by E. N. Joy
I simply shrugged and slipped on my black dress pants.
“How did you know I didn’t have plans to go out?” Dino nodded toward the room in which Baby D was sound asleep. He was hinting at the fact that if he had had plans, there would be no one at home to watch Baby D. “How did you know I wasn’t going out to have a drink with one of my boys?”
“Because you always broke,” I spat. “Where would you get money to go out? But if leaving Baby D here is a problem, just let me know. I can take him to Nana’s.”
Baby D and I hadn’t been to Nana’s since Dub went back to jail. Appreciating Dino all the more, I had stayed up under him.
After meeting Bianca, though, that all changed. I discovered that I could be a different person when I was out hanging with her. When I was out with Bianca, we always seemed to attract attention; we were like magnets to a good time. I had had no idea how popular Bianca was in the streets. Not because she had a bad reputation or anything, but because she was just so fun and likable, everybody knew her. All the popular people I recalled hearing about in high school, even those who didn’t attend my high school but were from one of the main high schools in Columbus, Bianca knew.
Bianca and I never went anywhere where she didn’t know somebody and where somebody didn’t know her. And because of Bianca’s status, I soon enough began to know all these people as well. People who I had never imagined hanging out with back in high school, I was hanging out with now. It was incredible. It was like a rebirth, like even though I was older now, I was getting to live out my high school days. While I was being born again and coming into the world, unbeknownst to me, something else was being born as well....
Stone Number Thirty-four
“A baby!” I couldn’t believe the words that had just come out of Dino’s mouth. I guess he figured I wouldn’t believe him, so that was when he whipped the picture out of his wallet and laid it on the table in front of me.
“Her name is Jontay,” he said. “I . . . I . . . wasn’t sure she was really mine. That’s why I didn’t say anything until now.”
Speechless, I just sat there, staring at the picture.
Dino decided to keep talking. “She’s four months.”
“Four months?” I finally found my words. “You mean to tell me, all this time we’ve been kicking it, you’ve had a baby on the way?”
“Like I said, I didn’t know if she was mine or not. My girlfriend from back home and I had broken up. I moved to Columbus, and then she called me, talking about she was pregnant. At first, I didn’t even think she was really pregnant. I thought that was just a trick for her to get me back and to let her come here to Columbus with me.”
“So when did you find out that she was really pregnant? Was it before or after you met me?”
Dino put his head down. “Like a couple weeks before.”
“So, you didn’t think that during all of our getting-to-know-each-other conversations you could have mentioned that you might have some girl back home in New York pregnant?”
“I still needed to find out if the baby was mine or not. If it wasn’t mine, I didn’t see why I should even bother mentioning it and risk you not being interested in me. Even when she was born . . . I mean, she looked like me, but I still couldn’t be sure. I just stood there outside the hospital nursery and stared at her for a long time, trying to—”
“Wait a minute.” I stood up. “Are you saying that you were there, at the hospital, when this child was born?”
Dino nodded.
“I don’t remember you going to New York.”
“Uh, the baby wasn’t born in New York. The baby was born right here in Columbus.”
I began to laugh nervously to keep from crying, not tears of pain, but tears of anger. I had promised that if this fool had been so broke because he was living a double life, I would . . .
“She ended up moving to Columbus, anyway, when she was about seven months into the pregnancy. A cousin of hers and his wife live here, so she talked them into letting her move in with them.”
“So let me get this right. For the past few months your maybe baby mama has been living in the same town and you have not said one word to me about this?”
“She’s not a maybe baby mama. Jontay is mine. The welfare office made Tabatha seek child support, which involved a paternity test to prove that I was the father. She’s mine, Helen.”
Although Dino and I had made it a point not to really talk about our exes, I recalled him mentioning Tabatha’s name a time or two, only to talk about how evil and mean she was. Other than that, he never mentioned her, so I assumed she wasn’t anybody special, nobody he had truly been in love with and had bonded with. Here, all the while they had shared a bond that he and I didn’t have. Then it dawned on me that once upon a time he and I had had a chance to share that same kind of bond, but I’d destroyed it.
