Chapter Twenty Eight An Opera in Three Acts But with Five Parts
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| why I never –– ever –– allowed my three Sons to spend time at the Grandparent Trues –– without me there as well. AmTaham was so deaf and Mehitable quite blind and so blindly unrealistic and old, old school in her expectations out of little children that I never trusted her with the Boys –– and That Pond. Ever. AmTaham wasn’t home, what with his business and all; and even if he had been, my father couldn’t have heard screams for help, not to mention, small chatter coming from little ones who had wandered farther away from the home – based premises than was … safe.
And Mehitable? I could just never trust that she would actually see them, let alone, see that two – , three – and four – year – olds, that … truly … children all the way up through 12 and older require direct and visual supervision … around water. We had all been farmers in our younger years, the sort of lifestyle in Iowa that, without the incredibly rare built – in swimming pool or even an above – ground one in rural folks’ own backyards, just does not lend itself –– for those regular, twice – weekly sessions –– to transporting the country kids 15 to 20 miles one way into a neighboring town with the nearest public pool. With farming and all of its chores, swimming lessons would have meant AmTaham doing all of the chauffeuring of us four Trues or his hiring someone else to take and mind us all there … since Mehitable was with her eyes of course, unable to drive anybody anywhere at any time! Neither AmTaham nor Mehitable swam themselves about which I ever knew; and since my siblings and I had never been sent for lessons either, I for one knew, having myself while recreationally swimming as a preteen with my friends been rescued by lifeguards out of pools three times in my former life, I knew that I could not swim to save myself! let alone, a child of mine! And Daddee – Herry? The father who wouldn’t, upon any nightfalls, even lock up one door anywhere, not to mention the actual various homelands’ entrances, … to try to protect my sleeping children? The father who cannot even spell Zane’s name correctly one time in his own Section D, the ‘SAFETY AND WELLBEING,’ that ‘safeguarding’ section in Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s very first affidavit to ‘the Court’, to daJudge (Chapter 26, Jury!) … that father? daMan who wouldn’t even accompany me to the True residence to visit AmTaham or Mehitable – ever? That father? Fuck, Daddee – Herry was in no way – ever – going to be accountable for Zane Truemaier, Jesse Truemaier or Mirzah Truemaier … around The Pond. This little I so, too, did know! I pulled both of the unfluffably foam – filled bed pillows out from under whatever quilt of the (literal) scores this woman owned and had squirreled away in this and all other of the different bedrooms’ blonde built – in cabinets and closets and chests –– and began to cry into them. I cried and cried and cried and cried. My father’s only brother, Wilbert, a couple of years younger in age than Daddy who had himself been the eldest of six children, and Marguerite, that man’s latest live – in since Wilbert’s divorce of long – standing and longer marriage which had itself produced now – adult children and three of my first cousins, arrived from Cedar Rapids, the first persons finally around –– to be able to deflect away from me the despicably violent and violating attentions of Mehitable and Sterling. Others of my father’s siblings, all women, began arriving then, too, eventually all three of the breathing ones, there having originally been four of them. All four of these DEhumans Mehitable detested –– quite in line with my mother’s obvious jealousy of anything female within her sphere … other than herself. Mehitable True, it seemed to me as a wee child and now a person approaching adulthood’s middle age, had always been adamant and right out loud in her dissing on each one of her husband’s sisters, my paternal aunts. With only one of the three living ones, the fourth – born of Ava Saffron’s string of a half a dozen kiddos, had Mehitable any interaction at her True house then during Daddy’s days – o’ – death event –– or, come to think on it … since, for that matter. That aunt with her spouse still resided only 15 miles from Mehitable and AmTaham, actually right on Daddy’s homestead place, the 80 acres which the Truemaier Boys’ Great – Grandpa Zebulon and Great – Grandma Ava Saffron had farmed and from where Ancestor Daddy had first courted Mehitable who, at the time, lived with her corn – growing parents in another rural township approximately 10 miles to the same county’s southeast –––– all of this activity … before