CHAPTER 28: The Opera: Act III; Pt. 5 [cont. 4]
From "The Saga of One F**ked Mother
Legion is back home in Iowa working hard at her jobs. In her secretarial position at the Forestry Department, she feels “loved and worthy” after successfully organizing their international conference despite major flooding damage. However, at her deli job, she is being discriminated against and sexually harassed by her boss. Feisty Legion has had enough one morning and walks out right in the middle of her shift, never to return—even though she really needs the money.
Legion is a doctor who’s been reduced to working jobs at which she can barely make a basic living, while being ordered to pay child support to a doctor who is allowed to keep her children away from her. She is discovering that the patriarchal Family Court system marginalizes and bankrupts even highly educated and successful women like her, who are just trying to keep and protect their babies.
In the last section, Legion sneaks visits with her boys for an entire week in various places around the new town five states away from Iowa to which Herry has legally kidnapped them. He has succeeded in his revenge M.O. to keep her precious children completely away from her—with the enabling of Family Court, of course, and the complicity of a wicked second wife, whom he married for that very purpose...
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
One of my most prized possessions exists from the presentation to me months later by a Conference principal…of my very own bound and glossy copy of the Proceedings from the Third International Agroforestry Conference—personally inscribed to me and autographed by all of my immediate Forestry bosses.
I felt loved—and, even more importantly to me, I felt … worthy. Once again.
The Worst—the absolute worst encounters were the not too infrequent mornings when Depraved Fuckface-Dick chose to test the limits of his frotteuristic indecencies and actually entered the deli area…so that his torso and trunk…were more or less forced to barely brush my back and buttocks as he squeezed his garbed genitals between me…and the gargantuan butcher’s block tabletop…
BOOK 3: Dr. True's Opera in Three Acts—with Five Parts
CHAPTER 28: The Opera: Act III; Part 5 [cont. 4]
…Hauling Ol’ Black back into Ames finally and returning without any further breakdown or other untoward incident whatsoever, I was, indeed, back to work Monday, the 19th of April bearing not only my gifts but, of course, also such great, great news to all of my co-workers. Yet not before remembering and marking well Zane’s last West Virginia words to me, “Ma, uh, Ma, if you try this again, can you please let me know you’re gonna?”
“Ya’ mean, somehow get in touch with you that I’m coming to see all of you again? Disguised or otherwise?” I asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Zane had appealed to me. I knew that in one way, notably the secrecy and the clandestine nature of the past surreptitious week, my coming had been difficult for all of the Boys—but especially for him. Zane the Eldest. He had always shouldered—all on his own and never because of any request of mine—that silent yet so heavily burdensome task of the role of My Siblings’ Protector. By him, … the Eldest. That most solemn of jobs of where the older brother is supposed to look out for his little ones. Zane has always taken that all on not only willingly but very, very seriously. And he was letting me know that for that specific, self-assigned labor of his, he just needed some heads-up’ time in order to prep himself and his two younger brothers—in the case that, well, that “Sam” may one day again appear to him alongside a darkened Grubtrop street in the very midst, actually, of some future nighttime.
I assured Zane that I so would get that done—because their mother soooo would be coming back out to see him and Jesse and Mirzah! 1993 was, of course, before email and even really before faxing had become widely available to individuals. While the Truemaier Boys didn’t have, even between the three of them yet, one personal computer I so hoped that because of their own proclivities and because of Dr. Edinsmaier’s money, my particular three Children out of all of the World’s kiddos soon would. At the moment I vowed to Zane that I would get him warned of my intentions to come see them all again, I did not know how I would accomplish that—but I? I had friends so, well, … so that would just get done. I knew that it would—and, therefore, I meant every word of it when I made Zane my promise.
And then? Then … the Truemaier Boys’ mother was gone.
