CHAPTER 28: The Opera: Act III; Part 4 [cont. 2]
From "The Saga of One F**ked Mother
In this next section of Chapter 28, Herry enlists a couple from Legion’s Quaker community to aid him in his scheme to torture her. Her boys show up at two different events. One is a funeral for her good friend and the other an Easter gathering. She is surprised and thrilled each time and runs to hug her sons, but the “Flunks”, Herry’s “lackey-gophers”, will not allow her near them. Herry relishes this power to make her suffer—for refusing to abide his authority, his sexual addiction and his abuse of her and the boys.
But at least Legion is still seeing her boys occasionally on the sly. Then she gets a call from the Flunks. She is told to come to their house that night if she wants to see her boys one last time—for 15 minutes. She is utterly shocked and begs them to tell her where they are going and how long they will be gone, but they won’t—they work for Herry.
In the last section, Legion ponders how Herry could have been given total legal control of the boys. She bemoans how she is not even being allowed supervised visits, when judges commonly order visitation with abusive and criminal fathers, even when they are in prison, and even when they have murdered the mother. She warns women who are contemplating separation from the “sources of spermatozoa” that they have a good chance of becoming the “next mothers fucked”.
CHAPTER 28 of Mother-Fucking: The Saga of One Fucked Mother begins with Act III, Part 4 of “The Opera” from Book 3. The Opera has three Acts with five Parts—one for each of the three Family Court and two Appellate Court trials. Chapter 28 covers all of Act III: Part 4: the third Family Court trial and Part 5: the second Appellate trial. [This is a long chapter and will be published in newsletter-sized bites.]
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—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 so make sure to subscribe if you haven’t yet!
TEASERS
Commonly Herry would bait me, set me up for disappointment or heartbreak or just whatever plain pain he figured the set‑up may inflict upon me; and as he did so much with Mehitable so, too, he particularly chose the Quakers and singularly there the Flunks.
…none of these preparatory negotiations had included me in any way, except to especially keep me fully and ‘quite clearly’ … in the dark. The Flunks’ role was merely that of lackey‑gofers in Herry’s inflictive fuck of bait and switch so as to the Boys to keep Dr. Legion True in hers: that of Invisible Mother.
BOOK 3: Dr. True's Opera in Three Acts—with Five Parts
CHAPTER 28: The Opera: Act III; Part 4 [cont. 2]
“You have a telephone call. I think it’d be okay for you to step down and away. It’s over there in the corner booth, ya’ know, the only phone out here on the floor for you workers,” that was my production supervisor, Ms. Phillipa Chance, a woman my age, mid‑40s, speaking. She meant that I would have to shut down my machine, leaving my colleague without a co‑worker and, therefore, more or less stranded without piecemeal work with which to rack up both of our end totals for the shift. Obviously, workers took very, very few personal telephone calls in order to avoid these costly shutdowns.
The person on the telephone was from Ames, a woman also my age named Dr. Agnes Flunk who did not work outside her home. She and her spouse, Dr. P.M. Flunk, a decade and more her senior, had been mere acquaintances of mine for approximately four years and considered themselves Quaker elders––although Quakerism is not supposed to have “elders” since all people are allegedly equal in the Light’s eyes. Much like an old Quaker joke, “We don’t have any elders, and we all know who they are” which Agnes and P.M. each found particularly amusing every time anyone delivered that one‑liner in their presence. Smirking in an “all‑knowing” kind of way, a smirk not unlike Herry’s, particularly out of P.M.’s lip commissures. Sometime‑Anthropologist Agnes on the other hand, although she almost always entitled herself after her signature as an ‘independent scholar’ as in “Agnes Flunk, PhD, Independent Scholar,” liked to play dumb. “Huh, O me? An elder? O, my! Well, I guess so. O, I mean no! Of course, no! We don’t have elders!” is likely a quip she would deploy between feigned forehead furls––were someone to query how long or how much Agnes Flunk had been involved with Quakerism and was she familiar with it to any extent.
