Chapter Twenty Eight An Opera in Three Acts But with Five Parts
|
|  Yüklə 1.61 Mb.
|
| all alone, daJudge’s decree after Act Two Part Two … forcibly loaded up –– as soooo against my will the Bitch was commanded to be controlled –– there at the SpaChezResort’s Sixth Floor Hotel on all of Drugging Daddee – Herry’s manipulating dope had I been brought straight on down to my knees.
In less than just five years’ total time, I had suffered Loss with a capital L –– there had become, now, established for me! ! !my very own Bureau of Loss –– the likes of which most folks, even if it all is spread out over their entire lifetimes of seven, eight, nine decades in length, will never, never experience. About Loss? They all –– comparatively –– know bupkus . The belovéd clinical and teaching professorship in Kansas, the marriage and spouse, my three precious children which loss ALONE changed them and me forever, the career as a veterinary anything, any accumulation or semblance of home permanency or estate stability and, now, my very own father to death. From June 1987 to March 1992. The man with a mind and a manner that I have never known in another –– gone. How unfair. How so unfair that, now, this Loss, too, and that I would have to grow all the way the fuck up. Instantly. Like right, right now. This morning. This very Monday morning. Here on Havencourt. And changed me yet again … forever. All alone. I moved. To the rocker again. Two pillows, the cushioned seat on the bottom of the chair and warm, cotton fleece blanketing me everywhere I could swathe and bandage myself. Wrapped, rocking, weeping –– and wracked. Alone. An hour and a half elapsed. I realized I wasn’t at my desk at the Forestry Department, so I made the first telephone call of many more to it there first. “Sure, no problem. Well, we’re so, so sorry, Legion. All right with you to let everyone know? Need anything from us? Yeah, well, okay then. Well, we’ll just see ya’ when you get back. Drive careful now. We’re just so sorry for you. Okay. Sure, Legion.” Rosalind Franklin, Chair Joplin and the rest of its Posse wired the Department’s yellow, potted chrysanthemums directly to the mortuary. When Wyman and I next talked, he had details. Daddy had dropped. Dead, it sounded to my cousin from his having spoken with the ambulance driver, “… ‘fore he hit the floor.” Shaving. Headed to work at the agency: that would have meant full – time at 72 years of age, without his enjoying any sort of retirement whatsoever, the very same age for dying and, thus, departing into Righteous Ancestor status as my Other Mother … Margaret Sagely, at the realty firm where AmTaham worked for someone else assessing, listing and helping then to sell for folks both farmland acres and residential homes in town. What Mehitable had heard was AmTaham’s smashing, on his final journey all the way down, into the bathroom shelving and the commode itself with all of their contents collapsing. He’d arisen at the usual 5:30 and gone over to the black leather La – Z – Boy with which I had gifted him the earliest Winter Solstice birthday he’d marked after my drawing a paycheck as a first – time labor and delivery room nurse practitioner. Into it to read, of course. The Cedar Rapids Gazette. As per their usual daily routine, AmTaham left both the chair and the newspaper to Mehitable nearly right at 6 a.m. to go into the lavatory and shave. Time of death called at somewhere between 6:10 and 6:15 a.m., Monday, 30 March 1992, then. My only brother, Sterling , had already departed the Omaha area for the Burg; his spouse would follow with her two sons when they finished the school day. That would give Miriam the time to collect things and to do the family’s packing in order to bring along the stuff of a week’s stay or longer; this, of course, was not at all, or ever, the task of Mehitable’s Bereaved Son Sterling’s to do. Ardys and spouse were leaving from east central Michigan and not expected in to Williamsburg until late that night. No one knew exactly how to contact Littlest Sibling Endys, estranged by her own choice from nearly the entire family except not from AmTaham and –– as everyone knew, as well –– probably because of Mehitable. Wyman thought he knew of someone who might be able to get in touch with Endys and, “ … what’ll you do, Legion? Talk is that, yeah, Mehitable does want all of the grandchildren, all the seven boys, to be AmTaham’s pallbearers then. So far, that’s what she’s saying anyhow. She’s kinda shocky though, too. What do you think you’ll do?”
