Chapter Twenty Eight An Opera in Three Acts But with Five Parts
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| Chapter Twenty – Eight
An Opera in Three Acts – But with Five Parts Act Three: Parts Four and Five “Years ago, still small, I lost my mother. Everyone wept around me, but I grieved in silence, Ignorant that to relieve sorrow, a flood of tears must fall.” --- Thich Nhat Hanh, Viet Nam Ms. Carlotta Klutz telephoned to say she was sorry about how things had turned out up at the Capitol Building after all and that “considering” how I felt about matters, what in the hell was I going to do? No, she didn’t use the word ‘hell’; only I use that genre of expletive in my lexicon from time to time. Likely … as well, within the spate of transactions of business matters such as with ‘my case’ I spake such. A bit more lately, too, than when my Boys were tiny, I must say! Not the language police but Zane himself had cured me –– if I had needed curing from offensive mouth – momism disease –– when he was just three and Mirzah newly suckling at my left breast. “Shit, I pissed all over myself!” came back out of the itty – bitty bathroom at the two of us and at one – year – old Jesse playing down there on the cold Hawkeye Lane linoleum of the married student housing complex at the University of Iowa where we were then, all of us, growing up! Seems Zane wasn’t able to get completely down his trousers before letting loose; and with my nursing Mirzah out in the kitchen and thus seated and fully occupied, Zane had merely taken measures to responsibly handle this latrine matter all by himself alone. Nowadays, however, the speech pattern, long dormant in our throats, had begun to reinvent itself at the surface of my larynx. What was I going to do? What I was going to do was regroup. And to try very, very hard to put certain people out of my life for good –– like Custody – Evaluator Carrie Canard and Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor, that High Aggrandizier who had not only hidden the first in his own stasho’cunts deeeeep within a sanitarium somewhere but’d also kept on repeatedly selecting Miss Mousy – Frump Canard, the Good and Wonderful Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s latest mind – squeeze –– herself at all times husbandless and childless –– to be … ‘in charge of’ … my Boys’ brains, spirits and wishes. The Truemaier Boys had been gone from me a year now and, at least as far as my 65 minutes’ drive, most of those months gone down to Urbandale. After nothing at all whatsoever back to me in the way of a response for their three birthdays’ worth of sacks of stuff that I’d quietly delivered right onto the 69th Street bungalow stoop where Ms. McLive, also quite quietly, puffed and puffed and after my pointfuckingblank asking all three kiddos in my continued, clandestine visits to the fall school term’s sports fields if they had gotten the gifts which I had left there for them, I believed purposefully gone missing then the books and the brand – new volleyball and Jesse’s special cherry – flavored cough medicine that he liked and that truly clobbered his mild, exercise – induced asthma and a tin of smoked oysters along with a jar of pickled herring for Zane plus one of grey poupon, country – style Dijon mustard along with a wrapped half pound package of Lorraine Swiss cheese from my Save – U – More delicatessen and salted sunflower seeds for Mirzah. Especially, too, the homegrown Beefmaster and Early Girl tomatoes which I hadn’t grown but that the farmer with acres off in the Storm County countryside had and who also lived on 24th Street and sold them to us so – faithful customers out of her double garage there every July and August. Just freshly vine – ripened and right ready for Jesse’s and Zane’s and Mirzah’s all – time favorite sandwich, their belovéd BLT, the goooo - od sandwich! Even the multiple books of 29 – cent United States postage stamps plus the sheets of the ones meant to cover the cost of sending only solo postcards. After we four had heard nothing about the two sweatshirts with the I – Cubs logo and the spittin’– new, unoiled outfielder’s mitt that I knew Zane would know how to break in himself along with that extra pair of plain, black, also brand – new Thinsulate gloves I’d always had cached in the bottom drawer of the coat hutch on Havencourt along with all of their other pairs and knit caps, I believed that all of these items were taken from the Truemaier Boys. I deemed them all stolen. An especially wicked execution of the practice of aprovechar in that the Boys’ favorite foods and books and toys and warm, winter apparel and sports equipment, even their very medicines, not to mention my special – occasion cards and other letters, being withheld and hidden from the Truemaier Boys was right up Herry Edinsmaier’s alley and smack in line with his plan to make me The Invisible Mother. Of the sort that Ralph Ellison wrote in The Invisible Man. Only as a DEhuman, that is, as a woman. And not as a man at all, of course. “SONS, YOU HAVE NO MOTHER. MOTHER, YOU HAVE NO SONS!” A shunning, a mother – fucking of murdering proportions. Killing the memories and swindling by way of