CHAPTER 28: The Opera: Act III; Pt. 4 [cont. 10]
From "The Saga of One F**ked Mother
In this section of Chapter 28, Legion gets to sneakily see her oldest son Zane every weekend for a month when he comes to Iowa for a visit, staying with her mother—but only because he did not give his grandmother Herry’s note directing her to keep him away from Legion. She is so pleased to have that little bit of time with one of her children. She has not seen or heard from the others.
Legion is busy pro se for the third Family Court trial, along with her multiple jobs. She is doing discovery, organizing witnesses, and filing all necessary documents timely and properly, including subpoenas. She is miffed that Herry’s shiesty attorney unscrupulously obtained her therapy records without giving her time to object to the subpoena.
And Legion has taken her first attorney’s advice: no men. She has had not one date, not even a rendezvous, since the separation for fear it will be used against her by the male judge. All along, she is well aware that men dating or remarrying, as Herry did, is never used against them.
In the last section of Chapter 28, Legion decides to go pro se, and realizes she does a much better job representing herself than either of her lawyers had—not that that would make any difference in the end. She is also beginning to fear that even if she gets all the truth to the court, including about Herry’s sex addiction and abuse, she may not get justice.
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
A letter to Mehitable from Herry detailed how she, my mother, was to prohibit all contact between Zane and his own mama. Zane whispered that he had not given it to her and that he was not going to. He never did.
So. I began. With my organization for the Big Issues, I began: i) witnesses, ii) exhibits and iii) necessary documents for the issues.
…Fifteen of them total then––the witnesses––and none of them, not a one of them a man with whom I was rendezvousing and trysting as a profligate caballero of any flavor in my life. Because there were none! Still. Still two trials later and initiating number three, I soooo took to heart Mr. Jazzy Jinx’s admonition: NO men! Not even the hinting, drifting waft of one! None whatsoever!
BOOK 3: Dr. True's Opera in Three Acts—with Five Parts
CHAPTER 28: The Opera: Act III; Part 4 [cont. 10]
…May, with its third anniversary of the divorce, June and July passed by no more uneventfully than three paying jobs and one very huge and not so monetarily profitable one researching and writing legal documents can provide for excitement. Ms. Phillipa Chance telephoned at the beginning of that quarter to say that orders were up again and that temporarily, at least, she could surely use me back on at the junk mail factory at the same hours “if you have any time left for that,” she’d been kind enough and considerate to remember. Saturdays and Sundays I could not believe the numbers of folks who seemed to think that making The Deli their first breakfast stop even as early as 6 a.m. on First Day mornings or the one for pastries and coffee on the way back home from church was a routine, must‑do order of their week. Gert and I, out of all of the other deli workers, were almost exclusively left with a couple of hours of pots‐ and pans‑scrubbing every single one of those days. Hardly anyone else––and certainly never, never the men except for its smallish bossman who possessed a princely baker’s heart it seemed to me––found themselves in the boring, windowless back at those lackluster washtubs with the giant, hovering spray nozzle and all of the various sizes and styles of scouring pads. Not another man.
At this point my time spent on preparation for the upcoming agroforestry conference of the future’s August 1993, actually the fourth incoming wage source, was the least. I put in approximately 18 to 20 hours weekends as well as Friday evenings at The Deli––and this was every weekend … with 16 more at the junk mail factory Mondays through Thursdays from 8 p.m. until midnight. Then back every morning five days per week for six hours a day beginning at 9 a.m. at the Forestry Department. It worked. But barely. Whatever time was left over in between––coffee breaks, lunches––all of those smidgens of moments were consumed with the work on … ‘my case’.
These were the warm spring and summer months, my months of “vacation”: I did not have to worry about slamming down through the Brookside Forest to Ol’ Black and zooming it and myself home to Havencourt Drive, thus every day taking the 55 to 60 minutes during all of my noon lunches there and back to my Biology Building workstation––to flush all of the drains and run the faucets for fear of their freezing up and bursting. And I could sleep a full and sound six‑hour stretch because I did not have to answer that first of two alarm clocks … which had been specifically and nightly, thus routinely, set from the Novembers through my Marches for 2:30 a.m. … in order to rise and perform those same pipes’ saving machinations. While this agenda worked for one lone Dr. Legion True, accountable day to day for no babies’ direct care except through Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s mandate of monthly child support payments, I cannot even begin to imagine what herculean effort it would take to “do” this agenda with subsequent scheduling through one to 1½ to two decades of “living”––had I been trying to support myself without, as then I was succeeding at “doing,” any dollars’ help from federal, state or county aid as a young, single mama––with a baby or two. Or, three. With three … Truemaier Boys!
