CHAPTER 27: The Opera: Act I; Part 1 [cont. 2]
CHAPTER 27: The Opera: Act I; Part 1 [cont. 2]
From "The Saga of One F**ked Mother"
CHAPTER 27 of Mother-Fucking: The Saga of One Fucked Mother begins with Act I of “The Opera”—from Book 3, the last part of the book. The Opera has three Acts with five Parts—one part for each of the three Family Court trials and two Appellate trials. Chapter 27 covers Acts I and II: the first two Family Court trials and the first Appellate Court trial. [It is a long chapter and will be published in newsletter-sized bites.]
In this section, the curtain closes on Act I. The trial is over, the divorce is finalized and joint custody decreed, with primary physical custody to Legion. This is what she expected since she had been the primary caregiver for twelve years. What she doesn’t realize—yet—is that is not the reason she was given primary custody. It was because Herry didn’t request it.
Legion dissects the Findings made by “daJudgeMan” noting how double standards prevail throughout and how he degrades her and uplifts Herry. Herry’s misbehavior, crimes, and history of terrible parenting were dismissed and she was ordered to “overlook” all that. But she’s happy to exit the awful bachelor pad Herry had bought without her knowledge and leave behind depressing memories associated with it. She and the boys move into a cozy condo just walking distance from their school.
Everything is looking up. Maybe being a single mama is better after all…
In the last section, Legion is nervous about the trial but feels confident she will get custody as all the evidence that she had been the primary and better parent supports that, except for, of course, the cherry-picked, “male-identified” evaluator. She notes that the interrogatory questions, part of the discovery phase, are almost all about finances, not who the more nurturing parent would be. The sexism inherent in the system is becoming apparent even at this early stage of the proceedings.
Dr. Blue’s novel is based on her own experience of the Custody Crisis. It uniquely conveys how Family Court judges are “mother-fucking” women—a form of systemic oppression and violence directed at ex-wives—as protagonist Legion is systematically and methodically deprived of her children and money and reduced to “one fucked mother”.
Chapters are stand-alone interesting so you can begin reading anywhere. A Cast of Characters follows to help readers at any point [on the web page]. All published chapters are included in the Section: “Saga of One F**ked Mother” accessible on the top bar of the home page of Women’s Coalition News & Views. Sequential chapters are published every Wednesday and subscribers will find them in their inboxes, so make sure to subscribe if you haven’t yet!
TEASERS
What a(nother) literal … mother‑fucking. Misogynistically … woman‑loathingly typical.
“Be lesser than, get down. Get down, Woman. For sure: be less than he is. He, daMan. He daMan, who, pillared and male, looks just like me, daJudgeMan!”
…And, most especially, I was fucking court‑ordered to overlook those––overlook those which are the crimes of––my Boys’ daddee! No matter how endangering! I had to DEhuman myself, else face a future of unhappiness.
CHAPTER 27
Dr. True's Opera in Three Acts—with Five Parts
Act I; Part 1 [cont. 2]
The old‑style, standard white desk phone which still functions quite well enough for me to this very day rang on Othello Drive along around 11:30 in the morning on the 25th day of May. Mr. Jazzy Jinx announced that he was sending on down to me the closing curtain on Part One Act One: that he was holding in his hand the divorce and custody decree signed by Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor and file‑stamped the day before, 24 May 1989.
No big hoo‑hah: I was a single woman. Biiiig, big hoo‑hah: it further stated that I was the primary caretaker and physical custodian of Mirzah, Jesse and Zane!
Jinx’s call with consequential news came in to me on a Thursday! Just like … any … Thanksgiving Day is!
School all the way down on the farthermost, other side of town at the Truemaier Boys’ Kate Mitchell Elementary was still in session for just another ten days, and then we’d all be moving away. Moving away from the Good and Wonderful Doctor’s bachelor pad and residing, instead, right down in the belovéd school’s ‘hood. Right down in it, as a matter of fact, on Havencourt Drive only a half a walking block’s distance from the schoolyard inside a little, three‑bedroom condominium there of an amorphous character with no window above the kitchen sink, in fact, no vista looking from the kitchen to the outside … at all.
