CHAPTER 28: The Opera: Act III; Pt. 4 [cont. 7]
From "The Saga of One F**ked Mother
In this section of Chapter 28, the funeral for Legion’s father is behind her and the boys are allowed to stay in Iowa for a few days. She has not seen or spoken with them since Herry abducted them to West Virginia a half year earlier.
Legion is disgusted by the fact that she needs a patriarchally-aligned chaperone and must carry with her a note from the judge allowing her to be around her boys—when she was always their loving, primary nurturer and he the mostly-absent abuser. But at least she gets to see and hug them...
In the last section of Chapter 28, Legion is dealing with her father’s death—his passing into Ancestor status. The judge has given Herry complete control over the boys and he makes good use of it by getting his buddy to go to the funeral specifically to keep the kids away from Legion. She notes how if it had been her trying to take the boys out of state for anything, she would have to beg for the court’s permission but the father can do what he wants when he wants—just another violation of women’s right to equal protection in Family Court.
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. 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
I had not seen two of my sons, Mirzah and Zane, since Monday night, 28 October 1991 … And, of course, Jesse and I had not seen each other since the Friday night before that one, the threateningly portentous blackness within our Ol’ Black of “If I’m taken away to live in another state, I know I won’t ever be a kid again in Iowa, Mom. I won’t ever again come back to Iowa as a child; I just know it” sorrow!
Subsequently, I, Invisible Ma, “had not been allowed” to even talk to any one of my three Boys since then … either. “MOTHER, YOU HAVE NO SONS! SONS, YOU HAVE NO MOTHER!”
I couldn’t even go along to the airport to pick them up! That task was relegated and delegated not to the Truemaier Boys’ own mother at all but to their Uncle Sterling, a patriarchal duty from which the brother absolutely delighted in deposing me––wearing with its directive … such the very same snide-like sneer as Herry’s!
BOOK 3: Dr. True's Opera in Three Acts—with Five Parts
CHAPTER 28: The Opera: Act III; Part 4 [cont. 7]
When I eventually emerged from that back refuge about an hour and a half later, quite a number of the relatives and others were all congregating inside the gracious and spacious living room, one both for sitting as well as for dining at a lovely blonde ensemble located off at the far east end of it. Mehitable was at her prime … working that room. Working … working, working it. And … all of the would‑be mourners now present. This is a woman who not only has made “Poor Me, Poor Me, O Ya’ Need to Pity Poor, Poor Me” an arts performance but also … her life’s work. And has, in addition, tried in every which tired, old way she knows of to make it and my two sisters’ … ours, too. Hence, the ‘be soft, be servile, be deferent’ invectives to only us females and her “You lost a marriage to a doctor? A doctor?! Why, you stupid idiot!” sorts of taunting teachings and scorning‑screed censures. It was, now, around 4 in the p.m. when I was first witnessing the tears flowing from her lacrimal canals and were they ever. Boxes containing Kleenex two of the women kept shoving into Mehitable’s reach and all DEhumans present could be collectively heard from time to time with their ubiquitous, “There, there. There, there now” or the ever popular and truly selfish question too, too many females implore from each other that is actually a strategized, maneuvered and the desired response to Mehitable’s poor, poor me–posturing … “O Mehitable, whatever will you do now?”
Selfish? Yes, selfish, in that … what about AmTaham and what about those of us others who truly had relied and depended upon him, his wisdom and his Truths daily. ‘Cause, hell, Mehitable’d be just fine. Mighty fine, in fact. She would just keep on doing now exactly what she’d always been doing, AmTaham alive or dead! Nothing about this day would introduce change into Mehitable’s functioning in the least. Only mine would AmTaham now LOST to me … change. This person Mehitable would continue to control everything––either out in front with AmTaham’s physical form gone missing now or still hooded and concealed just as she had always done or tried to get done before. From out behind the dashboard lights!
The driving engine that was Mehitable’s force was to be envied by the staunchest of radical feminists––except for one thing: Mehitable was precisely and of relentless, purposeful deliberation … noooo feminist, of course. Hers was a dark force, one of the genre of Mother Theresa and her ilk and never at all one of, “Fuck, you can go this alone. You don’t need a man. And, what’s more, you never did.”
