CHAPTER 28: The Opera: Act III; Pt. 5 [cont. 12]
From "The Saga of One F**ked Mother
Legion has reconnected with her long-lost sister, Endys, and finally asks why she and her mother and siblings hadn’t supported her through the immense pain at losing her boys and her desperate efforts to get them back. But Endys has no empathy and shows zero outrage at what was done to her by Herry and the Court.
Endys minimizes the horror of Herry’s violence and abuse by calling him a “bonehead”. She places blame on Legion for being “tricked” by Herry and for being a “sinner” who needs to be “redeemed”. Legion decides she doesn’t want that toxic energy in her life and hangs up, never to speak to her again. That means there is no one in her blood family alive who supports her.
This concludes Chapter 28 and Act III of Dr. True’s Opera. But the fat lady—Justice—is not all sung out yet…
In the last section, Legion resolves to make women aware of the rampant sexism in family court after the patriarchal Chief Justice corruptly turns the True Majority Opinion into the Dissenting Opinion by appointing two of his buddies onto the panel. She laments how her “male-identified” mother and three siblings were unsupportive in her battle to regain custody of her boys—when she needed them most. She reconnects with a sister who had disappeared from her life.
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 every Wednesday so make sure to subscribe if you haven’t yet!
TEASERS
So where, ah, just exactly WHERE, … where WAS my family for me? Ya’ know, the ones like my sisters and my mother and my brother who were supposed to’ve gone to The Mat and to The Ends of the Earth for me? Where WERE you all?!
“Well, Herry was just a bonehead and tricked you.” …I replied…“A bonehead?…That’s like calling Osama bin Laden a bonehead or Adolf Hitler a bonehead. Herry was a freakin’ thug, a terrorist, a savage and a criminal, Endys! WHERE WAS my family to try to help me protect myself and my kids?!!!!”
I could not permit that toxin, that poison––not even its littlest drops’ worth of venom––to be aspersed onto my essence and my energy again. My blood will not be dirtied, will not be contaminated by that type of blood anymore, full sibling to me––or not!
BOOK 3: Dr. True's Opera in Three Acts—with Five Parts
CHAPTER 28: The Opera: Act III; Part 5 [cont. 12]
…I had, one exact week earlier, telephoned to her at Chestnut Rising to ascertain that she, indeed, felt secure. She did––right then at least. And perhaps for the first time in just about ever. Awful as that may truly be … shut up inside the Rising. But Endys was finally … finally … I mean finally … off of the streets and interstates––as vehicle operator! “I jus’ gotta have wheels!” I had remembered hearing this person declaring each night before sleep came to me. At last, Endys was no longer driving––and, therefore, herself not falling asleep at the wheel! ! ! ! from the drugs or from whatever else had caused her to do so, a blatant and such startling, outright admission of Endys’s to me! ! ! ! on the very first day of our reconnection back in July––which had totally rocked my psyche. Getting this dangerous driver stopped had proved to be a job for me five months in the offing, but I had finally accomplished at least that for all of the other mamas motoring their families around out there in eastern Iowa! And … before … Endys had actually damaged anyone … including herself.
Around 8:00 o’clock on a Friday evening a couple of weeks before some folks’ alleged biggy day of annual, godly rebirthing, it was the 10th of December then, when I chose to telephone again to Chestnut Rising and to speak to Endys, … this contact specifically to discuss––for the very, very first time inside those five, reconnecting months––me! The worker who answered said she knew exactly where Endys was right then––in front of the television on the lower level––so her page would be direct and Endys would be taking my call momentarily. Yeah? That so did not happen. A full four minutes of my open wire detecting dormitory-like sounds passed by before I heard a louder shuffling with receiver-fumbling, then at last … the flattest of hellos. I knew the voice was hers.
“Hi, Endys. It’s Legion.” I always, always, always address a person by either their first or titled last names or by how it is that they have stated they want to be recognized and acknowledged. Always … I have this (most minimal amount of) respect for the other persons in any conversation––at the very least. Narcissist Edinsmaier, himself “always a teacher,” soooo never wanted to have me “teach” him … this, did he, Jury?!?
“I know.” I could barely hear her. Same as always on the telephone. So often in the weeks before, I had asked her to be louder, to enunciate and to project into the receiver. What deafened Legion True had never asked Endys to do was to remember to vocalize and to articulate using those same functions the next time she found herself in any dialoguing exchange with me! On the phone or in person! I had never asked her––let alone demanded from Endys, also the Herry-like narcissist, … that she think about me instead of … only about herself!
“So. How’s it going with you––tonight, Endys?”
“I’m okay.”
