Chapter Twenty Eight An Opera in Three Acts But with Five Parts
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| if I thought their presences and ‘their watching’ wouldn’t actually go the other way and … “hurt” ‘my case’. They all came. How their being there could hurt me I truly did not know. Then.
Of my two “other – mother” Ancestors – in – Training, Margaret Sagely was ashes, therefore already a Righteous Ancestor Mother; but Frieda Chicken Guthrie wasn’t yet. No matter that Frieda’s belovéd husband Al was sometimes weakened and physically unable to escort her, she by herself alone would motor on over to the Storm County Courthouse or accompany me there –– at all times with her walking stick, frugally packed lunch and a book to read in hand –– if ordered by daJudge to sit out in the courthouse hallways … time after time. Consistently throughout hearing after motion after legal activity inside those courtroom walls then, all of these people took time off from work or from their other labors and made different arrangements for their other weekday activities and events in order to sit behind me, always on the presiding judge’s right side and Herry’s, or more accurately Mr. Scheisser’s, left. Often each with notepads, tablets and pens –– taking notes. I cannot think of a single time wherein I actually had to appear alone before Second Judicial District Court Judge Harley Butcher or before any number of same – level judges, every one of them male, every one of them fathers themselves and who adjudicated the interim issues which had also arisen before the actual Trial Three commenced. Daddee – Herry Edinsmaier frequently did not show at all. Hugely androcentric that state of this affair … is. Dr. Edinsmaier’s arguments at these litiginous times were presented entirely and only by Attorney Shindy Scheisser or by one or another of Mr. Scheisser’s firm’s flunkies. No one, sitting in as supporters behind Herry’s table but Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive a time or two, appeared on the other side of the courtroom’s gallery. Ever. Curious it always appeared to me, however: the outright sexist discrimination –– blatantly demonstrated against me, the mother in ‘the custody case’, right from the start –– on at least one point specifically. At any time any of these issues involved witnesses’ testimonies other than Herry’s or mine, the mother’s testifiers –– all of them including Closest – Comrades Grace and László, of course, and Frieda, too –– all of them had to sit sequestered outside of the courtroom in the hallway and away from their being able to hear anyone else’s witnessing testimony. So did Herry’s testifiers –– except for one such person: Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive. Once I objected –– to her being permitted to stay inside the courtroom before her call to go up on the witness stand. I objected to her being able to hear all of others’ testimony –– subsequently, then, having the chance ... “to adjust” … her own! Well, ya’ can imagine, Jury! Judge Butcher summarily banged his gavel and proclaimed loudly that the mother’s objection was utterly overruled! that Ms. McLive indeed most certainly could stay inside the courtroom and remain seated behind Herry’s and Scheisser’s table at all times –– no matter as to what discrimination I seemed to think his fucking declaration be! Only that one time did I bother to try to object to daJudge’s biased blatancy. Ms. McLive’s subsequent testimonial lies spawned because of her having first overheard other persons’ testimonies with, then, the titanic opportunity to tailor her successive statements “to match” what she’d earlier learned from these other witnesses? This fuck of McLive’s was just soooo not worth any more expended effort on my part … than that one quite – overruled objection of mine. Importantly, I can remember thinking from time to time just exactly how it was that I actually “believed in the legal system.” I mean I, in point of fact, thought that I would, there within it, “the legal system,” receive back out of it … justice. I can also remember poised, courteous, calm and balanced Grace Portia throwing her head back at least one time and on several other occasions just outright heartily guffawing because of my sheer naïveté as well as of my stupendous stupidity at this very suggestion of mine: that if I “just told the Truth, why, justice would prevail because it’s … it’s … it is supposed to … to … to jus’ work out that way!” My several friends’ court – watching, of course, wasn’t the only thing that really, really wiped out ‘my case’ and did me in. The blonde thing in the room who was me and who soooo, so pissed off this latest and last collection of four male judges didn’t even rate so much as the physical – contact visits with her Sons that the slaughterers of their own children’s mothers routinely get to have inside maximum security prison walls with the crop of kiddos these dead women had