I liked the smiles on Dr. Joplin’s and Rosalind Franklin’s faces not only when I walked through the Forestry Department’s door but also when they saw what souvenirs I’d selected for each of them. That pewter wind chimes of John Deere tractors—well, who knew it’d be such a smash hit!? And then it was right back into the mix. Those International Agroforestry Conference dates were fast approaching, only four months to go now. With 350 to 450 expected to register. From all over the World so many, many different persons where the English language would not be their first tongue at all. This was truly fun. I was experiencing not only something at which I, with details, details, details and excellent writing and editing knowledge was very, very skilled, but I was having a whole passel of fun putting this deal together. And, no, I most surely did not do all of its prep alone; but by almost every single male (as well as each female) professor and colleague in the Department, I was given the respect and the honor certainly due me—and professionally due any lower-level clerical type at all times actually—but which was a completely unusual, even nearly foreign thing for me. What … with all of the name-calling, the evil appellations, his degrading sexist jokes, the mere questioning of my validity as a human person, let alone, as a mother, a good-enough one at that—not to mention my very sanity and the overall selfish narcissism and silent, shunning and shaming passive aggression with which Antisocial Herry treated me! With which, also, all of daJudges and ‘the Court’, the American family law court system—without policing check and balancing self-accountability whatsoever—had behaved!
As can be imagined, I had a radar. One of sorts mightily finely honed by this time. In only one colleague, did I sense discomfort, no, disgust it was actually—of the likes of which I had known with Herry. To the same painful and abusive degree of sexual innuendo and actual assault, either emotionally or physically. A tenured professor, without his initially asking and clearly out of the blue without any warning or impending insinuation to me at all, proceeded one workday to put hands onto me and initiate a massage of my neck. Immediately, he tried to extend one paw further downward into an upper back and shoulder rubdown—all the while stroking my long, blonde tresses with his other hand. About this particular action of his? I was, at that instant, consciously aware that to my knowledge, this man had not done nor offered this “service” of his to anyone else in our realm. Not even, at least on professional work time in the office in my purview, to his supposed significant other, a second wife who was also an academic researcher, the spousal-hire, inside the Forestry Department as well. I winced and pulled away—having been seated in my office chair before the computer monitor. He did not apologize, just Dr. Edinsmaier-smirked and sauntered off from my workspace. He never tried these indecent liberties, this frottage with me again. But the Ick Factor was definitely set loose! Let loose onto my screen now; that was a certainty! My invisible, safety-screening radar picked this particular man up every single time that, from that day forward, he entered the Front Office—until I eventually left the Department for a promotion into another one. I knew nothing else personally about this individual, but all of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s triggers, Herry’s frotteurism and indecent liberties as with Grace Portia for example, Herry’s use of pornography and its consumption with and around Zane, Jesse and Mirzah, Herry’s thinking and statements about wanting to drop his pants and fuck there on the spot vaginal-exam models in obstetrics laboratory, all of the forms of Herry’s exhibitionism from holes in his jeans’ crotches to answering the door in only his underpants to leaving wide open the draperies when getting undressed at night on Othello Drive by the Brookside Forest—all of Herry’s sex addict-actions would come flooding forth every time Professor Ick came around the corner of my workspace. It never stopped. Every single time Professor Ick triggered the memories of Herry’s sexual addiction around me and around my Truemaier Boys.
It rained one day. And then it rained the next day. And the next. And the next. After the 09th day of July 1993, with the Agroforestry Conference merely a bit more than a fortnight away, it became exasperatingly clear—and immediately so—that its venue would suddenly have to change. Because its original one was … all of it … under water. The muddy flooding from Brookside Forest’s now-raging Squaw Creek reached into the second level of the Continuing Education and Conference Hall as well as into a host of other University buildings including its enormous sports arena and entertainment coliseum indiscriminately knocking out records and computers and all other equipment as well as the buildings’ structures this way and that—and, of course, totally blocking off complete and main thoroughfares leading into the entire town, let alone, into the University. It was a fucking mess. Everywhere. Everywhere in Iowa, too, as a matter of fact! Before it was all said and done and subsided and the waters back inside their respective river banks all throughout the state, why, even our capitol city of Des Moines, population over 300,000, would, for over three full weeks, be without safe drinking water because its municipal waterworks’ operations became utterly contaminated by overrunning flood waters as well. And in Iowa’s 90- to 105-degree heat with its humidity set in the same numbers’ range! Karma sucked. Kismet was hell. Of the colossal kind. Life hurt.
