Second Thoughts (3 page)

“Order! Order in the court!” Judge Zachary Fisher screamed above my outburst, slamming the gavel repeatedly. “You are out of control.”

I paid him no attention. What the hell did I have to lose? Despite his action, I could sense the judge felt my pain.

“How do you sleep at night?” I continued. “How do you look yourself in the mirror in the morning as you tie Windsor knots in your Valentino Garavani ties, as if your work here is honorable?”

I spoke without blinking. My mouth was dry. I was seething.

“Just like that man you’re defending, you despise me.”

Bang! Bang! Bang! The sound from the gavel striking the sound block ricocheted from each wall of the immense courtroom.

“Mr. Duval, sit down, or I will find you in contempt!” the judge belted his second demand, but it did nothing to stop my outrage.

“As long as you find me, Judge, because for the longest time, I haven’t been able to find myself.”

My legs became brittle beneath me. The images of that night, of many nights when I was my daddy’s bitch, flashed before me; nights when I felt in order to live, I had to die. Every time he was on top of me, or in me, I died. And, in order to live again, I had to keep his vile act to myself.

“How could you?”

“Ms. Wallace, control your client.”

She sat behind her desk with her feet crossed. She did nothing to interrupt me. She knew exactly how many outbursts this particular judge would allow. This wasn’t her first time arguing a case with the distinguished Judge Fisher presiding, and this wasn’t her first child rape case, either.

“How could you?” I repeated. I didn’t expect any answers. “Up until then, I loved you. I worshipped you. Every fiber in me felt you could do no wrong. You were the man to me. And to think I…I one day wanted to grow up to be just like you. I wanted to be just like my daddy.”

I finally sat, staring through him with sadness and disgust in my eyes. I listened to the deadening silence. I looked down and felt a sharp pain shooting through me. I looked up, again, and finally at him. Until I’d positioned myself in the chair behind the witness stand, I hadn’t been able to look in his direction; I refused to. Hatred was pouring through my veins.

“Your Honor!” the opposing counsel interrupted.

His name was Pryce Medlin from the prestigi
ous Hunter Law Firm─forty years old, Georgetown Law, graduated at top of his class. He’d never lost a case.  Those were some of the credentials my attorney shared with my mother and me. I was certain my father was betting on the latter. None of it made a d
ifference to me; I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to. Attorney Medlin was the best my father’s old money could buy.

“How long are you going to allow this tirade to continue?” he added.

“You didn’t think you made your point the first time?” I continued, uncertain if Judge Fisher had responded to Mr. Medlin’s request. “So, you kept coming, and pounding, and penetrating. Even when I was lying there as if death had become me, you continued your assault on me. I guess, to you, talk was overrated, but I would have understood your position. But you had to make me pay for a reality I hadn’t quite come to terms with. Mr. Omar Morresse Duval, you are dead to me. You son-of-a-bitch, you raped me.”

“Your Honor,” Mr. Medlin repeated, now an octave louder than his previous attempt to get the judge’s attention.

This time he was heard.

“Mr. Duval,” Judge Fisher scolded.

“No disrespect, Your Honor.”

I looked at the judge with a tear-stained face.

“I heard you the first time,” I snapped, and shot my father a look from the corners of my eyes. “Find me in contempt. I refuse to sit here and be questioned as if I did something wrong. Am I on trial? I told you, my father raped me. My father raped me,” I repeated, just in case no one heard me the first time, and I allowed my tears to flow.

The concept of giving a damn no longer mattered to me. I sat back in the witness chair, feeling as if weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I removed my glasses from my face, and then took tissue from the tissue-box the judge was handing me. I hated that my father was seeing the weakness in me. After so many years, I still wanted to be a symbol of strength in his eyes, even if he wasn’t looking at me.

“Did you enjoy it?” Mr. Medlin asked.

I allowed his question to settle on my ears. I couldn’t believe his audacity.