themselves grown from such killers’ haploid sperm seeds! About this I am thinking, though, that what murders my soul the most are the females, the ones such as Mehitable, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, the henchwomen who work for literal mother – fuckers such as King George’s and Brother Jeb’s “Fathers’ Rights Initiative” men, those in the thoroughly nefarious yet massively profits – making “industry” completely ancillary to (and utterly dependent upon) this nation’s family court system. That “industry” consists of its “custody evaluators” such as the frumpy, wussy Ms. Carrie Canard –– and my own sister Ardys who, although these gazillions of women have all known of the misogyny since they were little eight – year – old girls, are unwilling to, who simply refuse to acknowledge that this takes place soooo easily and that they, the male – identified DEhuman Not Males, are, … in addition to the woman – loathing men, … the problem!!! I am, of course, talking about the type of brutally monstrous thugs one of whom Dearest Friend Rachel repeatedly experienced in that admissions and postpartum nurse when she gave birth for the second time on April Fool’s Day Y2003, and about all of the other bullies whom we Mothers on Trial, we noncustodial mamas make frighteningly envious and seem to evidently threaten and at whose jealous hands we such moms –– hourly –– have to live through their odious, outrageous and … raw … backlash. The very fact that these women “help” the legal system visit such mother – fucking messes down upon other impoverished, suddenly – made – childless women is to us Mothers on Trial and to our friends and supporters unconscionable. Do I think they don’t know what they’re doing? As I apparently didn’t truly know what I was doing when I walked into all of those custody evaluation and subsequent courtroom sessions –– when I walked into all of them … believing if I was simply honest that … then … I would be walking out of them with justice served? Or, do I believe, even knowing whom they are screwing and when, that these harassers, browbeaters and torturers then choose to continue to go ahead and persist in fucking over mamas like me? I believe the latter –– because of what is Truth about judges. They know. And they have always known, these women have, that they are destroying me. That is precisely why they choose to do it! Because they can … Just as the judges have agendae so do, too, all of these male – identified women! Because they can. A reporter for the Des Moines Register once asked me in January of Y2003, “Do you believe, Dr. True, that you’re like those mothers who lose custody of their children and all parental rights to them because they are alcoholics or drug abusers or prostitutes or participants in pornography and the slave – trafficking of women and children or certifiably mentally incompetent because of psychoses or retardation. Or, not?” It was a good question really and one which I had not asked of myself and that anyone who truly, truly knew me, both my friends and the folks who hate me, had never thought to ask of me either –– most probably because –– most likely because … I am just not seen by any one of them as a person at all like any of those about whom this reporter had just described and asked! Never to excess do I imbibe alcoholic products – never. I do not do drugs nor do I prostitute myself or even gamble. Not one dinero squandered upon a lottery ticket –– ever! I utterly loathe all forms of pornography and the flesh – pushing industries and that no matter what Herry, Ms. McLive, Mr. Shindy Scheisser, any of Herry’s family including Mi Sprision O’Revinnoco or Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier himself, Storm County Sheriff Stout or the types of buttock – jabbing brutes from the SpaChezResort Sixth Floor Hotel wielding hypodermic needles full of sedative and hypnotic chemicals want to get away with claiming about me, I am not and have never been … “certifiable” –– so it was a question that held details in it with which I am not at all familiar as a parent. As a mother. Nor, as regards me, Dr. Legion True, neither are my friends nor are my attackers and foes. When I explained “because they can” to her, the Register reporter just could not seem to grasp this concept as it pertains to mother – fucking, to the taking away from a woman –– if she simply pisses you off enough –– her entire constitutional right to parent her own children, let alone, to even be in their lives at all. Inside the United States of America. Inside any other of the World’s countries including, as well, all of those others apparently … westernized, too. I tried to help her see that her incredulity was not at all unusual, that we Mothers on Trial encounter this stupefaction about ex – husband and judicial misogyny … daily! Every single one of us to whom this mother – fucking has happened inside an American court of family law –– without just cause –– is