CHAPTER 28: The Opera: Act III; Pt. 5 [cont. 7]
From "The Saga of One F**ked Mother
Shortly after Legion returns from her sneaky Spring visit with her boys, she gets through to Mirzah on the home phone. He tells Legion something happened to Jesse, but Herry said he can’t tell Legion anything about it or where he is; but says he would tell her if he thought Jesse were dying. Legion calls around every hospital and finally finds him at a psychiatric inpatient unit.
Apparently Jesse had gone for a long time without being able to get a good night’s sleep and had a mental health episode. Of course, this would never have happened if Herry had not taken him away from his beloved mother. One good thing to come out of it, though, is that Jesse finds a way to contact her on Mother’s Day—the first time in the six years Herry has kept the boys away from her.
In the last section, Legion tells Jesse that she is going to write a book so they will know the truth about how Herry took them away from her with lies to the court. Jesse tells her about a $100K movie deal Herry and his attorney had been negotiating about their case. Legion is horrified. He would have used it to make her look like a crazy, vengeful ex-wife, as he had done with the local newspaper article…But she is determined to outlast him and hold him accountable for the horrors he’s inflicted on the boys and her through a definitive exposé.
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
Jesse at age 15½ began to lack large chunks of sleep––to the point that he actually became unable to sleep…Along with the insomnia, days and literally consecutive days of it that can stretch into nearly full weeks of it at a single clip, came for Jesse what comes for anyone in such a state––paranoia.
“If Jesse were, aaaah,… ah, if Jesse was, um … ah … ah, dying, ya’ know I’d tell ya’, don’tcha, Ma?! You know I would, don’tcha?! If he was dying, I would tell ya’, Ma.”
…when Jesse phoned me up that Sunday night in May, his late-at-night call to me had been the first Mother’s Day in six years’ worth of Mother’s Days that I had had a call or a contact or any form of a remembrance from him or from Mirzah or from Zane…
BOOK 3: Dr. True's Opera in Three Acts—with Five Parts
CHAPTER 28: The Opera: Act III; Part 5 [cont. 7]
…Perhaps Zane cannot just now call forth my second visit to Grubtrop and to West Virginia in his mind’s eye; but there was an event to take place over the very next three weeks, that is, the last of that year’s April and the first part of its May, nearly immediately after Ol’ Black and I had bustled ourselves way away from Tank-Driver Fannie Issicran McLive about all of which––he most certainly does recall. It actually involved Jesse more than it did Zane and more than Mirzah although they definitely were affected by it all. It involved Jesse and, of course, the Great Doctor Wonderful and Ms. McLive. To date I have never been told either verbally or in writing just what exactly transpired––other than in Herry Edinsmaier’s own typed words in a letter which he signed on 08 May 1994––on Mother’s Day! that is––and mailed directly to me in order to project purposefully onto me … the blame … for it all … because of their True mother’s having been out to visit with her Boys!
From piecing together little bits and fragments of information which have made their way back to me over the past decade and a half from several different sources, the least of whom were Herry, Ms. McLive and Mehitable, I am thinking that apparently for the very first time known to or at least recognized by others, Jesse at age 15½ began to lack large chunks of sleep––to the point that he actually became unable to sleep. That is, I am thinking that his adrenaline, the epinephrine chemical produced endogenously, kicked in to such an extent that after a while of wakefulness, it simply took over his body in toto and no amount of wishful hoping nor even concerted biofeedback can cause someone so long awake as Jesse had been to be able to slip into much, much-needed, consequential slumber. The epinephrine chemical rules and the only thing that will override its glandular production and secretion and bring on sound somnolence are other exogenously administered chemicals … therapeutic soporific drugs given intramuscularly or intravenously or, perhaps but usually less successfully, orally. Sleeping pills, in other words, are very often completely ineffective––until such doses of them are reached and swallowed that, instead, spell lethality.