AmTaham’s deployment to the Himalayas and Wilbert’s to France in the two prime killing scenarios which were World War II’s “theaters” for brothers. Great – Grandpa Zebulon, a pipe tobacco – smoker, a Prince Albert – in – a – Can kind of guy after trying unsuccessfully to entirely quit with the Lucky Strikes and the Camels and who drank only a very small amount of medicinal whiskey and no beer although most German and never that I, someone whom he affectionately called Li’l which sounded like Lil but is a diminutive of Little, saw, had died there at the age of only 67. And while tiny – boned and snow – white Great – Grandma Ava Saffron had herself lived in town for nearly a quarter century inside first a mint green and then a freshly blue – painted wooden cottage on Williamsburg’s south side since Zebulon’s lumberyard accident had eventually made her a very, very comely widow under her wildly wide black brims, she was also now deceased, too –– gone some seven years at her age then of 88 … from a fast – growing lymphatic cancer. AmTaham’s other two sisters lived separate lives, each singly, both in a small Cedar Rapids suburb less than another 20 or so miles from their middle sister. One of those two was also a long – , long – time widow and pensioner whose only child in his mid 20s had been killed one night during an illegal drag race on a country gravel road. The youngest True sister spent her lifetime as a secretary, quite a pianist and singer and as several elder folks’ caregiver. To these two paternal aunts I still send birthday cards. I keep in touch one or two other times a year as well and actually rendezvous at their haunts over in eastern Iowa for a face – to – face chat every now and then. When I eventually emerged from that back refuge about an hour and a half later, quite a number of the relatives and others were all congregating inside the gracious and spacious living room, one both for sitting as well as for dining at a lovely blonde ensemble located off at the far east end of it. Mehitable was at her prime … working that room. Working … working, working it. And … all of the would – be mourners now present. This is a woman who not only has made “Poor Me, Poor Me, O Ya’ Need to Pity Poor, Poor Me” an arts performance but also … her life’s work. And has, in addition, tried in every which tired, old way she knows of to make it and my two sisters’ … ours, too. Hence, the ‘be soft, be servile, be deferent’ invectives to only us females and her “You lost a marriage to a doctor? A doctor?! Why, you stupid idiot!” sorts of taunting teachings and scorning – screed censures. It was, now, around 4 in the p.m. when I was first witnessing the tears flowing from her lacrimal canals and were they ever. Boxes containing Kleenex two of the women kept shoving into Mehitable’s reach and all DEhumans present could be collectively heard from time to time with their ubiquitous, “There, there. There, there now” or the ever popular and truly selfish question too, too many females implore from each other that is actually a strategized, maneuvered and the desired response to Mehitable’s poor, poor me – posturing … “O Mehitable, whatever will you do now?” Selfish? Yes, selfish, in that … what about AmTaham and what about those of us others who truly had relied and depended upon him, his wisdom and his Truths daily. ‘Cause, hell, Mehitable’d be just fine. Mighty fine, in fact. She would just keep on doing now exactly what she’d always been doing, AmTaham alive or dead! Nothing about this day would introduce change into Mehitable’s functioning in the least. Only mine would AmTaham now LOST to me … change. This person Mehitable would continue to control everything –– either out in front with AmTaham’s physical form gone missing now or still hooded and concealed just as she had always done or tried to get done before. From out behind the dashboard lights! The driving engine that was Mehitable’s force was to be envied by the staunchest of radical feminists –– except for one thing: Mehitable was precisely and of relentless, purposeful deliberation … noooo feminist, of course. Hers was a dark force, one of the genre of Mother Theresa and her ilk and never at all one of, “Fuck, you can go this alone. You don’t need a man. And, what’s more, you never did.” AmTaham’s wisdom and his Truths, the stuff of which was now most literally Ancestral … instead, still, of the natures existing “… – in – Training,” were hair – trigger, that is instantaneously available and at all times now … accessible to me. I mean I didn’t have to wait any longer, wait to find AmTaham at home or for him to arrive at my house or to come to the telephone or to the end of some other lifeline. I could just call upon him, rely upon him, depend