Blasted and blighted and so, so cold and now newly sold 5221 Othello Drive (with many thanks to Realtor Madonna!) and the cursed Brookside Forest complete with three Truemaier Boys’ Daddee’s “Gotcha, Bitch!—I’m throwing Zane in the Creek!” flashbacks as well as full up of Herry Edinsmaier’s several exhibitionistic exploitations––both of these quite secretively never recounted nor explained in Ms. Canard’s mother‑fuckingly incompetent ‘Report’ and certainly never explored during trial testimony––plus dead Sylvan and dead mawwiage––all things deadened––would very soon pass. Would very soon all pass away.
Including in‑laws. No more would I have to assemble any DEhumanizing trips to the Fatlantic area to attend there the gargantuan ego of the paternal, er, patriarchal Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier who hadn’t even had someone drive him the 1¾ hours’ road trip time to come to the trial, indeed, though he could have more than managed motoring up to the Nevada, Iowa courthouse all by himself alone. Shit, of Herry’s ten other siblings alive and kicking as well? Not a one of them all … testified! Most certainly not the Ohioan renowned as a pediatric cancers’ researcher and Herry’s so parentally appearing sister––quite the mandatory reporter of abuse and criminal activity such as the supplying of pornography to children … be she, Dr. Mi Sprision O’Revinnoco! Their all … not coming … must have been a major stratagem of Mr. Shindy Scheisser’s contrived blueprint for securing as inevitable Herry’s tenor–ous role in the whole of The Opera as the fun‑loving nondad. Keep all of the brothers and sisters away or Daddee just might end up with physical custody after all! And, of course, of all of the things in the courtroom most muffled and muted, Detanimod unquestionably qualified, too. Those bones of Herry’s mother long lay silent in a hillside graveyard parallel to Interstate 80; and, for sure, this True mama, one who still did have a breathing spirit left inside her lungs, me—Legion—did not need to go there anymore now either!
Those days of AmTaham’s testimony on how it seemed that I might have been a little “preoccupied” were over. Mr. Jazzy Jinx had graciously declined Mehitable’s screed‑type offer to him to give ‘the Court’ “evidence”. “Hers,” he had forewarned me—behind a closed office door—before trial started, “would be poison.” He soooo did not trust her, “… nor should you,” Jinx repeatedly betokened me, toxic Mehitable’s own daughter, her own baby chil’. She who should have for me, the Truemaier Boys’ mama, … she who should have, right off the bat and always, gone to The Mat and to The Very Ends of the Earth for me, her own baby child.
The decree’s formalized 19 pages arrived in the United States mail the next day declaring that I, “Leigon,” was, despite its blatant misspelling technicality, “restored to the rights of an unmarried person” and had only a couple of years of alimony coming to me equaling, when ended, $12,000, a far, far cry from either $21,500 or $46,000 per annum. As a matter of fact, Judge Seizor wrote on its page two already, “She is currently unemployed by choice.” To daMan, too, an intelligent woman of bluestocking blood choosing to be and then actually being a full‑time, at‑home mama meant squat for worth––and certainly had little, if any at all, “current market dollar value.”
Judge Seizor further stated, “In spite of the fact that at times Legion’s work or studies have been demanding and her hours were long, she has been the primary parent for the children.” How, Judge, do you suppose this same sentence sounds flipped and reversed, “In spite of the fact that at times Herry’s work or studies have been demanding and his hours were long, he has been the primary parent for the children?” “In spite of?” So clearly, even ‘clearly … legally’, females are doing something out of the societal … read that, patriarchal … norm by working and by studying; but if they choose to do those things, then thank gaaaawd, she remembers where her first priority must––still––be placed? Indeed though, that = her mothering of three children inside the home all day in America in 1989 = is worth no more than 6,000 mother‑fucking bucks a year! Herry doesn’t have to remember to show ‘the Court’ that he has and will always be the parent, and not the worker and the rapscallion, first. Only Legion, the mother as well as the student or the worker, must show daJudge deciding custody … that!
Or what? If she didn’t remember to and she had flip‑reverse acted instead as Daddee Herry so far had, like a 16‑year‑old cheerleading sissboombah, boy‑chasing, boozing vamp‑scamp older sister to Mirzah, to Jesse and to Zane, then what would have happened to her in the legal system’s view as far as her mothering her own baby children daily? Well, since I would have lost custody flat out––even with no such evaluation Report asserting this comportment and conduct––since I would have lost just because of my choosing that behavior, then that same society? It would, wouldn’t it, accept me back into it from the courtroom with the same, open, sympathetic arms that America does to all of its non‑custodial daddees? Cuz, ya’ know, even though daddee dearest could never have the bond evolved from actually growing the babes, the loss of them is just so–so hard when either mom or dad comes up ordered to live without the little ones every day, right?
