“Okay. The defendant killed a pregnant woman and her unborn child.”
“‘Unborn,’ huh? That’s important in this case, isn’t it, Ms. Dufossat?”
“Yes.”
“Why is that?”
“Because the issue of the case is whether the unborn child constituted as a human being.”
“So I wasn’t posing some existential, Philosophy 101 question to y’all on the first day of law school?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Okay then. Tell me, Ms. Dufossat, why do we need to know the difference between a human being and person?”
“Because of the statute.”
“What exactly about the statute?”
“The…the wording?”
LaSalle wrote “LANGUAGE” in all capitals on the whiteboard.
“Language,” Zibby said to herself.
“And what is the language of the statute?”
Zibby read from the statute provided in the casebook: “First-degree murder is the killing of a human being: when the offender has a specific intent to kill or inflict great bodily harm upon more than one person.”
“So are you a person, Ms. Dufossat?”
“Yes.”
“And are you a human being?”
“Yes.”
“And what about Junior in Ms. Victim’s belly?”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“No, the fetus was not a human being.”
LaSalle wrote “Fetus ≠ Human Being” on the whiteboard.
“That seems a little harsh. Let me guess, you give donations to the Planned Parenthood canvassers over on Oak Street, Ms. Dufossat?”
Zibby fought against all “uhs” and “ums.”
“Well, I don’t see how that’s relevant to this case.”
“Excellent objection! You’ll be a star in Professor Rialto’s Evidence class next year. That is, if you don’t leave us for a shimmering school in one of the forty-nine less enlightened states of this union. But back to it—the language of the statute does not mention ‘fetuses,’ Ms. Dufossat. So why is that relevant to this case?”
“Because fetuses are considered persons.”
LaSalle wrote “Fetus = Person” on the whiteboard.
“Ms. Dufossat, could you read the Louisiana Revised Statute 14:2(7), as it has been amended by Act 256 of 1976, please?”
Zibby read: “‘Person’ includes a human being from the moment of fertilization and implantation…’”
LaSalle wrote “Person = Human Being” on the whiteboard.
“Ms. Dufossat, as you can see here, if a person equals a human being, and a fetus equals a person, then my first note”—she picked up the eraser and used it to point—“‘fetus does not equal a human being,’ must be wrong.”
Zibby had been so sure she was nailing this case. She had even cracked a smirk when LaSalle complimented her “objection” and an image cycled through her mind of her slamming her fists down on the attorney’s desk and demanding “I want the truth!” in front of a captivated jury. But with the stroke of one sentence, LaSalle had shattered her confidence, knocking her down into the bubbling 1L mess saturated with Zeiglers and Romanos. A reddening tide crept up her neck and she began to cough.
“I have been teaching State v. Keller for thirteen years and must’ve been wrong this entire time.” LaSalle began to erase “Fetus ≠ Human Being” from the whiteboard. “I can only pray that my past pupils are not flooding the Louisiana courts and declaring that fetuses are human beings like packs of irate pro-lifers!”
Then Zibby saw it. Like in Rain Man, the words of the statute began to shift in front of her eyes like a puzzle and set themselves in a neat and understandable order, a classic LSAT question.
“Wait!”
LaSalle stopped erasing. “Yes, Ms. Dufossat?”
Zibby recited her discovery in a blind fury. “Fetuses cannot be human beings, but can be persons. And a person can be a fetus, but can also be a human being, just not at the same time. So, if a person is a human being, he or she is not a fetus, and if a fetus is a person, the person is not a human being. Therefore, in regard to the statute and in a situation involving two victims, if someone kills a human being while possessing the specific intent to kill or inflict great bodily harm upon another person, that other person can be a fetus or another human being. Either way, it’s first-degree murder.”