AmTaham’s wisdom and his Truths, the stuff of which was now most literally Ancestral … instead, still, of the natures existing “… –in–Training,” were hair‑trigger, that is instantaneously available and at all times now … accessible to me. I mean I didn’t have to wait any longer, wait to find AmTaham at home or for him to arrive at my house or to come to the telephone or to the end of some other lifeline. I could just call upon him, rely upon him, depend upon his Truths and his wisdom just any ol’ time I bloody well needed him and them. That is, this––His Dying, was the very essence of His Things Ancestral. For me. Of this amazement, of course, I did not yet fully comprehend on that Monday of 30 March 1992; but even now and even so, I would soooo give up in the blink of the span of time that was that last heartbeat of his … I would give up anything over which I have control just to have him back breathing again. Instead of, now, “ … always, always accessible” to me and to the Boys.
On my person I possessed a piece of pocketed paper signed by Storm County’s High Aggrandizier himself allowing that the three Truemaiers, if the Boys themselves wanted to, could attend their grandfather’s funeral and, likewise, attend to the duties of it assigned therein to any one of them. Or, some such wording.
… That is, daJudge’d just written me a note.
Out of this morbid Monday morning’s swiftly‑scribbling hand of Sol Wacotler Seizor. … daMan. A note.
Me, the 44‑year‑old, now‑suddenly‑and‑finally‑all‑grown‑up‑daughter … of a man just dead.
And, in the United States of America in the year of 1992, the biological––and loving––mother of three, minor children.
A note that “excused” me!
And, a few hours earlier, stated that Mirzah, Jesse and Zane could become three of AmTaham’s pallbearers if Mehitable or Sterling or whoever, certainly not moi, had wanted this to be the case in their, and just as certainly not my, planning of the memorializing ceremonies. I am thinking on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Our Androcentric Culture published in 1911, almost a decade before the birth even of Mehitable Natures, and transposing to the legal system and the American way of supposed “freedoms” and “justice,” Authoress Gilman’s quotation there on … religions. “All the religions are made by men and forced on women whether they like it or not, women––denied souls––given a much lower place in religion going from the service of their fathers’ gods to the service of their husbands’, having none of their own. We see religions make no place for women, rigidly bigoted, unchanging as any other. That women are the bulwark of our religions is due to the acts of two classes of men: the men of the world who keep women in their restricted position and the men of the church who take every advantage of the limits of women.”
Gone from the dead man’s over to the service of her husband’s Legion True is … even though … technically ... he be the ex‑husband. And gone there only by way of daJudges, also almost all exclusively the humans … first. She, of course the DEhuman, requires, has need of and should desire for herself no justice and no freedoms of her own.
She does need to take a note of excusal with her, however.
When she goes over to do the legal servicing and the bidding of him who can have her, her services and her labors––as well as, of course, have utterly away from her––because of sperm exaltation––her very own babies which mission she alone chose for herself the deadly risk (that pregnancy and birthing is) to grow into the human beings who they themselves actually have become … she needs to take a note. Sordid. Macabre.
FLIP/REVERSE: A permitting piece of judicial fuck the likes of which paper I know of no adult man willing … to first procure and then to carry upon his person. And, finally, to produce to his approving and consenting mama or, say, … show his sanctioning sister! Not to mention via a third party, for example, to demonstrate as documentation to the ex‑wife! when she, from a long and far distance, demands to verifiably know of the daddee’s ‘legal’ proof of his ‘temporary’ authorization?! You, Jury?! You know of such a human, do any of You?!
I had to ask all of my Sons, long into their adulthoods, just how it was that they’d initially received the clobbering finality of AmTaham’s dying because Herry and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, of course, never told me. And Sterling and Mehitable haven’t––if they ever did know.
It’s a given that I was so not allowed to speak to Zane, Mirzah or Jesse if I had called out to Grubtrop; and although I do not remember if I did or if I did not, I can only imagine that I no doubt tried to do this telephoning. Any mother would have is what I am thinking. Any of us Mothers on Trial would have attempted to get this saddest of news to her children so I am fairly sure that I, too, … tried to tell them.
