CHAPTER 28: The Opera: Act III; Pt. 5 [cont. 1]
From "The Saga of One F**ked Mother
Legion must fork out more money than she has left for the appeal of the third custody ruling, so she relies on friends to lend her money while she works multiple jobs. Looking back, she is ashamed that she actually believed justice might prevail and continued to spend so much time and money pursuing it, when it was obvious by this time—3 custody trials and one appeal later—that “fatherhood exaltation overruns the true Rule of Law”.
Legion does realize that her boys’ childhoods were passing by while she fought for custody with no end in sight. So, she decides to defy court orders and clandestinely visit her boys in disguise. She embarks on the long trip from Iowa to West Virginia, anxious to see them again after years apart…
In the last section, the third custody trial concludes. Judge Butcher gives Herry sole custody and Legion gets no visitation. The false and unjust Findings and Orders leads to Legion filing yet another appeal. In it, she claims his ruling is “wholly illegal, wholly gender-based, gender-biased and gender-discriminatory” and painstakingly lists all the illegalities. With this second appeal, Part 5 of the Opera has begun.
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 emailed out every Wednesday so make sure to subscribe if you haven’t yet!
TEASERS
I am ashamed to have to declare that I still believed in … America’s Rule of Law. And that, at least inside the courtrooms built up upon the grounds and the very foundations of my ancestors’ ashes, I, the human being I had always thought of myself as, and a caucasian and a highly educated one at that, would still receive justice...
I still chose to ignore the amassing collection of “evidence” beginning to push out of its subtle and shrewd shadows everywhere––which is: that sperm and fatherhood exaltation overruns the true Rule of Law…and that any woman, no matter how allegedly “a have” rather than “a have not” she be, is quite a fucked fool to believe, in an American court of civil law, that she is anything more than a DEhuman.
BOOK 3: Dr. True's Opera in Three Acts—with Five Parts
CHAPTER 28: The Opera: Act III; Part 5 [cont. 1]
It is obvious to us mothers … to us women: “justice’s” rulings are not about the (Exalted) Sperm Source’s fitness to be father to minor children. Never. In these proceedings, it is never about him. It is only and all about us mothers’ fitness. Our fitness to … have power. Or not. In Mehitable-fashion, Buddhists ‘defer to’ and (s)hell out homage to daMan who mother-fuckingly states to them, “The body of a woman is filthy, and not a vessel for the Law.” Hhmmmm: Dr. Legion True is soooo not a “vessel” for any Law of the Land of Iowa, now is she, Jury?! daJudge twists she is not. daJudge tweaks for you, Iowans of the Jury and All Others. She, the Truemaier Boys’ mother, can never be, “I say so!,” any “vessel” owning power of the Law. Sexism: the Original Sin.
And all during this length of time through which I was ordered to await “Herry Edinsmaier’s approval” upon anything, everything and, of course, eventually for me … upon squat, I was to pay him monthly for three children I could never even talk to … let alone, see, hear, smell or touch. I was to pay him monthly child support stipends even though Judge Butcher the High Courtier wrote on his last of those 26 pages of mother-fuck, “Herod’s earnings exceed those of Legion’s by nearly twenty-fold.” Even though, too, I had testified under affirmation of its veracity that I had simply stopped wasting my dime by calling out to Grubtrop. I had placed my last telephone call to Herry’s number there on Wednesday, 05 February 1992, since I was never granted a conversation with any one of my three kiddos anyhow. I could never get past the Sheriff of Nottingham nor Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s dementedly devoted implementation of her King’s folie à deux directives to forswear all knowledge of his ex-Cunt.
My calls all went for naught. All of them. The Boys were never even told of the gazillions of times when the Bitchy Witch had tried to call them. And certainly never informed that I, in a telephone call in early December 1991, had asked for them to come visit me on their break.
It was the winter holiday season after all––a time off from school during which the Boys and I had not been together since December 1987! The few words of a response which that particular phone communication request to Herry through Ms. McLive, the King’s Interim Cunt, had produced from her only thus, “They most surely are not coming to your house for Christmas! You sure have a glorified sense of importance of yourself!” JYeah! Maybe I do! I am their ma! Years later I would learn that, although the Boys could not come to visit me then––even though they had had the time off anyway, the Daddee had taken them all out of school a month after that very Winter Solstice … … and in late January 1992, flown them all off to Oxnard, California, to attend there the mawwying of a cousin Mirzah, Jesse and Zane barely even knew. But who, apparently to Herry-Daddee and his Interim Cunt bore and carried far more “glorified” importance and weight in my Boys’ lives––plus, as well, warranted their all missing class days! A total of 27 more months were to pass by before I would even lift the receiver and attempt … once more … another telephone connection to Jesse, Mirzah or Zane inside West Virginia. Instead and again: I merely wrapped up––and rocked.
