Chapter 28 i): 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 or, if the mother’s father would not, then that man would automatically suffer The Pillar’s consequential punishment of: not seeing the grandsons the next, upcoming weekend. AmTaham was to swear to Dr. Edinsmaier right there on the telephone that in no way, shape or form would Mirzah, Zane or Jesse have, while in the company of their mama’s parents, any contact whatsoever with their mom, Legion. “… ya’ know, your daughter! Got that?!” was pretty much the gist of King Herod’s dictum this particular time. AmTaham refused to betray me or to sell me down the river to his ex – son – in – law just so’s the Truemaier Boys’ granddaddy could get a glimpsing of or a weekend visit with his three, most favored grandchildren. Hallowed Herry had thought it a no – brainer for AmTaham as, obviously, the usually dithering Mehitable also had; she believed AmTaham would have no trouble in blindly obeying the Boys’ Patriarch in order to just be ‘allowed’ that Emperor’s permission to see Jesse, Zane and Mirzah. “Sure, noooo problem, Herry, if that’s what you want. If that’s what you say, Herry, then that’s what we’ll do,” Mehitable had sold me out just as slickly and as swiftly as she could possibly get the declaration out of her mouth in order to herself be in her grandsons’ lives even if I, their ma, could not be. And, most importantly, even if she were to use me to bargain with and to nefariously negotiate –– aprovechar – style –– even if she were to betray the trust of me, her own second daughter, in order to supplant me with herself into Zane’s, Jesse’s and Mirzah’s lives, then she would most assuredly agree to do that, too. She did not hesitate one itty – bitty bit. She did it, and she did it right off. Boot me the fuck out. Put herself, along with Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, in. In –– right where I belonged. No wonder that Dr. Phyllis Chesler devoted an entire section in her 1986 tome, Mothers On Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody over to the children’s maternal grandmother and to what perfidious lengths that specific, so often male – identified woman will go in order to cut herself straightaway into self – centered deals with her ex – son – in – law so as to become “the mother” –– for her own child’s children –– instead of the children’s own mama –– remaining –– the mother to them that she, indeed, already … is. Emperor Edinsmaier was fucking pissed. Again. And executed exactly the expected reactionary and thuggish thing: Daddee dictated that the Boys not leave Urbandale with Sterling nor with anyone else unless The Ruler was stone – cold certain that Zane, Mirzah and Jesse would each be having absolutely no contact with me, their mama, Dr. Legion True. Well, that, then, during the school week pretty much meant their not at all leaving the house with anyone else other than Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive –– and, then, in the Humvee, all of which looked like a prison or similar institutional bus processional when and if Jesse, Mirzah and Zane ever left in a vehicle the 69th Street hut. The Truemaier Boys did not go to Williamsburg nor to their True grandparents there for the three – day weekend visit of 12, 13 and 14 October 1991. AmTaham True wasn’t much of a man according to Herry. According to Herry … when husband to me. At the least. Back then, I had actually seen throughout all of those 12½ years’ worth of my strictured breaths and decidedly throttled vocalizing constraints the different entries in those diaries of The Pillar –– as to how it was that Herod Edinsmaier, in addition to woman – hating and outright – harming, from time to time posted an absolute loathing of AmTaham True. Too. Cuz … quite simply, the words of those journals in Herry’s own hand stated that Mr. True, most unlike Fatlantic’s finely favored deacon Herry wrote, had just never measured up to nor come anywhere near equaling Herry’s and, as well Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier’s, hungers for money and controlling power. That Cinqué – of – the – Amistad answer –– the very same diss as had also been Dr. Lionel Portia’s regarding Herry – Daddee’s future in “pie” – sharing –– of my father’s blatant backside on the telephone turned against Dr. Herod Edinsmaier that day elevated this man, Daddy, in my eyes to that of eternal mahatma status as a true True Ancestor in Training –– and … just before he, Daddy, was about to become a – real – Righteous Ancestor. Nearly his last act walking the World was … to honor me, his Kitty – Kiddo. The stinging pungency of this Columbus Day weekend stench was still so fresh on my mind as I left the factory and approached Interstate 35 headed for yet another Friday evening of sitting in my cold car trying to find either Jesse or Mirzah or Zane for a few minutes or catching even just a sighting of one of them. The Boys already knew what had happened between AmTaham and Herry; they so knew, too, that the slam had had nothing to do with their Grandpa’s not wanting to see them. He always wanted them to come. So Jesse’s angst in the front seat this evening wasn’t over AmTaham’s attitude; that was for certain. Yet anxious we both were. With no power and no money, I had very little to offer the Truemaier Boys as therapy for their heartbreak and sorrow. Other mothers told me of their teenage sons’ vomiting and constantly chugging bottlefuls of Maalox or Mylanta one day and slurping down Pepto – Bismol smoothies to stop the diarrheal squirts the next. I asked the Boys to please turn it out of themselves, whatever it is that is the life – force killer, the soul – murderer, to turn that poisonous toxin outwardly and away from their innards. The last thing they needed and the last thing I wanted were spirits slogging through any more pollution than what pornography and its aftermath had already defiled, dishonored and violated their, and my, visions and futures. Nothing great nor good can come from more fuck brewing within the fight – or – flight hormones’ goo of my Boys’ brains and bellies and bones and life – sustaining or – uplifting joy – juices. * * * * To lose parental rights is a truly, truly huge deal, not just constitutionally, and next to personal and individual freedom, that is, freedom to just walk around pretty much however it is that I want to, it is the most massive of human rights lost –– in my opinion. The revocation of such rights is defined by worldwide society in general by only a very few conditions when those liberties are canceled from those of us who are the DEhuman beings. When women lose all legal rights to their own babies, society states that in so narrow terms. Ones that can only be happening –– surely –– because of such certain, overwhelmingly heinous offenses. Specifically those involving mama’s abusing illicit drugs or imbibing alcohol or her committing crimes of prostitution and other whoring matters including mom’s participation in any way with pornography. Or … she must be crazy. Certifiably so, I should hope and one would think. A true and bizarro whacko. Or, lastly, … she is both criminal and certifiable. But to lose the kids … over to the imprisoning whimsy and entire choice – making of one’s ex – husband? Who the fuck ever heard of that?! Except … with regard to so – disposed terrorists and all Americans of the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries. And all of the humans and DEhumans … Worldwide … before that. And to lose the children … over to the ex – husband’s complete control –– yet to actually be neither of those two conditions, crazy or criminal? Who the fuck ever did that?! Well, exponentially and rampantly so the family law courts do. ‘The Courts’– still so only Male, everywhere including everywhere in America and anywhere else that some type of a male supreme god worship or patriarchal religion exists and that the Second Wave of Feminism has finally entered, flourished and thrived – they, these mother – fuckers, do this. Only Grace Portia knew to hold daJudge and ‘the Court’ suspect, American though these be. Only she did. In addition to Dr. Herod Edinsmaier –– and his employee, of course, Mr. Shindy Scheisser. I still did not. And did not truly believe Grace’s repeated warnings to me. I trusted. Stupidly I the Idiot strode into ‘the Court’ ’s rooms every fucking single time and trusted. Raised that right hand of mine, affirmed all over the goddamn testimonial landscape, I did. And fuckingly told the literally mother – fucking Truth –– as if it actually mattered to do so, I did. “If you are Not Males contemplating growing a child or separating yourselves physically, and in any or all other respects, from men who have donated spermatozoa which have fertilized your ova and developed subsequently the boy and DEhuman children whom you alone have, also, already chosen to grow, beware. Be ever so aware of your mighty fine chances at becoming the very next mothers fucked. If that haploid sperm – cell exalter i) has any semblance of clout at all in the community and ii) presses for the children, if he actually makes nice to ‘the Court’ like he truly wants the custody of the kids [“ … Mind you, Jury, I purposefully did not state ‘wants … the work … of the custody of the children,’ did I?”], if he actually makes nice to ‘the Court’ … then, DEhumans, know this and know it very, very well: with the tenor of ‘the Court’ utterly against anything that smacks the slightest of Not Males’ independence, such as feminist thinkings or trappings, plus anything that strikes as the possibility of … your defiance … against the male gods of power and control, then you, Mama, … you are fucked. You are mother – fucked.” Jesse was the one this particular Friday evening, 25 October 1991. Jesse was the child whom I found at a soccer practice which was running a bit later than usual. DeAndré and Jesse and I all walked together from the field to the side street one block from the main thoroughfare intersecting with 69th before Jesse bid DeAndré goodbye, and the two of us escaped alone to the front seat of the surreptitiously parked station wagon. No small thing our Ol’ Black Beater wagon, but it had to be easier for me to cover its tracks, I am thinking, than for Humvee Herry to conceal those of the Edinsmaiers’ Chevrolet! Somber now, Jesse said little, sometimes a not uncommon condition for him. But I, too, did not feel like speaking; both of us were just antsy as hell though. There in the autumnal darkness my one hearing ear, ever poised in Jesse’s verbal direction, heard two of the saddest sentences it ever has, “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.” These Jesse, facing straight ahead of himself to the east from the car’s passenger side, articulated to the night air hanging in front of the blackened windshield. He did not look at me, he did not shake his head, he did not smile; Jesse was as deadpan as always my friend, Dr. Lionel Portia, is. But with Lionel I never, ever am worried about strictured breathing, gastrointestinal turmoil, brain death –– and heartbreak. I wanted to cry, and I am thinking that Jesse would have –– had there been any more time he could have spent with me; but the practice had run over and Sheriff McLive’d be on her appointed – rounds’ lookout for him, we thought. “O Jesse. O my,” I said out loud and my head did shake and my right hand covered my lips. Inside my heart broke, too, and it said just to my Self alone, “My, my … my, my, my. Whatever made you think of this, Jesse? What the hell is going on inside that house which Herry Edinsmaier chooses to say is your ‘home’?” Jesse and I had had no clue of Liar Herry’s charming ‘promise’ to Custody – Evaluator Carrie Canard and to Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor ‘to keep all three of the Truemaier Boys in schools in Ames’ or expanded now to include Urbandale … but, at least, still in Iowa –– and close by me. We had had, in always the blathering and mother – fucking drivel of Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, “no idea” of this written statement of the pillared Good Doctor –––– filed and tucked far off away in some court’s catacombs somewhere because it certainly was not tucked away inside the frontal lobes of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s, Ms. Fannie McLive’s, Ms. Canard’s or daJudge’s brains anywhere … accessible. Nor from what I could tell at this point the minds of the Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier patriarch or Herry’s famous sister, Ohioan Dr. Mi Sprision O’Revinnoco, a pediatric oncologist and, therefore, a pediatrician and, therefore too and most importantly, a mandatory reporter. Not only a parent, she, but also a mandatory reporter! One required to report abuse … … abusive crimes! But apparently this pediatrician needed to report to ‘the authorities’ or to intervene on the behalves of children … only when the kinds of abuses fit her specific definitions thereof And, of course, none of ‘those’ about which Her Special – Brother, Pillared – Male Daddee – Herry, was … perping. Just those which were male – identified … judicially … as abuse –––– and none of those, particularly to boy children, which are morally wrong because they are mightily woman – loathing! None of that of which Sister Mi Sprision not only knew but had actually herself witnessed occurring. On multiple occasions this parent, this mother, this mandatory reporter, this scientist, and obviously this entirely male – identified female, had seen it all –– and not only had reported nothing of it to official authorities, but she had reported in a formally authoritarian, pediatrician – like manner nothing amiss to her spouse, let alone to her sibling, the (also) Good Doctor Edinsmaier … nor, for sure, to his Next Cunt in the Stash, all four of them just a – genuflectin’ as fast as their eight, fat 40 – something kneecaps would take them on down! Devout christians now allegedly, the lot of ‘em –– or, at least, demonstratively. And she, Dr. Mi Sprision O’Revinnoco, one of the scriptures’ – spoutingest females of Herry’s gazillion sisters and brothers … despite her scientific brain which certainly knew differently, wouldn’t even help me, another DEhuman with a brain, one acknowledging and operating on … … reason! I have found Dr. O’Revinnoco’s inertia unconscionable. I have never forgotten it. I asked her once for her help both as a parent and as a medical doctor and, thusly, a mandatory reporter and allegedly a recognizer of abuse of the country’s littlest human beings. I needed another Edinsmaier female –– and preferably her because Mi Sprision, as I have explained … before, was the only one who was also a parent –– to help me in standing up for something which was the Right Thing to Do for small Boys’ well – being. To help me stand up firmly against the workings of Herry, Juggern and two of Herry’s brothers long ago. The issues involved both boating and life – jacket safety and the wisdom of the babes’ not at all motorcycle – riding back then. Dr. Mi Sprision O’Revinnoco, the only one of Dr. Edinsmaier’s five female siblings who has, of their own choosing, ever borne or by, any other means, put into their lives any small children on a regular basis at all. At a family gathering my asking occurred and only the one time –– long before the deepening shit began hitting that family’s fan. Only to see Mi Sprision take the turn then that she later would continue to also take with me again when ‘the Court’ at this latter time entered the Truemaier Boys’ picture: the turn that was her very blind – eye, I – so – cannot – go – up – against – the – ruling – Edinsmaier – men one. Dr. Mi Sprision O’Revinnoco displayed only scorn and contempt for mothering, for sure, and truly too for the legitimacy that mandatory reporting needs to have in order for its command to be effective in keeping safe, well and healthy the nation’s and the world’s children. Her choice with regard to obeying the mandate, the moral thing to do? The Right Thing to Do? For that, the Right Thing to Do she flaunted only disdain and disrespect –– when she did not come to the aid of these imprisoned Truemaier Boys. She and her spouse, along with all other of Brother Pillar’s siblings, sightlessly took up their programmed – into – silence roles: nothing more than the Emperor’s double – dealing slacker – lackeys in King Edinsmaier’s Empire. I hardly expected any of The Edinsmaier Patriarchs’ other four daughters or sisters to do one thing to help me. As a matter of fact, I truly did not believe that any other of that particular fuckly religious clan, female or male, would lift a kindly finger. I knew them all, had even once asked by telephone a brother close in age to Herry for help. Nothing from him but sarcasm, ridicule, derision, mockery and laughter, outright guffawing, back to me, the outsider DEhuman. Especially … about things or matters of sexual abuse or people sexually addicted. Quite in androcentric line with how all of the pranging, prongless men of the roman catholic hierarchy have handled their ‘dealings’ today! Were I to have, instead, been seeking mother – fucking, roman catholic or christian, genuflecting, cross – forming, verse – spewing, dirty little secretly pornography – consuming hypocrites, none of them including the male – identified DEhuman ones as is Dr. Mi Sprision O’Revinnoco, supposedly brilliant and supposedly a “protecting” mandatory reporter of known crimes against children, … none of them would have disappointed me in that regard! Textbook cases all of them, “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak not one damn word to help the Crazy Bitch out! I’ma jus’ keepin’ m’mother – fuckin’ mouth here … shut the fuck up!” The King’s five other brothers themselves –– each a classic case of either liberal, progressive, Stoltenberg’s men – of – conscience, leftist, peace – now mentality or of religious, rightist, family – values’ venom –– are, every last one of them, DEhuman oppressors. I do not recall one holiday collection or family outing where any of the males did anything in Detanimod’s kitchen ––except on a truly sporadic occasion. And, most certainly, although as well as eating gargantuan quantities these guys most regularly shit out same!, never, ever did a one of the men scour Detanimod’s … and Juggern’s … two toilet bowls. Fifteen or 20 minutes on one food – preparation project, perhaps, –– and most likely … that … of their very own beverages such as whacking open a couple of beer cans or possibly adding ice cubes and water to even just one container of frozen lemonade concentrate! Then? Then the Edinsmaier men went missing outta the kitchen –– and specifically and quite often –– could be found right next door inside the front room at where each planted himself in front of a sports program or the latest game on TV. Or else … he ran the bases outside and just slung back those beers and ladled – for – himself – alone lemonades on the porch – patio’s concrete jawing there with another. Never did these men –– at the huge labors which their Edinsmaier family occasions entailed –– work. At the successes of a family get – together. Although … quite the passel of persons this getting – together always, always, always meant for an Edinsmaier affair. No wonder Detanimod Edinsmaier died young. She had had to. In order to receive for herself that blesséd peace which every man in her life coveted for himself but which he, not even in his adulthood as a regular and daily routine, would not give back to his mother. Let alone, to his own spouse and her own daughters. Takers. Aprovechar – Takers. All five Edinsmaier men mawwied –– and married young enough to be, themselves, active in the raising up of the little, little kiddos. Unlike the five Edinsmaier women, all five Edinsmaier men’s wives did choose to grow and to bear biological children! Might’ve had, undoubtedly, something to do with the Edinsmaier men choosing … for them, their wives ... choosing for them to grow and to bear him children, however. Two Edinsmaier men’s wives each grew and bore three daughters a piece. One of Herry’s brothers’ wives grew and bore three children, two of them DEhuman as well. A fourth brother’s wife had two children, both DEhuman. But a fifth brother’s wife had four humans … that is, this woman had managed to grow and to bear for her husband, that most luckiest of Edinsmaier patriarchs, all and only four ... boy babies. So only Herod, because of my three Truemaier Boys, and one other brother out of all of the six Edinsmaier men whom Detanimod grew and bore donated haploid cell spermatozoa that consistently and exclusively resulted in more human beings. Only two products of Detanimod Edinsmaier’s 14 gestations did that –– in the 20 consecutive years’ time, the mid 1930s (when it was still, thanks to Anthony Comstock’s male – legislating ilk … get this! = most illegal and punishable! a crime! to USPS – mail birth control … information!) through to the mid 1950s, when Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier so regularly and routinely kept poking and impregnating her and forcing then the nonstop operation of the machining container that was for The Patriarch of Patriarchs … Detanimod’s baby – producing uterus. The rest of Juggern Aut’s third – generation progeny were almost exclusively DEhumans. And Herod Edinsmaier’s brothers not only knew it, of course, but they also treated their female children then, and do so today, as they themselves sooo expect … not … to be. As the DEhumans whom they, the daughters most certainly are. The Edinsmaier brothers who were fathers also started this treatment when the DEhumans of theirs were very tiny. By these men demonstrating to the daughters their very own basic behaviors in their very own mother’s (and Juggern’s, too, of course) kitchen, behaviors that quite centered around the most basic of human being needs. That is, around the gathering in of foodstuffs, its subsequent preparation and then finally the cleaning up of the dirtied dishes. The DEhumans, and only the DEhumans, wait upon the humans, the men’s daughters learned. Soft, deferent and … above all, servile, these many, descendent, Edinsmaier – daughtering DEhumans, also learned. Mehitable True liked them. Of course. * * * * To lose parental rights means specific things all right to a society that never really and truly has to deal with it, however. And that same society does not, at any cost, want the DEhuman to have to either. It does not want to help her deal; it just wants her to exactly do the opposite –– and to not deal with it at all . “And while you’re not dealing with it at all, then do that not – dealing with it at all somefuckingwhere else, by the way, Broad. And then for goodness’ sakes, Bitch, get the fuck over it! And right now, Woman. And stop the fuck talking about it. We all don’t wanna hear about it! JGeeesh, ya’ Stupid – Ass Heifer! Shut the fuck up about it all already, ya’ hear?! Got that, Witch?!” Ask Rachel or ask me. This? This is what we hear either tacitly or right out loud to our very faces every day –– every single, damned day. Rachel didn’t even lose complete and total parental rights to her now seven – year – old whom she – alone – grew out of the one, lone spermatozoon from husband number 1 and, at last, bore … and yet she still hears it. But it certainly means definite things to me, the mother who is no mother and, if anything like a mother, then The Invisible Mother. One of the no – rights I, the DEhuman parent, have is any sort of a say – so in where my babies end up. Some noncustodial parents have a right to stop another from physically moving too, too far away –––– especially the fathers of all echelons and levels in class status and of any residency, race, ethnicity, religious creed or from other sperm – exalting formats; these dudes seem to have this right. Not just the pillared, noncustodial ones but all of the noncustodial fathers seem to have this … everywhere they are and all of the time –––– and I am referring here to the United States family courts’ decrees! Even for fathers presently residing inside any form of the United States penal system! Even for fathers who have, for chris’sake, killed these children’s mothers! That is, the children out of whose now – dead mothers they were grown with the imprisoned men’s haploid sperm cells! Hell, these men have judges who have not only ordered the men to have visits with the children borne out of uteri belonging to women whom they have murdered; but the same mother – fucking judicial system, these male judges, order that the dead mama’s family, that is her mama, her sisters, her aunts, her grandmother, her sisters – in – law, the people who loved her … they, themselves … are ordered to have to make the drive of their grandchildren or of their nieces and nephews or of their great – grandchildren to the prisons for the express purpose of these killers having granted to them their court – ordered visits with these children. So – even murderers of their own children’s mothers get to have her kiddos brought to the slammer for visits with the dead woman’s babies and brought there by way of the murdered woman’s loved ones! “What measure of ultimate insult is this?” I ask myself. And I answer me back, “The Standard Measure, Dr. True. The androcentric Standard Measure, Woman.” Of course, elsewhere in the World, too, this is true; but in all 50 states of the US as well it also so is. Noncustodial fathers, in every state, can stop a mother wanting to move away, say, the moveaway for the purpose of her taking a very good, career – enhancing job post, –– just by opening their orifices and, through their mouthpiece employees who their own attorneys are or by way of their solo, pro se visits with daJudge, even such men’s male – identified next cunts as daddees’ puppet – jaws to ‘the Court’, render the mother immobilized –– and I mean like just yesterday! She is fucking stopped in her and the kiddos’ tracks like now! But no such luck at even parting one’s lips, let alone, the territory! if the noncustodial parent is a mother fucked who has lost her parental rights. If the alleged father has, over her, all power and all control, why then, she can kiss her babies goodbye without even ‘being allowed’ the chance to … kiss them goodbye. “You have a telephone call. I think it’d be okay for you to step down and away. It’s over there in the corner booth, ya’ know, the only phone out here on the floor for you workers,” that was my production supervisor, Ms. Phillipa Chance, a woman my age, mid – 40s, speaking. She meant that I would have to shut down my machine, leaving my colleague without a co – worker and, therefore, more or less stranded without piecemeal work with which to rack up both of our end totals for the shift. Obviously, workers took very, very few personal telephone calls in order to avoid these costly shutdowns. The person on the telephone was from Ames, a woman also my age named Dr. Agnes Flunk who did not work outside her home. She and her spouse, Dr. P.M. Flunk, a decade and more her senior, had been mere acquaintances of mine for approximately four years and considered themselves Quaker elders –– although Quakerism is not supposed to have “elders” since all people are allegedly equal in the Light’s eyes. Much like an old Quaker joke, “We don’t have any elders, and we all know who they are” which Agnes and P.M. each found particularly amusing every time anyone delivered that one – liner in their presence. Smirking in an “all – knowing” kind of way, a smirk not unlike Herry’s, particularly out of P.M.’s lip commissures. Sometime – Anthropologist Agnes on the other hand, although she almost always entitled herself after her signature as an ‘independent scholar’ as in “Agnes Flunk, PhD, Independent Scholar,” liked to play dumb. “Huh, O me? An elder? O, my! Well, I guess so. O, I mean no! Of course, no! We don’t have elders!” is likely a quip she would deploy between feigned forehead furls –– were someone to query how long or how much Agnes Flunk had been involved with Quakerism and was she familiar with it to any extent. I had been, formally and officially, a Quaker longer than either Flunk; and I, for one, knew for certain that they did not consider me to be any such elder. In Truth, I knew for a fact that these two thought me in the plainness of Quakerism to plainly suck at being a Quaker. And … at being a mother, let alone, at being a DEhuman. The holiday easter Sunday before, just eight months earlier on 31 March 1991, Professor P.M. Flunk himself had actually laid his two hands upon me in order to stop me from doing something. To put an end to my intended act before he’d have had to summon up all of his Quaker elderliness and oblige me to back the fuck off with even more force than what he was already applying. His Quakerly right fist at the end of its rigidly outstretched arm sunk itself into my torso’s sternum, and mathematics faculty member and ‘pacifist’ elder P.M. Flunk himself sicced me immediately off of … my very own child, Mirzah Truemaier. I was stunned to see him, Mirzah –– and his two brothers, Zane and Jesse. Commonly Herry would bait me, set me up for disappointment or heartbreak or just whatever plain pain he figured the set – up may inflict upon me; and as he did so much with Mehitable so, too, he particularly chose the Quakers and singularly there the Flunks. More than once, I would learn something about the Boys and be so thrilled to know it –– only to find out some Quakers and always the Flunks already knew what it was that I hadn’t known. From the Truemaier Boys’ dental visits to the soccer goals which any one of them had made. This information had smirkingly been withheld from me. The Flunks, like Mehitable, particularly enjoyed the part where I found out –– but only after it had become abundantly clear to the two Flunks that … I finally knew only after … these “Quakers” had had the information –– first! Overall, Snide Edinsmaier in his pillaredness manipulated the Flunks to organize and execute some of his dirtiness deals for him. It wasn’t at all difficult to do. Herry must’ve sensed that Agnes and P.M. were most impressed by persons of class, stature, title and education as they, indeed, quite are –– and used that Flunk feature to his advantage to wreak havoc upon ‘only mostly flawed’ – me … according to the Good and Wonderful Doctor’s highest – ranking whimsy. This particular easter 1991 deed of Legion – DEhumanization came on the heels of the Margaret Sagely ashes – one but just by a few days, in fact. Adam, who resides over in the town of the Storm County Courthouse and that junk mail factory of Ms. Phillipa Chance’s and mine, that is, about nine or ten miles east of Ames, received a telephone call from Herry. And Adam thinking Herry genuine, a condition of which Quakers are soooo, so silly about doing too, too much, well, … Adam was hooked by the Good Doctor’s bait. As is the fondness annually on this particular First Day, the Ames Friends traditionally go for an early morning walk on the wild side, well, … into the woods at least … a – conjurin’ up some springtime there and back out anyhow, then on over to the Meetinghouse for midmorning brunch and, lastly, finish off the custom with an hour or so’s worth of meditation and silence together. Herry, because of a one – time mawwiage to me, long, long well knew of this lovely, plain and simple spring exercise of the Ames Friends Meeting. In the days leading up to 1991’s, Conniving Herod had phoned Adam ‘to invite’ him to come pick up the nature – loving Truemaier Boys in Urbandale, a 130 – minute roundtrip for Adam just to get the Boys to the woods! And … at 5 fucking in the a.m. –– to start! Because our stroll into the forest near Ames commenced at 7! All of this Adam gladly did agree to do. So typical, too: Aprovechar Herry doing all of the talk, talk, talking –– and others doing all of the work, work, working! It wasn’t Herry doing the driving so that the Truemaier Boys could participate; it was Adam, fortunately himself quite the morning person any day anyhow, who did all of that early roundtripping and not, of course, the Daddee – Herry Edinsmaier at all! I didn’t join in the walk portion that year thinking, naturally, that the Boys weren’t going to be there to enjoy the sylvan assemblage with any of us either. Poor, poor Adam. As dear as he is, Adam always seemed to operate as if Daddee – Herry Edinsmaier had already told me about all of these arrangements about which, of course, Herry had conspired to make damned certain to never tell me! Dr. Legion True hadn’t one clue that her Truemaier Boys might be there in Ames at this vernal hoo – hah. Not one clue! So, accordingly, I determined to just meet up with the rest of the Friends who, after the amble, would be gathering over at the Meetinghouse around 9 or 9:30 a.m. for the breakfast victuals. When I beheld the Boys coming up the driveway of the Meetinghouse, why, I ran outside, arms outstretched, to greet them I was soooo excited. And Mirzah, the first to get out of Adam’s car, likewise ran over to hug me, too! Except that ... … Except that Professor P.M. Flunk, Quaker elder, got up in both our faces. And right now! I mean the man appeared outta nowhere. Not even had he been in my peripheral vision; and even if Flunk had been there, I wouldn’t’ve, at that stage, thought him capable of what it was he then proceeded to do. The doctor of mathematics’ philosophy dashed in between the two of us and faced me, his back to Mirzah, now forced dead in his little – boy tracks. Slowing, I turned to go around Flunk, my eyeballs still affixed on Mirzah, only to feel this incredible force about my neck and upper chest; it was shoving me hard backwards. P.M. Flunk actually had his outstretched arm and balled mitt solidly lodged on my breastbone. I was halted. “No! No! That is not allowed!” “O o o o!” I think to myself now, “what a woman – loathing shitload of fuckful patriarchal phraseology.” “What?!” is only, instead, then and a bit breathless and rather high – pitched, what came out of my mouth. “Hi, Mom!” Mirzah came around to my side but did not touch me either. P.M. Flunk removed his hand from its placement but not his wedged and blocking body from its. “Heeey, Baby, this is toooo cooool! I didn’t know you were coming! O, I’m so happy to see you and Zane and Jesse,” who were both by now also standing right next to us three. “This is so great! How long can you stay? How was your walk?! I can take you back to 69th Street then! There’s a bunch of great food. When do we have to be leaving?” “No! No! That is not allowed!” In front of his god (anyhow), Mirzah, Zane and Jesse and all of the other Quakers gathering, not to mention … in front of me … this Quaker elder, aaaah, androcentric asshole, by the name of P.M. Flunk and now flanked by spouse Agnes Flunk, PhD, Independent Scholar, claimed as his own King Herod’s patriarchal power of authority and control over me in the matter … of me … and … of my very own children. This, too, any freedom – loving independent (– scholar or not! –) can imagine, I have never forgotten! As much as I’d considered Mi Sprision O’Revinnoco, M.D.’s inaction parentally and medically unconscionable, the Doctors Flunks’ action was, likewise, not only hardly at all Quakerly or anything, like say, spirit – led, … it was as well in no way conscionable. I have never forgotten it, and I have never returned to a man’s easter sunday anywhere, certainly not there either. Pre – arrangements had included Adam and P.M. and Agnes Flunk –– and, specifically, not me … It had been the likewise folie – à – deuxing Flunk Intellectuals who chauffeured my Truemaier Boys back their afternoon’s 130 minutes’ haul to Herry’s at 1 p.m. and then themselves returning here to Ames, and none of these preparatory negotiations had included me in any way, except to especially keep me fully and ‘quite clearly’ … in the dark. The Flunks’ role was merely that of lackey – gofers in Herry’s inflictive fuck of bait and switch so as to the Boys to keep Dr. Legion True in hers: that of Invisible Mother. Herry played them. Herry Edinsmaier played P.M. and Agnes Flunk like the bobbleheaded marionettes they were, so dodderingly gaga were these two idiots over Herry’s impressive doctor title, his status in the community as a pillar and his elitist education as a physician. And …. likewise thusly, so oppositely repulsed by my judicial state as a nonmother … and apparently by everything else about me as well. And they, the Flunks? They let him. They knew the opprobrious Truth about Herry, but they also knew how much … more … they themselves, as did rurally Midwest Mehitable, enjoyed and reveled in their own religion –– the one based upon their credo of aristocratic appearances and image management. So the cultured Flunks simply let the Good and Erudite Dr. Edinsmaier play them. Full – well functioning that –– and, as regards me, many a –– First Day in the astringently punishing scholarship that: while knowledge is power, the withholding of knowledge is … even more power! Just four weeks earlier Margaret Sagely died on the 02nd day of March 1991, while on a personal mission of medical mercy to China for her belovéd people there. No proselytizing. None ever when Nurse Margaret went to China. Just gracious and helpful and scientific however she could be. Massive stroke. Seventy – two years young. Dead. Immediately. Cremated. Ashes back to the States. Another “other mother” of mine –– gone. Ashes like Frieda Chicken Guthrie. Ashes and gone. A memorial service was scheduled at a larger sanctuary in downtown Ames than the Meetinghouse’s front room so that her many, many friends who wanted to say goodbye to her could, three of whom … my Truemaier Boys. Herry had then, too, enticed Agnes and P.M., apparently contacting one or both of them to let them know that he, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive and the Boys would all join the Flunks in one of that particular church’s pews –– which they so did do. Again, I had had no prior heads – up until I glanced over my right shoulder and there, subtly nodding and smiling back at me but not too widely the service being a sobering memorial for Margaret who now was basically a carton of carbon inside her simple, mahogany wooden urn up at the altar and all, … were Jesse, Mirzah and Zane. On his way out the narthex’s massive doorway afterward, Mirzah managed to maneuver himself so as to brush beside me and high – fived my right hand that I held close in and low down by my thigh whilst, poker – faced, he stared straight ahead of himself and exited to the street. No words exchanged. And then, yet again, my three Boys … were gone. I closed the wobbly, wooden door of the booth in order to be able to hear something. My machine was temporarily shut down while I spoke on the telephone, but the rest of them were quite up, running and clamoring; it was as always very, very noisy. The phone booth was rickety, musty – smelling and darkened, there by itself in the far southwest corner of this warehouse – sized room which was the junk mail factory’s primary production floor. “Legion, this is Agnes Flunk speaking to you.” “Agnes?” The clock registered yet another hour and a half of afternoon shift left before I was to punch out. “Yes, Agnes Flunk. I have had a telephone call just now from Des Moines.” “What?! Who from?” “Well, it’s about the Truemaier boys.” “What is?! They’re okay?! What’s the matter with my Boys?!” “Well, ah, um …” “I said, Agnes, what . is . the . matter . with . my Boys?!?!” This woman was still another of those male – identified ditherers of whom in my World there are far, far too many and for whom I have no patience. None. Much worse yet is the fact that besides thinking herself a Quaker elder and terming herself an “independent scholar” who now and then when she feels like it from her bedroom computer writes books about odd, peculiarly narrow groups of workers or tribes, this woman calls herself a feminist, too. Now when certain of these types of DEhumans do this, then I truly am completely all out of any tolerance for them as well since their genre makes it sooo much harder for the rest of us DEhumans and true feminists, either female or male. “Your boys’ll be at our house tonight if you want to see them one last time. Herry said he’d bring them all by our house and that you are permitted to come there tonight at 6:30 p.m. for 15 minutes,” came the official announcement back to me of exactly that premonition over which Jesse had soooo been agonizing just the Friday night before. Anxious and sad? Now I knew at least a little something about why his sense. The weekend over, and lo and behold on Monday afternoon, 28 October 1991, less than 72 hours after hugging Jesse inside our dark, cold Ol’ Black parked on an Urbandale sidestreet and wanting to weep over the dread voiced in Jesse’s fears and sorrow at leaving me and Iowa and never returning to us as a kid again, Dr. True was indeed right now being dictated to by a person whom I do not trust and by the type of woman whom I so loathe that I, my Boys’ own mama, would be “permitted” one last chance to see them all before they left for where? “See them all before they left for where, Agnes?!” “Well, now that isn’t information I have. And if I did have it, I wouldn’t be permitted to give it out, now would I? You already know that though, Legion, don’t you?” There are four – and five – letter names for women like Agnes Flunk, names not at all like “scholar,” but she isn’t worth expending any more effort nor expounding upon with any more time or descriptive words, let alone, worrying about folks like her. Nor is P.M. either –– except for the itty bitty bit part in which P.M. was yet to be seen acting later on that evening. Ms. Phillipa Chance I hardly knew and then only as an overseer of my factory labor. I needed to leave work; but I, right then, just couldn’t think of how to explain in a short, short byte … why. My jobs changed soon after this 1991’s October –– both because the orders were decreasing and its temporary positions at the factory were being eliminated and because I needed more hours than those which had been available there anyhow so I have never gotten an opportunity to know this person. Recently I read in a wee local newsy rag where this woman was working alone one night at the county’s favorite BBQ take – out outfit and that Ms. Phillipa Chance had managed to salvage some of its equipment and to save herself before the tiny joint, like torched Twyla’s Salon and Barbering had in Urbandale, burned completely down. Still I don’t know her personally and, then as now, if the woman’s ever had a child or kids of her own or not. I truly only knew of her from that mid afternoon of my beseeching her for allowance to leave work. As I remember acts of atrocity, I also remember actions of the opposite kind, and Ms. Phillipa Chance has always remained in my memory for the fact that her nature with me so fit her name, Chance. I exited the phone booth apparently as white as this sheet. My supervisor, Ms. Phillipa Chance, heard above all of that din, “My babies. He’s taking my babies away,” as I walked up to her small workspace countertop in the midst of the warehouse, not dazed as much as seething. And, as noticeably DEhuman, ... powerless. No asking me “What?!” No asking me “Why are you talking to yourself and not back at your machine working?!” No questions at all as a matter of fact, and I never repeated myself. She looked at me squarely, no hedge, and replied, “Get outta here, Woman. Go! You are gone. We’ll just see ya’ tomorrow, okay?!” After the rare times as I run into such people, almost exclusively DEhumans too they are, I wonder how it is that they know, how they already know what was coursing through my heart and my soul after news like I’d just received. Had she lost a child herself? Had a besieged sister of hers needed to wage war and lost babies? Ms. Chance wasn’t old enough I didn’t think to be a grandmother, as was Grand Mehitable, who may have been mom to a tormented daughter and grandchildren embattled in ‘the court’ system –– with all of its functionaries there with whom the family, including Ms. Chance perhaps, may have had to deal, to engage, to clash, to fight, to come to legal blows –– from its judges to the attorneys to the family and child psychologists to those custody evaluators and guardians ad litem to the state’s family services’ division personnel to the cops and the drug rehabilitators and the alcohol abuse counselors to the battered women’s shelter workers to who knows who next. How had Ms. Phillipa Chance, with instantaneousness and urgency not to mention with nearly proven clairvoyance, known where I stood after that telephone call and how had she known with precision clarity, knife – like, what the cut of “He’s taking my babies away” meant? For all their PhDnesses and all of their assumed scholarship and theoretical Quakerliness, the elder Dr. Agnes Flunk along with her spicily mucked – up spouse, Dr. P.M. Flunk, parents themselves of two grown – and – gone sons, could certainly have both stood several lessons and to pass prelim examinations on Substance and Depth in Understanding and Compassion at Grace’s Listening College –– both of them tutored there then by one mighty brainy and … kind … Ms. Phillipa Chance, junk mail factory boss – lady. I knocked promptly at 6:30 p.m. on the front door of the bungalow. Dr. P.M. Flunk opened it to an empty living room in which stood Agnes, gawping in judgment at me without so much as a weak smile. I knew there’d been a reason why I hadn’t sought to be present any earlier; she and that countenance of hers was it. No Truemaier Boys anywhere in sight. And no conversation occurring either –– which was just fine with me. Deaf as I am, I am never discomfited as are other persons by silence in such threesomes; and because of the particular and peculiar other two in our specific axiso’three, I was most contented to remain shut up … waiting. Waiting for the Truemaier Boys in the silence of the front room of the Flunk household. I had a helluva lot to think on anyhow so, doing that, I just stared at its floor, “What in the hell was Herry up to? Taking the Boys where? For how long? No wonder Jesse’d said what he’d said last Friday night! Yeah, something’d been goin’ down, all right, but what? What?!” Around 6:50 finally a knock and in strode Community Pillar Herod Edinsmaier demanding to see Legion True, “Where’s Jesse?! Where’ve ya’ hidden Jesse?!” He was enraged behind such a carefully controlled to – the – Flunks’ mask. After all, Herry couldn’t very well call me Cunt or Bitch or Twat in front of them or Mirzah and Zane … now the two of them old enough to quite remember such Edinsmaier endearments for their mother. With only my youngest and my eldest coming inside and over to me on the loveseat, I instantly knew then that Jesse had run, that he had jumped ship, that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier hadn’t the foggiest fuck of an idea as to where my middle child for whom he, alone, was custodially liable was, and that Hideous Herry totally intended to pin onto me the full whammy of all that this meant –– right down to, “ … if Jesse is hurt, You Cunt, why I’ll … ” in so many sidewise glares and smirkfaced squints. The brassy fact that we were all in someone else’s home, a situation for which then I ordinarily would take under great advisement to be courteous and rather respectful, I gave not two hoots for here at the Flunks. I couldn’t have given a flying, fuckable shit that Herry Edinsmaier, two Truemaiers and one True frenetically seeking any news of the whereabouts of her third baby had completely taken over a space which none of us owned, let alone, found familiar or, for that matter, particularly Friendly! “We’re leaving Iowa, Mom. Tomorrow. We’re leaving tomorrow,” Zane exhaled softly. Mirzah, at his side and now mine, too, was just nodding. “I want her house searched! I’m heading over there right now! Come’n, Zane, Mirzah! Now!” Herry headed for the door and without so much as addressing me with any full first name or a surname even as, of course, is Herry’s usual shaming shunning of me anyhow, ex – Husband Herod hadn’t yet directly looked at the obviously indiscernible and, therefore, ... invisible … thing in that Flunk room which was … me. “They’re welcome to stay here, Herry,” it was Agnes Flunk, PhD, Independent Scholar, of course. “Sure. Okay. Good. Thanks,” and Herry turned to go. “No! No! He isn’t there! Jesse isn’t there! Where is he?! Where could he have gone to?!” I was frantic and becoming so, too, were