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

felt.
    â€œThanks,” I said to Lynn. “You can just leave the stuff right here on the porch. Dub will get it.” I couldn’t even stand for her to look at me one minute longer, I was so mortified.
    Lynn headed back to the car and rode off with our mom while I knocked on the door.
    Dub opened the door. “What took you so long?” He accusingly looked over my shoulder. “How’d you get here? Who dropped you off?”
    Here we go, I thought. Dub’s insecurities were showing themselves. It was no consolation to Dub that he was my first. His main concern had become making sure he was my only.
    â€œNow that you done had a baby, dudes know you give it up,” Dub had said to me on more than a solitary occasion. “Now they gonna be sniffing around you like hounds.”
    Dub’s jealousy and possessiveness were oftentimes worse than the whippings I took at his hands. The sting from the slaps would go away. The bruises from the punches would go away. But the mental assaults lodged themselves deep within me and wouldn’t betray me with abandonment.
    â€œMy mom dropped me off,” I assured him nonchalantly. It was no big deal. Of course, my mom had dropped me off. She was the one who usually dropped me off.
    He brushed me aside as he stepped out on the porch, looking for any signs of my mother’s car. “Where is she, then?” Suspicion laced his tone.
    I knew I was in for it. I’d have to have sex with him immediately to prove that I hadn’t just had sex with someone else. He’d sniff me, check my panties, and look for any other telltale sign that I’d been with another guy. I’d have to prove him wrong. Usually, proving someone wrong felt good, leaving a sense of victory. But not in this case.
    I was only seventeen. I didn’t even like sex. I was unlike typical seventeen-year-olds who were sexually active. I hated sex. In all honesty, I was straight on sex after the first time, didn‘t know what the big hoopla was about it, besides the fact that it made me feel grown up because I was engaging in a so-called grown-up thing. But by having unprotected sex, just feeling grown up was superseded by having to grow up fast.
    My mom was working for a cleaning company on the OSU campus, so she was working nonstop, which meant there was no built-in babysitter. While all the other kids at school were going to school functions and sporting events, I was at home, taking care of a baby. Sex before I was ready had changed my life drastically, so in my book, it was definitely the enemy and not an act I was fond of.
    Sex was something Dub liked. Something Dub wanted. I hadn’t bought that teddy for me; I had bought it for him, in hopes it would turn him on to the point that he’d hurry up and climax so I could get it over with. I guess I was about to find out if my little trick would work.
    Once we were in the house and settled, Dub took all our things down to his bedroom, which was in the basement. Baby D stayed upstairs with Ms. Daniels. That was usually how the scenario went. Ms. Daniels loved Baby D. He was her first and only grandchild. The minute I’d walk through the door, she’d rip him from my arms and I wouldn’t see him again until it was time for us to go home. So while he was a toddler, he didn’t get to witness most of the beatings, all of which took place in Dub’s room in the basement, where no one could see, where he thought no one could hear.
    â€œYou wearing that because you just got done being with someone else, aren’t you?” Dub said as he knocked me upside the head.
    We hadn’t been in his room a good ten minutes before it all started. Unfortunately, that stupid tail from the teddy had popped out again and Dub had seen it. His jealous rage instantly made him think I had been up to no good, instead of trying to do something good for him.
    â€œYou ain’t wearing that for me,” he spat.