Chapter Twenty Eight An Opera in Three Acts But with Five Parts
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| the consequences, the future, Worldwide, of all wrongs everywhere: The World does? No! The World does drastically fuckingly by all of … No! No! No! No, the World’s men … do –– knowingly and willingly –– drastically fuckingly by all of its females, starting, of course, with its littlest: its baby girls. With, of course, the help of the male – identified Mehitables of their World! Their own daughters. Sex – selective abortion. Female infanticide. IF bambina is allowed to live at all, why then, the little girl –– over most of patriarchy –– eats last and least so is up to multiple times more likely to suffer malnutrition than is her brother. And work? Hell, work?! Work = that ‘thing’, for example, which is Herry’s ruin, his friggin’ death sentence (if Legion True herself isn’t ‘it’, that is)! Why, work is definitely her thing to do? Whether it is in the fields, in the home or in the factories –– that is definitely, and often only, the little girl’s duty, for christ’s sake. And when sick? Well, medical care is purposefully not sought for her; and she is less likely than her brother is … to receive childhood immunizations and … that all important biggest deal … ever: EDUCATION! After all, she might! She might, you know! She just might then recognize the injustice and man’s inhumanity to woman –– if she were … educated! If she were learned! And then, pissingly, she just might come to want that injustice, well, you know, Jury, … rectified, mightn’t she?! She just might, if she got a lick of schooling, be, O, well, say, … fuckin’ morally outraged by it all!
And all of this? Why all of this leads to only one outcome of which we all know: This –– this preponderance of independence and egalitarian humanization of her –– and all that it means and brings to her –– is going to eventually … PISS HIM OFF! Whoever the him is; it ceases to matter when the ‘it’ of it all is a she, a female of any color, of any size and of any shape. And I am not even –– not even –– going to go further (than stating) into any of the heinous crimes that, if the gender were FLIPPED and REVERSED, would never even, one time, … would never even be considered doable, let alone, “cultural” or “religious” to little boys or to adolescent ones or to grown men: incest, rape, foot – rotting (often once called foot – binding), clitoridectomy, stoning to death, piling her living, breathing self onto forced – husband’s burning pyre, etc, etc and yada, yada. Just picture it, can you? FLIPPED. REVERSED. Just how friggin’ many and just how freakin’ fast do you suppose it would be, … just how short a time would it take … before an utter and entire END would be put to, O, say, … … penisectomies?! Just how many men, including, you know Jury, “holy” hoo – hahs, would let that “act” go on –– on little, itty bitty boys, for example, all’s the while, though, simultaneously and “lovingly” terming it … ‘tradition’ or ‘culture’ or ‘religious rite’… for, say, half a second’s time frame?! And another one: male – child infanticide. How long would that ‘religious rite’ last? Throughout the entire friggin’ course of remotely prehistoric and recently written history, how many hours’ worth of the murdering of male newborns would go by?! And you don’t want the wee boy to lose his way or even to run down to the end of the lane now, do you, let alone roamingly ramble across the World and away from where you, daMan, “need” him to do his day’s chores and duties now –– so let’s just make certain that –– forever –– his little, itty bitty baby footsies, are, you know Jury, O, … ‘bout three inches long! Like I said, “Make them that cropped like, O, … forever! And make sure, too, that those toes of his, … what’s left of them anyhow, … stink! With the foulest of odors which, when it clings to and follows him all around everywhere, also just happens to putrefy to the highest heavens –– just the way sheep foot rot does out in the pastures on those green hillsides which he, their shepherd, works every morning.” How likely is he, the 14 – year – old, the still so – growing and lively testosteronal example of teenaged human hunk to ever throw himself onto her, his elderly wife’s sickened and now dead, burning body? On to her ‘fun’eral pyre?! Just how likely is Kiddo to do this, do you think, Jury?! So. So when they, these little girls, grow up and eventually end up in ‘the court’ as sooo, so many mamas who have even just a wee, itty bitty bit pissed off The Blessèd Patriarchy … will, … then, then … THIS MOTHER – FUCKING is exactly and only what we all should KNOW –– aforehand –– WILL BE the