Chapter Twenty Eight An Opera in Three Acts But with Five Parts
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| hearing him –– except me! “This is so not what I’d wanted nor stated. But, fudge, what do I bloody care now? I’m free –– free at last! She’s always had Her Way about anything and everything anyhow!” Shit, the casket wasn’t even pine, at the least, and was entirely of a metal composition including appropriate railing handles for gripping use by pallbearers –– about whom … “I have no idea.” Dark, dark blue – black suit coat, pure white shirt, and some necktie about which I –– still –– also remember nothing –– except that he had been the man to teach me how to tie and to knot one once, my standing behind him and reaching around from the rear his shoulders still massive although weakened by that polio thingy … to secure it. “Because you have sons now, Kitty, and will need sometime to know how to teach them to do this,” Daddy’d coached me, the Truemaier Boys’ ma, on the Four – in – Hand first, then the Half Windsor; and finally I graduated with the Double. This little life lesson, too, for a mother of sons AmTaham had guided me in learning –– and I was long then into my 30s, his obviously full – well knowing even at that point about Herry – Daddee’s type of role – modeling … teachings.
O and the second detail, the actual structuring of Daddy’s memorial service itself: from the music pieces right on down to which program cover to choose! Ardys the Eldest, probably the most male – identified female adult I have ever met and fully proud of it, a woman who took straight to heart and learned very, very well Mehitable’s lessons on servility and deference to all men and so self – defined even more than Herry’s Next – Cunt McLive or Childless – ‘Evaluator’ Canard or indeed Mehitable herself, settled on one along with our mother too, I am guessing, that outdid even their own usual dependencies. Plain white, the front cover had on it a wooden cross with its bottom pole’s post piercing through a king’s three – pronged crown in black ink, the holy trinity symbol I am supposing, through which also lay on top of the cross a palm branch also in black. Not so appropriate for moral atheist AmTaham True my thought was; but, hey, ‘twas only my thought and I now bothered not at all to verbalize it, the cover itself being one – fourth of the entire, 8½” x 11”, folded deal to begin with and printed on mighty thin paper! About that part AmTaham would’ve been pleased –– that is, about his kiddos’ not having spent for expensive cardstock or something fancier. Everything about this man his entire lifetime like so many, many of the Midwest’s farmers before him oozed frugality, minimalism, simplicity –––– and that had been the utter substance of AmTaham True’s continuing message for us four at that family meeting, the distinct elements of said meeting Ardys, Sterling and The Widow Mehitable were almost as utterly ignoring –––– full – tilt funeral boogie –––– right now! It got worse … way worse in point of fact. In the lower right of this program cover were the following words –– still from these three’s most magically made and such ‘godly’ writings, most certainly not of AmTaham’s! “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you a crown of life” had been lifted out of a place called revelations in some male – construct’s worth of papers which martin luther alongside centuries of other only – authoring men dominatingly termed ‘holy’ and which words, therefore because these several dudes “had said so,” are to be believed and heeded! Opening the program to page four and past a stinging passage on its page two about “Who knows the power of your anger? For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you” said to have been taken from an entity entitled psalms 90, to a back – and – forth group – recitation between the preacherman and us, the mourning masses and the allegedly ‘AmTaham True – honoring’ assembled, there appeared this untruth, a wholly hypocritical and speciously incorrect falsity that started off this “responsive reading” … beginning, of course, with the ministerman’s first getting to speak, “As it was confessed by AmTaham at his confirmation and at other times throughout his christian life as a public testimony of his christian faith, we join in making our faith known …” … and then the rest of us, along with this cleric in his costly long white dress, were to launch into babbling away at another deal full – up of more only – men’s words called the apostles’ credo … or some such thingy. “Confessed? Public? Throughout? Faith? christian faith?” I should have … looooong and loudly … screamed back as my entitled! “responsive reading,” “We all here so assembled today … know … that AmTaham True had been forcibly coerced as a 12 – year – old, very publicly bludgeoned even! And that this man, when he lived and breathed and upon this World walked, entirely loathed any semblance of this whole, particularly mother – fucking, public confessional – type shit that, since the time from when he was just a budding teenager, he bloody well bloomin’ didn’t at all believe in! Religious education is child abuse, is child abuse, is child abuse. Child abuse is religious education. Very!” As if this gobbledygook and the claptrap that was the exhibit of AmTaham True inside his corpse and still not put to us per his wishes as the heap of carbonaceous ashes which Daddy had really wanted to become weren’t enough, Ardys, Mehitable and