LaSalle put down the eraser. “Excellent job, Ms. Dufossat. You must have scored very high on your LSAT exam. Why you decided on Loyola over that oasis of Yankeedom down the avenue need not be explored in this class. However, we all appreciate you clearing that up for us, and believe me when I say that the Pelican State will grieve when you depart from its bosom in three years.” She stood erect at the podium and addressed the class. “Now, why do we spend time arguing over the difference between human beings and persons and fetuses? Why do we break down the language of statutes word for word, with painstaking clarity? Because, as lawyers, language is your weapon, whether written or spoken. Without the mastery of language, we are no better than your drunk uncle shouting at the dog. A single word in a statute or deposition or affidavit could be the key that unlocks the gates of victory, if you have the ability to recognize it. So choose your words deliberately. Uhh-ing and umm-ing is like shooting blanks. If need be, gather your ammunition in silence, then fire. The appearance of confidence can be as powerful as confidence itself. Let’s move on to State v. Gehring.” And she assumed her position hovering over the roster.
Zibby checked the clock: there were still forty-five minutes left in the class.
Dio
Dio plucked plump grape bunches from the vine and tossed them into a silver bucket. He turned around when the gate opened, his shirtless body glistening in the midday sun.
“What are you doing out here like that?” Zibby asked, approaching the god. “My father is going to freak the fuck out.” His rippling muscles pulled her attention away from the rows of augmenting fruit.
“Nonsense. We have already enjoyed a bottle of my harvest.”
“Wait…you guys talked? He thinks you’re a foreigner who doesn’t speak English. How did…”
“Talked? We shared a captivating conversation about the history of your city over a bottle of my harvest.” Dio pointed to labelless bottles filled with red wine sitting in the shade. “He is a knowledgeable man. You didn’t tell me that your family helped build this city. And that you are New Orleans royalty?”
Zibby had been staring at Dio’s rows of abs but snapped to when he said, “I had an inkling you were of royal lineage, Pharaoh.”
“Yes, what? Royalty. Yeah. I mean, don’t believe everything he says. Wait? Is he drunk?”
“I believe he is having a nap inside.”
Dio picked up one of the bottles resting in the shade and poured out two glasses of the deep red elixir, spilling some on the grass here and there without hesitation.
Zibby took one of the glasses without blinking, still mesmerized by the little vineyard growing in her backyard as if it had been set to fast-forward. “How are…how are you doing that? Come on, teach me the trick.”
“Trick? Perhaps one day you will believe me when I tell you I am the God of the Vine.”
“God of the Vine, huh? Okay, what the hell. I need a drink after today anyway,” Zibby said as she took a swig of the ruby liquid, the bits of sediment still settling at the bottom of the glass. “Wow, that’s like…that’s really good.” Dio looked up from his knees and smiled, and then returned to checking the grapes. “So, you won’t tell me where you’re from…”
“I was born on the island of Thebes, taken to Olympus, and spirited away by Hermes to Mt. Nysa, where the Nymphs raised me until it was safe to go back to the Mount and reunite with my father.”
“…Right. Okay, and you won’t tell me how you do this trick— sorry, I mean, ‘illusion’—with the grapes, so…” Zibby grabbed a chair her father used for Saints tailgates and unfolded it
in the shade. “You got a wife? Girlfriend? Kids?”
Dio stood up and brushed the soil from his knees. His eyes, starting at her weathered red Converse, followed her legs, crossed at the knees, up to her tilted eyebrows that continued the question long after Zibby had stopped speaking.
“You even hold your wine glass like her,” he said, picking a bit of sediment from his teeth and flicking it aside.
“Like Cleopatra?”
“Just like her.”
“Mhmm.” Zibby sipped. “I’m getting the feeling you’re avoiding my question.”
Dio poured himself another glass until it overflowed, took a sip from the stained brim, and sat in front of her on the grass.
“I was married once. And I have a son.”
“Oh…really?” Zibby couldn’t picture the stranger she had recently woken up from a drunken nap on Oak Street as a family man. “So…” She waited for Dio to elaborate, but he just stared into his glass of wine. “Where are they?”
“Ariadne killed herself.”
“Oh my god.” She had to cover her mouth from spitting wine on his head. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Dio recounted the day he found her. He had fallen to the ground, much like he was doing then in Zibby’s backyard, as Ariadne’s feet swung in the Cretan breeze, hanging from a cypress tree.