Along with the insomnia, days and literally consecutive days of it that can stretch into nearly full weeks of it at a single clip, came for Jesse what comes for anyone in such a state––paranoia. Any psychiatrist or family medicine practitioner or internist, for that matter, worth her or his salt ought to know and to advise patients and their loved ones regarding this phenomenon––but, in my experience, rarely do they advise such––if they, indeed, do know of it. The same thing is notoriously common among foot soldiers in warring episodes of battle with its subsequent fatigue that brings about, however, no such-needed sleep. Instead, it appears easier, so, so much easier, for doctors and for platoon commanders alike to cavalierly label such folks as “paranoid,” and therefore “crazed,” and subsequently to isolate these people off either to Sixth Floor Hotel-type mental wards drugged and drugged and drugged or to their families’ back bedrooms back home … also drugged and, … there, forgotten.
When all that is needed is so simple and so tender and so fucking cheap! I mean it: All that is needed are about three to four days’ worth of uninterrupted, intramuscularly induced and sustained deeeep sleep … brought about by gentle, somniferous medications––and not by the vastly over-prescribed yet chronically debilitating and so, so evilly harsh ones. The perniciously injurious ones like haloperidol which cause, over time, in about 100 percent of the persons who ingest it … to involuntarily assume the rigid, unanimated, unsmiling, stupid-as-a-stump-post stance with a glazed-over eyeballs’ stare––about neither of which positions can the dope-fucked patient do a gawddamn, mother-fucking thing although … although deep inside themselves these people are quite lucid, can correctly hear and see everything, know exactly what is going on and, worst of all, know just exactly how horrible and how awful they, now capable outwardly of only physically achieving the Haldol Shuffle when they ambulate, … … we know just exactly how we look to all other passersby.
It was to this end that Jesse eventually came then––when sleeplessness and paranoia took him over.
Something happened at school, Jesse was finishing the ninth grade that spring, that caused teachers to report back to Daddee-Herry and to Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive and, voila, ‘fore one could blink over the utterly ridiculous disbelief of it all, Jesse was in absentia! Gone! An English teacher had assigned a project; and when Jesse conducted research for it, he started asking questions of school librarians that seemed to them perverted or areligious and atheistic or blasphemous or whatever the fuck. And this state, the State of West Virginia, allegedly all of them there being the godfearingest, purest, most worshiping folks in the entire gawddamn Union, why, these public school officials so fast jumped so far up and down to put an absolute silencing kibosh upon Jesse’s queries as to have made an Olympian contender’s high-jump coach proud!
As regards this fateful first disappearance of Jesse, I do not know and am only recounting from here on out, now, upon supposition; but perhaps he felt threatened, perhaps he felt like folks who, of all people, should not have been, … that is, his public schoolteachers and Daddee-Herry and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, like supposedly trustworthy people were out to stop him from his native nation’s First Amendment right of free inquiry and his freedom of assemblage … with whatever knowledge and information he desired to keep company! When he was trying to accountably accomplish his teacher-assigned school project, no less!
At any rate, Jesse began not sleeping well, then not sleeping at all, then experiencing “incidences” wherein he appeared paranoid in his verbal responses to some teachers and to restaurant shop-owners (at least once at the local Grubtrop Dairy Queen, I am thinking). This is the exact extent of what I know as far as triggering and precipitating factors that were then to lead up to consigning Jesse Truemaier among … The Disappeared.
Return now, Jury, to the Transcription Department of the major central Iowa clinic at where I had been on the … part-time, second-shift, second … job now all of exactly 5½ months, not even half a year yet, … in fact, since precisely 09 November 1993, my ‘anniversary’ date with said clinic as employers are known to mark a staffer’s beginning. So … “meanwhile, back at the” (as is infamously expressed in the movies, ya’ know, the movies, Jury, … such as the one Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive and daMan’s employee, Mr. Shindy Shyster, er, ‘cuse me, Scheisser, had all connived to construct about me … ya’ know, the one to allegedly raise money enough in order … “for Herry – Daddee to be able to finance the Truemaier Boys’ college educations …”) … meanwhile, back at the basement area of the Transcription Department where there were no windows, no outside lighting, only cramped cubicles, stuffiness and loooong, long evening shifts without any co-worker conversation, with ears plugged in, with right foot on the pedal and with both eyes and both hands screen- and keyboard-glued for hours and hours and hours which stretched consecutively and nightly until 11:00 p.m. and after … and with my having to, then, rise for the secretarial, day position as the Forestry Department’s Undergraduate Advising Secretary no later than 7:00 a.m. every weekday morning, Dr. Legion True was “fresh” from a break taken for a trip out east … my supervisor knew. Purportedly gone to visit family, I was now back to work typing away far into the night––same as always.