One of the phrases in Mehitable’s letters since––since my not performing daily in this reverse‑Olympian manner for just a couple of years now––is … “admire your long, long working hours.” Whatever gave any parents The Fucking Right “to expect” … “to admire” this freaking insanity in their adult children?! That their kids are up “to good things” by killing themselves slaving away for hours and hours and hours and hours, for years on end––in order just to save their parents the embarrassment or the humiliation or whatever it is that these parents perceive the much‑needed help as: that is, the help which is their daughters’ utilizing taxpayers’ dollars for personal aid––in order to assist their families to modestly live yet not utterly enslave themselves? That it apparently is “a bad thing” to provide backing to the poor people, most of them females, in going through the days of their lives “as other folks” do––who just seem by the “luck of the draw,” by the fucking luck of the status of their birthings to turn out more … blessed … and more … backed … than they?!
I call it a “reverse‑Olympian” state precisely because––it is not a good thing. It is a terrible and grievous state of things. This type of living is not to be sought after and, therefore, rewarded as “worthy of medals and praise.” What it is––and what it only is––is crazy‑making. Insanity. And what a self‑righteous, acid‑spitting parent who tosses this “admire” spew at me is truly saying is, “You’re poor. Therefore, you are less than I am. Therefore, I get to treat you as such! As the DEhuman that you are! How could you have ‘let’ yourself become so low?! I get to expect that you have to labor in this manner. But I? I don’t have to! Ya’ see, I don’t have to––because I am better than you are!” And, in my particular case, Mehitable only further reiterated her past puking acerbity, “You idiot! You friggin’, bloody idiot! You lost a marriage to a doctor! To a doctor, after all! How could you?! How could you be so stupid?! No wonder you sank so low. You weren’t soft, deferent and servile enough for him. You deserve to have to work like this for him!”
Zephyr, Lady and Rex thrived. Well, as near as I could tell, without their Zane, Jesse and Mirzah there to attend to them they did––and with only me to perform those pet chores. Zephyr was nigh unto at least ten years old and quite possibly by then 11, figuring back from the night he had, as the skinniest, half‑grown mouser he was, first meowed on our wintry doorstep in Columbia, Missouri, that blustery January of 1983. I did feed Rex her “groceries” regularly, of course, but simply had no time at all to allow her out of the huge aquarium and her hollow log hideout within it to slither about the living room for exercise as Jesse and Zane had been able to commonly do for her. Lady was perhaps the least well‑off of the Boys’ pets. She was the only bird now, by herself and all alone––so I removed the nesting material from her cage. There were no more eggs lain and no more zebra finches ever emerged––such as had been quite the source of Zane’s pride. He had so carefully––several times a day––mashed up the frozen spinach leaves in warm water so that Lady could regurgitate their seemingly incessant meals to the multiple clutches of babies she successfully had hatched when Zane was … around.
The piano stood silent Although resting off at the north end of the living room, the great centerpiece of our condominium’s largest room, the old, old console, remained quiet the entire time the Boys were gone. I left the keyboard cover off so that the octaves and the flats and the sharps were keys most memorably visible to me, but I just could not sit myself down onto its simple, plain bench to play them. During the few, precious moments I still took to rock and rock and rock and to stare into its blacks and ivories, I came mightily close to truly believing that quite possibly I––and Jesse, especially––never would again.
Food, that is my intake of it, continued more or less as an afterthought. When I was there The Deli provided, on the run of course and only while standing up, whatever I needed for nutritional sustenance. I took a piece of fruit for the 10:15 p.m. break at the junk mail factory, but Friend—and Wisest Teenager—Eric I no longer found to be working there so brought only one apple or banana with me during the period of this second temp stint. I always packed a quick sack for my working lunch at the Forestry Department. Always. I cannot remember buying a single lunch at the nearby Memorial Union nor feeding any vending machine in any campus building, not even one time––a frugal habit which I still find myself holding today. As a matter of fact, I cannot remember the last time I placed coin inside such a slot––unless it would have been when, still married to Herry and living on Othello, that man actually ordered me to spend for cans of soda and give them to the Boys from out of gas station machines when, from daycare and work, we stopped in on our way home to fill up––and … only minutes from his bachelor pad’s pantry inventory of plenty of pop! The only times when I supped at restaurants had been those such as during the wonderful days of April’s month in which fell Secretaries’ Day. I mean to tell you the Forestry Department really, really knows how to treat––and feed––a secretary! Noon after noon after noon its professors and boss types squired us three, all of it at their own individual expense, to some of Ames finest. It must’ve taken them going on three weeks’ worth of weekday lunches for us to be feted by all of the folks who apparently wanted to! It was an awesome eating month for me, that I’ll say! Plus the company of persons whom I joined while dining––was quite splendid … as well!