Sterling then topped the whole of it all off with a couple of tunes which they called hymns: “rock of ages” and “jesus, savior, pilot me.” These two, androcentric ditties were to be sung by all of us before and after this guy in his floor – length, cloud – robe throttled by such the fancy, multi – colored and likewise – expensive chokehold of a braided stole allowed ( … of course!) himself to sermonize on and on using some stock – and – canned, surreally metaphoric funereal message said ministerman termed, “following the shepherd’s voice” taken from yet another man’s myths, one by the ubiquitous name of john written within yet another male – identified construct claiming itself to be the be – all, end – all, tallest tale of all traditions: the christian gospel. The whole deal of this funeral deed then was to be done with by a concluding number … just before the recessional … rather levelly headed up as “abide with me, fast falls the eventide.” Then all of us assembled crawled off in carbon – spewing cavalcade (… instead of with carbonaceous Mr. True) to the side of his gravesite, the lone bugler’s Taps, more words of such untruths about Daddy blathered all around out there, then my father’s actual lowering –– and my actual being brought down soooo, so low too I thought –– then, as well, the dirt of course symbolizing Daddy’s ‘true’ True ashes, the cut, quite carbonaceous flowers, more symbolism strewn down on top of that soil’s first, the church – ladies’ swell – tasting food and, well, … back to all the rest of us then living all of our separate lives … lovingly, … I guessed! NOT! Wednesday the Truemaier Boys, just the three of them unaccompanied by anybody else whom they knew and about which I was so glad, flew themselves in to the Eastern Iowa Airport outside of Cedar Rapids to its south, and that for us four was no April Fool’s joke! I had not seen two of my sons, Mirzah and Zane, since Monday night, 28 October 1991 … of the Elitist and Erudite Edinsmaier’s and Flunks’ mother – and kiddos’ – fucking fiasco! And, of course, Jesse and I had not seen each other since the Friday night before that one, the threateningly portentous blackness within our Ol’ Black of “If I’m taken away to live in another state, I know I won’t ever be a kid again in Iowa, Mom. I won’t ever again come back to Iowa as a child; I just know it” sorrow! Subsequently, I, Invisible Ma, “had not been allowed” to even talk to any one of my three Boys since then … either. “MOTHER, YOU HAVE NO SONS! SONS, YOU HAVE NO MOTHER!” Shit, we had a helluva lot of catching up to do –– and with such the gargantuan Grandpa AmTaham loss and no privacy at all, it was, well, … not to be, of course! What did I and our needs matter after all? This funeral ‘fun’? This was entirely The Widow Mehitable’s ShowTime and not for us to desire anything whatsoever to suit ourselves: I couldn’t even go along to the airport to pick them up! That task was relegated and delegated not to the Truemaier Boys’ own mother at all but to their Uncle Sterling, a patriarchal duty from which the brother absolutely delighted in deposing me –– wearing with its directive … such the very same snide – like sneer as Herry’s! And aaaall about which Charlotte Perkins Gilman would have so, so easily recognized, too: The mother’s chattel – children, as of course is her own person, her actual self, are only to be … manhandled! Thusly, so ‘handled’ then from one man only … over to becoming the property, voila! of only another man’s –– and most assuredly for certain! never, never are the kiddos to be delivered into the overall care of … only their very own mama! “How androcentrically managed and ‘balanced’, Ms. Gilman, not?” I was left thinking. She can do the chores of and for the children as well as for him –– whoever the him is at the time who happens to have the exalted spermatozoal DNA – possession rights to her children, that is, she can do the cooking, the serving, the cleaning up after, the worrying about. She, the slave however, just cannot have any rights at all to her own children. All of the perfectly papal personae and that renegade one, marty luther? Why, any of these so godly men’d have been so through – and – through … so thoroughly … pleased with their two descendent pupils, the quite Male – Identified Mehitable and Her Most Excellent Only Male – Offspring Sterling! It was spectacular, of course, just to see them all –– even if for such the so awfully sorrowful deal as was this specific week’s. Yes, they appeared to me so much taller and older! Hell, it’d been over five months’ time! Girls and boys their ages have spurts! Zane was particularly quiet and subdued, not at all his usually exuberant self. I mean, sure, one of his, and mine, too, most favored people in the whole world died; but Zane had always … before … possessed a special resiliency about bad stuff in life not witnessed in most folks of all ages –– as had been the case with so many rescued animals particularly … including his Sylvan laprine inside the Brookside Forest, a blesséd buoyancy after being booted life’s hardballs –– of which Zane did not display any during this entire visit. Things surrounding either AmTaham’s dying or everything back in West Virginia or generally overall were entirely far, far too weighty –– even for Zane, still only 15 years old and in the very midst of his teenage years. Earlier, there had been talk of Zane’s tooting for AmTaham the Taps on his trumpet which I had brought with me from Ames