From the git-go upon my pitching down that blue apron onto the greasy spoon’s so, so slippery delicatessen floor, I had been just a bit remiss, purposefully, in deigning to tell this clinic’s transcription personnel when applying for their position that I had me … a few college degrees. Fuck, I needed work. Hours. A job. There was no way that I was going to be able ‘to tell all’ on the application categories marked “Education” and “Job Experience” … and, yet, get … hired! So, I simply didn’t.
In fact, I had left approximately ten years’ worth and more of my life and my brainy, blonde self utterly blank on these two categories––except for stating there the one fact which seems to help out persons like me with our “résumés” when we complete such job applications during hard times: over these particular vast spans of degree-achieving endeavors and veterinary medical-practicing and professorship employments, … why, Dr. Legion True simply stated the ‘other Truth’, … instead! As far as how it was, that is, that I had spent all of those years in child-bearing and child-raising.
And no one, absolutely no one then nor now, questions this “absence” nor asks for supplementary, in-depth detail about these chunks of time spent away from what they are truly perceiving to be … “one’s real work.” No one appears to think that this manner of ‘employment’ and ‘acquisition of higher education’––mothering––is even worthy of bothering at all with further querying at the times when women come out of their houses and back into the workforce to interview for their wages’ paying jobs! As they did know and as Dr. True did state, I was an ‘old nurse’ from before the years of even first getting pregnant … so employing officials just assumed that, from that education and from that work experience, Dr. Legion True had obtained my ability to know and to spell and to punctuate such medical jargon and, with my passing and surpassing the practical typing skill tests, … well, there apparently had been no further need of any transcripts which are the college-grade or degree-kind! And I had been hired on. And, thus: child support payments, therewith, to continue to be paid up in full and ahead of their due dates every single month. Noooo interruption in these whatsoever!
Transcription was such easy work. Easiest I’d ever done, I am thinking––in the sense of technicality. From the standpoint of warding off boredom and forcing oneself to stay entirely put, not kaput, inside one’s chair for two hours straight followed by a rise out of it to the bathroom and the lunchroom to make a cup of hot tea of from between ten and 20 minutes’ worth before submitting to another two-hour stretch of mandatorily plugging in and tuning everything else out, well, that has to be nearly the hardest of all of the jobs which the Truemaier Boys’ mama has ever performed time after monotonous time after monotonous time. One’s staying on with the department at all, not to mention a woman’s getting a quarter raise at annual performance review time, depends squarely upon ‘line count’ as well as even down to her ‘keystroke count’ so, well, … … one types. And that is it. That is that. That is all that one does when she is ‘at work.’ Nearly.
So if you’re often enough an outgoing and convivial person … as am I, why, you’re fucked. As far as having a whole helluva lot of fun at work! Yes, I do like the mental exercise of knowing and continuing to use, if only to correctly spell, those lovely, gargantuan, Latin-based words, … I do! But the sameness in the methodical mechanics of it all is tedium to me, more than factory assembly line-like and nearly to some of us, as hope most adamantly is, a woman-killer. I love working alone and am never lonely. Loneliness, different that it is from yearning specifically for the presence of Mirzah, Jesse and Zane, I do not experience; and, in this job, it also does not exist there for me. Working well alone and only by myself probably has a lot to do with my being so deaf. It’s just that the fixed, standstill position can be quite wearisome, to not be physically moving about accomplishing different tasks during such long stretches. Fortunately for me and as physically tired as this night job caused me to feel by the weekends, our evening lead and supervising transcriptionist was a hoot! Because of those few-minutes’ breaks between the two-hour grunt stints, she and I not only bonded but have remained friends since––since she, already several years ago now and mother to two school-aged children when I first met Stormy, left the bricks-and-mortar physicality to go home and begin her own solo, transcription business out of an office which she prepared for herself there!