With the notice of appeal document filed then, also pro se, I set about trying to raise the amount of money from Adam and Abraham and László that this particular judge’s court reporter stated would be the estimated fee for the five days of Trial Number Three’s transcripts––and, of course, I, the appellant in Appeal Two or Part Five of the Opera, was liable for the securing of and payment on the 21 copies of the entire transcript required by the Iowa Code. One copy came back to me, one went to the appellee or Herry for which I had to pay too, of course, and 19 further copies accompanied the other sets of 19 copies of documents that were filed in the State of Iowa’s Clerk of Court’s office.
So massive an undertaking were all of these sets of documents that I required numerous cardboard boxes in which usually arrive new reams of an office’s copier paper, the help of my girlfriend, Teri Lynn who to this day commutes in from Goodair County to work in Des Moines, and a flatbed hand truck to cart all of this mother-fuck into the Capitol from Ol’ Black backed up to that allegedly austere building’s loading dock.
The man who typed it all up from those court-reported tapes of 22-keyed, gobbledygookish mumbo jumbo told me initially that he needed a thousand dollars before he would ‘be able’ to type Word One of Day One of Trial Three. When I secured that amount … and showed up with it all … just moments before his arbitrary deadline for this task, he suddenly then … set a different amount. He ‘unexpectedly needed’, instead, he claimed … … another couple thousand!
One notices that the folks I borrowed from were all … male. Only those of my numerous friends are the ones with chunks of money huge enough to lend. Even today, years later, most certainly true this still is.
When an ally loans me $5, that is truly lovely––but that amount from one hundred of my closest friends will not buy me an appeal––not from even just a civil county court decree. If one hundred girlfriends loaned me $10 each, that would not do it either. This second appeal would go on to cost me, without $1 of its total given over to any professional attorney to litigate, on my employing behalf, one iota of any part of this appeal, a vastly conservative estimate of around … $8,000.00! That amount, I am stating, was required for only the appeal and for only the appeal, Part Five of Act Three, done––all of it, that is … pro se!
And women, who are most of my friends, just do not ever have this kind of money themselves, let alone, have it with the capability of forking it over indefinitely to others … like to me! At this cautious guess then of 8K overall, why, 100 of my nearest and dearest would have had to hand over $80 each … without so much as a date of when, and only a promise that, they would ever be seeing it back in their own pockets. Women routinely, that is day-to-day, do not have these amounts to loan and, likewise, this is the very same reason that, in this United States’ “justice” system, wholly wronged women cannot … even appeal! Hence … our second scream!
So I went begging to the few men in my life. Borrowed from them each … big-time! And filed.
But not until after that recorder [daMan] had raised his ‘unexpectedly needed’ amount … yet a third time!
Judge Harley Butcher’s man just kept raising it and upping it; and I know he thought he had stopped the Blonde Bitch with his third, precipitant hike. Upwards as it was by this third increase of the Iowa Code’s permitted allotment that year of the highest outer limit for charging litigants for typed pages: that is, daJudge’s own man’s fee abruptly became $4.00 per page! Five days of trial at 4 bucks a pop per sheet of it?!!!!
But daMan had not stopped me. Everyone needs the kind of friends … I am privileged to call mine!
When visibly handed its complete amount … $4,125.00 … the recorder no longer had an excuse either.
DaMan had to … finally … get started typing up five days’ worth of testimony after all. And whilst he set about doing so, he did so none too swiftly whatsoever. I had to call and to call and to prod and to remind him of my deadline dates and to extract out of him promise after avowal after promise after avowal that, indeed, he would have the third trial’s transcript and its 20 other copies completed within the time frame by when Appellant True needed them all to be done. After all, daMan had, in his hot typing hands, not just an installment or some of it––but all of the money. And I wanted the completed product for which I had so dearly borrowed––and paid daMan in full. My entire payment to him, I believed, entitled me to a product that was one of service as well. My met obligation meant to me that that recorder have back to me a completed and correct transcript with appropriate copies in a timely manner!