“You mean to tell me that knowing there was a possibility you had a baby on the way, you wanted me to have a baby by you too? Ooh, I am so glad I got that abortion, I don’t know what to do. God knew all this mess was going on and that you didn’t need another baby.”
“God didn’t have anything to do with the decision you made all by yourself to get that abortion,” Dino was quick to say. “I was trying to be a man about it, take care of my responsibility, but you were hell-bent on going through with that procedure. The same way I was trying to be a man about taking care of the one that was growing in your stomach, I’ m now trying to be a man about taking care of the one that is here.”
“So that’s why you all of a sudden became so bound and determined to start bringing in an income that you stooped to working at Burger King?” I spat.
“Wendy’s,” he said, correcting me. Dino looked at me with so much hurt in his eyes. “Stooped? Is that what you call it?”
I could tell that I’d hurt his feelings with my choice of words, but I was too angry to even care. I think I was born angry. Mad. Mad at the world. Wouldn’t know happy if it smacked me in the face, because I probably didn’t want to know happy. Not really. Hurt, anger, and pain had become my best friends. They’d feel betrayed if I let happy in, if I let happy get too close to me.
“Well, what else would you call it? A grown man working at a fast-food restaurant? I mean, I could see if you were the store manager or something, but you ain’t in charge of nothing but fries. For a minute there I was almost flattered, figuring you’d finally gotten off your butt to do something to earn some money instead of being a leaching bum, but now I realize that you did it for one reason and one reason only, you getting hit by the system. You gotta pay that broad child support, don’t you?”
He paused for a moment. “Of course I have to take care of my baby,” Dino replied.
“Oh, no, my brother, don’t try to play me.” I shook both my head and my index finger at him. “After getting those results to the paternity test, welfare ordered you to pay them some child support, didn’t they? Threatened to take your butt to jail, huh?”
“Even if they hadn’t ordered me to do so, I still would have. I don’t need no system telling me that I have to take care of my baby.”
“So not only are you dang near bringing in a minimum-wage check, but it’s getting hit by child support?” I asked, not expecting an answer. Dino didn’t give me one, either. “Wow. This is just too much.”
“I know, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. Unlike you, she didn’t kill the baby.”
Talk about nails down a chalkboard. Now I was outraged. Even though Dino had made the comment with absolutely no venom in his tone, and the comment was indeed a fact, I still blew up. “Don’t you dare try to turn this thing around on me. Don’t you even try to refocus the situation on something I did in the past. You are wrong, and you know you are wrong. You lied by omission. You kept secrets!”
Dino threw his hands up. “Okay, so what if I had told you what all was going on? Would that have changed anything between us?”
“I don’t know, but
at least I’d have a choice in the matter on whether this is something I wanted to entertain or not,” I lied to him, knowing darn well that had I known he had a baby on the way when we met, he would have never had a chance with me. Telling the truth about myself, I was only half a mother to my own son, so there was no way I saw myself as being a mother to some other woman’s child.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Dino said, throwing his hands up in defeat. “I’m sorry for not letting you know what was going on before now, but I’m not sorry that Jontay is here.”
All I could do was look at Dino and reply, “Well, I’m sorry too . . . about everything.”
“Girl, you are lying!” Bianca said as she and I sat in Cheddar’s Casual Café for lunch.
I had e-mailed her when I went to work the very next morning after Dino gave me the news about his baby and had asked her to lunch. I’d told her there was something I had to talk to her about. The dude she was dating had a three-year-old son whom his baby mama had been pregnant with when she started dating him. I needed some advice from her about what to do.
“I wish I was lying,” I replied, stirring my Coke with the straw.
“Well, at least in my case I knew what I was getting into. I knew my man had a chick knocked up.” Bianca took a bite of her mozzarella stick from her Triple Treat Sampler, her favorite item on the menu.