One night from the wall telephone in the clinic’s break room and using a then-newfangled thing known as a prepaid phone card, I tried calling out to West Virginia, to Grubtrop, specifically to try to connect with any and all of my Boys. For the umpteenth time since returning to Iowa from my recent rendezvous with them.
And did!
I was absolutely breathless when none of the Second Family-Troika––not Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive nor Mary Jane nor the worst who could have picked up my call, Terrorist bin Herry, was on the other end of the telephone wire! I was also almost as speechless when I realized the answering person was actually Mirzah! We talked and talked and talked and talked; “No, all three of ‘em ‘re out, Ma, it’s okay!” It was grand!
Not only had consecutive chunks of months passed by without my hearing his or Jesse’s or Zane’s voices, but over two years’ worth of monthly pages had been ripped off of our respective calendars … since I had. Except for my in-person, April visits of one week each out to central West Virginia in 1993, and 1994, not one telephone call in over 24 months’ time had I managed, costing me as hell of course, … had these Boys’ mama managed to get past the Sheriff of Nottingham in order to be able to reach any one of my Children. It hadn’t even been me, their mama, that late, dark March of 1992, who had been the one to try to gently let all of them know that AmTaham True was dead! Their belovéd Grandpa! It should have been me!
The kingly Coward never answered the residential telephone. ‘Twas against his home-ruling policies apparently. So as to avoid me and any other perceived confrontational shit, the Gutless Wonder simply and spinelessly refused to acknowledge, let alone, to handle or to be the first in the household to field … any incoming calls. Ever. Even, and yes this is only supposition, … even when Herry Edinsmaier was the only individual at home at the moment a ring came in! Just as had always been this very scenario in all of that mustachioed bull-snout’s barnyards when I had been the King’s First Cunt––er, not the first one, of course, but back when I had been one of the royal herd’s many such stupid-ass heifers, one actually mawwied to daMan! Consequently, Dr. Legion True had been entirely unable to ever get past the King’s henchwoman, Ms. McLive, who always, always, always sounded more than chirpy, pleased––and mocking––to have been suborned into doing His Majesty’s nastiness and atrocities for him.
So as to get back to my typing in just a little bit more, I asked Mirzah if he could put either Zane or Jesse on the telephone as well.
”Ah, um, yeah, but, ah, I can’t,” Mirzah wavered.
“O?”
“Um, I don’ know where Zane is.”
“O. Okay. Sure. Sure. Ya’ know, Mirzah, I’ve been calling a lot. Well, come to think of it: no … no, you wouldn’t know that. How could you? Beings how you and Zane and Jesse never know when it is that I’ve been trying to call any of you. Anyhow, I have been. And, ah … ah, Ms. Fannie McLive’s just been hanging up on me right off. She hasn’t even bothered to taunt me or insult me––like she usually does. The woman usually has about 30 seconds’ worth of crap which she always wants me to eat first––and … then? Then, … she hangs up on me. But these last two weeks, Mirzah, when she finds out it’s me who’s doing the calling, why, she just disconnects right away. Everything’s okay there, isn’t it? Can I talk to Jesse then? If Zane isn’t around, maybe Jesse then?”
Dead Silence.
For a moment there I thought I had been disconnected.
“Mirzah? Mirzah?” Nothing. But the line was open, and I knew that it was. All of the senses quickened …
That loathed dread which comes on to us Mothers on Trial at the oddest times of nearly every day and certainly on the ones when those lengthy, whacker, thumping legal documents arrive in the mailbox, why, the alarm was right there to the fore … again. On the Iowa side of the open telephone link I simply waited, receiver gripped, much in the same way as I had been taught to do by my former dean when a veterinary medical student; he had been a guru to me regarding the Zen of listening. Just like Grace does, too. Still nothing. The Silence that does not … protect … one. The longest pause, this one in the earliest days of May 1994, that I’d ever known in conversations with this child of mine, Mirzah. “Mirzah … ? Mirzah, Jesse’s not there either, is he? He hasn’t been there either, has he? For quite awhile. He isn’t home now and, … an’, aaaah, he hasn’t been. Am I right? Mirzah?”
Then, Mirzah spoke.