lethal silence three Truemaiers and, at the least, as many Trues out of any bonding and attachment to each other as happened to get in this King’s way. Before the pair’s folie à deux in this massive shuck – and – jive of theirs no longer worked, that is, when Zane, Jesse and Mirzah’d all grown old enough so that the Sheriff of Nottingham Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive and her King could no longer get away with lying to them or defrauding me or when the intervening seven years had seen the Boys all graduate from high school, become 18 years old and physically gone, a total of at least $5,000.00 worth of items which I alone had packaged up and sent to the Truemaier Boys either in the United States mails or by some other route both Daddee – Herry and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive had concertedly, had corruptly ripped off from them. And from me. It doesn’t matter that I cannot remember because I cannot. I cannot remember if the long – distance toll charges on the telephone calls which I placed just to visit with my Boys are or are not included in this total amount of dollars, but I think not. I am, of course, referring here in this specific mother – swindling to all of those phone – call fees where I would do the dialing up, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive would always be the person to answer the Edinsmaier – Truemaier landline as if right on staged cue from the Kingdom’s monarch; but where I, the Boys’ mama, would be immediately and summarily hung up upon without one word spoken or, at the very most, I would receive across my right eardrum the salutations of eleven or twelve of the nastiest utterances Noah’s dictionary contains and defines –– and, then, be slammed up upon. To all queries – ever – of mine about how to even reach Herry in order for myself to openly seek from the Grand Pooh – Bah himself his most – high permission to chat with my own Boys, the standard measure of all passively aggressive, narcissistic replies always, always, always hurtled back to me off of Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s glossal organ as to where Herry was and if, perhaps, I could speak with him directly at another phone number, “I have no idea” –– plus a few more of her own glossary’s invectives, new oaths or Ms. McLive’s same old ones. Then, at my call’s last, into that one hearing ear of mine and straightaway from out of the Good and Wonderful Doctor’s prearranged directives, King Herod’s several commands … this corrupted and aprovechar swindler – sheriff’s crash, smash, thump – thud –– followed by a dial tone. I was not rocking anymore now at all, no warming blankets enwrapping my legs nor cradling my arms. And Mirzah was correct when he’d told Daddee’s Canard what he had –– that I would not be undone after being dressed down but that I would come after the Truemaier Boys, no matter the outcome of the appeal. The one thing I could not do was run away with Jesse Truemaier, Mirzah Truemaier and Zane Truemaier. I would have. And I should have tried to, I believe, in retrospect. I just didn’t have one child only, though. I had three. Three not – so – tiny ones anymore, and I still cannot envisage in my mind’s eye just exactly how it is that I could have managed that: on the run. On next to no money. Even initially. Even before being caught and rounded up –– which I know would have happened. We were soooo visible –– we were. Because we are so cool – and we are – we four are so visible and would’ve been spotted pronto. Platinum, blue – eyed Aryan woman with three blondish, blue – eyed Aryan boy buckoes! How easy is that to detect and recognize? Plus, unlike Washington DC’s Dr. Elizabeth Morgan whose parents Antonia and William Morgan, escaped the United States with her one baby girl, Hillary, and were able to protect her with political asylum until she grew older then by their taking up citizenship in New Zealand –– as their own child, Dr. Morgan, rotted over two years in prison for civil, not criminal, contempt, I certainly did not have the help nor supporting backing from Mehitable for me to try any such thing on my own. AmTaham would’ve moved mountains, gone to the ends of the Earth and to any judicial, legal or financial mat for me had I run and had he been able to try to help us all ... alone. But Mehitable was around, very around: everywhere where the Mister Doctor Wonderful Edinsmaier and his three Truemaier Boys were concerned. And Grand Mehitable would have actively eaten me, her young, alive: turned me right over Me hit able would have. Either over to the authorities or in to King Herod himself –– which, as far as my United States Constitutional parental and parenting rights to anyone, was the same thing as the cops and the legal system. I also begged Zane, Mirzah and Jesse to promise never to flee away back to me because I was just too justifiably afraid of stranger danger, as rightfully were they –– if they had put themselves out there on the run alone. The three obeyed. And to my knowledge only one time did Jesse bolt out of a U – Haul parked at a McDonald’s in Columbia, Missouri, to escape his father for a period of two weeks’ time and to go utterly missing from West Virginia –– before Herry’d had a hired man sicced onto Jesse, him found and, of course, the recalcitrant returned back to the calculated tyranny of Dr. Horrid Herod Edinsmaier’s master plan for the invisibility and subsequent disappearance of the Truemaier Boys’ mother. From their lives. Altogether. Together we were so highly visible. But with us four now geographically separated so far from each other, it became a very cunning tactic of Herry’s in addition to his driving that 13 October 1990 Ryder away with them inside it … to sledgehammer, as well, a wedge wide enough between the Boys and me in order to separate all of them from any memories which they may’ve had of their mother and of their past lives with me. Soothingly cooing came Daddee – Herry’s cadence to each child separately and individually –– but only initially –– for never again would the topic, let alone … as always before and as recently as our family’s existence inside that man’s Othello Drive bachelor pad, would even just the verbal or written name, of Mother Legion True come up. The Velvet Voice of the Emperor Edinsmaier could talk and charm and explain and clarify and cajole and rationalize and enlighten and describe and validate and inveigle and authenticate and excuse and defend and shield and support and “prove” with such a tenor of supposed wisdom, understanding, “in your best interests” – operatic style and “evidence” … about exactly why it was that the Boys were to never speak to me – again. And, in like manner as well, why then he and his Next Cunt would never – again – sing of me either. All tolled –– including those times before the divorce was finalized and official, nine consecutive Christmas Eves, Christmas Days, New Year’s Eves, New Year’s Days, Mother’s Days and my annual Winter Solstice birthdays came and went ... without one note nor one telephone call sent to me from any one, two or three of my children. I knew. I knew it was not of their doing. I imagined that Herry never gave these special days one thought as regards any form the Boys’ involvement with me should take because of the nature of these only male – constructed calendar times. Besides Herry’s purposeful wreaking onto me the vengeance of his not caring any about all of that, it was just too damned much remembering – work for him to want to even start to try to do! And I further imagined that, quite likely instead, the barely fairly fuckable Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive so did and that when she did think of these days’ connections for the Boys to me, she then reminded Herry. And subsequently the two of them together, a folie regarding jolly – folly holidays, would make dead – certain that there was no mention made, no reminding done, no remembrances suggested out loud around the Boys of their maybe, perhaps getting in touch with their mom. No! Mum, mum, mum were they and not in the ol’ English or Aussie Outback sense either. No, actually exactly the opposite. Kept the fuck shut up the two of them did –– and the special events and moments in my and my Boys’ lives together, why, all of these, of course, just passed on by. As time will. And as judges, both district and appellate ones, so know that it will, too. With the children and their growths sooo not standing still, so not being passed by. Pissed – off and Revenging Edinsmaier’s patriarchal plan has worked out just mightily fine to a colossal extent, … hence Mirzah’s “ ... not before 11 years of age do I remember a thing about my life. And I don’t want to.” Mirzah’s mother, Legion True, alone, chose to grow Mirzah into himself and to, alone, bulldoze him out in late September of 1979, and to, as well alone! raise him up to his identity of 11 ! ! ! … on into the late year of 1990, at which hour the daddee showed up to abscond with both his body and his brain, (… As a matter of historically fictional, fairy tale – telling factoid, reminds me this scenario most certainly does of a dude named jesus christus and that guy’s daddee after his own mama had, as well, accomplished what should have been her … choices – alone!) … I … I never existed to Mirzah = is what this solo means, ya’ know, Jury. This man –– Mirzah Truemaier –– “has no idea” as to who I … to him … actually am.––from Edinsmaier’s aria: “Gotcha’, Bitch!” This stated belief of Mirzah’s is from someone who, earlier on, had matched both of his brothers in scoring perfect 36s on the reading portion of their respective SATs. It is sooo not like Mirzah just didn’t have the mental capacity to remember; this murdering of his banding bond to me, the mother, was deliberately and calculatingly perpetrated onto him and to his brothers. Something I still hear out of all three adult sons to this day goes something like thus, “But Herry never bad – mouthed you, Mama. He never said anything bad about you.” “No? Then how do you explain what he did to us and how he got away with it? He was not talking to you about me, but he was talking to someone. And, likely, to several people. Several were the accomplices in Herry’s terror and tyranny. There was a plan, a mighty androcentric ‘master’ – plan all right