmares. I wasn’t sleeping or eating, and I lost twenty-five pounds in only three months to prove it. Maybe I needed to face the fact that perhaps my freedom would only be temporary. That was when I decided that just in case these next few months were the last months I’d ever breathe, I was going to live them to the fullest. I was going to do all the things I’d never gotten to do before, things most twenty-two-year-olds took for granted, like listening to rap music, for example.
Dub had never allowed me to listen to rap music. Even though he was permitted to hang out with his friends and listen to rap music and smoke weed, I had to keep my ears closed to it. He said the rappers didn’t rap about anything but sex, and he didn’t want me to get any ideas or start fantasizing about a rap artist.
He didn’t allow me to listen to the local R & B radio station for fear I’d hear rap music there. So for years I listened to the most popular contemporary pop music station, which played artists like Duran Duran, Madonna, Tears for Fears, and U2. Every now and then they would throw in a Whitney Houston or an En Vogue song.
I should have seen the signs then. That should have been my very first sign that Dub was off balance. But since I was a young teenager, it actually made me feel good that he even cared that much. So even though the writing was on the wall from the beginning, I simply chose to paint over it with my favorite color.
Now that Dub wasn’t around to control what I listened to, I turned my dial to the radio stations that kept rap music and R&B music flowing. In addition to just listening to rap music, I decided that one of the things I wanted to experience before Dub got out of jail was going to a club and actually getting down on the dance floor to some rap music. So as I set out to do all these things I’d been barred from, things that I thought would make me feel like I was on top of the world and in heaven, I began my descent into hell.
“This is a nice little spot Uncle got going on here,” Lynn said as she looked around my uncle Pookie’s, my father’s brother’s, new house.
My uncle had purchased a nice little bachelor pad and was celebrating by having a set-style housewarming. Lynn had talked me into riding there with her. I had never, ever been to a set, otherwise known as a house party, in my life, although I’d heard about them when I was in high school.
Some of the kids at school would have lunchtime sets while their parents were at work. This meant that during the lunch hour a group of kids would gather over at the hosting classmate’s house to drink and smoke and listen to music. The liquor usually came from the hosts’ parents’ liquor stash, which, they figured, their parents would never miss, anyway.
Synthia had gone to a few and would tell me about them. I’d been invited because I was friends with her. I’d been way too much of a nerd to go. Besides, if Dub had found out, it would have been the end of my high school days for sure. I no longer had to live vicariously through Synthia; I was now at a set of my own.
My uncle was into old-school music, so those were the mellow tunes that blared through the speakers. The ambiance was nice and dim, and there was plenty to drink and smoke, although I wasn’t a smoker or a drinker. While everybody else got their drink and smoke on, I just looked around in awe. I mean, this was big business to me to be out and about in a social setting with the opposite sex. Crazy coolest!
Lynn had always been a partygoer. Very popular in high school, she went to all the school activities and got invited to all the parties. She was on the school drill team and dated dudes from other schools. So it was safe to say she was popular in the streets. That explained why almost everybody who walked into my uncle’s set knew who she was. I, on the other hand, didn’t know a soul. But that was fine with me. Since Dub hadn’t allowed me around people too much, I wouldn’t have known how to act, anyway, and it showed.
No one was more perfect to school me than my older sister, who was now twenty-four.
“Girl, why don’t you get something to drink and chill and relax?” Lynn finally said after getting sick and tired of me acting like a social struck nerd. “Here. Try some of this.” She handed me the red plastic cup she was drinking out of.
Without even thinking, I put the drink to my lips and swallowed a gulp. The smell alone should have been a warning. “Yuck! What is this?” I exclaimed as the burning sensation the liquid had left warmed my throat.
“Rum and coke, baby,” Lynn said, taking her cup back.
“How in the world do you drink that stuff?” I said as I pretended to spit out any trace of the junk I’d just drunk that might be left on my palate.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot you a rookie. You can’t mess with the hard stuff.” She got up and walked over to a cooler. “Here. Try this.” She pulled out a mini bottle that had something that looked like cherry Kool-Aid in it.
“What’s this?” I accepted the ice-cold bottle.
“It’s a Bartles and Jaymes wine cooler. That’s more up your alley. It tastes like juice.”
I examined the bottle.
“No, it’s not no rum and coke, but eventually, once you get immune to those, you can graduate to big girl stuff,” Lynn said, then winked at me.
Lynn was right. It tasted just like Kool-Aid. Way better than that yucky rum concoction. After popping that thing open, I had it halfway drunk in less than five minutes.
“Slow down, chick. Those things can sneak up on you. They ain’t called wine coolers for nothing. They got wine in them, you know. And wine is alcohol.”
I took heed of my big sister’s advice, and within an hour I was finishing up my second wine cooler. I was feeling so good. I was relaxed and was socializing like I had been hanging out like this for years. The alcohol had me feeling like I was someone else, like for now, as long as I was buzzing, I was an entirely different person. The perk was that when the buzz was gone, I could go back to being the old me with no regrets.
“What time is it?” Lynn asked the guy sitting next to her, with whom she had been yapping it up for the past hour. He was one of my uncle’s friends and was about ten years my uncle’s junior. I could tell he had an eye for Lynn, and she was feeling him too.
“It’s eleven o’clock,” he replied.
“Wow,” I said
, interrupting. “We been here that long? We got here at about seven.” By now, most of the guests had come and gone, and there was just a handful of us left. My uncle had even passed out on the couch, which was a sign that the party was over, but it was obvious the night was still young for Lynn.
“Shoot, I just broke up with my man, and I got my babysitter for the night. I ain’t had a babysitter to have a night out in a grip,” Lynn said, “I ain’t ready to go home yet.”
“Well, what y’all trying to get into?” the dude asked her.
Lynn thought for a minute. “Let’s hit Poppa Jack’s. It’s usually jumping up in there on Saturday nights.”
“Well, I can tell you ain’t been to that spot in a while.” The guy chuckled. “It ain’t even called Poppa Jack’s no more. It’s called Alexander’s.”
“Poppa Jack’s, Alexander’s, whoever. Let’s just go,” Lynn said, standing up from the love seat she had been sitting on.
Club? Club? I wasn’t allowed in clubs, but Lynn was driving, so how could I tell her that I couldn’t go, that Dub . . . Wait a minute. Dub was on lockdown, and I was supposed to be living it up. Dub couldn’t get to me. It was pure irony that Dub’s imprisonment was the key to my freedom.
“You game?” I heard Lynn ask.
Although I had been pumping myself up that Dub was in jail and I could do what I wanted, a little part of me still feared going out. Not because of Dub, but because I had never been to a club in my life and I had no idea how to act. And I guess Lynn could see it written all over my face.
“Girl, come on.” She grabbed me by the arm and led me out the door, and her male friend followed. “You’ll have fun. You know big sis will look out for you.”