I still had my other job, too—the one as delicatessen breakfast grill queen, of course. Only not as grilling or as cooking or as baking anything … now. At weekend brunch fests or at any other times whatsoever. The supermarket was not only flooded, situated as the entire grocery store was in the worst location of floodplains possible, the waters rose inside the store, despite sandbagging around its entire outer periphery, to the sixth echelon of foodstuffs’ shelving—around eight feet high in places, that is. For the next six days then, the folks at the food chain’s parent headquarters not only trucked in busloads of workers from its other locales in other towns but also hauled all of us over to the makeshift free clinic especially set up to administer us flood workers tetanus boosters. I want to never work at mud-scraping and mud-scrubbing so hard again. Hands and arms and legs, and lungs too I am thinking, rubbed raw. And then—well, then … Voila!—we were back up and running and in the business of selling all manner of grilled stuffs again!
Frieda Chicken Guthrie’s presence from leaning across onto the top handle of her black and twisty cane to her cheerleading-like promotion along with her storytelling whilst setting on a bench off on the sidelines—hell, she was pushing nearly 80 years of age … yet so wanted to contribute in some way, so during all of the store’s cleaning, this was hers all right—was most encouraging to me! It was during this six-day, free-for-all scouring melee spree that Frieda reiterated to me an offer which I would not refuse, “Now, Legion, if there’s ever a time when you think you jus’ can’t make those monthly premiums on that Ex’s life, why, Dearie, you jus’ let me know that—an’, and I’ll make ‘em that month for ya’! You can pay me back later—when ya’ can manage it then, ya’ hear me, Woman?”
Frieda was, yes indeed, referring to the term life insurance policy amounting to $100,000 of coverage which in 1988, Herry had taken out upon himself as the insured and had done so through no participation and certainly at no request nor behest from me … just months before daMan had walked. That is, Herry had gone and had a physical examination performed and had filled out and signed all of the proper forms—including the special one because he fancies himself a small-plane pilot with the very real possibility then of one or two or however many of his actually owned little planes suddenly falling out of The Blue at some future date—and apparently made the first premium payments back then for a few months. All of that, of course, because he was accountably attempting to look out for the spouse’s and for the Truemaier Boys’ futures? Hardly! That’s a jest, a mother-fucking joke! After just moving to Ames from Kansas, the Good and Wonderful Doctor Edinsmaier by wielding his ‘wealth’ was trying to impress a dimwitted nincompoop, some fawning ignoramus … one working in insurance sales whom Herry had just met in alcoholics anonymous!
Herry, of course, does this a lot—that is, he is really, really into the fucked craziness of trying to dazzle, to amaze, to wow, to awe, to fascinate and to influence people whom he hardly knows, especially females. Especially DEhumans—whom he considers, overall anyhow, less in stature … than he is. And particularly if they are in occupation and paid endeavor then … such as, in his thinking, insurance agents would be … compared to, say, physicians such as himself … if they are also what he wants to believe are less in their working-order castes than his. A very Mehitable-like practice. I say ‘practice’ and not ideology—because Herry knows he is not ‘any better’ than others, including DEhuman-Others or their efforts, studies and endeavors; Herod Edinsmaier just wants to be able to act like he is.
At any rate, however the existence of this insurance policy came about, it … for certain … was mine! That is to say, I was not only the primary beneficiary named on it with the Truemaier Boys, equally in thirds, being designated as its secondary beneficiaries, Dr. Legion True was also … the policy’s owner. That is, in every way, I controlled it—and its continued existence!
Or, not. It wasn’t like it was for a million bazillion bucks or something; the policy was for only a hundred grand is all! Enough to—if ever I managed to retrieve my immediate footing again and eventually acquired for myself some paid-off debt load and present-day financial stability and if ol’ Herry were to swiftly and unexpectedly buy the small-plane farm, why then, Jury, barely enough … $100,000 is … to bury me and to settle my estate—thereby leaving my Mirzah, Jesse and Zane with no unforeseen burden and probably without any other problematic money matters brought about on my account! To which end … I had faithfully, then, been making every last one of its monthly premium payments … since the divorce!
Yeah, about that … about the divorce. That is, Attorney Jazzy Jinx had furtively and o-so quietly explained to me—right off—one huge part of his dissolution of marriage law practice: Jinx stated to me that he absolutely never let such policies as mine … continue to exist. “Uh-uh, Legion. Were the one that you now own on Dr. Edinsmaier to have been, instead, the other way around? Like taken out on your life as the insured—and not on Herod’s? Why, I would require—as it would be our right to do so, Legion, at the time of the Discovery procedure where Herod would be, by law, required to let us know he owned such a policy on you—why, I would require to have it, the entire policy, retired and canceled at time of divorce! O yeah! I would never, never, ever let such a deal continue on. Nope! No! It would have to be voided out!”