and, in it, I was only ... bad – mouthed. Just you never heard. You weren’t ever going to. The plan was: you were never going to hear a thing –– bad or good because I did not exist to you –– immediately and for always after Daddee – Herry spirited all of you out of and away from 6143 Havencourt and The Teacup on that autumnal Saturday. I ceased to be. And so did you in the sense of your lives before that day, in the sense of your lives … with me.” Exactly unknown … as daMan – Enamored, Custody – Evaluator Canard had whiningly besot daJudge to help her keep secret from the Boys – and from anyone else, for that matter – her two viciously false and soooo unstudied “reports,” why, Jesse, Zane and Mirzah were never, ever supposed to find out that Shaming ex – Husband Herry, by way of his maleness and his moneyed pillaredness, had set into motion all of the mother – fucking deeds that he so, indeed, had. “Ya’ know, since these are written down as trans – scriptures!, Jury, allya’all are actually able to pick them up, to hold them in your hand, to review, to study … to know ( … just some of … ) them all, ya’ know, … cuz these’re written down – right there in Chapter 27!” Lorraine Swiss, the thousands and thousands of itty – bitty holes’ kind of Swiss? The Hy – Vee still stocks it in its delicatessen, in quantities of weighty, cellophane – wrapped cheese chunks, of course; I checked. And today it sells for $6.69 per pound, no extra charge when sliced thin. Some 50,000 mothers in this nation alone –– that is to not include any of those in the rest of the World’s countries (“Run, Mommy, Run” by Talia Carner*) –– run away, go missing, become ‘the disappeared’ or escape deeeep underground with at least one of their very own children every single year to escape from violent and criminal fathers or from male cohorts including those within gangs or alleged “juries” of judges or from men somehow placed solely in charge of the children these men did not grow. Now just why do allya’all suppose that it is a number … that massive?! *http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/run-mommy.html * * * * It was Friday evening and darkening quickly. I had only made it down to Urbandale after a particularly punishing shift of clamorous and jammed junk mail machinery that day … before the blesséd weekend. These October nights fell earlier and earlier the spinning Earth flying toward my and AmTaham’s Winter Solstice birthdays. Mulling over in my mind the events of two weeks earlier, I felt uneasy, disquieted: something afoul of things freshening was in the air, but I just could not identify the stench of it –– for true. By now –– an entire year apart, but I was, indeed, managing the crazy and frenzied pace of trying to keep some part of one, two or all three of the Truemaier Boys somehow in my life –– and the mother in theirs –– almost every single day through two hours and ten minutes’ – minimum of roundtrip road time. Hey, I had no nickels to rub together for Zane, for Jesse and for Mirzah; but I did find ten or 15 minutes “to splurge,” often meaning that just One of the Three held in the front seat next to me a conversation about things in general which were going on with Him. … Before my reversing Ol’ Black right ‘round then and motoring in the dark straight back home to our Havencourt condo in the Boys’ Kate Mitchell School’s Teacup subdivision of southeast Ames. Really as far as a few shekels for fun? I did give them each from time to time the couple of $ten – spots$ that they seemed to need in order to go get haircuts, with tip, over at Ms. Twyla Smith’s just around the corner west of 69th Street and two blocks south … until, of course, on another Friday night the local television news reported that –– way after hours –– her salon and barber shop ... mysteriously burned entirely down to its very ground. One lovely time near the start of this second school year of theirs there in Urbandale and not knowing if he had yet made any special associations with sixth graders who could come by the Kingdom’s domain … even for just a camaraderie – like visit, I delivered up to Mirzah a rather coolly coordinated evening on a Thursday –– and, thus, a school night. His old friends from Kate Mitchell Elementary, one of them Grace’s youngest Noel plus Mona’s BJ and Justine’s Trevor –– all three of the boys belonging to us Team Soccer Moms –– accompanied me belted inside Ol’ Black down to 69th. Noel, Trevor and BJ altogether went straightaway up in the twilight to Herry – Daddee’s and Ms. Fannie Issicran’s bungalow door. What was Sherriff McLive with her folie – à – assisting deputy – deux – daughter, Mary Jane, going to do? Keep the kiddos out there on the stoop –– away from Mirzah –– who’d already seen them all standing tall at the front door while she ran to telephone King Herod who was, of course, quite gone out of town? Down the street I sat and waited in the wagon; had some reading with me and by the dome light managed. All of them then, sans Mirzah of course, returned to the car in about an hour and a half’s time. We four drove back to Ames full of chatter and good vibes, and I fetched them all home. I have never forgotten their, and