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

noticed myself that Dub had ripped my shirt. I looked up at her with my telltale eyes. Then I looked at Dub, her son, the boy she’d raised. Her eyes followed my glare.
    â€œYou beating on her?” she asked Dub. “You beating on her?” she asked again after not getting a response from him the first time.
    I thought Dub would just be filled with guilt and shame after being found out by his mom and would confess and repent. I mean, this time there was no way she couldn’t see what was truly going on. But instead he puffed his chest out and got indignant. I guess what he was thinking was, Forget it.... I’ve been found out now. There’s no turning back, so I might as well man up to it.
    He looked at me with such rage and then said, “So what? She deserves to be hit if she’s supposed to be my girl and she’s cheating on me.”
    â€œBut I wasn’t cheating on you,” I cried. “I was just giving them a ride to work.” I looked at Ms. Daniels. “I swear I was not cheating on your son.” I felt the need to clarify that for her for fear that she might think that since I was cheating on her son, then I deserved to be hit.
    Ms. Daniels’s words surprised me. “And even if she was cheating on your sorry behind, that don’t give you no right to put your hands on her.” His mother, to my astonishment, defended me.
    Knowing that there was someone on my side who just might listen, I felt something erupt in me and I decided to tell all. “He always hits on me, Ms. Daniels,” I blurted. “And then, afterward, he just likes to get on top of me.” I didn’t have to spell it out. She knew what I meant.
    She looked at her son with disgust. “Just like your father,” she told him through gritted teeth.
    For some young men, that might have been a good thing to hear, while for others, the most insulting thing a person could ever tell them was that they were just like their father. With Dub it would be the latter.
    â€œHe used to do the same thing to me,” his mother confessed with moist eyes. “That’s why he’s paralyzed to this day. All them years of beating on me, when he got into a fight with a real man, he didn’t know what to do. Got himself beat so bad, he gon’ be in that wheelchair the rest of his life, and if you keep it up, you’re going to turn out just like him. I see it now.” She glared at her son. “I can see it in your eyes.”
    A raging heat arose in Dub. He was so angry at his mother’s words that I could tell he wanted to beat her down. Instead, he chose to do to me what he wanted to do to her.
    â€œNow, see what you’ve done!” Dub ran toward me, leaped into the air, and kicked me dead in the stomach with all the strength he could muster in his size ten foot. I never saw it coming. But, man, did I feel it.
    â€œUgh,” I gasped, bending over.
    â€œDub!” his mother yelled, slinging him back and away from me by his shirt. “What if she was pregnant or something? Did you think about that?” she scolded, still gripping his shirt. Pregnancy wasn’t a possibility, since I had been on birth control, but I understood the point she was trying to make.
    I was in so much pain, my body felt like electricity was flowing through it. Pain or not, I knew I had to get out of there . . . for good. I began to gather my things as hot tears streamed down my face.
    â€œWhere you think you going?” Dub asked me, trying to get past his mother, who was blocking him.
    â€œI’m out of here.” Then I got bolder. “I hate you! It’s over!” I would have never had the courage to say those things had his mother not been down there.
    â€œLook, I’m sorry,” Dub said, apologizing, something he hadn’t done since he first started hitting me. “I just love you so much that I lost it for a minute. Me thinking I’m going to lose