upon his Truths and his wisdom just any ol’ time I bloody well needed him and them. That is, this –– His Dying, was the very essence of His Things Ancestral. For me. Of this amazement, of course, I did not yet fully comprehend on that Monday of 30 March 1992; but even now and even so, I would soooo give up in the blink of the span of time that was that last heartbeat of his … I would give up anything over which I have control just to have him back breathing again. Instead of, now, “ … always, always accessible” to me and to the Boys. On my person I possessed a piece of pocketed paper signed by Storm County’s High Aggrandizier himself allowing that the three Truemaiers, if the Boys themselves wanted to, could attend their grandfather’s funeral and, likewise, attend to the duties of it assigned therein to any one of them. Or, some such wording. … That is, daJudge’d just written me a note. Out of this morbid Monday morning’s swiftly – scribbling hand of Sol Wacotler Seizor. … daMan. A note. Me, the 44 – year – old, now – suddenly – and – finally – all – grown – up – daughter … of a man just dead. And, in the United States of America in the year of 1992, the biological –– and loving –– mother of three, minor children. A note that “excused” me! And, a few hours earlier, stated that Mirzah, Jesse and Zane could become three of AmTaham’s pallbearers if Mehitable or Sterling or whoever, certainly not moi, had wanted this to be the case in their, and just as certainly not my, planning of the memorializing ceremonies. I am thinking on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Our Androcentric Culture published in 1911, almost a decade before the birth even of Mehitable Natures, and transposing to the legal system and the American way of supposed “freedoms” and “justice,” Authoress Gilman’s quotation there on … religions. “All the religions are made by men and forced on women whether they like it or not, women –– denied souls –– given a much lower place in religion going from the service of their fathers’ gods to the service of their husbands’, having none of their own. We see religions make no place for women, rigidly bigoted, unchanging as any other. That women are the bulwark of our religions is due to the acts of two classes of men: the men of the world who keep women in their restricted position and the men of the church who take every advantage of the limits of women.” Gone from the dead man’s over to the service of her husband’s Legion True is … even though … technically ... he be the ex – husband. And gone there only by way of daJudges, also almost all exclusively the humans … first. She, of course the DEhuman, requires, has need of and should desire for herself no justice and no freedoms of her own. She does need to take a note of excusal with her, however. When she goes over to do the legal servicing and the bidding of him who can have her, her services and her labors –– as well as, of course, have utterly away from her –– because of sperm exaltation –– her very own babies which mission she alone chose for herself the deadly risk (that pregnancy and birthing is) to grow into the human beings who they themselves actually have become … she needs to take a note. Sordid. Macabre. FLIP / REVERSE: A permitting piece of judicial fuck the likes of which paper I know of no adult man willing … to first procure and then to carry upon his person. And, finally, to produce to his approving and consenting mama or, say, … show his sanctioning sister! Not to mention via a third party, for example, to demonstrate as documentation to the ex – wife! when she, from a long and far distance, demands to verifiably know of the daddee’s ‘legal’ proof of his ‘temporary’ authorization?! You, Jury?! You know of such a human, do any of You?! I had to ask all of my Sons, long into their adulthoods, just how it was that they’d initially received the clobbering finality of AmTaham’s dying because Herry and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, of course, never told me. And Sterling and Mehitable haven’t –– if they ever did know. It’s a given that I was so not allowed to speak to Zane, Mirzah or Jesse if I had called out to Grubtrop; and although I do not remember if I did or if I did not, I can only imagine that I no doubt tried to do this telephoning. Any mother would have is what I am thinking. Any of us Mothers on Trial would have attempted to get this saddest of news to her children so I am fairly sure that I, too, … tried to tell them. Only from Zane do I know about the immediacy of the Boys’ receipt of the sobering knowledge that their Grandpa AmTaham had in the pentametre of the man’s Favorite Poet Tennyson “crossed the bar” over into Ancestor status. And Zane only knew about his own case