Only from Zane do I know about the immediacy of the Boys’ receipt of the sobering knowledge that their Grandpa AmTaham had in the pentametre of the man’s Favorite Poet Tennyson “crossed the bar” over into Ancestor status. And Zane only knew about his own case alone and nothing regarding what had transpired as far as his brothers’ first acquisition of the sorrowful information. Same Edinsmaier‑shunning deal as when Zane had, in Kate Mitchell Elementary’s fifth grade of Mr. Green’s, filmed his Grandpa AmTaham True for that specific History Day project four years earlier: Protecting and Guarding and Mentoring and Role‑Modeling Herry‑Daddee was nowhere around on the scene when Zane stepped off the Grubtrop, West Virginia community’s schoolbus that Monday afternoon, 30 March 1992, in front of Herry’s two‑story, white wood‑frame rental. The Good and Wonderful Doctor was probably at work … doctoring … ya’ know, Jury, … aaaah, “healing.” If so and nevertheless … Dr. Herod Edinsmaier was physically at a place, was at a workplace, from where he could have quite easily then left! Literally! Child–protecting and –guarding and –“loving” Daddee‑Herry could have … should have … … if loving ... gotten himself immediately, right there at the laboratory’s lot, into any one of the great number of his gazillion vehicles and purposefully driven off bound for the Truemaier Boys’ vicinity––just in order to come to the sides of all of these children at the very moments they each were to receive into their brains this devastating news.
Which Healer Edinsmaier did not do for Zane. And likely not as well for Jesse and Mirzah. Fuck, not only that … Dr. Herod Edinsmaier didn’t even (care to) know––in the vernacular of his Next Cuntly Spouse, in the blistering argot of blithering Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, Dr. Edinsmaier “had no idea” … then or, likely … ever on any given day and time! … the virtual, the possible, let alone, the actual! vicinities of any of my Truemaier Boys!
Ms. Fannie McLive told Zane right there on the front yard.
Zane, alone, without even one of his two brothers present, a freshman in high school, just 15 years old and a boy who had just lost one of the closest and truest friends he would ever know and have as devoted and loyal ally throughout his entire lifetime.
The incomprehensibility of some people’s actions does not boggle me anymore. It used to. It doesn’t do that anymore. At all. I can see Soooo Not–Gonna! – Step – Back – “Step”“Mother” McLive’s doing this deathly deed all by herself. Right there on the grass and sidewalk. Without any True on the telephone wire, at the least. Or one Truemaier brother present for each other’s steadying and silencing calm … as well. Or even just “First‑Father” Edinsmaier at all ‘around’ for (possibly!) earliest comforting. I can visualize this actual scenario occurring. It––as it was, of course, so determinedly and utterly meant to––disgusts. Still.
Same shaming shun, as well, as to how the three Truemaier Boys, Mirzah, Jesse and Zane, had each one received the cheerless and injurious news of their parents’ pending divorce: captured, confined and shut up as prisoners inside their seatbelts at interstate speeds and without benefit of the presence of their mother or any grandparent. Just detained hostages of Herry’s––alone. Very, very alone. A life lesson Herry‑The‑Walt Disney continued to teach, teach, all the time teach to each of my Boys on the day of the death of his ex-father-in-law, AmTaham True, “Receive and take all of this on and inside yourselves,––alone. Certainly don’t let a woman who might’ve been important to you at one time know or see you cry. She’s only a female; and, if you grieve, you’re nothin’ but a weakling! After all, she’s invisible to you kids anyhow.” Yes, by both the Good and Wonderful Healer Herry and his Next Cunt my Boys’ mother, too, was resolutely … was vengefully … made to be nowhere around when any one of the three Truemaier Children first heard of their Grandpa AmTaham’s dying that day! My Sons that day––as on all others –– had no mother. And I, suddenly made fatherless, too had no Sons … to give me comfort … either! The very same shaming Edinsmaier-shun. “Years ago, still small, I lost my mother.” “ … a flood of tears must fall.”