LEGAL DEFAULT ruling and, therefore, also known as … … The LAW. Cuz dissents? Well, dissents do not. not. not make it … right. A dissent –– even a mighty fine one –– rendered on mama’s behalf and, actually, in direct defiance of a wheeling – and – dealing, black – robed, pontificating pontiff so androcentrically comfortable in crookedly and fraudulently patterning his own pillaredness after that of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s, will not –– WILL NOT –– matter. It will NEVER count. But unlike the funky and fancy Good and Wonderful Healer, Pillared Herry Edinsmaier, had once penned in his own Eight Pages’ handwriting when apparently fantasizing on hooking up with Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, Mr. Allen Donnellson –– outright named like any other ordinary person and not bowed down to with all manner of highfalutin titling as if he were some god – like superhuman –– was not in the slightest ever worried … “that others will learn the Truth about me” !!! and what daJudge had opprobriously gone off and done. Because! BECAUSE … nobody –– except for the fact of and by way of materialization of this one, fucked mother’s … by way of Legion True’s … journaling saga –– nobody ever, ever, ever … would have! Nooooo “judicial accountability”! ZERO! It is to this fact –– this journaling saga –– that I search out all of those other Iowa mothers, and those in other states and countries as well, whose Mehitables and AmTahams have failed them. It isn’t too late yet –– though nearly so –– in her adulthood and her own motherhood to begin to learn to protect not only her own Babes but … her own Self! To this day, not one member of ‘my birth family’ knows of this Iowa appellate court’s Dissent –– nor how it came to be … its history. That is, they do not know … not because Dr. Legion True wouldn’t have shared it to them, … I would have. I soooo, so would have. And it is public knowledge: All of it is public and accessible information –– even from the internet. It is not known to them because: None, … not even a one of them, cared to know –– ever. … Ever. Not even one time did Sterling, my lone brother, … there as he was that arguing day of 07 June 1994, choose of his own volition to bother to ask me, “Legion, could I hear the details of, say, The Final Ruling by that Appeals Court? What the hell did they say anyway? How was this all okay with them? They’re judges, for chris’sake. How’d they justify judging it all out in the end? Ya’ know, deciding all of it the way that they did?!” Uh – uh. Not from Sterling. Not from Mehitable. Nothing –– nothing at all from Mehitable. Except for the woman’s perpetual whines regarding how it had been such a massive effort on her part, … “on your mother’s part,” … to have even made it there to the state’s Capitol Building –– no matter, apparently, that ‘my mother’ chose, when she arrived there, to symbolically sit her gargantuan self down upon Son – In – Law Herry’s supporting side of that appellate court’s fear – filled room! AmTaham was dead, of course. And Ardys and Endys? The last I’d heard (and, actually, the first I had heard from Endys in over 35 years !!! because of Mehitable’s hiding of her –– from everyone !!!) … the last I’d heard from either one of my two sisters was around the Winter Solstice Y2004, my 57th and AmTaham’s 85th birthdays, of course. Ardys the Pious, Ardys the Sanctimonious, er, I mean Ardys the Elder, sent this admonishing fuck with which to personally scold me inside her “happy” holiday card of that latest year … which bore on its envelope not only a madonna ‘n’ chil’ – type postage stamp but also the card manufacturer’s inscribed and entirely capitalized message within of, “MAY YOU ENJOY HIM IN ALL HIS FULLNESS THIS CHRISTMAS SEASON.” The funniest, though, and in her own fingers’ script were two scripturally christian citations followed by Ardys’ own personal, menacing and terrorizing foreboding to me. Noooo dithering from Androcentrically Identified Ardys! The first line which her hand (I imagined it must’ve, at the time, been balled up into a solid, rock – hard fist!) wrote in black ink was taken from the parchment of ( … and written there about a thousand or so years ago! by … ) some ordinary guy named John who’d labeled his thought as item #1:1 – 5 and apparently quoted by her from John “exactly” as: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. (NOT the light of WOmen, mind you, NO. Juuuust “men.”) The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it; the darkness has not overcome it.” Secondly, on the card’s insides Ardys continued in dark black pen by way of hopping back to her future that is quite possibly one of her