Or what? Would Americans––about a noncustodial mama––would Americans as well as the greater international society respond as if Legion were bad, evil? Wrong? Unstable and unfit? A crazy? A whore? A crazy whore? Fucked up—instead of … fucked over? Instead of … mother‑fucked?
The funniest portion of the 24 May 1989 file‑stamped “Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Decree” by far was Judge Seizor’s idiotic statement on page six, “It is obvious he talks to his counselor (Gary) to get his counselor’s assessment of his current problems more than alcoholism problems.” This person would have been the “alcoholics anonymous sponsor,” Gary Wussamai, the dry drunk with himself a bazillion busted‑up mawwiages under his belt by the age of 50, and not a one of them in which he had ever been a father or a stepfather or even just a halfafather. His “counselor’s assessment” to Herry of exactly squat would have been more appropriate than Gary Wussamai’s opinion about anything pertaining … to staying well‑married, to being an enduring and real father or to sustaining and uplifting a family, for chris’sake! Whom one wishes to emulate or finds of “worth” is with whom, for hours and hours and hours a week, one hangs out, not so, Judge?! Well, the “assessment” of what was “obvious” was that Herry was not at home hanging with us four, the spouse and her kiddos! “Is this what you really meant, Judge Seizor, and the real reason behind why it is that I was given primary care?” I am left thinking.
Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor had to write a few nice things about me before decreeing that I should receive the “award”. The “award” of … in his ‘joint’ custodial order … the Boys’ primary physical care. The “award” of my ‘staying on’ as their … actual … caretaker! His would not have fit with the correct interpretation of the law, it wouldn’t have been legal and would have left easy grounds for Herry to appeal—had daJudge not done so. Not after Ms. Carrie Canard’s “Report”.
But then daMan Sol Wacotler Seizor up and androcentrically negated all with which he had just praised me, “She finds that others do not have the intellectual capacities or standards which she sets for herself. There is little doubt that she has accomplished what she has because of her high personal standards. There are a lot of good people out in the world who will never be able to achieve or measure up to the standards that she sets for herself,” by the following stupefaction and prostitution of me, my being, my essence and those of hard‑working, brilliant and accountable mothers everywhere, “Somehow she needs to find a happier middle ground in regard to interpersonal relationships than she has had in the past.”
O! According to daJudgeMan, I needed to be lesser … in order to be greater.
I had to be lesser … in order to be happier.
What a(nother) literal … mother‑fucking. Misogynistically … woman‑loathingly typical.
“Be lesser than, get down. Get down, Woman. For sure: be less than he is. He, daMan. He daMan, who, pillared and male, looks just like me, daJudgeMan!”
Not that others––meaning Herry––had to improve, had to come up in his capacities or accomplishments or standards! Not even in those as a person, let alone, those as a parent, no. I, the woman and the mother, had to compromise: I had to be the one dishonest, even to lie, about folks’ behaviors and intentions and endeavors. If I saw or knew something to be wrong, I was the parent called by daJudgeMan just now to deny the realities of peoples’ actions. And, most especially, I was fucking court‑ordered to overlook those––overlook those which are the crimes of––my Boys’ daddee! No matter how endangering! I had to DEhuman myself, else face a future of unhappiness. I had to stupify myself. I had to prostitute myself. And the judge’s comment to me was none other than that same whoring one of Edward Lewis’s to the character of Vivian Ward of many men’s fantasia film, Pretty Woman, after which Julia Roberts whispers to her vapid self, “You just did.”
“Well,” I am left thinking, “Fuuuuck … that.”