Tuesday three‑fourths of the immediate siblings which, by then, included Ardys with her spouse from Bay City, Michigan, Sterling with his who’d joined The Only and Most Excellent Son‑Brother from their Omaha‑area home, and Dr. Legion True, alone and with No Other to comfort her, all motored, some of us inside AmTaham’s brand‑newest, two‑day‑old, promised‑to‑be‑gifted‑to‑Legion‑when‑Grandpa‑was‑“done with it”—Caddy Blue The Widow Mehitable over to a town just a bit more than an hour away from the Burg. A nice little village by where, I’d long ago been told in my youth, farmed “a lot of Amish” although, I wondered now, what is a lot of them? Does any one, two, three or so of humans and “their” DEhumans, particularly those quirkily different from ourselves, constitute “a lot of Amish” then? The “them‑and‑not‑us” mentality outright, and out straight as well from Mehitable, from her thinkings and sayings. As I knew she would most certainly do, Endys for whom Cousin Wyman had found contacts chose to forego all encounters with those of us others in The Family prior to the very ritual in AmTaham’s church of his childhood––the building that at one time had housed within its interior AmTaham True’s one‑room school. That elementary institution wherein which one specific herr reverend‑schoolmaster of the early 1930s had not been so reverent at all to, in particular, a learning, learning, always‑loved‑to‑learn‑more‑than‑he‑already‑knew, 12‑year‑old AmTaham True‑kiddo nor to that adolescent’s true and correct knowledge of The Dead’s Bones in Africa. No actual ancestoring knowledge himself had that herr‑teaching genre of ancestor‑in‑training! Obviously, this unholy, tutoring dude possessed, as well, Herry Edinsmaier’s magical mantra of “Deny, Deny, Deny!” Just deny The Truth. That of The Dead’s Bones!
The event that was unfolding as The Funeral of My Father began taking, at this other town, a decidedly Mehitable‑turn which, in some way, was to have been expected. And in other, crucial and honoring, ways … not! One of the many nieces of Mehitable Natures True on her blood side of the Natures family, actually the eldest of all of her nieces and nephews from both ancestries, a person then also first cousin to me and to my sibs, owns and operates by now for a very long, long time along with her spouse a mortuary in this locality. All-we-all had traveled there, of course, to select the accoutrements which these two people would then manage in the next four to five upcoming days through the physicality that was another funeral home building, and because of its distance, … not theirs. Another one back in Williamsburg––made by way of a business arrangement apparently often done between two such establishments, especially when the specific dead’s bones involved is––or was––a relative of some or one of the funeral parlors’ proprietors.
However, nearly everything else about the ceremony from this visit on out took on the characteristics of an affair which I did not recognize at all as a True one. Only a year and a half earlier this man, AmTaham True, had called a family meeting comprised of only us four adult children of his––and of no one else––to exactly explain things inside The Will of the True Estate and to elaborate clearly to us direct descendents of his about the terms AmTaham True had specifically set forth––in witnessed writing––regarding his dying and death––––one biiiig, big one of which understood terms was to be … cremation! All four of us were present at Said Meeting! Well, any of that family meeting’s directives? I mean any of AmTaham’s particularly detailed wants? So certainly were not now happening! And did not. No, Mehitable turned the entire deal all upside down and around Her Way––that is, “in The Right Way” … as I, when a little kiddo, used to continuously hear pitched at me if I fucked up stuff, according to her, which I’d been assigned to do.
The first of a couple of horrid liturgically dirge‑worthy details which Mehitable orchestrated was the casket selection. This lamentation deal commenced with an actual parade led by the Natures niece as majorette‑mortician, sans her metallic baton of course but poised pen in hand instead, out of her parlor’s backdoor to an outbuilding wherein were contained temperature and moisture controls and about a dozen different full‑sized and wee kiddo‑measured models in which one, now dead, could sail away off to Never‑Never‑Evermore land. I saw in this structure not one urn nor jar appropriate to the holding of the ashes of anything carbonaceous after its first being burnt beyond crisped or crypt or cryptic belief. Not even a box which was a construct slapped together out of cheap pine board slabs such as had been the environs of my dear friend Frieda Chicken Guthrie’s catacomb. Silver or pewter‑like, several different brown ones, black but gilded with that tacky gold paint trim, white and child‑sized. Mehitable’s, er, ah, um, rather AmTaham’s, choice came in brown and ‘naturally’ was quite appropriately padded with that pillowy, velvety smocked stuffing of satin or some such other fabric. In off‑white. Oyster shell, likely.