favorite areas in her world, a place that some have named Genesis plus jutting forward a little bit to yet another place those heavy lamentation – like dudes such as Paul called … Corinth. Pauly must have passed this light or lighting or lightning (whatevah) story down by word of mouth (men’s mouths, to be sure!) through about some 30 or 40 generations’ worth, probably more. “Kinda’ like playing the game of ‘telephone,’ ” I am thinking. Of the two combined quotations (Ardys’s poetic license to take … I guess), the Genesis one is ascribed with the classification of item #1:3 and the II Corinthians’ one with the notation of 4:4 – 6. Both together are, again, –– or are they … if the information – passing – along game of telephone and, O say, about a thousand years or more intervened?! … are they quoted “exactly” as somebody or several other somebodies (and not a one of these … women, you can imagine!) decided was patriarchally okay enough to put down on whatever genre of paper folks happened to fashion at the time or onto the moveable type pieces of the 11th Century printing press as, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ; who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” “Hmmm,” I am thinking, “ … ‘the god of this age … ’. Now just who or what’d that particular god be exactly? In the 21st Century, ya’ know, ‘ … this age … ’? According, of course, to … Ardys?!” Ardys ultimately, that Solstice, crowned her male – (along with her O so male god) – identified self and capped off her package of spiritually christian spit – on – me with her own inked ilk of a blackened presentiment, “There is a great darkness that shadows the hearts and minds of those who have turned away from the Light of the World –– who is Christ the Lord. Be very careful, Legion; your future will be determined by your decisions.” As in, “You are perilously close to The Edge, Witch, of your Eternal Abyss into Hell and Fiery Damnation,” … When first I read this card from Ardys, I finished, for her, … I finished myself right off of that cliff inside my mocking mind. “Ya’ know –– that’ll be, well, Forever! For just ever and ever and ever and ever and ever, O stop already, Woman! Stop!” I guffawed to myself. Maybe when Ardys had sat down to write me from Michigan and from most definitely the perceived safety and security of her husband’s ownership there, she had truly been thinking Husband Herry’s favorite names for me (since Herod Edinsmaier, to me, never could speak my own given name, Legion) –– Cunt and Pussy –– as in “ … to the edge, Cunt, of your Eternal Abyss, Pussy, into …” Maybe not. But probably so –– since good, good and soooo, so male – owned females cannot ever even say those appellations except that they do so at the risk of an eternity of worms moving into their souls. When they die. Or some such. Reality. “ … a great darkness that shadows …,” Ardys really has no fucking idea, does she, about what it all has been like? For me? For Jesse? For Mirzah? For Zane? But, wait, … she does! She does, too, have an idea! “That other sister … Endys; what about her? Truly? Thirty – five years?! You two didn’t know each other for over 35 years?!? Often the two of you lived in the same state, but … but 35 years?!?” I can just hear folks … disbelieving. These same people then would be forgetting, however, Mehitable True’s manner of ‘protecting’ her children. That is to say, a couple of them, for sure –– after Endys and Legion were … adults! That would be Mehitable’s soooo, so easy … hiding … of us two. Thrust and shuffled off, we were, by her two madly waving mother’s arms wildly gesturing toward the west: off into the shut – off bedrooms of her house when the front doorbell rang or a loud knocking came from the basement level’s garage door at the back! Or off at respective universities or other towns so no mention need be made of Legion and Endys –– except to whine on about how little, from afar, these two nasty, naughty daughters paid her heed. When there at her structure –– it was not ‘a home’ –– at the very far edge of the Williamsburg community, it was useless ‘to ask’ at age, say, 23 or at 27; there was no need to wonder if I could even … take a walk uptown. Mehitable’s best hide for me out of all of her male – identified ‘successes’? Disguising Legion True inside the long – ago, pseudo – marriage announcement she had wanted to place into the end – of – December 1976 “society page” of the Williamsburg Journal weekly, “Mr. and Mrs. Herod Edinsmaier visited over the Christmas holidays in the parental home of Mr. and Mrs. AmTaham True and were their dinner guests during the lovely seasonal menus provided by Mrs. AmTa …” Recognize !me! right