“But didn’t you worry about him having to spend time going to visit the baby and stuff, which means he has to be around the mama too?”
“Girl, please, whenever he went anywhere near that baby mama, I made sure he took a part of me with him.”
“How so?” I asked, confused.
“I made sure I always sent the baby a gift with him, and I would tell him to tell the baby right in front of the mama, ‘This is from Bianca.’ I needed for him to constantly remind her that even though she was the baby mama, I was his woman. Girl, I’d send the baby cards signed by both me and my man. I’d cut out diaper and wipe coupons and tell him to make sure he gave them to her and to tell her that I was the one who thought enough about her wallet to cut them out. I kept my name in his mouth while he was around her. I had to let that chick know that baby or no baby, I wasn’t going nowhere.”
“You crazy.” I chuckled.
“Yeah, but I won. She had thought that having that baby was going to bring her and my man closer, that she’d be able to steal all my man’s time so that he wouldn’t have any left for me. I proved her wrong. He’d tell me about the little comments she’d make about them, hoping they could be a real family once the baby was born. Well, I nipped that in the bud quick, fast, and in a hurry. I was not about to feel like some quitter or loser and give any broad on the planet bragging rights that she’d stolen my man from me. No way, no how.”
Until then, I honestly hadn’t looked at things like that. In all actuality, I really had wanted Bianca to back the decision I’d already made to let Dino go. But that was before she started throwing words like quitter and loser around. I didn’t want to be a quitter, and I certainly didn’t want to be a loser.
“Look, let me tell you this,” Bianca said. “Whatever you do, don’t let the baby mama win. Do not let her get the ‘w,’ the win. Do whatever you have to do to make sure she doesn’t win.” Those were her last words of advice to me before she demolished her Triple Treat Sampler.
I allowed Bianca’s words to get my adrenaline going. From that moment on I was bound and determined to do whatever I had to do not to let Dino’s baby mama walk away thinking she’d won by having that baby of hers. But at that moment, I had no idea just what lengths I’d go to, to ensure that I walked away with the “w.”
Stone Number Thirty-five
“I do,” I said, with tears in my eyes.
“Me too,” Dino said, and everybody in the sanctuary let out a chuckle.
I couldn’t believe that after knowing Dino for less than a whole year, I had just committed myself to him until death did us part.
As the preacher read the vows for Dino to repeat, Dino stood there holding my hands, trembling, with tears in his eyes. Tears had filled my eyes as well.
Unfortunately, the tears in my eyes weren’t tears of joy. I mean, I was happy . . . I guess. I wasn’t consumed with the feeling of being in love on my wedding day, a feeling I’d dreamed of as a little girl. I’d dreamed of a love that would break the curse of hate I felt had consumed me. I’d dreamed of the most powerful, mightiest love that could crush through all the bitterness I was filled with.
My tears were mostly tears of pity. I pitied Dino. I felt so sorry for him. He was in love all by himself. That boy honestly loved me. In spite of me and my ways, Dino loved me. I could see it in his eyes when he said, “I do.” This moment, this very moment, his eyes told the world he would treasure his wife for as long as he breathed. It was the look in a man’s eyes that every woman would kill to see on her wedding day.
I loved Dino back. Really, I did. I had mad love for him. I just wasn’t sure I was in love with him enough to want to spend the rest of my life with him as his wife. I wasn’t sure if I loved him as much as I did because he wasn’t Dub or because of who he actually was.
Although I hadn’t been to church in quite some time prior to Dino’s and my nuptials, the church I had been attending was where the wedding was held. It was a nice-size sanctuary that sat around three hundred people. It had a huge vaulted stained-glass ceiling, and when I looked up, I truly felt as if I was getting a sneak peek into heaven. But what I loved most were the beautifully painted angels that decorated the walls of the church.
On that day, it served as nothing more than a building. There was no anointing in our union. Even the minister who married us could discern it, especially after getting a chance to dive inside our relationship a little after I signed us up for counseling sessions.