Money, that is, the matters of money, were not only not an afterthought, a subscript, a postscript, financial matters were all‑consuming. Had they not been “I so would not have put in all of those hours, Mehitable!” But fortunately for me, and in my opinion for all people, these concerns consumed only up to the point that if I had enough to keep on paying the bills on time or in monthly installments and to continue buying copies of all of the legal documents which I typed, then I considered myself to actually be very, very well‑to‑do money‑wise. I was hardly in to investing and worried myself about mutual index versus bond funds or international small caps versus blue chips or REITs versus gold bullion not in the least, let alone, about contributions to traditional IRAs or home mortgage refinancing over 15 years instead of 30 or about anything at all long‑term and retirement … about anything more than the life insurance policy upon the Good and Wonderful Doctor Pilot’s life and upon which Frieda Chicken Guthrie so encouraged me to keep up with its premium payments. Talk about knowing how to, let alone, only being able to … “live in the moment!” Wall Street was a locale with an unknown address to me. For office couture … of which I did not require much … I shopped only Goodwill and Salvation Army. As those Dr. Herod Edinsmaier‑forced poisons called psychotropic drugs expanded me, Supervisor Rosalind Franklin gave me several skirts and blouses and even a winter coat she no longer wanted. I hit WalMart only once in awhile when filling the court‑ordered doping prescriptions for lithium––which itself only kept piling on the poundage as I kept … in “legalized” compliance with the Mother‑Fucking Herry‑Daddee, Shindy Scheisser and daJudge … popping its pills. And, like the piano‑playing, I stayed away from The Mall, too. There was neither the dime nor the time for The Mall; from that waste of space … The Mall … it was not at all hard to stay away … for months and months and months on end. Another habit of frugality I still own today. The only time someone finds me at The Mall is in the evening or on the weekend afternoons––specifically for the matinees at the five Dollar‑Theatres’ complex there! And when I do visit the local shopping mall, I frequently find that I have no idea about the kiosks, the stores and their products presently taking up the various plots inside of it. So many of them have simply up and changed since the last time, there, that I had frittered away any of my precious time.
Income tax issues I had absolutely wonderful, local help with by way of the all‑volunteer individuals, the VITA folks, of the federal Voluntary Income Tax Assistance program whose giving‑back service to their communities consists in establishing free‑aid clinics at the local libraries temporarily. One person, in particular, I so appreciated because of his patience, his reliability and his background. A farmer like AmTaham except for the three tax‑preparation months every winter, Mr. McCay spoke deliberately and fairly; he delivered his wisdom and advice with the utmost of kindness. And showed up. He was there at a tiny, quiet study room in the back of the public library every single time that I, in particular, needed him to be.
Doctors I never saw except for the regular monthly med‑checks with Dr. Singh after first having my blood analyzed for its level of lithium; that was the entire extent of my seven‐ or eight‑minute walk into and back out of his office, actually a room he borrowed twice a week at the county’s local outpatient mental health agency. There I told Dr. Singh on a couple of occasions that I thought he and I were both “suspect,” I the alleged nut case and he the East Indian‑born and ‑trained psychiatrist and, therefore, not by western measures and standards to be taken by us Americans, most particularly by those who are his colleagues and counterparts in any of the human medical specialties, as vastly knowledgeable and as seriously competent as the physicians of European and Caucasian descent. He quite agreed with me!––that we both were, indeed, suspect––and smiled a lot. I liked him, also a lot; and, for what he did whether for me or for others, well, Dr. Legion True thought him most competent and most knowledgeable. He used to travel up to Ames from his job down in Des Moines at a charity cases’ hospital emergency room where I’ll bet Dr. Singh does a lot of … good things … for really, really poor people: poor in dollars––––and especially poor in their spirits, too.