“Hera had discovered that Ariadne would bear my daughter.”
“Hera?”
“The vile wife of Zeus. She threatened to have the Titans tear the child limb from limb, just like they had done to me. Luckily, Athena had saved my heart and Zeus stitched me back together. But he would not endure another century of Hera’s wrath for his son’s half-mortal child.”
Zibby dropped out of the chair and to her knees, running her fingers over the scars forming rings around Dio’s shoulders and a loop around his neck. She had first noticed the healed wounds on Oak Street, but in the backyard, up close, they appeared thick with pulp, pulsating with blood.
“If only I had come upon her sooner, I would have been able to resurrect the child and hide her deep in Persia or Africa. But too many days had passed by the time I had cut her out.”
“…Cut her out?”
“Of Ariadne’s stomach. I was too late.”
“What is…what’s happening?” She held up the glass of wine to the sunlight. “Did you put something in this? I feel weird.”
“If you’re going to accuse me of creating adulterated wine like some Phoenician amateur, I will retire for the evening.”
“No, I’m sorry. It’s just…” For a few seconds Zibby had trouble breathing and became flushed. Dio watched as she jumped to her feet and scanned the backyard for a threat. She started to sweat and flick her tongue in and out of her mouth, making a clicking sound as she raised her palms to the sky above her head; a soaked spot began to expand on her jean shorts.
Dio had always enjoyed watching the transformation from woman to Maenad, but he knew the dangers that were only one glare or side-eyed look away. If Mr. Dufossat had come out and posed a threat to Dio, it would be difficult to stop Zibby from pulling off her father’s head or tearing out his throat.
He snatched her glass of wine from her hand and dumped it on the grass, and before she could let out a Maenadic screech, he started to sing a slow and delicate song in ancient Greek.
Zibby’s pupils returned to small black dots. Her shoulders relaxed; she could breathe again.
“What happened? Why are you singing?” She bent over and touched the moist grass. “Did I black out or something? I’ve never been roofied before…”
“The only way to calm a Maenad is to sing a song of Orpheus.”
“Like Harry Connick Jr.’s Krewe?”
“I have not been acquainted with this young Connick, but any advocate of dear Orpheus is a friend of mine. I miss him every day and still hear his beautiful voice before I fall asleep.”
Zibby sat in the tailgate chair, flushing red when she noticed the wet spot in her shorts, and folded her legs. “What happened to him?” she managed to eke out.
“He succumbed to a fate that had become all too familiar during the age of my budding cult.”
“Cult?”
“Orpheus was the greatest musician on earth. His song could tame and soothe even the fiercest spirit. I witnessed Orpheus accomplish the unthinkable while aboard the Argo. Jason was not nearly as bright or daring as this contemporary world has imagined him, and had directed the ship right into the heart of the Sirens’ nest. He and his Argonauts, enchanted by the wenches’ song, would have delivered us unto certain doom had Orpheus not strummed his lyre and sung the most beautiful song to ever grace my ears. The Sirens became overwhelmed and dashed into the water, never to be heard again. Jason righted the ship and the Argo avoided becoming another addition to the stony graveyard.”
“But…that shit isn’t real?”
“Orpheus was a dear friend who accompanied me on many adventures, especially after I had to flee Mt. Olympus after Hera’s assassination attempts and descended back to mortal Earth.”
Dio recounted when Hebe, the dainty and coy cupbearer of the gods—and his half-sister—who had regularly fetched Dio his wine from the fountain that trickled in the center of the atrium, had handed him a cup with wine as black as the Underworld. Luckily, Dio had opened his eyes enough to see the black liquid on the fringes of his lips and tossed the wine onto a potted fern, which shriveled on contact.
Hebe pled ignorance—she had simply been following Hera’s commands—and insisted that she had believed it was a typical deep and dark Sicilian red wine.