exactly because of that possible plan. One lovely lone oak tree, already with this year’s Vernal Equinox and late, late March nearly leafed out and so tall, had been singled out down a hillock a short piece from Daddy’s soon – to – be grave where out from under it the solo bugler was to sound that final farewell. That tooter did not turn out to be Zane … after all. For me the next three days passed by as pleasantly and as warmly as the sudden, wholly unexpected death of one’s belovéd father possibly could. From the comforting of the presence and embracing arms of my equally belovéd Boys to the words and gazes from my own four nephews and extraordinary first cousins of whom I am so luckily blessed with several superb and stupendous individuals on both the Natures and True sides of the family to the amazing miracles whom I have for friends. This man had a host of admirers and inspired friends himself. The viewing and reception at the Burg funeral home I found to be the hardest for me coming as it did on the very evening of the afternoon when the Boys had flown in … Wednesday. After the first day, the hardhearted and meanspirited death – filled day of Monday not only of AmTaham’s attack and dying but also their day of making Legion True out to be “the evil, murdering monster that we, Sterling and Mehitable, know her so to be –– just like Herry also says she is!” and the next day of preparations and planning were over, I exhaled and let my hair hang down and then, because of it, felt as did the Boys as well, fairly shocky –– something a normal DEhuman should expect to. The humble church of AmTaham’s youth was packed, the women of the kitchen, and the folks in there were only females of course, the food and their serving of it up all proved delicious and sensational and the graveside ceremonies … so sadly breathtaking. Returning to Mehitable’s house, the Boys and I determined to stay in its far recesses –– as the same deal as when The Widow had bluntly ordered me to its very remote bedrooms as a 23 – year – old divorcée back from New York City to hide out isolated there and to mask my adult self away from local visitors and guests at her and AmTaham’s front door. Mehitable True had done this very same concealing of an entirely adult but psychotropic drug – taking Endys, too, always couching her all – consuming embarrassment of my bipolar – labeled sister and me and our apparent humiliation of her in her hometown community as … “for our protection.” With a full bathroom in the back as well, we four talked, we read, we talked some more coming out from our retreat to the well – lit living room with its picture window spance to the south only once in awhile … to specifically visit there with relatives and friends. The Boys enjoyed especially the company of their True cousins, my four nephews, these seven male humans total then who equaled the entire extent of all of AmTaham’s and Mehitable’s grandchildren. About the fact of their only – maleness, Mehitable, herself merely birthing but a lone one male out of four total kiddos altogether, continues to this day to repeat her colossal pride. Time, as it does not always do for me at all, passed by us four … entirely too swiftly: it was Sunday morning of the 05th day of April, and my daddy AmTaham had been in the ground and cold now … since Thursday afternoon. Mirzah’s, Zane’s and Jesse’s flight was set to leave at approximately 1:30 p.m. that afternoon –– first for Kansas City, transferring them there then to Pittsburgh and at last by way of yet another transfer on through to the small, regional Montclank – Grubtrop airport inside central West Virginia … and once there, thus, back into Herry – Daddee’s (alleged) handling before it grew too, too dark … I was thinking. The Natures’ 70 – something stunning and marvelous matriarch, Pearl, of my First Cousins Amanda, Carolina and Wyman and for all of her time an aunt to awe any niece, asked to drive the Truemaier Boys … with me finally included … and, of course, along with The Widow Mehitable herself to their plane’s departure. She would, she said if Mehitable wanted it that way, chauffeur us all there in AmTaham’s newest and wowing Caddy Blue, now only about nine total days out from its purchase and into the Trues’ actual ownership and unmistakably only (legally blind) Mehitable’s … henceforth. This offer of my Aunt Pearl’s Mehitable speedily agreed to. And since according to family law judges and to the Truemaier Boys’ other owning – men like Herry and Sterling, it simply had to be, then so gladly did … I too agree. What it soooo did not simply have to be, however –– was that exact day! Around about 10:30 in that a.m., Zane, never really this entire time so far the effervescent and ebullient Zane whom I could recognize, fell very nauseous and dizzy, diaphoretic, vertiginously woozy and took to becoming nearly immediately prostrate on his belly in the bedroom closest to the living room and kitchen. I summoned pots to puke forth in, cooled water in which to wet washcloths for forehead mopping and daubing –– and his Grandmother Mehitable, “Call Herry, either you or Sterling. Get him on the phone and tell him to reschedule the flight. Zane cannot go anywhere today. Here’re the telephone numbers, both for the residence and for Herry’s lab at the med center. Go! Call him, please! Now!” “I’ll do no such thing!!!” was my immediately screamed, I mean stat! answer back. Now that, indeed! was something I did recognize! Right up there alongside her “in The Right Way!,” “I shall do no such thing!” is Mehitable’s standard response directly to me to just about anything and everything I have ever asked of her … throughout my entire lifetime and so it was certainly seeming to continue to be that right about then, too! The Widow’s manner was dictatorial and tyrannical as if she, her very self, had been the parental rights’ – terminating praetor on that earlier Storm County judicial bench. As a matter of fact, it was pretty obvious that she was very well calculating right on that spot there of Zane’s sickbed, at his and his brothers’ expense of their physical health, psyches and well – being, the possible weight and cost specifically to her … of my venture at flights’ rescheduling. What would be Herry’s take on her, Mehitable, the maternal grandmother’s siding back here in Iowa with the Truemaier Boys’ mama (who also just happened to be her very own child) … versus … placing them all on the previously arranged airplane right then and there –– with a traveling Truemaier child so ill! and all –– back to their daddee’s? So very, very soon into the Loss of their Grandpa AmTaham not only from her but from the rest of us as well, she was, in mighty fine – tuned and operating aprovechar style, already in to figuring out what the likelihood would be of The (Ex – ) Son – in – Law Herry Edinsmaier’s interpreting her actions at attending to the true “best interests of the Truemaier Boys” if she gave up, for even just this one day, her intentions and efforts at remaining Herry – Daddee’s most staunchest of allying, male – identified henchwomen. If in her immediate future alongside, of course, STEP – Right – In – “Mom” – McLive, ... if Mehitable did not abrogate the wishes of the Boys’ actual mother and, now, diagnostician, nurse, doctor and healer as well, and if she did not collude –– and right now! –– with The Good and Wonderful Doctor – Daddee Herry and go up against the involvement in their futures by the Truemaier Boys’ actual mama and instantly and directly work to make her as invisible to Mirzah, Jesse and Zane … as Daddee and stepMommy do, why then what ‘privileges’ as The Takeover Mother – Surrogate inside these brothers’ lives would Dr. Herod Edinsmaier rescind from her, Mehitable?! “I. Will. Do. No. Such. Thing!” “Please, Mom. Look at him. He can’t go anywhere today. Not like this. Please, please call Herry. Even Herry won’t want him to come back in this condition, I’m sure of it,” although I was nowhere at all sure of my statement. In fact, I felt it a lie –––– but I had to try. Zane was sooo, so sick. “Yes, he can. And he will. For all you know, he’s faking it!” she honestly said that. Mehitable, Zane’s grandma … allegedly in the agony and throes of gravest grief over the dying of her own great husband … she actually said that. She did. And he did. Zane did fly, too. That very day. No schedule of Herry – Daddee’s or Mehitable’s making was about to be by me upset or disrupted. Uh – uh. Up Mehitable got him; and since Zane really hadn’t thrown up yet but could barely navigate against the spinning sensation, it mattered not at all how he or I felt and only that she not be perceived in Herry’s eyes as anyone weakened or possibly influenced by the moaning cries and pleadings of the child’s mother. With Pearl indeed driving and as vociferous to Mehitable as a disapproving, incredulous and outright angry sister – in – law could have been, the car ride to the Eastern Iowa Airport did nothing to assuage Mehitable’s immoral resolve nor, of course, calm Zane’s stomach, heartbeats and heartbreak either; and after the most horrendous and wrenching of goodbyes again that likes of which we all had only just experienced the previous October, why … Patriarchal Pappy’s will and Mehitable’s fears of that will of Herry’s prevailed. And essentially, that afternoon, tossed Zane and his two younger brothers onto the first of three airplanes! They, the airplanes, all three of them, pitched and heaved –– as did Zane … “all the way home, Ma” through three flights and two transfers and … two very frightened, littler brothers and one very, very sick, weakened, scared, scarred and selfishly bartered son of mine. Abused, violently violated and royally fucked Zane was a thing traded between a father and a grandmother … and about which inane act perped by this child’s supposed loved ones, done by these two ‘adults,’ his own mama as powerless as ever before … could do absolutely nothing. Again. With that grandmother beginning to secure for herself more and more her most wanted role of The Hostile – Takeover Mother in The Opera, my Aunt Pearl motored her and me, completely mute and burning for keeps into my memory this specific Sunday, 05 April 1992 airport scenario just played out, back to the Burg where after thanking Ms. Pearl Natures for all of her kindnesses shown to us four, I immediately packed up everything I most wanted forever and ever to save –– which I knew right then would be all, would be the entire extent of anything that I from my daddy via this particular male – identified woman could ever possibly inherit –– and myself departed, for the very last time, this house that was no home. It had been no home ever, even with AmTaham alive and within it –– because of Mehitable; and I determined on the roadtrip back to the refuge that was my workstation the next morning at the Forestry Department that I would never darken its doorstep again. Which I have not. In addition to Daddy’s dying and