Of the only man from whom I never needed words repeated because words were so valuable, like time, to AmTaham, that he, with their very first transmission out of his larynx, always, always spoke with such elocution, such sufficient volume and such projection toward anyone and most especially to me, addressing and articulating in a slow, measured fashion, always attentively, that I never needed any of his spoken sentences repeated, –––on AmTaham’s final behalf, now, I so did not know what to tell Cousin Wyman. Indeed, the Columbus Day weekend 1991, would have been the last AmTaham set eyes upon his Truemaier grandchildren –– only that weekend Zane, Jesse, Mirzah and AmTaham never realized. The Boys were not permitted to come to him nor to Williamsburg then at all! I couldn’t even recall the last time AmTaham actually had been with any one, two or all three of them then –– and I still cannot today. Flummoxed, I told Wyman that I would have to call him yet a third time –– and from the Storm County Courthouse, that I just did not know what a pillared man, daJudge, would do to me on this request. By 10:30 a.m. I –– all alone, of course –– had Ol’ Black packed up and inside the ugly surrealism that was this entire exercise behind my exclusive upcoming roadtrip, I pointed the barely horse – powered vehicle easterly. And went to see a man about a question. Again, all alone. If there is any one thing that I have learned in the last ten – plus years, it is to not place myself into events and situations at all –– without first procuring the safety that there is at said event or situation in numbers, even in having just one other person alongside me holding me in the invisibility of her or his magnetic friendship field. Today I have the wisdom to absolutely refuse attendance at family functions, in particular, if I surmise ahead of its time that I will have at all –– to be –– in the interior of the physicality of the event’s or situation’s scenario ––
at the drop of a hat or … at the drop of a friend’s daddy … –– and to go with me out of town for an unknown or undisclosed length of time. I am not, after all and thank gawddess, of the English countryside’s aristocracy nor of any other elitist or intellectual groups. For my friends to leave their families and homes, their jobs and their lives is a very big deal and, for them to wisely and safely accomplish, takes weeks and sometimes months of planning ahead –––– under none of which qualities does the sudden situation of the unexpected death of a friend’s father qualify. Herry Edinsmaier, like very many other fathers whom I have since encountered, was selfishly horrid about spontaneity: he thought it just the greatest in the way of maneuverability for … himself. Well, one can think that when one is only looking out for one’s own self! Of all of the times when Herry got ants in his pants to up and suddenly go somewhere and to do something –– which was almost all of the times when he wanted to go do something afar … that would then involve an extended stay of more than a day –– why, he was indeed only thinking of himself. Only problem was: there were four others of us and three of them were not adults. Nor was Herry acting anything at all like one either! No. … On trips with the Boys and with me to out – of – town locales for any reason or event whatsoever, why Herry Edinsmaier utterly acted the 17 – year – old, older Joy Toy Boy brother role … almost solely. Taking three little, little, little Boys on a roadtrip anywhere was just mahvewous for the four of them –– and sheer, pure friggin’ hell on me. Always. But expected I was to not only bound for the open highway with all of the absolute bliss I could possibly scuttle but to also enjoy the Huck Finn – fuck out of myself throughout all of the labors, chores and tasks of it. The work of it all which Herry – Daddee, androcentrically entitled as he soooo was to his freedom, to his rest and to his relaxation after all, since he was such the hard, hard un…slacking – exalted doctor dude over there at such pillars’ medical center, never willed himself to take on as his own duties –––– let alone, as ‘expectations’ for himself! Elitist Edinsmaier’s only labors, chores, tasks or, gaaawd – forbid (my calling it) … work –– in order to sustain or uphold a traveling family of five –– consisted of i) his driving … some of the times and, for certain with every passed pasture full up of either beef or dairy cattle, ii) his mockingly modeling for three young humans, captured by not only their seatbelts but also by the alleged father – sons’ ‘bonding’ thingy, with his bushy brownish mustachioed mimickings of the bulky bulls’ snouts sniffing and snorting after the several Holstein heifers’ vulvae. With, … subsequently, … sniggers and sneers all around. In my own stupid – ass – heifer and silly mind’s eye with the custodial roles in The Opera reversed and flipped, I could just imagine Herry – Daddee in front of daJudge a – jawin’ ‘bout how ‘twas that, with the relatives rapidly collecting for the upcoming ‘fun’ of a family ‘fun’eral a – gathering, why, Dr. Edinsmaier just needed “to be skedaddling and a – hittin’ the open