“No?!” I had asked.
“Absolutely never!” Mr. Jinx was forcibly adamant. “O, if my client were stupid enough to say she didn’t care, why the policy, even after the divorce, is still good. Yeah, with almost all of the insurance companies that I know of … it is. And we’ll certainly check with that company anyhow—on this policy of yours; it doesn’t have to know who’s asking. But, yeah, whoever is the owner of the policy before the divorce—is still the owner after the divorce. That doesn’t change—unless … unless at the time of the dissolution, one or the other of the attorneys declares that the policy be made void. Then it has to stop. It does have to be canceled and stopped. And I always look inside the answers given back to me on the preparatory procedures called Discovery and Production of Documents, I always look especially for exactly these sorts of policy deals. And I’d never, never let my client make such a stupid, idiotic move—as to let it go on, the policy … that is. It would not stand. It would never continue. I would demand to have the policy, where it has been taken out upon my client as the one who is ‘the insured’, I would demand to have it canceled and retired. Ya’ jus’ never know what can happen after a divorce, do ya’?
“Well, after? Like what? What do you mean?” I truly hadn’t a clue … right then … what Mr. Jinx meant.
“Legion! Leeee – gion! Come’n! What do you think can happen?!” Mr. Jazzy Jinx grinned. More or less. “Besides, didn’t you tell me he’s the guy who never locked the front door, let alone, the back door—before the family went to sleep at night? Well, he’s probably still not lockin’ ‘em, ya’ know, … now that you’re out of the picture, don’tcha think? Ya’ know, like someone could come in and, well, come right on in an’, and … take him out. Ya’ know, whack him. Ya’ just never do know.”
“Whooooa! I never thought of that, Mr. Jinx. With the life insurance, I mean. I always did worry, though, about trouble like that with the Boys and me being the ones getting hurt. Because Herry wouldn’t lock the doors an’ at least try to keep us safe.”
“But. That isn’t the case here, now is it?! You are not the one insured … Herry Edinsmaier is. And he is not the owner … you are! Therefore, it’s up to Mr. Shindy Scheisser to recommend to your soon-to-be ex that he—they—that they demand to retire and cancel the policy! And Herry, if Mr. Scheisser does recommend that, most certainly will demand that then, too, won’t he? But. If they don’t, aaaah, … it’s right out there in the Discovery for both of them to see. But if they miss it? Why, it’s yours! Still. You own it and you control it and—well, for that matter, for as long as you desire, you’re home free with it, Legion. No matter what Herry thinks later! Or, wants done with it. He can’t do a frickin’ thing about it to stop you from having it. So. Well. We’ll just keep quiet. It can work.”
“O, they’ll find it. Herry’s a smart guy, and he’s paying that downtown Des Moines attorney of his twice what you charge me, Mr. Jinx. Mr. Scheisser, he’ll … O, he’ll find it for sure. For all that he’s being paid? Why, Herry’d be totally pissed if Scheisser didn’t find it, don’tcha think?”
“Well, I know my clients would be! Really, really pissed! That’s what you pay me to find—after all!” Mr. Jinx was smirking now, a Herry Edinsmaier-smirk! “And if they do find it, why, it’ll just be cancelled and retired as is requested. We’ll make no never mind about it—as if we just expected that to happen—and Dr. Edinsmaier’ll be none the wiser about the fact that you and I were ever even wanting him … to miss it!”
It had been some small measure of pleasure and fun. In all of that sorrow and sadness before the divorce, every once in a while just thinking about and pondering on that little bit of possibility. The one that wouldn’t happen for me—‘cause Herry’d, for sure, find out about it, wouldn’t he? But, ya’ know, Jury?! He hadn’t! And in all of the fucking mess during and after the immediate dissolution, all of the travel and all of the paperwork and all of the settling of the sale of the ignoble Othello Drive estate and of the bills with Attorney Jazzy Jinx and all of the sleeplessness and all of the tears and the hugs of just Act One Part One alone, there between my lawyer and me—and my old girlfriend and “Other Mother” Frieda, too—had been this little snide smirk all our very own: Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had outright fucking missed the life insurance policy—and I … also outright … owned it! And I, only I, … only Legion True controlled every little friggin’ bit of it!