to Mehitable’s dwelling now that had never been for me any true haven at all, I began to finally be able to willfully and to wholly let go of two others in my life because of the pain which they brought to me instead of the pleasure from them there in it that I should have been experiencing. At earlier times in my dealings with her as my sibling, I felt that perhaps my eldest sister was, with others in her life east of me and awash in her fanatic, frenetic religiosity, … rather harmless. I thought that if I could just ignore it, … it –– what crazy – making Ardys’s involvement in all matters magical and superstitious and mythological and blinding truly meant and what she really was, an extremist, to the extent that it ruled her every word and act –– was of no real damage to me or destruction to anyone else. Now, however? Now … I believed entirely differently. Sister Ardys’s was the pernicious goading from just beneath skin surfaces where her needling spur chiseled around and prodded and incited inflammation with subsequent fulminating infection and infestation all around under there. And all of this destruction, of course, under the hypocritical pretense of her actions being those of goodness and light and mercy and grace and a host of other of those spiritually divine, I’m – such – a – big – person nouns which, in Truth and in Nature, actually promote generalized dissension and internal dehiscence and thus, which is of course her niggling intent and desired outcome in the first place! … thus most especially, … inside a family! While Ardys prized her servility ability, another attribute of some secretariats which this woman most surely did not possess nor had at all the aspiration to own either, a very good one actually, is the art of keeping secrets when they soooo need keeping. Which, in my book, is all of them –– that, indeed, being the essential ingredient in whether or not some piece of information is defined as a ‘secret’! Inside our family? Noooo, no secretary she –– if that meant, in any capacity, being a true confidant and secret – arying. As a matter of fact, all Mehitable or Sterling needed to do in order to know something was to sic soooo male – identified Ardys on its trail. And if it were information that she could obtain, why then it was information which they too, in short order, would also possess. I couldn’t have any of that. Not in my life now and, most certainly, not any longer. Not with The Opera and The ‘Courts’ and The Exalted Herry – Daddee already ruling me with his various filliping, follying folies as he did. With AmTaham’s apologizing in the Havencourt condominium basement over our soaking those couple of paintbrushes and his and my long –, long – due conversation there utterly releasing me from anything lutheran or christian and his granting his kiddo … me … entire freedom from religion in general altogether, I had been suddenly made not only more enlightened in a roundabout sort of way on the immense and daily dangers of Ardys, of people like her, but also completely liberated from ever, ever having to react any longer to her as if her extremism was okay and good and a thing that I myself should strive to embrace when it definitely so was –– not! Even though Ardys, all of the times I was ever in her presence, either ostensibly or subtly from behind the scenes’ curtains, forced or foisted her religiosity onto me … that aggravating jabbing with its egging – on, under – the – skin kind of invading plague. My brother’s arrogant demeanor, Sterling’s deportment of entitlement in and total control over every aspect of his hauntings so similar to the upscale haughtiness of Herry’s and Mehitable’s, that is, wherever Sterling roamed, I wanted no more of that either. He and I had been so, so tight as little eight – and ten – year – olds but that? That we were not … now. Now, I believed I had no sister – brother relationship; and while ours had begun to deteriorate my freshman year in college when I in 1966 and 1967, took to pacific bra – burning and he took to including all – out militarism into his daily comings and goings that eventually led him to drop bombs, napalm and agent orange on nameless, faceless people because of “just following orders,” Sterling hadn’t started out to be that which he now came before me as. Nor had AmTaham at all endorsed the type of individual man Sterling presented himself as –– altogether too recognizable to me as just another aggressive narcissist, just another Herod Edinsmaier. Just another “because he can” kind of guy. And as well, in absolutely no way at all … brotherly. A true friend to me Mehitable was never going to become; and in these two others of her gene pool, Ardys and Sterling, I obviously also could not realize supporters either. Sterling because of his resemblance to all things Herry and Mehitable, and the treatment which Ardys dished out under her never – so – holy and quite – galling guise of invoking divinity and love often reminds me of an experience I’d once had as a newly beginning veterinary student. The three months’ worth of summertime before I commenced the very first academic year of veterinary class work and with my possessing humans’ medical and nursing knowledge, skill and its actual registration thereof, why, I had been taken onto the payroll of the College’s Small Animal Clinic as its only combination central sterile supply employee and operating – theater nurse. In the midst of a most humid August afternoon, Emergency Receiving took in