usually not even believed, let alone, granted validation, given empathy or shown an iota of compassion. By anyone! I told her that I believed and that I felt that I am different than the noncustodial mothers she had characterized. Not better, just different. She already knew when she telephoned to try to interview me that there was a passel of us women, that I was not the only one. Only one of us would not have made for her … a story! And she indeed had been given the assignment to do a series of articles on those of us unbelievable “mothers who just seemed to lose all rights to our children for no apparent reason!” We Mothers on Trial are in a league of our own which society –– which all of it … the public at large, that is –– if mother – fucking has not specifically happened to one of the women directly inside their very own lives –– just cannot fathom … exists. It cannot. What the investigative journalist did know, in addition however, is that I, Dr. Legion True, within the entire State of Iowa was absolutely the only one who would talk to her about it –– because, and only because, my children, my Zane, Jesse and Mirzah, were themselves finally all out of college. Finished. And all of them graduated, the last one of the three literally just a couple of weeks prior to her visit with me on the telephone. Jesse, the last one to graduate college, had just done so Saturday, 22 December Y2002, at the very, very top of his entire University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences class, the Winter Solstice again –– and AmTaham’s and my birthdays !!! The Righteous Grandfathering Ancestor, a decade dead of course, had turned … 83 on Jesse’s graduation day, and I myself was then this very same day now … 55 years of age! No one else of us Mothers on Trial could talk to the Register reporter. No one else of us Iowans had, at the time she was wanting to put together her stories, a child, let alone, all of her children out of college and, therefore, entirely out of and away from … … the judicial reach of her ex – husband’s or ‘the Court’s’ clench and full – throttle choke upon her throat. All others of us Mothers on Trial must keep a muzzle on our vocal chords because if we do not? Jury, if we do not?! Why, more holocaust than that which has already been visited down upon us will –– “legally” –– befall upon us women. Hours of our time and our opinions, ideas and wants for raising up our babies, more than those which have already been revoked from us, will be rescinded. And more dollars, which we don’t even have, will be ordered taken away from us and paid out to the men who make so much more than we mothers ever will. We can … count on it! Because he can. And the male – identified women or ‘the Courts’ who “help” these ex – men fuck over the kiddos’ mamas? About these women and judges? We mothers publicly state –– as to reporters –– absolutely … nothing! Nothing, that is, until –– now. About judges further, the vast majority of whom of course are male, that Iowa State University poly sci professor, Dr. Steffen Schmidt believes in his USA Today snippet clipping of Tuesday, 17 September 2002**, that because of their own agendae and intentions and with their least little bit of tweaking and twisting around and screwing with the laws of the people of the land called Iowa –– or of any of the other states’ citizenry as well –– and by way of their very abuse of power, these men who “represent” the peoples’ interpretation and thus also the public’s intentions, … these men willfully “make” the laws come out the way they always wanted them to come out before the very first piece of evidentiary testimony … is even heard!!! And I add because I am living, mother – fucked proof of it: especially … if any of that “evidence” comes from out of a bunch of multiple boxes’ worth belonging to one brash, cunty, bitchy, uppity upstart of a blonde. “Daughter, don’t piss off a judge and, Woman, for goddesses’ sakes, do not do it as a blonde!” my own mother Mehitable should have protected me with such a life – saving admonition … I am left thinking.
I still had had telephone contact with Mehitable. She wanted to know all of every detail, but I could not trust that what I told her … would ever remain with her. From a lifelong lesson I received in the United States mails a few years back on Friday, 20 October 1989, and fully took straight to heart … as well as exactly why Lawyer Jazzy Jinx had immediately and correctly seen through her jealousy and spitefulness and subsequently … stingingly … warned me about this woman’s ever, ever testifying, I kept close to my vest a letter sent to me from Mother Me hit able. This letter consisted of three pages of emboldened, hugely scripted scrawls and had on its first page, centered, her title of “Negative Remarks.” What followed that entitling squiggle and this person’s introductory statement of “When I wrote 10 positive remarks for your divorce case, I also at that time wrote 10 negative ones. Here they are –– ” is thus … verbatim and in the woman’s own format:
