A Verdict for Love (10 page)

“What’ll you ladies be havin’ this
afternoon? Want some iced tea to start off? How about a plate of
cornbread muffins for an appetizer?”

“Sure, that sounds great,” Grace
said.

As they waited for their
starters they both gazed at one another with love. Their hunger for
food was matched by a hunger for lovemaking in such an untroubled
setting.
Not touching intimately, even for
a few hours, was difficult for them. The passion between them had
reared up in these unexpected bursts from the start. Each knowing
what the other was wishing they shared a helpless glance around the
little café and broke up laughing.

The iced tea was strong and sweet to
sip between bites of hot cornbread. They followed it with lovely
barbeque sandwiches and Brunswick stew.

The smell of the savory meat and the
rich, succulent stew tantalized them as it was laid out before them
on the table.

“Mmmmm,” Chiara muttered audibly as
she tucked into the stew.

“This is so damned good,
Grace.”

The mouthwatering combination of sweet
and vinegary barbeque and the rich heady tomato based stew made
them both take on that glazed-over look that one often sees on the
faces of people who dine on the truest versions of southern comfort
food.

After they finished, they headed back
down the road to Savannah with increased anticipation.

As they approached the city the trees
became covered with the thick Spanish moss common to the coastal
regions of the Deep South. There are few things as captivating as
the look of that moss on the trees. The brilliant webs of vine
woven through wooden arms outstretched to the sky make you
understand that the sea is very close by.

Grace had never been there before. She
was amazed a little at its beauty. It had an old world charm akin
to that of its sister city, the southern siren New Orleans. But
Savannah is finer than her wilder sister in some ways. Her beauty
is calmer, imbued with a kind of melancholy that reaches out on a
barely discernable level toward something departed. The city
attracts people who also want to capture that lost, infinitesimal,
something.

“It’s so….”Grace whispered to Chiara,
clasping her hand, “sooo…..beautiful.”

Chiara smiled and held her hand
tighter, enjoying the girl’s appreciation of the city.

They made their way toward the island,
driving slowly and soaking in the open splendor of the scenery.
When they turned into number 10, Lovell Drive, Grace fell in love
with the small but fine house facing the Atlantic Ocean.

The view of the sea was panoramic in
scope. The gulls were calling. And all one could hear was the sound
of the waves splashing against the sandy shore. They both stood
quite still for a moment and then Chiara took Grace’s hand walking
her out to the beach.

“We can unpack later, Grace. Let’s
walk and enjoy the sea air for a bit.”

They walked arm in arm down the empty
beach. The smell of the sea, the feel of the trade winds blowing,
made them both feel a soft wordless pleasure.

Thus began a long and beautiful
vacation in a magical place on the coast of Georgia. Feeling safe
from prying eyes they relaxed into a genuine intimacy, becoming
increasingly aware that they could truly be happy there, that they
could be happy together away from the bustle, the competition, the
outright aggression of Atlanta, the south’s harlot of a city. It
was unspoken but deeply felt.

No worry was allowed to intrude. They
ate fresh shrimp off the grill. They built sandcastles. They flew
kites. They made love at night with the windows open as the waves
crashed on the shore.

Grace made Chiara feel young, and
Chiara made Grace feel safe. The combination spelled true love and
true happiness.

After not ‘spending’ their vacation
but rather ‘saving’ it by indulging themselves in sweet bliss each
instant there, they were both recharged emotionally and physically
and ready for the battle ahead. Neither of them knew how it would
turn out, but the joy that they would have together once they put
this mess behind them bolstered their courage.

It was as though they’d caught a
glimpse of paradise and knew that if they had to go through hell to
get back to it, the battle would be worth it.

T
amika Brown had been working night and day to gather
witnesses within and outside of the firm. She wanted to prove a
long existing pattern of exclusionary practices and preferential
treatment by the good old boys at Smith, Weinstein & Brooks.
She had found at least two women who’d once worked for the firm.
They had been suggestively stepped on. After complaining they were
sidestepped for promotions and finally just blackballed and plain
pushed out onto the street. That one was black and the other
Hispanic suggested discrimination beyond gender.

This was going to be a very big case
and Tamika knew that the media would lap up the facts surrounding
the dismantling of a big firm like this. Atlanta, like every other
city in the southeast was changing. Atlanta had grown and become a
true melting pot. Now few who lived in the metropolitan area were
true natives of the city.

With the bright minds and broader
perspectives being imported into the city, this case really had a
shot at changing minds within the south and beyond it.

On the other side of town, in their
plush offices, Tamika knew they were busy rallying to defend their
collective cause: maintaining the power of carte blanche. They
weren’t going to let this one go down without the most serious of
fights. The very idea that a lesbian, a dyke with an attitude,
would sue them for wrongful termination and discrimination was
anathema to them.

Lead attorney Adam Clay was no doubt
gloating over a long list of witnesses willing to destroy Chiara
Bianchi’s reputation. He was the type to relish ruining her. As far
as he was concerned she was a lesbian bitch who had tried to run
with the bulls when she didn’t have the balls to do so. He was
aiming to get her to run out of town instead.

Clay and his cronies were indeed
already celebrating their win before the case even went to the
courtroom. They felt somehow that they were still the true
representatives of the south and particularly of the Atlanta ideal
of family values. Church on Sundays, barbeques in the backyard and
good women in the kitchen or bedroom where they belonged. They were
guarding traditions that could not die.

