Fishbowl

By: David H
(© 2011 by the author)
Editor: Ken King

The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at...

 Chapter 7 

The last time Elias saw Giovanni Taylor was on the 18th of January, 1996, but ten years, 8 months, and 17 days later, on the 4th of October, 2006, he again came face to face with the man who had destroyed his already fragile childhood with drugs and prostitution.  The first day they met, Elias thought Giovanni was cool.  He’d defended Elias against some old crackhead who was trying to steal the last two dollars that he had to his name.  Giovanni was older and looked over him.  As he told it, he’d ended up on the streets much in the same way that Elias had, after having been in foster home after foster home.  He really managed to connect with Elias on a level that the younger boy had never experienced before.  He convinced him that drugs were cool and that stealing was a means of survival.  The sex came later, when Giovanni started getting into the drug dealing business.  From the perspective of a fourteen-year-old kid who was small for his age already, Giovanni was big, strong, powerful, and Elias felt he should be thankful for all that Giovanni provided him.

After ten years, though, those initial impressions of the all-powerful Giovanni gave way to quite different ones.  Giovanni was still tall, but not as tall as Elias had grown.  The orange jumpsuit that Giovanni wore as he was escorted into the courtroom draped over an emaciated man, a man whom drugs had destroyed, a man who was suffering from all sorts of ailments, evidenced by the various lesions and scabs on his arm.  The police officer who brought him in wore all sorts of protective gear, not the least important of which was a pair of yellow latex gloves.  Giovanni was placed in a chair at the side of the courtroom of The Honorable Malissia Loucks, the criminal circuit court judge elected from Jefferson County.

As other hearings went on, Elias, sitting at the back of the courtroom, found himself fixed on this man.  The anger he’d been feeling since the night Scott was arrested had begun to subside, but it was still there.  Seeing Giovanni now, though, Elias somehow felt a measure of pity for him.  If what he’d told Elias all those years ago was true, perhaps Giovanni could have had a different life if someone like Dr. Owens had intervened on his behalf, or if he’d had someone like Caleb there to protect him from all the maladies of the world even if only for a few short years before going their separate ways. 

“The State of Alabama versus Giovanni Martin Taylor,” the bailiff called as he handed the judge the folder containing the information for the case.  As the judge read through the information about the case, Giovanni was picked up by the deputy and escorted to speak with the public defender assigned to him under the law.

After they were in place and stood waiting on the judge to finish, Giovanni looked around the room.  There was no one there to stand with Giovanni--none of the people he’d hung around for years, none of the junkies he ‘helped’ were there.  Only one of the boys he’d ever hurt was there, but in scanning the courtroom, Giovanni didn’t recognize him.

“What say the State?” she asked.

“We have sufficient evidence to prove that Mr. Taylor has committed the variety of acts that were lain out in the warrant for his arrest: Possession of a controlled substance, manufacturing a controlled substance, distribution of a controlled substance, prostitution, several counts of endangering a child, endangering a minor in the custody of the state, having sexual relations with a minor, prostituting a minor…  The state requests that he be remanded to the custody of the sheriff of Jefferson County until his trial date can be set.”

“Very well,” she said, turning her attention to the defense.  “How does the defendant respond to the charges against him?”

“Your honor,” the defense attorney started, “the defendant pleads not guilty by reason of mental defect.  We have proof that he is suffering from a cornucopia of ailments that require him to stay close to doctors in Birmingham; therefore, we request that he be released on his own recognizance.”

“The doctors can visit him in jail, if they so choose.  The defendant is remanded pending a trial date to be determined by the Grand Jury,” she said as she banged the gavel.  Giovanni and his attorney talked for a moment before the police escorted him back out of the courtroom.

Awash in thought, Elias climbed from the end of the long bench on which he’d been sitting and walked out of the main door of the courtroom. 

********************* 

Slowly, Elias walked through the hallway to the elevator, his black dress shoes making clanging sounds against the stone floor of the building.  The sounds seemed almost louder than all the conversations and consultations that were going on around him.  The last time Elias had walked the halls of this building, the sounds he heard had been the squeaking of his tennis shoes which were tearing at the seams and had no tread whatsoever.  The feeling of solitude in Elias’s mind, though, was the same.  He had felt trapped by his circumstances then, forced to go to a place to which, ten years later, he now went to willingly on a daily basis.  But had his life really changed all that much in the time between?