alone and nothing regarding what had transpired as far as his brothers’ first acquisition of the sorrowful information. Same Edinsmaier – shunning deal as when Zane had, in Kate Mitchell Elementary’s fifth grade of Mr. Green’s, filmed his Grandpa AmTaham True for that specific History Day project four years earlier: Protecting and Guarding and Mentoring and Role – Modeling Herry – Daddee was nowhere around on the scene when Zane stepped off the Grubtrop, West Virginia community’s schoolbus that Monday afternoon, 30 March 1992, in front of Herry’s two – story, white wood – frame rental. The Good and Wonderful Doctor was probably at work … doctoring … ya’ know, Jury, … aaah, “healing.” If so and nevertheless … Dr. Herod Edinsmaier was physically at a place, was at a workplace, from where he could have quite easily then left! Literally! Child – protecting and – guarding and – “loving” Daddee – Herry could have … should have … … if loving ... gotten himself immediately, right there at the laboratory’s lot, into any one of the great number of his gazillion vehicles and purposefully driven off bound for the Truemaier Boys’ vicinity –– just in order to come to the sides of all of these children at the very moments they each were to receive into their brains this devastating news. Which Healer Edinsmaier did not do for Zane. And likely not as well for Jesse and Mirzah. Fuck, not only that … Dr. Herod Edinsmaier didn’t even (care to) know –– in the vernacular of his Next Cuntly Spouse, in the blistering argot of blithering Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, Dr. Edinsmaier “had no idea” … then or, likely … ever on any given day and time! … the virtual, the possible, let alone, the actual! vicinities of any of my Truemaier Boys! Ms. Fannie McLive told Zane right there on the front yard. Zane, alone, without even one of his two brothers present, a freshman in high school, just 15 years old and a boy who had just lost one of the closest and truest friends he would ever know and have as devoted and loyal ally throughout his entire lifetime. The incomprehensibility of some people’s actions does not boggle me anymore. It used to. It doesn’t do that anymore. At all. I can see Soooo Not – Gonna! – Step – Back – “Step”“Mother” McLive’s doing this deathly deed all by herself. Right there on the grass and sidewalk. Without any True on the telephone wire, at the least. Or one Truemaier brother present for each other’s steadying and silencing calm … as well. Or even just “First – Father” Edinsmaier at all ‘around’ for (possibly!) earliest comforting. I can visualize this actual scenario occurring. It –– as it was, of course, so determinedly and utterly meant to –– disgusts. Still. Same shaming shun, as well, as to how the three Truemaier Boys, Mirzah, Jesse and Zane, had each one received the cheerless and injurious news of their parents’ pending divorce: captured, confined and shut up as prisoners inside their seatbelts at interstate speeds and without benefit of the presence of their mother or any grandparent. Just detained hostages of Herry’s –– alone. Very, very alone. A life lesson Herry – The – Walt Disney continued to teach, teach, all the time teach to each of my Boys on the day of the death of his ex – father – in – law, AmTaham True, “Receive and take all of this on and inside yourselves, –– alone. Certainly don’t let a woman who might’ve been important to you at one time know or see you cry. She’s only a female; and, if you grieve, you’re nothin’ but a weakling! After all, she’s invisible to you kids anyhow.” Yes, by both the Good and Wonderful Healer Herry and his Next Cunt my Boys’ mother, too, was resolutely … was vengefully … made to be nowhere around when any one of the three Truemaier Children first heard of their Grandpa AmTaham’s dying that day! My Sons that day –– as on all others –– had no mother. And I, suddenly made fatherless, too had no Sons … to give me comfort … either! The very same shaming Edinsmaier – shun. “Years ago, still small, I lost my mother.” “ … a flood of tears must fall.” Tuesday three – fourths of the immediate siblings which, by then, included Ardys with her spouse from Bay City, Michigan, Sterling with his who’d joined The Only and Most Excellent Son – Brother from their Omaha – area home, and Dr. Legion True, alone and with No Other to comfort her, all motored, some of us inside AmTaham’s brand – newest, two – day – old, promised – to – be – gifted – to – Legion – when – Grandpa – was – “done with it” – Caddy Blue The Widow Mehitable over to a town just a bit more than an hour away from the Burg. A nice little village by where, I’d long ago been told in my youth, farmed “a lot of Amish” although, I wondered now, what is a lot of them? Does any