The words were leaden. And to my knowledge the gravest that Mirzah had ever in his mere 14½ years uttered, I am thinking, “If Jesse were, aaaah,… ah, if Jesse was, um … ah … ah, dying, ya’ know I’d tell ya’, don’tcha, Ma?! You know I would, don’tcha?! If he was dying, I would tell ya’, Ma.”
What?! ! ! ! What exactly was the news my only functioning ear had just received?! More of this bone-crushing mother-fuck to that poor, poor ear of mine––and this time, coming innocently as it surely was, from my baby! “Mirzah? Dying? Jesse? Where is he?! Where is he, Mirzah?! He’s in a hospital somewhere, isn’t he? He is. You don’t even have to say it, Mirzah; I already knew it! He is!”
“I can’t! I can’t! But if he were dying, Ma, … ”
“I know, Honey, I know. I know. Don’t worry about it; I’ll find him. I will. But, ah, but if … if you get a chance to see him or talk to him, ah … aaaah … can you at least tell me––it is or it isn’t critical, Mirzah?” The mother staggered a little in my voice delivery yet recognized in it its potential for transmitting horror and terror to Mirzah––so staggered, instead, … inside myself! … in order to try to keep solid and constant.
“I don’ know. Really I don’t, Ma. Ah, um, I don’t think he’s critical. I just don’t know though,” it was blatant Mirzah had been threatened. That meant Zane, too, had been. And the two of them certainly had been told precisely squat about Jesse. Calculatingly so. I couldn’t compromise Mirzah’s being sworn to secrecy from me much further nor did I want to: Mirzah was clearly shook and helpless––even though a teenager now––helpless to aid his year-older brother in any way, and it was telling in his tone back to me.
“I’ll find him, Mirzah, I will. If you get a chance to get him a message, tell Jesse, too, that … I know now––and that I’ll find him. I better let you go, Honey. I love you. And I love Zane; please tell him. And I love Jesse. I’ll find him, Mirzah; I will. Good-bye, Honey.” Wha’th’hell?! Om’gaaaawd!. Again … another scene in Herry’s horror movie––twisted. Twisted all inside out this episode, hell, this entire, mother-fucking chapter would have been. The one that was yet to completely unfold for Jesse and for me.
From the break room I returned to Stormy but not to my specific transcription cubicle, not just then. “It’s Jesse, Stormy, he’s in a hospital somewhere; but Mirzah couldn’t say where? O, my fucking god! What can I do? What can I do? Go home; I gotta go home. But … but, ah, … it’ll only be even later out there, there in West Virginia, by the time I, ah, I … I can figure something out!”
Immediately Stormy sensed the urgency of the matter, too; mothers are like that about children and family. And only mothers, I mean. Sometimes a few fathers are, too, yet only a very few are even attentive enough to ‘get it’, to get … right off … the gravity of such a deal. But always, always, always mothers are. “Um, ya’ … ya’ have any more time left on that phone card, do ya’ think?” Stormy asked.
“Sure. Sure I do.”
“Come with me. I’m punching you out; ya’ got sick here at work. Wouldn’t that be about right?! Given the way ya’ feel right now, that’d be the truth, now wouldn’t it be?!” Supervisor Stormy didn’t even hesitate. “And you … you had to … ah, you had to take off … I didn’t say ya’ had to get home … you just had to take off ‘fore that Ménière’s came over you, right, Legion?! I know where there’s a stash of phone books with lists of a whole bunch of hospitals in the U.S.; I’m gettin’ it. You can jus’ pick the most likely ones and start calling ‘em. Get in here,” Stormy opened the passageway through to a back, back room, through at least two more doors, “there’s a phone over there in the corner, and all of these doors’ll just be shut. Hell, I’m not leaving till you are. Get goin’. I’ll bring ya’ the books.” Whirlwind and dynamo, Stormy’s name certainly stuck to her!