**http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2002-09-17-oppose_x.htm * * * * May with its third anniversary of the divorce, June and July passed by no more uneventfully than three paying jobs and one very huge and not so monetarily profitable one researching and writing legal documents can provide for excitement. Ms. Phillipa Chance telephoned at the beginning of that quarter to say that orders were up again and that temporarily, at least, she could surely use me back on at the junk mail factory at the same hours “if you have any time left for that,” she’d been kind enough and considerate to remember. Saturdays and Sundays I could not believe the numbers of folks who seemed to think that making The Deli their first breakfast stop even as early as 6 a.m. on First Day mornings or the one for pastries and coffee on the way back home from church was a routine, must – do order of their week. Gert and I, out of all of the other deli workers, were almost exclusively left with a couple of hours of pots’ and pans’ scrubbing every single one of those days. Hardly anyone else –– and certainly never, never the men except for its smallish bossman who possessed a princely baker’s heart it seemed to me –– found themselves in the boring, windowless back at those lackluster washtubs with the giant, hovering spray nozzle and all of the various sizes and styles of scouring pads. Not another man. At this point my time spent on preparation for the upcoming agroforestry conference of the future’s August 1993, actually the fourth incoming wage source, was the least. I put in approximately 18 to 20 hours weekends as well as Friday evenings at The Deli –– and this was every weekend … with 16 more at the junk mail factory Mondays through Thursdays from 8 p.m. until midnight. Then back every morning five days per week for six hours a day beginning at 9 a.m. at the Forestry Department. It worked. But barely. Whatever time was left over in between –– coffee breaks, lunches –– all of those smidgens of moments were consumed with the work on … ‘my case’. These were the warm spring and summer months, my months of “vacation”: I did not have to worry about slamming down through the Brookside Forest to Ol’ Black and zooming it and myself home to Havencourt Drive, thus every day taking the 55 to 60 minutes during all of my noon lunches there and back to my Biology Building workstation –– to flush all of the drains and run the faucets for fear of their freezing up and bursting. And I could sleep a full and sound six – hour stretch because I did not have to answer that first of two alarm clocks … which had been specifically and nightly, thus routinely, set from the Novembers through my Marches for 2:30 a.m. … in order to rise and perform those same pipes’ saving machinations. While this agenda worked for one lone Dr. Legion True, accountable day to day for no babies’ direct care except through Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s mandate of monthly child support payments, I cannot even begin to imagine what herculean effort it would take to “do” this agenda with subsequent scheduling through one to 1½ to two decades of “living” –– had I been trying to support myself without, as then I was succeeding at “doing,” any dollars’ help from federal, state or county aid as a young, single mama –– with a baby or two. Or, three. With three … Truemaier Boys! One of the phrases in Mehitable’s letters since –– since my not performing daily in this reverse – Olympian manner for just a couple of years now –– is … “admire your long, long working hours.” Whatever gave any parents The Fucking Right “to expect” … “to admire” this freaking insanity in their adult children?! That their kids are up “to good things” by killing themselves slaving away for hours and hours and hours and hours, for years on end –– in order just to save their parents the embarrassment or the humiliation or whatever it is that these parents perceive the much – needed help as: that is, the help which is their daughters’ utilizing taxpayers’ dollars for personal aid –– in order to assist their families to modestly live yet not utterly enslave themselves? That it apparently is “a bad thing” to provide backing to the poor people, most of them females, in going through the days of their lives “as other folks” do –– who just seem by the “luck of the draw,” by the fucking luck of the status of their birthings to turn out more … blessed … and more … backed … than they?! I call it a “reverse – Olympian” state precisely because –– it is not a good thing. It is a terrible and grievous state of things. This type of living is not to be sought after and, therefore, rewarded as “worthy of medals and praise.” What it is –– and what it only is –– is crazy – making. Insanity. And what a self – righteous, acid – spitting parent who tosses this “admire” spew at me is truly saying