True it was: Herry didn’t know I still had it or owned it: it was my sweet secret from him—but the delight, the delectation, the little luxury of it all in Herry’s paying out so, so much to someone else, to Shyster Shindy Scheisser, as passive-aggressively forgetful and as narcissistically incompetent as himself—why, that was still there for us, for Frieda and me. Throughout all of those hours and hours during which I toiled at my various jobs to pay a doctor child support … for babes whom I couldn’t even talk to and the icy cold ones after I crawled home late at night to finally slumber bundled under heaps of comforters in my little Havencourt apartment without so much as its furnace’s pilot light burning. And it was to that confidence of only ours, almost a cryptogram, a cipher that insurance policy was, one that belonged only to us two and was entirely away and utterly out of the range of Heinous Herod’s evil powers, that Frieda was speaking when she had made me her pure and dear offer to spring for the monthly premiums—if I could not manage them.
Frieda never had to, though. I managed. And I made them all. Myself. True it was, too, that I did not own such things as any visits to the dentist yet or even enough gasoline at times for an entire month, but I made all of those premium installments right along with the child support amounts and the monthly $15 toward “retiring” the huge, Herod-induced hospitalization bill … every frickin’ last one of them myself. That, too, to get that done, to succeed at bringing about these payments on my future—and on my Boys’—all on my own, that had been a private goal which I’d set for myself. My own private quest that had to it a helluva lot more substantive depth and meaning than the rich kid – Idaho film’s had had, that was for sure! Especially since this mission of mine included for me the knowledge that Herod hadn’t beaten me down—completely. Not entirely had he. Not even from the days of the very First Act had he! Let alone, after those times of the SpaChezResort Sixth Floor Hotel and the Ames Tribune article either! It was clear that I—I—had not been the one in this particular dissolution of marriage action who had been … Ames’s village idiot here!
* * * *
Hustled! A mighty hustle it was! All of us Forestry personnel really had to move. To scurry around—because of that Great Iowa Flood of ‘93, in order to get other University buildings and new workshop and seminar rooms reserved and scheduled and along with all of that, different traffic routes, bussing and shuttling planned as well as food and meal-serving events, all redone away from the swamped-and-inundated-up-to-its-second-floor! Scheman Continuing Education Building and rushed into the now-changed program for the entire International Conference. And, of course, we did it! A thundering success this specific Conference was—along with the lightning bolts and the torrential rains which only continued! One of my most prized possessions exists from the presentation to me months later by a Conference principal, one of the Forestry Department’s kindest and most eminent professors, of my very own bound and glossy copy of the Proceedings from the Third International Agroforestry Conference—personally inscribed to me and autographed by all of my immediate Forestry bosses. I felt loved—and, even more importantly to me, I felt … worthy. Once again.
For as much as I so needed the little extra paid to me from the evening and weekend work at the delicatessen and for as much as I, while there, so appreciated knowing and being around Gert, nearly an octogenarian herself as was Frieda Chicken Guthrie who continued, after Al’s going off “home to the angels,” … naaaaw, off to the verms, to come around the deli, too, at dinnertime, I did not treasure at all the treatment there that the other male workers gave to all of us female employees—of any age. With the exception of only the delicatessen manager, Mr. Jim Shiloh, who was indeed very kind and as egalitarian in his assignments and approach to subordinate workers as I’ve ever seen or myself experienced from any blue-collar, mid-level type, the entire store’s executive manager, about 45 years old, and all of the other men assigned to work in the deli, all of whom were under 30 years of age and many, but not all, of whom were college students, … harassed and discriminated. And only acted their crimes out onto the others of us there in the delicatessen who were female, never to or upon each other.
The rumor mill had it that that executive manager himself was, by the company’s HQ folks, transferred in to the Ames store position just a couple years before I had begun work there—because of his being legally banished from the residential and employment vicinities of two, unrelated women back in his former city of work in western Iowa. And since that court decree of geographical expulsion included almost all of that previous municipality, then in order for this frigging predator to continue in ‘workplace management’ with the supermarket company chain at all, he had had to be moved all the way out of and completely away from that town! Same exact androcentrically ‘accepted’ maneuver—in ‘business’—as to how … predator priestly fucks are from one parish to another, different one … ‘re-arranged.’ Sure, it was only scuttlebutt and lovely, soft, servile and deferent persons are not supposed to judge nor to base lasting viewpoints on speculative guessing, are we DEhumans?! But I, and other women, too, have a radar—and the Ick Factor with this marauder in motion anywhere around a particular milieu where I was also moving was …, well, massive!