Meanwhile back in my own life, I am some nights and every single Saturday and Sunday, 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the supermarket delicatessen with its breakfast grill … my accompanying there plucky Gert and others far more punkish in their late teens and early 20s, the student-employees all widely yawning at those earliest of weekend working hours far more than Gert and I. As well as 3/4-time days at the Forestry Department with 1/4-time additionally, there now, even more fully devoted than ever before, also some nights and on weekend evenings, over to finalizing the Third International Agroforestry Conference plans––and about which not only were the professors excited but so was I. Very much so.
Just as the Forestry Department’s Annual Wild Game Banquet approached in early March, an event the students and I both especially loved planning and during which awards for the previous year’s accomplishments are given out, the Sunday Des Moines Register led Valentine’s Day that year, 1993, on its opinion page with an incredibly disturbing headlining editorial … entitled as it was: “Equality not always present in Iowa courts: A biased judicial system cannot adequately dispense justice.”
“Well, dah!” came back nearly my entire response!
I utterly loathe the writings and speeches wherein we DEhumans are continuously and as “just a matter of fact”-like pointed out and specifically delineated as “the Other”, as “the (ab)Normal,” as “the Not Male,” as “the Less Than Usual Standard Measure of.” This is soooo the case when writers and speakers preface nouns with the adjective “female” or “woman” as in the two-word phrases “female farmer” or “woman athlete” or “female researcher” or “woman lawyer.”
Nevertheless, the editorial opinion of the Register ran with that very phrasing, of course, “Put yourself in the place of ‘a woman lawyer’ seeking nomination for a judgeship in Iowa, only to be told that you are too ‘nice’ to be a judge. Or put yourself in the place of a black woman seeking a job with a law firm, only to be told that you would have a tough time finding a job in certain parts of Iowa, and to be later asked if you would be interested in a nanny position for the person conducting the job interview. Now consider the case of one Iowa woman involved in a divorce, who said that ‘The judge leaned across and pointed his finger, asking how I thought I could ever possibly share joint custody with my ex-husband when I couldn’t make the marriage work. He was holding only me responsible even though there were two people involved, not just one.’ Or consider that, if you are a black person or a member of another ethnic minority, your chances of receiving harsher treatment from the Iowa criminal justice system are quantifiably higher than if you are a white.
Now consider this: Can a judicial system that is biased, even if marginally so, against women and minorities adequately dispense justice? If you are a woman or minority standing before such a bar, can you have a high level of faith in the credibility of the decisions handed down?
Fortunately for all Iowans, those kinds of questions are being asked at the pinnacle of the state’s court system.
Two years ago the Iowa Supreme Court formed a Task Force to consider thoroughly the issue of equality in the state courts. It was a bold move, not so much in terms of setting any precedents––at that time more than 30 other states already had examined the issue in their courts––but because it represented a challenge to the conventional, but in many ways biased, judicial system.
The 312-plus page report issued by the Equality in the Courts Task Force last week is broad in its scope and eminently fair, its recommendations cautiously drawn. Task Force chairman James R. Havercamp of Davenport, chief judge of the Seventh Judicial District, took pains to emphasize the report’s finding that most persons involved in the court system see it as fair and that most attorneys and judges rarely if ever engage in biased conduct.
But he also made it clear that while a court system may never be perfect, Iowa’s courts have not yet reached the ideal. Says the report, ‘There is no question but that some quantum of gender and race bias exists.’ It exists in three ways, says the report: 1) Women and minorities are underrepresented in important sectors of the legal profession and the courts; 2) a majority of women and minorities report they experience bias in the system; and 3) gender and race bias may adversely affect the interests of certain classes of litigants involved in everything from domestic relations to criminal justice.
What should be done?
The Task Force offers page after page of recommendations. Some––particularly in the area of judicial appointments––are, frankly, timid. It is not enough just to encourage that more women and minorities be appointed to judicial positions. Other recommendations, however, are specific and more far-reaching. They include proposals that all Iowa attorneys and judges complete continuing legal education relating to gender and race bias; that the Supreme Court adopt policies making judges and lawyers more aware of the value of the services of women as wives, mothers, and homemakers in relation to the division of assets in the awarding of family support and alimony; that in matters of temporary child custody the system be more open; that there be better record-keeping of charges filed and the gender and race of alleged perpetrators; and that ‘the present and future court system database should be monitored periodically, and patterns of racially associated disparities noted, publicly disseminated and specifically brought to the attention of districts where disparities occur.’