After the first session she was on to me. She could see right through me with all my talking over Dino whenever she asked him about things he saw in me that he didn’t care for.
“Sometimes she yells and fusses and says—”
I cut him off quicker than Michael Myers and Jason put together could have cut one of their victims. Why was he telling this woman about my yelling and fussing?
I knew there was this ugly beast inside of me that sometimes lost control, but that was my business. It was my demon. It was like this thing would just take over me. It would handcuff and muzzle me so that I couldn’t stop it from doing whatever it was it wanted to do . . . from hurt whomever it wanted to hurt. No matter how painful it was for me to just stand by and watch. It felt like a sickness, like a disease there was no cure for.
One time I had an episode of screaming at Baby D, who was now in second grade. I had screamed at him for about two hours, and afterward I had prayed to God to just let me be nice for one week. Let me not snap off and lose control. It was probably what someone trying to rid themselves of a cigarette addiction would pray. If I could control myself for one week, then I could do it for two and then three and so on. But my prayers were never answered. Perhaps they were, but I just was too busy yelling to hear the answer.
One day I shared my feelings with my mother. After that she started spending more and more time with Baby D. She basically relieved me of him, so to speak, because eventually all his clothing and belongings ended up at her house. He was safe from my vicious tongue there. While he was gone, I was hoping not having him around would allow me to change a little. It allowed me to change only the person whom I directed it all at, which was Dino. And now he was ratting me out!
I began talking over Dino, with a fake smile plastered on my face.
“I just talk loud,” I said, reasoning with the minister. “My whole family is loud. Our voices carry.”
The minister tried her best to get back to Dino’s concerns by ignoring me completely and staying focused on Dino. “So you don’t like when she yells and fusses?” she repeated. “How does that make you f—”
I talked over her as well. “I used t
o get in trouble all the time in class for talking loud.” I chuckled.
Now, at the altar, I was even talking over God’s “Please don’t” with my own “I do.” Seeing that I was a big girl and insisted on doing my own thing, God let me be. And with His absence, God was nowhere in the midst of this marriage. Even He knew my heart and refused to show up and bless such a mess.
I felt so bad knowing that my “I do” and Dino’s “I do” didn’t mean the same thing. His “I do” meant just that. Mine meant ‘I really shouldn’t, but I will.’ Dino didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve me. He deserved much better.
Dino would have given me the world if he could have. He was romantic, liked holding my hand or putting his arm around me. He opened doors for me. Anywhere he got invited, he invited me, whether he thought I wanted to go or not. He loved hanging out with me. He wanted to show me off to the world like I was Miss Universe. Like in D’Angelo’s song, I was his lady and he wanted the world to know. Like Maxwell, he felt fortunate to have me.
The way Dino felt about me was exactly how I had always wanted a man to feel about me. It was the fairy tale. Well, almost the fairy tale. The only thing that wasn’t part of the fairy tale was the proposal. Dino didn’t get down on one knee and propose in some special way. But I know he would have . . . had I let him.
See, I had thrown Dino this really nice birthday party at a party house and had invited all his friends and family and mine. I was going to do it up. I even made sure that Dino invited his baby mama’s cousin, whom she was living with, and his wife. Word needed to get back to her ASAP about what was going to go down at the party. If she had any ideas about trying to get back with Dino, after tonight they would be crushed. Like Bianca had instructed me, I was not going to let her get the “w.”
While Dino wasn’t that financially stable, at least his hours at Wendy’s had increased to full time and he’d gone on two interviews at a bank. He’d also gotten lucky with a lottery scratch-off ticket, winning five thousand dollars, which he turned over to his landlord. In addition, he was getting caught up on his rent from monies from his paycheck. And, of course, we were living together now, so I had income to chip in and help out. I was going to be the wife, which trumped the baby mama. Things were looking much brighter. Dino was a good guy, much better than Dub. I couldn’t see myself getting a better guy. So why not just marry him and allow our relationship to fully blossom?