Once in it, Daddy did look lovely, of course––but for the expression on his lips and in those “peaceful” eyelids of his that otherwise pronounced in solitude to no one there willing to or capable of Truely hearing him––except me! “This is so not what I’d wanted nor stated. But, fudge, what do I bloody care now? I’m free––free at last! She’s always had Her Way about anything and everything anyhow!” Shit, the casket wasn’t even pine, at the least, and was entirely of a metal composition including appropriate railing handles for gripping use by pallbearers––about whom … “I have no idea.” Dark, dark blue‑black suit coat, pure white shirt, and some necktie about which I––still––also remember nothing––except that he had been the man to teach me how to tie and to knot one once, my standing behind him and reaching around from the rear his shoulders still massive although weakened by that polio thingy … to secure it. “Because you have sons now, Kitty, and will need sometime to know how to teach them to do this,” Daddy’d coached me, the Truemaier Boys’ ma, on the Four‑in‑Hand first, then the Half Windsor; and finally I graduated with the Double. This little life lesson, too, for a mother of sons AmTaham had guided me in learning––and I was long then into my 30s, his obviously full‑well knowing even at that point about Herry‑Daddee’s type of role‑modeling … teachings.
O and the second detail, the actual structuring of Daddy’s memorial service itself: from the music pieces right on down to which program cover to choose! Ardys the Eldest, probably the most male‑identified female adult I have ever met and fully proud of it, a woman who took straight to heart and learned very, very well Mehitable’s lessons on servility and deference to all men and so self‑defined even more than Herry’s Next‑Cunt McLive or Childless‑‘Evaluator’ Canard or indeed Mehitable herself, settled on one along with our mother too, I am guessing, that outdid even their own usual dependencies. Plain white, the front cover had on it a wooden cross with its bottom pole’s post piercing through a king’s three‑pronged crown in black ink, the holy trinity symbol I am supposing, through which also lay on top of the cross a palm branch also in black. Not so appropriate for moral atheist AmTaham True my thought was; but, hey, ‘twas only my thought and I now bothered not at all to verbalize it, the cover itself being one‑fourth of the entire, 8½” x 11”, folded deal to begin with and printed on mighty thin paper! About that part AmTaham would’ve been pleased––that is, about his kiddos’ not having spent for expensive cardstock or something fancier. Everything about this man his entire lifetime like so many, many of the Midwest’s farmers before him oozed frugality, minimalism, simplicity––––and that had been the utter substance of AmTaham True’s continuing message for us four at that family meeting, the distinct elements of said meeting Ardys, Sterling and The Widow Mehitable were almost as utterly ignoring––––full‑tilt funeral boogie––––right now!
It got worse … way worse in point of fact.
In the lower right of this program cover were the following words––still from these three’s most magically made and such ‘godly’ writings, most certainly not of AmTaham’s! “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you a crown of life” had been lifted out of a place called revelations in some male‑construct’s worth of papers which martin luther alongside centuries of other only‑authoring men dominatingly termed ‘holy’ and which words, therefore because these several dudes “had said so,” are to be believed and heeded! Opening the program to page four and past a stinging passage on its page two about “Who knows the power of your anger? For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you” said to have been taken from an entity entitled psalms 90, to a back – and – forth group – recitation between the preacherman and us, the mourning masses and the allegedly ‘AmTaham True – honoring’ assembled, there appeared this untruth, a wholly hypocritical and speciously incorrect falsity that started off this “responsive reading” … beginning, of course, with the ministerman’s first getting to speak, “As it was confessed by AmTaham at his confirmation and at other times throughout his christian life as a public testimony of his christian faith, we join in making our faith known …” … and then the rest of us, along with this cleric in his costly long white dress, were to launch into babbling away at another deal full‑up of more only‑men’s words called the apostles’ credo … or some such thingy.
“Confessed? Public? Throughout? Faith? christian faith?”
I should have … loooong and loudly … screamed back as my entitled! “responsive reading,” “We all here so assembled today … know … that AmTaham True had been forcibly coerced as a 12‑year‑old, very publicly bludgeoned even! And that this man, when he lived and breathed and upon this World walked, entirely loathed any semblance of this whole, particularly mother‑fucking, public confessional‑type shit that, since the time from when he was just a budding teenager, he bloody well bloomin’ didn’t at all believe in! Religious education is child abuse, is child abuse, is child abuse. Child abuse is religious education. Very!”