“Sicilian! I wouldn’t allow Sicilian wine on the Mount! Barely more palatable than a Phoenician…” She had already walked away, leaving the chalice rolling in circles. “Hebe, you cretin! You tried to poison me!”
When Dio brought the matter to Zeus, who was resting from a month-long binge in an Arabian harem, the patriarch dismissed the hullabaloo as sibling squabbling and directed him to Athena.
“Athena is commanding the armies of Greece against the Persians!”
“Then handle this issue with your sister yourself. You’re just as much a god as she is.”
“Half-sister,” he said, and marched out of Zeus’s chambers.
But Zeus’s words—either insincere, so as to give Dio the confidence to handle the matter on his own, or haphazardly chosen due to his descent into sleep, as he had a plethora of children by numerous goddesses and would oftentimes confuse one with another—were false.
Hebe, born of Hera and Zeus, was a goddess, just as much as Athena or Aphrodite or Demeter. Dio’s mother, Semele, was born a mortal and died a mortal, thus making Dionysus the only diluted god on Mt. Olympus.
“It was that time I left Olympus to meet Orpheus on the Thracian coast that I met Eurydice, the love of his life,” he said, looking back up at Zibby from the grass.
“What does that have to do with your ‘followers’ killing him?” asked Zibby, sitting back in the chair.
“It was after their wedding. They were a gorgeous couple— Eurydice was every bit as elegant as Aphrodite, no small feat for a mere Nymph, and Orpheus was as beautiful as the music he played. Well, they did not spend a single married night together. On their descent to the river after the wedding ceremony, Eurydice suffered a bite from a viper above her ankle and soon perished.”
“Oh my god.” Zibby leaned forward.
“I followed my friend’s cries, and when I came upon the adder, I bashed its skull with my thyrsus and it vanished into black dust. I tried to bring her back…”
“Bring her back? What are you, Jesus now?” Zibby let slip out. But Dio, already enveloped in his recollection, didn’t notice.
“But my powers were worthless. I had only been stymied once before.” Dio took a swig of wine. “When Artemis’s arrow missed a sprinting doe and struck a young boy picking berries in the forest.”
“Wait, did you guys kill a kid? Are you trying to tell me you shot a kid during a
botched hunting trip or something?
“I had stopped many souls from descending into the Underworld to spend eternity with my uncle. The only two that have resisted my powers were that child in the forest and Eurydice.” “Okay?”
“‘O-kay’? You don’t understand the significance of the anecdote? Hera had sent that serpent to kill me!”
“You sound paranoid.”
“I have smashed many a slithering beast on the head with my thyrsus. I even slew the serpent that took Cleopatra, your namesake, Pharaoh…”
“Wait, that was true?”
“…and never had one disintegrated into black ash. I couldn’t tell Orpheus that…that I was the creature’s target. That my mere presence got his sweet Eurydice killed.”
Dio dropped his head into his arms, which were folded around his knees, and let out the faintest cry.
“Wait, but I thought this was about Orpheus’s death being somehow related to you?”
“Please! I beg of you, give me a moment to compose myself during this unexpected wave of grief!”
“Okay, okay, sorry. Take your time.”
Dio blindly searched for his wine while he dried his eyes, found the glass, and took a gulp that polished off the remaining contents. He rose from the grass, grabbed another bottle leaned up against the trailer, and sat back at Zibby’s feet.
“Unable to bear the sudden departure of his love”—Dio filled his glass to the brim— “Orpheus descended into the Underworld to retrieve Eurydice from my uncle, Hades. Charon let him cross the River Styx without charge, if only Orpheus would play his lyre—he played the same song to soothe Cerberus, whose three heads dropped to the dirt upon hearing the first pluck. Ixion’s wheel had stopped spinning and Sisyphus sat at rest upon his stone; Tantalus forgot his thirst and for the first time the Furies, those wretched, winged witches, fell silent, and their cheeks became wet with tears. My uncle was so impressed that he permitted Orpheus to take whomever he wanted from the Underworld, whether it be from Elysium or the deepest depths of Tartarus.”
The Neon God Page 6