Guardian of Eden (6 page)

***

Over the years, I’d discovered something about myself. Inside, I felt angry, unsure, and alone. These feelings manifested in one of three illogical ways. Either I found some unsuspecting victim and took out my frustration on his face, I locked myself in the bathroom and puked until I was empty inside, or I wrote a poem then set it on fire so no one would ever see it. After meeting
Maddie
, I settled on option number three.

I had never seen a blue

so
deep

so
wide

so
all consuming

Eyes that seize

my
air

my
thoughts

Eyes that entomb me

With one look I died

a
sweet death

from
the passion that

overwhelmed
my soul

Her eyes had

captured
my spirit

and
swallowed me

whole

“Who’s
Maddie
?” Eden asked as we rode the metro home after school.

“
Just a girl.”

“What’s so special about her? Why are you writing a poem about her? Why do you have her name written all over your notebook? I thought only girls did that.”

“She’s just a girl from school,” I responded, covering my notebook with my Latin book.

“Oh, come on, Gary. You can tell me the truth. We tell each other everything. I told you when I was in love with Brendan.”

“You were eight. And you got over it when you found out he still wet the bed.”

“So, I still told you.” Eden crossed her arms and sulked in her seat. I felt a little guilty about excluding her. She was right, we did tell each other everything, but this was different.

“Look, Eden-bug, I just met her. I don’t know how I feel about her. But when I figure it out, you’ll be the first to know, all right?” Eden smiled that smile that melted my heart.
The smile that I’d seen every day for the past 11-and-a- half years.
I swear
,
she smiled that smile at me the day she was born.

Eden hopped out of her seat on the train and started dancing around chanting, “Gary’s in love, Gary’s in love.” It was a ridiculous showing, but Eden’s beauty allowed people to ignore her silliness. They were mesmerized by her. A few people even clapped. Eden had a different way of dealing with her inner demons. She became somewhat of a theatrical genius. Sometimes even I had a hard time reading her true emotions and I knew her better than anyone in the world. The shy six-year-old who once thought she was too ugly to look at herself in the mirror now loved to dress up and prance around the house as if she walked a runway in Europe. I guess it was a girl thing.

Eden took a bow, basking in the attention, before returning to her seat next to me.

“
I hope you’re finished,” I said, pretending to be upset with her.

“For now.”
She smiled slyly as I tousled her long dark blonde hair.

“You want to play our game to pass the time?” I asked.

She nodded excitedly.

“Okay, we’re on the letter H, right?” I said, just trying to make sure she’d been paying attention.

“Unh-uh, we’re on
I
. We did H last Wednesday on our way home from the library,” she said shaking her head.

“Right, right.
Okay, minimum length is six letters. I’ll start with…indolent.”

“Iconic.”

“Impasse.”

“Information,” she said with a sly grin.

“Oh come on, Eden. That’s cheap.”

“What? It’s more than six letters,” she responded innocently.

“You know the rules. You have to use words not common in everyday language.
Sophisticated words.”

“Okay, okay.
What about…indigenous?”

“That’s my girl.”

***

“Why don’t you tell me about that fight you were in when you lived with Ms. Brooks?” Richard asked me this question about three times a year since it happened when I was nine-years-old. You would think by now I would have a suitable answer, but I didn’t.

When Eden and I went to live with Ms. Brooks after my fight with Jimmy, there was this kid named Elias Castillo. He was two years older than me but he looked my size maybe smaller. Elias stuttered, twitched uncontrollably and sometimes wet his pants at the slightest provocation. All of his problems came from the fact that his mother used drugs when she was pregnant with him. The other kids would taunt him by asking him a simple question. When the slow stuttering response came, they would laugh and call him ‘crack baby’
which
would trigger the twitching and the pants wetting. It was a vicious cycle. One day I got tired of it.

“Hey, Elias, what day is it?” twelve-year-old
DeMarcus
asked, stepping in front of the television where Eli had been watching cartoons.

Immediately his partner in crime, Terence, started laughing and said, “By the time he answers it’ll be tomorrow.

“I asked you a question, retard. Now what day is it?”

“
Tu
…
Tu
…
Tu
…,” was all that came from Eli.

I tried to ignore the scene at first. I sat in the corner and concentrated on the hand-held electronic Scrabble game that Mr. Jeffries had sent me in the mail. But when
DeMarcus
pushed him down, I decided I had to do something.

“Does terrorizing an innocent make you feel particularly stalwart?” I asked still sitting in my corner of the living room. Stalwart was my word for that day. I had found it in the newspaper then asked my teacher what it meant when I went to school.

“What the hell are you talking about?”
DeMarcus
probably didn’t understand a single syllable I’d said.

“I’ll say it again, but this time slowly and with smaller words.” I stood up and approached the bully. He was a good three inches taller than me, but for some reason I wasn’t afraid. Maybe I should have been. “Beating up on people who can’t defend themselves only makes you look stupid.”

DeMarcus
stared at me utterly surprised that I would call him stupid to his face. He opened his mouth to say something then closed it again. I could see his jaw tightening in anger. Then, without another word, he punched me in the face so hard I
fell
backwards right on top of where Eli had just wet himself. Even though the room was spinning, I still managed to see
DeMarcus
and Terence laughing. Then I heard him say, “Who looks stupid now?”

What happened next is a little hazy. All I remember is sitting in my room holding my cracked electronic Scrabble game. Eli told me later that I tackled
DeMarcus
and bashed his head in with my game.

Seven years later, I still didn’t remember what I did to
DeMarcus
. What did that mean?

“What does that mean?” I asked Richard when I’d finished recounting as much as I could.

Richard stopped writing and looked at me. I think it surprised him that I actually asked him a question as if I wanted to engage him in conversation. Our sessions usually consisted of him asking all the questions and me giving as many one word responses as possible.

“Um, I don’t know.”

“How can I send a boy to the hospital to get seven stitches in his head and not remember? What’s wrong with me?”

Richard cleared his throat, cleaned his glasses, then said, “I think you’ve had an extremely difficult life and you don’t quite know how to deal with your emotions. You’re angry over the hardships you and Eden have suffered and rightfully so, but you have to learn an appropriate release for that anger or else it will consume you.”

His psycho babble didn’t answer my question. What did anger have to do with memory lapse? I could only take solace in the fact that it hadn’t happened again since. Or, if it did, I didn’t remember.

***

“Get dressed,” my mother said to me one Saturday morning as I read the newspaper. It was seven o’clock in the morning. A full three hours before my mother usually awakened.

“Why? Where are we going?”

“I’ll explain in the car. Just put on something nice. Do you still have that suit you wore for your eighth grade graduation?”
      “Holly, that was three years ago. It won’t fit me.”

“Well, borrow a shirt and tie from Corbin.” I stared at my mother trying to read her emotions. Her eyes were red and puffy with the obvious remnants of tears.

“Holly, what’s wrong? Did Corbin hurt you?” I sat upright in my chair.

“No, of course not.”
She sighed. “This is not about me.
Not exactly, anyway.
It’s about you. Now get dressed. We have a long drive.”

“Did I do something wrong? Are you sending me back to foster care? What about Eden? Is she coming too?” I stood up from the table in a panic.

“Oh, my poor baby,” she said embracing me. “No, it’s nothing like that.” She pulled away from me and wiped tears away from her face with the back of her hand. “We’re going to see your father.”

“My father?
What…why…where…” I took a step back and stared into my mother’s tear swollen eyes.

“I’ll explain in the car, Garrett,” she said turning away so I couldn’t read her emotions.

“What about Eden? I promised to take her to the Air and Space Museum today.”