For the lithium which other doctors back at the Sixth Floor Hotel had “legally” forced upon me at the behind‑the‑scenes’‑behest of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s petition to ‘the Court’ and at Herry’s getting Sheriff Stout to follow through on in order to dope me up––––I had a plan. And the plan was to quit the mind‑stupefying, body‑altering and mother‑fucking stuff! Altogether and cold turkey. But not until after Act Three Part Four. Not until just immediately after the point that I could prove to ‘the Court’––and ultimately to Herry––that I not only could and would follow physicians’ orders and was more than willing to try “to get well” if that’s what it took to get back my Boys but that those particular medical orders of theirs were, in fact for me, utterly useless and, what’s more, destructive! Brought me harm they did! Just as what would have been done to me by daMan who had been given a court‑ordered decree which said he, because Herry was also a physician, this particular ex‑husband then had The DEhuman Right to force onto me his own design for … “a program of mental therapy”––––had I indeed assented to any such deal in order to try and win back even a bit of “permitted” or “legal” time in my Truemaier Boys’ lives!
I love to imagine––although it is impossibly difficult in past history or with any such future within my lifetime to come up with there ever existing such a place on the Planet––where the tables of “family” court‑ordering dicta might be turned, … might be flipped and reversed. That is, where the women designed and decided upon such agendae and programs of mental therapy in which their ex‑husbands, in order to have in their lives such breathing beings as the full‑term products of their haploid spermatozoal cells, had to participate. And complete! Not to mention … where these women would even be thought of as “allowed the choice,” or not, to wield this insane power suchlike over the men!
There came a point only late in our relationship where I began to actually think that I might be able, even for just a little bit, to trust Dr. Singh––so I told him of my plan for the lithium. I told Dr. Singh but made no promises to him. I simply stated that I wished to keep speaking with the individual and family counselor, Mr. Keith Log, for as long as I wanted and for as long as Mr. Log was able to keep me on as a part‑time, hit‑and‑miss kind of client of his since the money was always an issue with me and since my visits to Therapist Log were to no extent whatsoever at all covered by my medical insurance through the University.
At least after 2½ years and one car accident without it, I now had health insurance! Yeah, a used, navy Chevy Celebrity Eurosport wagon which AmTaham had found for me just before Ol’ Black came into my life … shattered! I had been forced off an Ames city roadway onto the shoulder embankment by a man changing lanes––changing lanes before he looked over his right shoulder to see if it were safe to do so. It had not been. He did not signal and was, in point of fact by turning into the lane in which I traveled a couple of car lengths behind him, headed straight into my driver’s side doorway. Inside that split, split second in which a person has to strategize on escape maneuvers before crashing, I remembered that I had insurance on my so belovéd, new‑to‑me! station wagon––but none upon my person. It is state law in Iowa for vehicle owners to possess at least liability insurance in order to be able to drive their cars legally but not for the owners, nor for any other people for that matter, to carry health insurance on themselves, upon their own bodies! Driving that wagon alone, I jumped the curb to elude his impact upon my personage and swung the wagon around in an arc of about 45 degrees so that its passenger door and frame’s support column slammed into the lamppost before it, with me still at the wheel totally and entirely untouched, came to an immediate stop, of course. I remember seeing the young driver’s mouth still wide open as he entirely failed to steer out of my lane and back into his own original one. He was just gawping and gawking at the misfortune he had just caused me while not at all navigating his own vehicle back out of my thoroughfare so that I possibly could have moved back from the easement onto the street and avoided, up there, the various signposts and light poles. The frame’s column came to rest only a couple of inches from my right shoulder caving inward as it did with both passenger‑side doors following it. Had anyone else been riding alongside and belted in those passenger seats either in front or in the back, then I would not have even been able to initiate this course of action because those people would have certainly died. And if I had not been able to, then … I surely would have.
I received a shocking, a stunning telephone call from Zane informing me on the early evening of Thursday, 09 July 1992, that he was speaking to me from … my mother’s kitchen, from Mehitable’s! She apparently had wanted to see him during the summer and, of course, fearing Herry, had paid for Zane’s flight herself. Zane did not know that I hadn’t at all been told of his coming, his innocently believing that Herry had “made all the plans” when, in fact, Mehitable had only spoken once to Herry before Zane’s arrival at the Eastern Iowa Airport. Zane was to stay until another Thursday one month later, the 06th of August, and to daily work at his and my cousins’, Wyman’s and Amanda’s, hybrid seed corn business just outside of the Burg there. No money accompanied Zane––but a letter did. A letter to Mehitable from Herry detailed how she, my mother, was to prohibit all contact between Zane and his own mama. Zane whispered that he had not given it to her and that he was not going to. He never did. In addition to the three, whirlwind weekend ones to the Burg where, when there, I slept in the back of my newest wagon, the 1986 Ol’ Black Eurosport, the last visit I had with Zane before Trial Three commenced I took off work to drive the five‑hour round trip it is from Ames to the Cedar Rapids Airport and back that last Thursday my darling eldest graced Iowa.