Finally, the Task Force recommends the creation of a follow-up group to ensure that education programs continue, to monitor progress and identify new problem areas. Some Task Force members, in discussing the report with Register editors and reporters last week, candidly alluded to differences among them. But there also seemed to be a very high level of mutual respect and, just as important, a willingness to listen, to study and to accept the need for change. The Task Force report notes that ‘more work and understanding can make a difference.’ If the report is accepted by the legal community in the spirit in which it has been presented, it not only can make a difference, it will.”
Blah, blah, blah and yada, yada, yada. “More education, willingness, change.” “It will make a difference.” These are bullshit, feel-good phrases of more mother-fuck! I have repeatedly said we all, to effect change, only need two, frickin’ really, really cheeeeap tools; and because we have all known since we were frickin’ eight years of age what The Right Thing to Do in such matters is, then we sure as hell need not one more goddamn minute of “more education” or “more programs” or “follow-up focus groups!” No “more gaaaawddamn talking.” We just friggin’ need to do the change about which we already soooo know … needs doing! So. Where the fuck is the “willingness”?!
I also took truly, truly big issue with the Task Force Chair’s assessment, “… that most persons involved in the court system see it as fair and that most attorneys and judges rarely if ever engage in biased conduct.” Because in just a very few short lines a wee bit later on, it was, in an obviously gargantuan discrepancy with the Chair’s assessment, pointed out that “a majority of women and minorities report … they experience bias in the system! ! ! !” Aaaah … JYeah, Judge Havercamp, … buuuut … you daMan, of course, aren’t jya’?!
Well, what the fuck is this … actually … saying? ! ! ! ! It is in direct dispute of and opposition to the sentence just before it: the one about how “most” see everything and everybody as “fair”. Noooo, they do not! MOST do not view the judicial system as anything close to “fair”! Because women are … “the most” ! We are 53 percent of the entire, goddamn World. So. We are “the most”! And we do not see—–justice!
Male Task Force Chair Havercamp was just assuming that by the term “most”, it was meant that the most of “them like himself” who are the white guys, the Good Ol’ Boys, “feel” that way––that is, they “feel” that in the courts … things are fair! And, lest we forget, Jury, Task Force Havercamp is a judge––who is soooo not about to disparage his own workplace colleagues (––just as physicians also ‘protect’ and keep soooo, so silent about other errant doctors), thereby having to bring his own judge-self … to account! ! ! ! No! No! Not that! Crikey! Transparency! Yikes! And he is always, too, first a lawyer even after becoming appointed a judge––so then, likewise, not at all about to criticize himself nor hold to changing his own views or changing his own behaviors. He is … already … one of those other men who also sees himself not only as the interviewee in the CBS Evening News piece said as “used to people respecting their power” and, when we do not blindly abide the biased and bad judgments and the judges’ powers, then getting “very angry and vindictive against mothers who defy their power” … but also as … a ceaseless (so-called) … “pillar of the community!”
* * * *
While I listened very carefully to Grace who counseled defiance of The High Courtier Judge Harley Butcher’s dictum which screamed, “She must obtain psychiatric/psychological therapy and counseling,” and heeded her and my own self’s solid advice to not comply in the least on this, daJudge’s madness and anger at me, I am ashamed to state that even as late as now, 08 March 1993, even after the few reports I had been hearing in the media––and, believe me, Jury, these newspaper editorial and television accounts were only inklings and, in no way, massive blitzes of the Truth at all … as there should have been––even after these couple of times of “warnings” of what was happening out here in the hinterlands of America’s family law courts, I am ashamed to have to declare that I still believed in … America’s Rule of Law. And that, at least inside the courtrooms built up upon the grounds and the very foundations of my ancestors’ ashes, I, the human being I had always thought of myself as, and a caucasian and a highly educated one at that, would still receive justice after the right I thought I deserved to petition for a fair hearing.
I still chose to ignore on this date of all dates––that is, after nearly a century’s worth Worldwide of marking International Women’s Day on the 08th of March––the years’ and years’ worth of noting injustices to us females. I still chose to ignore the amassing collection of “evidence” beginning to push out of its subtle and shrewd shadows everywhere––which is: that sperm and fatherhood exaltation overruns the true Rule of Law. That, in deed and in fact, sperm and fatherhood exaltation is its own Rule of Law instead and that any woman, no matter how allegedly “a have” rather than “a have not” she be, is quite a fucked fool to believe, in an American court of civil law, that she is anything more than a DEhuman. And I still went ahead and filed-stamped the second appeal––Part Five––this 1993 International Women’s Day. Hope is, as I have now twice before said, such the woman-killer.