I had been, formally and officially, a Quaker longer than either Flunk; and I, for one, knew for certain that they did not consider me to be any such elder. In Truth, I knew for a fact that these two thought me in the plainness of Quakerism to plainly suck at being a Quaker. And … at being a mother, let alone, at being a DEhuman. The holiday easter Sunday before, just eight months earlier on 31 March 1991, Professor P.M. Flunk himself had actually laid his two hands upon me in order to stop me from doing something. To put an end to my intended act before he’d have had to summon up all of his Quaker elderliness and oblige me to back the fuck off with even more force than what he was already applying. His Quakerly right fist at the end of its rigidly outstretched arm sunk itself into my torso’s sternum, and mathematics faculty member and ‘pacifist’ elder P.M. Flunk himself sicced me immediately off of … my very own child, Mirzah Truemaier.
I was stunned to see him, Mirzah––and his two brothers, Zane and Jesse. Commonly Herry would bait me, set me up for disappointment or heartbreak or just whatever plain pain he figured the set‑up may inflict upon me; and as he did so much with Mehitable so, too, he particularly chose the Quakers and singularly there the Flunks. More than once, I would learn something about the Boys and be so thrilled to know it––only to find out some Quakers and always the Flunks already knew what it was that I hadn’t known. From the Truemaier Boys’ dental visits to the soccer goals which any one of them had made. This information had smirkingly been withheld from me. The Flunks, like Mehitable, particularly enjoyed the part where I found out––but only after it had become abundantly clear to the two Flunks that … I finally knew only after … these “Quakers” had had the information––first! Overall, Snide Edinsmaier in his pillaredness manipulated the Flunks to organize and execute some of his dirtiness deals for him. It wasn’t at all difficult to do. Herry must’ve sensed that Agnes and P.M. were most impressed by persons of class, stature, title and education as they, indeed, quite are––and used that Flunk feature to his advantage to wreak havoc upon ‘only mostly flawed’—me … according to the Good and Wonderful Doctor’s highest‑ranking whimsy. This particular easter 1991 deed of Legion‑DEhumanization came on the heels of the Margaret Sagely ashes—one but just by a few days, in fact.
Adam, who resides over in the town of the Storm County Courthouse and that junk mail factory of Ms. Phillipa Chance’s and mine, that is, about nine or ten miles east of Ames, received a telephone call from Herry. And Adam thinking Herry genuine, a condition of which Quakers are soooo, so silly about doing too, too much, well, … Adam was hooked by the Good Doctor’s bait. As is the fondness annually on this particular First Day, the Ames Friends traditionally go for an early morning walk on the wild side, well, … into the woods at least … a‑conjurin’ up some springtime there and back out anyhow, then on over to the Meetinghouse for midmorning brunch and, lastly, finish off the custom with an hour or so’s worth of meditation and silence together. Herry, because of a one‑time mawwiage to me, long, long well knew of this lovely, plain and simple spring exercise of the Ames Friends Meeting. In the days leading up to 1991’s, Conniving Herod had phoned Adam ‘to invite’ him to come pick up the nature‑loving Truemaier Boys in Urbandale, a 130‑minute roundtrip for Adam just to get the Boys to the woods! And … at 5 fucking in the a.m.––to start! Because our stroll into the forest near Ames commenced at 7!
All of this Adam gladly did agree to do. So typical, too: Aprovechar Herry doing all of the talk, talk, talking––and others doing all of the work, work, working! It wasn’t Herry doing the driving so that the Truemaier Boys could participate; it was Adam, fortunately himself quite the morning person any day anyhow, who did all of that early roundtripping and not, of course, the Daddee‑Herry Edinsmaier at all!
I didn’t join in the walk portion that year thinking, naturally, that the Boys weren’t going to be there to enjoy the sylvan assemblage with any of us either. Poor, poor Adam. As dear as he is, Adam always seemed to operate as if Daddee‑Herry Edinsmaier had already told me about all of these arrangements about which, of course, Herry had conspired to make damned certain to never tell me! Dr. Legion True hadn’t one clue that her Truemaier Boys might be there in Ames at this vernal hoo‑hah. Not one clue! So, accordingly, I determined to just meet up with the rest of the Friends who, after the amble, would be gathering over at the Meetinghouse around 9 or 9:30 a.m. for the breakfast victuals. When I beheld the Boys coming up the driveway of the Meetinghouse, why, I ran outside, arms outstretched, to greet them I was soooo excited. And Mirzah, the first to get out of Adam’s car, likewise ran over to hug me, too!