And Mr. Executive Manager came cuntily bull-snorting and vulva-sniffing around … me … a lot! Mustachioed Manager Man ordered the same thing, the same fuckly breakfast meal, never paying for it. And, therefore, I fastidiously grilled up for him two eggs over-easy, two strips of bacon extra crispy and prepared two pieces of buttered white bread, untoasted and spread by my hand, never by his, with only strawberry-flavored jelly plus a bowl of Quaker-brand instant oatmeal, two sugar substitutes and not pure sugars, and with only one ounce of the deli’s Half and Half, every single Saturday and every single Sunday morning that he worked—which was every single morning that I did ... because, of course, I worked every one of the weekends … when he’d had some of them off! O, and a medium coffee, black—with one refill, too. Which always gave him the opportunity to ever so slightly rub the backs of my right fingers as his gripping hand grazed mine when he gave me back the white, paper cup to replenish ... I loathed the very sight of Mr. Executive Pervert’s coming, always early and almost like clockwork around 6:20 or so on those two mornings, coming around the fresh-produce displays and on over to the delicatessen’s grilling counter. The Worst—the absolute worst encounters were the not too infrequent mornings when Depraved Fuckface-Dick chose to test the limits of his frotteuristic indecencies and actually entered the deli area through its aluminum half-door swinging it inwardly instead of out the other way so that his torso and trunk covered in the store’s regulation long-sleeved white shirt and black trousers were more or less forced to barely brush my back and buttocks as he squeezed his garbed genitals between me, my administering to my duties over the blazing-hot grill, and the gargantuan butcher’s block tabletop upon which we deli workers prepared the day’s worth of foodstuffs and which was situated just opposite and only inches from my stance at the front of the grill. Like I said—Ick Factor big time! But. He was the boss, all of the divisions’ bosses’ boss actually. An’ … and I? I needed the money—so what was I going to do? Say something?! Say something even to Gert—Gert … whose very pension depended upon this store and her gazillions of years of groveling there in it for her retirement? Rrrriiiight. So NOT!
One hot and steamy August Iowa day, and ya’ might know, it was not only its 13th but also a Friday the 13th, along around about 7:10 on that extra morning for which I had even taken off from my Forestry Department as vacation leave from there a couple of days right after the conclusion of the International Agroforestry Conference in order to help out Mr. Shiloh who needed to absent himself from the delicatessen because of sudden, personal family business that arose, I undid the tied bow of my royal blue, full-length apron. And hoisted it with its skinny neckband and all gathered up over my head and slammed it smack down onto the greasy floor just the grill’s side of that specific half-door. I had had it. Had it, I tell ya’.
Four of us flunkies were on duty that Friday morning, two women and two men, and the female one other than myself wasn’t Gert but, instead, an early 20s-something woman just moved up to Ames from Atlanta, Georgia, a nice person whom I’d taken a liking to right off. She very soon had introduced me to the superbly exquisite and enchanting aroma known as Love’s Baby Soft cologne. This job at the deli was her sole means of support, so far, except that she had had the lovely good fortune, at least, to be able to live here in Ames with her grandmother. Ms. Georgia was trying to save up to enroll in the practical nurse’s program at the local community college but hadn’t enough yet for even one term’s worth of its tuition.
At 6:30, 6:45, 7 o’clock then, folks were stopping in and coming by for their mighty fine and cheap morning meals before heading out into the community for their usual, heavy workdays, of course. I had had this experience many, many times. Men on all manner of central Iowa’s construction crews especially seemed to truly enjoy what I could routinely cook up for them at that hour. And at that price! Of merely a buck or two—plus all of the great-tasting java one could chug. With no pressure to tip; there was no added cost to the customer for gratuities whatsoever! So except for that no-tipping part, a regular Louise Sawyer I was—ya’ know—Louise of Thelma and Louise! I can even say that I actually liked, except for the ungodly time of the early mornings at when I had to get up and get going, I actually and actively liked what I did, that is ... cooking! Of all things! Mehitable’d’ve been soooo proud of me, I am thinking—if she’d ever known—which, of course, she never did. But, then again: No! Probably not at all proud of me would my elitist mother have been—since this work was for menials, a job only for minions, for fuckers far, far down on labor’s pecking order … come to think of it! Actually it was AmTaham who would have been pleased for me–-had he been alive. Never had AmTaham been one to turn up his nose at another’s honest day’s worth of work nor, for that matter, turn down anyone’s effort at good cooking either! I liked my charge though—because, for one thing, I was damn good—hell, I was great at it, and, two, the folks who purchased ‘my product’ seemed genuinely appreciative of what I could do. Every day that I did it! And it was, like my working inside the Forestry Department, a damn worthy product that I, Dr. Legion True, created there, too!