As if this gobbledygook and the claptrap that was the exhibit of AmTaham True inside his corpse and still not put to us per his wishes as the heap of carbonaceous ashes which Daddy had really wanted to become weren’t enough, Ardys, Mehitable and Sterling then topped the whole of it all off with a couple of tunes which they called hymns: “rock of ages” and “jesus, savior, pilot me.” These two, androcentric ditties were to be sung by all of us before and after this guy in his floor‑length, cloud‑robe throttled by such the fancy, multi‑colored and likewise‑expensive chokehold of a braided stole allowed (… of course!) himself to sermonize on and on using some stock‑and‑canned, surreally metaphoric funereal message said ministerman termed, “following the shepherd’s voice” taken from yet another man’s myths, one by the ubiquitous name of john written within yet another male‑identified construct claiming itself to be the be‑all, end‑all, tallest tale of all traditions: the christian gospel.
The whole deal of this funeral deed then was to be done with by a concluding number … just before the recessional … rather levelly headed up as “abide with me, fast falls the eventide.” Then all of us assembled crawled off in carbon‑spewing cavalcade (… instead of with carbonaceous Mr. True) to the side of his gravesite, the lone bugler’s Taps, more words of such untruths about Daddy blathered all around out there, then my father’s actual lowering––and my actual being brought down soooo, so low too I thought––then, as well, the dirt of course symbolizing Daddy’s ‘true’ True ashes, the cut, quite carbonaceous flowers, more symbolism strewn down on top of that soil’s first, the church‑ladies’ swell‑tasting food and, well, … back to all the rest of us then living all of our separate lives … lovingly, … I guessed! NOT!
Wednesday the Truemaier Boys, just the three of them unaccompanied by anybody else whom they knew and about which I was so glad, flew themselves in to the Eastern Iowa Airport outside of Cedar Rapids to its south, and that for us four was no April Fool’s joke! I had not seen two of my sons, Mirzah and Zane, since Monday night, 28 October 1991 … of the Elitist and Erudite Edinsmaier’s and Flunks’ mother‑and kiddos’‑fucking fiasco! And, of course, Jesse and I had not seen each other since the Friday night before that one, the threateningly portentous blackness within our Ol’ Black of “If I’m taken away to live in another state, I know I won’t ever be a kid again in Iowa, Mom. I won’t ever again come back to Iowa as a child; I just know it” sorrow! Subsequently, I, Invisible Ma, “had not been allowed” to even talk to any one of my three Boys since then … either. “MOTHER, YOU HAVE NO SONS! SONS, YOU HAVE NO MOTHER!”
Shit, we had a helluva lot of catching up to do––and with such the gargantuan Grandpa AmTaham loss and no privacy at all, it was, well, … not to be, of course! What did I and our needs matter after all? This funeral ‘fun’? This was entirely The Widow Mehitable’s ShowTime and not for us to desire anything whatsoever to suit ourselves: I couldn’t even go along to the airport to pick them up! That task was relegated and delegated not to the Truemaier Boys’ own mother at all but to their Uncle Sterling, a patriarchal duty from which the brother absolutely delighted in deposing me––wearing with its directive … such the very same snide-like sneer as Herry’s! And aaaall about which Charlotte Perkins Gilman would have so, so easily recognized, too: The mother’s chattel—children, as of course is her own person, her actual self, are only to be … manhandled! Thusly, so ‘handled’ then from one man only … over to becoming the property, voila! of only another man’s––and most assuredly for certain! never, never are the kiddos to be delivered into the overall care of … only their very own mama! “How androcentrically managed and ‘balanced’, Ms. Gilman, not?” I was left thinking. She can do the chores of and for the children as well as for him––whoever the him is at the time who happens to have the exalted spermatozoal DNA‑possession rights to her children, that is, she can do the cooking, the serving, the cleaning up after, the worrying about. She, the slave however, just cannot have any rights at all to her own children. All of the perfectly papal personae and that renegade one, marty luther? Why, any of these so godly men’d have been so through‑and‑through … so thoroughly … pleased with their two descendent pupils, the quite Male‑Identified Mehitable and Her Most Excellent Only Male‑Offspring Sterling!