also both Zane and Mirzah now –– who, I rather suspected, knew all along that Jesse, was indeed, gone most missing and they just didn’t know what to do. Herry, for chris’sake, had done nothing to allay any of these two brothers’ fears and, now arriving in Ames and seeing me, Mirzah and Zane were altogether certain that Jesse was nowhere at all close by to us. “I’m calling the police and László.” “That is not necessary. He’s at your house,” Herry finally glowered straight at me, that Stupid – Ass Heifer in the Flunks’ living room, although he still would not speak my name. “No! I told you, he isn’t! I’m calling the police, and they’ll search my house to convince you. Then maybe we can get the true search for Jesse started. Don’t tell me. Do not tell me that you haven’t even called the Urbandale police yet, Herry?!” my voice was shaking I was so livid. Herry had not. Herry Edinsmaier had driven out of two major metropolitan areas, Urbandale and Des Moines; 65 precious minutes he had traveled out of town and onto major thoroughfares and interstates and over 45 to 50 miles northerly and into another metropolitan area, Ames, in the cold and now also the darkness –– without even calling their local police first. Not only that, the Good and Wonderful Dr. Edinsmaier had driven out of the probable vicinity of Jesse’s disappearance two more of my children displacing them even further away than they already had been from their missing brother –– and all of this evil just to be able … to come after me. I turned to go to the telephone which appeared in a nook past the grand piano, black of course, itself alone constituting most of what were the living room furnishings besides our carcasses. Seeing this direction of mine, again P.M. Flunk darted over to the corner as well and stuck his fakey, little power façade – like veneer between the telephone and me, lifting up its receiver himself. He swung it and the coil wide away from the cradle, frowned and pursed his lips at me because, assuming he was going to, I asked, “O, are you calling the police then, P.M.? I know the number,” which, of course, I did –– “239.5133.” Any mother does; we memorize the doctor’s, the emergency room’s, the cops’, the fire department’s. What can I say? I knew it stone – cold so I dictated it to him. He turned around, his dialing finger halted at pressing the digits; he soooo did not want to, I could tell. “If you don’t, P.M., then I shall. Call them and tell them to send someone over to 6143 Havencourt and to do it right now.” P.M.’s nonverbal demeanor even Mirzah and Zane couldn’t miss. I thought, “Fuck him.” Before heading to Havencourt, I motioned Zane aside and whispered to him, “Do you know where he’s taking all of you?” “Ah, no, we don’t know. We just found out today when he came to the school. I think Jesse’s bolted, Mom. I haven’t seen him since this morning. Herry came to the school at noon. Jesse must’ve seen him coming down the hall or something.” Dr. Edinsmaier insisted, from the immediate moments of all of their birthings, that all three Boys only ever call him Herry –– never Daddy, Dad, Pa, Poppy, Pops or even the formal Father. Never. He taught them well; all three of the Boys only ever did call him Herry, too. Herry, their arrested 17 – year – old, older Joy Toy Boy ‘brother’ who, through his violence of passive – aggression and abusive collusion with ‘the courts,’ lied and bullied just whenever the frickin’ hell he felt like it and was, now with the help of these same two Quaker “elders,” gutting the goddamn bitch –– again. Mirzah finished, “Only thing we know, Mom, is that it’s tomorrow morning. We leave tomorrow morning.” “O, m’god! And you don’t even know where you’re going?! And we don’t know where Jesse is?! O, m’god! O, m’god!” “Uh – uh,” it was Mirzah, only a month past 12 years of age, just searching my face with his. “Okay. Okay. I’m thinking here. I’m thinking. I’m going over to Havencourt and do that thing, the obligatory search thing over there. With the Ames cops. Obliged to. Got to. László’ll meet me there. I’ll tell ya’ all why later. Then, … then I’m telephoning the Urbandale police myself if Herry won’t. I know their number, too. I’ll call them from there, from Havencourt. I won’t be back. O, m’god! This is it then. I won’t see you two again. O, m’god! Do you think Washington State or not? West or east? South to where was it you thought he once went off to down there? Ya’ know, one time to go work somewhere down there, Biloxi? No, not Biloxi. Where the heck was that?! O, m’god.” We were hugging and hugging and hugging. I completely ignored the two others, the Flunks. Herry was already gone anyhow. “I’ll find you. I will find you. I. Will. Find. You. I love you, Mirzah.. I love you, Zane. O, m’god. And I’ll find Jesse, too. Tell him I love him.” Kiss. Kiss. Arms undone. I was gone. Herry’s manner in and management of his public rage appeared similar to Dr. Lionel Portia’s everyday face, the one Grace’s spouse used for all of Lionel’s feelings, anger or joy, … pretty much deadpan. As much as Herry loathed true work, he truly worked very carefully at concealing from the general populace and, in particular, its upper crust … the Edinsmaier rage. Often, even most often, he buried it, appearing placid and unruffled for months that sometimes lasted a year or longer; but when the rage was just beneath the surface as it was this evening, Herry took extra charge and effort to put on the outward countenance of calm and correctness and the presentation of “the one who is not only in the know but since he is, since he does know, then he is the one, therefore, next doing the correct and right thing.” This fairly much describes passive aggression in a folie à deux, this immediate folie then –– Highfalutin Herry with the high – flown Flunks. The phrase also fits what Herod Edinsmaier provokes in rational people. His actions as a passive aggressor are provocation, and he so manipulated them, as did Mehitable, to whatever resultant outcome he desired. But a reasonable response from ordinary folks to the consequential upshots of passive aggression is one of frustration or disgust often to the point of us others expressing, in no calm way whatsoever, our aversion, our disgust, our anger and our disappointment. Hell, Herry’s aggression costs us others time, money, work, lots and lots and lots of extra, initially unneeded work that now becomes necessary, pain, huge disappointments, huge, often separation and incredible isolation as was to be the end result of the news this evening that all of my Boys, not just Jesse, would so very soon go completely missing from me. It is no wonder at all that the rest of us, dealt this shit and forced this fuck, act after its display and implementation from persons such as Dr. Edinsmaier the way that we do. Only one gargantuan problem there is with us recipients and our reactions: we others are the ones who outwardly look to the cops, to the SpaChezResort Hotel Six Floor health care providers, to the judges, to the sheriffs, to the attorneys, to the child psychologists, to the custody evaluators, to the social workers, to the children’s services’ counselors, we others look like the aggressor because we do get angry. And we show it! Herry’s calculated violence in his application of passive aggression was, however, of historic proportions. And when coupled with the vacuous, wooden demeanor on his face to the outside onlooker, nearly impossible to read if an untrained observer. I, on the other hand? I had lived this. With Herry I had lived this mother – fucking every single day for the 12½ years of legalized mawwiage to the thug and, ever more escalatingly, all of the days since the divorce decree became official midweek on 24 May 1989! Herry was so predictable to me by now. I didn’t need to read his face; I just knew what he would probably, most likely try to get away with next. Hence, why the very real need for me to not only be present at the search of my very own home, one done without any officially obtained search warrant! but I also had to have present at this specific search an Ames police official conducting a totally thorough search of it –– because Herry, in some future court action, would lie –– another imminent perjury. I needed to be able to defuse and to counteract the falsehood that the prevaricated scenario would morph into –– by overseeing at my own residence, right now Monday night, 28 October 1991, a totally thorough search. I had to preempt a strike against me in some upcoming court appearance of which I did not even know yet –– by, right now, leaving no shower curtain drawn and no corner closet exhaustively uninspected! Too, the scrutiny absolutely had to be performed by a methodical force which could perhaps act as a neutralizing one in daMan’s court! An unbiased third party I needed, a witness or testifier that would be … the cop! Right now in my throes of becoming geographically separated for gaaawd knows how long from all three of my Boys, I had to first be concerned about a future attack and cross by Herry’s Mr. Shindy Scheisser which would run something like, “But you really didn’t even go in the Havencourt condo, did you, Officer Pam?” “Actually, that is not correct, Mr. Scheisser, I did.” “But you really didn’t even go upstairs and check into anything or behind anywhere, did you, Officer Pam?” “Actually, that is not correct, Mr. Scheisser, I did. Even though I had no warrant to check anything or behind anywhere! ! ! I still did. As a matter of fact, Mr. Scheisser, I checked everywhere and behind everything, a complete and thorough search, and there was not a goddamn sign there of anybody resembling a Jesse. There were, however, Jesse’s and his two brothers’ belovéd pets, Mr. Scheisser, all three of them. No! More than three. Her boys’ mama bird’d had babies. That’s how mother – fuckingly thorough my search was; I even searched the finch’s nest, too! Not just the DEhuman mother’s nest! Hypothetically speaking here, Mr. Scheisser, why wouldn’t a supposedly loving father, swiping custody of her kiddos, not also wanna take custody of her children’s pets?!” “I will ask the questions here, Officer Pam! And you will do the answering, Officer Pam, and only the answering. Not the judging. I have no further questions, Your Honor, for this witness.” This was the sort of future “anticipatory guidance” pediatricians tell parents about their growing children’s activities, actions and what to expect? No, this was the sort of anticipatory guidance, a medical term used daily in these doctors’ dictations after the well – child checkup visits of little kids nationwide, which I had to also employ in order to try to guide myself around and past the crimes of the older – brother Joy Toy Boy bully, Daddee Edinsmaier himself. In order to attempt to –– later –– save my own ass within ‘the court’ that Pillar Herry could so easily manipulate to his advantage. I arrived on Havencourt. László had broken peripheral speed records, I thought, in order to get there. He and Judd lived five miles out of town in the diagonally opposite direction of The Teacup, and he from the northwest then was there already when I drove up. So was Officer Pam except that she was a he, Officer Chris. Up to the door the four of us went, and I even invited in Herry; and had he entered, this would have been his first step inside the Havencourt condominium ever. He did not; he declined of course, and László decided to wait outside with him. I still have never figured out for certain when all of my tools came up missing from my two garage cabinets’ worth, but I don’t think it happened this specific Monday. I believe Herry stole them all, but I now believe the burglary occurred at a later date, still yet another thuggish thievery of Herry’s to be realized –– just not on this particular 28 October. Because László, Ancestor in Training in Cinqué – style as well, was right there beside him –– standing in silence. The search ended; Herry and Officer Chris both drove away from Havencourt Drive. László came inside then and sat down at our brown kitchen table as I proceeded to dial, from memory of course, the Urbandale police station. Waiting on the line for the correct person to take my transferred call, I told László that I had kissed Zane and Mirzah for the last time for a long, long, long time, that the Boys were to be spirited out of town the very next morning and that to where the four of us, in the words of Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s infamous and favored ‘scriptural verse,’ … “had no idea!” Where my 15 – year – old, 13 – year – old and 12 – year – old children were next to call ‘home’ was a secret –– even to them. Assuming, that is, that middle brother would be caught. Jesse was. And I was never told that he was. And ‘caught’ is the correct verb, not ‘found’. I hung up the telephone for the last time around 1 in the a.m. of Tuesday, 29 October 1991, not knowing. By 4:30 pm that afternoon and off shift, I zoomed down to the 69th Street bungalow and pulled Ol’ Black plain as day right up into the driveway. There was nothing there. Nothing of evidence around the outside of the house and the property’s detached garage that my family of three Truemaier Boys had ever existed there. I hauled ass off of 69th and out onto Douglas Avenue and careened westerly toward the Urbandale Police Station. The speeding was out of anger, yes, and certainly not out of any misperceived capability to catch up with someone, anyone. After 5 p.m., I could not enter its front door without having to first press the security intercom and summon someone to come unlock it and let me in. I blitzed by the doorman enroute to the dispatch window and was given there, by a very nice woman who of course knew nothing, the name of someone to call “in the morning.” So began a blizzard of queries to the cops, whether there in Urbandale or five states away or half a nation away or a full continent away –– it didn’t matter. Always, always courteous to me I proceeded to get out of any law enforcement authority anywhere not one shred of information on or about my very own babies whom I alone grew. Not one fragment of knowledge. I am reminded of the time Zane ran away from home in Columbia –– and Jesse and I in that beige Shitbox Dodge had quietly followed behind him and his tracks. The cop then in the blazing heat of that July never truly ‘saw’ my little boy in his winter coat packing a long, skinny bundle that could’ve contained a rifle. Didn’t –– but could have. Zane had determinedly claimed that his fishing pole would permit him to survive ‘out there’ … alone. Although the policeman, Jesse and I so well saw, had looked squarely at Zane, the lawman never even stopped to inquire if there might be something rather at bit amiss with this scenario here. “You have papers that say we can tell you if we know, do you?” the named individual on the post – it scrap asked me the next morning. “Ah, no, I don’t have those papers.” “Well, then, I’m awfully sorry, but I don’t know if you’re really the mother plus, anyhow, if you don’t have official papers, then I certainly am not going to say anything. Is that understood?” “Can’t you even tell me … if … Jesse’s found and safe?” “No. I’m hanging up now.” Click. The night before until the wee dark hours of the early morning it had been the same with the police. And with Ms. McLive. Herry wouldn’t even come to the telephone to talk to me nor had Mirzah or Zane been allowed to answer the phone or take my calls. Ever before –– when they all were still sequestered in west Ames or existing inside that Urbandale bungalow. Mothers worldwide know this routine on a regular basis –– from the doctor to the teachers to the parole officer to the male – identified, maternal grandmother to the child’s commanding, milifucking officer. Not to mention, when there’s the colossal crisis of one of hers in trouble, hurt or missing, we still cannot get information. No way. No how. And if one is a noncustodial mother, why then it is a given that the backlash fuck – off will nowhere approximate a polite kiss – off. Understand the standard measure that is ownership of information. Information is male; it is patriarchy and belongs only within all things androcentric. Smack in line with martin luther’s “… woman was no more than a machine to make babies for him with neither the need nor the right to …” … to know anygoddamnthing else! Knowledge is power and the withholding of knowledge is even more power. And from fat, old buddha, “ … a woman’s body is filthy and not a vessel for … the law.” The law? She soooo cannot! for chris’sake, have the least bit o’ knowledge, lest the fucking woman dare to think, dare to believe that she is entitled to actually possess some … power! Just ask Mehitable, the most male – identified of all – knowing, maternal grandmothers whom the Truemaier Boys have ever encountered. Only weeks later did I actually know that Jesse had been captured and that not only was he all right but that he had fought the abductor and his continuing thralldom the only way he could think of at this last minute. A portion of the overture to Act Three had played out exactly as Zane had intuited. Zane and Jesse both possess to this day, sometimes even Mirzah too, the uncanniest powers of near extrasensory perception. I in no way believe in ESP nor in supernature and so doubt that, atheist that I am, I ever shall; but if I ever do, I’ll wager my believing will have to do with some event or situation spawned because of Jesse’s or Zane’s minds knowing ahead of time what was going to happen or their abilities, given just a very, very few items of information or clues, to piece together what the hell went down at a place and time far, far removed from them. Zane was correct. Jesse had, from inside his seventh – grade classroom and out its window accidentally or uncannily looked up and watched Herry in the Humvee hurl past his building and haul into the high school’s front horseshoe drive just a block east, headed he accurately presumed, at midday on a Monday morning when Herry was usually long gone outta town since the early, early hours of the first workday to his “job” wherever the locum tenens per diem contract was for that particular week, … headed instead this noontime to Zane’s Principal Druid’s office. Excusing himself from the classroom and I’ve never yet asked him how, Jesse beelined to his locker, cleared it out as much as he’d wanted and managed to signal a friend whose name I don’t know. Indeed, it was around 12:30 or 12:45 when Jesse, out a side door unguarded on that Monday afternoon, exited off the grounds of the Metro suburb’s middle school. And disappeared. Just as Zane in the Flunks’ front room had imagined to me Jesse must’ve done. I don’t know how he made it past adults, but Jesse’s darling and quite the athlete so perhaps he either just smiled and kept on walking, sack of locker shit and all, or he may have explained about needing to return something to or retrieve something from off of the soccer – football field out back. Like his independence or something. With backpack and some belongings then Jesse, at any rate, was gone quite missing by the time Herry next returned with already snatched Mirzah and Zane to the Urbandale Middle School to pluck Jesse out as well. And instead of quizzing the school authorities or the local fuzz if Legion True had been spotted anywhere in the Boy’s immediate vicinity or not, Herry decided, one way or the other, that even if I had not been seen around, indeed that even if I had actually not been around, … he would still exploit the situation against me. Herry knew Jesse had jumped; and if his escape hadn’t been with me, then it was accomplished with someone else or carried out by himself. He knew. Herod Edinsmaier simply determined, with less than only a full day’s time left to Daddee’s getting done “for his family” all of the moving – away kinds of chores and last – moment minutia, to still choose to take out some of those remaining few hours several miles away and harass the mother – fuck out of Legion, the ex – Cunt and Present Bitch. While all that while –– permitting Jesse to stay missing and purposefully to not jostle and scramble together all manner of proactive functions and efforts to find him! To let Jesse stay missing to him, to me and to his brothers! That level of gruesome cruelty only one who has recognized and violently lived, day to day, with this passive aggression can predict and expect. László stayed with me as I was on the telephone calling and calling and calling all night long and getting back only clicks and hang – ups from both the Urbandale police and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive. The madam was so transparent that if László and I weren’t genuinely most worried about Jesse, it would’ve been hilarious! With every phone call, and there must’ve been a dozen at the least which I placed, all long distance, … with every one, the Next Cunt answered soooo ridiculously syrupy sweet and cheery –– herself modeling and very well mimicking Horrid Herod’s aggressive passivity, “The Edinsmaier and McLive residence, Fannie speaking. How may I service you?” Er, no. Correction. “How may I serve you?” After about the second or third consecutive call of mine to the 69th Street number, it became crystal clear that Herry’s newest Next Cunt was taking her mother – fuckingest revenge in this manner but way, way worse than that: with her and Herry’s folie à deux operating at top speed in its so slickly slamming operatic duet again, there was the very real fact that she, too, was also … not … searching for … nor … finding my child! Apparently around 10:30 p.m. that signaled friend of Jesse’s had attempted to flee his own residence with extra warm boots, a wool shirt, a poncho, a flashlight, some books and not only the canned goods, the pork and beans, tuna and corn, but he’d also remembered to pack the can opener next to the canteen and a couple of store – bought bottles of water. Perhaps it was the bulk of the sleeping bag and two blankets that gave him away to his mother, but Friend was discovered all right before he’d managed to exit their back door around about his bedtime on a school night. Kiddo ‘fessed. Jesse was holed up in a fort he had fashioned for himself somewhere in an urban forest not too far away. Late October outside in the city’s woods in the dark. Not exactly this particular ex – Cunt’s accommodations after all, but Jesse had bivouacked his own ‘home’ if Herry was –– again –– about to fuck with mine. And, of course, neither Jesse nor I nor Mirzah or Zane knew at all then of Herry’s affidavit – “pledge” to daMan, to daJudge, to Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor, to “never” take him away from Ames until he was 18, had graduated Ames High School and could choose for himself to where to be off exploring next! Back into Ames and The Teacup and at or under the posted speed limit, I hunkered down at the brown kitchen table next to the telephone and tried to think of what to do. It was the evening of another day when another moving truck had yet again pulled up to my children’s lives and in the course of another couple of hundred minutes or so into it had been swallowed up all of the available stuffs of their childhoods. And in a vehicle following the van out onto interstates had been swept up and spirited several states away, as well, my three Truemaier Boys –– jettisoning them all over – again – somewhere between Ames, that Invisible She – Devil there … and the Deep Blue Sea. Only weeks later did I know that Mirzah, too, had been captured. Mirzah, my little man of so, so many talents. From soccer to French to percussion to baking, actually making skilled use of, even at just five years of age, the nesting set of Pyrex mixing bowls, to entrepreneurial endeavors, especially ones involving the ‘investing’ of his money, to piano to volleyball to political leanings and leadings to keyboarding and computers just appearing on a very, very few kiddos’ horizons. Except in the form of Nintendo or the few Pacman or Pokémon games before those. And, most especially, and of a truly magnificent treasure to both him and to me, to his mighty fine art for making friends and establishing and maintaining friendships. All of the Truemaier Boys possessed this wizardly craft. If ever I’d wanted to know who someone was, all that I had to do was query out loud to the thin air, “Who’s that?” Himself suddenly interested also, Zane at three, four, five years of age, would swiftly shift focus from whatever activity he was engaged in, slip – slide on over to the person in question, look longingly up at her or him and with pinpoint clarity and precise pronunciation the first time he would simply ask, “Who are you?” And then I, too, would know because Zane was so irresistible and, thus, always commanded by his wee, sweet presence the correct answer back! I so worried about this trait in the Truemaier Boys though; it could be endangering to them all to be so open and unafraid to approach total strangers. It could save their lives, too; but it still concerned me so all throughout their little, little boyhoods. The Boys’ belovéd nanny, Rosemarie, loved to repeat the story of lunchtime one noon in the Hershey household when she’d served up food to the three of them. Rosemarie invented lovely themes, ideas and topics with every meal to foster in them amongst themselves not only camaraderie but also the finesse of fine conversation. During the discussion at this particular repast, she had asked each Boy to individually tell them all collectively assembled around the dinner table what he wanted to be when he grew up. First Zane expounded; then came Jesse’s discourse. When Rosemarie came ‘round to Mirzah poised in his high chair at the grand ol’ figure of a mere 2½ years in age, he paused and paused, eyelids scrunched shut with his right arm and fist doubled up under his little chin, elbow on the high chair tray –– just silent like Frenchman Rodin’s so – famous Le Penseur statue of 1902, thinking and thinking and thinking. Then when she and two brothers by their cocked heads and raised brows in Mirzah’s direction appeared to query him again … he finally opened his eyes, his little arm shot skyward from out its place under his mandible and, with set jawline and princely ceremony, Mirzah exaltedly proclaimed to all gathered therein, “Prezdunt o’da Knighted Tates!” In the sixth grade now and eleven years old that Fall of 1991, things hadn’t much changed in this regard. Although they may not have been able to actually come over to visit Mirzah at the daddee’s residence patrolled there as it was by Nottingham Sheriff McLive, Mirzah still made friends as easily as drinking pure water; and, of the collections of people he found himself within, one such group was the Extended Learning Program’s early morning class of ultimate conversationalists, the children there who participated in the Mock Trials project. By 7:15 a.m. since late August and early September, Mirzah had had to be at the Karen Farmer Elementary School two to three times a week and ready to rehearse the courtroom scenes for his group’s involvement in local and regional competitions. The kids at Karen Farmer’s had beat out several other elementary ELP mockers; they advanced to win the locals’ championship! So much so had the ELP sixth – graders won already that autumn that Mirzah, in two different mock situations, was slated with the other actors of his class to perform their two trials at the regional finals’ competition. On Monday, 28 October 1991, I can only imagine that as Mirzah left the bungalow around 7 in the early morning in the chauffeuring accompaniment of another competitor – colleague’s parent in order to get to the rehearsals on time, he was totally pumped for both of his roles, one as the criminal’s defense attorney; and in the second trial, Mirzah actually played the part of the defendant himself charged –– with murder! The regional’s contest was not very far away at all. No one from Karen Farmer Elementary School had to travel any further than Des Moines’s own Drake University. Yes, further than the trip to school but not by much more than 15 to 20 minutes or so at the most; and there was obviously no need to carpool out of town or for any such planning as that necessary at all, one of the fine things about living in a bigger sphere with great opportunities. Out of Urbandale proper and into Des Moines officially a child’s parents would have to drive, but the Olmstead Center there at Drake was so close to Herod Edinsmaier’s suburban rental that Mirzah certainly did not think that he needed even to arrange a ride with other teammates to get there. Mirzah would just appear and meet up with everyone else –– right there at the Olmstead Center. Perhaps from his Grandpa AmTaham and I’d like to think also from me did Mirzah learn and hold strongly and utterly to the precept that a person did not disappoint her or his friends. No way. No how. If one is a true friend, then one comes through for the rest of the posse’s others no matter what it takes; and until the morning of Wednesday, 30 October 1991, when Mirzah Truemaier awoke to find himself five states away and consequently failing to show up at the Olmstead Center of Drake University to uphold his end of the Mock Trial team’s bargain, he had not one time messed up on this … this how – to – be – a – true – friend deal, the most important of matters to him ever. Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had succeeded in capturing Mirzah and by Herry’s subsequent imprisonment of him on the interstate and ultimately at their final roadtripping destination, had literally stolen from Mirzah the loyalty to his friends that he so prized inside of himself. The prize of the Mock Trial Project championship? O well, everyone knows what happens at such times as these. Whether at the mock trials’ competitions or at the city club’s softball game without enough players or with the default on the loan for the family’s next home or “the consequences of all of the other messes he visits upon her when he leaves her home” as John Stoltenberg quotes, the word is –– forfeit. Mirzah’s school friends left the Drake University’s Center and returned to their classroom activities at Karen Farmer Elementary without accomplishing one performance because, without its key and starring actor, there was no performance. And according to the Project’s rules, because of this dazzling absence then, the forfeiture of any ranking of the team’s standing in the competitions –– was required! What I have never been able to justify, coming at this specific October scenario with Mirzah in The Opera from Herry’s possible perspective, is how he could have done this to Mirzah. I mean why?! Why not just wait one fucking day –– more –– before leaving town?! The realization of just the friggin’ timeframe alone of this heinous action consternates me! Blows me clean frickin’ away it does. Even if Dr. Edinsmaier had had to be at work elsewhere, which I soooo do not believe was the case at all, why the fucking hell did Herry – Daddee dump the way that he did … this horrific mess on Mirzah’s spirit?! One day longer is all! Then, Herry could have hired a freakin’ truckdriver for the Truemaier Boys or the household’s moving van –– or for both! –– if Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive wasn’t up to any of it herself! And fuck –– Herry for himself? Shit! –– Herry could’ve taken a goddamn airplane out of Des Moines to said destination of new job five states away, could he not have?! I know. I know. This planning was work –– the work of parenting. And Herry loathed it. Herry had always hated all manner of the preparing and of the arranging that it took to help make everyone else’s lives –– ordered! Only his own life was of importance enough to warrant any such of his own labors and time. And in that own life of his, he so wanted, too, to make damned, friggin’ certain that I was fucked. If Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, Pillar, personally saw all of my Boys out of town, then he personally saw to it, also, that I, at my end, was indeed mother – fucked in possibly –– at all –– trying to stop him from doing so. Despite the irony that there is in all of the weeks and weeks and weeks of preparing and of arranging that it must’ve taken Herry Edinsmaier to keep so secret his impending plans for his own life, still so great was Herry’s neediness to know the Pussy, Legion True, was completely fucked that this is the only explanation which I can come up with as to why Herry Edinsmaier committed this slash – and – burn on Mirzah Truemaier’s so – prized loyalty to his friends. It never should have happened. * * * * My life was and wasn’t fucked. Herry would have, I am thinking, been disappointed to know. To know that he had not quite finished the task of that. I did commence rocking again; that I did do. And it was, once more, so cold, … November now; and as in previous years, I did not start the furnace’s pilot light to even begin to be able to turn on the heat source. That alone would save me $15 a month, just its pilot light unlit. It was back to 2 percent milk, baked potatoes with butter for main and only course and bananas with sprinkled sugar crystals on top for dessert. Sometimes a certain molar acted up in the upper right. Sometimes to the point, in fact, of forming an eruption which I could not only palpate in my cheek from the outside but could also visualize it enough orally in order to be able to actually drain its pus on the buccal aspect of the mucosa and reduce it completely. Till –– of course –– the next time the abscess ballooned out. No wonderful job prospects, not surprisingly. For sure – not after Herry’s sabotaging shenanigans with his sending all around everywhere that evilly ‘prepared’ and purposefully mother – fucking Ames Tribune article of Tuesday, 25 September 1990, its front page featuring that all – crazed and – whoring witch – twat which was the thing in its screaming headline who was me. The junk mail factory was laying off – right before the holidays. This included Dr. Legion True, too. I’ve, like I said, never seen Ms. Phillipa Chance again. I have just read about her in that rib joint’s fire, but every so often that scene at her countertop, supernatural she was in her head and obviously in her heart, too, kind of like my Truemaier Boys’ brains’ and hearts’ wiring, just sometimes in order to give me comfort and to take for myself a refresher in compassion, I actively conjure up –– her lovely image that late October afternoon there on the factory floor. I couldn’t move either. I didn’t know to where to move away –– in order to be near my Boys, and I didn’t have 50 cents with which to do that anyhow. I suppose I should’ve lived out of the Ol’ Black wagon once it was learned where they actually were, but I wasn’t brave enough to do that then. Other DEhumans run and, very, very often, like 50,000 or so – annually – in only America alone as I’ve referenced, these mamas flee with a child, but I had no support network in the form of Mehitable nor in my many Ames and Iowa friends who simply themselves had nowhere near money enough to lend to me in huge chunks that could carry a person through more than a couple of weeks. I wasn’t about to ask Wyman for more. While I don’t know exactly why –– it probably had all to do with that Midwest – finishing and – solvency thing in me again. The Wednesday when Mirzah was absenting the performance of his lifetime both in fulfilling the tenor of that of true friend as well as of defense attorney and possibly convicted murderer, I read in the weekly free flyer a small box advertisement for help wanted. Another temp position so no benefits at all but the pay was $9.08 an hour, and I didn’t have to telesurvey at minimum wage, something I was already doing and loathing every second of for the University’s Sociology Department –– in sporadic droplets of four – hour sprints in between trips to the junk mail time clock. Rural sociologists, the ones here at Iowa State anyhow, just loooove asking people of tragedy zillions and bazillions of questions about how they’re coping after this flood or that tornado or this barn fire or that drought. I sat on my tuchus for hours on end with only a total of from three to eight people surveyed by the finish of the four hours –– utterly captured and tethered because of my wired headset connection to the computer screen –– asking these soooo – saddened folks all of those soooo – scripted questions. Precisely as written the queries had been asked –– so as for us questioners to appear … unbiased. It seems to me –still – simply quite ridiculous for one … to fear if her voice isn’t flat enough or drone – like enough, to fear prejudicing the stranger’s response back to me! Fuck! I soooo could’ve answered for every single one of the farmers! I full – well knew … exactly … how they’d all be a – copin’, didn’t I, Jury?! True it was: I wholly loathed this position and “work” –– even more so than the destruction I had wrought to trees and to people by my manufacturing mail that was effing rubbish. Try asking heartbreaking questions without any feeling or emotion in your tone to already heartbroken individuals. An ordinary and reasonable human or DEhuman being wouldn’t even need to start from a fucked mother’s so sorrowful standpoint to feel like pure shit for doing this to others. Let alone, for money. Not to mention in order to accumulate for intellectual hoo – hahs whom I didn’t even really know either … reams and reams of dissertational research material and subsequently, from that, a couple of PhDs and all of the publishing and other accolades that go with those. A form of ‘collective’ – aprovechar over at The Ivory Academe. Come to ponder on it, Unempathetic Herry’d be a natural, a whiz – bang at this speech form and could, pell – mell, churn out of those poor unfortunates telephoned just a whoooole passel of entirely uninfluenced survey answers, I am thinking. The United Parcel Service was hiring, through the folks over at the state’s local Job Service HQ, a very few drivers’ helpers for its upcoming holiday frenzy, the wee flyer’s ad stated. Application itself took the form of a series of three testing sessions over the next couple of weeks and another one for processing all of the scores of hopefuls. Work began the Monday after Thanksgiving. I was the only DEhuman put on at the Ames center that season. The rest were all men, farmers of the surrounding counties done with harvesting mostly and a few others about whom I didn’t know a thing. We temporary helpers were each issued the lovely standard chocolates right up to an oversized, lined carcoat under which I still needed to pile on layers of flannel and thermal in order to stay warm enough, all of which livery was required to be turned in late christmas eve night –– or else the last paycheck withheld until such time as the center recovered from me its toggery. In between episodes at the Sociology Department’s carrels especially equipped with surveying technology and the proceedings that tested my parcel delivery locating abilities, I began a calling and address discovery campaign of my own. For which, of course, I not only received no income but had to, instead, outlay some of my last few precious dimes. Directory assistance of any of the A. G. Bells and all other major telecommunication companies costs. I don’t know how much now because I never use it anymore – what with wonderful telephone book banks and happily helpful reference desk catalogers at the Ames Public Library or with internet access to folks’ number information, but it also cost back then in late 1991. Perhaps 60 cents or so a dial – up. I began with the state of Maine and not Washington believing that the earlier weeks’ undercurrent chattering within the Edinsmaier 69th Street household specifically about Wenatchee might have purposefully been loosed upon the Truemaier Boys as a decoying direction. I spent 3½ weeks speaking to different accents from the country’s most eastern rim instead –– while working the map westward. “Yes, thank you. Have you a listing in your region for a Herod Edinsmaier or a Ms. Fannie McLive, maybe just F. McLive? Any at all for either Edinsmaier or McLive. That would be E d i n s m a i e r or M c L i v e.” I didn’t know, of course, how long it took from placing an order for telephone service before one’s name and number appeared upon the operators’ sheets of new listings so if I’d called and there was no record at present, perhaps, if I “were to call back in a week,” I was told repeatedly, why then … “there may be one later on.” Too, I didn’t know if Dr. Herod Edinsmaier would choose to keep unlisted the home residence number entirely; but I banked on his not at all doing this –– because of his ego. He too much wanted to remain accessible to anyone who might want to find him – other than I – yet still, for anyone he might think to term ‘an associate’ or ‘a colleague’ such as Varry Wussamai or those other Des Moines – area alcoholics anonymous gangsta – thugs of which there was a large number, he did not want to do the work of letting them all know the specific changes in address and telephone. After all, others might inquire about more than he wanted to reveal on why the changes; and, besides that, I had always done this detail for the family after all of those moving stints before. King Herod wasn’t about to issue Ms. Fannie McLive a fiat to contact Mehitable, for example, and perform for him this mundane part of moving herself, that is, of also informing Mehitable and AmTaham of what he’d done by taking Mirzah, Zane and Jesse even further away from me –– especially after the fiasco of Herry – Daddee’s Columbus Day weekend caper just the month before. If she, Mehitable, and others wanted to put out their efforts to find him, that would be all right; but Dr. Herod Edinsmaier wasn’t about to expend any orderliness on anyone else. I so counted on this predictability in Herry Edinsmaier; and 3½ weeks into the same script that I recited to approximately 70 or 80 different directory operators, struck paynim pay dirt. Atheist that I am, Jesse, Zane, Mirzah and I had been missing to each other for what felt like to me an eternity of hellfire. Oprah Winfrey periodically offers up on her television program what would seem to be a fairly common piece of wisdom to get, to understand, to know on one’s own: that the evil that Herry did to my children “changes them forever.” The “not knowing” is the worst; I already felt this and had experienced it in my core, of course, every day the Boys were in Urbandale so the not knowing – until I did know – until I did know that they were so far, far away, 890 miles and five states, seemed interminable. I know other mothers live decades like this. Not knowing. How they do daunts me. How they survive this holocaust … How dare they even ever … have to! I immediately phoned all of my friends to let them know I’d found that which was lost –– well, not exactly. It was waaaay, way worse than we’d feared –– the ‘finding’ of the lost children. Maybe Chicago or Saint Paul or Omaha or Kansas City, even possibly Milwaukee. We had all thought, “Well, he and she both have family around here themselves and Herry’s already done the coastal living thing – with Legion herself when Mirzah, Jesse and Zane were so, so little – so, no, it’ll probably be around here somewhere. Worst it could be is the big city, ya’ know, Legion –– like Chicago or Saint Louis.” “What’ll ya’ do, Legion?” Grace asked, “Are you headed out there, do you think? How could that man have thought – that – a good place for your Boys? Why, Legion, I’m from the South, and while that place might be in the South, too, our schools are not so bad in Tennessee. But there?! Where he took them?! Why, its schools truly, truly do suck, Legion! You don’t think, Legion, do you?! Naw – surely, surely not! That … ah, ya’ know, cuz she herself was a teacher at one time, ya’ don’t think she’ll homeschool them all, do you?! Om’god, Legion, ya’ know, he just might tell her to do that! It’d be like her own classroom – that kid of hers plus all of yours, too! Om’god, Legion, surely not!” Fuck, I didn’t even possess one credit card, no. I in November 1991, was headed at the next month’s Winter Solstice into beginning my 44th year, and I had always and only done all of my deals in cash. Never, never credit –– an opposite of sorts from AmTaham and from most farmers with whom I’d grown up … as a matter of fact. One time my father told me when I was a young adult, maybe 29 or 30, when he and Mehitable finally had had to leave the farm for good that he and she were $88,000 in debt. I remember myself there in his beater sedan’s front seat hearing this figure and my jaw dropping and determining from the lines in AmTaham’s forehead that I myself would never, never, never have to repeat words such as those to someone, least of all to my Truemaier Boys, about my financial circumstances –– and, so far, despite the iciness inside the condominium in which I was indeed existing and the utter absence of life lessons in such solo debt ‘protection’ for myself from either AmTaham or Mehitable, I had not had to. I was in debt all right, four different dentists’ bills and that horrendous SpaChezResort Hotel hospital bill which Homeland Terrorist Edinsmaier had viciously incurred for me by way of his orchestrating and, then from behind his so – pillared judicial curtain, remotely conducting Commander Stout’s misogynistic threatening. But I was whittling away at each at $15 a month per recipient and, since these came due every 30 days’ worth long before any such online bill payment options were in place, dropping off the payments on my walks around town every month saved – as well – on the postage stamps even. And as part of my entire savings plan, while it had no pension nor stocks in it and the IRAs to date had all been cashed out, it did include absolutely no credit extended to me from anywhere else. Dealings only in cash money. On the barrelhead now. So, consequently and purposefully, I had had not one credit card issued to me –– ever. No card? No temptation then. One reason, however, that I also could not just climb into Ol’ Black and go barreling forth to seek after Mirzah, Zane and Jesse … either. How would I reserve hotel rooms or buy gasoline or, for that matter without a credit card, rent a tiny car, for example, –– in order to stay clandestine –– that didn’t have on it Iowa license plates? If I had run with all three Boys, why I definitely would have had to possess a credit card and probably several, but that hadn’t happened because of the fact that there, indeed, were three of them and not just one child. Consequently, I just had never even applied for any kind of a credit card. Yet. “No, no. Umm, I won’t be moving out there, Grace, I can’t. I want to. For chris’sake I so want to, but I just can’t. Not nearly enough money, but I’ll certainly start to learn everything I can about the damn place. That’s for sure. Hope? JYeah, I sooo hope that just even for a little while, while I try to figure out what to do, that the schools and the fact that they’re some older, well, I just have to hope they’ll know something of what I taught them, enough to get by in one piece for a little bit anyhow. Shit, I so hope just for that little. And not for much more, Grace.” And I set about doing just exactly that: finding out –– again –– and … learning. I have to say, however, that in hindsight, we mothers specifically and DEhumans in general are so fuckingly addicted to hope. To a distraction, especially inside family law courtrooms. To a very big fault in us. It is an addiction. It is such a mistake to start far too, too many sentences of ours with that phrase, “I hope … ” and then fill in the blanks with whatever. It’s like saying, “I believe in the father and the son and a goddamn ghost, for chris’sake. Who is male, also, that holier – than – me ghost is!” when one really needs to sit up and place belief and strength and … protection … “Yes, Mehitable and AmTaham!” protection for oneself out of one’s … own being. Out of one’s own essence. Out of one’s own damned ghost! Out of one’s own ghostly spirit! Hence, why the teaching to our littlest human beings of the lessons of self – reliance and self – protection, the preparations that will last them for all of their adult years –– instilling in and imbuing the kiddos with reality, with its realism, with hard work, rationality and reason! –– must, for certain, take place during their very, very youngest ones. Sure, I loved holding and