Consequently, I borrowed and borrowed and paid out and borrowed more and continued “to exist”––if one could call it that, in 37- to 35-degree interior temperatures throughout Iowa’s brutish winter. And Part Five, Appeal Two went forward! Whilst I never … not even one time … missed being early at giving over in full to this man the “decreed” child support payments for the very three children I myself, alone, chose to grow but to whom I still had NO RIGHTS at all.
Much later I was to learn that meanwhile back in Grubtrop, West Virginia, one of the (who-the-fuck-knows-how-many?!) “overheard” names used by Role-Modeling Herry and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive to refer to Dr. Legion True in their ‘private’ talks and massive efforts and stratagems to keep me invisible there––all of which occurred daily––was that of “the non-Edinsmaier.” While that appellation certainly did fit, I have since considered it an honored moniker and far, far more complimentary than what Zane is reported to have called Herry, that is, “the Warden” and “the Step-Dad!” And certainly a far kinder handle than the one which Herry-Daddee once gave to Zane after a skirmish with Mary Jane––that of “female batterer”. And then … then when Herry was called on it by Zane to account for Zane’s behavior with Mary Jane, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, the Father and my three Boys’ Role Model, actually stated to all present at the time that: Herry-Daddee’s own beating up on Legion, on Zane’s and his brothers’ mother, was warranted and justified as necessary because “she was crazy” and needed … her mental condition did … to be treated with … the Good and Wonderful Healing, Husbanding Doctor’s specific brand of domestic violence and narcissistic passive aggression!
To this type of a person Herod Edinsmaier then, one who had had a modification of child custody decision on 21 September 1990, favorable to him and really only supplementarily redone again on 07 December 1992, by Act Three or Trial Three and The High Courtier Butcher in cahoots with The High Aggrandizier Seizor and their own Pillared Boys’ Rule of Law, Mirzah, Jesse, Zane and I were still sentenced. To this very man who had himself ordered all three Boys, when they became old enough to talk and to understand the concept of “father” or “dad” or “daddy” … to this daddee who had strictly ordered each Truemaier Boy never.never.never to call him by any of those designations. Dr. Herod Edinsmaier only wanted the Boys to call him Herry or Herod and never, ever Daddy or Pops or Pa, Dad or Father. Yet, in order to fuck with specifically me, Dr. Legion True, Perfectly Pissed-Off Porno-Purveying Pappy Edinsmaier absconded with them––completely stealing away from me all of the Children who had lovingly called me … Mother.
I had to appeal.
I also had to see my Boys. It was now over a year; not since the 05th day in February of 1992, had I picked up a telephone receiver to even try to speak to one of them so the only way that that was ever going to happen was to go there to Grubtrop, West Virginia. And find them. Actually Grace, Frieda, László, Linda and I––and no one else did we tell––truly started planning my clandestine journey back during the Winter Solstice on which AmTaham and I always turn another year older and, I am thinking, … wiser. That is, just as soon as The High Courtier Butcher had ordered me nowhere near Zane, Mirzah and Jesse––until Mother Mehitable-fashion, I softly deferred to and complied with all of his and Aggrandizier Seizor’s and (O-So) Small Man Syndrome-Afflicted Herry’s machinations for my whoring and demented “DEhuman mind,” we all began my defiantly wicked-badass underground railroading exactly there! The bit more than a week of it was set to begin the next April 1993 then … right around the weekend some holier folk term eastertide.
That Winter Solstice 1992, was not only the turning into the 73rd birthday of Righteous Ancestor AmTaham which he never realized––breathing––and yet another unrecognized, unheralded and unobserved one for me, but I also knew in my core that I myself was finally turning as well! I no longer at all sought externally for happiness and protection, two “things” for which Mehitable certainly castigated and chastised me long into my 40s and continued to harp at me to look for from men––even after the main fathering man to me was now dead. Well, to seek my happiness and protection from well-positioned ones, that is. Then again, this so-called ‘good’, bible-quoting and keeping-up-appearances woman was the one and the same who in ‘conversations’ often employed the word “j e w” as a verb, routinely labeled brazil nuts of the scientific name Bertholletia excelsa as “n i g g e r t o e s” and, when describing folks from a certain Asian island, only ever did so using the noun “J a p s”. Even around Jesse, Mirzah and Zane. Even when I specifically told her not to spew her swill. Even when I threatened to––then did––leave her home and her town if she continued to do so. Taking my Boys with me and away from her and her fuckingly foul mouthings.