“You know what?” I asked, smiling devilishly. I shook my head and pierced through him. “That’s exactly what he asked me after the first time and the second. I guess, like then, now I’m supposed to tell you I felt pleasure every minute of it?”

“Wasn’t it what you wanted? Isn’t that what you guys do?” Mr. Medlin continued his assault.

He was devoid of compassion, at least for me. I was, of course, the least of his concern. He had to keep my father from spending the next ten year
s of his life where he belonged─longer, if it were up to me─behind bars.

“Objection, Your Honor,” Ms. Wallace yelled, standing to her feet.

Though she spoke to Judge Fisher she directed her livid stare at Mr. Medlin.

“May you please remind Mr. Medlin my
client isn’t the one on trial here? Whether or not he felt pleasure from this man’s forced sexual encounter…”

“You know what?” Mr. Medlin interjected.

He placed himself directly in front of me. He stared, and I saw that same look of intense dislike in Mr. Medlin’s eyes that I thought, up until now, only existed in my father’s eyes.  He walked back to his desk with one hand in his pocket. He stood briefly behind the desk as if waiting for his standing ovation. He then sat in his chair, with his feet outstretched and his hands clasped behind his head, as if he had accomplished something worthy of celebration.

“I have no further questions, Your Honor.”

“Ms. Wallace,” Judge Fisher leaned forward, his arms folded and rested on top of his bench.

His emerald-blue eyes warned without spoken words. Judge Zachary Fisher looked younger than the fifty years Ms. Wallace had given him when we met a few months earlier. He was either just starting to grey or had done something to hide it well. But for now, the only visible grey showed at the edges of his short-cut sideburns, and a few specks in the beard and mustache that framed his mouth.

“Would you like to cross?” he continued.

“Mr. Duval, do you need a moment to pull yourself together?” Mya Wallace asked in her soft, caring tone that had become familiar to me.

She tugged on her suit jacket as she began her approach.

The two weeks of rehearsing her questions and my responses hadn’t prepared me for the emotions that overcame me, but it was nothing worse than the feeling of my father on top of me, panting as he neared climax. It pained me to remember. Damn! I could feel him growing inside me. I tried to escape to ocean breezes and palm trees, to golden sunsets glistening on the pacific, but his thrusts and hateful verbiage always brought me back to the dreadful terror I had found myself in. 

“No. I can do this,” I said.

She winked.

She stood in the courtroom with confidence. Her skin was the color of peanut butter, and apparently, just as smooth. She had big, round eyes the color of amber, with thick black lashes that went on forever. Her eyes beamed with an unparalleled passion for law, for right. Her lips were full and painted in a soft carnation pink. Her jet-black hair hung straight to either side of her face. She wore a black pinstriped suit, exposing just the collar of her snow-white button-down shirt. A few exposed white pearls from an exquisite-looking necklace rested just below her neckline. Two simple pearl stud earrings decorated both ears. My lawyer was beautiful. I’d searched for a wedding or engagement ring, but she wore none. I thought she purposely left either of them off, maybe in a jewelry tray on the top of her mirrored dresser, to give her the upper hand with opposing counsels who found it hard hiding the fact that she wore her beauty well; not that she needed that kind of advantage. Her Harvard Law degree meant she could argue against the best of them.

It was much easier telling her my story; she needed no convincing. I liked the fumes that came from her the moment we met. Today she smelled like Nocturnes. She’s never smelled the same since we’ve met, and I’m sure a completely different scent would ooze from her pores tomorrow or the next time we meet.

“Why do you think your father did this to you?” she began.

I stared at him as I responded, “He wanted to show me what happens to fags.”

I hated the way that word tasted coming from my mouth.

“Were those his exact words?” she asked, walking back to her desk.

“Yes.”

“I’m going to ask the court to pardon my language in advance of my next question.” She paused. “Patrick, did you ever tell your father you were a fag?”