The Truemaier Boys were to be supported monthly at a configuration of the usual formulation rate set down into codified tables in such matters by the State of Iowa Legislature. Almost all of the rest of it, Herry’s visits, drop‑off times, midweek nights, holidays read like the only words and names that were changed were the ones to fit the parties of this particular dissolution action, that is, of ‘my case’. With a goodly smattering in it every so often of what daMan figured he, along with mesmerized Miss Mousy, could disgustingly disguise as was “in the best (mother‑fucking) interests of the children.” Standard daJudge’s words were (without that quaint little phraseology of mine) to the whole of the 19 pages. Standard, like my kitchen telephone. Standard, like “sorta real”‑life, made‑for‑television movie contracts. Right down to daMan’s fact that, even though I could cook and clean and launder and chauffeur and could fuss over and could mess with, I could not manage the Boys’ savings accounts, no! Those? Money issues? Dollar signs? Manly matters? Manly man matters? Those? Those––the kiddos’ three savings accounts––Herry, daMan, was ordered to keep under his tutelage, protection and guidance for the Truemaier Boys. Judge Seizor wrote, “His control of the accounts can help build another bridge between he and the children.” [The word ‘he’ (instead of ‘him’) is daJudge’s; it is not my typo or grammatical mistake.] Apparently I, the DEhuman, did not have the skillful intelligence nor the ability to know about money, frugality, savings, investments, our home’s economics nor, for sure, anything regarding the monetary futures of Zane, Jesse and Mirzah. “Well, well, well,” I, Dr. Legion True, forsooth animadvert, “ … … Fuck that too, Sexist Pig – Pillar!”
The divorce and custody decree papers, slipped back into their buff‑colored manila envelope, were placed among the litigious others inside the several boxes, the ones so far accumulated. Almost all divorced mamas I know require reading ‘the Court’s’, ah … daJudge’s, daMan’s decisioning details only one time. Only once.
Now I needed to think about how the hell I was going to pay off the $7,000 Mr. Jazzy Jinx seemed to feel that I alone still owed him, to get in to Herry’s empty Othello pad the two‑woman cleaning crew, to close out on its sale deal and to move the Boys and me down to 6143 Havencourt Drive right after their school year at Kate Mitchell Elementary next to it concluded. We had a bit to do!
Having no idea nor even an inkling of what Herry‑Daddee thought about the custody part of the dissolution order other than wagering that the Good and Wonderful Dr. Herod Edinsmaier was most relieved, I for myself ended Act One Part One. Off that very same hour out of Jinx’s ringing me up with the news came the gold band from the left fourth finger and, instead,––and to this hour––enwreathes that digit a blue topaz birthstone in a faceted emerald cut with four surrounding diamonds symbolizing my new family of Mirzah, Jesse, Zane and me––all in a simple silver setting.
* * * *
AmTaham wanted to help us all move so up from Williamsburg he and Mehitable, along for certain only to commandeer and, thus, quite blatheringly maneuver the process of everything, came but not in Caddy Blue. Grandpa AmTaham borrowed his nephew’s pickup, one from out of my Cousin Wyman’s business fleet also in blue. That and our 1979, beige Shitbox Dodge station wagon—as old as Mirzah then––including for even my ol’ pissant piano and what seemed in its gunmetal gray weightiness like an office desk made out of cast iron––hauled for my old man and me about a dozen fully loaded trips per each vehicle back and forth across town in just two days’ time. That same desk plus also the walnut, king‑sized, bookcase headboard bed AmTaham had himself paired up and trucked on down to us all in Kansas just a year and a half earlier. We were gone from that past Othello pad and, instead, settled into the gaudiest kitchen with no outside lighting that we both had ever, ever seen. Immediately the two of us set about to steam‑stripping off the most aweless mass of caramel and brown with orange diamonds the size of smashed, squashed basketballs. Just around its loudest papered wall and in a corner nook much too near the very front door lodged the downstairs’ half bath displaying a golden‑like color that even the French’s mustard company would never, never use.
It was nearly July 1st of 1989. I rinsed out the paintbrushes whilst AmTaham True gifted his little girl child, the one with whom he every year shared his Winter Solstice birthday with that apology––for the child abuse that is religious inculcation––which would change my 41½‑year‑old life at that point to nearly the same magnitude and dimension as would the end of The Opera’s Act Two Part Three. Meanwhile back in Fatlantic and speculatively shoed in shabby sneakers which I’d bet to be no different than the gym treads he chose to wear in order to dance with me at Fatlantic High’s long‑ago, now‑remote 10th one, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier attended his most recently thrown high school class reunion. Hhmmm, it’d’ve been by then about Herry’s Class of 1964’s 25th one. Or somewhere thereabouts.