Except that ... … Except that Professor P.M. Flunk, Quaker elder, got up in both our faces. And right now!
I mean the man appeared outta nowhere. Not even had he been in my peripheral vision; and even if Flunk had been there, I wouldn’t’ve, at that stage, thought him capable of what it was he then proceeded to do.
The doctor of mathematics’ philosophy dashed in between the two of us and faced me, his back to Mirzah, now forced dead in his little‑boy tracks. Slowing, I turned to go around Flunk, my eyeballs still affixed upon Mirzah, only to feel this incredible force about my neck and upper chest; it was shoving me hard backwards. P.M. Flunk actually had his outstretched arm and balled mitt solidly lodged on my breastbone. I was halted.
“No! No! That is not allowed!”
“O o o o!” I think to myself now, “what a woman‑loathing shitload of fuckful patriarchal phraseology.”
“What?!” is only, instead, then and a bit breathless and rather high‑pitched, what came out of my mouth.
“Hi, Mom!” Mirzah came around to my side but did not touch me either. P.M. Flunk removed his hand from its placement but not his wedged and blocking body from its.
“Heeeey, Baby, this is toooo cooool! I didn’t know you were coming! O, I’m so happy to see you and Zane and Jesse,” who were both by now also standing right next to us three. “This is so great! How long can you stay? How was your walk?! I can take you back to 69th Street then! There’s a bunch of great food. When do we have to be leaving?”
“No! No! That is not allowed!” In front of his god (anyhow), Mirzah, Zane and Jesse and all of the other Quakers gathering, not to mention … in front of me … this Quaker elder, aaaah, this androcentric asshole, by the name of P.M. Flunk and now flanked by spouse Agnes Flunk, PhD, Independent Scholar, claimed as his own King Herod’s patriarchal power of authority and control over me in the matter … of me … and … of my very own children. This, too, any freedom‑loving independent (–scholar or not!–) can imagine, I have never forgotten!
As much as I’d considered Mi Sprision O’Revinnoco, M.D.’s inaction parentally and medically unconscionable, the Doctors Flunks’ action was, likewise, not only hardly at all Quakerly or anything, like say, spirit‑led, … it was as well in no way conscionable. I have never forgotten it, and I have never returned to a man’s easter sunday anywhere, certainly not there either. Pre‑arrangements had included Adam and P.M. and Agnes Flunk––and, specifically, not me …
It had been the likewise folie‑à‑deuxing Flunk Intellectuals who chauffeured my Truemaier Boys back their afternoon’s 130 minutes’ haul to Herry’s at 1 p.m. and then themselves returning here to Ames, and none of these preparatory negotiations had included me in any way, except to especially keep me fully and ‘quite clearly’ … in the dark. The Flunks’ role was merely that of lackey‑gofers in Herry’s inflictive fuck of bait and switch so as to the Boys to keep Dr. Legion True in hers: that of Invisible Mother. Herry played them. Herry Edinsmaier played P.M. and Agnes Flunk like the bobbleheaded marionettes they were, so dodderingly gaga were these two idiots over Herry’s impressive doctor title, his status in the community as a pillar and his elitist education as a physician. And …. likewise thusly, so oppositely repulsed by my judicial state as a nonmother … and apparently by everything else about me as well.
And they, the Flunks? They let him. They knew the opprobrious Truth about Herry, but they also knew how much … more … they themselves, as did rurally Midwest Mehitable, enjoyed and reveled in their own religion––the one based upon their credo of aristocratic appearances and image management. So the cultured Flunks simply let the Good and Erudite Dr. Edinsmaier play them. Full‑well functioning that––and, as regards me, many a––First Day in the astringently punishing scholarship that: while knowledge is power, the withholding of knowledge is … even more power!
Just four weeks earlier Margaret Sagely died on the 02nd day of March 1991, while on a personal mission of medical mercy to China for her belovéd people there. No proselytizing. None ever when Nurse Margaret went to China. Just gracious and helpful and scientific however she could be. Massive stroke. Seventy‑two years young. Dead. Immediately. Cremated. Ashes back to the States. Another “other mother” of mine––gone. Ashes like Frieda Chicken Guthrie. Ashes and gone.