It was spectacular, of course, just to see them all––even if for such the so awfully sorrowful deal as was this specific week’s. Yes, they appeared to me so much taller and older! Hell, it’d been over five months’ time! Girls and boys their ages have spurts! Zane was particularly quiet and subdued, not at all his usually exuberant self. I mean, sure, one of his, and mine, too, most favored people in the whole world died; but Zane had always … before … possessed a special resiliency about bad stuff in life not witnessed in most folks of all ages––as had been the case with so many rescued animals particularly … including his Sylvan laprine inside the Brookside Forest, a blesséd buoyancy after being booted life’s hardballs––of which Zane did not display any during this entire visit. Things surrounding either AmTaham’s dying or everything back in West Virginia or generally overall were entirely far, far too weighty––even for Zane, still only 15 years old and in the very midst of his teenage years. Earlier, there had been talk of Zane’s tooting for AmTaham the Taps on his trumpet which I had brought with me from Ames exactly because of that possible plan. One lovely lone oak tree, already with this year’s Vernal Equinox and late, late March nearly leafed out and so tall, had been singled out down a hillock a short piece from Daddy’s soon‑to‑be grave where out from under it the solo bugler was to sound that final farewell. That tooter did not turn out to be Zane … after all.
For me the next three days passed by as pleasantly and as warmly as the sudden, wholly unexpected death of one’s belovéd father possibly could. From the comforting of the presence and embracing arms of my equally belovéd Boys to the words and gazes from my own four nephews and extraordinary first cousins of whom I am so luckily blessed with several superb and stupendous individuals on both the Natures and True sides of the family to the amazing miracles whom I have for friends.
This man had a host of admirers and inspired friends himself. The viewing and reception at the Burg funeral home I found to be the hardest for me coming as it did on the very evening of the afternoon when the Boys had flown in … Wednesday. After the first day, the hardhearted and meanspirited death‑filled day of Monday not only of AmTaham’s attack and dying but also their day of making Legion True out to be “the evil, murdering monster that we, Sterling and Mehitable, know her so to be––just like Herry also says she is!” and the next day of preparations and planning were over, I exhaled and let my hair hang down and then, because of it, felt as did the Boys as well, fairly shocky––something a normal DEhuman should expect to.
The humble church of AmTaham’s youth was packed, the women of the kitchen, and the folks in there were only females of course, the food and their serving of it up all proved delicious and sensational and the graveside ceremonies … so sadly breathtaking. Returning to Mehitable’s house, the Boys and I determined to stay in its far recesses––as the same deal as when The Widow had bluntly ordered me to its very remote bedrooms as a 23‑year‑old divorcée back from New York City to hide out isolated there and to mask my adult self away from local visitors and guests at her and AmTaham’s front door. Mehitable True had done this very same concealing of an entirely adult but psychotropic drug‑taking Endys, too, always couching her all‑consuming embarrassment of my bipolar‑labeled sister and me and our apparent humiliation of her in her hometown community as … “for our protection.” With a full bathroom in the back as well, we four talked, we read, we talked some more coming out from our retreat to the well‑lit living room with its picture window spance to the south only once in a while … to specifically visit there with relatives and friends. The Boys enjoyed especially the company of their True cousins, my four nephews, these seven male humans total then who equaled the entire extent of all of AmTaham’s and Mehitable’s grandchildren. About the fact of their only‑maleness, Mehitable, herself merely birthing but a lone one male out of four total kiddos altogether, continues to this day to repeat her colossal pride.