During one of those nights of lovemaking, … er, of Herry’s pornographic “pussy poking,” and not yet two years into our dozen and a half during mawwiage to which Herry nearly always flatly referred … as “screwing” or “takin’ me some strange” and once in awhile as nothing more than merely “messin’ around,” … a woman then described to me by My Loving Husband Herod Edinsmaier as “a very fat girl who used to talk to me at the lockers between classes at school” made sure she showed up, too, at this particular class reunion. Her dad was old and weakened it seemed, but her mother still got around the town of Fatlantic enough to have found out about Dr. Edinsmaier’s recent little unlashing from his 12½‑year legalized liaison to me. I’m only surmising here, but it was information probably well turned around and around and around the social hall and curtained confessionals of saints john and jude roman catholic church whereat the now 79‑year‑old widower Juggern Edinsmaier and Ms. McLive the Elder both still attempted to most regularly genuflect. As a matter of blatant fact, one of the chief reasons that Detanimod Edinsmaier, dead for years by then, could never have come to this prayer meeting for help for her family and for her livestock suffering from sister–brother or daughter–father incest and cows’, dogs’, pigs’ and chickens’ bestiality back in the late 1950s had had to do with Perpetrator Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier’s patriarchal standing in the local community as such the churchy layman then, and he was still one of the county’s most elevated vicars ... five adult daughters and (some‑of‑those‑boffing) six sons later.
At any rate, with painted talons poised and before any one of the three Truemaier Boys was able to blink twice, why lickety split, there appeared on their terrain when they were tarrying with Herry the Daddee, their 17‑Year‑Old Bro and Joy Toy Boy, on those mandated weekend visitations of his … the Next Cunt in His Stash, another fungible commodity by the name of Fannie Issicran McLive. Twenty‑six years of pining away for her lost‑love illusion from beside those Fatlantic High School lockers and some 310 poundage later, why, Ms. McLive the Younger had secured for herself one of those how‑so‑friggin’‑easy‑is‑it‑to‑lose‑all‑of‑my‑blubber’s stomach‑stapling operations, dropped some 67 and one‑half of those neck‑to‑knees kilos, stashed her own two adoptees somewhere else and arrived at Fatlantic’s ‘64 Reunion, her sights and tipped fingers aligned with and aimed right at soooo‑available Herry’s inside wallet pocket! It seems that she herself had never mawwied. It seems that she had fixed for herself, besides one hefty apron of abdominal flabby fleshy panniculus, a little family of one child, spotted that one up to its adulthood and then, still with such the same narcissistic neediness as Herry’s, fixed herself up with then yet one more. Another second, adopted and attending (as in attention‑tending) daughter who was now somewhere around her twelfth year and charging full throttle into adolescence. One at a time times two times.
So the single but not yet slim and svelte surrogate got word of for herself a third chance now––most likely straight from the tongue of Ms. Genuflecting McLive the Elder, ah, from her own mother. And for this “new family” she didn’t even have to be the mama, not a foster mom and, most assuredly, not even a true ‘step’ping back‑like ‘step’mother. Just had to be all … his! The Doctor’s! Not a bad plan. Not a bad plan at all. Not a new one either certainly. Many, many others—consorters—throughout the ages have quite nearly and fully researched and developed for the dear Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive the diagrammatic schema complete with flow‑chart chronology on how to get this done––this “blended, transition family‑making,” [such the fuckful yet soooo, so usual term for effectually dissing any mama’s First Family]––in a fairly fine‑tuned, failsafe fashion. Ms. McLive at the time––apparently and allegedly––taught students some English grammar a westerly state away at a tiny high school and, there as well, advised its squad of cheerleaders––whichever, the younger or the older DEhuman Kansan screamers, I have no idea … nor would I care.
Leaving all that? Not a problem. “Soooo not a problem,” she had repeatedly reiterated to Herry. Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive could and would walk away today, the Good and Wonderful Doctor learned, and not look back. He’d thought about asking her just as far as mid Minnesota and a week lakeside there with the Truemaier Boys in August but apparently did not. Jesse and Zane were bound first for three weeks to a Quaker‑run camp six hours away from Ames in the southwest quadrant of the Dairy State. Herod, with Mirzah struggling with a 103‑degree temperature and sporting a summer cold that just would not shake itself, drove off at the end of that fortnight and a half to retrieve them both, but then straightaway headed them all on over west from there to the rental lodge just above Bemidji. Guess it was, indeed, just way too much work for Herry the Daddee to get orchestrated, what with Mirzah physically sick and Jesse just ten days recovered from an initial week and a half run‑in at the woodsy Wisconsin compound with inharmonic homesickness. Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive did not manage to go with.
I didn’t either, of course! Hee, hee! Hah, hah!