road with those best buds of mine, my three boys, and can we just a – hurry up that there paperwork or whatever it takes to get us all on our way, Your Honor?” JYeah, that is, if he had been Mirzah’s, Zane’s and Jesse’s noncustodial parent who was ‘court’ – ordered and, thus, required to obtain daMan’s ‘permission’ to take the mama’s kiddos … anywhere! But Herry was not. Dr. Legion True was. I be that parent. Fuck, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier would not have even needed to, let alone, taken the trouble to do the work of appearing in daMan’s ‘Court’ –– as the scofflaw which he had, already in Acts One and Two, quite and so well proved himself to be by his blatantly outright contemptuous and disdainful refusal in these first two trials’ Production of Documents’ processes to turn over any or all of the actually existing answers about himself splattered all over within those sooo – tangible hard – copy, handwritten journals, diaries and scrawls of his! Herry just would not have had to even come before any judge, man or woman! Dr. Edinsmaier merely would have called over to whoever was one of the judge’s underlings and given that specific DEhuman this message of his: the Good and Wonderful Doctor has a sudden, unplanned and quite urgent need to get the hell outta Dodge … and, of course, Herry – Daddee’d’ve been off and gone –– with All My Children –– adding nothing more than something like, “Say, I’ll stop in later and take care of signing off on the paperwork –– or just send it to me. You can do that, can’tcha’? Yeah, just send it to me.” But I? Do that, too? Noooo. Nowhere even close could Dr. Legion True get away with trying that –– before my getting onto the road to go home to be able to even start to grieve the death of my adored father. First things first here! We have to DEhumanize the ex – Cunt yet once again. And even more so around the deal of this specific dead man … than we already have before this, her daddy’s dying day. Had I not stopped to literally beg before daJudge assigned to me at the courthouse first, 11:15 to 11:45 am, Monday, 30 March 1992, still the very same first morning that I was trying to process the incredulity which was befalling upon me and mine that day, my three Truemaier Boys would not have arrived back in the Burg for their belovéd Grandpa AmTaham’s funeral at all. And ‘that development’ in The Opera would have been just mighty fine with Herry –– if Zane, Mirzah and Jesse all had missed it –– considering how Herry himself had always felt about his ex – father – in – law. “You promise to not drive them anywhere?” “You promise to see them only at the residence of your mother’s and at the places of the service proper and nowhere else; that includes only to the cemetery, graveside, is that correct?” “They are not to be in your direct care, is that understood?” Never out of this judge, who of course was the High Aggrandizier himself, Sol Wacotler Seizor, never, not one word of this mere man’s lexis on this miserable matter included any sentiment sounding whatsoever at all like, “ … Aaah, gee, Ma’am, we’re all here so sorry for the Loss of your father today.” No. Uh – uh. O No! And I? I did not shed one mother – fucking tear in front of this dastardly heartless DEhuman – fucker either. Not one! I saved them all for who really mattered, walked out of that world’s wicked aura, aimed Ol’ Black east yet one more time again, out onto the federal Lincoln Highway … US #30 … and left behind me and suspended for the time being Herod Edinsmaier’s holocaustic hatred of things Legion – like. Again alone. Not until 2:30 p.m. did I arrive. On, now, the saddest day of my whole life –– for a trek by automobile that ordinarily should have been completed to Williamsburg by any ‘normal’ father (such as, for example, … Mehitable’s only – born human, Sterling) by, O say from initial packing on Havencourt in The Teacup to pulling in to the driveway there at her and AmTaham’s house in the Burg, 10 a.m. –– Straightaway in line with controlling androcentrism and the epitomic essence of patriarchy’s power, I owed half of my most grief – stricken day to Herry and to his folie follies with judges and the Next Stupid – Ass Heifer in his Stash. At this specific day’s start, I had to suffer and to receive unto myself the execution of Horrid King Herod’s aprovechar practice in ‘the Court’ again of its first royally screwing me, the mother of three of AmTaham’s most favored folks on the entire Planet. And it was Herry’s final assault on AmTaham, too, to besmirch his memory with this exploit against another of AmTaham’s favorites, the one with whom the, now, Righteous Ancestor annually shared his Winter Solstice renewal and all the rest of his Truth, wisdom and nature: me. After this recurring belittling courtroom beating and mother – mugging, little did I know that I apparently owed someone else besides Herry his opportunity, too, to wreck violence, to rain, as well as, to reign down upon me, the DEhuman, the masses’ hellfire and to mouth – whip me bloody with his verbal vengeance and terrorism. Only – Brother Sterling’s additional bombastic tyranny is, indeed, why my ‘safety in numbers’ deal, a protection never taught to her three daughters by Mother Mehitable and for which Dr. Legion True always, always, always calculates and accords my precious self before leaving my home –– now! I parked Ol’ Black in the driveway, walked up the outer concrete steps, about ten of them on the rocky northern edge of the bi – level, caramel brick ranch with chocolate brown trim, to the doorway of my parents’ home and, after repeatedly knocking without any response whatsoever, escorted myself into its tiny foyer which nearly immediately opens off to its right side into the very bathroom that had been AmTaham’s death chamber. As time would prove true, I accomplished this fairly simple physical exercise into AmTaham’s and Mehitable’s west – edge home over the course of that day and the next six –– for the very last times. To its left or the easterly direction of this short entry space, a visitor turned directly into the True kitchen, a well – lit, modest one designed like a boxcar with blackish linoleum splashed by light speckles of white and pink within it –– over which my firstborn Truemaier, as an infant, used to crawl to a water bowl that Gran Mehitable placed down upon it for Zane to actually lap there from it like a little kitty cat drinks. Things on one side and about an equal number of things on the other side, lots of cupboards both up and down and all of them crammed chockfull of pans and pots and other stuffs and lots and lots of countertop workspace, a kitchen with all of the necessary, and quite a few unnecessary, appliances. Round, clothed table, very small with really only enough room at it for two people, place settings and food items at the very far east end that, itself, either bifurcated into AmTaham’s home realty office or, at right angles to his office, a permanently opened archway that led into a spacious and very comfortable living room. A kitchen and living room, both, in which breakable bric – a – brac, all manner of knickknacks and other cheap, cheap gimcracks spewed and splat themselves all over in between the things, and low – down on curio corners and shelves too, crappy ornaments which were never removed when my Truemaier Babies came to visit. “He has to learn what I mean when I say ‘NO!’,” her boomed “homeland law” spat back at me –– as Mehitable would simultaneously slap the dorsal aspects of any of my Boys’ tiny hands since she claimed to know such ‘truths’ from ancient, (and, obviously, far less than … righteous – ) ancestral … “parenting” … times. Verisimilar in violent style Mehitable’s was to that of Fatlantic’s Grand Lay Priest’s, the Great Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier’s, filthy, lewd and loutish baling wire – whippings about the very same aspects of the bilateral calves of older children’s lower limbs –– those kiddos seemingly not quickly enough coming into compliance with that specific man’s “parenting and homeland laws.” Unwanted intruder who I always believed myself to be before this date … when, upon my arrival, it’d been only my mother at her house there … I swiveled around from the bathroom doorway and its early – morning figment of my falling father imaged on my brain to join the voices I already heard coming from deep within that kitchen. Except that, myself entirely wordless as of yet and from the carpeted foyer inwardly, I took only two wee steps forward on that blackish flooring before –– as had been Legion True’s very same patriarchal dealing with Professor and hardly quakerly or eldering P.M. Flunk’s fist – on – the – DEhuman’s – maternal – breastbone mother – fuck, I was summarily halted. An instantaneous screaming at the top of his lungs occurred not more than an inch and a half from my hearing ear, perhaps two to three inches altogether –– but no further –– from that working right eardrum of mine. As Dear, Dear Daddy just, indeed, had done! I myself –– truly and literally –– nearly fell down to the floor from the force behind daMan’s hardly (as well) brothering blast, “YOU KILLED MY FATHER!!! YOU KILLED MY FATHER!!! YOU KILLED MY FATHER!!! YOU. KILLED. MY. FATHER! ! !” This –– from out an orifice situated on Sterling’s lower face which was ajar a distance that I, long – time a medical worker, had never known possible for the temporomandibular joint of a human being. A python ingesting its constricted, crushed and asphyxiated antelope or gazelle whole, yes, but not a width which a human’s jaws could uncover, no. Immediately flanked in this feat at Brother’s right shoulder and, remarkably, at the very same swiftness that it required for Sterling to reach me splayed The Widow Mehitable in all of her cyanotic cyclonic wrath as well. Both of these two robots raging in symphonic – conducting stance together, he with his right and she with her right also, took to jabbing their respective index fingers into the air, repeatedly stabbing them downward into and mere millimeters away from connecting with my sternum and breasts. While the spread mouth on Sterling underwent no break from its massacring work, no sounds emitted from Mehitable’s; but the entire bulwark that was her cranium, face, neck and