Sitting in Friends Meeting one First Day I heard, … I mean I truly, truly listened to Yanira––out of our collective Silence––telling us all assembled there that her brother, as the adult he now is, was so angry with their parents. Their mother and father, both Quakers, it now seemed to both of their children had never truly prepared them in their broadminded and so unprejudiced, generously patient, progressive and merciful household. Had never from their childhoods prepared their two children to protect themselves from the real and angry and hard-hearted and mean-spirited persons who exist everywhere, especially in posts of power which, daily, impacted their very selves––in those now same adulthoods of theirs! That her brother was so, so pissed as a 20s-something because he had not had the self-awareness fostered in him by parents who should have about how evil many, many people truly choose to vengefully and everlastingly be. His parents, too, should have worked to cultivate in him when he was still a minor kiddo his own tools for the very “protection” of the self which I was now having to forge out of my core for my own person––and I, the nucleus of the self who was Legion True, had just become that 22 Twelfth Month 1992, already, 45 years old!
The Agroforestry Conference was developing nicely, the call for papers yielding massive numbers of interesting ones; and it certainly began to look like attendance with Iowa State University’s hosting of the third such international conference in early August 1993, would hit a registrants’ record of from between some 350 and 450 persons headed into Ames from all over the Globe. Evenings I visited with Frieda at the delicatessen and weekends she came there, too. Between the support from her and from Gert while I was there scrubbing its so slippery, greasy floor and equally dangerously filthy men’s bathroom, flinging chicken parts down into the two deep fat fryers, slinging macaroni salad into pint Styrofoam containers and grilling up Ames’ finest breakfast for a buck and from the support and counsel of my other friends, especially from Grace and Linda and a new one, Cyan Song Goodwater, all three Boys’ art teacher just before they had been forced to go missing from Kate Mitchell Elementary, I managed to write appeal documents and to plan the secret sojourn east. Cyan Song was, literally, also raising up five boys of her own … herself––out of which “five” … one of them was, in actuality, … the spermatozoal source for the other four … that is, her husband. Except for that Stupendously Slacker-Spouse of hers about whose uselessness she more than hopelessly acknowledged, Cyan Song’s situation was a breath of fresh air to me, as a matter of fact. Her four boys started in ages just about where mine ended; that is, her eldest James who had testified in Trial Two was my Youngest’s exact age and had, in fact, been to visit with Mirzah by way of my driving James there one time when Mirzah had had to go live in Urbandale. She and her entire family of testosteronal molecules had just come to Ames and the Teacup ’hood during the earlier and ongoing acts of The Opera––most recently from Wisconsin by way of, really, the Carolinas first. Cyan Song loved acting in community theater, art with the teaching of it as well as the actual wearing of it all over upon her very person––from her near-baldness to, later, those fiery locks to always her decorated toenail tips––and she loved her (three, then whoopsydaisy an entire decade later) four baby boys. This mother rocked. And she knew it. I do not remember how we first connected, but I am so glad that we did hook up.
On the early morning of Thursday, 08 April 1993, I left Ames. I mean it was 4:00 a.m., and I was securely belted inside the driver’s seat of the Ol’ Black Eurosport wagon––loaded down and hauling out. The plan was for me to become––a man. In as many ways and for as many days and events and functions as would be necessary to get done this being with my Boys in Grubtrop, West Virginia. Good weather, good roads, and specifically the ending of the Grubtrop Community School system’s week of its annual Spring Break. Why, Jury, the end of that particular week on the academic calendar? I figured it would have been just my fucked luck to have planned, spent bookoo dollars for, entirely used up all of my vacation-leave days and done this whole covert operation to the center of that state only to discover, when I finally arrived there, that Soooo Moneyed-and Joy Toy Boy Older Bro-Daddee had, over their time off from school, up and spirited the three of them all off to some true spachezresort hotel-destination hundreds to thousands of miles away, thus leaving me––and them––so screwed … yet one more time again. So, instead, I put in for all of my earned, saved leave to be taken … beginning with that Thursday through my being back at my Iowa State University Forestry Department’s workstation desk on the morning of Monday, 19 April. And, thus, determined with the Boys at their high or middle schools in the mornings, that I would be able to more than likely find one, two or all three of them around 3:00 p.m. or after––out at the baseball fields or the cinder track or even just leaving the schoolyard––once Zane, Jesse and Mirzah Truemaier were done each weekday with formal classes.