To where I also did not go was ten‑year‑old Jesse’s side at his Wisconsin campsite either. I couldn’t even talk to him on the telephone. Camp rules. My babies weren’t so much babies anymore. Not all by himself but with the unflinching adoration and companionship of Zane, the World’s kindest older brother, the Camp’s counselors and director, the mighty fine and friendly forest and its falcons, Jesse cured himself. Perhaps, for him, the first of many such episodes for which Jesse in his ensuing life’s subsequent decades would have to go … deeeep. So fucking deep inside himself to uncover there the Cinque‑of‑the‑Amistad’s ancestral courage to come up with his own healings. It was breaking my heart. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t do anything, I could. I could go get him. I was his mother and, Wonder of Nearly All Wonders, I was also his legal custodial parent. Indeed, I could. I could go get him. I didn’t. Jesse and I both toughed it out, I soooo far more in pain than he, I am certain.
* * * *
A new home, a new school year for the Boys real, real soon; and I, Dr. Legion True, had secured, too, a new job, the first outside‑the‑home and actually salaried endeavor since the end of June 1987, back in Manhattan. Temporary assistant professor (truly, only the instructor level) of pathogenic microbiology for program majors mostly in their third undergraduate year, Iowa State University.
“One semester only the need is for. At a flat fee of 8,000 bucks. No benefits. Take it?” queried its salty department chair.
“O yes, yes! This will be splendid, indeed! My text? My class? My lab?” I answered. I owed Attorney Jazzy Jinx just a grand less than this amount. How cool to be able to so quickly get out from under all of that debt, huh!? And what’s more: I would be soooo damned good that they’d just have to hire me on permanently, I knew it!
O! What I did not know! … Still. About the academy! Even after fucking Kansas State. About departmental administration and faculty politics. About who is who and who knows who. Inside the state’s legislature and the governor’s mansion as well as inside the university provost’s office, let alone, its controller’s or the various colleges’ deans’ offices. And about what is the undertow and about what you, the DEhuman, cannot do squatfuck. Ever.
The Truemaier Boys’ two rooms were shaping up each with one large window to the day’s rising sun. Mirzah in one alone, and Jesse and sometimes Zane in the larger. No more fucking chipped red metal or lumbering and glossily varnished bunkbeds anywhere. The king‑sized bookcase and bed frame just barely squeezed into mine on the west side of the condominium’s upper‑level; I arose out of its left portion to stand almost directly inside the very midst of my clothes closet. Enough space for the ancient ancestral bureau’s drawers to extend up to within approximately six inches from the foot of its mattress and box springs. Vacuuming the room’s burnt orange shag was so easy; there was hardly any of it left visible at all––after placing into the mistress’s bedroom just those two pieces of furniture alone.
Zane and Jesse got the gray metal desk following such the trick it was for AmTaham, with them and me thinking we were actually helping that old man, to hoist the fucker up the railed and winding staircase. After that moving maneuver then, sailing the 88 white and black keys into the condo’s 12’ x 18’ front room, itself floored in coconut‑bark shag, seemed a snap. The two tawny plaster busts of Beethoven and Mozart each perched themselves again at their usual ends atop the console. Gold refrigerator, gold range came with the $425‑a‑month rental. Hoo–hah! Our brown, top‑loading portable Kitchenaid with the fake wood cutting board surface and just enough room for the same old brown dinette set from out of Othello and every other kitchen before that plus one closet pantry and about three also so‑dull brown drawers and cupboards, and … that was that.
The blue and green floral couch cushions, the chocolate, faux leather barrel chair on whose backstretch Zephyr so loved to sharpen his claws, the two floor‑to‑ceiling bookcases with a special shelf shrine on the most prominently situated one for my already inherited 1896 black, quarter‑hour‑chiming, mantel timepiece of AmTaham’s and the front room with a double‑paned patio door was nearly completed. Finishing it off from a dome hook in its warmest corner hung Zane’s yellow wired contraption caging his zebra finch pair with some dimestore bamboo nesting material inside it, and from time to time Jesse kept Rex in her colossal aquarium in either the living room or on the equally gold kitchen linoleum, depending I guess on his particular whimsy.
Zane played and studied upstairs, but his late‑night reading and sleeping he did in the basement. Not legal I know. Not by fire code standards is it legal. And all other poor and cramped mamas know this, too, of course. There were two window‑well panes that opened partially inward near the top of the east concrete block wall above which spread our living room, but no mama I know wants to depend upon her teenager waking in time and then being able to escape out through either window to safety in case of need. No, no mother wants to. But she does.