Not really, he surmised.  Elias was still scared of things that adults shouldn’t fear.  He became nervous around police, even though he knew he’d done nothing wrong.  He had no desire to drink, but even if he’d wanted to, he probably wouldn’t because of a fear of what it might lead to.  Beyond feeding Max, drawing, and watching TV, Elias had no genuine sense of ‘fun.’  He hated crowds of people; Jenny’s family, which had more or less adopted him, was almost too large for his comfort.  That’s why he never went on family vacations with them or went to holiday parties.  Christmas especially was a day of dread, because it not only reaffirmed the fact that he was alone in the world, but also because he still found it hard to even function around people in a loving, caring situation.  He steered clear of situations that could lead to relationships, or even casual hook-ups, because he was afraid of what it might cause him to remember.  To that end, he’d been on only a few ‘dates’ in college, and none of them ever went beyond the first.  He couldn’t trust those people because he couldn’t trust himself.

As he climbed into his car, he sat there for a moment before pulling away.  It was a car that was ten years old, but he adored it.  It was his.  He’d worked his ass off to buy it from Jenny’s dad so that he would have a way to get around, yet he never took it anywhere but to home and to work.  The one time he went to Montgomery and when they went to her parents’ house for whatever reason, he rode with Jenny.  Elias longed to have a ‘normal’ existence, but there was nothing normal about a twenty-five-year-old college graduate who had only been on one vacation in his life, who had worked through spring and other holiday breaks from sixty to eighty hours to avoid having to enjoy the same life that his three friends had.

Before pulling away, he called Dr. Owens and asked to take the rest of the day off.  She told him yes, knowing that his mind was racing from the cracking in his voice.  She did tell him, though, that she wanted to see him before the students went to breakfast the next morning.  He agreed.

Pulling away from the building, he stopped at a gas station to fill up the gas tank in his car and then he began to drive almost aimlessly.  At one point, he was in Tuscaloosa, driving through the campus of the University of Alabama, with all its history and tradition.  A couple of the buildings on campus had survived the Civil War to become prized possessions in the history and lore of the college.  By nightfall, he found himself clear across the state on I-85, heading toward Atlanta.  He’d never driven in a city that large, and, to be honest, it was a scary, unsettling experience as people weaved between more lanes of traffic than he’d ever experienced.  As he left the city, he stopped for another tank of gas before heading down I-20 on his way back to Birmingham. 

By the time he returned home, close to midnight, he fed Max and then showered.  As he stood beneath the hot jets of water that pelted his skin, Elias felt more naked and exposed than at any point he could remember.  It was a frightening feeling as he ran the soap through the hair on his chest that covered the painful physical reminders of his former life.  As he washed his hair he remembered what it had felt like to be so geeked out that his hair became thin.  His teeth were sensitive and brittle, yet he would not go to the dentist.

As he climbed out of the shower, he closed his eyes and wished so hard that life could have dealt him a different hand.  Why was it that he deserved not to have a dad or have a mom that wasn’t addicted to crack?  Why had he been moved from home to home?  Why couldn’t he have had just one place, a home with loving parents? Maybe brothers and sisters like Jenny?  A dog?  A cat?  Happiness?

Elias knew that it was going to be too much in just a few minutes for him, so he grabbed his phone and called his best friend, his only friend in the world and evoked their secret safe word: “Cantaloupe.”

Being that he’d never used it before, Jenny knew that whatever was happening to Elias, it was deep.  It was immense,  something that he knew that he couldn’t handle himself.  Jenny swiftly jumped out of bed and put on some clothes before leaving her apartment.  She drove as quickly as she could and arrived at his apartment to find Elias lying on his bed in the fetal position, having had just enough energy to pull on a pair of boxers.  He was sobbing like a baby.

The sight of her friend in such a state caused her to get misty as well.  Growing up, she’d always learned that children were a gift from God, yet no god that she’d ever been taught about would have allowed the things to happen to Elias that she knew he had experienced.  What had he ever done to deserve what had happened in his life? Why had he been robbed of the things he should have had?  What was so wrong with him that God had forsaken a blameless child and left him to the throngs of Satan?

Jenny covered Elias with the sheet on his bed as his head lay on the pillow.  As she walked out of the room, content to pass the vigil in his living room, he spoke.  “Please don’t go,” Elias asked her as she turned around.  His voice was rough and raw, and he spoke with almost a childlike innocence.  “Please don’t leave me.”

“OK…” she said as she removed the glasses that she’d hastily grabbed and put them on top of his dresser.  Lifting the covers on the other side of his bed, she climbed in and snuggled against him, wrapping her arms around him to let him know that he wasn’t alone, that she was there with him, as she always had been and as she always would be.

To be continued...

Posted: 10/21/11