A memorial service was scheduled at a larger sanctuary in downtown Ames than the Meetinghouse’s front room so that her many, many friends who wanted to say goodbye to her could, three of whom … my Truemaier Boys. Herry had then, too, enticed Agnes and P.M., apparently contacting one or both of them to let them know that he, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive and the Boys would all join the Flunks in one of that particular church’s pews––which they so did do. Again, I had had no prior heads‑‑up until I glanced over my right shoulder and there, subtly nodding and smiling back at me but not too widely the service being a sobering memorial for Margaret who now was basically a carton of carbon inside her simple, mahogany wooden urn up at the altar and all, … were Jesse, Mirzah and Zane. On his way out the narthex’s massive doorway afterward, Mirzah managed to maneuver himself so as to brush beside me and high‑fived my right hand that I held close in and low down by my thigh whilst, poker‑faced, he stared straight ahead of himself and exited to the street. No words exchanged. And then, yet again, my three Boys … were gone.
I closed the wobbly, wooden door of the booth in order to be able to hear something. My machine was temporarily shut down while I spoke on the telephone, but the rest of them were quite up, running and clamoring; it was as always very, very noisy. The phone booth was rickety, musty‑smelling and darkened, there by itself in the far southwest corner of this warehouse‑sized room which was the junk mail factory’s primary production floor.
“Legion, this is Agnes Flunk speaking to you.”
“Agnes?” The clock registered yet another hour and a half of afternoon shift left before I was to punch out.
“Yes, Agnes Flunk. I have had a telephone call just now from Des Moines.”
“What?! Who from?”
“Well, it’s about the Truemaier boys.”
“What is?! They’re okay?! What’s the matter with my Boys?!”
“Well, ah, um …”
“I said, Agnes, what . is . the . matter . with . my Boys?!?!” This woman was still another of those male‑identified ditherers of whom in my World there are far, far too many and for whom I have no patience. None. Much worse yet is the fact that besides thinking herself a Quaker elder and terming herself an “independent scholar” who now and then when she feels like it from her bedroom computer writes books about odd, peculiarly narrow groups of workers or tribes, this woman calls herself a feminist, too. Now when certain of these types of DEhumans do this, then I truly am completely all out of any tolerance for them as well since their genre makes it soooo much harder for the rest of us DEhumans and true feminists, either female or male.
“Your boys’ll be at our house tonight if you want to see them one last time. Herry said he’d bring them all by our house and that you are permitted to come there tonight at 6:30 p.m. for 15 minutes,” came the official announcement back to me of exactly that premonition over which Jesse had soooo been agonizing just the Friday night before. Anxious and sad? Now I knew at least a little something about why his sense. The weekend over, and lo and behold on Monday afternoon, 28 October 1991, less than 72 hours after hugging Jesse inside our dark, cold Ol’ Black parked on an Urbandale sidestreet and wanting to weep over the dread voiced in Jesse’s fears and sorrow at leaving me and Iowa and never returning to us as a kid again, Dr. True was indeed right now being dictated to by a person whom I do not trust and by the type of woman whom I so loathe that I, my Boys’ own mama, would be “permitted” one last chance to see them all before they left for where?
“See them all before they left for where, Agnes?!”
“Well, now that isn’t information I have. And if I did have it, I wouldn’t be permitted to give it out, now would I? You already know that though, Legion, don’t you?” There are four- and five-letter names for women like Agnes Flunk, names not at all like “scholar,” but she isn’t worth expending any more effort nor expounding upon with any more time or descriptive words, let alone, worrying about folks like her. Nor is P.M. either––except for the itty bitty bit part in which P.M. was yet to be seen acting later on that evening.
Ms. Phillipa Chance I hardly knew and then only as an overseer of my factory labor. I needed to leave work; but I, right then, just couldn’t think of how to explain in a short, short byte … why. My jobs changed soon after this 1991’s October––both because the orders were decreasing and its temporary positions at the factory were being eliminated and because I needed more hours than those which had been available there anyhow so I have never gotten an opportunity to know this person. Recently I read in a wee local newsy rag where this woman was working alone one night at the county’s favorite BBQ take‑out outfit and that Ms. Phillipa Chance had managed to salvage some of its equipment and to save herself before the tiny joint, like torched Twyla’s Salon and Barbering had in Urbandale, burned completely down.