comforting and mothering my Boys when they were tiny, as I do now that they are adults and men; and I do not, in any way, mean to imply that that should lessen because I do not believe that that should … lessen. I do not believe in “mamas’ boys” or smother love; I don’t believe it exists, that is. I don’t believe DEhumans are over – anything. I do believe that males choose to be under – loving themselves because i) either, like Herry, they want to be this way usually as a manipulative, aprovechar / swindling out of and taking the greatest advantage of sort of defrauding violence, a passive – aggressive tool for their own selfishness and self – aggrandizement or ii) they were under – loved as little humans themselves and that “the standard measure of all things guided by” isn’t, but should be, the guiding loving possessed, accomplished and demonstrated to all children by DEhumans. An editor of Iowa State University’s student – run paper, a student herself of course, once wrote that, about the Y2003 Iraqi War, females were “overly emotional,” “too emotional” and “just hysterical” when she described that war’s protestors. I had to respond. “No!” I said in my published letter to her, its editor, “your assessment is as false as that which operates on the patriarchal premise that all things human are only all things androcentric and male – approved and male – oriented. Your assessment is smack in line with all of the male – identified lies that diss the emotions, feelings, sentiments and the utter essences of all of us female humans. It is, in fact, DEhumanization and, for mothers specifically, a fucking.” “Instead,” I continued, “we DEhumans possess and display, for the human species, for all of the human condition, just exactly the correct amount of emotion, the correct amount of hysteria and the correct measure of all things human and, most especially, when those things actually mean … blood – and – guns – and – guts – and – graves war.” That males themselves actively choose to not possess, to not accomplish and to not at all emote in an enough of a measured amount simply … because they can. And that leads me back to the hope thing: hoping accomplishes for us DEhumans exactly squat. Because it cannot! It is again the sitting back and the being passive, servile, deferent and so, so soft, the blindly abiding by the Mehitable – sort – of – poor me – poor me rule and role which many, many males and seemingly all male – identified females such as herself choose not only for the females in their lives but want to also put onto all of us other DEhumans. And for long, long millennia now, this hoping deal has been –– as well. Hoping is an opiate, an addiction –– and an excuse, an escape from accountability –– like religion is. And we DEhumans especially would do so much better to get on in our lives without it, that is, by losing it! By losing the “O, I so hope … yada, yada, yada” dithering. I finished the United Parcel Service helper job around 11:15 p.m. christmas eve 1991. It had been great, and I actually have fond memories of that particular post. Not always, by any means, no, no, no! has that corporation done well by DEhumans. Uh – uh. Sexual discrimination and harassment lawsuits, as a matter of fact, abound against the company nationwide; and in Iowa alone rather recently – 1998, one such jury awarded $80,700,000 to a Des Moines woman so justifiably charging both harassment and discrimination for years and years against a UPS center just a little over an hour away from me. Yes, that’s quite correct! I am stating … … that amount: 80.7 million dollars. Thank goodness and, most certainly! no frigging gaaawds, for moral jury persons. But back up here out of the Ames center I was treated with nothing but respect and honor – and the expectations on managers’, overseers’ and drivers’ behalves that I could – and would – actually do the job. It certainly was work, all right. Run, run, run. Haul, haul, haul. Lift, lift, lift. Smile, smile, O remember to smile at the customers, Legion! Although all of the drivers for whom I rode shotgun I truly liked and we went everywhere including the remotest rural homesteads of Storm County and beyond, I especially enjoyed the shopping mall assignment wherein early every morning for about two weeks the sorters loaded me up a colossal fifth – wheel and parked it out at the mall’s back lot to the service entrances of the biggest shops and stores. With brown suit and flatbed and hand truck and appropriate clipboard and paperwork and lots and lots of walking back and forth to the trailer then, I kept stocked the stores for the holidays. I so relished the smiles. The most difficult wasn’t the physical labor although true it was: I could consume whatever the hell I pleased because of its exercise. The hardest was, of course, watching the little kiddos dart about happy as clams. O, that was hard –– incredibly so! Seeing mama after mama after mama stroll children by my carts as I rolled and unloaded, I knew I had to hold back on the waterworks in order to keep professional the outward countenance –– and so … I just did. AmTaham as well as domestic violence and battered women’s shelter workers and sexual abuse counselors all called that –– this utility which I practiced … splitting: the adept ability to split into two people, two personalities … at the least. The one who does the work simply because the job needs doing in order to survive, and the person who splits off of the first Legion and floats up somewhere around the ceiling, safe there, protected and comforted for the time being, by the distance and the warmth up there in the darkened recesses of my brain. AmTaham had explained repeatedly to me –– in the last few months of my and the Truemaier Boys’ turmoil –– about this phenomenon which he himself still performed some 4½ decades later since the return from his Pacific battles of World War II. “But above all, you must keep this to yourself, Kitty. You just don’t know whom you can trust with this information. You know, that you split off –– in order to manage. I think it’s fine. As a matter of fact, I believe it necessary to the psyche, but you just can never know what other people are going to believe about you –– and, an’, aaah, they might hold it out against you. As proof you’re whacko. You know what I’m saying? So just be truly, truly careful with whom you admit this about yourself, Kitty. This cleaving thing. Hear? ‘Specially under no circumstances to any court or judge! Verstehen?!” And, O, had I! This ‘protection’ advice from an old warrior and the adroit True tribal chieftain to his 44 – year – old adult daughter! Only Grace knew. I kept this skill so secret, that is, about my ability to become two Legions. And most certainly nowhere near that custody evaluator, Ms. Carrie Canard, had I ever let on. Same survival mechanism as within my condominium’s raw and so frosty glaciation when showering, lo, those many years’ worth of no heat. A system so honed that within moments of my being socked with something shocking or difficult or tragic or holocaustic to the flash of generating and accomplishing the schism, I could split in seconds –– if there be need to do so. On the 24th of December then, we were particularly swamped as had the entire week been before, naturally. But this exceptional Tuesday, I’d received an early morning notice from an Iowa State University human resources official that if I wanted an interview for a secretarial position, then I had better get on over to its Forestry Department just as soon as possible since at noon they were all closing up shop there and everywhere else within the University for the holiday. I asked for an hour off is all –– explaining straight up front to my UPS bossman that if I didn’t get on out at the University or somewhere else after that night, why I’d be evicted from the condo in less than two weeks’ time –– with the beginning of 1992 –– because I simply did not have January’s rent money. “One hour! Then I need you right back at the Mall. Got that?!” O JYeah, that? That … I had gotten all right. “Says here, Dr. True, that you have a lot of degrees. What about that? What’s the story with that? Why are you applying to be a secretary? Maybe you won’t be staying very long? Would I have that about right?” asked a very tall, lissome man wearing the Malcolm X – browline and FBI agent Carl Hanratty – style of eyeglasses which Actor Tom Hanks modeled in Catch Me If You Can and who appeared to be about my age. He stretched out his right hand to me and identified himself as Dr. Joplin presently then Chair of Iowa State University’s Forestry Department. I had already taken to the woman, also my age, perhaps up to a decade older it was hard to tell, who was Dr. Joplin’s chief administrative assistant when she remarked how nice it was to see me liveried for a job interview in the chocolate browns of the UPS uniform, the one I was to entirely relinquish later on that very night, –– instead of, of course, in the ‘standard’ two – piece navy wool with matching pumps. She genuinely meant it. I looked at Dr. Joplin; I looked over at his assistant, Ms. Rosalind Franklin. I looked down at the floor. To be honest –– which I so wanted to be with these two people –– I needed another byte about the size of this book and the time that that would take … to explain the mother – fucking. And just how matters such as one, that is, how matters such as a mother – fucking, result in DEhumans like me darkening their doorstep seeking employment. Long – term employment, as a matter of fact, and a situation that came with belovéd benefits, too! It did strike me though –– Dr. Joplin’s very initial questioning –– as sooo, so different than what would have been Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s dissing at such as would be my introduction in this type of conversation. Hell, Herry would not have believed me to even own those degrees! I would have been –– right off! –– accused of lying on my résumé –– –– as he himself does –– to this day! –– on his own! Fuck! Herry would sooo not have addressed me by any name, let alone, by a titled one in accordance with correct, professionally respectful etiquette! I answered him, “Dr. Joplin, it’s the Forestry Department. The Forestry Department. You and everyone here, I am certain that every day you’re here, you do … worthy … work. And my degrees? About my education? Dr. Joplin, I use my education … every day.” I don’t know what it was that got me the job. Were they inundated under mountains of work? Had they been strapped and hard – pressed for weeks to months trying to find someone? Was I the first one off the top of the pile and out of the gate? Was I to pay back for all of the trees I’d personally felt accountable for killing over at the junk mail factory? Was Ms. Phillipa Chance’s guiding and generous spirit invisibly orchestrating from an office corner? Or was hiring me only a case of Winter Solstice and seasonal charity? Well, because of –– whatever, thus began … again … for my first time since graduating there, 6½ months’ pregnant with Jesse as I was conferred the doctorate in veterinary medicine, that is, the DVM degree May 1978, a simple relationship with Iowa State University that works today. The start date was set for the Monday morning of 06 January 1992. I could get through the next two weeks without turkey and pie nor certainly any decorated cookies or New Year’s bubbly, for that matter. After all … I, Dr. Legion True, had secured a truly worthy job, only ¾ – time, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. then and only the nine academic – year months without the summer income at all –– –– but a job, nonetheless, with, again, the promise of permanency! … And since American civil court judges soooo do not count mothering as a job whatsoever at all, then … according to daMan, the first genuine –– paying –– one since Kansas. As I left the Biology Building’s second floor and hurried right back up to the Mall trailer to there finish out the 24th with the United Parcel Service before ending the season and the year of 1991, for that matter, as Save – U – More’s 6 a.m. breakfast cook that upcoming weekend, a holocaustic and terrorizing scene from the Othello Drive’s pornography den returned to my mind’s eye. From that walnut – walled playroom with the walnut, console piano, the space Herry’d said that had, in addition to the gymnasium – sized picture window to the Brookside Forest in its living room, caused him to buy the house from his newest alcoholics anonymous idiot – pal, Cornball –– without my input. Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had brought back to me the Truemaier Boys after first retrieving Mirzah, Jesse and Zane from their weekend at AmTaham’s and Mehitable’s. It was a Sunday evening, 02 October 1988; and strapped within their seatbelts and, thus, captured and inescapably imprisoned in this way on Interstate – 80 while traveling back, Still – Husband Herry, alone, had told the Boys that he was divorcing me –– and before telling me he was divorcing me! Inside that den, then, he proceeded to –– while the Boys witnessed from their hallway glances through its doorframe. Horrid Herry blathered forth with yet another … exhibition. Still – Husband Herry picked up an object that just happened to be sitting on the top – down, built – in escritoire, a stainless steel teaspoon which had been left lying there by who knows who. Herry held it between his thumb and left index finger and, with the last three fingers slightly crooked, began swinging the spoon back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, it swaying in front of my eyes in that procedural – like hypnotizing pendulum mode as The Sperm Donor of MY three Truemaier Boys sneered at me, “I don’t have my ‘doctor – doctor wife’ any more, my ornament to dangle in front of my family and friends. You’re nothing now. You’re nothin’ but a regular, old housewife now. You’re nothing.” This … from the good and wonderful man who was later to tell several different judges several different times how it was that he, even at this point in his life, had had ten years of alcoholics anonymous ‘recovery’! This … from the man who was later to tell several different judges several different times how it was that he, at the time he married Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive on 02 June 1990, a most incredible shrew and even more like Mehitable than I could’ve ever imagined possible in another, that he, at the point when he married her, had had 13 years of alcoholics anonymous ‘recovery’! This? From a ‘recovering’, much less, ‘recovered’ … man? From one who still did not speak my name ––not even to tell me that he was divorcing the “nothing,” the “regular, old housewife” … behind that name! What would this ‘recovered’ man, admittedly snide and licentiously elitist, who had not only completely hidden my children from their mother but had also spirited them halfway away across the nation into an aristocratic milquetoast’s and his termagant’s territory think about one Legion True, BSN, DVM, PhD and present Deli Grill Queen – Secretary? Never one to have been a human doing instead of a DEhuman being, it will take far, far more than a spoon, Herry’s sneering and those standard snide remarks of his in front of my babies to humiliate me now. Detail – and precision – oriented person that I am, I was thrilled –– and proud –– to be worthily working for the University; and since from my Latin of previous years’ education I already knew the root of the occupation and its title, I just knew then, too, that I’d make one helluva damn mighty fine, secret – keeping secretary. This ‘recovered’ man’s slung – at – me snidery? Classically, such … says a colossally passel more about Swill – Spewing Herry than it will ever accurately describe any of The Sexist Pig’s cuntable liaisons, much less me, Dr. Legion True, Secretary! Some 1991 year it had been. Fabulous finale that finding both the Boys and the Forestry secretariat position almost back – to – back was, and this fortune most assuredly was fantastic, one matter had not ended that November and December well. As soon as I knew where the Boys were –– central West Virginia –– a small port there called Grubtrop of less than 7,000 persons which was contiguous with one of 24,000 … at where a medical center was located, Montclank, I telephoned the cops there and its community’s public school officials. I wanted, of course, to secure for the Boys by long – distance as much safety as I could possibly manage; but either Herry or Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive or, more likely the both of them together just a – folie – à – deuxing yet again! had already covered those two distinct bases in that town. And thoroughly! I wasn’t even accorded the time of day by anyone at either outfit. Even receptionists and clerical workers, not to mention teachers, school counselors and detectives as well as the principals and its fuzz’s chief –– all echelons all the way up and down –– again already knew who I was when first I called. And they were not on the telephone anyhow, to say the very least, at all … cordial. Kinda like how far toooo, too many persons frostily (ab)use impersonal emailing of their basest sentiments … now. Pillared Edinsmaier, a doctor after all, had just graced their community with his moving – in presence; and all of its locals were apparently fawning and falling all over themselves to make him and his little, stay – at – home, possibly homeschooling missus just as welcome as possible –– even if that meant dissin’, on his behalf of course, the certainly – now – so – pointless – and – most – redundant ex – missus. Ms. McLive, after all and witnessed there in Herry’s Own Opprobrious Eight Pages, had cuntingly cooed during Herry’s ‘courtship of sorts’ how it was that she could “work at McDonald’s and she didn’t care where.” And the lawmen and this port’s school personnel? Smack in line they were. Androcentrically, these folks all lined right up, one by one there in central West Virginia, too, to carry out the sexist backlash for daMan –– the one with which Rachel and I and all of us other Mothers on Trial are always everywhere … so smashingly clobbered. Mirzah Truemaier enrolled in one of the two Grubtrop elementaries which, in physical space, was approximately a mile or more from the middle and high schools, both of those buildings and sports fields, side by side. That is, a mile or more away every day from his brothers, too, of course. The police station was situated on the far northwest side of town next to a mixmaster – like infrastructure which was the confluence of two major intersecting interstates; and from the Edinsmaier – McLive residence or either school complexes not at all easily accessible by a child walking there. If need be. Mehitable, right away, sent me a newspaper clipping about how six out of every 10 males in the entire state of West Virginia, from his age of 10 years old or older chewed tobacco –– 60 percent of its young boys and men. This did not surprise me. In fact, nothing about the state from its public schools’ quality and conditions to the vast extent of its handgun ownership to its feverish, snake – handling religiosity – fervor to its US Senator Byrd – antics shocked me. Nor, now either, … with its present – day leader: Governor Robert Wise recently stated to the New York Times that he wholeheartedly believes in “accountability” but also knows that “forgiveness” has “to be earned” –– in light of his lately revealed “unfaithfulness” to his family … infidelity by way of flying off with the overseer of the European operations for West Virginia’s Development Office, a woman not his wife with whom he flung a bit about Spain and whose estranged husband outed her. And subsequently too, that state’s Chief, the man whose office states that not only has the governor no intention of resigning but also that it is certain that none of his little adventures will affect Mr. Wise’s chance for re – election! How wise was Wise? Don’t know yet. Guess we’ll all find out, huh? No surprise, though. Only saddened and disappointed me soooo –– to finally learn where Jesse, Mirzah and Zane actually were. “Poverty with a view,” Octogenarian Frieda Chicken Guthrie outright branded West Virginia when she, too, found out my Truemaier Boys’ probable whereabouts. This man who had “sworn an oath” to Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor … “legally promising” him … JYeeaah!!! … that my three Boys would conclude their elementary and secondary educations in Ames, Iowa, the school system ranked that Act I year of 1989, and at least the next four consecutive years, which included then Acts Two and Three, as number nine among all of the community school systems within the entire nation had just taken them all to a state –– considering the positives and negatives of the overall conditions and categories (such as education, economics, safety, employment and community opportunity, housing, climate and environment, transportation and health) –– that fuckingly ranked down in the frickin’, flushing toilet! Today West Virginia is 49th of the 50 states in quality of folks’ health, freedom from crime and persons’ overall general livability –– one of the least livable states and second only to Mississippi, that is. In 1991, it could not have been in the top ten even –– which is where Iowa was; and in the first couple years of the newest millennium, Iowa ranked #2 in livability on most ratings’ indices and second only to Minnesota … next door to the north! The Ames Public Library? Our sweet APL ranked in the year 2000, as number nine among the country’s best community libraries. Just in the quality and taste of its drinking water alone? Ames frequently ranks as #1 in the entire state and within the top ten in national competitions overall! The worst of it though? This was …this is … common knowledge! Folks knew this going in –– it wasn’t like it came as a major astonishment nor even as a minor unknown to Dr. Herod Edinsmaier; he knew all along what it was that he was doing with West Virginia and how he was playing so dirtily with all of … my Boys’ brains. He was hiding Zane, Jesse and Mirzah from me while, at the same time, sacrificing the wonderment they’d already had with me –– and, most assuredly, … purposefully and perfectly punishing us all. Rabid … lethal … revenge. * * * * Only a couple of months into the Forestry position a handful of professors came to me and asked if I might want more hours’ work –– which was awesome! Their department was, in a year and a half’s time hence, to play host to 400 of the World’s finest agroforesters. An international conference was coming into town; and for its preparation then, the faculty needed an individual contact person and coordinator inside the department proper to start to work now, ahead of time, alongside the University’s overall, general conferencing service which performed the more universal coordinating endeavors. Again I was thrilled –– and took to it immediately –– including evenings and some several, late Saturday afternoons, after first finishing my delicatessen shift. A nicer, more spiritually elevated group of persons to ever walk the natural World over … I have yet to meet and know. I truly, truly missed my Boys, which of course I believed was to Deviant Herry’s delight. All of one’s ordinary human emotions and any of those of DEhumans for damned sure, so ‘outlandishly irrelevant’ and purposefully alien to this man, I know that my yearning for my Children … hourly … utterly pleased the socially pathologic pathologist. But I threw myself into this job and into these people and learned again to smile once in a great, long while. While blue jeans and the loveliest of simple, gray heather departmental sweatshirts was more than acceptable apparel, from time to time I actually languished in hosiery and high heels –– just for a vintage, retro genre of secretarial attiring adventure! I also enjoyed the other persons of the position –– the college students themselves, that is, the forestry majors emphasizing in their four – year degree programs either sustainable agricultural practices or all of the knowledge surrounding human beings’ use of products made from or involving anything … wooden! I was the “undergraduate advising secretary,” my official title, so those folks are whom I was privileged to mostly serve! The undergrads and their forestry professors. Once in awhile some graduate students as well –– although another superb individual handled their secretarial matters. As much as an episode of yearning cut so deeply, a couple of first –, second – or third – year students would come by my workstation and need help with the planning of their annually flung Wild Game and Honors Banquet or with how to fund each one of their summer requirements consisting of eight weeks’ Forestry Camp up north or out west to administering the department’s fine arts contest which I continuously oversaw so that students could win tickets on an event – to – event basis and actually attend then, free of charge to the student, local performances and concerts! (with grateful thanks to a very, very generous retired program benefactor and donating sponsor!) to worrying with them all about their upcoming midterm examinations. To –– as well –– the spring semesters’ midterm breaks when two of the undergraduates in particular spent those entire weeks annually all of the years of their educations not vacationing anywhere at all but, instead, hard at work in Ames filling out scholarship and grant applications with my help so as to secure for themselves their own funding sources for the next upcoming fall terms since these two women’s parents just didn’t have it for either one of them! And … as far as my own education –– as far as about that which Forestry Department Head Joplin had, at the very first, asked me? –––– Well, with regard to life’s lessons, the ones a willing person learns when teachable … when she or he isn’t all of the time talking, talking, “teaching” – talking but is, instead, actually listening to others! … as well as with regard to my knowledge taken in from all of my formal, higher degrees –– the ones behind diplomas which I actually earned and never make up lies about or fuckingly fake on any résumés’ biographical sketches … as does, still, the Wonderfully – Good – at – Lying Dr. Edinsmaier? I was, indeed, using … my own education… every day. I used it every single day all right … that is, up until one Monday morning –– the most common day of any week for middle – aged to elderly males to suffer heart attacks and die –– when my telephone rang around 6:40 am on Havencourt just as I shuffled out of the shower still not terrifically refreshed for my upcoming work week. It had been a particularly trying weekend actually, and I was not quite recovered from it –– yet had a hefty schedule facing me but, really, nothing more than the usual. In order to live and to keep current on all of the in – full, on – time child support payments, that usual then meant weekday daytimes at the Forestry Department, two evenings per week and both Saturdays and Sundays every single weekend at the 6 am – to – 2 pm delicatessen grill of the Save – U – More grocery store –– except … for this very past weekend. I had finally asked for the 28th and the 29th of March entirely off from the weekend deli work because of a special errand I wanted to run … one down in Des Moines , which AmTaham had requested of me actually. The Mercy Hospital’s continuing education complex there staged a two – day regional conference and workshop on post – polio syndrome, that which had plagued my father also since his days of poliomyelitis paralysis and those of when Great – Grandma Tessa Lorraine had managed, struggling nearly alone with – then – no way to know if what she was doing would actually work to heal him, to salvage his entire life. She administered the two years’ worth of function – saving physical therapy to her stricken 19 – year – old child and, thusly, the then – forced college dropout, AmTaham. AmTaham himself could not attend the medical center’s event and wondered if I could go –– in order to learn on his behalf and, then, to report back to him. I did both. I went and I reported back. Late that Sunday afternoon of 29 March –– along around 5:00 p.m. or so. We exchanged a lovely discussion on the telephone, he and I, since the conference, while exhausting, was quite amazing and soooo, so eye – opening; and I had had a profusive glut of information to tell him. AmTaham began the conversation, our last, by thanking me for doing this for him and then shocking the beYesus out of me with the fact that while I was driving to Des Moines he’d been insuring his latest Caddy, another Blue not even a couple of years old yet, a Sedan DeVille, and that if I wanted it when he was done with it, his having only just purchased and brought it home to Williamsburg from Iowa City “the day before yesterday,” why, simply to let him know that! That said then! well, the conference and what I now knew from my having participated in it took up the remaining bulk of our chat. I remember telling him that I had never seen so much metallic evidence inside one room before –– of human beings permanently brought low and almost entirely all the way down by a microbe … as I had seen that specific 1992 Saturday afternoon in Des Moines . Braces and wheelchairs and crutches and wilted and withered, literally fucked forms all over that place. AmTaham and a mama named Tessa Lorraine had simply done wonders back in 1939, back when there were no chemicals to prevent, let alone, to cure! My daddy, while afflicted somewhat had certainly not been cursed, life – long, as had so many, many of these other Iowans. Life – long? How little I knew. The person on the telephone early on the very next morning –– this particular Monday then –– was my older sister, Ardys, calling me from her home in east central Michigan to say that she herself had just hung up the phone receiver with our mother, Mehitable. At 6:15 to 6:20 a.m., approximately 25 minutes’ time earlier and apparently … a lifetime’s length of measurement, it seems Mehitable had dialed 911 because she, alone and reading the day’s Gazette in their Williamsburg living room at the time, had heard a massive crashing noise coming to her ears from the main – level bathroom. Ardys said that Mehitable had told her that our father, AmTaham, appeared to Mehitable to be dead. “Wha’? What?! So you’re saying what exactly here, Ardys?!” “Well now, I don’t quite know, I guess,” my eldest sibling, at the time then herself 47, had never been one to get from others facts and details coming at her pinned down … fast. She would have made, I am thinking now, just a horrid secretary. “Is Daddy dead, Ardys?! ! ! Ardys, what do you know?! ! !” “Well now, that’s what it sounds like Mother was trying to tell me, doesn’t it?!” “How the !^*#&$@^$#&*&#! should I know! I’m hanging up and calling Wyman!” Shit! I loathed her dithering, same as I hated Mehitable’s! And I did exactly that, “Wyman. It’s Legion. Say, Wyman, I, ah, um, I just received the strangest call from Ardys. From Michigan . She said Mehitable just called her, but between the two of them, they apparently don’t know if AmTaham’s suffered a heart attack and is or is not dead from it! It’s 6:45 right now. Can you please rush over there and check on things, Wyman? Dad and Mom’s line keeps coming back busy!” Interminable it seemed but truly was only 15 minutes or less before Cousin Wyman telephoned me back. He must’ve flown over to the very west edge of town which, for him at the time, only meant about a mile by car but through several stop signs and block intersections in the Burg. His uncle, he told me, was, indeed, dead. “It’s true, Legion. He’s gone. AmTaham is dead.” “O, m’god! ! ! O, m’god, O, m’god, O, m’god! ! !” I slumped over and dropped the receiver to my one hearing ear on the brown table in the Havencourt condominium’s kitchen in the darkness of the early morning and without its lamps on yet. This news came to me … 44¼ years old. Same birthday as AmTaham’s –– but the two of us now separated. Separated forever. And I was … all alone. All alone. All alone. “Yeah.” It could’ve been a couple of minutes, a hundred seconds or so. Then I spoke again, still not weeping, “Aaah, ah, Wyman?” “Yeah.” “I, um, I have to call some people. And, ah, um, … ah, get on the road then. Actually, no. No. Come to think on it some, Wyman, I bet … I bet I have to go over to the courthouse in Nevada first and, ah, … ah, talk to a judge about the Boys. About permission, ya’ know. About the judge’s letting the Boys come back here from West Virginia. Or … or not. Ah. Where can I call you back later?” We all didn’t have cell phones then yet so arrangements were made for me to catch Wyman in a couple of hours’ time at his home. Life – long? How long is that? … Just how long is life – long? From my last hearing AmTaham, life – long meant less than a full day. Barely more than a half day actually, not even 14 hours. From Sunday afternoon a bit after 5 p.m. until 6:45 – 7:00 a.m. the very next morning. And post – polio? It had killed him, I am thinking. The heart, the cardiac muscle … shot, the result of polio’s viral destruction. Now I cried. Forty – four and, there alone in the darkened kitchen, I sank, “O Daddy, O Daddy, O Daddy, Om’Daddy. O O O O … O Daddy.” The 30th day of March 1992, it struck me near to the very bottom of my soul was the day when I was finally … all grown up. No part of me, nowhere within me, was little anymore. I was no one’s little girl anymore. Not in any wee, small way would I, could I ever, ever be … little again. O, I have to say: not since my bizarro eyeballs’ and mind’s mêlée with my actually trying to read clear through for myself, also all alone, daJudge’s decree after Act Two Part Two … forcibly loaded up –– as soooo against my will the Bitch was commanded to be controlled –– there at the SpaChezResort’s Sixth Floor Hotel on all of Drugging Daddee – Herry’s manipulating dope had I been brought straight on down to my knees. In less than just five years’ total time, I had suffered Loss with a capital L –– there had become, now, established for me! ! !my very own Bureau of Loss –– the likes of which most folks, even if it all is spread out over their entire lifetimes of seven, eight, nine decades in length, will never, never experience. About Loss? They all –– comparatively –– know bupkus . The belovéd clinical and teaching professorship in Kansas, the marriage and spouse, my three precious children which loss ALONE changed them and me forever, the career as a veterinary anything, any accumulation or semblance of home permanency or estate stability and, now, my very own father to death. From June 1987 to March 1992. The man with a mind and a manner that I have never known in another –– gone. How unfair. How so unfair that, now, this Loss, too, and that I would have to grow all the way the fuck up. Instantly. Like right, right now. This morning. This very Monday morning. Here on Havencourt. And changed me yet again … forever. All alone. I moved. To the rocker again. Two pillows, the cushioned seat on the bottom of the chair and warm, cotton fleece blanketing me everywhere I could swathe and bandage myself. Wrapped, rocking, weeping –– and wracked. Alone. An hour and a half elapsed. I realized I wasn’t at my desk at the Forestry Department, so I made the first telephone call of many more to it there first. “Sure, no problem. Well, we’re so, so sorry, Legion. All right with you to let everyone know? Need anything from us? Yeah, well, okay then. Well, we’ll just see ya’ when you get back. Drive careful now. We’re just so sorry for you. Okay. Sure, Legion.” Rosalind Franklin, Chair Joplin and the rest of its Posse wired the Department’s yellow, potted chrysanthemums directly to the mortuary. When Wyman and I next talked, he had details. Daddy had dropped. Dead, it sounded to my cousin from his having spoken with the ambulance driver, “… ‘fore he hit the floor.” Shaving. Headed to work at the agency: that would have meant full – time at 72 years of age, without his enjoying any sort of retirement whatsoever, the very same age for dying and, thus, departing into Righteous Ancestor status as my Other Mother … Margaret Sagely, at the realty firm where AmTaham worked for someone else assessing, listing and helping then to sell for folks both farmland acres and residential homes in town. What Mehitable had heard was AmTaham’s smashing, on his final journey all the way down, into the bathroom shelving and the commode itself with all of their contents collapsing. He’d arisen at the usual 5:30 and gone over to the black leather La – Z – Boy with which I had gifted him the earliest Winter Solstice birthday he’d marked after my drawing a paycheck as a first – time labor and delivery room nurse practitioner. Into it to read, of course. The Cedar Rapids Gazette. As per their usual daily routine, AmTaham left both the chair and the newspaper to Mehitable nearly right at 6 a.m. to go into the lavatory and shave. Time of death called at somewhere between 6:10 and 6:15 a.m., Monday, 30 March 1992, then. My only brother, Sterling , had already departed the Omaha area for the Burg; his spouse would follow with her two sons when they finished the school day. That would give Miriam the time to collect things and to do the family’s packing in order to bring along the stuff of a week’s stay or longer; this, of course, was not at all, or ever, the task of Mehitable’s Bereaved Son Sterling’s to do. Ardys and spouse were leaving from east central Michigan and not expected in to Williamsburg until late that night. No one knew exactly how to contact Littlest Sibling Endys, estranged by her own choice from nearly the entire family except not from AmTaham and –– as everyone knew, as well –– probably because of Mehitable. Wyman thought he knew of someone who might be able to get in touch with Endys and, “ … what’ll you do, Legion? Talk is that, yeah, Mehitable does want all of the grandchildren, all the seven boys, to be AmTaham’s pallbearers then. So far, that’s what she’s saying anyhow. She’s kinda shocky though, too. What do you think you’ll do?” Of the only man from whom I never needed words repeated because words were so valuable, like time, to AmTaham, that he, with their very first transmission out of his larynx, always, always spoke with such elocution, such sufficient volume and such projection toward anyone and most especially to me, addressing and articulating in a slow, measured fashion, always attentively, that I never needed any of his spoken sentences repeated, –––on AmTaham’s final behalf, now, I so did not know what to tell Cousin Wyman. Indeed, the Columbus Day weekend 1991, would have been the last AmTaham set eyes upon his Truemaier grandchildren –– only that weekend Zane, Jesse, Mirzah and AmTaham never realized. The Boys were not permitted to come to him nor to Williamsburg then at all! I couldn’t even recall the last time AmTaham actually had been with any one, two or all three of them then –– and I still cannot today. Flummoxed, I told Wyman that I would have to call him yet a third time –– and from the Storm County Courthouse, that I just did not know what a pillared man, daJudge, would do to me on this request. By 10:30 a.m. I –– all alone, of course –– had Ol’ Black packed up and inside the ugly surrealism that was this entire exercise behind my exclusive upcoming roadtrip, I pointed the barely horse – powered vehicle easterly. And went to see a man about a question. Again, all alone. If there is any one thing that I have learned in the last ten – plus years, it is to not place myself into events and situations at all –– without first procuring the safety that there is at said event or situation in numbers, even in having just one other person alongside me holding me in the invisibility of her or his magnetic friendship field. Today I have the wisdom to absolutely refuse attendance at family functions, in particular, if I surmise ahead of its time that I will have at all –– to be –– in the interior of the physicality of the event’s or situation’s scenario –– by myself alone. No way do I do that now. I had always had ‘enough’ friends; but friends in my sphere? My friends are far too poor … fiscally, that is … to be able, economically, ‘to just take off’ whenever –– at the drop of a hat or … at the drop of a friend’s daddy … –– and to go with me out of town for an unknown or undisclosed length of time. I am not, after all and thank gawddess, of the English countryside’s aristocracy nor of any other elitist or intellectual groups. For my friends to leave their families and homes, their jobs and their lives is a very big deal and, for them to wisely and safely accomplish, takes weeks and sometimes months of planning ahead –––– under none of which qualities does the sudden situation of the unexpected death of a friend’s father qualify. Herry Edinsmaier, like very many other fathers whom I have since encountered, was selfishly horrid about spontaneity: he thought it just the greatest in the way of maneuverability for … himself. Well, one can think that when one is only looking out for one’s own self! Of all of the times when Herry got ants in his pants to up and suddenly go somewhere and to do something –– which was almost all of the times when he wanted to go do something afar … that would then involve an extended stay of more than a day –– why, he was indeed only thinking of himself. Only problem was: there were four others of us and three of them were not adults. Nor was Herry acting anything at all like one either! No. … On trips with the Boys and with me to out – of – town locales for any reason or event whatsoever, why Herry Edinsmaier utterly acted the 17 – year – old, older Joy Toy Boy brother role … almost solely. Taking three little, little, little Boys on a roadtrip anywhere was just mahvewous for the four of them –– and sheer, pure friggin’ hell on me. Always. But expected I was to not only bound for the open highway with all of the absolute bliss I could possibly scuttle but to also enjoy the Huck Finn – fuck out of myself throughout all of the labors, chores and tasks of it. The work of it all which Herry – Daddee, androcentrically entitled as he soooo was to his freedom, to his rest and to his relaxation after all, since he was such the hard, hard un…slacking – exalted doctor dude over there at such pillars’ medical center, never willed himself to take on as his own duties –––– let alone, as ‘expectations’ for himself! Elitist Edinsmaier’s only labors, chores, tasks or, gaaawd – forbid (my calling it) … work –– in order to sustain or uphold a traveling family of five –– consisted of i) his driving … some of the times and, for certain with every passed pasture full up of either beef or dairy cattle, ii) his mockingly modeling for three young humans, captured by not only their seatbelts but also by the alleged father – sons’ ‘bonding’ thingy, with his bushy brownish mustachioed mimickings of the bulky bulls’ snouts sniffing and snorting after the several Holstein heifers’ vulvae. With, … subsequently, … sniggers and sneers all around. In my own stupid – ass – heifer and silly mind’s eye with the custodial roles in The Opera reversed and flipped, I could just imagine Herry – Daddee in front of daJudge a – jawin’ ‘bout how ‘twas that, with the relatives rapidly collecting for the upcoming ‘fun’ of a family ‘fun’eral a – gathering, why, Dr. Edinsmaier just needed “to be skedaddling and a – hittin’ the open road with those best buds of mine, my three boys, and can we just a – hurry up that there paperwork or whatever it takes to get us all on our way, Your Honor?” JYeah, that is, if he had been Mirzah’s, Zane’s and Jesse’s noncustodial parent who was ‘court’ – ordered and, thus, required to obtain daMan’s ‘permission’ to take the mama’s kiddos … anywhere! But Herry was not. Dr. Legion True was. I be that parent. Fuck, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier would not have even needed to, let alone, taken the trouble to do the work of appearing in daMan’s ‘Court’ –– as the scofflaw which he had, already in Acts One and Two, quite and so well proved himself to be by his blatantly outright contemptuous and disdainful refusal in these first two trials’ Production of Documents’ processes to turn over any or all of the actually existing answers about himself splattered all over within those sooo – tangible hard – copy, handwritten journals, diaries and scrawls of his! Herry just would not have had to even come before any judge, man or woman! Dr. Edinsmaier merely would have called over to whoever was one of the judge’s underlings and given that specific DEhuman this message of his: the Good and Wonderful Doctor has a sudden, unplanned and quite urgent need to get the hell outta Dodge … and, of course, Herry – Daddee’d’ve been off and gone –– with All My Children –– adding nothing more than something like, “Say, I’ll stop in later and take care of signing off on the paperwork –– or just send it to me. You can do that, can’tcha’? Yeah, just send it to me.” But I? Do that, too? Noooo. Nowhere even close could Dr. Legion True get away with trying that –– before my getting onto the road to go home to be able to even start to grieve the death of my adored father. First things first here! We have to DEhumanize the ex – Cunt yet once again. And even more so around the deal of this specific dead man … than we already have before this, her daddy’s dying day. Had I not stopped to literally beg before daJudge assigned to me at the courthouse first, 11:15 to 11:45 am, Monday, 30 March 1992, still the very same first morning that I was trying to process the incredulity which was befalling upon me and mine that day, my three Truemaier Boys would not have arrived back in the Burg for their belovéd Grandpa AmTaham’s funeral at all. And ‘that development’ in The Opera would have been just mighty fine with Herry –– if Zane, Mirzah and Jesse all had missed it –– considering how Herry himself had always felt about his ex – father – in – law. “You promise to not drive them anywhere?” “You promise to see them only at the residence of your mother’s and at the places of the service proper and nowhere else; that includes only to the cemetery, graveside, is that correct?” “They are not to be in your direct care, is that understood?” Never out of this judge, who of course was the High Aggrandizier himself, Sol Wacotler Seizor, never, not one word of this mere man’s lexis on this miserable matter included any sentiment sounding whatsoever at all like, “ … Aaah, gee, Ma’am, we’re all here so sorry for the Loss of your father today.” No. Uh – uh. O No! And I? I did not shed one mother – fucking tear in front of this dastardly heartless DEhuman – fucker either. Not one! I saved them all for who really mattered, walked out of that world’s wicked aura, aimed Ol’ Black east yet one more time again, out onto the federal Lincoln Highway … US #30 … and left behind me and suspended for the time being Herod Edinsmaier’s holocaustic hatred of things Legion – like. Again alone. Not until 2:30 p.m. did I arrive. On, now, the saddest day of my whole life –– for a trek by automobile that ordinarily should have been completed to Williamsburg by any ‘normal’ father (such as, for example, … Mehitable’s only – born human, Sterling) by, O say from initial packing on Havencourt in The Teacup to pulling in to the driveway there at her and AmTaham’s house in the Burg, 10 a.m. –– Straightaway in line with controlling androcentrism and the epitomic essence of patriarchy’s power, I owed half of my most grief – stricken day to Herry and to his folie follies with judges and the Next Stupid – Ass Heifer in his Stash. At this specific day’s start, I had to suffer and to receive unto myself the execution of Horrid King Herod’s aprovechar practice in ‘the Court’ again of its first royally screwing me, the mother of three of AmTaham’s most favored folks on the entire Planet. And it was Herry’s final assault on AmTaham, too, to besmirch his memory with this exploit against another of AmTaham’s favorites, the one with whom the, now, Righteous Ancestor annually shared his Winter Solstice renewal and all the rest of his Truth, wisdom and nature: me. After this recurring belittling courtroom beating and mother – mugging, little did I know that I apparently owed someone else besides Herry his opportunity, too, to wreck violence, to rain, as well as, to reign down upon me, the DEhuman, the masses’ hellfire and to mouth – whip me bloody with his verbal