Interstate 74 caught on the west side of Illinois snakes rather quickly down to and through Peoria and Champaign-Urbana. Ol’ Black had on him a tank which held enough gasoline at the speeds which I drove, always … and I mean always, within the limits of the various states’ laws or just below them, for five hours’ worth of travel time so the next stop up for fuel-filling and planned-peeing came out at Cincinnati. Final third leg of the tour via the southerly and good State Route #32 through Ohio on into West Virginia was to get me and Ol’ Black, bearing as it was its Iowa license plates, into Fairvale, a town about 13 miles north up Interstate #79 from Grubtrop, right around the sun’s setting time of approximately 8:00 p.m. Eastern––with daylight savings having just commenced nationwide the Sunday morning four days previously.
All of this part of the preparation did occur happily enough––except nearly exactly 24 hours later than originally set. Trying to exit the east end of Cincinnati yet still on the south edge of the old Reds Stadium, Ol’ Black … quit. Just as quiet as he could be. No cell phones had any of us then––so I waited within locked doors wondering where a safe payphone could possibly appear to me when, upon cranking over the ignition one more time, Ol’ Black started up just as keenly as always––and, outta there, flew the two of us!
Until that Thursday, 08 April 1993, I had never used before any sort of credit card. I had never owned one. And the only reason that I did so this trek was to be able to rent a cheapest, wee vehicle once I woke up in Fairvale, West Virginia. A farm kid who dealt only and always in cash, paid my debts at nearly all costs and strictly of the ya’-didn’t-buy-it-if-ya’-didn’t-already-have-in-hand-the-bucks-for-it mindset, I simply abhorred plastic––and refused, until age 45, to even possess one. Of course, my utter loathing the so-real deal at this time … where we females, we DEhumans had to have our male significant others’ “permission and signatures” before being “allowed” … as “the second” individual on the ownership of a family’s credit card … played the major role in why I had always defied and eschewed possession of any. Until that day. Ol’ Black made it out of Cincinnati proper and slogged on into its eastern suburb of Milford––without a(nother) hitch.
But he did not make it out of there––except by way of a tow into the business confines of the kindest mechanics residing within the State of Ohio! These folks, a wife-and-husband-owned outfit randomly selected out of those proverbial Yellow Pages, determined in short order and now around 4 o’clock Eastern in the afternoon of my first travel day, that the wagon’s fuel line was faulty, appropriate parts existed in another part of the state, those parts could arrive the very next weekday morning, that is Friday, “Such is your luck that it’s not the weekend, Ms. True!” And they all could have Ol’ Black and me up and running and done with southwest Ohio within 24 hours were I to approve of that arrangement. Well, I had no choice, of course, and began right then and there on the greasy, oil-stained cement floor of their auto repair shop my hate-love–mostly hate relationship with MasterCard.
One thing further this woman and man did for this poorer mama. She ordered Ol’ Black towed over to the rear of their concrete block building at where he was backed up alongside its west exterior wall away from any view of the street out front and then allowed me to do there inside him, with one window cracked ever so narrowly for that ‘fresh’ city-suburb night air, what was going to become my design with Ol’ Black once I got inside West Virginia: lock, recline in his turned-down backside, cover up and drift off to sleep.
It was now supposedly a particularly extra ‘good Friday’ according to folks calling themselves christians, and the excitement I felt within my chest was literally palpable––as in palpating. My cardiac muscle was thumping so thunderously when I throttled Ol’ Black via US Federal Route #50 into the west side of Montclank, West Virginia, aimed toward the mixmaster of intersecting interstate exchanges connecting it to Grubtrop with a separate stretch of highway exiting off right there north up to Fairvale … that I could barely breathe. Not much different about that, though––the not-breathing part––than from all of those times so far to date when I had walked out of county courthouses with absolutely crazy-making family law custody judgments in my hands, however. Yes, the scenery since leaving all of Ohio and entering this state had certainly been exactly as wise Other-Mother Frieda Chicken Guthrie had earlier told me that it would be, “Poverty with a view … ”, but I hauled in my heart such a hateful heaviness about this place which I had never before seen––and only because Herry inhabited this space holding hostage here from me my Kiddos.