Time, as it does not always do for me at all, passed by us four … entirely too swiftly: it was Sunday morning of the 05th day of April, and my daddy AmTaham had been in the ground and cold now … since Thursday afternoon. Mirzah’s, Zane’s and Jesse’s flight was set to leave at approximately 1:30 p.m. that afternoon––first for Kansas City, transferring them there then to Pittsburgh and at last by way of yet another transfer on through to the small, regional Montclank‑Grubtrop airport inside central West Virginia … and once there, thus, back into Herry‑Daddee’s (alleged) handling before it grew too, too dark … I was thinking. The Natures’ 70‑something stunning and marvelous matriarch, Pearl, of my First Cousins Amanda, Carolina and Wyman and for all of her time an aunt to awe any niece, asked to drive the Truemaier Boys … with me finally included … and, of course, along with The Widow Mehitable herself to their plane’s departure. She would, she said if Mehitable wanted it that way, chauffeur us all there in AmTaham’s newest and wowing Caddy Blue, now only about nine total days out from its purchase and into the Trues’ actual ownership and unmistakably only (legally blind) Mehitable’s … henceforth. This offer of my Aunt Pearl’s Mehitable speedily agreed to. And since according to family law judges and to the Truemaier Boys’ other owning‑men like Herry and Sterling, it simply had to be, then so gladly did … I too agree.
What it soooo did not simply have to be, however––was that exact day!
Around about 10:30 in that a.m., Zane, never really this entire time so far the effervescent and ebullient Zane whom I could recognize, fell very nauseous and dizzy, diaphoretic, vertiginously woozy and took to becoming nearly immediately prostrate on his belly in the bedroom closest to the living room and kitchen. I summoned pots to puke forth in, cooled water in which to wet washcloths for forehead mopping and daubing––and his Grandmother Mehitable, “Call Herry, either you or Sterling. Get him on the phone and tell him to reschedule the flight. Zane cannot go anywhere today. Here’re the telephone numbers, both for the residence and for Herry’s lab at the med center. Go! Call him, please! Now!”
“I’ll do no such thing!!!!” was my immediately screamed, I mean stat! answer back. Now that, indeed! was something I did recognize! Right up there alongside her “in The Right Way!,” “I shall do no such thing!” is Mehitable’s standard response directly to me to just about anything and everything I have ever asked of her … throughout my entire lifetime and so it was certainly seeming to continue to be that right about then, too!
The Widow’s manner was dictatorial and tyrannical as if she, her very self, had been the parental rights’‑terminating praetor on that earlier Storm County judicial bench. As a matter of fact, it was pretty obvious that she was very well calculating right on that spot there of Zane’s sickbed, at his and his brothers’ expense of their physical health, psyches and well‑being, the possible weight and cost specifically to her … of my venture at flights’ rescheduling. What would be Herry’s take on her, Mehitable, the maternal grandmother’s siding back here in Iowa with the Truemaier Boys’ mama (who also just happened to be her very own child) … versus … placing them all on the previously arranged airplane right then and there––with a traveling Truemaier child so ill! and all––back to their daddee’s? So very, very soon into the Loss of their Grandpa AmTaham not only from her but from the rest of us as well, she was, in mighty fine‑tuned and operating aprovechar style, already in to figuring out what the likelihood would be of The (Ex‑) Son‑in‑Law Herry Edinsmaier’s interpreting her actions at attending to the true “best interests of the Truemaier Boys” if she gave up, for even just this one day, her intentions and efforts at remaining Herry‑Daddee’s most staunchest of allying, male‑identified henchwomen. If in her immediate future alongside, of course, STEP‑Right‑In‑“Mom”‑McLive, ... if Mehitable did not abrogate the wishes of the Boys’ actual mother and, now, diagnostician, nurse, doctor and healer as well, and if she did not collude––and right now!––with The Good and Wonderful Doctor‑Daddee Herry and go up against the involvement in their futures by the Truemaier Boys’ actual mama and instantly and directly work to make her as invisible to Mirzah, Jesse and Zane … as Daddee and stepMommy do, why then what ‘privileges’ as The Takeover Mother‐Surrogate inside these brothers’ lives would Dr. Herod Edinsmaier rescind from her, Mehitable?! “I. Will. Do. No. Such. Thing!”
“Please, Mom. Look at him. He can’t go anywhere today. Not like this. Please, please call Herry. Even Herry won’t want him to come back in this condition, I’m sure of it,” although I was nowhere at all sure of my statement. In fact, I felt it a lie––––but I had to try. Zane was soooo, so sick.
“Yes, he can. And he will. For all you know, he’s faking it!” she honestly said that. Mehitable, Zane’s grandma … allegedly in the agony and throes of gravest grief over the dying of her own great husband … she actually said that. She did.
[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]
Zane Truemaier: Legion’s son
Jesse 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]
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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