“No. He…” I remembered her direction to only answer the questions I was asked. “No,” I repeated. 

“How did he find out?”

“He overheard.”

I paused and sat back uncomfortably in the black, leather chair.

“Would you like to explain?”

“I was sitting on the back steps with my friend Taylor. I needed someone to confide in because I knew I couldn’t tell my father anything, and I wasn’t ready to mention anything to my mother. I whispered to Taylor about these feelings I was having. I think she got a little excited and yelled that I was gay. I asked her to be quiet. When I told her, yes, I was, or at least, so I thought, she was looking straight through me. When I turned around, following her gaze, my father was standing at the back door, with that same look on his face that Mister had when he stood outside the window as Miss Celie practiced her spelling.”

Seeing the smile on Ms. Wallace’s face made me feel more at ease. 

“Was that the first secret you shared with Taylor?” Ms. Wallace asked, still smiling.

“Your Honor,” Mr. Medlin interrupted, “I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”

I smiled when the judge paid no attention to his objection. I didn’t think this question had anything to do with why I was sitting here, either, but I was happy to answer.

“No,” I shouted into the microphone.

I looked out into the courtroom, stealing a quick eye-to-eye with Taylor DeAngela Duncan.

I’ve always c
alled her Dee-Dee. I was the only person she would allow to call her that name─even today─and I had fought hard for that privilege. I’d met Taylor at Francis Elementary School in Mr. Skidmore’s second grade class. She was a beautiful girl. She always wore
her silky, jet-black hair in a ponytail, and often removed stubborn hair that found its way too close to her eyes. She always smiled before she spoke, revealing the one deep dimple that always appeared in her left cheek.  I almost never knew when she was being serious. Taylor was unusually tall, much like her father.  Everyone made her my childhood crush. The neighborhood boys made her my at-home girlfriend; my classmates made her my second grade love interest.

I wish he had the guts to look at me. His behaviors were similar to most defendants, guilty or innocent, but it was usually the guilty ones, staring at you, hoping to evoke enough fear to cause you to choke on your words. Or whispering in his lawyer’s ear when he thought he’d heard a truth that could be twisted and flipped into the lie they wanted it to be.

I looked over at my father. His lips were close enough to kiss Mr. Medlin’s earlobes. Whatever he was saying wasn’t going to work this time. Ms. Wallace was here to make certain of that. What could he possibly be telling him? 

Nine years, three hundred and sixty-three days to the day was the last time I saw my father, and I have been having that dream ever since. That man had really messed with my mind. I can’t begin to tell you what he did with my trust. What happened in those two weeks in the courtroom was painted on the inside of my eyelids. As spruced-up as he was, he was no better than the criminal he would be calling roommate or the ones he would be breaking bread with. The expression “no bad deed goes unpunished” has never sounded so melodic. He couldn’t hide behind his tailor-mades or his money. It bothered me, even then, that he held his head high in arrogance even with his hands cuffed behind him and freedom, as he knew it, had been reduced to nothing more than a few hours in a fenced-in courtyard.

I knew this day was coming; still I hadn’t been able to focus on anything else all week. The session today with Dr. Kendrick did help some, but now in the dark of night, I sat wide-awake. I had k
ept my phone off before my session with Doc. I had kept my visits with her a secret─one of my many secrets─and had no intention of telling anyone I was seeing a shrink. I needed to talk to someone. I wasn’t sure who to reach out to. There were so many people who knew nothing about this ruinous event in my life─an event that screwed up my perception on life and love, and screwed up was putting that shit lightly. What my father did affected so many parts of me. I had made so many attempts to bury it along with my father and any memories of him─failed. I knew who I saw when I looked in the mirror, what I saw in my dreams, and what kept replaying in my mind, even as I tried to drown them out with my own sexual excursions. Why didn’t she stop him? Fuck! She shoul
d have known him well enough to know she should have been protecting me from him. But she couldn’t have known; that wasn’t the part of himself he showed her.