their mamas’, kindnesses in essentially providing us two this ... “Evening in Urbandale” for Mirzah Truemaier. When all of the Truemaier Boys actually last saw their Grandpa AmTaham True – alive – I do not even know. This is huge with me –– as it should be. As it should be with anyone who truly gets … Righteous Ancestoring. I do know that they were to have seen him alive on the Columbus Day weekend of 1991, a three – day deal for the Boys since they were all off on Monday, too, as well as its Saturday and Sunday –– actually in Iowa an unusual event for public schools to commemorate in this way Indigenous People’s Day. Unbeknownst at all to me, Mehitable had arranged with Herry or with Herry through Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, and my brother, Sterling, who was motoring through Des Moines from Nebraska in one of the multi – passenger, gasoline – guzzling and bus – sized transporting behemoths Brother Sterling keeps stashed in his stable of vehicles, for Sterling to stop inside Urbandale and bring Jesse, Mirzah and Zane all on to Williamsburg. And, subsequently after in that same massive machine, to deliver the Truemaier Boys all back to the daddee’s rented bungalow by late on Monday evening, the 14th, at which hour Sterling decided to haul himself back to the Omaha area. The telephone rang in Williamsburg. Deafened AmTaham most easily heard the strident Truemaier Boys’ mother’s mother quite swiftly agree, “O certainly. If that’s what you say, Herry, then that’s what we’ll surely do.” Apparently the caller was not completely convinced and needed to hear from another source what it was he wanted to hear and right now –– by this point a rather usual procedure in Herry getting his own way about everything and anything all through his allegedly grown – up relationships with other adults for whom he didn’t much care since they wouldn’t much cater to and instantly gratify his every arrested – development whim, and this, of course, included me. That is to say, either one told Dr. Herod Edinsmaier exactly what it was he wanted to hear when and how it was he wanted to hear it and … only that … or one simply did not deal with Herry. Because, like any spoiled brat learns to attempt at a very, very young age, Herry in his smutty snitty fits walked away, drove off, hung up or slammed doors and now, as a pillared physician adult, was able to get away with those narcissistic and passive aggressive actions just whenever he heard something he deemed would result in his not getting his own way. “I’ll put him on the line,” Mehitable finished, “and we’ll see the Boys then this weekend whenever they get here. Don’t worry about Sterling. He won’t do anything I don’t want him to.” And one more of the original DEhumans handed the mahaTmA the receiver. There was never a time in my 12½ years of that stupidly coerced religious binding that mawwiage to Herod Edinsmaier was for me when AmTaham True did not go to the ends of the Earth or any other Mat for me. Never a time. I rarely asked him to –– and he never did so without my request; but when Daddy discerned, without my solicitation during this specific instance, the clear need to do so this day on the telephone wire in order to bolster and be supportive of me, his very own child, why, AmTaham, out of whose mouth words stronger than “fudge” never, never, absolutely ever slipped, verbally lit out after Herry and finally let him have it –––– ending with, “You go straight to fucking hell.” And Mr. True hung up on Herod Edinsmaier. Arrangements had been set –– except for the promise extraction. Horrid Herry was just like Mehitable in this manner, just like when she’d hogtied me into taking that 1988 trek to summery Wisconsin. Herry connived and waited until the very last minute, then merely forced out of Legion, AmTaham or Mehitable or out of any other folks disgusting to him whatever it was Herry wanted out of them so as not to be thwarted himself or to fail someone else dependant upon his permission for their entertainment or gratification. If Pillar waited until the last possible moment, why, then others’d just have to deliver the desired goods; otherwise, they would look like the bad guy. To Dr. Edinsmaier and to any others who would then surely be disappointed – also. So. Right now, AmTaham was looking like such the big, bad guy to the Truemaier Boys, a countenance and demeanor they just never saw him present to them. Nor even to Mehitable herself. Daddee – Herry Edinsmaier had waited right up until this very last – minute telephone call to require and to extract out of both maternal grandparents, Mehitable and AmTaham, a certain condition and uncompromising promise. And Grand Mehitable, of course, had most readily complied to all of it fully –– right the fuckish – hell off. AmTaham, on the other hand, immediately recognized the connivance for the slamming shunning and soul – murdering collusion that The Doctor wanted out of him. That the Truemaier Boys’ father wanted to meld Legion True’s father into an accomplice and a pawn in the ex – husband’s vengeance – seeking thuggery against me! Herod Edinsmaier had actually demanded of AmTaham True that he do something |