“Well, good! That’s good! Ah, Endys, I was wondering, um, I’ve been wondering, you know, during the, um, O, maybe the last 15 years or so, um, just what exactly you happened to know about me and, ah, ya’ know, about Zane and Jesse and … ‘nd Mirzah?” I purposefully put, for her, the Truemaier Boys’ names in their respective ages’ order, from eldest to youngest, of course––as too, too many parents never seem to be able to break themselves away from doing. Which they so should! But I did not want to confuse the issue with her just then! The ‘issue’ which was … me and them and what the fuck had happened to us––according to Endys’s information! According to what she––as full sister to me and as aunt to the Boys––should have known, I am thinking!
Right away, a fairly loud and most audibly comprehensible tin-ear response returned to me, “O, I am suuuure you didn’t call me just to talk about thaaaat, now did you?!?!”
To which I replied too, too meekly to truly be me anymore, “Well, actually, Endys, now that you’re okay and getting the help you need and it’s been, ah, five months since I’ve reconnected with you, I really would like to know what it is … that you knew. History-wise, I mean. I would like to know about what was out there in our family floating around as to exactly what was happening––over all of those years––to my Boys and to me.”
“Well, I don’t know anything.”
“Ah, nothing? Nothing?! Cuz, well, aaaah, I was … I was DYING, Endys. DYING! For YEARS and YEARS and YEARS, Endys! Nine months I sat in a rocking chair after the Boys were taken. Just rocked and rocked and rocked and rocked. At the end of the month I got up out of it … to pay the bills and then went right back into the rocking chair again. Nine months, Endys! Then I got up out of that sweet chair and went out and got work. I was living without heat inside. Six winters. Four months each winter. In Iowa. 37-degree temperatures. I took showers in 37-degree temperatures indoors, Endys! Two alarm clocks. One to get me up at 2:30 in the morning to run all of the faucets and to flush all of the drains. And then I raced home every four hours during the daytime to do the same thing. Every lunch hour. Day after day after day after day, Endys. That headline article in the local Ames paper in 1990? See that one? Did you see that one, Endys?”
“Yeah, I did. Well, not ‘see’ it, Mom told me about it being on the front page. So if you were just rocking, then who paid your bills for you?” Fuck! It was like Endys was querying me with this thought for her own livelihood! … instead of about anything that had truly gone on … with me! “Hhmmmm, okay, now––now let me get this straight: If you didn’t have to work to pay for stuff, then somebody else’s money must’ve paid for everything for ya’––so, so––now if I jus’ believe in the power of magic pixie dust or some such notion or some such potion a – sprinklin’ down upon me, why, all’s I’ll have to do,–– too,–– is just sit in a chair! Like I already do!!!! But I’ll get to watch TV all the time. And, ‘nd what’s even better: I won’t have to worry ‘bout any little kids at the same time, let alone, actually do anything about them, since––since, ah, ah… I ain’t got any!”
Not a word from her, not even one question from Endys about that libelous newspaper slop which Shyster Shindy Scheisser and Nottingham Sheriff Fannie Issicran McLive had both been decreed by King Herod to make appear nearly everywhere … once Pillared Edinsmaier had first succeeded in having it published on the Ames Tribune’s front page and emblazoned there with the headline of just how mother-fuckingly crazy Legion True … ‘truly’ was! Not one, little, itty bitty bit of interest in that savagery, that crime of the Great and Wonderful Doctor Herod Edinsmaier’s was forthcoming to me at all … from Endys!
I simply answered her question about the money instead, “Well, I … I HAD … savings, Endys! I cashed in my short-term cds and all of my bonds. Even the IRAs, Endys. Had to pay the penalties for doing so, too, of course. Ya’ know, the savings one puts away in the good times FOR just exactly such times, Endys. FOR the bad times. THAT money!” I forced the crime and thuggery issue just a wee bit more though, “And that article was cut out and circulated all over. To my places of possible professional employment including costing me a veterinary position––and career!!!!––that I had already been offered at the NADC!”
“The NADC?”
“Yeah, the National Animal Disease Center. That article went out, too, Endys, to specific principals of the Boys’ schools. In Urbandale and all the way to all of their schools, every single one of them, in West Virginia. Sent or given out by Herry, his lawyer and his next wife! This went on for years!” I tried ever so hard with myself to keep my voice’s timbre quite even-keeled. Now I have no idea why I did that. Why had I even bothered to be so careful with Endys and her feelings. Except that I knew at the time of the telephone conversation, I am thinking that Endys must be picking up––if just from my intonation alone––on the meaning of all of the heinousness and on all of the violence of everything which I was recounting to her and that all of that, as it had soooo done to me, could somehow … hurt … her. Could somehow cause Endys some manner of harm. And I did not want that.