chest, that is her whole head and upper trunk, gyrated up and down like a black Angus bull’s massive front side does inside a Spanish fighting arena and bore on its facial anterior the same expression as one can imagine embellishes said bull’s. Her mouth was indeed silent next to Most – Favored Son Sterling’s which was obviously moving for hers also, Mehitable’s own lips rigid and pursed, the cartilaginous cords strained and popping out from her neck. The only elaboration missing were the two streams of hottest steam cartooning and jettisoning from out of both of The Widow’s nostrils, but each naris snorted again and again in rhythmic synchrony with the two flying right fists and index fingers, and itty bitty flecks and strings of mucousy snot flit out onto the flesh above her upper lip. I saw plenty of spit and mucus and phlegm, but the body fluid that is tears’ secretions –– that I saw none of emitting from these madness machines’ four total bulbar cavities. I, on the other hand, was utterly reduced to nothing but. Weeping from out my own sockets like, like … aaaah, like … I’d just lost my dad or something. No one else. Not one other person was in this house yet. Just the three of us there along around 2:45 or so –– while Sterling continued the dastardly duet that was my brother’s and my mother’s. Straight out –– classic … this scenario –– of the data findings and results’ pages of Mothers on Trial researcher and author, Dr. Phyllis Chesler, regarding noncustodial mamas facing down –– in my case, all alone –– the violent and violating vitriol exactingly flung at them from their very own families, “It’s cuz of you that he’s dead! You killed him! You and all your goddamn problems! You killed him sure’s if you’d shot him dead yourself! It’s cuz of all the goddamn, friggin’ problems you brought to him! You did this. You killed my father.” “He was my father, too.” “Yeah? Yeah?!!! Well, fuck you! You killed him! It’s all cuz of you. It’s all your fault!” And Sterling repeated for both himself and Mehitable their mantra as if I had had no daddy ever, “You killed my father!” It was of no wonder at all to me that with her only family friend and ally dead, Sister Endys appeared at AmTaham’s funeral and graveside only and –– never –– over at The Widow’s house. I tore away from the blustering clutches of these two automaton contraptions and started to wince my way with the couple of travel bags down a carpeted hall intending to route myself into the furthest, southwest one of the main level’s three bedrooms when Mehitable whose house alone the entire structure now was, of course, shouted, “Where do you think you’re going?!” “Uh. Um. Well, ah, I thought …,” stammering as usual in her presence I was, “I thought that, um, …” “You thought what, Young Lady? Just what did you think?” still not crying –– no tears from this person. And the designation with which Mehitable had referred to me as, well, all of us “young ladies” know exactly what that means at any time someone uses it as an address, let alone, … when one’s own mother does. “Sterling’s right. Your brother’s absolutely right, ya’ know! AmTaham’s dead because of you and Endys. Because of all of the problems you two caused all of us; that’s what’s killed him! I don’t know how you can live with yourself now, Young Lady! Go on! Go on! Get outta my sight!” Just shouting and screaming. And … from AmTaham’s Widow Herself … still … no tears. With the brushing and the battering of both of her upper extremities at the windless air in the dark hallway of her ‘home’, a building I had never known the inside of until I was 24 or 25 years old, Herry’s Other Shrew dissed, pooh – poohed and shooed away no one other than her second daughter – child whose first name –– Legion –– literally as in the same shaming shunning manner of The Soooo Good and Wonderful, (albeit) Her ex – Son – in – Law Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s, had yet to be spoken by my own mama. Escaping to that precise bedroom, I closed the door quietly, locked it, submersed myself into the mattress on the far side of its double bed there and faced the juncture of the west and south walls where both walls’ windows were big slits stationed up near the ceiling, my only view then the room’s ivory paint –– and not the Burg’s town park to the west. The one with the little kiddos’ play equipment including a jungle gym with three, attached and graduated monkey bars, three rocking horses, an orange – handled water hydrant next to the bright whitely painted picnic shelter –– and The Pond barely but just large enough for practicing canoeing skills and in which Zane Truemaier had once plied his fishing hobby, the one on which Rosemarie’s belovéd Bill had begun him at my firstborn’s wee and tender age of four years back at Hershey P A’s BullFrog Valley Pond. The playthings in threes which all of them, Mirzah, Jesse and Zane, had at one time or another simultaneously occupied. To their (Now – Newly Made) Ancestor AmTaham’s absolute delight. After the Truemaier Boys had … each one … learned to walk, it was that body of water … in particular … which was the principal reason, however, behind |