on a stretcher an entirely prostrate and moribund Old English sheepdog … barely breathing, about 80 pounds’ worth. This dog was not unconscious but so critically dehydrated and in extreme pain that it just no longer could stand, let alone, walk itself into our care. The pooch ultimately became the property of the Small Animal Clinic and a successful ‘experiment’ of that year’s collection of rotating senior clinical veterinary students since the canine was not discharged until the following March! Cured. Its owners had not been able to withstand the medical bills which nearly immediately piled up, not to mention, those that were sustained chronically … although the Clinic eventually did release the animal back to them anyhow. On scorching, sticky Iowa days after a cat’s or dog’s scratch wound merely the size of a pinprick, it takes no time at all for barnfly eggs laid by those insects attracted to itty – bitty serum droplets wetting the fur strands by only a miniscule amount … to hatch. And the subsequent maggots therefrom … to begin their infesting burrowing and tunneling demolition –––– obliterating under the dermis, epidermis and all of this hound’s foot – long hair the entire fascial and fibrinous infrastructure of a nearly five – foot – long animal’s chest, thoracic and abdominal walls … bilaterally. Once its fur was completely shaved off, anyone would have had a very difficult time gazing upon this heap were it to have been a corpse or even a mutilated, rotting, stinking carcass out in an August’s pasture or field somewhere, but it was made all the more grievous to look upon this critter knowing that it was –– alive. Hours and hours and hours and hours the seniors and I labored over this individual dog for at least the first month that it was with us, and the ensuing ones that it took for the entire sides of this animal to literally … regrow. The canine had to regenerate a new, complete covering of skin in from its most outer edges and from its shoulders to its haunches in toto … bilaterally. And as critically at the very same time along this long, long way … try to keep from its becoming infected, Pseudomonas aeruginosa the most egregious and damning of microbes. The condition visited one summer in Iowa’s farm country upon this downed creature paralleled the fifth – degree burns into muscle and bone of persons –– anywhere for any reason –– splashed with … napalm. I believed then, and do so today, that the workings and the behaviors of my sister, Ardys, in her interactions with virtually all others of my acquaintance and most especially with me and my woundings whether minute or wide, to be not so different at all from those of jet fighter pilots in Viet Nam who similarly visited such fuckful conditions upon living things and to mirror the machinations of those maggots with, intentionally if not also effectively in at least some of us other recipients of Ardys’s plotting attentions, … matching consequences. One classic example of such an undermining – and – sabotage working of Sister Ardys involved a neatly typewritten letter which I received from her, single – spaced, one 8 x 11½ piece of white paper on both sides and dated the Fourth of July 1992, a weekend that year, a freeing Saturday no less! Not only some folks’ idea of marking a day of “independence” –– even in three women their whole lives so very well – trained by their male – identified mother, Mehitable, to simply be soft, deferent and subservient, that is servile to men –– but also this holiday was only a smidgen over Daddy’s lying in the ground for a mere three months’ time by then. The full front side of this sheet was sisterly letter chitter – chatter: gardens, visits, her volunteer activities, some on her adult sons off on summer – job jaunts and away from their respective undergraduate programs, the Michigan weather, even up to something about how Ardys is “glad Sterling has been able to spend a few weekends with her. Many other townpeople [her word] and friends have seen to it that she has transportation and companionship. I feel rather helpless at times, but try to call and checkup [Ardys’s word] on her every few days. I think it makes us both feel better and we get to share things, ideas and newsy stuff Mother enjoys.” Then, over on this missive’s backside Elder – Sister Ardys launches the napalm – containing missiles above the bow and her similarly outfitted torpedoes under it! “Now that I have caught you up on such things that have occurred in the past month, Mother tells me you have not called, written, visited…….NOTHING SINCE DAD DIED. How unthoughtful, selfish, self-centered, cold, uncaring, unChristian, [her capitalization], uncivil can YOU BE???????????????????” [I had to stop here and count them all by hand to be accurate –– that is, the 19 of Ardys’s questioning marks.] “Shame on you for being so small and so selfish. Mother really wants you to be her daughter, her friend. You have called her a ‘witch’ to me. I almost responded that night that I thought the broomstick belonged in your hand. But, Sterling intervened, and I didn’t get to say it. Consider it said. Only it isn’t a witch you are like, it is something much worse. You are causing unhappiness and distress to Mother. She does NOT DESERVE SUCH BEHAVIOR FROM YOU! There is a God-given law which reads, (incase [Ardys’s word] you have forgotten it) “Respect your father and your mother, so that you may live a long time…” [Notice how Ardys takes care to type the man, even though this