is, “You’re poor. Therefore, you are less than I am. Therefore, I get to treat you as such! As the DEhuman that you are! How could you have ‘let’ yourself become so low?! I get to expect that you have to labor in this manner. But I? I don’t have to! Ya’ see, I don’t have to –– because I am better than you are!” And, in my particular case, Mehitable only further reiterated her past puking acerbity, “You idiot! You friggin’, bloody idiot! You lost a marriage to a doctor! To a doctor, after all! How could you?! How could you be so stupid?! No wonder you sank so low. You weren’t soft, deferent and servile enough for him. You deserve to have to work like this for him!” Zephyr, Lady and Rex thrived. Well, as near as I could tell, without their Zane, Jesse and Mirzah there to attend to them they did –– and with only me to perform those pet chores. Zephyr was nigh unto at least ten years old and quite possibly by then 11, figuring back from the night he had, as the skinniest, half – grown mouser he was, first meowed on our wintry doorstep in Columbia, Missouri, that blustery January of 1983. I did feed Rex her “groceries” regularly, of course, but simply had no time at all to allow her out of the huge aquarium and her hollow log hideout within it to slither about the living room for exercise as Jesse and Zane had been able to commonly do for her. Lady was perhaps the least well – off of the Boys’ pets. She was the only bird now, by herself and all alone –– so I removed the nesting material from her cage. There were no more eggs lain and no more zebra finches ever emerged –– such as had been quite the source of Zane’s pride. He had so carefully –– several times a day –– mashed up the frozen spinach leaves in warm water so that Lady could regurgitate their seemingly incessant meals to the multiple clutches of babies she successfully had hatched when Zane was … around. The piano stood silent Although resting off at the north end of the living room, the great centerpiece of our condominium’s largest room, the old, old console, remained quiet the entire time the Boys were gone. I left the keyboard cover off so that the octaves and the flats and the sharps were keys most memorably visible to me, but I just could not sit myself down onto its simple, plain bench to play them. During the few, precious moments I still took to rock and rock and rock and to stare into its blacks and ivories, I came mightily close to truly believing that quite possibly I –– and Jesse, especially –– never would again. Food, that is my intake of it, continued more or less as an afterthought. When I was there The Deli provided, on the run of course and only while standing up, whatever I needed for nutritional sustenance. I took a piece of fruit for the 10:15 p.m. break at the junk mail factory, but Friend – and Wisest Teenager – Eric I no longer found to be working there so brought only one apple or banana with me during the period of this second temp stint. I always packed a quick sack for my working lunch at the Forestry Department. Always. I cannot remember buying a single lunch at the nearby Memorial Union nor feeding any vending machine in any campus building, not even one time –– a frugal habit which I still find myself holding today. As a matter of fact, I cannot remember the last time I placed coin inside such a slot –– unless it would have been when, still married to Herry and living on Othello, that man actually ordered me to spend for cans of soda and give them to the Boys from out of gas station machines when, from daycare and work, we stopped in on our way home to fill up –– and … only minutes from his bachelor pad’s pantry inventory of plenty of pop! The only times when I supped at restaurants had been those such as during the wonderful days of April’s month in which fell Secretaries’ Day. I mean to tell you the Forestry Department really, really knows how to treat –– and feed –– a secretary! Noon after noon after noon its professors and boss types squired us three, all of it at their own individual expense, to some of Ames finest. It must’ve taken them going on three weeks’ worth of weekday lunches for us to be feted by all of the folks who apparently wanted to! It was an awesome eating month for me, that I’ll say! Plus the company of persons whom I joined while dining –– was quite splendid … as well! Money, that is, the matters of money, were not only not an afterthought, a subscript, a postscript, financial matters were all – consuming. Had they not been “I so would not have put in all of those hours, Mehitable!” But fortunately for me, and in my opinion for all people, these concerns consumed only up to the point that if I had enough to keep on paying the bills on time or in monthly installments and to continue buying copies of all of the legal documents which I typed, then I considered myself to actually be very, very well – to – do money – wise. I was hardly in to investing and worried myself about mutual index versus