Montclank is a town of approximately 23,000-plus spirits immediately conjoined to Grubtrop’s 6,000 to 7,000 more. The only spanse of it which I at the first saw, motoring directly through it, was of nearly all very, very old brick, dilapidated and boarded up structures with splashed graffiti, ripped-up posters with edges flapping in the breezes and Italian-appearing last names on the aged buildings’ masts, almost all of these with letters missing or broken off. I left this entangling mess of concrete on its east side and schlepped up north just as fast as I possibly could, the sun still with me although now around 8:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight––just as about when I had originally planned to arrive there except with that one, full missing day … later.
Once inside Fairvale, WV, I drove directly over to the rental car agency just to scope it out as to its distance from my planned parking spot for Ol’ Black. No internet yet so I truly did not have much of this part of my Operation BWB, that is, Be With Babes, exactly researched too well––as would have been the case had there then been a world wide web with Google-search capacity! This municipality proved itself in physicality as I would later find Grubtrop to also be––that is, with almost all of its streets as very, very narrow pathways and headed up and winding around and around extremely steep inclines to buildings atop them––almost upon precipices.
One such building had two parking lots, layered-like, in tiers cascading down from the rather massive main configuration upon its peak. This specific structure was that of the Fairvale City Hospital, and the two lots most physically separated the physicians who had medical practice privileges there––away from––the hospital’s other ‘regular’ employees, its day laborers, its temporary staff and from us visitors. I say ‘us’ because it suddenly struck me that Ol’ Black, with his out-of-state, even Iowa plates on him, could very easily “have reason enough” to be parked in such a building’s lot––and for days and days on end even … since, of course, would not it make sense to patrolling security, in either town cop form or the hospital guard system, that this beater wagon’s owner or driver or passengers had motored in from elsewhere and were themselves inside visiting with and comforting their injured or sick loved one who was, therein, … hospitalized!? Furthermore, the littler lot of the two all the way to the back of this hospital’s northeast side and right beside the emergency room entrance there with its “no blocking” sign had regularly spaced and conveniently read small white crosses of wooden laths upon which were painted in black letters the doctors’ names. One such cross bore not a name upon it but the one word “Pathologist,” the first letter a capitalized P, for sure––and I knew, in that second, just exactly where I could squat Ol’ Black for about a week’s worth and not have him, well, ever Elitist Edinsmaier-discovered by the Good and Wonderful (and quite a ways away-parked and self-segregated … ) … Doctor!
Out in the much larger front one to the southwest, us peons’ parking lot, and down onto its lowest tier of graveled spaces completely out of view of the entire hospital’s height of windows even, I descended the old black station wagon which was to become my temporarily stationary hotel room’s bed and from the front’s bucket seats climbed into its backend. From off of Havencourt Drive’s battered and tattered sofa, I arranged back there, then, the three foam rubber cushions into a linear pattern, having, in order to create enough room, to move up to the front passenger seat several bags of stuff which I had brought along. I crawled under the sheet plus the couple of blankets topped with our ancient navy down comforter. My heart slowed. I slept.
[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, Teri Lynn
Legion’s Best Friends: Ms Grace and Dr Lionel Portia and Rachel
Wende: = Legion's friend after divorce [committed suicide due to Custody Crisis]
Cyan Song Goodwater: boys’ art teacher
Jim Cornball: Herry’s acquaintance from AA and realtor
Loser Lorn: Insurance agent referred by Cornball
Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor: 1st Family Court judge
Judge Harley Butcher: 2nd Family Court judge
Judge Barry Crowrook: Appellate Court judge
Judge Pansy Shawshank: Appellate Court judge
Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor: District Court judge on first two trials
Judge Allen Donnellson: Chief, Appellate Court for second and third trials' appeals
Judge Harley Butcher: District Court judge for third trial
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
Dr. Shark: Herry’s residency supervisor who fired him
Carrie Canard: twice judge-mandated custody evaluator
Ms Tsianina Snowball: Legion's friend who instructs her in re The Look
Fairvale, Montclank & Grubtrop: WV cities Herry moved boys to
Author: Dr. Blue, aka Ofherod, BSN, DVM, PhD = Commander Edinsmaier's Handmaid (Commander reiamsnidE's Handmaid)
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