particular one is dead, before the living woman about whom she is writing to me –– just as is smack in line with the patriarchal androcentrism of the biblical encyclic with which marty luther has so well inculcated her.] Be very careful, Legion. That is the ONLY commandment that carries both a promise and a veiled threat from a holy, just, mighty, care-full God. You have some choices and considerations to make about your behavior toward Mother. I hope you will make the right ones that will be of benefit to both Mother and to yourself. I will be asking Mother how things are going from time to time. If I know you are not changing and trying to become all that you could be with regard to being a daughter and friend, you will be hearing from me again. (Perhaps you would like to know, God’s commandments are recorded in Exodus 20:1-17.) When you send that next repayment check … ” [Here Ardys refers to that which is absolutely none of her mother – fucking business. Soooo, apparently, Mehitable must have told her, and likely Brother Sterling as well, of my financial dealings with her and Daddy because I certainly had not –––– and about which these two parents had never one time said to me a thing regarding Ardys’s or Sterling’s borrowing from them biiiig, big loans from time to time! Mehitable obviously blabbed to Ardys that I, indeed, had in April 1991, borrowed $2,323.00 at 8 percent interest and complete with notarized promissory note all quite proper and legal – like from her and Daddy to pay off, then, my subsequent income taxation penalties which I’d incurred against me for my cashing in too early all of my IRAs the year before –– in order to live! And I was in its repayment stages –– always, these, in full and current –– when Daddy dropped, all installment monies “of not less than $72.79 per month due on or before the 15th” now … routinely and regularly … being mailed by me to The Widow Mehitable … alone! Obviously then? Mehitable hadn’t been so truthful to my sister in regard to that part in Ardys’s letter which recounts that, “Mother tells me you have not called, written, visited…….NOTHING SINCE DAD DIED.”] “Not one hour and not one dollar,” once I asked the Righteous Ancestor AmTaham when he was still One – In – The – Making what, for a death, he would consider okay. At least just an okay one, if not a mighty fine death. It was not until a couple of years out from his burial or even longer –– after a degree of time had passed me by so that the suddenness and the shock of it all had somewhat lessened in its intensity that I was able to look back at the chronology of this entire affair, of AmTaham True’s falling down stone – cold dead on an early Monday morning after enjoying his usual self – entertainment of some reading and while preparing to go to full – time work at a task he didn’t too much mind doing while, at the very same time, undergoing no effects from slowly deteriorating ill health, no severe or chronic physical pain nor enduring any diagnoses of bodily conditions to later worsen or prove catastrophic, all in the accompaniment and proximity of someone also fairly healthy whom he loved –– although not with him the presence of his adored Truemaier grandsons, as … exactly the way I would like to someday die. Just not as young as Daddy was when last he breathed. And not without my children, all quite living and healthy themselves of course, beside me, too. AmTaham True had only one fear about which I as his kiddo knew. That is to say, he surely had more than one. Hell, he was a soldier in World War II for chris’sake, his own spouse nearly died on him a number of times, Child Sterling was pitched unconscious off of a pony once and not found for more than an hour’s time and his own daddy, the Truemaier Boys’ Great – Grandpa Zebulon, did die a lingering death from a thrown embolic thrombus to the heart after a colossal beam in a lumberyard fell upon him pinning his legs which so compromised the man’s lower – extremity vascularity that it and he never truly recovered from the accident. So AmTaham, like all of us, had plenty of reasons to fear some things. It’s just that I only ever knew of this one: AmTaham did not want to spend any time at all, not even one hour, as a resident of a nursing home or old folks’ facility. And he did not. He got his wish on that one. O, how he absolutely loathed the thought of –– and truly outright feared –– having to spend any time as a “patient” or resident in such an establishment … anywhere. I’m sure that there are such places which are good ones; Daddy wasn’t so sure. Ever. And AmTaham True never wanted to set foot in one as a person having to actually stay and live there. Well, … he didn’t. “Not one hour.” Except for the one aspirin and the one tablet of cardiac medicine which AmTaham True took daily that, of the latter pill itself alone, actually was probably as costly as a dollar or more … given the outrageous expense of prescription medications even then … Daddy, ever the economist and frugal to his core, abhorred the cost of health care and especially that which could be classified as catastrophic and lavishly spent on elderly people. From his research and reading AmTaham told me on more than one occasion that, in the United States, the most money spent to provide a person medical attention is, indeed, lain out in the average adult American’s last five days of life. Not including children then, the common woman or man in need of medical care is never more in need of it