one, two, three or so of humans and “their” DEhumans, particularly those quirkily different from ourselves, constitute “a lot of Amish” then? The “them – and – not – us” mentality outright, and out straight as well from Mehitable, from her thinkings and sayings. As I knew she would most certainly do, Endys for whom Cousin Wyman had found contacts chose to forego all encounters with those of us others in The Family prior to the very ritual in AmTaham’s church of his childhood –– the building that at one time had housed within its interior AmTaham True’s one – room school. That elementary institution wherein which one specific herr reverend – schoolmaster of the early 1930s had not been so reverent at all to, in particular, a learning, learning, always – loved – to – learn – more – than – he – already – knew, 12 – year – old AmTaham True – kiddo nor to that adolescent’s true and correct knowledge of The Dead’s Bones in Africa. No actual ancestoring knowledge himself had that herr – teaching genre of ancestor – in – training! Obviously, this unholy, tutoring dude possessed, as well, Herry Edinsmaier’s magical mantra of “Deny, Deny, Deny!” Just deny The Truth. That of The Dead’s Bones! The event that was unfolding as The Funeral of My Father began taking, at this other town, a decidedly Mehitable – turn which, in some way, was to have been expected. And in other, crucial and honoring, ways … not! One of the many nieces of Mehitable Natures True on her blood side of the Natures family, actually the eldest of all of her nieces and nephews from both ancestries, a person then also first cousin to me and to my sibs, owns and operates by now for a very long, long time along with her spouse a mortuary in this locality. All-we-all had traveled there, of course, to select the accoutrements which these two people would then manage in the next four to five upcoming days through the physicality that was another funeral home building, and because of its distance, … not theirs. Another one back in Williamsburg –– made by way of a business arrangement apparently often done between two such establishments, especially when the specific dead’s bones involved is –– or was –– a relative of some or one of the funeral parlors’ proprietors. However, nearly everything else about the ceremony from this visit on out took on the characteristics of an affair which I did not recognize at all as a True one. Only a year and a half earlier this man, AmTaham True, had called a family meeting comprised of only us four adult children of his –– and of no one else –– to exactly explain things inside The Will of the True Estate and to elaborate clearly to us direct descendents of his about the terms AmTaham True had specifically set forth –– in witnessed writing –– regarding his dying and death –––– one biiiig, big one of which understood terms was to be … cremation! All four of us were present at Said Meeting! Well, any of that family meeting’s directives? I mean any of AmTaham’s particularly detailed wants? So certainly were not now happening! And did not. No, Mehitable turned the entire deal all upside down and around Her Way –– that is, “in The Right Way” … as I, when a little kiddo, used to continuously hear pitched at me if I fucked up stuff, according to her, which I’d been assigned to do. The first of a couple of horrid liturgically dirge – worthy details which Mehitable orchestrated was the casket selection. This lamentation deal commenced with an actual parade led by the Natures niece as majorette – mortician, sans her metallic baton of course but poised pen in hand instead, out of her parlor’s backdoor to an outbuilding wherein were contained temperature and moisture controls and about a dozen different full – sized and wee kiddo – measured models in which one, now dead, could sail away off to Never – Never – Evermore land. I saw in this structure not one urn nor jar appropriate to the holding of the ashes of anything carbonaceous after its first being burnt beyond crisped or crypt or cryptic belief. Not even a box which was a construct slapped together out of cheap pine board slabs such as had been the environs of my dear friend Frieda Chicken Guthrie’s catacomb. Silver or pewter – like, several different brown ones, black but gilded with that tacky gold paint trim, white and child – sized. Mehitable’s, er, ah, um, rather AmTaham’s, choice came in brown and ‘naturally’ was quite appropriately padded with that pillowy, velvety smocked stuffing of satin or some such other fabric. In off – white. Oyster shell, likely. Once in it, Daddy did look lovely, of course –– but for the expression on his lips and in those “peaceful” eyelids of his that otherwise pronounced in solitude to no one there willing to or capable of Truely |