Operating only on intonation and mere supposition from Mirzah’s voice and his very few, “allowed” words to me on the gravest of concerns, I, the mother, indeed commenced calling; the time was 8:30ish Central Daylight, therefore, an hour later out in West Virginia. Beginning with the most obvious place to start, I tried first the medical center of the Great and Wonderful Healer, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier. Receptionist after hospital receptionist began telling me what I, before initiating this endeavor, … what I truly feared almost as much as finding Jesse and learning what was actually wrong: every single one of the women, and they were all the voices of only DEhumans, about a baker’s dozen or so all over central, west, north and south West Virginia, came back at me with the same, very practiced script, “Ma’am, that is information I am unable to provide you over the telephone. You’ll have to come in … in person. He’s a minor and your son, you say? Well, be that as it may; I am not able to release any such information of that sort over the telephone. I’m sorry.” All of them were cordial. All of them were as adamant as they were pleasant. Just as––ordinarily––Jane Q. Public would want them all to be! That is, strictly adherent to medical records’ confidentiality!!!!
But this was no fucking ordinary night, and I needed information. The not knowing, the withholding of knowledge, purposefully, is such power, such control over. And in mothering situations? This is the worst. The absolute worst. Next, of course, to her child’s maiming or death. As a matter of primed and skillful fact, … hateful, spineless, gutless cowards for fathers … soooo know this. They know this very, very well! And work it. O, O, O, O how they work it against us mothers! This particular evening the loaded charge of “not gonna tell ya’ ”was forthcoming out of the mouths of only women––but you can bet … yeah, you can bet upon your own hospitalized children, Jury, that this ‘policy’ was put there in front of these DEhumans to read to fraught mothers such as myself, put there in front of them at their telephone reception units by medical boards packed chock full with the majority of them men making such ‘policy’ and the rest of such boards’ members … male-identified women … most of whom will not have been, nor ever will be, mothers, let alone, frantic ones, … of minor children themselves.
I rang up every single hospital that I could find there in Stormy’s stack of phone books which she’d brought to me inside the Transcription Department’s far back room––that is, the ‘general information’ numbers of the ones which would fit even a remote possibility that Jesse might be a patient there. Around 10:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, I dialed the main switchboard number for a lovely sounding place which called itself the Blue Hazelnut Ridge Hospital in Morgantown, at least about a 45-minute drive from Grubtrop and apparently affiliated, perhaps in some teaching way, with a university there. “Hello, ah, my name is Legion True, Ma’am. I’m sorry to be calling you so late, but I need to be connected to Jesse Truemaier’s room. It’s very urgent, and I am his mother.”
“O well, that will not be possible, I’m sorry, Mrs., aaaah, ah, what did you say your name was?”
“Legion True. I’m Jesse’s mama.”
“I am sure that you are, Mrs. True, but, ah, um, … I am not allowed. I, um, I can’t connect you because, well, how to put this, well, … ummm …” and the receptionist’s voice trailed off a wee trace … amongst what sounded over the wire to be a bit of some shuffling of papers. Then the woman continued, “O yes, now I know. Um, I can’t put you through to any such room of that person because, um, well, because I am just not at liberty to tell you, or anyone else for that matter, over the telephone whether or not any such Jesse Thaddeus Truemaier person is or is not a patient here at Blue Hazelnut Ridge. I’m so sorry to have to tell you that, but I just can’t say a thing one way or the other about our patients here at this time, Mrs. True.”
But she just already had! And purposefully, too, I could tell it in her voice! She must have discerned sincerity, authenticity and legitimate substance in mine because she had clearly searched for––and found––a very, very telling way to get to me the answers to everything I’d asked of her … without compromising her duty and, ultimately, her very job, of course. “Of course,” I replied with probably too much enthusiasm to my pitch and timbre, “ … aaaah, of course! Ah, um … I won’t bother you any longer. I know it’s really, really late. Thank you! Thank you ever! For … for, well, thanks so much, Ma’am. Good-bye now.” I have never known her name, but … but I know her. And thousands of such mothers like her do I know! At no time had I ever given over to her or to any other of the receptionists or nurses who had answered the late-night, infirmary switchboard sets at those various easternmost hospitals … Jesse’s middle name of Thaddeus. Coming as it was back to me and mentioned for the very first time all evening, exclusively and singularly throughout its pronunciation, there could have only been one way that that had happened: Jesse was, indeed, a patient there––and currently there as in––“… our patients here at this time, Mrs. True!” which she had, with me on the wire still, just looked up inside all of the reception registry’s chart-related mishmash which I had heard this other, West Virginian mother pushing around and so swiftly jumbling through.