off or the fact that Herry, not yet graduated from medical school, hence, only dubbed, so far, as a ‘mister’ (and, not yet anyhow, as her pillared and fancily entitled ‘doctor’ son – in – law) and I … had just married on the 18th in Ames … (in a church! –– as a matter of Truth!) of that very month in any of that verbiage now, would you? Legion True was only some man’s cuntly possession … after first … only ever having been, during such a christian time as that calendar’s era, as well as always before that, … someone else’s child. Legion True was not in there anywhere! And that, of course, was Mehitable’s whole point. Completely hidden from view … was I. And in plain sight, too! so to speak. Nosily or otherwise –– including, possibly, quite genuine interest in me and in my comings and goings and thinkings and doings –– perhaps, for example, in my brand – new marriage at my age in years then of almost 29 already!?! –– poked into at all by any others in the Williamsburg area? Never. Never. And the very same “protection mode” of Mehitable’s was determinedly set in stony concrete for all of those some 35 years for Endys … the very same one. Mehitable’s was a bulwark of safekeeping or of secretive guardianship; hey, call it a custody arrangement! –– because while not exactly like the custody – arranging Mother – Fucking onto me by all of ‘the courts’, hers most certainly was of the precise nature of a prison’s “protective custody” for adult persons! Hers projected externally far, far and wide, of course. But, most evilly, Mehitable, our own mother!, calculatingly and cleverly crept and wove it in and out of all aspects and phases of our lives with each other, with our comings and goings … specifically among us four, grown siblings! “After all,” Mehitable whimperingly did dither to me in my young adulthood time and time and time again –– no differently than with any islamic / muslim ‘honor’able fucking – over of only daughters within a family –– when there were only the two of us alone together in her kitchen, “your father and I have to live in this small community. We just can’t afford to have you and your sister bringing shame down around us all the time! We just can’t! You don’t have to put up with it at all. You get to go away every time, but I have to be here and live here and know who you are!” The other favorite shunning and shaming slam of hers was, “You’re such a disappointment to me, Legion! Why?! Why, why, O, why can’t you … ” and then Mehitable would end that particular ‘disappointment’ – statement with whichever fault of mine happened to be fuckingly pissing her off the most at that specific moment. Like, “ … why can’t you bring home a wealthy, fine – mannered, manly man, ya’ know, one with a splendid stature and reputation? And from the right side of the tracks, too?!” or “ … why can’t you just get used to jewing the big money outta those pet owners who want you to transplant kidneys or something in their prize pussies?!” or “ … why don’t you know how bad those Japs are?! They tried to kill your dad, for heaven’s sake!” Or, “… why can’t you just leave me be?! They’re ‘nigger toes’ if I say they’re ‘nigger toes’,” as she, from time to time, cracked open another Brazil nut over all of those godly and so sacred hours around the 25th of December! She actually did. Mehitable, in fact, did use that racial epithet –– and repeatedly! She truly did use the word ‘Jew’ –– often … and right in front of Mirzah, Zane and Jesse, too –– as a fucking verb she did! I actually never did hear this woman state the ethnicity as … ‘Japanese’. People native to that specific island were only ever referred to by Mehitable as ‘Japs’ or, as often, ‘those Japs’. Even when I asked her not to. Even when I begged her not to say such loathing appellations –– begged her not to, knowingly, commit such hate crimes –– in front of my children. So. From one time to the next one, I have finally analyzed this first statement of my mother’s through enough replays in my brain to have finally heard it. Understood it. Truly, Mehitable was saying, “I have to know you.” It was she! It wasn’t everyone else in town or even anyone else from whom she was perpetually hiding me: it was from herself. It was from herself whom she was hiding me. She loathed me so much. Me hit able so hated the me whom she herself had not molded and that I had, alone on my own, become. She hated me so very, very much that she dealt with The Shame of her construed ‘parenting’ failure –– by hiding from herself the source of her mortification –– me. And Endys. We two were so not perfect. Instead, we were humiliating to her –– and, therefore, only to be hidden away. And we were. Indeed, so we