Besides the storage of the Boys’ baby clothes and their tender‑years’ toys in cardboard boxes under the staircase, the only other basement space in an area separated by a thin, darkish covering from Zane’s bed and headboard was completely occupied by the furnace, the water heater, the clothes washer and dryer and one stand‑alone sink with an archaic train‑case mirror wired from overhead water pipes, all set upon bare concrete flooring. No toilet in the basement. Zane had to use the stool either one set of stairs up or two, the one on the top floor the main bathroom with standard white fixtures and absolutely no frills. Up in its tub went the same shower curtain in multiple tones of beige, tan, ivory, cream and brown butterflies that I had purchased and placed in the rental on East Chocolate Avenue in Hershey, P A. That would have been the one from even before the Boys’ belovéd nanny, Rosemarie, came into all of our lives. Why, Mirzah was still exercising his baby thighs in the Johnny Jump‑Up bouncer which I’d suspended by a coil from the kitchen doorframes there! … the very same shower curtain from some nine years before, that is.
This was Home, Sweet Home; and I was very satisfied. I believed, too, that so were Zane, Mirzah and Jesse, especially because their Kate Mitchell School and the baseball/kickball diamonds and a couple of playgrounds there and The Pines neighborhood one were all a mere two minutes’ or so walk away from the condominium’s front door. And their friends? The Truemaier Boys’ friends were everywhere and anywhere including the condo complex’s gated and guarded swimming pool right outside our easterly patio door but also, most wonderfully, their friends were with us inside our very own home every single day. I kept on hand plenty of oranges and apples and bananas and punch‑flavored Juicy Juice, Jesse’s favorite flavor, along with ice cream bars and fudgesicles in that old‑gold icebox and still made popcorn in my ancient ancestral Revere Ware copper‑bottomed skillet nearly as often as the Boys and their chums felt like chomping on it.
AmTaham and Mehitable got a little carried away it seemed. Grandparents’ style. No longer intimidated and humiliated by the physical presence of a hard‑hearted, son‑in‑law ruffian bully, one day an accordion showed up: black, white, pearly finish, squeeze segments, piano keys on the right‑handed location, blackish buttons on the left, the whole damn ball of wax. And in not only mighty fine‑looking shape but also in a mighty massive‑appearing size, too! Black case even. It was wild, and I loved it. Grandpa and Grandma had intended it for Jesse whose eleventh birthday we were now celebrating, and he was going to have, well, … no frickin’ part of it! At the same time in bing cherry red and also burnished off in that identical pearly white finish came a full fucking set of drums for Mirzah with Grandpa AmTaham explaining that the Cedar Rapids bar owner from whom they’d purchased the entire bloody mess of ‘em right down to the dual top‑hat cymbals had convinced him to buy because as she’d declared to AmTaham, “Why, Mister, ya’ just don’t have a band at all till ya’ have the heartbeat of the whole damn deal: the drummer and her drums!” Topped off with the hottest pair of Day‑Glo, fluorescent, neon pink drumsticks to match, er, I mean to clash! Mirzah’s late September birthday present for his tenth year just happened to come from Grandpa and Grandma during their same trip up to Ames, only a wee bit early this time––since it was still … August.
School started for all four of us. Very soon I settled in to late‑night lecture writing and laboratory prep. Also I wanted a different quotation on the chalkboard at the beginning of every lecture so I had to go over my collections for ones appropriate to the day or its lesson. Three hours’ lecture at 9 am weekly plus two four‑hour laboratory afternoons plus, of course, always the very most time‑consuming for me, the course’s primary instructor: the lead preparatory time necessary to get ready all of the materials and supplies for those pathogenic bacteriology lab sessions, all part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. This five‑credit class had nothing to do with the University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and had in it in my section, the only one taught that autumn term, no aspiring veterinarians. Thirty microbiology majors, however, folks who by the fact that this one was their major, inferred to me that microbiology was what they wanted to get up every morning and, while quite possibly not their absolute passion, go off to work to do.
Yet they couldn’t come to class––something for which they or their parents were paying plenty of per‑credit dollars. Or, when they did manage to appear, they couldn’t come prepared. And worse: they did not even know, at junior level, the extreme basics of several areas that I, in the beginning of the semester, assumed that they had learned in their high school science classes, let alone, during first‐ or second‑year collegiate biology! I was rapidly met with having to stonewall the entire section by backing up, oftentimes in concepts’ explanations, to square frickin’ one, a most frustrating experience for me and for a few students––a very few though––in the class as well.