So. This specific morning then I had had six sets of eggs and omelets already spread out on the grill with fresh, raw hash browns crisping up and some sausage patties, some links and some bacon strips on the griddle besides a pair of hotcakes. Those other foods, the potatoes and the meats—they did not require as much care nor as much watchful vigilance as the hens’ eggs and flapjacks, of course, did. The eggs though were especial; one needed to be right on top of their cooking time always, and a decent-enough cook had better not leave unattended the three-dimensional, white and yellow ovals for too damn long a time or she would just have to friggin’ pitch ‘em entirely and start the fuck all over again. In order for the cook to be correct—as regards to that which had been her customer’s original order on how he wanted his eggs done.
Ms. Georgia stood in the back of the delicatessen—completely away from the cash register and countertop and fully out of its and my view humped over the hot and deep, stainless steel, dual sinks scrubbing therein … the entire lot of pots and pans with their baked-on and now-dried slop messes which had been left piled high there and wholly undone by the young shift workers of the evening before! This particular event, too, occurred all of the time it seemed: that is, the employees from the night before, ISU students for the most part, just left the worst of the worst for those of us who came in to work early the next morning … to do! And, as I have mentioned before, except for Deli Manager Shiloh himself, only we female laborers ever, ever went back there to the double, vat-sized tubs to take on the sometimes hours and hours of scalding spray which the sweaty burden of scouring out these individual vessels and kettles oftentimes required. Baked beans’ and pot-roast containers were killers on the fingernail lacquer. No way with her location and the clamor of the clanging cauldrons and the whooshing water from its splashing sprayer could Ms. Georgia have heard, and therefore known, what along around 7 a.m. was about to happen.
A line of customers, all male and mostly young, I’d surmise all of them under 30ish or so, began to materialize at the cash register. I had started already those six breakfasts at least and just clipped into the wire’s line up in front of me a passel more order slips when it became crystal clear to me … and to the other two workers who, in full view of and speaking-voice volume from the ordering countertop, were shaving that next noontime’s supply of sliced ham and turkey and coating the raw pork tenderloins … … that Dr. True, the lone-ranging grill cook, would not be able to verbally attend to the rest of the newest customers, to write down these latest requests and … yet, at the very same time, to keep a truly close lookout on the progress of the eggs’ yolks presently frying on the hot grill.
Spatula in right grip and flipping flapjacks and over-easies this way and that but not yet onto flimsy Styrofoam plates, I glanced over my left shoulder at both of the employees and, without a word spoken, swung my head back over to my right side in the very direction of the languishing customers. Both men’s heads were already oriented in my view; they stared straight at me. For at least 10 or 12 seconds I could ‘feel’ them watching me although I set my field of vision again back down just in front of me and at the yolks’ work right there at the grill. But there could be utterly no mistaking my nonverbal gesturing in seeking their help to follow up with the taking down of new orders. The two guys then turned their heads. Both pairs of their eyeballs looked straight at the row of fellows, some of the patrons now beginning to shift their weights from one foot to the other as folks will do when they tire of standing in the same place without respite, without satisfaction or, in this specific store’s delicatessen venue, … without due attention paid to them!
But for the particular two of these slackers to leave their individual tasks not at all necessary at 7 in the a.m. to go attend, instead, to the smooth functioning of the deli’s early-morning breakfasting operation, for these two men to step aside to the nearby faucet, to wash up their hands and to go take up a pen at the countertop to receive and write down food orders—for me? For me, who was not only a pissant, old bitch but had apparently had the impertinence, the absolute arrogance, the uppity brazenness to actually appear to make commands upon them? Let alone, to make said directives to them right in front of all of those other males waiting up at the cash register? Uh-uh. Noooo way were the two sexist machismos going to budge. No way were these two little shits going to show me any respect whatsoever, not to mention, help me out. So they didn’t. They did not.