were –– physically, verbally in every form known, and emotionally –– in every way possible! Only Mehitable’s death wherein those worms did slither on in and take over her essence in August Y2003, brought a stoppage, a collapse, an end to this mother’s “protecting”. Mehitable True, my own mother lo my 50 – some odd years had in no uncertain terms secured for me, her third baby child, not one wee ounce of “protection” from men who mother – fuck. And since Mehitable had not been (the least, little, itty bitty bit) successful, either, in over half an entire century’s worth of working so weightily at me, and ‘the Court’ Majority’s Dissention (yet, of course, with its instantaneous override by those three, entitled and soooo, so pillared men entirely bent upon Their NOT – to – be – Dicked – With Mother – Fucking) had not resulted in a Legion True who was herself finally … soft, servile and deferent, … why, I went looking for and found … Endys. It wasn’t easy. Finding her. Endys, when found, was not in a good place. Hard times had beset –– but just within the duration of the very most recent 18 months or so that’d gone by, that is to say, for about a half a year before Mehitable died and the entire 12 months following that, an event after which my liberator – attending – it – with – me (there’s safety in numbers, you know, Jury … ) and so – close – friend Rachel helped humor me with her wit and the sarcasm of, “Hmm, your brother Sterling so knows how, doesn’t he, Legion, to put the ‘fun’ back in … ‘fun’eral?” Till I had concertedly reconnected. In the last half of Y2004. At Endys’s age of 53. She still resided in eastern Iowa although a half an hour’s drive up the interstate. Hard times now. Fired in early 2003, from her State of Iowa medical transcription position at the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics. Real reason unknown. Unknown to me, that is, although I have my suspicions. Endys’s stated reason to me for her summary dismissal, a booting without reinstatement eligibility privileges nor one cent of retirement accruals, was caused by her “missing too much work.” Throes of vastly out – of – control bipolar, losing (and rapid, eventual loss of) both her apartment and the late – model yet underwater car, paroxysms of bilateral lower extremity physical pain, “fleeting and stabbing” but apparently “continuous, too,” she’d stated. Enough so as to keep her, daily, off of her feet almost entirely –– watching the tube or just sitting. Sprawled – like … as would be a beached whale … was my observation. With no interest in reading –– but not because her eyeballs wouldn’t hold still –– as my own would not when I had been forced, by doctors and lawyers and judges and sheriffs ... and one criminal ex – husband also hell – bent upon His Torturing and Twisted Mother – Fucking of me, … … when I had been forced to consume dope. I asked. She had replied to me, “I just don’t want to read. Got that?!” A right elbow which constantly seemed to pain her, too; so not exactly … as is common among transcriptionists … was this localized ache due to carpal tunnel syndrome. Massively obese –– probably from between 250 to 300, if one visually estimated poundage; “morbidly” so Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s medical term for her personage would pathologically be. Evidently present – day episodes also of such wild spending that creditors were now bloodthirsty bloodhounds: personal bankruptcy loomed in Endys’s very immediate future –– her only alternative. … She possessed hardly a thing. All manner of what had been her small number of owned items were so cockroach and itty bitty roachie – egg – infested that they nearly all had had to be pitched. This much Endys did recognize. More cockroaches than I myself had ever even seen … in anything New York City – tenement – wise! One month bedded down in one, thoroughly smoky poorhouse before, more permanently, settling in on the 01st day of December 2004, … “for as long as I wanna be,” she flat – affected, almost inaudibly so, at a second one. And, there, “to be taken care of” in this “assisted – living facility” with all psychiatrists’ visits and all medications’ costs picked up, of course, by the county, her same county, after all, of previous long –, longstanding residence. Ten days later, I broached with Endys the topic of what I figured was –– –– soooo about my time to do so! Five months I, her only sibling to care to do so … and with the most willing aid of my sons, Zane and Jesse, by then in their late 20s and university students there in Iowa City, … had served as this person’s shepherdess with all that that had meant … for an adult of 53 years of age. Now? Now, |