As a matter of fact, Bethany Joan Marquardt stands out in my memory since she was, hands‑down, the best––that is, the smartest and always the most prepared––student. In actuality, she is the only student out of the entire class whom I, 14 years later now, can still remember. Thirty‑three years old then, the mother of three kiddos under seven years of age and in a tech post full‑time, 40 hours out at the National Animal Disease Center on the other side of town––including working there some nights this specific semester so that she could take my course only offered during daytime hours. And, not including the final examination, she was for two out of the other three exams I administered that term not only both tests’ highest scorer but also, at 1 or midnight or 2 in the so early darktime of the morning, inside the local hospital’s emergency room both times the very day of the 9 am exams with babies’ high fevers and raging otitis media infections. She was also married. To a man about whom I know nothing. And I never did. Needless to say, she reminded me … of me.
[to be continued]
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Dr. Legion True: One Fucked Mother
Dr. Herod (Herry) Edinsmaier: Legion’s husband/Sperm Source [“re: I am snide” backwards]
Jesse Truemaier: Legion’s son
Zane Truemaier: Legion’s son
Mirzah Truemaier: Legion’s son
AmTaham True: Legion’s father [Mahatma backwards]
Mehitable True: Legion’s mother [Me hit-able—i.e. she was abusive]
Ardys and Endys: Legion’s sisters [names backwards]
Sterling: Legion’s brother [her mother’s planned name of next son (who never came)]
Mi Sprision O'Revinnoco: Herry’s sister [misprision: concealing knowledge of treason/O'Revinnoco = O'Connivero backwards]
Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier: Legion’s father-in-law [juggernaut; aut = 0; misein = “to hate (misogyny)”]
Detanimod Edinsmaier: Legion’s mother-in-law [dominated backwards]
Ava Saffron True and Zebulon True: respectively, Legion's paternal grandmother and her husband, Legion's paternal grandfather
Rowland and Wyman Natures: respectively, Legion's most favored uncle and most favored male first cousin
Fannie Issicran McLive: fawning enabler of ex [narcissi(st) and Mc(Evil) backwards]
Legion’s Friends: Margaret, Mona, Yanira, Stormy, Lynda, László, Jane, Kincaid, Joseph, Sheryl
Legion’s Best Friends: Ms Grace and Dr Lionel Portia and Rachel
Wende: = Legion's friend after divorce [committed suicide due to Custody Crisis]
Jim Cornball: Herry’s acquaintance from AA and realtor
Loser Lorn: Insurance agent referred by Cornball
Judge Harley Butcher: Family Court judge
Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor: Family Court judge
Judge Barry Crowrook: Appellate Court judge
Judge Pansy Shawshank: Appellate Court judge
Jazzy Jinx: Legion’s Family Court lawyer who sold her out
Shindy Scheisser: Herry’s lawyer [shindy = noisy; scheisser = German for shithead]
Li Zhang: Herry’s Aussie affair
Dr Freddie Goldstein & Ella: Herry’s colleague and wife
Mick: = Herry's acquaintance from high school; best man [not in Herry’s life after that as he had no true friends]
Varry Wussamai: Herry's AA sponsor (not a real friend) [I am a wuss backwards]
David Humes: nursing student; classmate of Legion's, y1968 - y1971, New York City
Edmund Silver: Legion's boyfriend pre-Herry
Braemore St: where Legion and her family lived, y1983 - y1986
Havencourt condominium: Legion's Ames apartment; after separation
Zephyr: tabby cat of Zane's, Mirzah's, Jesse's [pronounced “Zay – fear”]
Rex: Jesse’s pet Eastern Florida Kingsnake, female
Lady: Zane's pet Zebra Finch, female
Madonna: realtor
Larry Brouhaha: court-mandated marriage counselor
Carlotta Klutz: Legion’s Family Court attorney
Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor: District Court judge on first two trials
Judge Harley Butcher: District Court judge for third trial
Dr. Shark: Herry’s residency supervisor who fired him
Carrie Canard: twice judge-mandated custody evaluator
Author: Dr. Blue, aka Ofherod, BSN, DVM, PhD = Commander Edinsmaier's Handmaid (Commander reiamsnidE's Handmaid)
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