* * * *
Grace, Frieda, László, Linda, Adam and Abraham all personally geared up with me for the last week of August 1992, when Trial Three, the Part Four of The Opera, was about to get underway. Fifteen people were either lined up or subpoenaed to appear––including Ms. Twyla Smith, the Boys’ barber, who had lost her shop and been forced because of its fire into retirement. Mr. Varry Wussamai I knew was going to be a hostile witness, but what I so did not know ahead of trial or of my subpoenaing him was that he personally was quite acquainted with and very familiar to and friendly with Judge Harley Butcher! While Mr. Varry Wussamai lived in Ames, he hadn’t always. Apparently he had actually grown up and gone to school, even worked at sign‑making for a time, in the same hometown as daJudge himself had! Absolutely astounding to me was the fact that through the process of pretrial Interrogatories and Production of Documents, I found myself informing all of my friends the day before Trial Three that Herry had … just that day … finally gotten back to me, through Shyster Scheisser of course, his answers and that my friends should be expecting not one witness to testify. For the side of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, the Boys’ dad. Discovery had revealed in these replies back to me that Pettifogger Shindy Scheisser intended to call NOT ONE WITNESS to the stand—NOT EVEN HERRY, the Boys’ father himself–––– who wielded complete control and power over them and over me!
I stated in a specific document submitted in petition form that mine were “children in need of assistance” from ‘the Court’. Not only had I been denied a guardian ad litem for the three Truemaier Boys when I had so petitioned for one for them––in early March 1992, even before AmTaham was dead––by way of my giving ‘the Court’ the names of four different lawyers from which it could have chosen one! for the Boys, all of the attorneys male and all for whom I would have myself paid, but I also had had during all of this pretrial shit … my SpaChezResort Sixth Floor Hotel medical records stolen by Terrorist Tormentor Herry!
I use the verb “to steal” because for a year––––for a mother‑fucking year before the date of the trial’s August 1992 beginning––––I had, every single last day of the month, reminded myself––and then further remembered––to telephone the Medical Records Department and warn them all there about a certain attorney whom they could expect to darken their door seeking exactly that: my medical records! Even if The Fucking Shyster possessed in his hot little fist or in the hands of his hottie paralegal assistants what looked to these records’ keepers to be an officially sanctioned subpoena, all stamped proper‑like and sealed, even then, the workers did not, I assured them, have to hand my private documents over … just then. I told these people repeatedly, I told them over and over and over and over … every single month … for one mother‑fucking year, that I had a legislated right to submit to ‘the Court’ a piece of pleading known as a “Petition to Quash Subpoena” … first!––and that the records’ personnel did not have to, right away then, give over to this lawyer or to his lackeys one goddamn sentence of my confidential papers!
So. Then. Every month’s single last day through a dozen of them, the director of the medical records room pledged back to me––she did––that she would get on the horn just as soon as this grievous breach to my privacy and confidentiality loomed, contact me at one of half a dozen or so telephone numbers with which I’d supplied her and let me know––so that I would have the 24 hours I was, by law, entitled to––to file such a petition to quash it. She didn’t. Scheisser’s sweeties appeared, and over to them went every last mother‑fucking page of my private medical chronicles. The paralegals were in and out in less than an hour and had strong‑armed out with them … all––absolutely all––of my 2½ weeks’ worth of Hotel Sixth Floor spa data! The written information garnered during the savagery of those extra days and days and days of hospitalization with which Herry‑Daddee had browbeaten me … through his folie à deuxs with ‘the Court’, with daJudge and with Sheriff Stout. And for which holocaustic and gutting thuggery of mother‑fuck … I was still paying out at the rate of $15.00 a month in order to try to––someday––retire this medical debt!
I told the medical records director I was stunned. She replied, “Well, for $15.00 I can make you a copy for yourself––if you’d like one.” Of course! Of course, I had to have my own friggin’ copy! I had to know what about me “officially,” however inaccurate and outright mother‑fuckingly wrong it was, Dirty Herry and Equally Deceiving Scheisser now–– “had privilege to”––and its knowledge therein! And?! ! ! ! And to possess same, that is, to own for myself this “medical” fuck all about me! I had to, then, up and mother‑fuckingly pay for every single, scripted, er … scribbled … line of it––as well ! ! ! ! Where in any of this … is … The Right Thing?! Justice?! Justice for mother?!