vengeance and terrorism. Only – Brother Sterling’s additional bombastic tyranny is, indeed, why my ‘safety in numbers’ deal, a protection never taught to her three daughters by Mother Mehitable and for which Dr. Legion True always, always, always calculates and accords my precious self before leaving my home –– now! I parked Ol’ Black in the driveway, walked up the outer concrete steps, about ten of them on the rocky northern edge of the bi – level, caramel brick ranch with chocolate brown trim, to the doorway of my parents’ home and, after repeatedly knocking without any response whatsoever, escorted myself into its tiny foyer which nearly immediately opens off to its right side into the very bathroom that had been AmTaham’s death chamber. As time would prove true, I accomplished this fairly simple physical exercise into AmTaham’s and Mehitable’s west – edge home over the course of that day and the next six –– for the very last times. To its left or the easterly direction of this short entry space, a visitor turned directly into the True kitchen, a well – lit, modest one designed like a boxcar with blackish linoleum splashed by light speckles of white and pink within it –– over which my firstborn Truemaier, as an infant, used to crawl to a water bowl that Gran Mehitable placed down upon it for Zane to actually lap there from it like a little kitty cat drinks. Things on one side and about an equal number of things on the other side, lots of cupboards both up and down and all of them crammed chockfull of pans and pots and other stuffs and lots and lots of countertop workspace, a kitchen with all of the necessary, and quite a few unnecessary, appliances. Round, clothed table, very small with really only enough room at it for two people, place settings and food items at the very far east end that, itself, either bifurcated into AmTaham’s home realty office or, at right angles to his office, a permanently opened archway that led into a spacious and very comfortable living room. A kitchen and living room, both, in which breakable bric – a – brac, all manner of knickknacks and other cheap, cheap gimcracks spewed and splat themselves all over in between the things, and low – down on curio corners and shelves too, crappy ornaments which were never removed when my Truemaier Babies came to visit. “He has to learn what I mean when I say ‘NO!’,” her boomed “homeland law” spat back at me –– as Mehitable would simultaneously slap the dorsal aspects of any of my Boys’ tiny hands since she claimed to know such ‘truths’ from ancient, (and, obviously, far less than … righteous – ) ancestral … “parenting” … times. Verisimilar in violent style Mehitable’s was to that of Fatlantic’s Grand Lay Priest’s, the Great Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier’s, filthy, lewd and loutish baling wire – whippings about the very same aspects of the bilateral calves of older children’s lower limbs –– those kiddos seemingly not quickly enough coming into compliance with that specific man’s “parenting and homeland laws.” Unwanted intruder who I always believed myself to be before this date … when, upon my arrival, it’d been only my mother at her house there … I swiveled around from the bathroom doorway and its early – morning figment of my falling father imaged on my brain to join the voices I already heard coming from deep within that kitchen. Except that, myself entirely wordless as of yet and from the carpeted foyer inwardly, I took only two wee steps forward on that blackish flooring before –– as had been Legion True’s very same patriarchal dealing with Professor and hardly quakerly or eldering P.M. Flunk’s fist – on – the – DEhuman’s – maternal – breastbone mother – fuck, I was summarily halted. An instantaneous screaming at the top of his lungs occurred not more than an inch and a half from my hearing ear, perhaps two to three inches altogether –– but no further –– from that working right eardrum of mine. As Dear, Dear Daddy just, indeed, had done! I myself –– truly and literally –– nearly fell down to the floor from the force behind daMan’s hardly (as well) brothering blast, “YOU KILLED MY FATHER!!! YOU KILLED MY FATHER!!! YOU KILLED MY FATHER!!! YOU. KILLED. MY. FATHER! ! !” This –– from out an orifice situated on Sterling’s lower face which was ajar a distance that I, long – time a medical worker, had never known possible for the temporomandibular joint of a human being. A python ingesting its constricted, crushed and asphyxiated antelope or gazelle whole, yes, but not a width which a human’s jaws could uncover, no. Immediately flanked in this feat at Brother’s right shoulder and, remarkably, at the very same swiftness that it required for Sterling to reach me splayed The Widow Mehitable in all of her cyanotic cyclonic wrath as well. Both of these two robots raging in symphonic – conducting stance together, he with his right and she with her right also, took to jabbing their respective index fingers into the air, repeatedly stabbing them downward into and mere millimeters away from connecting with my sternum and breasts. While the spread mouth on Sterling underwent no break from its massacring work, no sounds emitted from Mehitable’s; but the entire bulwark that was her cranium, face, neck and chest, that is her whole head and upper trunk, gyrated up and down like a black Angus bull’s massive front side does inside a Spanish fighting arena and bore on its facial anterior the same expression as one can imagine embellishes said bull’s. Her mouth was indeed silent next to Most – Favored Son Sterling’s which was obviously moving for hers also, Mehitable’s own lips rigid and pursed, the cartilaginous cords strained and popping out from her neck. The only elaboration missing were the two streams of hottest steam cartooning and jettisoning from out of both of The Widow’s nostrils, but each naris snorted again and again in rhythmic synchrony with the two flying right fists and index fingers, and itty bitty flecks and strings of mucousy snot flit out onto the flesh above her upper lip. I saw plenty of spit and mucus and phlegm, but the body fluid that is tears’ secretions –– that I saw none of emitting from these madness machines’ four total bulbar cavities. I, on the other hand, was utterly reduced to nothing but. Weeping from out my own sockets like, like … aaaah, like … I’d just lost my dad or something. No one else. Not one other person was in this house yet. Just the three of us there along around 2:45 or so –– while Sterling continued the dastardly duet that was my brother’s and my mother’s. Straight out –– classic … this scenario –– of the data findings and results’ pages of Mothers on Trial researcher and author, Dr. Phyllis Chesler, regarding noncustodial mamas facing down –– in my case, all alone –– the violent and violating vitriol exactingly flung at them from their very own families, “It’s cuz of you that he’s dead! You killed him! You and all your goddamn problems! You killed him sure’s if you’d shot him dead yourself! It’s cuz of all the goddamn, friggin’ problems you brought to him! You did this. You killed my father.” “He was my father, too.” “Yeah? Yeah?!!! Well, fuck you! You killed him! It’s all cuz of you. It’s all your fault!” And Sterling repeated for both himself and Mehitable their mantra as if I had had no daddy ever, “You killed my father!” It was of no wonder at all to me that with her only family friend and ally dead, Sister Endys appeared at AmTaham’s funeral and graveside only and –– never –– over at The Widow’s house. I tore away from the blustering clutches of these two automaton contraptions and started to wince my way with the couple of travel bags down a carpeted hall intending to route myself into the furthest, southwest one of the main level’s three bedrooms when Mehitable whose house alone the entire structure now was, of course, shouted, “Where do you think you’re going?!” “Uh. Um. Well, ah, I thought …,” stammering as usual in her presence I was, “I thought that, um, …” “You thought what, Young Lady? Just what did you think?” still not crying –– no tears from this person. And the designation with which Mehitable had referred to me as, well, all of us “young ladies” know exactly what that means at any time someone uses it as an address, let alone, … when one’s own mother does. “Sterling’s right. Your brother’s absolutely right, ya’ know! AmTaham’s dead because of you and Endys. Because of all of the problems you two caused all of us; that’s what’s killed him! I don’t know how you can live with yourself now, Young Lady! Go on! Go on! Get outta my sight!” Just shouting and screaming. And … from AmTaham’s Widow Herself … still … no tears. With the brushing and the battering of both of her upper extremities at the windless air in the dark hallway of her ‘home’, a building I had never known the inside of until I was 24 or 25 years old, Herry’s Other Shrew dissed, pooh – poohed and shooed away no one other than her second daughter – child whose first name –– Legion –– literally as in the same shaming shunning manner of The Soooo Good and Wonderful, (albeit) Her ex – Son – in – Law Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s, had yet to be spoken by my own mama. Escaping to that precise bedroom, I closed the door quietly, locked it, submersed myself into the mattress on the far side of its double bed there and faced the juncture of the west and south walls where both walls’ windows were big slits stationed up near the ceiling, my only view then the room’s ivory paint –– and not the Burg’s town park to the west. The one with the little kiddos’ play equipment including a jungle gym with three, attached and graduated monkey bars, three rocking horses, an orange – handled water hydrant next to the bright whitely painted picnic shelter –– and The Pond barely but just large enough for practicing canoeing skills and in which Zane Truemaier had once plied his fishing hobby, the one on which Rosemarie’s belovéd Bill had begun him at my firstborn’s wee and tender age of four years back at Hershey P A’s BullFrog Valley Pond. The playthings in threes which all of them, Mirzah, Jesse and Zane, had at one time or another simultaneously occupied. To their (Now – Newly Made) Ancestor AmTaham’s absolute delight. After the Truemaier Boys had … each one … learned to walk, it was that body of water … in particular … which was the principal reason, however, behind 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 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, changes away from what his promises had been to Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor. Which promises too then of course, upon my appealing the September 1990 trial court decision to the three, all – male panel of Iowa Court of Appeals judges, Perjuring Herry had –– for his easy convincement of all of these men –– merely manufactured. While the Boys and I had not known of Daddee – Herry’s written statement, of his sworn affidavit, submitted to daJudge in January 1989, about the Good and Wonderful Doctor’s word back then that Zane, Jesse and Mirzah would … all three … graduate from Ames High School! and obviously of his assurance, even his guarantee, that they would stay in Ames, let alone in Iowa, some 3¼ years previously, none of that had really mattered at all to ‘the Court’ –– which did know. By this time Herod Edinsmaier’s ‘promise’ just about that one thing, not to mention about sooo many others concerning the maintenance, promotion and enhancement of relationships between my Boys and me to at least four different judges through two separate trials and one appeal had in no way at all obstructed nor impeded Dr. Edinsmaier from removing all of the Truemaier Boys not only from Ames but also from Iowa. “Nor stopped Herry in any way from extracting all three of them entirely, Mehitable, that exact evil from which you should’ve soooo taught me to protect myself, from out of my life and away from me, completely away from and out of my life! Me, their mother! You should’ve coached me on how to protect myself and my children from this incredible wickedness, Mother Mehitable!” I need to note here, in essence, that because the three appellate judges represented the interpretation of the laws of the land of Iowa and thus its public, that is, its people, both the humans and the DEhumans of the State, then what the appellate judges, all of them men of course, were saying too is that if they did not give a good goddamn about the Good Doctor’s word, then why the hell shouldn’t all of those Iowans who are the very people of these laws also fuck a mother, too? These four men –– as all Iowans’ judicial representatives –– merely stated to us, the public, that it was quite okay for us too to collude with the pillared doc in whatever it was that Herry wanted to get away with doing and … fuckingly gut the bitch. Besides, these five men –– the four plus Daddee –– argued, rationalized and justified to themselves that the good people of Iowa would never even know of Edinsmaier’s “word” –– in the wholly unlikely event that any one of them would have bothered to rise up and say something about his actually keeping his many promises! Smack in line the reasoning of these four patriarchs is with, as well, their musingly and correctly figuring that … this pissant woman Legion’s “passions and struggles are nowhere near as stupendously important to anyone else as they, O – so head – bangingly, are … to her!” And these four guys didn’t even care, because they didn’t want to and they didn’t have to, about all of the other subversions of Herry’s –– his exhibitionism and voyeurism and frotteuristic incest and bestiality … “cows, dogs, pigs and chickens” the Rolodex card states in that order! which is scripted in Herry’s own hand, the woman – loathing jokes, his crimes of providing and encouraging the sex toys of gem – studded condoms and hormone – raging greeting cards and other pornographic magazines and materials in front of, with and to the Boys, not to mention the King and his Nottingham Sheriff’s folie à deux at preventing the Boys and me from having the least little bit of contact with each other or permitting them to have even $1’s worth of the $5,000.00 that were the gifts, the letters, the cards, postage stamps, medicine, the books, the favored foods, toys, sports equipment, movie tickets, the post office box use, the telephone calling cards, etc, etc, et cetera that, with Jesse, Mirzah and Zane now five whole states away, I had sent to them all! As Rachel had declared last Winter Solstice, “And there’s no judge, Legion, who himself doesn’t surf porn.” What is truly classic and thoroughly choice, though, is its mother – fucking, sexist flipping reversal: No woman, no mother could have moved out of state in the same wink of an overnight, heartbreaking beat that Thieving Edinsmaier had done with my Truemaier Boys Tuesday, 29 October 1991. No woman, no mother I have ever, ever come across in all of my literal trials’ and similar tribulations’ travels since … can take the products of one’s exalted sperm –– even across the fuckin’ county’s line like, say, because she took up another union or had secured for herself the coolest job ever –– the way that this man banished my children not only from out of my sight and away from my arms but also all of me, their very own mother, from completely out of their brains and spirits as well. Invisible. Deadened. = Daddee’s defining purpose. Thus with the legitimate and formalized 4:27 p.m. petition began Act Three, Part Four –– to include in its specific scenes of The Opera then King Herod’s newest tyrannical and undermining tactics to subvert the Boys’ and my relationships with each other and to bring to the attention of justice – seekers in charge of placing minor children safely away from domestic and sexual abusers the startlingly frightening Eight Pages of Herry’s personally handwritten admission to bestiality with “cows, dogs, pigs and chickens” and the incestuous, frotteuristic behavior with his three littlest sisters, Kay, Celeste and Murielle. Further evidence and outright admittance of Herry’s sexual addiction were these Eight Pages –– in addition to all of its previous substantiation which had come forth in Act Two before. Which, there in Two, had simply been ignored or vehemently denied by both Dr. Herod Edinsmaier and all four judges, that is, by all of the men. Subsequently ignored and denied as well then, too –– through interpretation of legislative and judicial representation –– by all of the people of the State of Iowa! Even ignored and denied because of their being represented in the laws’ interpretations by male appellate judges in this manner by Iowan mothers about to also have themselves and their own children entirely mother – fucked in upcoming lawsuits over custody of their very own abused … (but, of course, utterly “crazy” and “whoring” –– and, thus, also quite “committable”) … selves! and kiddos. In addition, those same Eight Pages revealed words carried to his writing digits from Herry’s brain which spelled out phrases such as i) “a chance to be young and carefree again” and that stated that Ms. McLive offered up to him, Dr. Edinsmaier, as far as his role of father to three sons plus, through his act of marrying the grotesque, dowdy and heartless harpy also taking on the alleged accountability for a fourth minor child Mary Jane, one about Zane’s and Jesse’s ages, was concerned, … ii) “a refuge from parental responsibility.” “Huh, Herry!? Since frickin’ when ! ! ! and in just what fucking parallel universe ! ! ! is the 24 / 7 personal accountability for four children under the age of 18 ‘a chance to be carefree again’ and since when is a total, mother – fucking stranger to the Truemaier Boys a better mother for them, let alone, an excuse for you, Herry The Daddee, to run away from your responsibility for them yourself!? Wha’? Still the Joy Toy aprovechar Boy, are ya’? Still –– at middle age, Herry?! Although the blonde bitch – witch truly, truly pissed ya’ off when that friggin’ Ex – Cunt Legion True called ya’ to account to everyone including ‘the Court’ for your sexual addiction … which you’re soooo busy trying to instead obfuscate from others by way of your pretense of some beer – swilling and all of those outright wasted resources from your trying to cover up and deceive us all with alcoholics anonymous – fuck?! Are you still wanting only to be in your arrested development! in the idiotic role of that 17 – year – old, dry – drunk, fun – loving’, let’s – varoom – on – out – into – the – woodsy – older brother to Jesse, to Mirzah and to Zane? The one who really doesn’t have to do any work at any time at all –– let alone, the really hard, hard work, Herry, of being a true parent, not to mention, of being the primary parent?! ! ! What is this Next One in Your Stash, Herry, but a Detanimod Edinsmaier – to – you – surrogate?! A mothering , cooking, babysitting, housekeeping, cleaning, laundering, cock – sucking, semen – reservoiring, male – identified spittoon for you?! Fuck, at the same 46 – year – old age as you that Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive is right now, Herry, she actually even resembles … physically … your soooo – dominated, 74 – year – old mama, Detanimod … when the woman had finally given up and given in to that cancer back in 1985!” Whether or not this factual tidbit is from Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s having weighed in at 310 pounds for some gargantuan length of time prior to the gastric bypass / stapling operation or to the development of a subsequent abdominal panniculus and other skin – sagging or to the ensuing malnutrition with its consequential balding hair loss, facial brown – spots’ mottling discoloration and massive wrinkling because of collagen and elastin destruction which could –– as well –– have been precipitated by her nicotine ingestion from smoking cigarettes I, in the same snide parlance of King Herod’s own Nottingham Sheriff’s most favorite of all phrases on the telephone wire back to me before she slams down “her household’s” receiver, “I … have noooo idea.” Nor do I give one shit. Although 18 months or so older than I am, about Ms. McLive several friends of mine have been known around me and within very close proximity to the vicinity of my one hearing ear to hum several bars from Jimmy Soul’s nasty classic. One even had the brassy audacity to email me its “Never make a pretty woman your wife. So for my personal point of view, get an ugly girl to marry you” – lyrics! Those Eight Pages equaled … the Smoking Gun. Terrorist Edinsmaier’s multiple sabotaging Ames Tribune article – bombings not only murdered my chances at decent earnings from the three professional job prospects, that is, from the possibility of my actually being elected as Storm County’s next recorder or of my securing one – or both! – of the two veterinary – related offers at the National Animal Disease Center and at the Center for Veterinary Biologics; but that Tuesday, 25 September 1990 headlining newspaper article was also, no doubt, a mightily valued item which either Herry – Daddee Edinsmaier or the Sheriff of Nottingham, his folie enforcer, or the both of them together always made damned certain to take in tow with them –– entirely and utterly unbeknownst, of course, to any one of the Truemaier Boys –– to the various Grubtrop schools when they enrolled Mirzah, Zane and Jesse there for their first day. Again –– for just that very same purpose … as had been Ms. McLive’s most homicidally slashing intent –– what with the daddee’s constant outta – town absences all during those long weeks at the bungalow rental –– when Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive most vigorously and enthusiastically slopped it … er, slipped it … into that Legion True – file! of Principal Druid’s back at Urbandale’s high school! “Why, there’s no doubt in my mind but that … to show you up, Dr. True, in a very bad light to all of us here at the school, I would have to say,” had been Principal Druid’s answer back to me and thusly stated with the utmost of serious, unequivocal, out – and – out expressions to the question which I’d put to him … as to why the Next Cunt in Herry’s Stash would have done such a heinous thing. As I have written before, Jury! this fact quite requires repeating: There is the Boys’ collective but soooo, so uninformed whine: “Well, but Herry never bad – mouthed you, Mama. He never said anything bad about you.” … “JYeah?! Well, Herry was not talking to you about me, but he was talking to someone! And, likely, to several people! Several were the accomplices in Daddee – Herry’s terror and tyranny.” There was a plan, a mighty androcentric, murderous ‘master’ – plan all right and, in it, Dr. Legion True was only ... bad – mouthed. Just the Boys never knew. They weren’t ever going to know. The plan was: Zane, Jesse and Mirzah were never going to hear a thing –– bad or good because I did not exist to them –– immediately and for always after Daddee – Herry spirited all three out of and away from 6143 Havencourt and The Teacup on that autumnal Saturday. I ceased to be. And so did they in the sense of their lives before that day, in the sense of their lives … with me. There’s no doubt, likewise, in my own mind that The Good Doctor Wonderful, performing on an hourly basis what actual little work was his usual, in my case, however, bloody – well strove mightily to keep Dr. Legion True monetarily destitute for a multiplicity of reasons not the least of which among these, of course, was to stop dead and, therefore, kill off any possible chance which I might have had at actually supporting three children on my own –– should I ever get them back with the chance, then, to try to do so! Get any one of them back –– either ‘illegally’ cuz they’d run away back to me on their own or I’d grabbed and fled with any one or all of them –– … escaping, ya’ know, Jury, with my vast wages so quickly saved up – ha! – and our taking off to some cheap place to collectively live underground ‘there’ – ha! Or, most probably: Horrid Herod likely feared any financial ability of mine to continue legal activity against him in daMan’s ‘court’. I had undertaken a lawsuit to modify physical care custody of Mirzah, Zane and Jesse back to me all right –– with all of the credit to be given over to Dr. Herod Edinsmaier and to Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive for my impoverishment, for my having absolutely no more money whatsoever with which to carry it forth by way of Mr. Jazzy Jinx, Ms. Carlotta Klutz or any other bona fide licensed and bar – admitted attorney for that matter. Pro se, therefore, I began. And I … Dr. Legion True … managed in absolutely every one of all of its aspects and details and by Friday on the 04th day of November 1994, had taken to completion at the ends of the Iowa appellate court system then … a Trial Three and an Appeal Two from that third trial’s decree order. A week or so over 2½ entire years’ worth of lawyering myself and my sons. Because? Because I could pay no one else to do it any better than I could do it –– and … and all that while holding down a few other positions as well. Accounting, thus, in this … The Opera … for Act Three, Parts Four and Five. Absolutely all of it realized and accomplished all by myself –– without one dollar to one attorney. In nothing more than cookbook style is written the Code of Iowa. A formula – or recipe – like design then this codification is which easily facilitated for me, a detail person by nature anyhow, a process whereby all of the documents and all of the sequential administration of the agenda and all of the chronological events throughout Act Three … I could, their first time out of the starting gate on any legal aspect with correct wording and grammar and formatting and notarization and stamping and filing and my never, not even one time, missing one set timetable deadline nor my ever having to ask for even one continuance because of incompetence during any phase of it all, … I could achieve at the least the very same result which Ms. Klutz had realized for me … after both parts of Act Two. Certainly no worse an outcome than that which she had garnered for the Boys and me! And save myself the $125.00 per hour in the process which, thanks literally to Dr. True’s Career – Killer Herry, I did not have anyhow! I prepared and put together from interrogatories, from production of documents, from other discovery, from the subpoenaing of a half a dozen or so of the 15 witnesses for my side! as well as from all of the written replies and appropriate responses back to Mr. Shindy Scheisser that were necessary, all of those returned to him (and, therefore, also to Dr. Edinsmaier) in an on – time fashion too, a five – day trial in the State of Iowa’s Second Judicial District up to, including and through a specific solo appellate court appearance occurring for a mere measly and quite precisely 10 minutes’ worth on Tuesday morning, 07 June 1994, to argue ‘my case’ in person before the State’s Court of Appeals’ bench of three, seated judges inside the State Capitol Building’s pompously august courtroom. And, finally, ‘my case’s’ … finale: a written case submission from that appellate panel’s decision which was sent on up to the highest echelon at all possible for Dr. Legion True and her Truemaier Boys: the Supreme Court of the State of Iowa. So. In the proverbial nutshell then, it is fairly clear and the conclusion from the last sentence of the last paragraph could most certainly be drawn that with respect to every bloody one of all of these scenarios of legal activity to get back my Truemaier Boys … Dr. Legion True lost. Were that to be someone’s supposition or assumption, then that person would be utterly and entirely … correct. Of course, I lost. In addition to the most obvious, egregious and damning of courtroom antics and wrongs in sustaining, in continuing, in even promoting the abuse of minor children and the violence and terror against DEhumans in general and against me in particular, there is, at play, yet quite another much less acknowledged but nevertheless pissant mess at work here and one found succinctly encapsulated within the memorable spring Y2003 quotation from Actress Cybill Shepherd recounting to a couple of Newsweek reporters … the 16 May issue of that year … about her recent performance in a film detailing the life of one Ms. Martha Stewart, “A lot of it has to do with envy. There’s just something about being a blonde and being very powerful and walking into a room and acting as if you have as much power as everyone else in the room that really pisses people off. I think it’s the beauty issue, too. Beauty is so envied, and there’s so much hatred.” Of course, it is an understood given that Ms. Shepherd, when she submitted there what she did about living beings … blonde, was referring only to Not Males who are blonde, that is, to us saffron – haired DEhumans, and not at all to yellow – topped Males. And the “room” of which she spoke? That meant for the blonde, DEhuman thing in the room who was me, Dr. Legion True, at least three, different district courtrooms and one very, very fancy state capitol building one. In other words, not only had this cuntly blonde, acting empowered, pissed off Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, I had also fucking pissed off a whole ‘nother gathering of male judges, another set of four of them, by doing all of this –– and doing it very, very well! By … myself alone! As was stated, without one dollar paid out to any attorney for the construct which was Part Five, another second appeal that is, just a best guestimate of the out – of – pocket expense to me for only the appeal of Part Four to the three – judge panel of the Iowa Court of Appeals … alone … came to upwards of $8,000.00! To be most specific then, this cost amount did not include in it any sums accrued because of the five – day, third district trial, also pro se, namely, The Opera’s Part Four! Soooo pissed did Dr. Legion True, Wicked – Smart Uppity Blonde Cunt, make one man in particular, one in another folie à deux with The Good Doctor Wonderful, that specific person also the Chief Judge of the Iowa Court of Appeals in mid 1994 … just an ordinary guy named Allen Donnellson … that I did not win back the legal parental right to even one telephone call to any one of my three kiddos. Let alone, a long – distance conversation with one, two or all three of them on any regular or routine, above – board basis. As a matter of fact, it was the final Supreme Court affirmation of Donnellson’s gaveling in his prior Court of Appeals majority (but not unanimous) decree that affirmed what had been the preceding state district trial judge’s opinion. That is to say, at the very, very end of every step which I could possibly pursue, there was at that conclusion then the declaration that I continue to pay this man, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier… a man who made in annual salary Second Judicial District Judge Harley Butcher admittedly wrote “20 times what Legion earns” … child support throughout 81 months of six, brutal Iowa winters’ worth when I had no heat in my home until Mirzah’s age of 18. And, furthermore! to pay it out to Herry every subsequent year as Zane and as Jesse each graduated from high school at the very same monthly rate for two children and for one child as it had originally been set at for all three children! All of this –– while never, never getting to so much as speak to any one of my kids! let alone, to keep any sort of company with them or to be able to reach out and to actually touch any one of them! * * * * On weekends, at night, at lunch breaks, early, early in the morning rising often at 3 or 4 a.m. the very same as I had done throughout all four years of the veterinary medical program of study and all four years of the subsequent PhD research on veterinary microbiology, I wrote reams and reams of documents, put together massive multiples of bound tomes variously entitled by such phrases as “Appellant’s Brief and Argument,” “Appellant’s Reply Brief,” and “Joint Appendices, Volumes I, II and III” that, by Iowa Code, had to be placed in certain colored binders, blue ones, then gray ones, then white ones. The latter volumes were upwards of 1,500 pages per each one, and the coded requirement was for 21 copies –– of everything! And … I continued to live off of baked potatoes, milk and bananas for dessert –– that which had become the usual supper since my Truemaier Boys left Havencourt Drive. Truly never before, however, as I had once expressed at my job interview with Dr. Joplin when applying for Forestry’s secretarial position, had “I used my education every day” on such an intense daily basis and at such a feverish pitch. Friends would call or I would talk to Grace or László, to Adam or Abraham, my two champions from Quaker Meeting. They and another Mother on Trial with whom, as a matter of fact, I had gone to junior high school and who herself was going up against an attorney ex – husband, yet another goddamn – perceived community pillar, for custody of her own two daughters, ones about the very same ages as my Boys, telephoned to ask me if she –– plus her own mama, the kiddos’ grandma and about 85 years old –– could please come to my court sessions to not only check it all out for themselves and because of their pending war but also to watch the Court, that is, to court – watch! on my behalf as well –– along with the kindly vigilance of my other friends –– if I thought their presences and ‘their watching’ wouldn’t actually go the other way and … “hurt” ‘my case’. They all came. How their being there could hurt me I truly did not know. Then. Of my two “other – mother” Ancestors – in – Training, Margaret Sagely was ashes, therefore already a Righteous Ancestor Mother; but Frieda Chicken Guthrie wasn’t yet. No matter that Frieda’s belovéd husband Al was sometimes weakened and physically unable to escort her, she by herself alone would motor on over to the Storm County Courthouse or accompany me there –– at all times with her walking stick, frugally packed lunch and a book to read in hand –– if ordered by daJudge to sit out in the courthouse hallways … time after time. Consistently throughout hearing after motion after legal activity inside those courtroom walls then, all of these people took time off from work or from their other labors and made different arrangements for their other weekday activities and events in order to sit behind me, always on the presiding judge’s right side and Herry’s, or more accurately Mr. Scheisser’s, left. Often each with notepads, tablets and pens –– taking notes. I cannot think of a single time wherein I actually had to appear alone before Second Judicial District Court Judge Harley Butcher or before any number of same – level judges, every one of them male, every one of them fathers themselves and who adjudicated the interim issues which had also arisen before the actual Trial Three commenced. Daddee – Herry Edinsmaier frequently did not show at all. Hugely androcentric that state of this affair … is. Dr. Edinsmaier’s arguments at these litiginous times were presented entirely and only by Attorney Shindy Scheisser or by one or another of Mr. Scheisser’s firm’s flunkies. No one, sitting in as supporters behind Herry’s table but Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive a time or two, appeared on the other side of the courtroom’s gallery. Ever. Curious it always appeared to me, however: the outright sexist discrimination –– blatantly demonstrated against me, the mother in ‘the custody case’, right from the start –– on at least one point specifically. At any time any of these issues involved witnesses’ testimonies other than Herry’s or mine, the mother’s testifiers –– all of them including Closest – Comrades Grace and László, of course, and Frieda, too –– all of them had to sit sequestered outside of the courtroom in the hallway and away from their being able to hear anyone else’s witnessing testimony. So did Herry’s testifiers –– except for one such person: Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive. Once I objected –– to her being permitted to stay inside the courtroom before her call to go up on the witness stand. I objected to her being able to hear all of others’ testimony –– subsequently, then, having the chance ... “to adjust” … her own! Well, ya’ can imagine, Jury! Judge Butcher summarily banged his gavel and proclaimed loudly that the mother’s objection was utterly overruled! that Ms. McLive indeed most certainly could stay inside the courtroom and remain seated behind Herry’s and Scheisser’s table at all times –– no matter as to what discrimination I seemed to think his fucking declaration be! Only that one time did I bother to try to object to daJudge’s biased blatancy. Ms. McLive’s subsequent testimonial lies spawned because of her having first overheard other persons’ testimonies with, then, the titanic opportunity to tailor her successive statements “to match” what she’d earlier learned from these other witnesses? This fuck of McLive’s was just soooo not worth any more expended effort on my part … than that one quite – overruled objection of mine. Importantly, I can remember thinking from time to time just exactly how it was that I actually “believed in the legal system.” I mean I, in point of fact, thought that I would, there within it, “the legal system,” receive back out of it … justice. I can also remember poised, courteous, calm and balanced Grace Portia throwing her head back at least one time and on several other occasions just outright heartily guffawing because of my sheer naïveté as well as of my stupendous stupidity at this very suggestion of mine: that if I “just told the Truth, why, justice would prevail because it’s … it’s … it is supposed to … to … to jus’ work out that way!” My several friends’ court – watching, of course, wasn’t the only thing that really, really wiped out ‘my case’ and did me in. The blonde thing in the room who was me and who soooo, so pissed off this latest and last collection of four male judges didn’t even rate so much as the physical – contact visits with her Sons that the slaughterers of their own children’s mothers routinely get to have inside maximum security prison walls with the crop of kiddos these dead women had themselves grown from such killers’ haploid sperm seeds! About this I am thinking, though, that what murders my soul the most are the females, the ones such as Mehitable, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, the henchwomen who work for literal mother – fuckers such as King George’s and Brother Jeb’s “Fathers’ Rights Initiative” men, those in the thoroughly nefarious yet massively profits – making “industry” completely ancillary to (and utterly dependent upon) this nation’s family court system. That “industry” consists of its “custody evaluators” such as the frumpy, wussy Ms. Carrie Canard –– and my own sister Ardys who, although these gazillions of women have all known of the misogyny since they were little eight – year – old girls, are unwilling to, who simply refuse to acknowledge that this takes place soooo easily and that they, the male – identified DEhuman Not Males, are, … in addition to the woman – loathing men, … the problem!!! I am, of course, talking about the type of brutally monstrous thugs one of whom Dearest Friend Rachel repeatedly experienced in that admissions and postpartum nurse when she gave birth for the second time on April Fool’s Day Y2003, and about all of the other bullies whom we Mothers on Trial, we noncustodial mamas make frighteningly envious and seem to evidently threaten and at whose jealous hands we such moms –– hourly –– have to live through their odious, outrageous and … raw … backlash. The very fact that these women “help” the legal system visit such mother – fucking messes down upon other impoverished, suddenly – made – childless women is to us Mothers on Trial and to our friends and supporters unconscionable. Do I think they don’t know what they’re doing? As I apparently didn’t truly know what I was doing when I walked into all of those custody evaluation and subsequent courtroom sessions –– when I walked into all of them … believing if I was simply honest that … then … I would be walking out of them with justice served? Or, do I believe, even knowing whom they are screwing and when, that these harassers, browbeaters and torturers then choose to continue to go ahead and persist in fucking over mamas like me? I believe the latter –– because of what is Truth about judges. They know. And they have always known, these women have, that they are destroying me. That is precisely why they choose to do it! Because they can … Just as the judges have agendae so do, too, all of these male – identified women! Because they can. A reporter for the Des Moines Register once asked me in January of Y2003, “Do you believe, Dr. True, that you’re like those mothers who lose custody of their children and all parental rights to them because they are alcoholics or drug abusers or prostitutes or participants in pornography and the slave – trafficking of women and children or certifiably mentally incompetent because of psychoses or retardation. Or, not?” It was a good question really and one which I had not asked of myself and that anyone who truly, truly knew me, both my friends and the folks who hate me, had never thought to ask of me either –– most probably because –– most likely because … I am just not seen by any one of them as a person at all like any of those about whom this reporter had just described and asked! Never to excess do I imbibe alcoholic products – never. I do not do drugs nor do I prostitute myself or even gamble. Not one dinero squandered upon a lottery ticket –– ever! I utterly loathe all forms of pornography and the flesh – pushing industries and that no matter what Herry, Ms. McLive, Mr. Shindy Scheisser, any of Herry’s family including Mi Sprision O’Revinnoco or Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier himself, Storm County Sheriff Stout or the types of buttock – jabbing brutes from the SpaChezResort Sixth Floor Hotel wielding hypodermic needles full of sedative and hypnotic chemicals want to get away with claiming about me, I am not and have never been … “certifiable” –– so it was a question that held details in it with which I am not at all familiar as a parent. As a mother. Nor, as regards me, Dr. Legion True, neither are my friends nor are my attackers and foes. When I explained “because they can” to her, the Register reporter just could not seem to grasp this concept as it pertains to mother – fucking, to the taking away from a woman –– if she simply pisses you off enough –– her entire constitutional right to parent her own children, let alone, to even be in their lives at all. Inside the United States of America. Inside any other of the World’s countries including, as well, all of those others apparently … westernized, too. I tried to help her see that her incredulity was not at all unusual, that we Mothers on Trial encounter this stupefaction about ex – husband and judicial misogyny … daily! Every single one of us to whom this mother – fucking has happened inside an American court of family law –– without just cause –– is usually not even believed, let alone, granted validation, given empathy or shown an iota of compassion. By anyone! I told her that I believed and that I felt that I am different than the noncustodial mothers she had characterized. Not better, just different. She already knew when she telephoned to try to interview me that there was a passel of us women, that I was not the only one. Only one of us would not have made for her … a story! And she indeed had been given the assignment to do a series of articles on those of us unbelievable “mothers who just seemed to lose all rights to our children for no apparent reason!” We Mothers on Trial are in a league of our own which society –– which all of it … the public at large, that is –– if mother – fucking has not specifically happened to one of the women directly inside their very own lives –– just cannot fathom … exists. It cannot. What the investigative journalist did know, in addition however, is that I, Dr. Legion True, within the entire State of Iowa was absolutely the only one who would talk to her about it –– because, and only because, my children, my Zane, Jesse and Mirzah, were themselves finally all out of college. Finished. And all of them graduated, the last one of the three literally just a couple of weeks prior to her visit with me on the telephone. Jesse, the last one to graduate college, had just done so Saturday, 22 December Y2002, at the very, very top of his entire University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences class, the Winter Solstice again –– and AmTaham’s and my birthdays !!! The Righteous Grandfathering Ancestor, a decade dead of course, had turned … 83 on Jesse’s graduation day, and I myself was then this very same day now … 55 years of age! No one else of us Mothers on Trial could talk to the Register reporter. No one else of us Iowans had, at the time she was wanting to put together her stories, a child, let alone, all of her children out of college and, therefore, entirely out of and away from … … the judicial reach of her ex – husband’s or ‘the Court’s’ clench and full – throttle choke upon her throat. All others of us Mothers on Trial must keep a muzzle on our vocal chords because if we do not? Jury, if we do not?! Why, more holocaust than that which has already been visited down upon us will –– “legally” –– befall upon us women. Hours of our time and our opinions, ideas and wants for raising up our babies, more than those which have already been revoked from us, will be rescinded. And more dollars, which we don’t even have, will be ordered taken away from us and paid out to the men who make so much more than we mothers ever will. We can … count on it! Because he can. And the male – identified women or ‘the Courts’ who “help” these ex – men fuck over the kiddos’ mamas? About these women and judges? We mothers publicly state –– as to reporters –– absolutely … nothing! Nothing, that is, until –– now. About judges further, the vast majority of whom of course are male, that Iowa State University poly sci professor, Dr. Steffen Schmidt believes in his USA Today snippet clipping of Tuesday, 17 September 2002**, that because of their own agendae and intentions and with their least little bit of tweaking and twisting around and screwing with the laws of the people of the land called Iowa –– or of any of the other states’ citizenry as well –– and by way of their very abuse of power, these men who “represent” the peoples’ interpretation and thus also the public’s intentions, … these men willfully “make” the laws come out the way they always wanted them to come out before the very first piece of evidentiary testimony … is even heard!!! And I add because I am living, mother – fucked proof of it: especially … if any of that “evidence” comes from out of a bunch of multiple boxes’ worth belonging to one brash, cunty, bitchy, uppity upstart of a blonde. “Daughter, don’t piss off a judge and, Woman, for goddesses’ sakes, do not do it as a blonde!” my own mother Mehitable should have protected me with such a life – saving admonition … I am left thinking. About that backlash coming at me from my very own mother and specifically of which Ancestral Feminist Dr. Phyllis Chesler writes regarding the children’s maternal grandmother in her 1986 Mothers on Trial: the Battle for Children and Custody, during all of my preparation leading up to Trial Three or Part Four, I still had had telephone contact with Mehitable. She wanted to know all of every detail, but I could not trust that what I told her … would ever remain with her. From a lifelong lesson I received in the United States mails a few years back on Friday, 20 October 1989, and fully took straight to heart … as well as exactly why Lawyer Jazzy Jinx had immediately and correctly seen through her jealousy and spitefulness and subsequently … stingingly … warned me about this woman’s ever, ever testifying, I kept close to my vest a letter sent to me from Mother Me hit able. This letter consisted of three pages of emboldened, hugely scripted scrawls and had on its first page, centered, her title of “Negative Remarks.” What followed that entitling squiggle and this person’s introductory statement of “When I wrote 10 positive remarks for your divorce case, I also at that time wrote 10 negative ones. Here they are –– ” is thus … verbatim and in the woman’s own format: “Tolerance –– Quick to anger –– very outspoken –– Fault – finding in others. On a scale of 1 to 10, she’d score a short 3. Authority –– Gesturing, finger – pointing. Commanding and demanding. ‘Tender power’ could surely be gained if voice were softened and facial expressions more pleasant. Choices –– This great liberation with ‘my choice’ is carried to a degree that defeats the purpose. Snap judgments often pin her to the wall. It’s ME first. Sharing and Caring –– On the surface, this quality is hidden. Profanity and sharp remarks diminish her chances to be well – liked. Sacrifices –– Slow to understand her own wrongdoings. Suffers a great deal of emotional pain – unbending, unyielding. Respect and Pride –– Deliberately rejects much of what our social structure advocates as normal. Seems not to bother her if she ‘steps on toes.’ Independence –– Over – extends herself. When something fails for her, she does not seek help soon enough. Trust –– Wary – Constantly on guard. Accuses others. Will not take suggestions or advice. Leaves the impression of being ‘hard – boiled.’ Traditions –– Opposes nearly all the age – old traditions. Sees no reason to get back to basics. Priorities –– ? ? ? ?” From hardly – teachable Teacher Mehitable Natures True, my own ‘protector’, this letter is signed off on with … “Lovingly, Mom.” Since this woman is ‘legally’ blinded and unable to drive her own personage to the Storm County courtroom then, these mailed ‘words’ of hers to me are Mehitable’s idea of “support” to her very own baby in that child’s time of such great need. And LOSS. These words are Mehitable’s “motherly” version of going to The Matt and … to The Ends of the Earth –– for me, Dr. Legion True. That … of what exact male – identified backlash against their very own adult daughters Professor Chesler documents. **http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2002-09-17-oppose_x.htm * * * * May with its third anniversary of the divorce, June and July passed by no more uneventfully than three paying jobs and one very huge and not so monetarily profitable one researching and writing legal documents can provide for excitement. Ms. Phillipa Chance telephoned at the beginning of that quarter to say that orders were up again and that temporarily, at least, she could surely use me back on at the junk mail factory at the same hours “if you have any time left for that,” she’d been kind enough and considerate to remember. Saturdays and Sundays I could not believe the numbers of folks who seemed to think that making The Deli their first breakfast stop even as early as 6 a.m. on First Day mornings or the one for pastries and coffee on the way back home from church was a routine, must – do order of their week. Gert and I, out of all of the other deli workers, were almost exclusively left with a couple of hours of pots’ and pans’ scrubbing every single one of those days. Hardly anyone else –– and certainly never, never the men except for its smallish bossman who possessed a princely baker’s heart it seemed to me –– found themselves in the boring, windowless back at those lackluster washtubs with the giant, hovering spray nozzle and all of the various sizes and styles of scouring pads. Not another man. At this point my time spent on preparation for the upcoming agroforestry conference of the future’s August 1993, actually the fourth incoming wage source, was the least. I put in approximately 18 to 20 hours weekends as well as Friday evenings at The Deli –– and this was every weekend … with 16 more at the junk mail factory Mondays through Thursdays from 8 p.m. until midnight. Then back every morning five days per week for six hours a day beginning at 9 a.m. at the Forestry Department. It worked. But barely. Whatever time was left over in between –– coffee breaks, lunches –– all of those smidgens of moments were consumed with the work on … ‘my case’. These were the warm spring and summer months, my months of “vacation”: I did not have to worry about slamming down through the Brookside Forest to Ol’ Black and zooming it and myself home to Havencourt Drive, thus every day taking the 55 to 60 minutes during all of my noon lunches there and back to my Biology Building workstation –– to flush all of the drains and run the faucets for fear of their freezing up and bursting. And I could sleep a full and sound six – hour stretch because I did not have to answer that first of two alarm clocks … which had been specifically and nightly, thus routinely, set from the Novembers through my Marches for 2:30 a.m. … in order to rise and perform those same pipes’ saving machinations. While this agenda worked for one lone Dr. Legion True, accountable day to day for no babies’ direct care except through Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s mandate of monthly child support payments, I cannot even begin to imagine what herculean effort it would take to “do” this agenda with subsequent scheduling through one to 1½ to two decades of “living” –– had I been trying to support myself without, as then I was succeeding at “doing,” any dollars’ help from federal, state or county aid as a young, single mama –– with a baby or two. Or, three. With three … Truemaier Boys! One of the phrases in Mehitable’s letters since –– since my not performing daily in this reverse – Olympian manner for just a couple of years now –– is … “admire your long, long working hours.” Whatever gave any parents The Fucking Right “to expect” … “to admire” this freaking insanity in their adult children?! That their kids are up “to good things” by killing themselves slaving away for hours and hours and hours and hours, for years on end –– in order just to save their parents the embarrassment or the humiliation or whatever it is that these parents perceive the much – needed help as: that is, the help which is their daughters’ utilizing taxpayers’ dollars for personal aid –– in order to assist their families to modestly live yet not utterly enslave themselves? That it apparently is “a bad thing” to provide backing to the poor people, most of them females, in going through the days of their lives “as other folks” do –– who just seem by the “luck of the draw,” by the fucking luck of the status of their birthings to turn out more … blessed … and more … backed … than they?! I call it a “reverse – Olympian” state precisely because –– it is not a good thing. It is a terrible and grievous state of things. This type of living is not to be sought after and, therefore, rewarded as “worthy of medals and praise.” What it is –– and what it only is –– is crazy – making. Insanity. And what a self – righteous, acid – spitting parent who tosses this “admire” spew at me is truly saying is, “You’re poor. Therefore, you are less than I am. Therefore, I get to treat you as such! As the DEhuman that you are! How could you have ‘let’ yourself become so low?! I get to expect that you have to labor in this manner. But I? I don’t have to! Ya’ see, I don’t have to –– because I am better than you are!” And, in my particular case, Mehitable only further reiterated her past puking acerbity, “You idiot! You friggin’, bloody idiot! You lost a marriage to a doctor! To a doctor, after all! How could you?! How could you be so stupid?! No wonder you sank so low. You weren’t soft, deferent and servile enough for him. You deserve to have to work like this for him!” Zephyr, Lady and Rex thrived. Well, as near as I could tell, without their Zane, Jesse and Mirzah there to attend to them they did –– and with only me to perform those pet chores. Zephyr was nigh unto at least ten years old and quite possibly by then 11, figuring back from the night he had, as the skinniest, half – grown mouser he was, first meowed on our wintry doorstep in Columbia, Missouri, that blustery January of 1983. I did feed Rex her “groceries” regularly, of course, but simply had no time at all to allow her out of the huge aquarium and her hollow log hideout within it to slither about the living room for exercise as Jesse and Zane had been able to commonly do for her. Lady was perhaps the least well – off of the Boys’ pets. She was the only bird now, by herself and all alone –– so I removed the nesting material from her cage. There were no more eggs lain and no more zebra finches ever emerged –– such as had been quite the source of Zane’s pride. He had so carefully –– several times a day –– mashed up the frozen spinach leaves in warm water so that Lady could regurgitate their seemingly incessant meals to the multiple clutches of babies she successfully had hatched when Zane was … around. The piano stood silent Although resting off at the north end of the living room, the great centerpiece of our condominium’s largest room, the old, old console, remained quiet the entire time the Boys were gone. I left the keyboard cover off so that the octaves and the flats and the sharps were keys most memorably visible to me, but I just could not sit myself down onto its simple, plain bench to play them. During the few, precious moments I still took to rock and rock and rock and to stare into its blacks and ivories, I came mightily close to truly believing that quite possibly I –– and Jesse, especially –– never would again. Food, that is my intake of it, continued more or less as an afterthought. When I was there The Deli provided, on the run of course and only while standing up, whatever I needed for nutritional sustenance. I took a piece of fruit for the 10:15 p.m. break at the junk mail factory, but Friend – and Wisest Teenager – Eric I no longer found to be working there so brought only one apple or banana with me during the period of this second temp stint. I always packed a quick sack for my working lunch at the Forestry Department. Always. I cannot remember buying a single lunch at the nearby Memorial Union nor feeding any vending machine in any campus building, not even one time –– a frugal habit which I still find myself holding today. As a matter of fact, I cannot remember the last time I placed coin inside such a slot –– unless it would have been when, still married to Herry and living on Othello, that man actually ordered me to spend for cans of soda and give them to the Boys from out of gas station machines when, from daycare and work, we stopped in on our way home to fill up –– and … only minutes from his bachelor pad’s pantry inventory of plenty of pop! The only times when I supped at restaurants had been those such as during the wonderful days of April’s month in which fell Secretaries’ Day. I mean to tell you the Forestry Department really, really knows how to treat –– and feed –– a secretary! Noon after noon after noon its professors and boss types squired us three, all of it at their own individual expense, to some of Ames finest. It must’ve taken them going on three weeks’ worth of weekday lunches for us to be feted by all of the folks who apparently wanted to! It was an awesome eating month for me, that I’ll say! Plus the company of persons whom I joined while dining –– was quite splendid … as well! Money, that is, the matters of money, were not only not an afterthought, a subscript, a postscript, financial matters were all – consuming. Had they not been “I so would not have put in all of those hours, Mehitable!” But fortunately for me, and in my opinion for all people, these concerns consumed only up to the point that if I had enough to keep on paying the bills on time or in monthly installments and to continue buying copies of all of the legal documents which I typed, then I considered myself to actually be very, very well – to – do money – wise. I was hardly in to investing and worried myself about mutual index versus bond funds or international small caps versus blue chips or REITs versus gold bullion not in the least, let alone, about contributions to traditional IRAs or home mortgage refinancing over 15 years instead of 30 or about anything at all long – term and retirement … about anything more than the life insurance policy upon the Good and Wonderful Doctor Pilot’s life and upon which Frieda Chicken Guthrie so encouraged me to keep up with its premium payments. Talk about knowing how to, let alone, only being able to … “live in the moment!” Wall Street was a locale with an unknown address to me. For office couture … of which I did not require much … I shopped only Goodwill and Salvation Army. As those Dr. Herod Edinsmaier – forced poisons called psychotropic drugs expanded me, Supervisor Rosalind Franklin gave me several skirts and blouses and even a winter coat she no longer wanted. I hit Wal – Mart only once in awhile when filling the court – ordered doping prescriptions for lithium –– which itself only kept piling on the poundage as I kept … in “legalized” compliance with the Mother – Fucking Herry – Daddee, Shindy Scheisser and daJudge … popping its pills. And, like the piano – playing, I stayed away from The Mall, too. There was neither the dime nor the time for The Mall; from that waste of space … The Mall … it was not at all hard to stay away … for months and months and months on end. Another habit of frugality I still own today. The only time someone finds me at The Mall is in the evening or on the weekend afternoons –– specifically for the matinees at the five Dollar – Theatres’ complex there! And when I do visit the local shopping mall, I frequently find that I have no idea about the kiosks, the stores and their products presently taking up the various plots inside of it. So many of them have simply up and changed since the last time, there, that I had frittered away any of my precious time. Income tax issues I had absolutely wonderful, local help with by way of the all – volunteer individuals, the VITA folks, of the federal Voluntary Income Tax Assistance program whose giving – back service to their communities consists in establishing free – aid clinics at the local libraries temporarily. One person, in particular, I so appreciated because of his patience, his reliability and his background. A farmer like AmTaham except for the three tax – preparation months every winter, Mr. McCay spoke deliberately and fairly; he delivered his wisdom and advice with the utmost of kindness. And showed up. He was there at a tiny, quiet study room in the back of the public library every single time that I, in particular, needed him to be. Doctors I never saw except for the regular monthly med – checks with Dr. Singh after first having my blood analyzed for its level of lithium; that was the entire extent of my seven – or eight – minute walk into and back out of his office, actually a room he borrowed twice a week at the county’s local outpatient mental health agency. There I told Dr. Singh on a couple of occasions that I thought he and I were both “suspect,” I the alleged nut case and he the East Indian – born and – trained psychiatrist and, therefore, not by western measures and standards to be taken by us Americans, most particularly by those who are his colleagues and counterparts in any of the human medical specialties, as vastly knowledgeable and as seriously competent as the physicians of European and Caucasian descent. He quite agreed with me! –– that we both were, indeed, suspect –– and smiled a lot. I liked him, also a lot; and, for what he did whether for me or for others, well, Dr. Legion True thought him most competent and most knowledgeable. He used to travel up to Ames from his job down in Des Moines at a charity cases’ hospital emergency room where I’ll bet Dr. Singh does a lot of … good things … for really, really poor people: poor in dollars –––– and especially poor in their spirits, too. For the lithium which other doctors back at the Sixth Floor Hotel had “legally” forced upon me at the behind – the – scenes’ – behest of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s petition to ‘the Court’ and at Herry’s getting Sheriff Stout to follow through on in order to dope me up –––– I had a plan. And the plan was to quit the mind – stupefying, body – altering and mother – fucking stuff! Altogether and cold turkey. But not until after Act Three Part Four. Not until just immediately after the point that I could prove to ‘the Court’ –– and ultimately to Herry –– that I not only could and would follow physicians’ orders and was more than willing to try “to get well” if that’s what it took to get back my Boys but that those particular medical orders of theirs were, in fact for me, utterly useless and, what’s more, destructive! Brought me harm they did! Just as what would have been done to me by daMan who had been given a court – ordered decree which said he, because Herry was also a physician, this particular ex – husband then had The DEhuman Right to force onto me his own design for … “a program of mental therapy” –––– had I indeed assented to any such deal in order to try and win back even a bit of “permitted” or “legal” time in my Truemaier Boys’ lives! I love to imagine –– although it is impossibly difficult in past history or with any such future within my lifetime to come up with there ever existing such a place on the Planet –– where the tables of “family” court – ordering dicta might be turned, … might be flipped and reversed. That is, where the women designed and decided upon such agendae and programs of mental therapy in which their ex – husbands, in order to have in their lives such breathing beings as the full – term products of their haploid spermatozoal cells, had to participate. And complete! Not to mention … where these women would even be thought of as “allowed the choice,” or not, to wield this insane power suchlike over the men! There came a point only late in our relationship where I began to actually think that I might be able, even for just a little bit, to trust Dr. Singh –– so I told him of my plan for the lithium. I told Dr. Singh but made no promises to him. I simply stated that I wished to keep speaking with the individual and family counselor, Mr. Keith Log, for as long as I wanted and for as long as Mr. Log was able to keep me on as a part – time, hit – and – miss kind of client of his since the money was always an issue with me and since my visits to Therapist Log were to no extent whatsoever at all covered by my medical insurance through the University. At least after 2½ years and one car accident without it, I now had health insurance! Yeah, a used, navy Chevy Celebrity Eurosport wagon which AmTaham had found for me just before Ol’ Black came into my life … shattered! I had been forced off an Ames city roadway onto the shoulder embankment by a man changing lanes –– changing lanes before he looked over his right shoulder to see if it were safe to do so. It hadn’t been. He did not signal and was, in point of fact by turning into the lane in which I traveled a couple of car lengths behind him, headed straight into my driver’s side doorway. Inside that split, split second in which a person has to strategize on escape maneuvers before crashing, I remembered that I had insurance on my so belovéd, new – to – me! station wagon –– but none upon my person. It is state law in Iowa for vehicle owners to possess at least liability insurance in order to be able to drive their cars legally but not for the owners, nor for any other people for that matter, to carry health insurance on themselves, upon their own bodies! Driving that wagon alone, I jumped the curb to elude his impact upon my personage and swung the wagon around in an arc of about 45 degrees so that its passenger door and frame’s support column slammed into the lamppost before it, with me still at the wheel totally and entirely untouched, came to an immediate stop, of course. I remember seeing the young driver’s mouth still wide open as he entirely failed to steer out of my lane and back into his own original one. He was just gawping and gawking at the misfortune he had just caused me while not at all navigating his own vehicle back out of my thoroughfare so that I possibly could have moved back from the easement onto the street and avoided, up there, the various signposts and light poles. The frame’s column came to rest only a couple of inches from my right shoulder caving inward as it did with both passenger – side doors following it. Had anyone else been riding alongside and belted in those passenger seats either in front or in the back, then I would not have even been able to initiate this course of action because those people would have certainly died. And if I had not been able to, then … I surely would have. I received a shocking, a stunning telephone call from Zane informing me on the early evening of Thursday, 09 July 1992, that he was speaking to me from … my mother’s kitchen, from Mehitable’s! She apparently had wanted to see him during the summer and, of course, fearing Herry, had paid for Zane’s flight herself. Zane did not know that I hadn’t at all been told of his coming, his innocently believing that Herry had “made all the plans” when, in fact, Mehitable had only spoken once to Herry before Zane’s arrival at the Eastern Iowa Airport. Zane was to stay until another Thursday one month later, the 06th of August, and to daily work at his and my cousins’, Wyman’s and Amanda’s, hybrid seed corn business just outside of the Burg there. No money accompanied Zane –– but a letter did. A letter to Mehitable from Herry detailed how she, my mother, was to prohibit all contact between Zane and his own mama. Zane whispered that he had not given it to her and that he wasn’t going to. He never did. In addition to the three, whirlwind weekend ones to the Burg where, when there, I slept in the back of my newest wagon, the 1986 Ol’ Black Eurosport, the last visit I had with Zane before Trial Three commenced I took off work to drive the five – hour round trip it is from Ames to the Cedar Rapids Airport and back that last Thursday my darling eldest graced Iowa. * * * * Grace, Frieda, László, Linda, Adam and Abraham all personally geared up with me for the last week of August 1992, when Trial Three, the Part Four of The Opera, was about to get underway. Fifteen people were either lined up or subpoenaed to appear –– including Ms. Twyla Smith, the Boys’ barber, who had lost her shop and been forced because of its fire into retirement. Mr. Varry Wussamai I knew was going to be a hostile witness, but what I so did not know ahead of trial or of my subpoenaing him was that he personally was quite acquainted with and very familiar to and friendly with Judge Harley Butcher! While Mr. Varry Wussamai lived in Ames, he hadn’t always. Apparently he had actually grown up and gone to school, even worked at sign – making for a time, in the same hometown as daJudge himself had! Absolutely astounding to me was the fact that through the process of pretrial Interrogatories and Production of Documents, I found myself informing all of my friends the day before Trial Three that Herry had … just that day … finally gotten back to me, through Shyster Scheisser of course, his answers and that my friends should be expecting not one witness to testify. For the side of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, the Boys’ dad. Discovery had revealed in these replies back to me that Pettifogger Shindy Scheisser intended to call NOT ONE WITNESS to the stand – NOT EVEN HERRY, the Boys’ father himself, –––– who wielded complete control and power over them and over me! I stated in a specific document submitted in petition form that mine were “children in need of assistance” from ‘the Court’. Not only had I been denied a guardian ad litem for the three Truemaier Boys when I had so petitioned for one for them –– in early March 1992, even before AmTaham was dead –– by way of my giving ‘the Court’ the names of four different lawyers from which it could have chosen one! for the Boys, all of the attorneys male and all for whom I would have myself paid, but I also had had during all of this pretrial shit … my SpaChezResort Sixth Floor Hotel medical records stolen by Terrorist Tormentor Herry! I use the verb “to steal” because for a year –––– for a mother – fucking year before the date of the trial’s August 1992 beginning –––– I had, every single last day of the month, reminded myself –– and then further remembered –– to telephone the Medical Records Department and warn them all there about a certain attorney whom they could expect to darken their door seeking exactly that: my medical records! Even if The Fucking Shyster possessed in his hot little fist or in the hands of his hottie paralegal assistants what looked to these records’ keepers to be an officially sanctioned subpoena, all stamped proper – like and sealed, even then, the workers did not, I assured them, have to hand my private documents over … just then. I told these people repeatedly, I told them over and over and over and over … every single month … for a mother – fucking year, that I had a legislated right to submit to ‘the Court’ a piece of pleading known as a “Petition to Quash Subpoena” … first! –– and that the records’ personnel did not have to, right away then, give over to this lawyer or to his lackeys one goddamn sentence of my confidential papers! So. Then. Every month’s single last day through a dozen of them, the director of the medical records room pledged back to me –– she did –– that she would get on the horn just as soon as this grievous breach to my privacy and confidentiality loomed, contact me at one of half a dozen or so telephone numbers with which I’d supplied her and let me know –– so that I would have the 24 hours I was, by law, entitled to –– to file such a petition to quash it. She didn’t. Scheisser’s sweeties appeared, and over to them went every last mother – fucking page of my private medical chronicles. The paralegals were in and out in less than an hour and had strong – armed out with them … all –– absolutely all –– of my 2½ weeks’ worth of Hotel Sixth Floor spa data! The written information garnered during the savagery of those extra days and days and days of hospitalization with which Herry – Daddee had browbeaten me … through his folie à deuxs with ‘the Court’, with daJudge and with Sheriff Stout. And for which holocaustic and gutting thuggery of mother – fuck … I was still paying out at the rate of $15.00 a month in order to try to –– someday –– retire this medical debt! I told the medical records director I was stunned. She replied, “Well, for $15.00 I can make you a copy for yourself –– if you’d like one.” Of course! Of course, I had to have my own friggin’ copy! I had to know what about me “officially,” however inaccurate and outright mother – fuckingly wrong it was, Dirty Herry and Equally Deceiving Scheisser now –– “had privilege to” –– and its knowledge therein! And?! ! ! And to possess same, that is, to own for myself this “medical” fuck all about me! I had to, then, up and mother – fuckingly pay for every single, scripted, er … scribbled … line of it –– as well ! ! ! Where in any of this … is … The Right Thing?! Justice?! Justice for mother?! About three years ago an Indian woman, Ms. Tsianina Snowball, asked me when I recounted this belief of Professor Schmidt’s to her … the one about judges, before any freakin’ piece of evidence is even first heard or seen by them, having already made up their “minds”, … er I mean, having already readied themselves … “to enact The Laws of the Land” as to exactly “how” these men want the outcomes “to be” … aaah, to be tweaked and twisted, that is, “Did you notice the expression on the judge’s face when all of you walked into the courtroom that first day of trial? And then the first thing every morning of it after that?” What she meant was “the Look.” Had I seen each day’s initial “Look” shot from Judge Harley Butcher over to Herry and to Mr. Scheisser sitting there at their own table on daJudge’s left side? “The Look” that Native Americans know so, so well when they, too, … especially when the women and the many mothers among them who are single, appear before daMan in the courtrooms of the Great White –– Controlling –– Fathers? Not until she asked me this –––– years after Part Four had vanished into antiquity –––– had I realized that, indeed, I had seen this thing she termed simply “the Look.” I had soooo seen it! Every single day of the five days, first thing, too, as he strutted up to take his high – backed, black leather throne behind the glorious wood –– just like Ms. Snowball had indicated! Since I was no good at silent, sparring smoke signals and Ms. Tsianina Snowball certainly was, maybe I hadn’t beheld it before. Maybe, and most likely, I hadn’t noted it before because I was still soooo frickin’ stupid: I still had faith in the literally mother – fucking justice system and about which this naïveté of mine on such silliness Grace had soooo tried to warn me! On a white tablet of lined paper I wrote the heading “Big Issues” under which they were listed: “Herry’s acts of keeping me away from the Boys and out of their minds,” “Herry’s acts of economic sabotage and harassment,” “Herry’s and Fannie’s acts of lying and perjury and deception before and at time of Trial Two including withholding from custody evaluator Carrie Canard everything about The Eight Pages,” “Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor’s September 1990 decision was not supported by and was, indeed, contrary to the ‘evidence’ presented wherein the Boys’ best interests were not at all served and there has been a permanent material, unanticipated change from it since anyhow.” Some brief, some of them not so short. All of them true and not too hard to figure out! Owning exactly ‘that’ about which women of certain personage Actress Cybill Shepherd spoke, I strolled into a Storm County, Iowa courtroom controlled by one Judge Harley Butcher then on Wednesday, 26 August 1992, just as confident in my abilities and in my knowledge of them as I was in … possessing the power of the actual facts of … ‘my case’. So. I began. With my organization for the Big Issues, I began: i) witnesses, ii) exhibits and iii) necessary documents for the issues. The witnesses given here in no particular order but called to the stand in a very structured and precise one were Herry – Infatuated Carrie Canard, Therapist Keith Log, Grace, László, Linda, James who was one of Mirzah’s friends from Kate Mitchell Elementary –– with his own mama’s permission of course, Passive Aggressor Varry Wussamai, Other – Mother Frieda Chicken Guthrie, the Boys’ barber Ms. Twyla Smith, Mr. Dave Henderson who was the 69th Street mail carrier in Urbandale as well as Jesse’s football coach and a person who many times had himself personally witnessed Denying and Perjuring Fannie Issicran McLive smoking cigarettes around the 69th Street bungalow when the Boys had been forced to live there, my Forestry boss Dr. Joplin, a counselor with whom the Boys had visited and liked talking to Mr. Lance Rowe and besides myself, the most infamous of folies à deux, Nottingham’s Sheriff McLive and the Kingdom’s Lord and Master himself, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier. I wanted two of the witnesses to bring documents along with them to the Truemaier Boys’ and my third trial, The Opera’s Part Four, this process requiring then a special summons called a subpoena duces tecum which I had also done up and correctly served the two –– including in plenty of time. Fifteen of them total then –– the witnesses –– and none of them, not a one of them a man with whom I was rendezvousing and trysting as a profligate caballero of any flavor in my life. Because there were none! Still. Still two trials later and initiating number three, I soooo took to heart Mr. Jazzy Jinx’s admonition: NO men! Not even the hinting, drifting waft of one! None whatsoever! And there had not been! Most certain I was of the exhibits. They cannot lie. I had notarized affidavits from all three Truemaier Boys. I had Zane’s and Jesse’s personal journals. I had letters home to me from the Boys. Twelve pages of my own testimony from the September 1990 trial, a page of guidelines detailing my requests to ‘the Court’ in view of the changed circumstances. I had a notarized, three – page affidavit from the reporter, Ms. Abbey Gaffey, of the notoriously nefarious, front – page and headlining September 25, 1990 Ames Tribune article. Of course, I had that mother – fucking article itself plus all of the letters which the Tribune’s editor had received because of it. I had telephone bills, both of Herod Edinsmaier’s and of mine plus the billings for the 800 telephone number which I had secured for the Boys and through which conduit they could call me from anywhere, a transcript from an audiotaped telephone conversation with Mirzah, a detailing of the sudden rash of harassing phone calls which László and his partner, Jude, kept receiving at their country home, the threatening letter which Herry – Daddee sent to Therapist Keith Log, a copy of the ratings of West Virginia schools, Urbandale High School Principal Druid’s affidavit and Grace Portia’s affidavit. Of course as well, too, the Opprobrious Eight Pages: the evidence in a modification of custody – case which is that infamously necessary “material change of circumstances” and is, in the hoo – hahs’ legalese jargon, … The Smoking Gun’s Absolute Truth. The most significant of the crucially needed documents was a copy of ‘the Court’ ’s denial back to me after my request for the appointment of a guardian ad litem to represent Jesse Truemaier, Mirzah Truemaier and Zane Truemaier. Of nearly equal weight, I thought, were the copies of the Boys’ journals and their letters home to me, the Ames Tribune article and Ms. Gaffey’s affidavit chronicling the entire generation of that article, Principal Druid’s sworn statement about how he’d come by possessing said article “on me,” and Herry The Daddee’s written threat to Mr. Log. The Wicked – Smart Blonde in … ‘the Court’ ’s … room had my ducks all in a row and was more than confident and strong to go. The first thing … after his gaveling us all down in to “order” … for which I asked ‘the Court’, daMan, daJudge Harley Butcher, … was the production of a document to me from Mr. Shindy Scheisser … well, one truly from Herry. I yet needed to receive … an unaltered hard copy of The Smoking Gun … the Eight Pages! I already had several copies of it, of course, but I wanted to see if Herry or Herry and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive or Herry and any other of his folies’ folks would try to change it in any way. I told Judge Butcher that this request had been part of my formal pretrial Production of Documents’ petition, something which I was fully and legally entitled to receiving … and to receiving before any actual first day of such proceedings! –– but which perversion – riddled and – chronicling record in Herry – Daddee’s own scripted jots had not yet been given over to me from the Employer Edinsmaier – Shyster Scheisser folie’s duo. To which statement of mine the extremely raucous, the very “Shindy” Scheisser accusatorily screeched as, beside him, the Mightily Mother – Fucking Herod Edinsmaier snidely and silently sat smirking, smirking, smirking and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive took up her discriminatory and soooo, so male – identified, subservient position immediately behind Her Man in the right wing –– while … all of my witnesses for the morning had to seat themselves … sequestered … outside in the courthouse’s hallway, “We don’t know, Your Honor, to what Legion here alludes with this request of hers. There is no such thing. There is nothing to produce. Dr. Edinsmaier categorically denies anything like that ever existed. There never was such a set of pages so there are no copies of it to be given over to her or to anybody else, Your Honor!” Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s employed shamster, using no title and last name for Dr. True of course, had just deflected the ‘Real’ Doctor’s lying and deceit away from The Daddee and … onto, instead, … me! This, Jury, is your lovely American family law court system. “Truth? Justice? O, for cryin’ – out naïveté … hardly!” In my mind’s ear, I can –– now –– hear Grace Portia blisteringly detonate. It is that simple. It truly, truly is. To lie and to deceive, depending upon who you are and upon what your pedigree is, in an American court of family law, … that is literally all that it takes. Because he can. Because he is a male and he is a pillar. “Next item up for business. Let’s move on then,” and more of The Look fired from daJudge to Herry and to Mr. Scheisser at their table, from daMan who, in essence, has just spouted off these “Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up … we don’t have all day” words! “We have to listen to the friggin’ Blondie – Cunt rant cuz The Law says we have to –– but when I see you’all on the first tee this afternoon for a short round of nine holes, why, we’ll just forget about the Stench of her Trench and enjoy each other’s company around the greens, won’t we, Shindy … Herry?!?!” That was the basic substance behind the Indian’s definition of The Look, “You, Legion True, you don’t have my, Tsianina’s, proverbial Snowball’s chance in Mother – Fucking Hell, Woman! You don’t! You do not! You are ooooone fucked mama.” That was the most angering event of Act Three Part Four: its very opening scene. I had to continue on without at all the “evidence” – exhibit of any of the telling … actually the screamingly smooooking … Opprobrious Eight Pages. The absolutely most ludicrous event, however, arrived on Thursday when that alcoholics anonymous “sponsor” of Herry’s, Mr. Varry Wussamai, arose to take the witness chair. He and daJudge did not, …. but consequentially might as well have, high – fived each other. What they did do was reminisce for over a minute’s worth about nostalgic old times back in Hoo – Hah town or from wherever the hell they’d known each other for years –– before Judge Butcher soooo, so regally pronounced from his power – post, “Even though I know him personally, this man can testify. And he is not a hostile witness.” “Heh heh heh … sniggers, titters and giggles,” all around. Except I … was not laughing. “He isn’t?!” I should have asked daJudge back incredulously –– if I hadn’t been DEhuman and if I hadn’t been … a blonde DEhuman! Mr. Varry Wussamai took the witness chair and proceeded to tell ‘the Court’ about his relationship with Dr. Edinsmaier as I had asked him to explain. Except that in very, very short order and over my vehement objections to his continuing to talk out of my line of questioning and with such a snide and sneering countenance, Judge Butcher allowed him to not only recite all of the 12 Steps of friggin’ aa but to then also back up after he was done with #12 to its Step #4 again and, there … to take my, Legion’s, inventory, with it! ! ! That is, my! inventory according to him –– in his! bloviating! opinion! under so – called oath! With daJudge’s blessing! This –– this mother – fucking testimonial “evidence” –– from a person who doesn’t even know me, who has never, ever spoken at length to me, not even one time, who has never more than grunted in my direction a mere acknowledgement of my presence, who is not a friend of any of my friends, who is indeed my ex – husband’s alleged “12 – step program” “sponsor” because he’s always told Herry what narcissistic, passive – aggressive Herry wanted to hear and only what Herry wanted to hear and is, in all of his daily comings and goings, rather himself a gargantuan failure! at whatever he touches overall! A dry – drunk failure. True it was, he didn’t drink alcohol. But he did not succeed at anything else either. At none of his four marriages! nor had he adopted or fathered even one, small child of whom he was at least aware, let alone, for whom he was an engaged, involved caretaker! And is, today, some sort of a street preacher going around spouting even more patriarchy and more androcentrism and, I am sure, more of his vicious judgments upon us debased DEhumans. Ridiculous! too, had been Mr. Shindy Scheisser’s cross – examination of László the day before –– and about which that night the two of us chuckled away. Except that it so illustrates male fixation, actually their “entitled” obsession –– even inside a “civil” courtroom! of their absolutely having to know about and of trying to control through derision, mockery and through finger – pointing a woman’s movements –– her comings and goings –– or her behavior around … other men! Men other than … the very questioning ones wanting to know and wanting the control of her! Men other than … themselves, of course! László, on direct examination, had answered my question put to him about Herry’s whoooolly unwarranted! search for Jesse of my Havencourt condominium by way of Chris, the Ames cop on the evening of Monday night, 28 October 1991, of, “Did Dr. Edinsmaier, in your opinion, seem at all upset or concerned?” with, … “No. There was no outward sign of him being particularly upset at all about the fact that he didn’t know where Jesse was. It was all very matter – of – fact and very routine and quiet.” On cross then, Mr. Scheisser right off the mother – fucking bat laid into László with, “Where are you employed? And what do you do there? Professor of what? How long have you been at Iowa State? Have you been married before, Sir? Do you have any children, Sir? Now, you have said you have been around the Respondent, Dr. True, many, many times. Would you tell ‘the Court’ about your relationship with Dr. True?” To which László responded, “We have probably communicated on the average of at least three times a week, sometimes maybe more times. Sometimes I have been out of town.” “You are a social friend of Dr. True; is that a fair statement?” “Primarily,” answered László. The clincher questioning came from the quite incredibly noisy Mr. Windy “Shindy” Scheisser not even, not even, half a page into the trial’s transcript [Transcripts of Part Four = Trial Three THERE SOOOOO … EXIST!] on László’s testimony, “And you have a romantic involvement with Dr. True?” “A romantic involvement” is the phraseology used by shysters! I hadn’t known that until that day, my first day, and … my very first … witness whom Lawyer Scheisser cross – examined! “Absolutely not.” The court reporter, a man who worked for only one judge, Judge Harley Butcher, and literally followed him around an 11 – countywide district court circuit! to record only that specific judge’s trials and to whom then I would eventually go on to pay out in three installments of $1,000.00, $1350.00 and $1,775.00 just moments before another legal deadline would’ve stopped further appellate action by me, placed no exclamation point at the end of László’s answer! He did not. Then shot Silly Scheisser’s next manly – man question, “Do you have a sexual involvement with Dr. True?” “And, again, from that court recorder’s transcription, Jury, we seen no exclamation point, ‘Absolutely not.’ ” “You are a good friend of her, right?” “Yes.” “And your testimony has been totally platonic, right?” Now, I so am not certain how “testimony” could or could not be platonic. I had always thought relationships were or were not; but that was, indeed, the line of questioning which Mr. Scheisser greeted László with –– first –– before finally getting on … on to those of material substance! Oooo, had Mr. Jazzy Jinx been right! “No men, Legion. Not one! I’m tellin’ ya’! I don’t want to hear that there’s even been one!” Shit, was I glad I had listened to him –– and not only because of the courtroom custody proceedings’ reason either! Anyhow, while Dr. Herod Edinsmaier probably could have handled hearing and learning that I was in a sexual or a romantic liaison with a dallying man –– other than he ––although Herry would have surely tried to use that information against me in my striving for custody for my children, what he absolutely would never abide is being told that I, Legion True, was in a social relationship with this specific man, László, a gay man! –– whom I really, really liked. László did not and I never did either, that is, we were never compelled to, so we did not, … tell … the Good and Wonderful Dr. Herod Edinsmaier how it was that László came to not be my love interest. Were we to have told him? That would have driven Herry truly livid! –– tantamount as it was to: the Narcissistic Passive – Aggressor Edinsmaier’s being told when he did not want to hear it that which Closet – Homophobe Herry did not want to hear! By Friday morning with only half of my witnesses heard and cross – examined, I awakened with what was eventually diagnosed that afternoon as food poisoning. László had taken me to supper after Thursday’s session of “We have to put up with the Ditch – Witch, Stupid – Ass Heifer – Cunt, Men! –– but not for long!” After Thursday’s session of all of Ms. Snowball’s explained … Looks. The doctor felt the creamy shrimp salad dressing to be the culprit. I thought him quite correct and would never have, on my own terms, incurred this medical bill; but I, being most powerfully knowledgeable and capable of diagnosing this condition myself, did not trust that I … that I, The Not – Real – Doctor – At – All, would be believed were I to not also have been able to tell Ms. Wren when I called the courthouse at 8 a.m. on the 28th of August, that I was seeking medical attention –– along then … with its subsequently written and, therefore, validating documentation –– yet another gaaaawddamn note from The – Big – Man – Real – Doctor for the li’tl’ pussy to take with her and give over to The – Other – Big – Man! DaJudge! And for what I, a totally capable adult but one … Sick – While – Throwing – Up – as – a – Blonde – DEhuman … believed to be poisoning from bacterial toxins! I realized that Judge Butcher could not outright state either to Ms. Wren or to me or, for that matter, to anyone else that he didn’t really believe me, that he didn’t really believe I was so ill that I could not continue on that day; but I never, ever dreamed that he would do what he, instead indeed, did do –––– to punish me! That is, Judge Butcher set the continuance date for the remainder of Trial Three to not start up again … for another two months’ time! The concluding segment was not rescheduled to begin again until Wednesday, 28 October 1992, and then to not end in that courtroom at all but in two wholly unfamiliar ones inside a courthouse inside an entirely different county than Storm County and 20 miles to the west of Ames! This dressing down, this upbraiding was ‘the Court’s’ payback to The Cunt for her legitimate physical sickness that temporarily halted The Opera’s Part Four. And it utterly amazed me. I be stunned. Now? –– now I know. I know that this sort of evil and harassing maneuvering takes place by ‘the Court’, by daMan, by daJudge in unspoken cahoots with the pillar and the pillar’s pettifoggers against us DEhumans all of the time. I just didn’t –– then. Meanwhile –– meanwhile what does this delay mean for all of us Fucked Mothers on Trial?! Our children grow older; they grow up. They friggin’ grow all the fuck up. They continue to grow up –– without us. Mirzah, Jesse and Zane got older and older and did all sorts of seventh, eighth and high school grades’ things and I, their ma, was still –– still … to them … invisible. Grace had wanted to testify early on, but she had suddenly been called out of town. In her physical stead then, I placed into the record the exhibit of her affidavit, handwritten, with the time out she took to do it and have it, as well, witnessed by László … also Grace’s compeer… and affirmed and notarized on the very date of her third baby boy’s, Noel’s birthday, also an August one as are Jesse’s and Zane’s. “I, Grace Portia, on August 21, 1992, do affirm that I am a friend of Legion True and was neighbor and friend to the Truemaier Boys when they lived in Ames . Herry Edinsmaier called my home early September 22, 1990, to say he had won custody. According to Abbey Gaffey, Mr. Scheisser phoned and faxed the information to the Ames Tribune September 24th. The Boys were hurt and humiliated to learn of the decision in this way. Herry told me the next week he would hold the Boys responsible for Legion’s actions. He did not want any further court action, and he said money spent fighting Legion would take away funds available for the Boys’ future. He stated Legion had lost the Boys but had not ‘hit bottom’ yet -- -- not until she had lost her home and food. Herry allowed the Boys visitation and their Spring Break week with Legion in 1991, before completely severing ties between the Boys and their mother. The Boys were allowed to visit my home at different times later that spring and summer; however, I was not to allow them to have contact with Legion. Since he disallowed her visitation rights, I decided not to have the Boys visit again. I did not want to assume responsibility for the care of children whose father I did not understand. Fannie told me Herry had turned down several positions that summer in order to keep the children closer to their mother. This made no sense because Herry did not allow visitation, cards, or phone calls. I cannot understand how a court could allow this to happen. Herry traveled most weeks after receiving custody and before moving to West Virginia. When Legion had custody, she cared for the children and actively involved the Boys in all activities and opportunities that were available. I beg the court to please give custody to Legion, an involved, caring, loving Mother. The Boys thrived under her care, as was testified to in 1990. The Boys need discipline, care, and a loving relationship during these critical years. Grace Portia, Ames, Iowa László, Witness” Just as Grace had been unable to appear (then), neither, of course, were any one of the Truemaier Boys able to! Not that Herry would have permitted any of them to –– had I asked him. Not that ‘the Court’ would have allowed any of them to –– had I asked ‘it’, daJudge, daMan! I didn’t. I didn’t bother. That much I already did know! Into ‘the Court’s’ record, thus into its transcript too then, I placed all three of the Truemaier Boys’ sworn affidavits, a bit of a great time – travel trick acquiring those affidavits it had been, I must say, with Jesse’s subscribed to and affirmed before a notary public on 27 March 1992, and Mirzah’s and Zane’s subsequently on 03 April 1992! “I, Mirzah Truemaier, 12½ year old son of Legion True, hereby state that: 1.) I wish to be represented by legal counsel, as with a Guardian Ad Litem and / or an attorney for my brothers and me until I reach majority age on 28 September 1997. I want my brothers to continue to have legal counsel until they, too, reach their majority birthdays, Zane Truemaier on 24 August 1994, and Jesse Truemaier on 15 August 1996. 