But Tamika was planning on painting a
very different portrait of them. Anyone raised in the south was
familiar enough with the Bible to know the passage from Matthew
23:27,

“Woe unto you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchres,
which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead
men's bones, and of all uncleanness.”

The old club was going to
be shown for what it was: a sad old tombstone whose ideas were
ready to be properly buried. Tamika held a shovel and if she could
make it the trump spade she was ready to lay open a hole and mount
a case that would, she prayed with her very soul, push them into it
for good.

T
he
camera crews from the local stations were all crowded around the
front of the Fulton County Superior Court Building that Thursday
morning as the principals mounted the steps. Camera shutters were
clicking and the newscasters’ mouths were moving.

“A case against Smith, Weinstein &
Brooks, one of Atlanta’s oldest and most prestigious law firms,
goes to court today. The plaintiff is Chiara Bianchi. The prominent
lawyer who defended and received an acquittal for the notorious
Jack Shay. According to Tamika Brown, her attorney, Miss Bianchi,
after being recently promoted to senior partner by that firm, was
suddenly and wrongfully forced to leave on the basis of her sexual
orientation.”

Tamika ignored the questions thrown at
them as she ushered Chiara and Grace past the crush. She was not
yet ready to use the press. She didn’t want a trial by media if it
could be avoided.

Clay however stopped at the top of the
steps to the reporter’s answer questions. He loved seeing his face
on the news. It was good for business.

“Mr. Clay, do you think Atlanta is
ready to give equal rights under the law to gays? Will this case
usher in insurance benefits and enforceable domestic partnership
agreements?”

“I really don’t think so. It’s a whole
new world we’re living in now with gay people getting married and
even being allowed to raise children if you can imagine such a
thing. The law tolerates their difference. It even protects them
but they want more. They want us to celebrate them. Isn’t that what
they really want?”

Even the news reporters were a bit
shocked at that last. There were some things you didn’t say.
Finding the right way to spin that kind of bigoted statement was
going to be tough.

But not for one instant did Adam Clay
care who might think the comment went too far. He knew that any and
everyone who mattered in his world agreed with him.

Inside, the partners settled at the
defense table alongside their champion. They were smiling and
seemingly unconcerned. Clay’s blue steel eyes narrowed in on Tamika
as she took her place across from them. She smiled and nodded in
his general direction. If the cold look had been meant to
intimidate there was no sign that it had succeeded. The qualms
Tamika had felt when Chiara had first approached her had long since
vanished.

Leading up to this opening day the
voir dire process during the jury selection had been drawn out,
with each side using all of their exclusions. Clay had sought as
conservative a panel as he could get while Tamika had looked for
even the barest hint of liberality. The result had been just the
kind of jury Chiara had foreseen...a very mixed panel with regard
to ethnicity and gender.

Tamika hoped this case would help end
the days of gay people being sectioned off into pink ghettos.
Though she had initially been hesitant about representing a
lesbian, she had come to see it as the same struggle all minorities
faced and had allied herself with Chiara on a very personal
level.

Discrimination was discrimination. And
in the south, the word was loaded with connotations and images of
wrongs committed over many past years. This was another
discriminatory barrier that needed to be taken down and she was the
woman to do it.

T
amika stood and waited for the murmur behind her to die away.
She made sure she had every juror’s eye before she began to deliver
her opening remarks. The room slowly grew hushed…a pause before a
storm.

“Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of
the jury, I come before you today because an injustice has been
done. My clients, Chiara Bianchi and Grace Butrell are good people.
Miss Butrell put herself through seven years of study and hard work
to achieve the dream of a career in law. Only to have the
defendants seek to deny her that dream for no reason other than
their disapproval of her life style.”

Tamika paused to direct a disapproving
look at the partners before resuming.

“Miss Bianchi toiled for this firm and
its clients for fifteen years. During which time they not only
found no fault with her performance…they made her a senior partner.
Then they discovered she was gay. For this and this alone…these
men…who by their very profession should have felt bound by due
process and fair play, instead decided to act as judge, jury and
executioner. They sought to negate her entire career.

We all know that there are some
prejudiced souls in our society who still hold unfortunate ideas
about what it means to be gay.”

She smiled at the jurors as if to
assure them that she knew none of them could possibly be
prejudiced.

“For those people such a personal
choice still seems taboo. But these two women worked hard to obtain
and deserve the same rewards that all of the rest of us expect from
our own efforts to excel.

I ask you today to weigh
all that will be presented and then ask yourselves if it is not
time to send a message. In the immortal words of Frederick
Douglass…
It is not light that we need, but
fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm,
the whirlwind, and the earthquake.

We need to stand on the
side of justice and uphold the law of this great nation, the
promise that no one regardless of their color, creed, nationality,
disability…or sexual orientation, should be discriminated against.
Thank you.”

The jurors had listened and
could be seen appraising Chiara and Grace. Both sat poised quietly
at their table. Chiara in a lovely black Armani dress with a single
strand of perfect white pearls around her neck. Her long mane of
dark hair was pulled back from a face radiating a natural dignity
and elegance. Grace sat beside her, lovely to look at, wearing a
pale blue blouse that matched her eyes. She was a vision of
innocence and her intelligent face suggested the great promise that
Tamika charged had been thwarted.

They made an impressive
pair. It was difficult to look at them and classify them as
stereotypical flaming lesbians. There were no tattoos, no
piercings, no rainbow flag T-shirts. Just two beautiful,
accomplished women who felt they had been wronged. The image was
not lost on the jury. You could see it in their eyes as they
appraised them. Tamika was satisfied that they had made a good
impression.