apparently, according to demographics and economics studies, than that which is administered to the person during the five, consecutive days just prior to her or his death. On average. As in workers trying to dramatically bring the person back. After stroke or heart attack or cancerous metastases or end – stage kidney failure or massive visceral organ shutdown or disseminated intravascular coagulation or brain function cessation due to whatever cause. Trying to bring the patient back … from the precipice of purgatorial entry! And except for the cost of those two pills taken once a day for the five days leading up to Monday, 30 March 1992 then, “not one dollar” of billing for physicians’ services nor hospitalization nor any other manner of fanatic – extremist medical care was put out for nor onto AmTaham True’s family and estate … towards trying to save this particular mahatma from said cataclysmic illness. It was that which AmTaham loathed –– what he believed was the squandering of resources out of that which should go to the rest of the family members and out of that which should be his legacy and their estate which he so did not wish frittered away upon himself. And that, too, did not happen to AmTaham. For which, if Daddy had known, I believe he would have been so thankful. * * * * Only exactly one month after Daddy’s dying, the date of 30 April 1992, rings out as the next remarkable one. At ten minutes before 4 in the p.m., I found myself bounding through the Brookside Forest to its entry lot wherein I could park Ol’ Black all day for free and walk the 20 minutes up one of its asphalt and cinder paths into my campus building. Except that on this trip back to the car I was sprinting at the highest speed that my skirt and flats would allow me. If the trek had taken me the usual 1/3 of an hour to get back to my vehicle, well, indeed, I would have been too late. And it would have all been over. ‘My case’ entirely and utterly closed. No going forward whatsoever. No further legal action allowed me. ‘The Court’s’ “rules” … At 3:50 p.m. the incoming telephone call to my Forestry workstation had been for me a personal message and not one departmentally related, “Dr. True, this is Mrs. Ray. I’m responding to a question you put in to the clerk’s office yesterday. You’re aware, aren’t you, that you need to have file – stamped over here at the courthouse in the clerk’s office by 4:30 this afternoon the initial petition document? I can’t really advise you on anything more than that since none of us here are attorneys. We’re not really permitted to do that anyhow, ya’ know.” I did know that last part –– hers about the not counseling me in the fashion of a lawyer regarding legal matters since she and other workers in their county governmental office were actually barred by law from stating to me outright just about anything more than Ms. Ray had just done. I had not known, however, about the first part –– about the 4:30 p.m. file – stamping deadline in order to keep hope, that most awful of addictions, alive. Hence, the very reason I was running. I had had the document prepared and appropriately notarized; I just hadn’t known for certain the timeframe on filing the petition which was why my inquiry into the clerk’s office of the day before. Nor the answer to its cut – off date with which Ms. Ray had just now supplied to me. Exiting said Forest I turned Ol’ Black toward 13th –– and through the intersection connecting to the disgusting Othello Drive at the very limits of, or more than, in – town speeds and out onto the interstate a short piece till at its juncture I joined up with #30, a thoroughfare known as the Lincoln Highway which, labeled as Federal Highway #30 throughout all lengths of it, eventually traverses … the entire United States of America. On this particular nine – mile stretch of its two lanes into the courthouse town, however, it is well – posted as 55 mph through farming countryside and crossed by all manner of such slow – moving machinery, road – working equipment and truck types. Not to mention motorcycles and even bicycles. Not to mention that this portion of Highway #30 is quite a favorite and routine passageway into the furthest reaches of the rural region by every single one of the Storm County sheriff’s deputies. Timely this Thursday then that for me Ol’ Black had always been such a barnburner of an automobile. More than one time in this brief nine miles that Chevy wagon and I were propelling easterly, pell – mell, at upwards of 90 miles per hour passed several wee cars and two 18 – wheeler semis. And, most fortuitously for me, zero deputy dogs. Hope, indeed, is an affliction that could have killed me –– and others –– that day. At three minutes before 4:30, at 4:27 p.m., Thursday, 30 April 1992, and with grateful appreciation to the kindest of Storm County folks present within its University’s Forestry Department, particularly Ms. Rosalind Franklin and Dr. Joplin, and those special others in law enforcement not present at that precise half an hour upon its portion of the Lincoln Highway, I owned in my right fist an officially file – stamped document. The petition stated that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, by way of his own willful and seditious choices, had caused to occur such circumstances in my and the Truemaier Boys’ relationships with each other as for those conditions to be material, destabilizing changes. Daddee’s choosing to subvert the Boys’ and my ties and bonds were, indeed, |