About three years ago an Indian woman, Ms. Tsianina Snowball, asked me when I had recounted this belief of Professor Schmidt’s to her … the one about judges, before any freakin’ piece of evidence is even first heard or seen by them, having already made up their “minds”, … er I mean, having already readied themselves … “to enact The Laws of the Land” as to exactly “how” these men want the outcomes “to be” … aaaah, to be tweaked and twisted, that is, “Did you notice the expression on the judge’s face when all of you walked into the courtroom that first day of trial? And then the first thing every morning of it after that?”
What she meant was “the Look.” Had I seen each day’s initial “Look” shot from Judge Harley Butcher over to Herry and to Mr. Scheisser sitting there at their own table on daJudge’s left side? “The Look” that Native Americans know so, so well when they, too, … especially when the women and the many mothers among them who are single, appear before daMan in the courtrooms of the Great White––Controlling––Fathers?
Not until she asked me this––––years after Part Four had vanished into antiquity––––had I realized that, indeed, I had seen this thing she termed simply “the Look.” I had soooo seen it! Every single day of the five days, first thing, too, as he strutted up to take his high‑backed, black leather throne behind the glorious wood––just like Ms. Snowball had indicated! Since I was no good at silent, sparring smoke signals and Ms. Tsianina Snowball certainly was, maybe I hadn’t beheld it before. Maybe, and most likely, I hadn’t noted it before because I was still soooo frickin’ stupid: I still had faith in the literally mother‑fucking justice system and about which this naïveté of mine on such silliness Grace had soooo tried to warn me!
On a white tablet of lined paper I wrote the heading “Big Issues” under which they were listed: “Herry’s acts of keeping me away from the Boys and out of their minds,” “Herry’s acts of economic sabotage and harassment,” “Herry’s and Fannie’s acts of lying and perjury and deception before and at time of Trial Two including withholding from custody evaluator Carrie Canard everything about The Eight Pages,” “Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor’s September 1990 decision was not supported by and was, indeed, contrary to the ‘evidence’ presented wherein the Boys’ best interests were not at all served and there has been a permanent material, unanticipated change from it since anyhow.” Some brief, some of them not so short. All of them true and not too hard to figure out! Owning exactly ‘that’ about which women of certain personage Actress Cybill Shepherd spoke, I strolled into a Storm County, Iowa courtroom controlled by one Judge Harley Butcher then on Wednesday, 26 August 1992, just as confident in my abilities and in my knowledge of them as I was in … possessing the power of the actual facts of … ‘my case’.
So. I began. With my organization for the Big Issues, I began: i) witnesses, ii) exhibits and iii) necessary documents for the issues. The witnesses given here in no particular order but called to the stand in a very structured and precise one were Herry‑Infatuated Carrie Canard, Therapist Keith Log, Grace, László, Linda, James who was one of Mirzah’s friends from Kate Mitchell Elementary––with his own mama’s permission of course, Passive Aggressor Varry Wussamai, Other‑Mother Frieda Chicken Guthrie, the Boys’ barber Ms. Twyla Smith, Mr. Dave Henderson who was the 69th Street mail carrier in Urbandale as well as Jesse’s football coach and a person who many times had himself personally witnessed Denying and Perjuring Fannie Issicran McLive smoking cigarettes around the 69th Street bungalow when the Boys had been forced to live there, my Forestry boss Dr. Joplin, a counselor with whom the Boys had visited and liked talking to Mr. Lance Rowe and besides myself, the most infamous of folies à deux, Nottingham’s Sheriff McLive and the Kingdom’s Lord and Master himself, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier.
I wanted two of the witnesses to bring documents along with them to the Truemaier Boys’ and my third trial, The Opera’s Part Four, this process requiring then a special summons called a subpoena duces tecum which I had also done up and correctly served the two––including in plenty of time. Fifteen of them total then––the witnesses––and none of them, not a one of them a man with whom I was rendezvousing and trysting as a profligate caballero of any flavor in my life. Because there were none! Still. Still two trials later and initiating number three, I soooo took to heart Mr. Jazzy Jinx’s admonition: NO men! Not even the hinting, drifting waft of one! None whatsoever!
And there had not been!
[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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