I Ain't Me No More by E.N. Joy

was making a conscious choice to be Dub’s punching bag. A part of me, though, honestly thought that I’d brought this on myself, that my verbal abuse of Dub had led him to be physically abusive with me. So maybe if I did better, then he would do better. Then we would be better.
    By now, my mom had married her boyfriend and was on her second husband. Lynn had just graduated from high school and had moved in with a roommate. My stepdad was a really good guy. He took great care of us. He was a workaholic, so he was rarely home. My dad had long been out of the picture, dragged away in shackles by drugs and on some occasions by the police.
    Only a month after Dub had promised me he would never hit me after that first time, that was all he did. The beatings turned into torture and torment, then escalated to rape. I had once controlled him with my tongue, but now he ruled me with his fists.
    At first, the hits here and there didn’t really bother me. I mean, growing up, I had witnessed my dad beat my mom. Even our neighbor when we lived in a duplex unit got beaten by her husband on the regular. Lynn and I used to hear the beatings through the wall. With every punch, every blow, we’d jump and our little bodies would tense up.
    Sooner than later, this type of behavior no longer seemed abnormal. I grew accustomed to it, so much so that instead of Lynn and I huddling together while we listened to our father beat our mother, eventually we could finish a full game of Monopoly without even twitching when glass shattered or a door got kicked off the hinges. So when I, too, became a victim of abuse, it was more like confirmation that I was normal, after all.
    â€œRun and get me a glass of juice right quick,” Dub ordered me, lying back on the bed, kicking up his feet, which were still clad in his boots.
    I hated when he put his shoe-covered feet up on the bed, but I’d learned the hard way that voicing this led only to a fight.
    â€œCan you go get it? I’m about to get in the shower.” Duh, it wasn’t like I wasn’t standing there buck naked, with my pajamas in my hand. I headed toward the bedroom door, planning to dash across the hall to the bathroom real quick. Baby D was in his room, asleep in his crib.
    Before I could even get my hand on the doorknob to open the door, I felt a hand around my neck and I was yanked backward onto the bed.
    â€œGet off of me!” I yelled as Dub’s hands tightly gripped my neck.
    â€œShut up!” he yelled before releasing me.
    At first I thought my plea had worked, but I came to find out that he had taken his hands off my neck only because he needed to use them to slap me and pull my hair.
    â€œWhere’s all that mouth now?” Dub loved to say. And he’d have this look of victory on his face whenever he said it. It was as if he’d finally figured out a way to shut me up. And he had. I knew better than to get fly at the mouth with him now, because all it meant was me getting busted in the mouth. But it didn’t matter anymore whether I talked slick to him or not. Dub had turned into this person I no longer recognized. He’d haul off and hit me for the littlest thing or for no reason at all. I guess this made him feel like the man I had accused him of not being.
    â€œWhy are you doing this?” I cried after Dub’s final blow to my head before he got off of me.
    â€œQuit all that crying,” Dub roared. “You know darn well why. The next time I ask you to go get me something to drink, I bet you won’t tell me to go get it myself.”
    Dub just sat there watching me cry, his eyes lacking any sense of compassion. Where had it all gone? I’d often asked myself. Had the awful things I used to say to him eaten away not only at his manhood, but also at the love and compassion he once had as a person? Eaten away at his soul? Was it possible that I had brought this on myself? Had I taken my hurt, pain, and anger