And the eggs burned.
All 12 of them. One dozen yolks! Well, not burnt-burned. But definitely the ‘now’– finished style for every single, last one of them had become … over-extra hard ... when absolutely none of those first six customers had ordered his eggs prepared in any way approximating stiffened sheetrock. Indeed, this grizzled grill cook then had had to throw out the lot of them all. And … to altogether begin over again. So I did.
With the first several orders then commencing one more time anew on the hot top, … why, Ms. Georgia happened to come around to the front for a bit of a break to her back, her arms and her fingertips. “You know how to do a number 1 and a number 2 and, ah, ah, a 6 and a 10, don’tcha? I think I’ve seen you cook those four breakfasts before, haven’t I?” I looked at her face squarely. She scrutinized the setup on the griddle at that point.
Ms. Georgia nodded and with ever the slightest lip-pursing asserted, “Ah–huh. Yeah, I can do those. You bet.”
“O goooo – ood. That’s real, real good. Cuz, ah, cuz, I’m gonna, um, … I’m gonna need you to take over here in just a little bit,” and without one more moment’s hesitation, I had that tied bow behind me undone and was reaching to gather up the mostly-still-fresh whole of that supposedly “protective” blue cloth out in front of me with one hand while transferring with the other to Ms. Georgia the wide-plated, stainless steel spatula. The apron flounced onto the floor; and before those two slacker shits could spring over to the cash box area this time to register there with me any kind of complaint they may have been a-harborin’, that same metal half-door was brushing someone’s backside on my own way out of it!
And … without another part-time position, thus no little extra coin on the side, to slip right into, I quit! As well, of course, no past-employer recommendation to be forthcoming on my behalf from this grocery store’s supervisory folks toward my application for another such job either! Friday the friggin’ 13th—and I frickin’ walked out! Times such as those, one wants eyes in the rear or sides of one’s head—as it’s most exhilarating, I tell ya’, to watch jaws drop as her strolling-saunter out their portal more or less silently shouts back over her shoulders, “Fuck you, Mister!” In this case and on this specific early morning, I was flipping off about three of this establishment’s misters as I sashayed … … those two turkey-fucking grunts still whittling ham and their eerie, creepy store manager, Mr. Big Ick Factor himself, of whom I’d just caught a glimpse parading around the piles of potatoes apparently feeling a hankering coming on for a bowl of Legion’s hot oats or something and almost an hour later than had been Depraved Executive’s usual harassing time, was about to join that line of milling-around men waiting at her countertop … when, all of a sudden, the woman’s apron popped a wheelie and spun out! Landing right down onto that deli workplace’s floor! Dr. Legion True was soooo … outta there!
* * * *
[to be continued…]
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CAST OF CHARACTERS
Dr. Legion True: One Fucked Mother
Dr. Herod (Herry) Edinsmaier: Legion’s husband/Sperm Source [“re: I am snide” backwards]
Zane Truemaier: Legion’s son
Jesse Truemaier: Legion’s son
Mirzah Truemaier: Legion’s son
AmTaham True: Legion’s father [Mahatma backwards]
Mehitable True: Legion’s mother [Me hit-able—i.e. she was abusive]
Ardys and Endys: Legion’s sisters [names backwards]
Sterling: Legion’s brother [her mother’s planned name of next son (who never came)]
Mi Sprision O'Revinnoco: Herry’s sister [misprision: concealing knowledge of treason/O'Revinnoco = O'Connivero backwards]
Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier: Legion’s father-in-law [juggernaut; aut = 0; misein = “to hate (misogyny)”]
Detanimod Edinsmaier: Legion’s mother-in-law [dominated backwards]
Ava Saffron True and Zebulon True: respectively, Legion's paternal grandmother and her husband, Legion's paternal grandfather
Rowland and Wyman Natures: respectively, Legion's most favored uncle and most favored male first cousin
Fannie Issicran McLive: fawning enabler of ex [narcissi(st) and Mc(Evil) backwards]
Mary Jane: daughter of Fannie Issicran McLive; stepsister of Zane, Jesse, and Mirzah
Legion’s Friends: Margaret, Mona, Yanira, Stormy, Lynda, László, Jane, Kincaid, Joseph, Sheryl, Abraham (Quaker elder), Frieda, 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)