I was as thrilled as a mama could possibly be … … who has just learned the news that her child has been hospitalized. This is not electrifyingly delightful news––yet it could be described in that moment as … breathtaking. I’d found Jesse!––and obviously he was alive! Trying to piece together the time and date just then with what I could intuit from Mirzah’s overtones and inflections and with how many times I had tried telephoning out to any of the Boys since my return back to Iowa, it appeared to me that it was quite possible Jesse Truemaier had been in Blue Hazelnut Ridge, or at least gone from Herry-Daddee’s Grubtrop residence, for at least two weeks or longer. Perhaps from about as many weeks as I had been gone from Grubtrop in mid April 1994, to the initial time that Jesse … went missing.
But Jesse Truemaier was alive! This much I finally did know! And, for the little bit of present time directly in front of me, this information and knowledge in to the mother and no longer withheld from me was … enough.
That night at work was nearly a decade ago and still so harrowing for me that I remember it as if it were just last night’s endeavor! And Stormy? I’ve said it before––in Ms. Emily Dickinson’s prose, “My friends are my estate.” … “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Stormy and Unidentified Blue Hazelnut Ridge Worker Woman!” Only vengeance-wresting, loathing fathers would ever cause a mother nearly a thousand miles away––which might as well have been as far away as the other side of the Planet––to have to hear from her 15-year-old child’s brother, that is, from her other child, her 14-year-old Mirzah, the following words, “If Jesse were, aaaah,… ah, if Jesse was, um … ah … ah, dying, ya’ know I’d tell ya’, don’tcha, Ma?! You know I would, don’tcha?! If he was dying, I would tell ya’, Ma.” That was, however, the life stratagem and style––indeed––of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, Alleged Daddee and Healer.
At the time I did not know that Blue Hazelnut Ridge Worker Woman was, after all, a nurse. When I first asked, she knew right away that Jesse Thaddeus Truemaier was there because … Jesse was her patient! She just didn’t have on the tip of her tongue his middle name so, hence, her need to quickly consult documents which held this all-important clue––the one which she gave right back to me.
My home telephone on Havencourt Drive rang there about 11 p.m. on the late night of Sunday, 08 May 1994, nearly a week after my wired encounter with Blue Hazelnut Ridge Worker Woman when we two were both at our respective places of work. “Hi, Ma, it’s me, Jesse. Happy Mother’s Day! I couldn’t call ya’ earlier today cuz I couldn’t get to a telephone by myself. Just wanted to tell ya’ that. An’, an’ that … I’m home. An’, O … ah, … ah, the nurse? She came and told me right after she talked to ya’ that you’d called for me.” Jesse didn’t say it, but I knew it: Blue Hazelnut Ridge Worker Woman was smiling directly at him that night when she told him I had found him; I know it. “Mom, they thought I was on drugs. That’s why they put me there. But I wasn’t, Mom. I wasn’t. You were just out here; I wasn’t on drugs, was I?!”
It would not be that Mother’s Day 1994, when I also told Mirzah and Zane that I had found Jesse the very night I promised Mirzah on the telephone that I would: it was too late on that specific one. But at some later point, I did tell both of Jesse’s brothers that I, indeed, had had two friends that frenetic night, one my boss and another whom I shall never meet nor know further … guide me straight to Jesse. Jesse didn’t know it either, and this fact I have never told any of the Truemaier Boys: that when Jesse phoned me up that Sunday night in May, his late-at-night call to me had been the first Mother’s Day in six years’ worth of Mother’s Days that I had had a call or a contact or any form of a remembrance from him or from Mirzah or from Zane because Dr. Herry Edinsmaier, with the more-than-willing, folie-à-deux assistance of Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, had in his notorious kingly reign kept such a tight rein in on them all––including the earlier times even––when they lived with me but were gone over to Herry’s house or had been with Herry on weekend visitation when this one particularly special May Sunday on everyone’s calendars came ‘round!
[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]
Jesse Truemaier: Legion’s son
Zane 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, 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)