bond funds or international small caps versus blue chips or REITs versus gold bullion not in the least, let alone, about contributions to traditional IRAs or home mortgage refinancing over 15 years instead of 30 or about anything at all long – term and retirement … about anything more than the life insurance policy upon the Good and Wonderful Doctor Pilot’s life and upon which Frieda Chicken Guthrie so encouraged me to keep up with its premium payments. Talk about knowing how to, let alone, only being able to … “live in the moment!” Wall Street was a locale with an unknown address to me. For office couture … of which I did not require much … I shopped only Goodwill and Salvation Army. As those Dr. Herod Edinsmaier – forced poisons called psychotropic drugs expanded me, Supervisor Rosalind Franklin gave me several skirts and blouses and even a winter coat she no longer wanted. I hit Wal – Mart only once in awhile when filling the court – ordered doping prescriptions for lithium –– which itself only kept piling on the poundage as I kept … in “legalized” compliance with the Mother – Fucking Herry – Daddee, Shindy Scheisser and daJudge … popping its pills. And, like the piano – playing, I stayed away from The Mall, too. There was neither the dime nor the time for The Mall; from that waste of space … The Mall … it was not at all hard to stay away … for months and months and months on end. Another habit of frugality I still own today. The only time someone finds me at The Mall is in the evening or on the weekend afternoons –– specifically for the matinees at the five Dollar – Theatres’ complex there! And when I do visit the local shopping mall, I frequently find that I have no idea about the kiosks, the stores and their products presently taking up the various plots inside of it. So many of them have simply up and changed since the last time, there, that I had frittered away any of my precious time. Income tax issues I had absolutely wonderful, local help with by way of the all – volunteer individuals, the VITA folks, of the federal Voluntary Income Tax Assistance program whose giving – back service to their communities consists in establishing free – aid clinics at the local libraries temporarily. One person, in particular, I so appreciated because of his patience, his reliability and his background. A farmer like AmTaham except for the three tax – preparation months every winter, Mr. McCay spoke deliberately and fairly; he delivered his wisdom and advice with the utmost of kindness. And showed up. He was there at a tiny, quiet study room in the back of the public library every single time that I, in particular, needed him to be. Doctors I never saw except for the regular monthly med – checks with Dr. Singh after first having my blood analyzed for its level of lithium; that was the entire extent of my seven – or eight – minute walk into and back out of his office, actually a room he borrowed twice a week at the county’s local outpatient mental health agency. There I told Dr. Singh on a couple of occasions that I thought he and I were both “suspect,” I the alleged nut case and he the East Indian – born and – trained psychiatrist and, therefore, not by western measures and standards to be taken by us Americans, most particularly by those who are his colleagues and counterparts in any of the human medical specialties, as vastly knowledgeable and as seriously competent as the physicians of European and Caucasian descent. He quite agreed with me! –– that we both were, indeed, suspect –– and smiled a lot. I liked him, also a lot; and, for what he did whether for me or for others, well, Dr. Legion True thought him most competent and most knowledgeable. He used to travel up to Ames from his job down in Des Moines at a charity cases’ hospital emergency room where I’ll bet Dr. Singh does a lot of … good things … for really, really poor people: poor in dollars –––– and especially poor in their spirits, too. For the lithium which other doctors back at the Sixth Floor Hotel had “legally” forced upon me at the behind – the – scenes’ – behest of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s petition to ‘the Court’ and at Herry’s getting Sheriff Stout to follow through on in order to dope me up –––– I had a plan. And the plan was to quit the mind – stupefying, body – altering and mother – fucking stuff! Altogether and cold turkey. But not until after Act Three Part Four. Not until just immediately after the point that I could prove to ‘the Court’ –– and ultimately to Herry –– that I not only could and would follow physicians’ orders and was more than willing to try “to get well” if that’s what it took to get back my Boys but that those particular medical orders of theirs were, in fact for me, utterly useless and, what’s more, destructive! Brought me harm they did! Just as what would have been done to me by daMan who had been given a court – ordered decree which said he, because Herry was also a physician, |