I continued vigilantly, “I couldn’t get any information from the Boys’ teachers or their doctors or from anyone who might’ve even known them for just a little bit. I had four jobs. Four at one time. To pay Herry child support for children I couldn’t even … TALK … to, Endys! Herry even lost three of the support checks, so NOT badly did he NOT need the money! Four YEEEEARS, Endys, I went without speaking to ANY ONE of my sons cuz, well, I just couldn’t get through to them. I couldn’t get past Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive or that daughter of hers for them to come to the telephone to me, and those two’ld never, never let me talk to Herry. Even to just beg him. And Herry had threatened the Boys if they tried to call me. Threatened to take away things from them. Privileges, ya’ know. Other stuff. You had to have known something! That something was wrong, Endys! So where, ah, just exactly WHERE, … where WAS my family for me? Ya’ know, the ones like my sisters and my mother and my brother who were supposed to’ve gone to The Mat and to The Ends of the Earth for me? Where WERE you all?! I am a good person. WHERE WAS my family for me!?”
It struck! It roared! THE ANSWER. Suddenly, lightning-fast. And without any warning. “NO! NO! No you’re NOT!”
“Wha’? ‘Not’ what? I am ‘not’ what, Endys?”
“YOU’RE NOT EITHER A GOOD PERSON! You’re just a sinner! You need to be redeemed. Redeemed, I tell you! Have you even read the Bible, Legion! You need to be redeemed! And Mom said you had two jobs. Just two jobs. And why did you work at places without heat anyhow?” She actually used the word ‘redeemed’ specifically in reference to me three times!
“No, not ‘worked at,’ Endys. I told you: I lived like this in order to pay Herry child support. Just the pilot light alone on the furnace burned up $15 a month right there so I simply put it out and never lit it again until I was finally done paying him. In 1997––after Mirzah turned 18 that late September. 81 straight months of payments. Never late, Endys; I was always early! And, ‘nd the checks?––The checks were always in full!”
“Well, Herry was just a bonehead and tricked you.”
I couldn’t believe my ear. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was at a fucking loss by now. I am thinking, “Excuuuuse me??! Wha’??!”
Instead, I replied still too, too damned calmly, “A bonehead? A bonehead, Endys??! That’s like calling Osama bin Laden a bonehead or Adolf Hitler a bonehead. Herry was a freakin’ thug, a terrorist, a savage and a criminal, Endys! WHERE WAS my family to try to help me protect myself and my kids?!!!!”
Over and over and over, Endys the Younger displayed absolutely noooo, none, zip, zilch, zero … outrage … on my behalf! Then … in the course of the ensuing conversation and my attempt to elicit from her any knowledge at all of her take about the most recent decade and a half’s worth of my history, Endys suddenly and caustically demanded, “Now LISTEN and DON’T INTERRUPT me!”
THAT?! That was it.
My response to that was automatic and utterly immediate and, I believe, put into me by my therapist and my friend and that guru who, not that long ago, saved my spirit, Mr. Keith Log, of right here in Ames: I laid the receiver back down onto its cradle–– ––and walked away from the telephone. By a family member or by an ex-family constituent not my own Boys, I had not been spoken to––in that manner––since Mehitable lived and, before that, since ‘lovely’ lone brother Sterling and his screaming mere millimeters away from my only hearing ear on the day of AmTaham’s dying. And, of course, not since … Herry. By any other family member, let alone, from my very own sister, I could not permit that toxin, that poison––not even its littlest drops’ worth of venom––to be aspersed onto my essence and my energy again. My blood will not be dirtied, will not be contaminated by that type of blood anymore, full sibling to me––or not!
Along with Endys’s previous, recent wild spending, her apparent grandiose ideas of superiority and what she was worth, of what she, for that matter, was actually worthy of having materially, and of my earlier witnessing about her bankruptcy filing such shallowness and flippancy, I could not abide––that at her age of 53, she had, for herself on her own, developed in over three decades of adulthood no more knowledge, no more self-discipline and no more self-restraint––just in financial matters alone, for example, let alone, in social conversation with her long-, long-time, unheard-from sister who had first taken months of effort and cost to see to Endys’s own security,––she had no more … than what I had been hearing that night and observing in the five months before that! Even if Endys does have bipolar––any genre of it, it was not the bipolarity speaking to me on that Friday evening so soon before the most recent December’s batch of christianizing and proselytizing: that––is––Endys.
This?––This from all components of the people who know themselves to have been the immediate members of what was left of My Birth Family which amounted to … all of them … except for AmTaham––after that argument date of 07 June 1994, and those ruthless black robes filled up with flowy hollow and ghostly but so pillared––and mightily unchecked, thoroughly unaccountable––men who could not wait to do me, Legion True, DEhuman,––to do me in. For good. Via this Second and Final Appeal … Part Five!
No matter The True Majority of ‘the Court’ in its operatically ignored and, thus, so inconsequential … Dissent.
* * * * *
All Five Parts … now completed! The Opera ended? Its fat lady––Justice––all sung out? … Hardly so.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Dr. Legion True: One Fucked Mother
Dr. Herod (Herry) Edinsmaier: Legion’s husband/Sperm Source [“re: I am snide” backwards]
Jesse Truemaier: Legion’s son
Mirzah 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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