Still I don’t know her personally and, then as now, if the woman’s ever had a child or kids of her own or not. I truly only knew of her from that mid afternoon of my beseeching her for allowance to leave work. As I remember acts of atrocity, I also remember actions of the opposite kind, and Ms. Phillipa Chance has always remained in my memory for the fact that her nature with me so fit her name, Chance. I exited the phone booth apparently as white as this sheet. My supervisor, Ms. Phillipa Chance, heard above all of that din, “My babies. He’s taking my babies away,” as I walked up to her small workspace countertop in the midst of the warehouse, not dazed as much as seething. And, as noticeably DEhuman, ... powerless.
No asking me “What?!” No asking me “Why are you talking to yourself and not back at your machine working?!” No questions at all as a matter of fact, and I never repeated myself. She looked at me squarely, no hedge, and replied, “Get outta here, Woman. Go! You are gone. We’ll just see ya’ tomorrow, okay?!”
After the rare times as I run into such people, almost exclusively DEhumans too they are, I wonder how it is that they know, how they already know what was coursing through my heart and my core after news like I’d just received. Had she lost a child herself? Had a besieged sister of hers needed to wage war and lost babies? Ms. Chance wasn’t old enough I didn’t think to be a grandmother, as was Grand Mehitable, who may have been mom to a tormented daughter and grandchildren embattled in ‘the court’ system––with all of its functionaries there with whom the family, including Ms. Chance perhaps, may have had to deal, to engage, to clash, to fight, to come to legal blows––from its judges to the attorneys to the family and child psychologists to those custody evaluators and guardians ad litem to the state’s family services’ division personnel to the cops and the drug rehabilitators and the alcohol abuse counselors to the battered women’s shelter workers to who knows who next. How had Ms. Phillipa Chance, with instantaneousness and urgency not to mention with nearly proven clairvoyance, known where I stood after that telephone call and how had she known with precision clarity, knife‑like, what the cut of “He’s taking my babies away” meant? For all their PhDnesses and all of their assumed scholarship and theoretical Quakerliness, the elder Dr. Agnes Flunk along with her spicily mucked‑up spouse, Dr. P.M. Flunk, parents themselves of two grown‑and‑gone sons, could certainly have both stood several lessons and to pass prelim examinations on Substance and Depth in Understanding and Compassion at Grace’s Listening College––both of them tutored there then by one mighty brainy and … kind … Ms. Phillipa Chance, junk mail factory boss‑lady.
I knocked promptly at 6:30 p.m. on the front door of the bungalow. Dr. P.M. Flunk opened it to an empty living room in which stood Agnes, gawping in judgment at me without so much as a weak smile. I knew there’d been a reason why I hadn’t sought to be present any earlier; she and that countenance of hers was it. No Truemaier Boys anywhere in sight. And no conversation occurring either––which was just fine with me. Deaf as I am, I am never discomfited as are other persons by silence in such threesomes; and because of the particular and peculiar other two in our specific axiso’three, I was most contented to remain shut up … waiting. Waiting for the Truemaier Boys in the silence of the front room of the Flunk household. I had a helluva lot to think on anyhow so, doing that, I just stared at its floor, “What in the hell was Herry up to? Taking the Boys where? For how long? No wonder Jesse’d said what he’d said last Friday night! Yeah, something’d been goin’ down, all right, but what? What?!”
[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]
Mirzah Truemaier: Legion’s son
Jesse Truemaier: Legion’s son
Zane 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]
Mary Jane: daughter of Fannie Issicran McLive; stepsister of Zane, Jesse, and Mirzah
Legion’s Friends: Margaret, Mona, Yanira, Stormy, Lynda, László, Jane, Kincaid, Joseph, Sheryl, Abraham (Quaker elder), Frieda
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 first Family Court lawyer
Carlotta Klutz: Legion’s second Family Court attorney
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
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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