2.) I wish to testify to any Court and / or to any judge and / or to any agency personally and privately about any matters and / or issues and / or conditions that do and / or will impact upon and / or affect my life until I reach majority age on 28 September 1997. I want my brothers to continue to, likewise, testify personally and privately to the same agencies, parties and / or bodies that may and / or will be deciding on any matters and / or issues that may and / or will impact upon and / or affect their lives. 3.) I wish to speak and / or counsel with and / or listen to anyone that I TRUST about issues and / or matters that may and / or will impact upon and / or affect my life until I reach majority age on 28 September 1997, without their or my fearing reprisal from anyone for my and my brothers’ doing so, my brothers’ speaking and / or counseling with and / or listening to anyone they also trust until they reach their majority ages, Zane Truemaier on 24 August 1994, and Jesse Truemaier on 15 August 1996. 4.) I wish to live with my mother, Legion True, in her full care until my 18th birthday at least, which occurs on 28 September 1997. AFFIRMED Mirzah Truemaier” “I, Zane Truemaier, 15½ year old son of Legion True, hereby state that:” and his followed exactly as Mirzah’s except for the appropriate names’ and dates’ changes for reaching majority ages of his brothers and himself. Jesse’s differed slightly, “I, Jesse Truemaier, 13½ year old son of Legion True, state that: 1. I want to testify to the Court in any proceeding modifying custody, visitation and / or economic and financial support of me that will or may be held until my 18th birthday, 15 August 1996; and 2. I want a guardian ad litem and / or attorney to represent my brothers, Zane Truemaier and Mirzah Truemaier, and me at any such proceeding until we are all of majority age; and 3. I want to be allowed to speak to and counsel with anyone that I trust about my life. Jesse Truemaier” Certain I am now that Grace’s and the Boys’ affidavits daJudge Butcher never read. Just as certain I now am that no judge, either district or appellate, ever read any of them either! In addition, I am also now just as positive that Ms. Abbey Gaffey’s affidavit was never read by any of this Act Three set of four judges. Had they been? It still would not have done me one lick of good –– my now knowing about ‘the Court’ what I now know about these men and about their relationships with other alleged pillars of the community such as the Dr. Herod Edinsmaier – genres of it. Perhaps Principal Druid’s Judge Butcher read. After all, it was short. But, more accurately, to the point of why he may have read it? It was written by a man. A pillared one … at that. “I, Dr. Patrick Druid, after duly swearing, depose THAT I was Principal of the Urbandale Senior High School, Urbandale, Iowa, including during the 1991 – 1992 academic school year when Zane Truemaier, then of 8293 69th Street, Urbandale, Iowa, became registered for and began attending his freshman year of high school (ninth grade) there; THAT in or near the middle to latter part of August 1991, Zane’s stepparent, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, also then of 8293 69th Street, Urbandale, Iowa, supplied me with a copy of a newspaper article about Dr. Legion True, Zane’s mother, taken from the 25 September 1990 “Ames Tribune” which I read completely through and THAT it is my opinion Ms. McLive personally delivered the clipping of the newspaper article to me in order to show Dr. True up to me, Zane’s principal, in a bad light with the expectation that I would then not allow her access to Zane, to the school in any way nor to any extracurricular activities in which Zane Truemaier may have been a participant. Dr. Patrick Druid” This one I had obtained by personally driving down to Principal Druid and his Urbandale school, one more last time, on what was Zane’s very 16th birthday, 24 August 1992, and two days prior to the opening of Trial Three. While I know it was not read and, therefore, not considered (let alone, believed!), Reporter Abbey Gaffey’s affidavit specifically speaking to the generation of that Tuesday, 25 September 1990 Ames Tribune article which she herself, by its soooo – male Editor Geiser, had been slammed down into her chair and commanded to juicily and titillatingly come up with and then type out and of which Nottingham Sheriff Fannie Issicran McLive so freely and so cavalierly, as well as at her King Herod’s behest, supplied Principal Druid … makes for head – bangingly sad and sorrowful (but no longer incredible) reading … anyhow … and entirely validates that which my Friend at the Ames Tribune (Tom = Friend’s first name –– of Chapter 27‘s infamy!) had recounted to me when I checked myself into the SpaChezResort’s Sixth Floor Hotel and, instead of walking out of it after three days’ and nights’ refreshening somnolence as I had needed, became there … King Herod’s prisoner! “Notice initially, Jury! that Reporter Gaffey –– right the hell off! –– knows when scripting her affidavit to ‘the Court’ that … she must address it to … a man! ‘Dear Sir,’ … she begins, doesn’t she?!” “Dear Sir, I have been requested by Ms. Legion True to give details about a story which I wrote about her in the September 25, 1990 edition of the Ames Tribune. The story dealt with a court order which came down on September 21, 1990, as part of a divorce / child custody proceeding of some sort. I have been asked to tell where I got my information for the story. I do not have a copy of the actual story. I believe a copy has been submitted by Ms. True. I received a call from Ms. True’s former husband’s attorney, Shindy Scheisser, shortly after deadline (10:30 a.m. – 11 a.m. – ish) on Monday, September 24, 1990. I do not know if Mr. Scheisser asked for me personally, or whether the call came into the general switchboard and was transferred to me because my line was open. The gist of Mr. Scheisser’s telephone conversation, to the best of my recollection, was that he had some information about Ms. True that he felt the public needed to know. Ms. True was a candidate for County Recorder at the time, I believe, and Mr. Scheisser emphasized that voters might be well served with the information about Ms. True’s personal problems at the time. For whatever reason, the telephone conversation was fairly brief and ended with Mr. Scheisser asking if he could FAX the court decree to the Tribune marked to my attention. I had taken notes during my conversation with Mr. Scheisser. Those notes are not in my possession and therefore I can’t confirm exactly what was said, only what I recall. The notes are in the possession of the Ames Tribune. Later in the afternoon of the same day, September 24th, I received the FAX from Mr. Scheisser. I distinctly remember the FAX because of its extraordinary length –– it almost stretched the length of the newsroom. The FAX was a copy of the court decree. It was not annotated by Mr. Scheisser or anything else. I was left to draw my own conclusions. The original story which I wrote was highly watered down from what eventually appeared in print. I felt, at the time and presently, that much of the article presented information that was titillating at best. At the behest of my editor, Dan Geiser, I was literally forced to ‘put the juicy stuff back in,’ to use his words. The article was written in the published form with the editor breathing down my neck. Mr. Geiser was aware of the ‘juicy stuff’ because several Tribune staffers had taken the FAX off of my desk in my absence and read parts of it aloud in the newsroom. I will admit that some of the information in the court decree made me laugh, as well. It was rather lurid. I attempted to reach Ms. True for her comments on the story. I remember getting hold of her mother the next morning, Tuesday, September 25, 1990. I requested more time to locate Ms. True but my editor would not hear of not running the story that day for fear the Des Moines Register would get it first. Consequently, the final product (the story) was indeed one – sided. I am not aware of all that ensued with the story after October 1, 1990. I do know that there was quite a bit of backlash from community members who thought the story was unfair, slanted, in poor taste, etc., etc. I am aware that the newspaper received several unfavorable calls and letters as a result of the story. I am not aware of anything after October 1, 1990, because that was the day I was terminated at the Tribune. I suspect, though I was never told by officials at the Tribune, that the majority of my dismissal can be attributed to the negative comments about the True story and that my firing was to send a signal to the community that something had been done about the situation. Of most interest in this present proceeding are the following facts to which I will attest: 1. The information from the story was obtained from public court records FAXED to the Tribune by Mr. Shindy Scheisser. 2. The FAX originated after a call to the Tribune by Mr. Shindy Scheisser. 3. Ms. True was not given adequate time to respond to the story – even though attempts to reach her for comment were made. I was only able to reach her mother, and then, only the next morning. (September 25th.) 4. A sizeable number of Ames residents found the story upsetting and questioned whether it should have been published at all. I attest to the veracity of the contents of this letter, though I no longer possess my actual notes or the FAX and am writing this solely on my memory, over the space of almost two years, of one of the thousands of stories I’ve written in the past decade. Sincerely” and then Ms. Gaffey affixed to this official missive her personal signature … with an address that set her particular point of residence then at the northeast border of the State of Nebraska. Reporter Abbie Gaffey had, indeed, exited Ames in very, very short order. I will not submit –– here –– one word from out of either of Jesse’s or Zane’s journals, from those hard copies themselves. Should they ever want these trial exhibits of mine –– and of their actual self – scripted writings –– published, then they, of course, are free to do that themselves. My only assessment of the two is summed up in one, tiny, too familiar adjective: sad … * * * * September 1992 finally melded into the next “ ‘Court’ – appointed,” soooo ‘Court’ delayed – trial month, and Frieda and I climbed into the family – sized, seven – passenger Shitbox, only it was a Chevy now and not the Dodge … a wagon dubbed Ol’ Black, and not really used by a family at all … there being just me, obviously. And together the two of us drove the 20 miles west to there resume the Second Judicial District Court Trial Number Three –– again … its taking itself up –– finally –– on another Wednesday morning. Wednesday, the 28th of October! Friend Frieda –– again … took up her solo sentry post in that particular courthouse’s hallway, one inside a friggin’ ‘nother county! … cane, book, lunch, her presence and abiding spirit and all. Grace, by now of course, was back in town and more than ready to testify; but first up came Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive who, all along, had being allowed and did listen to everyone else’s testimonies!!!, she being the only unsequestered witness whom ‘the Court’ –– who was, in Truth, only just another guy!!! named Harley Butcher –– kept allowing inside the courtrooms’ galleries everywhere!!! ––– at any courtly – like venue we all seemed to eventually find ourselves! What fuck! What … literally … only mother – fuck! Ms. McLive, the Not Mother, could not tell ‘the Court’, um, this guy Butcher, what the “step” part in “step – parent” meant –– but, then, he Butcher, er, daJudge, um, His Honor, did not know what it meant … either! “I have no idea of the derivation. I don’t have a dictionary with me,” her heh – , heh – , heh – ing mightily implied, of course, to the Blonde Bitch’s … to my questioning of The Not Mother; and, too, there’s that famous phrase of hers again, that is, Ms. McLive’s having “no idea” … regarding squat! “You don’t know what it then means to “step” back or to “step” forward in the presence or the absence of a biological parent: Is that what you are telling ‘the Court’?” I, the examiner, asked of the King’s Nottingham Sheriff. Why was I not in the least at all surprised?! I could not get the woman to define biological maternal – child bonding because “I have no such experience; I am not a birth mother;” and, although stating about the Truemaier Boys that “sometimes they’re very lovable,” … when she had departed West Virginia to accompany her King back to Iowa for Part Four of The Opera, neither one of them, neither she nor Dr. Herod Edinsmaier (who was to later attest to this factoid … that is, to testify!), ever at all actually told one Truemaier child, when they walked out of their West Virginia door to take a flight five states away from the Boys!, that he was … loved. This? This from the sperms’ – donating Daddee – Herry? This is just flummoxing! And, Jury? And unconscionable! “Have you at any time since September 21, 1990, said ‘I love you’ to any one of the Truemaier children?” I continued, 21 September 1990 being the file – stamped date of Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor’s decreeing that Herod Edinsmaier, indeed, be “the primary caregiver parent” and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive the … well, “the Hostile Takeover Mother when Mehitable’s not physically around to do that – parent,” I guess. “Have you turned to them, looked them in their eyes, any one of the three Truemaier teenage children, teenage children being incorrigible at times, and told them, ‘I love you, Mirzah. I love you, Zane. Or, I love you, Jesse’?” “No, I have not verbally told them that.” It was to be determined, except for my surreptitious sentences the Boys inside West Virginia received by stealth methods which truly only consisted of a couple of times, then, since that so, so sad Monday of 28 October 1991, when I myself had last hugged Mirzah and Zane and … when Jesse had escaped capture and gone missing to us all, that the Truemaier Boys had not heard a parent tell them, “I love you …” And it was, by then, two days over … an entire, bloodied year later. Moments later, the Good and Wonderful Doctor’s response to the same questioning came as merely, “No.” The “primary caregiving parent” had not seen it a fit and “caregiving” – thing to do to tell “his” very own three sons that he loved them in over a year’s time –– and Herry sure’s hell was not about to let me, their invisible mom, have a chance to tell them this either! The only message that was loudly getting through to them, and back to me too of course, was resoundingly clear, “Sons, you have no mother! Mother, you have no sons!” “Is it, Jury, in any way any wonder that two of them today steadfastly refuse to use the verb “love” in any of their salutations or closings to me, their mama, either in written form or verbally?! I truly believe that both Mirzah and Jesse are … well, unable, not just unwilling, to do so ... I continued with Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive about the custody evaluator –– the incredibly incompetent, literally mother – fucking, twice – appointed custody evaluator! “Why did you withhold information from Ms. Canard about your mental and physical health histories prior to her giving a recommendation to Judge Seizor? Did you withhold information from her about the fact that you now admit to post – traumatic stress disorder, panic attack disorder, and to having severe problems with your lower back?” Ms. McLive responded, “First of all, I do not admit to having severe problems with my lower back. I had one back surgery, not as you have stated in documents, numerous back surgeries. I was at one time obese. I do believe I told Ms. Canard that. It is not as you have described as chronic obesity.” “I didn’t ask her about obesity, Your Honor.” Ms. McLive circumvented my questioning about her own mental capacity again … or attempted to, “I am trying to state that I did not knowingly go into Ms. Canard and say, ‘Ms. Canard, I once hospitalized myself for post – traumatic stress syndrome many years ago.’ She did not ask me. I did not knowingly withhold any information from her. I did not knowingly tell any lies when I took the MMPI. She did not ask me. Had she asked me, I would have told her.” I had known it! I had known that there was some biiiiig, big secret! “You can assure Judge Butcher, can you, that in no way will you ever have another panic attack, “panic attack” as is described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Psychiatric Disorders?” Fuck! I was fucking scared –– for my Boys’ health and safety! –– since finding out from “Journaling” Herry’s handwritten smoking gun, the Opprobrious Eight Pages about The Hostile Takeover Mother’s having been, at some time in their not too distant past, … … “attacked.” I was friggin’ frightened for the safety of my own children –– with their being put at all into this person’s care, let alone, seemingly nearly all of the mother – fucking time! “No, I cannot assure. I cannot assure, as I told you in phone conversations which are entered in transcripts, I cannot assure you that I will not have a panic attack. I was hospitalized for post – traumatic stress syndrome once for four days.” But, hey, none of this, Jury, although I had soooo sought it in pretrial Discovery with Interrogatories and Production of Documents had ever, ever come back to me! Nothing about this had been produced and handed over to me, let alone, ever “introduced” either … to Evaluator Canard! Or, … to daJudge, er, that other, first guy –– Seizor –– of Trials’ One and Two decisions! I had merely put 2 and 2 together and taken a chance in asking the question based on my education –– and lo and behold –– it was all true! Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, indeed, had a history of documented mental problems –– no differently and no less so than the Sixth Floor Hotel had –– wrongly –– saddled me with same! With … such said (“type” of) documentation! Only, although I had tried to obtain them, I just could not get Liar Herry and Shyster Scheisser to hand this same type of documentation over to me –– the medical documents about Ms. Fannie … which said so! It is that simple. It truly, truly is. To lie and to deceive, depending upon who you are and what your pedigree is, in an American court of family law, that is literally all that it takes. Because he can. Because he is a male and because that male is a pillar. The barnburner of a question to Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive came next –– that is, my smoking – gun query put to this person! This one on the very last day of Trial Three. But, O O O O, did Mr. Shindy Scheisser noooot like it! “Would you tell ‘the Court’, Ms. McLive,” I asked, “what was the trauma after which there was stress? As defined by the title ‘post – traumatic stress syndrome’? There was stress. What was … the trauma … after which there followed then … the stress?” O, we all could have heard a fucking pin drop after Ms. McLive’s gasp on this one! Of course, there was no … “we all” … of a true Jury in This Opera –– only daJudge. DaJudge Butcher. And I now know that the guy Butcher had already “decided” long, long before we all would be given or not given Fannie Issicran McLive’s answer back to me … just exactly how he was going “to find.” At any rate, Ms. McLive fucking – fired both Herry and Mr. Scheisser stunned stares of “Rescue me! Rescue me! Rescue me! Rescue me!” Of … “I can’t let her know this shit! Fuck, do something! Don’t make me tell her this! I’ll never live it down if I have to tell her, her of all people, this! She’ll get the Boys for sure if the judge finds this shit out, Herry! Stop her! You’ve got to stop her! And stop her right the fuck now, Herry, or she will have to be given the boys !!!” Yeah! No district court judge would have dared leave ( … anyone’s!!! … ) children with these two people, Herry Edinsmaier and Fannie McLive, after hearing, under sworn oath, … her shit. Appellate judges would have had to shoot down Butcher’s decree –– if Judge Butcher, that is, if ‘the Court’, had thought that he could try to let Herry keep my Truemaier Boys! But, then again, most probably not! That is, Herry indeed, probably could have kept Zane, Jesse and Mirzah with no problem to him at all … on appeal. Only thing was though: Just like me, Dr. Legion True, … why, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive herself did not know that, then, from her perch up there on that particular county’s witness stand. She did not know that violent abusers like Herry and endangering people such as herself get awards of primary physical care custody of minor children all of the fucking time! And that, even if challenged on appeal, those discriminating and destructive decisions willfully go by … wholly uncorrected. The abuser prevails. And nothing changes. And the children continue to … grow up … without their mother. With their mother –– to them –– vengefully made … invisible! Well, the “this” which I suspect she and Herry were so about to have to cough up and puke over to me there inside ‘daMan’s Court’ is that: Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s son – in – law, George I believe his name is, either “successfully” raped her or her adopted daughters or all of them or one or some of the two adopted daughters. Or, tried to. The man, the son – in – law, Herry’s stepdaughter’s husband, is mentally retarded as is Ms. McLive’s elder adopted daughter –– two people that to that date of Ms. McLive’s testimony on Friday, 30 October 1992, and since, none of the Trues or the three Truemaier Boys, “stepbrothers” to the wife in that mawwied couple though they be, have ever, ever met! Furthermore, not only do I believe that he, this George person, tried or accomplished something of this violence and criminal nature, I further suspect that Ms. McLive herself, and possibly one or both of the adopted daughters, became pregnant. There may be other reasons why a single woman at or nearing the age of menopause would seek a tubal ligation –– which Ms. McLive had long had completed by time of trial (again, from those Opprobrious Eight Pages of Herry – Daddee’s ‘journaling’!) –– but I do not know what those other reasons would be –– except as a ‘prophylactic’ of sorts … for her own “peace of mind”?! My own straightforward and unadorned thought on all of this, however? “Now, just how fucked up is all of that?!” And joyously I further imagined Ms. McLive’s one thought to be something more akin and parallel to, “Yeah, am I ever right on this one! Legion’s, and now Judge Butcher’s too, knowing this is certainly not only humiliating but also making the probability of Legion’s gaining back custody of the Boys –– after all of this aprovechar fraudulence and swindling of information away from her and our taking away from the Boys and Legion, from the four of them, everything … both tangibly and in spiritual and soulful separations from each other that Herry and I have –– our behaviors make her getting back custody nearly a certainty now! This news of the rapes plus what we’ve done to the four of them plus Herry’s Eight Pages! Legion has certainly more than succeeded at proving a ‘material change’ since the fucked – up, fictitious and literally mother – fucking “facts” we got away with lying about before Seizor’s 21 September 1990 decision! Legion certainly has shown us two “parents” up to be the fuckin’ frauds and abusers and endangering people –– and criminals!!! –– that we, indeed, both are! Why, Herry and I don’t stand a chance anymore at staying in charge of the Truemaier minor children’s “care”!” But they did! Shyster Scheisser jumped the fuck up! O, did he ever! Additionally as I have so many times before said, I believe Butcher never intended that I, pro se, a DEhuman and a cunty, blonde one at that, ever have a ghost of a true chance! And most certainly not up against a pillar of the community in Dr. Herod Edinsmaier … such as he, Mr. Harley Butcher, saw in his very own self, a district court judge in that very community! “May I voir dire the witness, Your Honor?” To which, of course, ‘the Court’ allowed Mr. Scheisser his scheming scam, “Ms. McLive, when were you hospitalized with this post – traumatic stress disorder?” “1984.” “I object, Your Honor. Predates!” waved Mr. Scheisser. I think Judge Butcher, however and to use Ms. Abbey Gaffey’s words, was “juicily titillated” by Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s testimony and, so far, ‘twas still really only a cliffhanger. We did not know for sure, but he too was suspicious that there was something sexual involved! I think he just wanted to find out the rest of what Ms. McLive’s spicily salacious secret was –– for that reason alone! The “excitement” of the story –– even though he already knew how he was, custody – wise, … going “to find.” “Go ahead, Ms. McLive, and answer if you recall it.” “I recall it vividly, Your Honor. I have great difficulty, because it is of a personal nature. And the disclosure to Dr. True in the past about anything has been devastating to me, my family, my children,” Ms. McLive recounted. I didn’t “take it” –– … as Teenager Eric from the junk mail factory had asked me about Little – Man Herry and Herry – Daddee’s aprovechar – style taking from me the 81 months’ worth of child support checks (three of which he subsequently went on to so narcissistically and so swiftly lose!) when I soooo did not have it, especially during all four months of those six Iowa winters without heat! … to give over to the already rich – enough, vengeance – wreaking “healer” – doctor. No, I did not “take it.” Instead I backed off the questioning of Ms. McLive and stopped forcing “her secret issue” answering –– which would have been or should have been under oath described to us all in full, gory detail as well as sworn to … in open ‘Court’! Actually, I regret my having done that now – now, of course, “her secret issue” is not “out there” to be inside Trial Three’s transcripts cuz … Dr. Legion True felt sorry for her! up there –– helpless! –– on the witness stand and, because of that, I softened! No. No, indeed: Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive did not respond –– at all –– because I let The Soooo – Not Mother off my hook with, “Your Honor, I don’t need to hear it. That is a point well – taken which she makes, however. You see, Your Honor? It is … still … prevalent today.” Listen and look at her, Jury; Ms. McLive had just displayed such an immediate, visceral response! Whatever trauma there had once been, whatever it had been that so had fucked with her? Well, this definitely sooo … still stressed her!!! –– postdating, as it certainly did, any time of its infliction –– and that stress in the Sheriff with her folie – association with Herry – Daddee was most endangering to Zane, Jesse and Mirzah I feared. I moved on, “Have you, since September 21, 1990, smoked … any cigarettes?” “No, I have not.” I gave Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive a chance … to recant. “Ms. McLive, Dave Henderson was your postman, and he saw you smoking on your step. What was that … that you were smoking, if it wasn’t a tobacco cigarette?” “I don’t know what Dave Henderson saw. I don’t know the connection between you and Dave Henderson, and if I were to sneak a smoke, I would not smoke on my front steps,” she lied. Outright perjury … as if nothing had just … happened! “Have you then, indeed, sneaked smokes?” “No,” she lied again. “Of any nature?” I again gave her a chance to redeem her lies. “All right. Is it true that you have a tubal ligation and that none of your children you bore; is that true?” “Yes.” To which Mr. Scheisser again jumped up, voir dired and tried to hide fact! “Ms. McLive, the information that Dr. True just talked about, when is the date of that?” “I had a tubal ligation in 1984 or 1985. I am unclear of the exact date.” “Once again, Your Honor, she predates!” meaning me and Dr. True’s questions about Truth in Ms. McLive, facts which she and Herry Edinsmaier had always, till now, kept very well hidden, although called for in Discovery, before both Trials One and Two –– both, then, by Attorneys Jazzy Jinx and Carlotta Klutz! It is that simple. It truly, truly is. To lie and to deceive, depending upon who you are and what your pedigree is, in an American court of family law, that is literally all that it takes. Because he can. Because he is a male and that male is a pillar. Again as before with her “secret issue,” Judge Butcher, piqued by apparently possible juiciness in the woman’s upcoming answer, did ask me, “What is the relevance of that to the issues you are raising?” “All right. Her not understanding the bonding and the giving – birth process and experiences in a mother, Your Honor.” “All right,” and then allow! “If that’s the subject, then let’s proceed.” I turned to Ms. McLive, “Have you told Grace Portia, or someone like her, sometime during or after the September 1990 trial that you did not think that when you married Herod Edinsmaier you would be having to raise up … his three sons?” It is that simple. It truly, truly is. To lie and to deceive, depending upon who you are and what your pedigree is, in an American court of family law, that is literally all that it takes. Because he can. Because he is a male and he is a pillar and because she is his Next Cunt in the Stash, she lied again and, at the same time, mockingly guffawed at me from her post there on the witness stand where she was sworn to tell the Truth, “No, I have never told that to Grace Portia. And I don’t know who ‘someone like her’ would be!” I continued, “Have you, Ms. McLive, ever said these words sometime after September 21, 1990, or words to this effect, to any one of the three Truemaier Boys, ‘Zane, I am going to school and vandalize your True family project there?’ ” “What?” “ ‘I am going to go to your school and vandalize,’ the verb was ‘vandalize’, ‘the project you conducted or did on the True heritage?’ ” I repeated for her. “No, I don’t remember ever hearing about a True heritage project,” Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive had juuuust … sidestepped, dismissed, disputed, discounted and … dissed … Zane’s journal entry entirely. Slick she must have thought herself. “Did you ever say words to Jesse to the effect, sometime in February 1991, perhaps at the office of pediatrician Dr. Lind who’d wanted to study Jesse’s cardiac function, in the presence of Zane, ‘So, she wants to put you on a treadmill, Jesse. Well, I hope they run you till you drop dead. That won’t happen though –– ‘cause I won’t pay for it?’ ” A referral to another journal entry, this time of Jesse’s … and my heart was breaking –– again!, right there in that friggin’ courtroom –– when, out loud, I read that one, too. “No, I would never say such a thing,” another lie. It is this easy … And no judge at any time ever sent out a county worker from ‘the Court’, a disinterested third party, to the various folks in the community such as Zane or Jesse or even Jesse’s pediatrician at the time, Dr. Lind, to find out about and bring back to daJudge the veracity or the falsehood of Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s sworn – to answer just then. Every judge just accepted all of this vomitus which spewed out of her and Herry’s mouths –– as the mother – fucking Truth! “Did you ever utter to a policeman while motioning to a human who happened to be Jesse Truemaier, ‘Jesse, you are part of the problem?’ ” “Yes, I did. I can recall the incident.” “Thank you!” I, at looooong last, sighed a loud one at this finally farted … fact of hers! She went right on, “I would like to explain the incident. It is out of context. The policeman was called to our house, and it was a time that you had been at our house and either called or he had called, because you had been there. Jesse was in another room. And Herry and I were talking with the policeman who said, who was suggesting what we should do. And Jesse came out and said, ‘I think you should hear all the story.’ And Herry said, ‘Jesse, it is not the time.’ And I said, ‘There’s part of the problem, Officer.’ ” This I believe to be fairly accurate in that Herry and his sheriff were mother – fuckingly calling the (actual) Urbandale police on me all of the mother – fucking time! She especially –– since The King – Daddee was out of town most of the time! Speaking to more of the “part of the problem,” I next asked Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, “Did you ever tell any one of the Truemaier children that their mother was, words to the effect, obsessed, deranged, mentally disturbed, crazed, feeding her mental illness by the Boys’ wanting her to appeal, or any such other derogatory and negative remarks about their mother?” I don’t know what Ms. McLive meant by her prefacing – “if you want” remark in her answer back to me … other than to continue to mock my efforts at conducting my own part in the Trial alone, pro se and without paid representation; but she replied, “If you want, I think I have said ‘obsessed’ when they have discussed either the article in the Ames newspaper or when they have asked why something was or was not being done. I have said, ‘I think your mother is ill.’ ” Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive and Horrid Herod, too, (per Grace Portia’s affirmed affidavit about my “needing” “yet” “to hit bottom” and “to lose” my food and my home! according to that which the Good and Wonderful, soooo – ‘healing’ Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had outright declared to Grace’s face!) had utterly dismissed me to my Truemaier Boys. And had orchestrated by their subsequent behaviors with Mirzah, with Jesse and with Zane that I become invisible, that I cease to be, that I cease to ever have been!, that my name and any mementoes and items of interest about me, that any gifts or objects which I had sent or methods of contact between them and me … stop –– except for … … “your mother is ill.” That was the extent of my existence to my own preteen and teenage children –– as far as she and Edinsmaier himself were concerned. “Have you ever, in your perception, said anything negative or derogatory about the Boys’ mother in front of the Boys or to the Boys?” She shot back at me, “Do you consider it derogatory to say ‘mental illness’?” But I simply stared at the Not Mother and, instead, stated to her with as much of a signature – Edinsmaier snide – sneer to my statement as, famously, any of his own, “I am not answering questions, Ma’am, you are.” “Well … then my answer would be no. It was not derogatory. I was being factual.” Soooo … JYeah, Jury, she had just called me … fucking nuts. And, many times, to … my Boys, Zane, Jesse and Mirzah, … the very same! I asked about seatbelt usage, was circumvented and only managed to get out of Ms. McLive, “No, I am not as adamant as Dr. Edinsmaier is on that. I can’t guarantee you everybody does anything.” I asked about motorcycle – driving to which this adopting ‘mother’ replied about her 14 – year – old daughter Mary Jane’s driving one, “I don’t know if Dr. Edinsmaier ever asked my permission.” Well, that soooo … did not surprise me: Herry Edinsmaier’s not bothering at all –– to think –– to need to ask a mama about the activities for her kiddos. This behavior of his would have been right in line with The Daddee’s own schema of just plowing ahead –– with the children, even with other people’s children –– as he wanted to do –– just … because he can … so … he does! Herry’s not caring one whit –– let alone, remembering to do the work! of asking permission of some – other – cunt, if the child’s actual mother, in this case Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, may not want him to take her child anywhere, let alone, may not want her child to drive a motorcycle! And about the “children – custodians” ’ ownership of a dog which Zane had been led to believe that he and the rest of them were all going to be able to get, the Not Mother under oath replied, “Although Zane would really like to have had a dog, we could not on our lease in Urbandale. All four children have been instructed that we cannot have a dog inside the house at the present where we live.” About that latter place, the “at the present” one? This answer of Herry’s Next Cunt in His Stash merely meant that the Truemaier Boys still did not have a dog in West Virginia yet, a year after their setting up residence in that state and their aaaall being long, long gone missing from the Urbandale bungalow … where my Boys obviously were not allowed a pooch either! “Have you taken mail that you knew I intended the Boys to have, since the date that’s in question?” I had to keep asking “since September 21st, 1990,” … the date of Act Two, Part Two. Or, since … Trial Two, Jury! Of course, Lord and Master Edinsmaier’s windy Mr. Shindy Scheisser piped right up here with, “Well now, … the Respondent is asking for what this witness’s impression of what she intended. I think the question is just improperly phrased.” Now that Mr. Scheisser, of course, had just left out the word “is” in his sentence phrasing! He continued, however, “I think the question is just improperly phrased. If the proper phrasing is, if she took mail addressed to the children, then I don’t have an objection.” “Whew!” I thought. “Glad he so made that clear as frickin’ mud, Jury!” Instead, I just muttered, “Yeah, would you please answer his question? Please.” Paaaawh – leeeze! Self – righteousness abounded within her reply, “I have no trouble in answering either one, in either form. Yes! I have taken mail addressed to the Truemaier children and to individual Truemaier children.” “Presents and gifts?” She again stalled and tried to circumvent with a question back at me, “Have I taken presents and gifts?” “Telephones, books, posters, food items, camera and film rolls and postage –––– for their taking pictures to send to me?” She was resolute in her evasion, “I have not taken food items. I have taken mail.” Is it any wonder then!!! that I prefer, in people, … directness –– such as can be found in Dr. Lionel Portia’s entire demeanor when he interacts with absolutely everyone?! I had to ask Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive –– again –– with the same amount of detailing as I already had! “So, by a process of elimination, we are to assume since you didn’t say posters and you didn’t say books and whatever, that you did take those? You gave them the food items, but you did take the other items? ? ?” She –– again –– tried the end – run thingy around directness and, quite instead, answered my question with two of her own concluding her “final” answer with Bill Clintonesque ridiculousness, “What do you mean by ‘take’? Have in my possession? If I found items that I thought were inappropriate for them to have, if I found letters, mail. I do not think I have any posters.” Inappropriate? Letters from the Truemaier Boys’ mama which she herself, not at all taking … the step … in “step” – parent … back …, defined and characterized and judged and, subsequently, eliminated entirely … as for my Truemaier Boys … “inappropriate”! UN – fucking – believable! A lie of The Not Mother’s which totally pissed me off and one about which I, again, could do absolutely nothing, of course, … because it is that simple in a court of American civil ‘law’ to lie, “You didn’t take a silver chain and throw it in the bathroom trash?” One belonging to Mirzah. One given to him … by me, given to my child, Mirzah, by his own mama, Dr. Legion True? … Naturally? “No, I didn’t.” What to do? Squat. I could not do a thing. Not one damn, mother – fucking thing. But Herry’s Next Cunt lied. And, at least, now, … Mirzah knows that, too. * * * * Questioning of Mr. Fannie Issicran McLive was nearly completed … and only resulted really in more lies. Still keeping in one’s mind the date of Friday, 21 September 1990, as some freakin’ dude’s idea of a “holy” magical date! … after which I needed to show that “material change” in the custodial situation of my kiddos had occurred, I asked this Next Cunt of Herry’s, “Have you ever told me since that date that … I have a glorified sense of importance of myself?” Me, ya’ know, the Boys’ actual, birthing mama?! Glorified in the sense that I am The Mother! –––– and is or is that not an important enough role in … born – kiddos’ lives?! “Yes, I have. On the phone. I think I said, ‘You have an exaggerated sense of self.’ ” “Do you ever recall saying to anyone that just as soon as you can and baseball season in Urbandale was completed in 1991, the best thing for ‘the best interests of these children,’ you and Dr. Edinsmaier had decided, was to move them as far away from their mother as possible?” This male – identified, McLive woman had, indeed, told … same … to several people at the school and at the soccer and baseball practices and games –– in conversations with women only, … that is, with the other moms who had gathered around watching their own children’s play. Men who are not violent would not have placated her loathing enough … to grant Edinsmaier’s Cunt even one listening ear because men –– fathers –– who do not abuse their children’s mothers do not want their kids invisible to –– and entirely gone missing from –– their mamas! “No,” she lied. “Have you actively gotten in the car in Urbandale and simply gone up and down the streets patrolling, … looking for the Truemaier Boys?” “I have gotten in the car. I got in the car in Urbandale several times looking for the Truemaier Boys, when they were 30 to 45 minutes late, or when I perceived that there was something wrong,” right after which statement Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive continued with, “Frequently that was when I saw you circling the house or when I had phone calls from the school or from the Downshim Laboratory that you were in the area. Specifically a time,” and she herself used the verb “patrolled”! … “Specifically a time I patrolled was when you took Mirzah off a bus, and he was not home.” Well, that which the Nottingham Sheriff had just sworn herself to was … in part, was … sorta the way in which my youngest and I had met up! Sorta, I say. I had partly participated in something like the blather which Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive used, from the witness stand, to try describing our gathering, but Mirzah? Mirzah was not even on or … anywhere near … a bus. A schoolbus … I presume she had meant. Mirzah, from exiting the Karen Farmer Schoolhouse doorway, had just come on over to the Shitbox Dodge. And, together, we two had taken off to a nearby McDonalds … for an afterschool snack, those nefarious! fries and cheeseburgers! Whoooooa. How incredibly criminal of us both, I know! McDonalds! To the lions with me! To the rack with that ex – cunt! Her lies were literally exhausting me! –– Utterly! The televisions in the home were, according to the She – Liar, “frequently never on.” Noooot according to the Truemaier Boys. According to all of them … to Zane, Jesse and Mirzah, the household’s two working televisions were quite the opposite! and exactly … never off! The She – Liar prescreened R – rated movies –– ooooonly … she really did not. A funny hah – hah thing happened on the way to one answer, though! “So, do you, because of your conviction on this matter, not allow Jesse to go over to friends’ homes when they are viewing movies that you don’t approve of?” “I don’t tell Jesse no.” Then … from Ms. McLive’s lower – facial, frontal orifice came one of Mehitable’s special, special verbs –– straight out of my own mother’s textbook on how women can teach themselves to softly and servilely remain a first – rate, mightily male – identified female, “I defer in the discipline of the three Truemaier Boys to their father. And support what their father says.” “Since when?!” “Since whatever the date of our marriage.” “Our mawwiage?” Wha’? Whaaaaat did she say?! By accident or as near to unintentionally as I could tell, she had just made the word sound like it had come from out of the mouth of Actor Billy Crystal in his wole of performing the wedding cewemony in that classic and wonderfully funny film … “The Pwincess Bwide!” I nearly burst into guffaws! But had to, instead, counter another of her gazillion falsehoods … more soberly with, “Dr. Edinsmaier was not around, is it not true? From maybe January 1991, until November 1991?” “Aaawh, that’s right.” “So. Disciplining and deferring of fathering matters or of parenting matters were put off … were they?” “Aaawh, no. Aaawh, we decided together. He set the course for his children.” That was weally, weally funny, too! Herry ‘setting’ anything that smacked of work, let alone, work regarding my children. He was their Joy Toy, 17 – year – old, older brother – Boy! She went on, “I was –– ” when I did cut her off. “He wasn’t there!” And, of course, Mr. Shindy Scheisser was not pleased with me, “Juuuust a moment. She interrupted the witness.” That I, indeed, had done. She went right on, anyway, “I was the person, if you want to use the word ‘enforcer’,” Whoooa! Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive had just said that! Ms. McLive had actually just admitted to playing the role of the Sheriff of Nottingham and to willingly and happily participating in the folie à deux with Herod who acted as the absentee King –– off and away from the kingdom on a lark or a crusade or whereeverdafuck he went off to –– the King who certainly was not at home doing the hard, hard work of fathering or of parenting! Or, even of leading! To daJudge, to Judge Harley Butcher, her mouth and words had just proved another of my exact pieces of “material substance change.” Herry was not home parenting –– as he had promised he would be! … Back before that blackest of mythically magical dates, 21 September 1990, during Act Two! The Liar finished that speech, “ … if you want to use the word ‘enforcer’, I was the person to try to carry out my husband’s wishes. And I still might see myself as that role. I think it is the biological parent’s role in a step situation to be the disciplinarian.” Fuck! Did she just say, “step”? And, the funniest ever: did the McLive Stepper just call me or was she referring to JTB – Herry, the Joy – Toy – Boy as, a “disciplinarian”?! More funny – hah hahs followed, “So, every time that I would call and Dr. Edinsmaier was there, did you, Ms. McLive, let me talk to him? Did you say, ‘O, the biological parent is here, the Truemaier Boys’ father. And the biological mother, Dr. True, is calling so, so this call is not for me,’ and then did you put the phone down and ‘step’ back like the ‘step’ in stepparent means to do –– until Herod came to pick it up and talk to me? Or … or, Ms. McLive, did you in fact and instead act as a go – between?” The answer to which, of course, everyone in the courtroom including Judge Butcher and sitting outside of it in the hallways either in support of me or sequestered there before testifying –– all of us –– already knew! I almost couldn’t contain my laughter when she tried the question – with – a – question route, “Are you asking me if I disciplined my husband?” Not that he didn’t need it! I know from experience that … that he most certainly did!!! “My husband is not a child.” “O, O but he is! Herry is exactly that! And, you too, … you, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, you well know it, don’t you?! That is why you just said … what it is you just said!” my thoughts were sooo nodding to myself. “So, if there was –– Wha’? What?! Are you winking at me?!” she abruptly exclaimed back at me! Some ditherer, too, this particular woman. As Mehitable. Of course, I wasn’t. I believe the woman was trying to buy herself some extra time … to think … were she capable of such an exercise! “Excuse me. Aaah, um, um, I lost my concentration. Would you repeat the question? I thought you were asking me if I was disciplining my husband,” and she full – well did know why, had I been asking that question, it would’ve indeed been quite a valid one to ask! Herry was a child –– and she had been long enough with him to have now formed that opinion in her very own mind herself! Else, she wouldn’t have thought that the hint of that exact idea was there in my question in the first place! Arrested development!!! As is any usual Joy – Toy – Boy. I stated, “I was asking if when I called and asked to speak to the children, did you say to yourself, ‘This is a situation between the biological parents?’ Or, did you in fact and in stead act as a go – between –– between –– the two biological parents?” “Aahh, when you called and asked for my husband,” which was always the case when I called because it seemed Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, a physician never on call apparently, simply refused to answer telephones at his home because not one time did he –– and this was long before caller – ID came into being, “if my husband was there, I said, ‘Herry, it’s Legion.’ ” And what, pray tell, … “What was his reply to you at all times?” Every last one of them. “He would say, ‘I don’t want to talk to her.’ ” That was not a lie! Hallelujah! Praise the goddesses! And in my mind’s ear I could just hear his tiny – man, whiny – high pitch about it, too, “I don’ wanna talk to her! Nah – nah – nah – nah … nah!” Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, too, like Herry’s behavior, acted like a little schoolgirl about to get caught in a lie but, by her teeth, escaping the catch. I must have unexpectedly thwacked the air of the courtroom with, “Do you have any knowledge about who it was that first contacted the Ames Tribune on September 24, 1990?” O! O! O! O!, did we ever –– all of us –– immediately hear from Mr. Shindy Scheisser, “Irrelevant, Your Honor!” But I went on, despite his shout, anyhow, “… about the publication on September 25th, subsequently of the article that appeared about me?” Mr. Scheisser screamed, “TOTALLY irrelevant! We spent a lot of time on this. It has nothing to do with her modification action!” . He stated Legion had lost the Boys but had not ‘hit bottom’ yet -- -- not until she had lost her home and food. “Your Honor, it goes to motive.” Material motive of the Good and Wonderful Healer’s and of hers, of course, to keep me frickin’ … without materials, to keep me mother – fucked, … particularly without money! Poor! Relatedly, as Thuggish Daddee had nonchalantly mentioned to Grace Portia, all that while having me, against my will, holed up those weeks and imprisoned inside his SpaChezResort Jail … that Legion had lost the Boys but had “not hit bottom yet” – – not until she had lost her home and food! That motive … my query about the mother – fuck of the Ames Tribune … soooo goes to! Judge Butcher was heard to eventually state, “Well, go ahead and answer.” But Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive questioned – the – question … again … instead of outright answering it –– trying to secure for herself more time for a way outta this one, “Do I have any knowledge about who did it?” “Yes. About who it was that first contacted the Ames Tribune?” Her infamous line of unaccountability, for not holding herself responsible, let alone, culpable for killing my chances as a veterinarian, academician or researcher, “No, I do not. I have no idea.” Two years after the article’s publication and all of the murderous damning that it did to the Boys, to me and to Reporter Gaffey –– and Ms. McLive has “no idea” who? It is that simple, Jury. It truly, truly is. To lie and to deceive, depending upon who you are and what your pedigree is and to whom you are connected –– such as a physician pillar, in an American court of family law, that is literally all that it takes. Just get it said. Under oath, “I have no idea.” And suddenly, then, this fuck becomes “testimony”, now “evidence” –– and Herry and Mr. Scheisser get clean, slick away with ruining my career opportunities forever, their purposeful perfect, utter humiliation to the three of us Truemaiers and to me! Not to mention, my merely managing to get next month’s rent paid! * * * * I grew even more cynical, too abraded with her fuckly antics to continue anymore with the cuntly Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive. True it was: I gave up on her. Mr. Shindy Scheisser took his turn with her, that is, his cross examination. All of it, of course, glowing reports of her and Herry’s magnificent step – parenting and fathering of the Truemaier Boys –––– humans whom I, alone, had … chosen to … grow into … themselves! Or, Shyster Scheisser’s cross of Ms. McLive centered on how heinous and harmful was their mother by my having a thing to do with Mirzah, Zane and Jesse –– with letters particularly sent to –– my very own Boys. One particularly telling example of a mother’s desperation in trying to keep in contact with her babies when the Sperm Donor and the Next Cunt in his Stash lays waste to her came in the cross dialogue about the Grubtrop United States Post Office box and the 800 telephone number, both of which services cost money to rent and to subscribe to at that time. “There’s been testimony about a post office box obtained by Dr. True for the children in West Virginia, and an 800 number obtained by Dr. True to have the children call her in Ames, when you moved them all away to West Virginia. Did you approve either one of those?” Using my actual, earned title and surname with which to identify me –– finally! for the court reporter, Attorney Shindy Scheisser actually asked this of Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive –– as if she evidently had had decreed authority to grant and to sanction my comings and goings, my thinkings and doings for the Boys! He just got it said, just got it asked. Therefore, by his simply stating this assumption –– out loud in a courtroom –– that the Not Mother owned such power, why, that must have made it okay for her to even think that she had any say – so or any right –– to approve or to not approve of my acquiring these services in order to try to reach my children! “No, I did not approve either one of those.” Period! “Did Dr. True consult you before obtaining either one of those?” Assumed Mr. Shindy Scheisser did that the Nottingham Sheriff, by her coupling in a mawwiage to the Kingdom’s King Herod, had had such authority of which I, the Truemaier Boys’ Real Ma, had first needed to seek out –– regarding these two! “No, she did not.” Period! “Did the children tell you about either one of those?” That was noooot likely! “No, they did not.” Period! And that I did believe! “Did you discover both of these? Or, how did you discover the post office box?” Mr. Scheisser finally got around to making his point. “I think actually my husband discovered the post office box, or together we did. Zane had a letter in his jacket, and it didn’t say ‘322 Lawson’ on it. It said ‘post office box number.’ And I believe his father asked him. I did go to the post office, and I spoke with a postmaster there then. And another woman and asked them about this. And we gave them a letter stating we wished to have that box closed, and asked the children. And they did admit there was a post office box, and that they had gotten a letter, I believe they said.” One letter was all that made it through –– for the box’s $20 rental fee –– one. Before Mother – Fucking Herry shut it down! Before Herry had apparently had the right –– via His Henchwoman – Sheriff –– to make the federal government in the form of the United States Post Office remove access to any form of my free speech right to my own children! I have often wondered, since, if I could walk in to some USPS fortress of federal authority somewhere and demand to have shut down the post office boxes of Herry – Daddee Edinsmaier at where he receives his pornography materials. The “materials” –– with which the Good and Wonderful Doctor – Daddee criminally purveys, as “healing teacher,” … to my minor sons. Reverse / flip the genders, ya’ know, Jury. Would that, d’yo’s’pose, regarding the First Amendment work? Would it work, as Andrea Dworkin declares that it needs to, for me, the woman? “If the First Amendment does not work for women,” says she, “then it simply … does not work!” As well, so states … I! Mr. Scheisser asked further, “What about the 800 number? How did you discover that?” “I discovered the 800 number when I came home from mass with my husband, and was given a square piece of paper by my daughter, Mary Jane, that said on it ‘West Virginia State Police.’ The police came over to our house. The boys must have been in bed. Mary Jane was downstairs, and the police came to the door and gave her this slip of paper. And she handed it to us when we walked in. And it said something about Legion True trying to get in touch with the boys. I think it said ‘family emergency’ or somehow we were led to believe it was a family emergency.” “And it had an 800 number?” “Yes, yes, it did.” “And what did you do?” “We dialed it.” I guess Zane, Jesse and Mirzah –– all –– must have still been asleep. They did not greet the WV Blues; and Minor Mary Jane, completely in inmates’ – like, choreographed, synchronized … and DEhumanizing … lockstep with her step – King – Daddee, most certainly did not … first … give to my Boys the note from the police. It appeared that they still were not privy to the telephone number, let alone, ever able to actually use it to themselves … reach me! “And what did you hear?” “We got Legion.” “She answered the phone?” “Yes, yes, she did! And in hindsight, I wished we would have had the presence of mind to say something. I was just dumbfounded. I thought I was calling the State Police. And, instead, I was calling Legion!” The incredible lengths we mothers have to go to in order to even … try … to stay in our children’s lives. “Did you terminate the phone conversation then, or the call I mean?” “I hung up the phone. And I assume my husband did. I think I hung up the phone first.” The Boys never one time used the 800 number for which I continued to pay … for years to come. Hope, as I have many, many times stated, is an addiction. How could they have known that I did that –– when they had never even known of the telephone number’s existence? And how would I have known differently either? Extra – terrestrially? Through ET? Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s “testimony” that day was the first “evidence” with which I myself had learned that Mirzah, Jesse and Zane had never known that I had been soooo hoping that –– from anywhere –– there was at least one telephone available for their use ––so that my Boys would be able just … … just “to phone home.” But … then it was finally my turn with Herry! Herry swears apparently. That is, it does not matter to him that he, before testifying, swears or affirms. The record stated that Herod Edinsmaier was “first duly sworn by the Court.” I received sort of a send – off from Judge Butcher, “Whenever you are ready, Dr. True.” I began, “Are you the father of Zane Truemaier and Mirzah Truemaier and Jesse Truemaier?” “Yes, I am.” “Where are they?” “They are in West Virginia. Specifically, they should be in school right now. Grubtrop Middle School and Grubtrop High School.” “In whose care are they at this hour?” I asked. “Let’s see, we retain two people to be in the household at all times when we are gone. One’s name, Karin Richardson. The other’s name is Cheryl Bowen, I believe.” Huh? “I believe?” Either the Brilliant Doctor knew or he did not know. Their names! Did he or did he not know, at the least!, their names?! Zap! “Where were they at the end of August, when you were sitting here in Storm County, at the time of trial?” I asked of the Truemaier Boys’ primary – “caretaking” daddee, Herry – Daddee! “School had not yet begun then. They were also in the care of two women who were there. We had arranged to have someone at the house at all times.” “JYeah? JYeah, well, maybe you had, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, maybe you had. But you, allegedly, O Brilliant One, you could not remember their names, could you? So, if you couldn’t even remember the DEhumans’ names, then how do you know one or the other of the two women even came 24 / 7 to my Boys … and came to them with credentials?!!!” That was just me thinking; of course, I really did not say that stream out loud. After all, none of them in the courtroom would have acknowledged what a DEhuman is although all of them only treated me and the Boys’ childcare providers as though we are that … DEhuman! “One was Karin Richardson. And the other was, O gosh, her name is Tammy. I can’t recall her last name right now.” “You don’t know her last name?!” This I did ask out loud! Loudly! O Brilliant “Caretaking” Daddee! “No. I have it at home.” “So, you don’t know this woman very well?” “Well, I know her well enough. I have gotten references about her and enough to be satisfied that she was reliable, and she proved to be.” But you don’t remember her last name?!” Granting that she may have been a good caretaker which, of course, was not at all known or granted! … but just given that, anyhow, how would he still not have known her last name?! –––– except that it –– and she –– were not at all important enough to him for Herry to have taken the trouble to do the work of … remembering it!? The UNimportance of Truly UNimportant Women! Again! Still! “No, I got it written down, because it will be necessary to provide tax records for it at the end of the year.” Good gawd! Money. It was about the money! The angle of why she was at all important enough for him to have at least written it down, her last name, was about the money. “Provide tax records for it?” Herry had actually stated “for it.” Not even “for her.” But “for it.” How more DEhuman could one describe a woman? Than to make her an … “it.” I continued, “I asked what instructions you left, Dr. Edinsmaier. Not we. You.” “Well, I had a hand in establishing all the instructions.” “What was that hand? Specifically?” “Well, Fannie and I …” “No. You.” “Fannie and I spoke with the babysitters.” “And so, you gave the babysitters, since you didn’t give the teenage Boys telephone numbers where you could be reached, you gave these women then, did you, the Clerk of Court telephone number for this courthouse, did you?” “No.” “So, they really don’t know exactly where to reach you, do they?” “Well, the reason for having a responsible adult there was so that there would be someone to make decisions, if necessary, in our absence. I didn’t see the need or the wisdom of giving them a phone number like the county courthouse, of which I didn’t know in any case, because, you know, she is there because she is supposed to know what to do in an emergency.” “The wisdom?” Where do I begin? This sounded just like when he was my legal husband and had gone off to medical meetings in Boston or San Diego, “Well, now, Ya’ Stupid – Ass Heifer, if an emergency came up, you’d have to handle it alone now yourself anyhow, wouldn’t you? So, wha’ the fuck, Pussy!? You don’t need my hotel number or my flight either, Twat!” And I would have to go to his colleagues’ spouses for all of that information –– as Herry would leave me with precisely –– none of it. He did not want the work of any parenting –– even from a long distance! The man did not want to be found –– not even in the case of an emergency with one (or more) of the Boys! At least 25 times through 12½ years of my being patriarchally bound to this slacker. And now? Now, Herry – Daddee was still not wanting to be found –– while … at court … and up against the ex – Cunt for custody of those same Boys! Still not wanting to be found! Still wanting, … as written inside the Opprobrious Eight Pages of his, … still wanting to be “young and carefree” and have in these babysitting women and The Not – Mother Fannie Issicran McLive his very own “refuge from parental responsibility,” the Slacker had scripted! From the work of … his accountability! “So, if one of the children died right now, say of an allergic reaction, and we have a son who is allergic, they couldn’t get to a telephone number, a 432 courthouse exchange number, could they?” “Well,” Dr. Edinsmaier realized he had utterly fucked up … so tried to evade with sidestepping my question, “it would be their job not to call us but to in fact make use of the fact we left them an emergency release to get medical treatment.” Soooo many “facts” the Brilliant Doctor stated there to be! Facts? Try … factoidals! “Yes, yes, of course, but you knew I was asking about after they’d received the news from the medical personnel that either the children were all right or they were dead, they, these women then, they wouldn’t be able to phone you directly, would they, Herry?” Finally! … no evasion, “No, they wouldn’t be.” “You said you did not know the number, Herry. Are there means to find that number out?” “Yes.” “And you did not take those means to do so, did you?” “No.” And this passive – aggressive, blasé, laissez – faire, couldn’t – give – a – shit, doddering daddeeing mattered not one whit –– still –– to a district ‘court’ either! Let the DEhumans do it. Let the bitches do the actual work of parenting. Just give daMan, Herry, his “refuge from parental responsibility.” And … right now! I asked, “Dr. Edinsmaier, when is the last time you told the Respondent where her sons were?” “I don’t recall when’s the last time I told you where they were. It’s been fairly clear that you have known, and there was not much need to tell you where they were.” Not that Herry permitted me, me the particular bitch who was the Boys’ ma, to know; but since I did, he wasn’t about to do any work on his own accord or initiative –– of letting me know. His was the plan, after all, to keep me, the Boys’ mother, invisible anyhow. And if there were any work to his daddeeing, then that was the work Herry Edinsmaier was about: from Mirzah, Jesse and Zane keeping me … hidden and gone. “Let me help you, Herry. Have you ever told the Respondent where her sons were? Since September 21st, 1990?” “I don’t recall telling you. I have to point out that, as I said before, you seem always to have known. There was not a lot of point. You knew that we lived in Urbandale. You knew that they went to school in Urbandale. You knew all of the schools that the children attended. So, it isn’t as if I have tried to hide them from you.” “Isn’t that exactly what you tried to do?” “No.” “Not at any point?” “No,” Herry lied. Again. “Not even here? What is this the anniversary of?” “Well, today is the 28th of October. It was about this time last year that we went to West Virginia.” And it most certainly was. The precise “time” … it was! “Actually, is it not also the anniversary of the day Jesse ran away?” I was more to the immediate point: that one of deliberately and vengefully keeping Legion True, the true mama, hidden and gone from her own kiddos. “It is very close to that time. I don’t recall the exact day that he ran away.” So. Why was I not at all surprised that Herod Edinsmaier would not remember this event?! This horrible happening was huge to me: Jesse’s having to run away. But as László had witnessed in his earlier testimony: when Herry had really, in fact, presented himself with the countenance of rabidly being into haranguing and harassing me by searching my condominium in Ames, to Herry … Jesse’s having gone missing was of no big a deal! “There was no outward sign of him being particularly upset at all about the fact that he didn’t know where Jesse was. It was all very matter – of – fact and very routine and quiet,” László had testified! Which was true! I had seen “this” in Herry myself that very night! Herry was not at all worried about Jesse’s gone missing! He wasn’t! His demeanor was only one of trying to destroy me! “This is the exact day. Today, Dr. Edinsmaier.” I was becoming disgusted. And we had only just begun! Further, there was more disgust to come: four to five pages of Dr. Edinsmaier not giving me a direct answer about his having told the Boys’ various physicians that he, the father, believed their mother, me the Bitch, to have a mental illness. Questioning went on and on before Herry finally admitted, “I could have. I do not recall. Well, it is difficult for me to understand how a person would engage in the course of action that you have unless they were ill in some way.” Herry had finally given me a full – sentence conclusion, but I countered, “Course of action,” Dr. Edinsmaier? That’s terribly vague. You just got it said. You did get it said in ‘Court’ all right, ‘course of action.’ Well, if I am mentally ill demonstrated by a ‘course of action’ as you just got said, then what did you do, Dr. Edinsmaier, about that? If I am in whatever vague, presumed ‘course of action’ of mental illness, what did you do on the 15th of March 1991, with regard to the Boys? That was a date after September 21, 1990, and what did you do when I was allegedly so mentally ill?” Typical, “I don’t recall.” “You don’t recall, Dr. Edinsmaier, that you remanded back to me, that you put those three Boys back into my care for an entire 11 – day spring break period?!” “Yes, I did.” “Well, Dr. Edinsmaier, but I was in a ‘course of action,’ you just testified, of one that was of a mentally ill person! You just said that! I was behaving like a mentally ill person. And you put me ––, you put those children in my care at my total cost for 11 days! And then, did you ever call or write these children to check on them in the care of that mentally ill person during those 11 days? Well? Did you?” “I did allow them to visit you during spring break for that entire week.” “That is not what I asked you, Dr. Edinsmaier. I asked, did you call or did you write or did you check up on these children in the care of a mentally ill person, in the care of a person whom you believed to be mentally ill?!” How mother – fuckingly and utterly ridiculous for me to have to point out this discriminatory shit! “I don’t believe that I did. You know, it appeared to me that you did in fact have concern for the Boys’ health and well – being, in that you could contact me … if … there were need.” What it, that 11 – day period had truly appeared to be to Herry, was not at all a time of his leaving the Boys with a mentally ill person in whose care a reasonable parent would never entrust children but, in fact, a perfectly sane mother who was instead for Herry his “refuge from parental responsibility” and under whose supervision he, Herry, would not have to actually DO ANY parenting work at all because he already knew the Boys would be very, very well taken care of, indeed, and that he could, for 11 days at least, go off without them and be “young and carefree again!” Which, with absolutely no contact that entire time to them, is exactly what he had proceeded to do! And, here in open ‘court’, the Daddee was trying to convince me (since he didn’t have to persuade an already “decided” judge) that what he had done over this specific spring break period of placing the Truemaier Boys in the unsupervised control of “a mentally ill person” was all A – okay indeed! To which I say, “What a crock of mother – fuck!” And continued, “Hypothetically, if you believed a person to be mentally ill today, Dr. Edinsmaier, would you give those children over into that person’s care –– today?!” “Well, it would depend greatly on the reasons for doing so. And it would depend greatly on the nature of the illness.” “So. You would?” I asked back incredulously! Incredibly, more mumbo – jumbo! fuck from Herry! “I mean, it would depend on the circumstances.” “It would, huh? So. You really, really didn’t believe at all, did you Dr. Edinsmaier, that I was fucking nuts, did you?” No, no, it didn’t get asked exactly that way; I did leave out the “fucking” and … just asked, “You didn’t really believe, did you Dr. Edinsmaier, that I was nuts, did you?!” I wanted to clarify, “But I just fucking pissed you the hell off, didn’t I? By calling you to account for your sexual addiction about which you were soooo trying to hide it behind alcoholics anonymous and the 12 Steps and with the ‘help’ of idiot fuckers such as Varry Wussamai, now isn’t that, in fact, Herry, the … Fucking Truth?! I fucking so pissed you off! I mean I, Dr. Legion True, one uppity, blonde pussy, truly, truly pissed you off, huh, Herry?!” “Dr. Edinsmaier, I want you to take a copy of the September 21, 1990 decision of Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor’s and show Judge Butcher now and me in it where it says, ‘cut off all contact including mail and telephone contact.’ ” With the copy, Herry immediately flipped to page 16, and stated to us all, “Well, he puts in the paragraph here, ‘if it becomes apparent to Herry that Legion is continuing to engage in the same practices that have now twice been prohibited, Herry is to advise her that it is his intention to terminate visitation if she will not comply. If she continues, he has the right to deny visitation.” “But I didn’t specifically hear the words, did I, Dr. Edinsmaier, ‘all contact’ or the word ‘mail.’ I didn’t hear the words ‘telephone denial’ or ‘take her mail from them,’ did I? Or, ‘lie to the Boys if you want to’ about her? I didn’t hear Judge Seizor tell you to ‘steal her mail to them’ or to ‘break her mother – child ties to the Boys’, did I? I didn’t even hear, did I, the two – word phrase, ‘parental rights,’ did I? You just did all this denial of me to the Boys … because you could, didn’t you, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier? Because you knew you could!” “This was directed to me so I had to interpret this and then let the Court decide later if I had done it correctly,” the Truemaier Boys’ Exalted Sperm Donor blithely answered. “And that was my plan!” O O O … O Soooo, So Brilliant One, I just bet that it, indeed, especially was –– that! Exactly that! The Proxy Domestic Violator continued, “The telephone calls and letters … I felt it was my responsibility as a parent to try to shield them from this kind of influence.” Meaning me, the Mother – Parent, of course. Maternal deprivation was the Not Parent’s entire intent. The Perfect Revenge. “What I did was attempt to carry out the burden that was placed on me by Judge Seizor. He said I was to terminate visitation under those circumstances. And I believe that I did to the best of my ability. And I was expecting that at some point a judge and Court would determine whether I had done what was proper and give me the direction necessary. And until that happened, I was operating on my own! I felt it was my responsibility as a parent to provide them the proper atmosphere!” Indeed, Dr. Edinsmaier carried out –– on his own –– the pillared men’s entitled vetoing power –– just as slick as, in reality for androcentric millennia! ANY man has had dominance and dominion over ANY woman whom he so chooses to oppress! Just as those same pillared, countenanced judge – men would themselves do –– should their own ex – fucked cunts dare to totally piss them off, too! I could not get a straight answer so had to ask, “How do I threaten you, Dr. Edinsmaier?” a number of times. Finally, I stated, “The only thing I can understand from what you said, if I were dead, then I would no longer be a threat to you. Is that right?” “Well, I certainly would not be worried about you writing any more letters.” How true was that! “So, whenever I am in the living state, then that is a threat to you?” I actually became forced and compelled to then ask Dr. Herod Edinsmaier this totally asinine question! Except that it –– and the Good “Healer” ’s answer under sworn oath –– illustrates so clearly the male human sphere and privileged realm of domination, dominion over and control of the DEhuman female in all things –– in even whether she should draw breath or not, let alone, have in that breathing life of hers –– her own –– biological children! Or, not! Exalted Sperm! “Well, yes,” the Good – and – First – Do – No – Harm Doctor replied! “I think as long as you are capable of doing what you have done in the past, then you are a threat to me and my family life.” What unrestrained, arrogant mother – fuck. The unseemly spermy spawn of the Juggern Aut Patriarch had just sworn in open ‘court’, thus confirming! that I to him and to “his” was much, much better off –– dead. All, of which of course, I had soooo, so clearly regarding the safety and well – being of my kiddos and of my self … known –– from the exact moment, late – late on the night of Monday, 06 June 1988, when Herod Edinsmaier for his last time exited The Manor as its Lord. And himself walked away from all of us mooost , most … willingly! Then came several transcript pages’ worth of intervening issues: Herry never intended to –– and did not –– take with him (any of the work of!) the Truemaier Boys’ pets: Zephyr, Rex or the zebra finch Lady –– not ever! He did not even ask for their animals! Not one time did he request them! The telephones –– two total –– which Zane’s, Jesse’s and Mirzah’s Aunt Endys and I had each given the Boys had wires on them cut and both were confiscated by Herry and by the Not Mother, the Not Even ‘Step’ – ping Back – Mother McLive so that the Boys could never use them to call me, a silver neck chain that I had personally given to Mirzah mysteriously wound up in the Urbandale bungalow’s bathroom trashcan and neither the Daddee nor the Not Mother seemed to know how that had happened, in the autumn or early winter there had been no seasonal influenza vaccination given to exercise – induced asthmatic Jesse, although recommended by an orthopod no orthotic arches obtained for Zane’s baseball shoes –– and, most importantly … no guns nor hunting knives taken away from Zane during a period of depression with his talking and journal expression of suicide. That one, that last one, is unconscionable to me: how a physician, a pathologist no less, passive – aggressively and with such a laissez – faire, read that actually as with such a LAZY ethic, outright refused to acknowledge the danger of the father of a teenage boy allowing such firearms and weaponry in the home when the child is depressed. I was fucking stunned at this one. daJudge Butcher? From him? –– Not a measure of one hint of incredulity did Judge Butcher register on this factoid! Not even one. We moved on: some there was on the three Truemaier Boys being deceived into believing long, long past the end of job negotiations that Herry was taking a post where, for the children, there was to be a really large house and even a swimming pool in Russellville, Arkansas, and that they would all be moving there. Then a short month or so later Mirzah was deceived into believing that Big – Daddee Herry was going to be the director of pathology at another locale after all … which location, actually, already had two pathologists and Herry, were he to be hired on there, would truly have been … third rung on its ladder and not the chief of anything (except of family matters … pathological) atop that area’s hierarchal pole of totems –– at all! Then, “Isn’t it really true that you, Dr. Edinsmaier, perpetrated terrorist and hostage – holding techniques in addition to all of the withholding of the Boys from me and that you did not promote their finding of friends for themselves?” “Well, healthy children will find friends if they are just left alone. And that’s what happened. That’s the way it is supposed to work,” and as untouched by fatherly encouragement, let alone, his parental work to any of it all! Herry driveled this friend – finding fuck. “In other words,” I asked, “you never actively took them to practices, you never took them to their friends’ homes or to practices? You, Herry. You. You never went over to their homes, met their parents, found out what kind of people they might be, as far as adults around Zane, Jesse and Mirzah? What adult examples did you bring to your home for these children to have as a scaffold to learn how to make friends, Herry? Who are your close, personal male, unrelated friends, Herry, whom you brought to your home to show these Boys, ‘I have friends myself –– and this is how I myself am a friend to them.’ If you were so passive and blasé about it, who are your friends, Herod? To put dates to this, from January through October 1991 then?” Of course, Mr. Shindy Scheisser absolutely loathed this question and vociferously objected so I said, “I will make it simple, one tiny question, Your Honor. Between January 1991, and October 1991, what close, personal male friend ever came to your home to visit you, Herry?” “Well, aaah, I can recall that Devin came one time.” “Did he come to visit you, Herry, or is he really the Boys’ godfather?” “Well, he came to visit me. I think there is the fact he does also enjoy visiting with the boys. But as far as I know, he came to visit me.” “How many times?” “Once.” Herry repeated the number. “So. In ten months’ time you had one personal contact with him. This ‘very close, personal’ friend. Did you ever talk to him on the phone on a weekly basis? This ‘very close personal’ friend of yours?” I asked. “No.” “Do you have anybody that you ever talk to on the phone on a weekly basis who is your close, personal, male, unrelated friend?” “Well, I have a lot of friends involved in – ” “The real question, Herry. Please answer only the real question.” “Well, there are friends that I have who are –” “You have no friends, do you, Herry?” “Yes, I have friends. I have friends in, aaah, at work, um, in – ah, in the church.” This? This from the vehemently avowed atheist, the amoral atheist, Herry Edinsmaier. “In the church that I went to in Urbandale. I have friends at meetings I attend. I see them.” “How many times then, Herry, are they in your home on a weekly or monthly basis?” “O, they are rarely in my home!” No shit, Sherlock. True that was! –– and noooo different than from what had been that very case when he was mawwied all of those 12½ sperm – donating years to me! Still –– true this was! “Why?” “It is unnecessary to have them come to my home. I see them elsewhere.” “So. Entertaining friends in your own home isn’t something that you set as an example for your children? To emulate to them in their own setting? On how to be a friend?” No different this was –– from when Herry was such The Slacker – Freeloader! that he always soooo, so had been! At Dr. Freddie Goldstein’s palatial country estate with the outdoor hot tub –– to back before then even –– to when we were juuuust starting out and Herry Edinsmaier would only ever sponge off of Abby and Devin at their student housing complex when the Boys were so much tinier and he and I first married. O, he wanted to socialize sometimes, yes –– but always, always at others’ expense and only ever at their homes. And never, never because he actually had to pay for anything nor, most especially, never, never if Herry had to do any work to accomplish the entertaining of guests –– from his performing either the work of cleaning up the Boys’ house before friends showed up to his ever having to shop for or actually prepare any of the victuals or the activities of the social call! NO. No work for Herry! Absofrickin’lutely none. This was the how – to manner of Herry’s being a friend to someone –– for as long as I could remember. It disgusted me way back when –– when first I had gotten this about him figured out. And it disgusted me then –– right there in the courtroom, Herry – Daddee’s testifying about how he continues to model this behavior on how to be a friend … to my three Boys. Or, more accurately, on how sooooo not to befriend people! “You just testified, Dr. Edinsmaier, how you let them find their own friends. Did you prepare a home of a family – nurturing kind that would, that the Boys would want to bring friends home to? And did? Did you have such a home?” “Yes.” “Where?” “In Urbandale.” “When?” “For the entire time that the boys lived with me there.” “Then why didn’t they have friends over? When was the first friend over for Mirzah Truemaier when he lived in Urbandale with you? What day, month or year, Dr. Edinsmaier, was the first friend over for Mirzah from Urbandale?” Mirzah loved having friends over. Always had. I so want that he always will. Absolutely loved having friends come over for a visit! So, too, did Jesse and Zane; but Mirzah I recalled as the child from littlest years, who, if a friend liked a toy in Mirzah’s toy chest, would take it out and give it away to the friend. For them to play with at their own homes for awhile? Like borrowing? No! No … the little friend, Mirzah would matter – of – factly tell them, could “keep the toy for always!” It was now theirs. If the other kiddo liked a jacket Mirzah was wearing, then the other child needed only to express that liking to Mirzah –– and she or he then … became the jacket’s newest owner! Because Mirzah had just given it over to her or him. For keeps. Mirzah had always been this generous –– ever since he could talk and walk! I so did not want to see this in him … die! Mirzah was before he was seven years old, as I had humbly told Grandpa AmTaham while we were all getting ready to leave in the Caddy Blue on that joke of a trek to Wisconsin with miserable Mehitable, “the kindest person to walk the World –– whom I had ever known in my entire life.” Any act of Herry’s and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s with him … –– the silver neck chain in the rubbish and no friends brought or even allowed over for Mirzah to play with … –– this was just killing me. “I don’t recall.” Herry answered –– killing me. “I will help you refresh your memory, Dr. Edinsmaier. We had it in testimony back in August, a young child testified then, Jim. His name was Jim. He testified that he had been Mirzah’s first friend over to the house there on 69th in Urbandale. Did he, Herry, did he come from Urbandale? Or, did I –– drive him down there to Mirzah from Ames and from Mirzah’s old Kate Mitchell Elementary School area, Dr. Edinsmaier?” No answer came back to me. Mr. Shindy Scheisser saw to that. But the testimony had been clear: Friend Jim had had to come to Mirzah by way of … and down to Urbandale from … The Teacup ‘hood in Ames! * * * * A few pages of the playbook of The Opera’s Act Three Part Four established –– again –– that none of my three Boys were ever allowed to see me for Christmases, for New Years, for both holidays’ eves, for May’s Mother’s Days –– and never, never on my, or AmTaham’s, Winter Solstice birthday. Herry could not remember the last time when I had ever had my Truemaier Boys for any of these special times since he himself had only and always had Zane, Jesse and Mirzah –– captured –– with him. There was the admission to ‘the Court’, to daJudge, of a $1 bill exhibit that the almighty Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier who had lost that amount in a poker game to Jesse had sent in a letter to the child –– as gambling debt repayment. And then the questioning switched to the Boys’ other grandfather, AmTaham. “Is it true, Dr. Edinsmaier, that these children dearly loved, all three of them, their Grandfather AmTaham?” “I believe that’s true,” and, O, how Herry Edinsmaier hated … hated … absolutely loooooathed stating that. This was even obvious from the witness stand. Herry knew this to be the Truth about Jesse, Mirzah and Zane. And he was fit to be tied having to admit it here. “Has there ever been a time when you denied the Boys visitation to their Grandfather AmTaham?” Herry seethed. And made no bones on trying to hide from ‘the Court’ his contempt, “There was one time.” “Explain the nature of that one time,” but, lo, Herry did not. not. noooot want to! “I refused to let them go to Williamsburg that one time. About a year ago. It was after a conversation which I had had with the Trues. And in addition, I might add that on several occasions I tried to make some sort of arrangements that both they and I would feel comfortable with.” O, that there? That is the classic maneuver – ‘dance’ of Herry’s of “shift – the – fucking – blame!” … onto the Trues! And … away … from himself! “About?” It was, indeed, nearly exactly a year and two weeks ago –– now, you Grandpa AmTaham – fucker! “What was the nature of those arrangements, Herod?” I asked again. “Be specific,” I had to beg. “And just how utterly controlled by you alone would those ‘arrangements’ need to be, Herry?! To the point where a man would betray the trust of his own daughter, his own child, Herry?! Because that is exactly what you would’ve certainly liked to have had the power to make AmTaham True do against me, wasn’t it? Betray me. Betray the trust of his own kid, Legion. Wasn’t it, Herry?!” I was left thinking. “Aaah, on one occasion there was a long history of very difficult communications between me and your parents, particularly your father. On one occasion when I stopped in Ames to see to the welfare of the children, when they were in the care of your parents, I asked your mother if I could talk with your father. And her reply was, ‘Well, he doesn’t want to talk to you.’ ” This sounded to me an awful lot like precisely how Herod kept himself, through the manipulations and machinations which occurred in his folie à deux with Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive: shutting himself away from having to ever speak to me! Herry didn’t like his own medicine! Or, his own tactic being used –– when he was not the one initiating its use! “And at that point, I did not pursue the issue.” Well, that would have been true, too, I am thinking. Herry’s passive aggression was to use the violence of his aggressiveness –– later. To run away from it at the first and to never, ever confront the conflict at its source. But to … later … ‘let’ it viciously but quietly reappear in the form of denying the Boys their getting to visit with their Grandpa AmTaham –– while, all the while, making AmTaham out to the Boys to look like ‘the bad guy’ who caused this visit denial in the first place. “Later on, I spent about an hour in their home in Williamsburg trying to come to some sort of understanding that would allow me to leave the children in their care, and yet feel that I was discharging my responsibilities as a parent properly. They were very critical of me. In the end, I could not come to any kind of a suitable arrangement. There was just no way that I could find to establish grounds for communication with your father. Then, later, I discovered that you and the children were using the occasion of visits –– and by the way, in spite of being unable to come to a understanding with your parents, I continued to allow them to visit with their grandparents, until it came to my attention that your parents and the children were using those visits as opportunities for you to visit the children, in spite of the fact that I had written you to say that I was going to terminate visitation. And when I asked your father to assure me that he would not use those occasions as times to visit you, he would not.” Yeah, rah, sissboombah, AmTaham! Score one for true True fathering to a child! For his to me! “Well, what did AmTaham True tell you, Dr. Edinsmaier?” “He told me that he knew perfectly well that what he was saying might wind up with him not being able to see the children, and if that’s the way it was, then so be it. But he would not make that kind of promise. That I would have to make a court get involved in order to get him to do that.” Whoa!!! Score two, Father AmTaham! I prodded further, “He told you something about Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor though, didn’t he, Dr. Edinsmaier?” “Well, I said, ‘I am not trying to tell you what to do in your home. I am simply trying to state what the conditions are so I can make my decisions.’ And my decision was that it was my intention to separate the children from their mother based on the power Judge Seizor had given me to do so. That wouldn’t occur if I continued to let the boys visit with the True grandparents in the Trues’ home. So I simply wouldn’t let them go there any longer.” That answer about Herry Edinsmaier’s control over a woman and her children –– “to separate” them from each other –– to maternally deprive the kiddos of their birthing and bonded mother, that is, by way of his patriarchal perpetration of domestic violence by proxy? That occurred on … page 666 … of The Opera’s script! How utterly and thoroughly appropo! 666! “They did not go to the Trues’ home in Williamsburg ever again, did they? And that man died, didn’t he?” “Well, that’s correct.” “Do you know whether or not he tried to contact Judge Seizor and find out Judge Seizor’s intention for him, the Boys’ grandfather?” Coldly came Passive Aggressor – Herry … one more time, “I have no way of knowing what your father did.” I continued, “Show me, please, in Judge Seizor’s decree of September 21, 1990, where it states that you, Herod Edinsmaier, have the right to deny the maternal grandparents visitation of their grandchildren.” From out of The Opera’s Act Two Part Two, from out of that decree … then. And again, no answer came back to me. Mr. Shindy Scheisser –– again –– saw to that. More and more it was a certainty that these entire operatic scenes of October 1992, before daJudge Butcher were ones of Ms. Tsianina Snowball’s exercises in … The Look. It just wasn’t obvious to one of us there in the courtroom, however. That is, to me! I just did not know yet then –– about the predetermined dispensing of pillared men’s so – called … “justice”! There was the battering testimony. Zane had been in an altercation with Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s child, Mary Jane, which the Daddee claimed had been physical (whether it was or it was not … ). About that one incident, then, Herry had, soooo choicely, termed Zane of all people … “a female batterer!” I asked Herry then, “What were Zane’s words back to you, Dr. Edinsmaier, when you called him … ‘a female batterer’?” “I don’t recall.” Common. Common answer of Herry’s. Sometimes … to nearly every question, it seemed. “Weren’t they something to the effect that if he were a female batterer, then he learned how to batter females … from his father?!” “It could have been. I don’t recall him saying that though.” “O, of course! … Sure you don’t, Herry, sure! So classically you, Herry, deflect away! Never, ever account for yourself. Deny. Deny. Deny –– by way of slick, ol’ ‘I don’t recall’ – fuck!” I was left thinking. “You, the Brilliant Doctor! Your not remembering so, so much juuuust doesn’t match with … how intellectually radiant and dazzling you deem your gray matter to be, now, does it, Dr. Edinsmaier?!” What I stated to the courtroom air, instead, was, “Could it have been? Could it have been that he continued to say that he witnessed you, on repeated occasions, beating upon his biological mother? And could it not also have been that you replied to him, ‘That was necessary and appropriate for me to beat up on your mother because she is mentally ill and she is crazy?’ Did you not in fact say this to Zane?!” “I do not recall such an exchange.” “But it could have happened, couldn’t it have?” Suddenly back at me just the one – word lie, “No.” “O, so it didn’t happen? An exchange of those words didn’t happen then?” “I don’t recall the exact wording.” I replied, “Well, I don’t either which is why I’d initially asked ‘words to that effect.’ So, you’re stating here, are you, Dr. Edinsmaier, that this conversation, this particular exchange of words never could have happened? Well then, have you ever done that which he could have witnessed?” “What? Crossed the line?” “OK, yeah, crossed the line by striking a woman? I am asking you, Dr. Edinsmaier, have you ever struck the Boys’ biological mother?” O so coldly again, “Since September of 1990, I have not struck their biological mother.” “You have, in fact, hit me, haven’t you, Herry?” Again unfeelingly, “Since September 21 of 1990, I have not touched you.” “You have, in fact, hit me in front of the Boys, haven’t you, Herod?” As indifferent as one could sound on this crime of battering came –– again –– this answer from Herry! “Well, since September 21 of 1990, I have not touched you.” The UNimportance of UNimportant women. “In front of the Boys, Herod, they have witnessed this, haven’t they? Repeatedly, haven’t they?” I could not get Herry to tell the Court, daJudge, that he had battered me and had done so repeatedly and had done so repeatedly in front of the Boys –– as if only then, then is when the violence counts as something heinous, that is, only if it is done in front of witnesses or in front of witnesses who are little kids. As if only then would battering of a woman, a wife, a mother, be worth anyone’s time to sit up and take mother – fucking notice of! It is this simple. To keep lying and to manage to keep deceiving in an American court of law. Depending upon who you are, of course, that is, whether or not you are male and pillared. Or, not. And, again, Mr. Shindy Scheisser put an end to me and to my examination with a matter – of – fact manner and nonchalance to that same room’s worth of air, “It is obvious, Your Honor, what she wants to get into. She wants to get into issues that were litigated at the time of the original dissolution.” And the head – shake. With yet another of … The Look. Which, of course, this unimportant crime of battering and Herry’s sexual addiction proclivities had not been. Ever. Because Mr. Jazzy Jinx and Ms. Carlotta Klutz had been unable to bring them up –– since ‘there had never been any’ of this abuse, violence and terror, just as ‘there had never been’ the information of the probable rape of Ms. McLive by her son – in – law George –––– with Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s subsequent mental problems of post – traumatic stress thereafter, … given over to Ms. Carrie Canard for her, the custody evaluator, to either deal with or try to hide in her two evaluation reports … anyhow! “Is it true that you carried Jesse out of doorways, Herod, bruising his shins on the door frame woodwork when you took him outside?” “I don’t believe that I did,” he lied about this act of his violence, too. “Isn’t it true that Mirzah was going early mornings before his regular classes began to prepare for his roles as a defense attorney and his role as a murder trial suspect in mock trials for the Drake University sixth grade talented and gifted regional competition?” “Yes.” “Weren’t those final competitions to have been held at Drake University on October the 30th 1991, Dr. Edinsmaier?” “I don’t know.” That did not surprise me! “Didn’t you actually know before departing for West Virginia on the 29th of October 1991, that you were, indeed, going to be leaving on that date … long before … that date?!” “Well, we knew. Yes.” “So, Dr. Edinsmaier, on October the 30th, 1991, you had a child, Mirzah, didn’t you, who had been out of the talented and gifted program –– for which he is rated for over a year –– finally get into it, then go practice early morning after morning for six weeks to prepare for his trial duties. You had him suddenly up and leave for West Virginia –– one day –– before those finals were to have occurred, leaving him, is that not so, without the opportunity to participate and with his teammates without the opportunities to prepare others for those two roles, didn’t you? Didn’t that happen?” Then came that pillared man’s slippery – slick elusiveness again. Just as always. Smooooth, smooth Herry, “Well, I think the moderators knew what the schedule was. I don’t think Mirzah did.” Huh?! “How did they know when you didn’t tell Mirzah?” “We did not let the children know exactly what our plans were, no.” “Did they know, Herry, or are you just saying that? Did they know you were going to be leaving that team high and dry and without those two roles covered?” Shyster Scheisser, full – well knowing, of course, that Self – Centered Herry Edinsmaier had utterly and entirely fucked up Mirzah’s whole school’s chances at winning with its regionally competing mock trial team, sooo did not like my point! “He just answered, Your Honor.” “Herry, you said ‘I think’. I want you to state whether or not you, in fact, had informed the moderators or you did not inform them. Did the moderators know Mirzah was not to be appearing for the two roles or didn’t they know?” Herry Edinsmaier evaded still. Just because he could. With … “in any case.” What is that, “in any case,” but a total mother – fuckoff of my questioning? “In any case, the principal concern here was that of the family and what was the proper time and context for moving to West Virginia.” “One day, Herry ––” The Arrogant, Entitled Pillar never did give an answer as to why he, as Daddee to my loveliest ever of third – born children, had demanded that Mirzah … flunk out on and let down … his friends! * * * * Almost done with questioning because I could not get this man, Herod Edinsmaier, to speak Truth, I landed into the areas of his sexual addiction, his ordering of the sabotage to my life and career as a veterinary professor and practitioner and his failures at loving. “Isn’t it true that you helped Zane subscribe to Playboy Magazine? When he was 11 years old, a minor child, and this a crime, Herry?” “Well, this certainly is not an event that has occurred since September 1990,” trying to shake off and elude accountability came the Aprovechar – Escapee’s answer back. Again, I got nowhere with Herry’s crime of pornography distribution and the sexual violence to minor children with its consumption … because of the September 21, 1990 date before which Mr. Jinx and Ms. Klutz also had not been allowed to address the exploitation –– Herry – Daddee’s visual and verbal molestation. “So. You admit to having told these children that their mother is crazy, obsessed, deranged. Did you tell these Boys, one, two or all three of them, that they were feeding their mother’s mental illness by their wanting me to appeal and get back physical custody of them?” Blame the judge on this one … daJudge Seizor! “I did attempt to explain to them, using words like those that Judge Seizor used, that there was mental disturbance and an obsession, and that that was an illness. To the extent that they were encouraging you to continue in this course of action, they were not helping you or doing you any good.” Typical narcissistic aggressor spew. Particularly to the abuser’s own children about their mama! “She’s crazy! And by your wanting stuff like, O say, justice! … why you’re just making her crazier, Kids!” Veeeery, very usual abuser mind – manipulation! Blame someone else, first and for sure. And then, too?! Blame the children! Blame the kiddos for wanting their mama. For wanting to even just be with her. And as regards the fuck of, “ … they were not helping you or doing you any good … ,” veeeery ordinary, manipulative male – anger and male – envy of The Pussy expressed as mother – fucking … ‘concern’ for her! “Did you, Herod, tell my Boys words to the effect that Judge Seizor gave you the power to keep them away from their mother entirely?” “I would have.” I wanted to vomit. This male power tripping thing over a female –– still, still boggles my mind. And it is over a decade later. Even in America. Not to mention that the power and control and domination and dominion over is about her babies, the ones –––– SHE ALONE–––– chose to grow! Then followed the matters of Herry’s threatening the Boys with their not being able to attend college because of my appealing, their never ever calling him Daddy and only Herry because “I have asked them to call me Herry.” “What is your role in the publication of the September 25, 1990 Ames Tribune article? Shyster Shindy Scheisser vehemently interjected his usual vomitus, “That’s been asked and answered ad nausea at the first part of this trial, Your Honor! And it is irrelevant on top of it!” That, Jury, is literally all that it takes, the pillared guy’s attorney calling me and my substantive issues about my life, my career, my livelihood, my very essence … “irrelevant!” Because he can! “Your Honor,” I stood firm, “it hasn’t been asked of this witness.” And so came back Herry’s lie, “I had no role in the publication of that article.” I tried, “Do you consider Mr. Scheisser your employee?” “I consider him my counsel.” “Do you consider him your employee?” “Well, he is my counsel,” and now? Now, Herod Edinsmaier was smirking at me, knowing he had me successfully cornered. As well as successfully kept forever … poor. “Do you pay him a fee as if you were hiring him to do something?” “Yes.” “Is he then your employee?” Mr. Scheisser bounced up with his snide side on the line of questioning, “Asked and answered, Your Honor, four times already!” Also smirking. It is that easy. Judge Butcher also jumped in with, “Ask another question, Dr. True.” So I did. “How did the Ames Tribune article come to get published, in your words, please, Herry?” Mr. Scheisser became viciously defensive, “This witness said he had no knowledge of it! Now she is asking how it got published! It’s been asked and answered. It is also irrelevant!” Literally … all … in my life for which I had strived –– destroyed by them, their judges and this printed article. “But, hey, Fucking Ex – Cunt: it is just totally irrelevant that the Daddee and I shot off all of our mother – fucking loogies all over you! Of course, now, though … flipped and reversed?! Why, if that fuck’d been done to us, well, we’d be flipping pissed, Bitch! And we’d come git and gut the fuck outta ya’, Twat! Actually? Like we soooo did … anyhow!” Again, I am “irrelevant”. How, I am thinking, do these woman – haters go to sleep with themselves at night? How do they even get to sleep at night? That lovely second spouse of Frieda Chicken Guthrie’s … Al … ‘fore he died, had a so – slick answer for me on this very query, “Hey, Woman! They sleep with themselves just fine! Don’t think that they don’t! Cuz they do, Legion! Just as easy as pie! It’s you and me; it’s folks like you and me, Legion, that don’t. Us – wid the consciences, Woman; we’re the ones that can’t get to sleep over treating folks this bad!” I came back to Herry by way of that soooo – telltale event and vengeance – seeking revelation to Grace, “Did you ever, after September 21, 1990, tell Grace Portia that Legion True had … ‘not hit bottom yet’?” Again, “I don’t recall saying that. I might have.” How many, many questions had I asked of this man to which he never, ever outright frigging answered me back with a fucking straight answer? An “oath” meant nothing to Herry. I had known that, though, from back at those alleged wedding vows of his … hadn’t I?! “Do you recall saying that she won’t hit bottom until she loses her house and her food?” “I don’t recall saying that, but I might have said something like that.” “How then, Herry, how could she lose her house and food, you know, in the realm of possibilities? How could that happen?” “Well, it could happen because you would not have any income.” Aaaaah, dah! “Why wouldn’t I have any income? I am a qualified – ” and here? Why, here Herry The Mother – Fucker interrupted me! “Well, I think the progression was … that … direction. That you had first been employed as a veterinarian, then you were in the faculty at Kansas State, then you came to Ames and didn’t work, and eventually were employed part – time passing out samples at the grocery store and working part – time for UPS. And it seems to me that the progression was not in the terms of increased employment but decreased. If it continued, you would have none!” In Ames, Jury, … nota bene: With three little boys, I “didn’t work!” And, as we know from Chapter 27, and its cited research studies, mothering should be paid … well, squat! “Did you in fact help that along by spreading or allowing people you know to spread certain information? Did you not in fact want to help bring about that ‘bottom,’ Dr. Edinsmaier?” I knew Herry Edinsmaier would lie. Lying came soooo, so easily to this man. Lying in ‘the Court’ as well, Jury? Occurred with quite the same placid ease as had that tranquil deceit of his inside the master bedroom –– with not so much as even a mere twinge of discomfit to it at all. No shame. I just wanted to ask the question … anyhow. “No.” “No? Well then, in your opinion, Herry, would an attorney, hypothetically speaking here, all on his own have any reason, have any merit lawyering – wise, to want to spread or generate information such as came out of that last trial, if that attorney weren’t acting for an employer, weren’t acting for someone who had hired him?” You can bet Mr. Scheisser hit the mother – fucking Court’s roof on that one! “I’d object! It is clearly speculation. It is an improper hypothetical! None of those facts are in evidence, nor could they be, and it is irrelevant!” He was pissed. Clearly! Not that the Daddee’s lawyer was, in any way at all, worried that anything would happen to him or to Herry. Without a doubt, he was not. He was just bloody pissed that I knew what the fuck the two of them had done! That The Blonde In The (‘Court’s’) Room Who Was Me and Who Acted Like She Had As Much Power As The Two of Them Both Had –– had actually opened up that oral cunt o’hers and … and … and had fully … dropped this opprobrious, shameful fuck into the midst of “their room.” And? And called them both out! That was all. Judge Butcher said that Herry could answer me, though, again … I am thinking … because the judge was merely amused. My life and my career and my livelihood –– but daJudge is mildly amused by it … is all. “I don’t know why it occurred. And if so, I don’t know why,” Herry lied and lied. And I? Well, simple. The Perfect Revenge II (after my any one or all three of my kiddos gone missing: Revenge I): I had no career. That is why both Missings I and II –– occurred! Thanks … to Herry Edinsmaier! Finally, I was led to question the Daddee about Jesse’s running away and about why Herry would act to Agnes and P.M. Flunk, to László, to the Ames police and the Urbandale police as if I would play favorites with my children?! That is, were I to run off with kiddos then, why would I choose only one to grab and run with?! I asked why Herry had left Des Moines and Urbandale so, so soon to come and harangue me up in Ames –– instead of the Good and Wonderful Healer’s pursuing the search for Jesse in far more likely places! And, the very worst: the not knowing! Jesse was missing to me for weeks. And Herry never told me –– not even after getting into West Virginia did this man “let” the child’s mother know that her babe, Jesse, was found. And was safe! How could he not even do that … little?! The Daddee … refused me … this knowing! I was tiring of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s deceit. All in the courtroom could tell. “You didn’t tell the custody evaluator, Ms. Carrie Canard, about your psychological health or that of your next wife, did you? You didn’t tell her that you, Herry, were ‘afraid of others learning the Truth about’ you and that you used Ms. Fannie McLive as ‘a refuge from job and parental responsibilities,’ did you, Dr. Edinsmaier? Those are your words.” From the Opprobrious Eight Pages. . Pages of whining intervened with illusiveness –– and then finally to this same question came back this fuck, “Well, I didn’t share that specifically with her. It isn’t as if in a short period of time I was going to be able to give her every last detail about my life. I attempted to answer her questions and to give her the information she indicated that she wanted.” So now it had become Ms. Canard’s ‘fault’ for not reading Herry’s mind and for her not knowing what she should specifically have asked of him –– and not the other way around. Not that Herry should have had to come clean with all of that opprobrious dreck of his and been up front … and lo and behold … –– honest ––with her! Herry the Liar placed the onus onto another –– again. Yet once more Herry blamed someone else for the paucity of information which he himself, alone and of his own accord, should have coughed up! And disgorged it all up … in the Boys’ best interests! To this man’s fuck, I said about the Truemaier Boys’ custody evaluator, the frumpily soooo, so unlived one which ‘the Court’ twice –– twice! ! mind you, Jury! ! –– elected to choose! ! to “evaluate” the paramount and supreme custodial home for my Zane, Jesse and Mirzah, “She testified in August that she couldn’t read minds and didn’t know what it was you were withholding, Herry, and she testified that it would have been significant if she had known that –– as well as the fact that you and your next wife kept from her the fact that Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive suffers from panic attack disorder and post – traumatic stress disorder and severe back injury. You and Ms. McLive kept all of that hidden from Ms. Canard, didn’t you?!” Amazingly Herry the Brilliant Doctor and in whose physical care custody several judges had determined should lie the Truemaier Boys’ best interests, answered that … he could not even remember if Ms. Canard had given him the MMPI test! “Now I could be mistaken, but I thought she did. I cooperated as I recall, and I have to trust that she knew what was relevant to ask me and when she asked me things, well, then I answered her questions.” Iiiick! O Jury, huuuuge Ick Factor with this man’s escape from accountability! Since the ‘safety and wellbeing’ of my Boys then is so not Herry’s favorite matter, I began to wind up the questioning with that which actually is his pet and much loved ‘concern’. On money, “Dr. Edinsmaier, what does a gallon of milk cost?” Herod chortled his signature sneering and snide snort, “I thought ‘that’ … aha, aha! …aheh, heh, heh! … was a discussion between Bush and Clinton! And it was a dollar – four a gallon. Aha, Aha!” Not surprised in the least at Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s idiocy on issues of substance regarding a family’s groceries, I asked again, “It was what?!” “It was a dollar and four cents a gallon.” Even in late 1992, milk everywhere in America was never as cheap as $1.04 a gallon! “At what store –– even in West Virginia –– Herry, does a gallon of milk cost only a dollar and four cents?” “As I recall, that was a question given in the presidential campaign.” Indeed, it had been and then, too, put to George Herbert Walker Bush and to Bill Clinton in debate –– since neither one of those two pillared men owned the slightest knowledge regarding home economics of an average American family. As neither also, obviously, did Dr. Herod Edinsmaier … who fuckingly never had shopped for … ‘his’ family! Work! ! ! Dr. Herod Edinsmaier clearly did not know the price of milk in America either. The Cunty – Uppity Blonde took great, great pleasure near the end of my examination of him in pointing this out. To the very mother – fucker who had lost three –––– three, Jury!!! –––– of my support checks while I froze nearly to death –– so not at all! had he needed the support money, “Dr. Edinsmaier, a gallon of milk costs two dollars. Double, Herry; that’s double what you answered.” On factory – laboring Teen Eric’s, “And he takes it?!” I mused! “Okay, If you say so. If you say so.” “You didn’t know that, did you?” “No,” Herry Edinsmaier smirked. I asked further questions about the support of a family of four children. Elitist Edinsmaier knew nothing. Just as in the very straight line with the Daddee’s full – up bellyaching stupidity and silliness spewed into his moans, whines and neediness for “a chance to be young and carefree again” and have in his next sexist slave woman “a refuge from parental responsibility.” The worst? The worst, Jury, is that –– to ‘the Court’ –– it never, never truly mattered at all that he, daMan, the Pillar … knew squat about … the pillaring … of a family of kiddos. I concluded the testimonial examination of this lying ‘witness’, my Truemaier Boys’ legal custodian and Herry Edinsmaier’s being granted that status because ‘the Court’ ‘decidedly finding’ it allegedly to be in Jesse’s, Mirzah’s and Zane’s “best interests” that they all … exist … in Porn – Pappy’s “primary” physical care, with … the zinger. “Do you, Dr. Edinsmaier, promote a family environment of fear instead of love?” “I think I promote one of love. I try to promote one of understanding. And I certainly do not attempt to promote an atmosphere of fear.” Understanding? Love? Hmmm. “Did you fly here today or yesterday, Dr. Edinsmaier?” “Yes, I did.” “Well then, Dr. Edinsmaier, did you say, ‘I love you, Zane’? Did you look him straight in the eyes and tell him that?” “No.” “Well then, Dr. Edinsmaier, did you say, ‘I love you, Jesse’? Did you look him straight in the eyes and tell him that before you got on that plane?” “No.” “Did you look Mirzah straight in the eyes and tell him, Dr. Edinsmaier, ‘I love you, Mirzah’?” “No.” “Dr. Edinsmaier, did you tell them that on Monday at any time?” “No.” “Dr. Edinsmaier, did you tell them that on Sunday at any time?” “No.” “Dr. Edinsmaier, did you tell them that on Saturday at any time?” “Dr. Edinsmaier, did you tell them a week ago from today at any time that, ‘I love you Zane’? Did you look him in the eyes and say, ‘I love you Zane’? “No, I don’t recall saying that.” Love? Understanding? “Dr. Edinsmaier, isn’t it a fact that you don’t tell your children that you love them?! Ever?!” Finally … truth. Finally … from The Liar’s lips. “It is true that I seldom say something like that.” “Why is that, Dr. Edinsmaier?” “Well, it is primarily, I guess, related to the way I was reared. And it is a difficulty, I suppose, overcoming some ingrained patterns.” Can you, The Jury, smell, er, ah, spell Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier here?! Who, not one time, in 49 years and 11 months of alleged christian and obviously unholy roman catholic, scorched – earth! mawwiage to (his and martin luther’s baby – making machine) Detanimod Edinsmaier, told her, not one time, that he “loved” her. Who allowed, in his purportedly “healthy” home of 14 friggin’ pregnancies and of 12 live birthings over a 20 – year period, his wife Detanimod to die ––––without Juggern Edinsmaier’s ever once telling her that … he loved her! Now just how literally mother – fuckingly fucked – up sick is that one, Jury! “Isn’t that what psychotherapy, counseling, individual therapy would help you overcome, Dr. Edinsmaier? Why do you not tell these Boys that you love them –– if in fact you do?” Slip – slid back into evasive mode just pell – mell and lickety – split Herry did. Finessed with Mehitable’s signature … if … tactic! “Well, if you are asking why I don’t tell them I love them, you know, I think the more important question would be do I love them. And I have tried to tell you that, you know, I suppose that there are families for whom things like that come easily. They don’t to me, and I haven’t.” Iiiick! Sick! Sooooo sick! “So. You don’t think that is a problem?” “It has been compounded by the attitudes that the boys have expressed to me since they came. And the attitudes that they have persisted in since they came,” Herry – Daddee desperately tried this spin on his definite “problem”. What twists and gyrations! Drecky damage control for all of daMan’s “No” answers! I saw it through and through –– for the fraud this man tried to perpetrate, “Dr. Edinsmaier, that’s the answer you would like Judge Butcher to perceive, but that, in fact, is not true, is it? It isn’t true that just since the Boys came to live with you, this has only taken place? This problem of yours? It took place, didn’t it, long, long before they came to you, didn’t it?” “Well, I think that if the issue is whether I say that I love them, I don’t do that.” “Do they need to hear it, Herry?” “Well, if the issue is,” Juggern Aut’s Spawn full – well knew several fucking times now what the mother – fucking issue was, “if the issue is whether I love them, the fact is I do. You know, I do everything I can. Much is directed to the welfare of those children.” “Dr. Edinsmaier, don’t they need to hear it? What psychologists, what psychiatrists have told you that they don’t need to hear it? What psychologists and which psychiatrists have told you that you, Herry, are just supposed to sit back and let them figure it out for themselves?!” “Well, it is my hope that given enough time, if we can get away from some of those other issues, particularly the issues that are involved in the dispute between you and me, that we could settle some of those things. But it has been very difficult to address anything like that. I mean, it’s been difficult, and I believe largely based on your influence, to even establish peace in the household, let alone, getting to the point where we are addressing issues like, you know, do I love you.” Fuck, Herry would not give it a rest already! What fuck is this!?! Shouldn’t addressing issues like do I love you be, like, uh, um, like the number 1 issue inside families!?! And what things does that then entail!?! Things like, O, promoting a relationship with the Boys’ mother! For just one tiny example! “But, first, ya’ know Jury, let’s project –– again –– my blame in this onto someone else, aaaah, ya’ know, make another accountable! Like the Mother of Bitchery herself! That Witch!” “Dr. Edinsmaier, you are attributing to me powers I do not possess.” “Well, you do have significant powers to interfere with the psyches of the boys in my household.” Fuck, I am only the one who did choose to grow the Boys! To grow them into … themselves! Into the very people … who they are! “You are saying that these children don’t need to hear on a regular basis the words out of their biological father’s mouth, ‘I love you’? In all the months of this family therapy and individual therapy that you said you went to, you don’t see a problem? You don’t see that you have, … you, Herry, … you have a problem? You don’t see that?” “Well,” it is as if Herry cannot speak without the word, “well” in his answer. “Well, I see the problem is that we have been unable to effectively address any other issues … as long as you have input.” “JYeah, and I shall continue to have input, Envious Edinsmaier!” I am left thinking. Three Boys love their mother with a strength of emotion the likes of which the Sperm Donor can never … compete. How zealously jealously angering for him! “Dr. Edinsmaier, can you say, ‘I love you, Zane’? Can you say those words?” “Yes, I can say those words.” “They why don’t you? If you don’t have a problem, why don’t you?” Even for me, Homophobe Herry never wavered in the trough of his piggish swill! “Well, it is pretty difficult.” “Dr. Edinsmaier, when was the last time you told each of your sons into their eyes and by using their name that you loved them?” “I don’t. It’s been some time ago. I have expressed such things as ‘I like you.’ You know, ‘I am glad that you are my son.’ But I can’t give you a specific time.” I finished. “Isn’t it true, Herry, that the number of times you told your first wife, ‘I love you, Legion,’ in your entire relationship with her … the number of times was zero? The number of times that you told your first wife, namely me, ‘I love you, Legion,’ in the entire time from the time you met her until the time you were divorced from her –– that entire time –– you told her, ‘I love you, Legion’ was … zero?” Juggern’s #Whichever Kid … Seventh maybe, I am thinking … had a problem all right! Yet Lying Herry, once himself the 1968 recipient of a bachelor’s degree in mathematics (although never his then – also – claimed physics bachelor’s!!!) before medical school, could not commit to knowing a number, such a simple one as … the number zero! Not even then –– at the end –– could Herod Edinsmaier come out and out clean about a factoid of which he knew the Truth, “It is close to that. There may have been once or twice, but I don’t think it would have been over that.” “Your Honor, I don’t have any further questions.” But –– none of this testimony of Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s or from Dr. Herod Edinsmaier … mattered. To ‘the Court’. Not one whit. Nothing at all this was but an exercising of the intolerance limitations of three men who, in no way, intended near the end of this display, this particular Part Four of The Opera, to do anything differently as The Outcome of it all than what the three of them had wanted at Its Overture. The only “work” the three guys had to do at all was … wait it out. Meaning me. They actually had to listen to, or at least be in the same room for a few days as, the soprano soloist and let The Blonde get it sung the fuck out. They had to wait out what shit was mine –– before they could wield the poleaxe, bulldoze away and flatten me when the Final Curtain fell with what the men had always wanted to crush –– in the first place. And that … for these three males, although now supplied with the tool of a somewhat more complete awareness, some further knowledge and a whole shitload of lies obviously told under no real perjurious threat, … that was to still … change nothing. Because they could. Where was the willingness? The tool of the willingness to change primary physical custody of three minor children and give them back to the mama who had grown them and from whose protecting care and nurturance they had so wrongly been wrung because … she had called the patriarchal supplier of only half of their genetics … to account for his violent and violating behaviors? Because the woman had –– truly … truly –– pissed off … daMan! Simple. * * * * I called Grace Portia at last –– and last –– to the witness stand, my good, good friend, Grace! Grace whose husband Lionel had just there outside of our views in the courthouse’s hallway been gently squeezing both of his wife’s shoulders and with a very directed gaze beseeching her, “Remember, Grace. For All of Us, remember! From Legion and Her Three Boys to Me and especially for Yourself, Grace, please remember what that puny, little man did to You! And what that thug is getting clean slick away with now! He’s a criminal, Grace!” Deadpanning Lionel. As all the while … Frieda Chicken Guthrie continued her enduring and comforting vigilance with the same patient countenance out in the courthouse corridor … as she had done back in August, it was now Grace’s turn to be called up to the witness stand –– and sworn in. “Would you tell Judge Butcher and me your name please?” “Grace Portia.” “How long have you known me?” “Five years. Since you moved to Ames.” “Five years. How long have you known the Boys, the Truemaier Boys?” “Since they too moved to Ames, as soon as they moved here and school started which was almost right after they got here.” “Is it your impression that you are one of my closet, most personal, intimate friends to whom I share my innermost feelings, beliefs and everything about myself?” “Yes. Yes, it is.” “Is it your impression that your sons and my sons are really tight friends?” “They were. They were until they were taken away to West Virginia.” “Did your son, Nathan, tell you last night whom his closest and best friend ever, or the last one he ever had, is?” “He did. It was Jesse Truemaier.” “Are you acquainted with anybody else here in this courtroom this afternoon? Have you ever met any of these other people in this courtroom before today?” “Everyone. Except the judge, the recorder and Mr. Scheisser’s helper.” “So. Do you know Dr. Edinsmaier?” “Yes.” “Have you spoken to him?” “Yes.” “You have spoken to him several times?” “Yes.” “You know Ms. Fannie McLive?” Who, of course, was still being allowed by Judge Harley Butcher inside the courtroom –––– whereas all of my other witnesses including Frieda, already examined, were not! ! ! … so “allowed”! ! ! “Yes.” “And have you spoken to her?” “Yes.” “You have spoken to her many times?” “Yes.” “Would it be fair to say, Grace, that it is your impression from having spoken with Dr. Edinsmaier and heard words out of his lips that he would do anything not to go back to court?” “Yes.” “Is it your impression and have you heard words spoken out of the lips of Dr. Edinsmaier that Legion True hasn’t hit rock bottom, not until she loses her food and her home?” “I have heard that.” “Was this that you heard somewhere between September 20th, say September 23rd or 24th or 25th, and a few days after that to approximately October of 1990?” “Yes” “Was that a period then in which the ruling was favorable about the custody of the Truemaier children to Dr. Edinsmaier and not to me?” Shyster Shindy Scheisser was chomping and fit to be enraged, just short of frothing at those sneering commissures of his lips! “Your Honor, no foundation! You might as well let Dr. True get up and testify herself!” And, of course, daJudge was curious, only piqued about me and my friendships and how it was I thought that The Blonde Bitch could possibly pull off, alone, something as monumentally gargantuan as a five – day, state district court trial of witnesses, subpoenas, evidence, exhibits … And the whole, friggin’ rest of it. Merely that –––– and nothing more … when he was blasély heard to pronounce, “You can answer, Ma’am.” “Yes, it was.” “Have you heard words to the effect or have they come out of the lips of Ms. Fannie McLive how it is that she was referring to all the driving and the raising up of so many boys? In that same time period, for instance?” “Yes.” “Would you tell Judge Butcher why you would not allow the Truemaier Boys to come over to your home sometime in and around January 1991, and thereafter? Somewhere in the wintry period of January, February or March 1991, and nevermore after that? Why did you stop letting the Truemaier Boys come over to your home?” “My husband, Lionel, and I discussed it. We decided that we would not ask the Boys to come anymore since June of that year because Herry held the Boys accountable, well for their actions and for Legion’s actions. I could not have them in my home without my getting a lecture on that they were not to see Legion since she lives one street over. I am not going to hold the Boys hostage in my home and not allow them to go out in the neighborhood.” “Were you afraid of taking any of my sons on your boat?” “Yes. I didn’t think that the relationship was good enough for me to be held responsible for the safety of any of those Boys.” “Did you fear that if something injurious happened then Dr. Edinsmaier would sue you and Lionel, your husband?” “Yes.” “Did Herod Edinsmaier, a doctor, ever provide you with a telephone number at where you could get a hold of him about his sons?” That trenchant question –– regarding my three Boys’ ‘safety and well – being’ –– had just been far, far too easy to ask –– and so, so angering … to have to. The same ol’, same ol’ regarding the Great and Wonderful Doctor – Daddee, no less. I could just hear Herry jestingly and dismissively toss to Grace as he’d flipped off to me so mother – fucking many, many times, “Well now Grace, if an emergency came up with Zane, Jesse or Mirzah, why, you’d have to go on and handle it yourself alone now anyhow, wouldn’t ya’?!” And with a snide smirk as he swaggered around entertaining that opprobrious perception of his of a “chance to be young and carefree again” escaping away from his … “parental accountability”! Saddling Grace … now The Slacker’s “refuge” away from parenting! with all of those responsibilities! Her without a telephone number! And this line of proof on Herry the Doctor – Daddee, the Joy Toy Boy, the 17 – year – old, older, pleasuring ‘brother’, only continued, “Did he ever provide you, Grace, with a medical release … in case something did happen while the Boys were in your care?” “No.” “Did you expect him to provide that, and you didn’t have to read –– . Did you expect him to provide that?” I caught myself from the rest of my question … certain to piss off Mr. Scheisser again, one on Grace Portia’s having … “to read Passive – Aggressor Herry’s mother – fucking mind, after goddamn all?!” Infuriating Herry has always intended his violating, violent behavior to be: persons are expected by him to be able to read his mind (because –– that way –– it all is always so much less work on Herry’s part of needing to remember to express directives or instructions to folks!) And Herry Edinsmaier always succeeds … at that. At … the express intent of his at infuriation. Niggling needling is one of the most defining idiosyncrasies of passive – aggressiveness. Within Herry, this fuck stems from the jealous Daddee’s neediness for attention. Standard classic DSM – IV. “Yes. If he was not going to be home where he could be reached,” which we all know Herry was almost never, ever home and almost always out of Urbandale, even out of the state! “then I would expect him to have provided that to me.” “Otherwise you were left to assume that the only place you could call was the 69th Street Urbandale residence number which, of course, you knew; is that correct?” “Right. Correct.” “And were there times then, Grace, to your knowledge when he left you the Boys but he did not go straight back to his home?” “To my knowledge? O, many. Yes, and when we had the Boys stay for a week at a time, he was often out of town traveling.” “And you didn’t have any idea where he was; is that correct?” “Well, I thought he was in Missouri or in Arkansas. But, yes, that is correct: I did not know where he was. Really.” “In and amongst that time, is it a fact that you and Lionel would have done anything including taking these children in, these Truemaier Boys, if they wanted to … quote – unquote … live with you, Grace? Is it true that you would have, if that had to happen for any reason, if that had had to happen, you would have taken them in to live with you?” And, of course, I already knew the answer to this question, too! “We would have. We would have taken them in, and we told them that we would take them in.” “Did you at sometime hear words come out of Dr. Edinsmaier’s mouth during this period of time centered around a subject that if Zane were to run away and to come and find his way to your home, Grace, did you ask Herod what you should do?” “I did. I asked Dr. Edinsmaier what I should do. I told Dr. Edinsmaier that Lionel and I had told the Boys that if they ever needed us they should call us and that we would come and get them. It didn’t involve Legion or Herry. We were there for the Boys only and didn’t want to get into a fight with the parents. I asked Dr. Edinsmaier what it was that I could expect as far as having the Storm County sheriff on my doorstep. And he said he wouldn’t. He said I shouldn’t expect to see Sheriff Stout on my doorstep.” “Did Dr. Edinsmaier say to you that then he would come and get runaway Zane? If Zane had run away and come to you and Lionel?” “He told me he would not. That he would not come for Zane and that I could care for the Boys as long as I could –– if I wanted to!” Now Grace thought that most bizarre for a parent –– as did I and as it quite certainly is –– but it sure’s hell did not shock me since it was, indeed, just … vintage Slacker Herry! “Do you have knowledge, Grace, whether or not, since you know both of the two parties in this courtroom, Herod Edinsmaier and Legion True, do you have knowledge of when the Boys were in the custody of their mother that they were ever in trouble, with the law or at school, or that she ever, ever kept them from having a visitation with their father?” “I do not have knowledge that you ever kept them away from a visit with their father.” “Did the Boys indicate to you about visitation to their father’s?” “Yes. The Boys did not want to go with their father.” “So. Did I stop them from going?” “No. No, you didn’t stop them from going with Herry.” “I think I have one final question. You, Grace, have testified that you have known me for five years. Have you then known Herry for that length of time?” “Not very well.” “Not very well? Okay. Have you known him better since the two of us have been divorced than you did when we were married in the sense that there have been more contacts with him?” “Yes, I have spoken to him more. But I don’t know him.” “So. Is it your impression, Grace, from what you know of me that I have a loving home, I have lots of friends, that Ames is a wonderful community, that the Boys have lots of friends, that the Boys would slip back into their home community easily if they were to be given over into my custody? Would that be your impression?” “The Boys would easily be accepted back into the neighborhood. And I don’t think that you would find a neighbor or a teacher or a coach who would not say that Legion had been the better parent, the one who provides a loving home. The Boys were doing fine. Just fine.” “I guess that there is one more last question though, Grace. Have you heard my therapist and counselor, Mr. Keith Log, ever say that Legion True was a manic – depressive and that she should not have her kids?” Grace had accompanied me to several of my sessions with Keith – both as a friend and companion to me and precisely because she would be able then to have heard firsthand what Keith’s beliefs and thoughts on me were. “I heard Keith just two days ago, in fact, say that you were not manic – depressive and that you, Legion, should have the custody of your children.” “That is all I have, Your Honor.” And Grace stepped down and away –– very well having remembered what Herry personally had done. What Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, custodial daddee, pillared physician and sexually addicted frotteurist – creep, personally and criminally had done to her left thigh –– after he had purposefully crowded his prickish self down right beside Grace already sitting there upon the bleachers of the elementary gymnasium at a St. Cecil’s youth basketball game. What Herry had done when Grace’s eyes and gaze had been averted down court as she had craned in the squeeze to see her son, Nathan, play against the team of my son, Jesse … A thing or two about which Lionel knew, too! Therapists term this sex addict’s aprovechar act –– the taking of indecent liberties. JYeah … I’ll say! Under the Iowa Code of Law? At least, an aggravated misdemeanor! And certainly in and under any context including Lionel’s and Portia’s particularly … SICKO! After the called break –– wherein at its outset … now … I know that The Look (of Ms. Tsianina Snowball’s lesson to me) had been, of course, … acknowledgingly exchanged, Attorney Shindy Scheisser had his short … very short … cross – examination of Grace –– in which there were only a few questions of his that made any sense at all to either her or to me. Nota bene, Jury: regarding the rest of that man’s questions? Ms. Grace Portia told Mr. Scheisser that as far as words which had come from out of her mouth, NONE of what he stated she had said in the past … had she ever, IN FACT, said to anyone! And, of course, what she said in contrast to what he said, in contrast to what Mr. Scheisser accused her of having stated, in contrast to what he just managed to get said out loud in an American court of civil law without his or Herry Edinsmaier’s ever truly having to actually go out into the community and bring back solid proof of any of what they had just gotten said … well, what Grace, the DEhuman had had to say? That? … That meant squat. To ‘the Court’. To daMan. Or to … justice. Redirect from me followed Mr. Scheisser’s cross. “We have heard Mr. Scheisser use in one of his questions,” in one of his ravings and rants actually, “the word ‘breakdown’, specifying breakdown at a hearing. Is it your impression, Grace, from knowing me so intimately during that period with the stress on me and the children that all of that was breaking my heart?” “It was not only breaking your heart, Legion, it was breaking the Boys’ hearts. And the children cried more than you did that week!” “Ms. Portia, in your opinion when one’s heart is breaking, is it appropriate to cry?” “Yes. Yes, it is.” “Is it normal?” “It is very normal, especially when you love the children. It is so normal.” “What is your testimony when he, Mr. Scheisser, described me as ‘different, Legion is different.’ What does that mean to you, Grace?” “Well, it means that Legion is different. You are not your average sit – at – home, watch – TV – all – day – long housewife. You are involved in everything. You are at the school all day working. You are at every single ballgame. You keep the score! You are involved with absolutely everything that’s going on in the neighborhood and the city and the school.” I had been. At least I had been –– I had been not only Mirzah’s and Jesse’s Little League team scorekeeper but one of Storm County’s certified safe Iowa hunter educators and not only the Kate Mitchell Elementary School principal’s parent advisor to its budget – making committee but also one of the Ames superintendent’s parent advisors to the entire community school district’s budget – deciding task force! “Is it your impression that from my lips at any time that you’ve ever known me in the five years have I said, ‘I am afraid I am going to kill myself. I am afraid I am going to commit suicide. I think I will kill myself if I lose my Boys. I will kill myself.’ Anything like that?” “That was never said by you.” “Is it your impression that, IN FACT, the very opposite was said? If anything at all about suicide was said, it is your impression that what had been said was that suicide would, indeed, be a mother’s ultimate abandonment of her children? That the children would always blame themselves, that they would never be able to understand why and that I would never, never subject my Boys to that ultimate type of abandonment?” Mr. Scheisser loathed every bit of that one, his crying “foul” all over the freakin’ place … “leading” and “arguing” with the witness. Not! –––– Whoa! How … shindy … this Shindy surely was! “Yes, that is true. That would have destroyed the Boys.” “These words I just stated? They came to you from my lips? About the ultimate abandonment of children by a mother?” “Yes.” “At this hour, Grace, at these very proceedings as well as at any time since September 21, 1990, including the time that I was sleeping up on the Sixth Floor of the Medical Center and the Boys were in your care, is there at any time anything that you can tell Judge Butcher that should prevent him from giving me full, sole custody, physically and legally, of Mirzah, Jesse and Zane Truemaier?” Ms. Grace Portia’s answer was perfect and just so like her, “There is nothing.” And at still yet another 4:27 p.m. exactly –– ‘exactly’ in the moments of the ‘legal’ times of ‘my case’, this one on that Friday afternoon of the 30th day of October 1992, the record stated that The Opera’s Part Four –– and my Trial Three –– concluded. Except that … children’s growing up doesn’t stop; that does not conclude. As long as it took to get a decision handed down from any of those beautifully honed judges’ benches in any of those small county courtrooms, my three Truemaier Boys were just another 38 days older and we were, yet again, that long –– and much, much longer –– in our lives … without each other together. * * * * Ms. Ray at the Storm County Clerk of Court’s office was always, always very kind and gracious on the telephone. And as can be imagined, I called and called a lot. One early afternoon on the 09th day of December, another Wednesday, I was told that, why yes, two days previously on Monday, 07 December 1992, an order on ‘my case’ had been signed by Judge Harley Butcher and was, in fact, just this very day of the 09th file – stamped and now, indeed, made official. A copy of it would be sent out to me the next morning. “Aaah, yes. Yes, you can do that,” was the answer that came back to me on my query to Ms. Ray about my driving over to the Clerk’s office at the courthouse –– right then –– for my copy. I, in a huge flurry, telephoned Grace who had always said she wanted to be there with me when first I read it. I called Frieda, too, just as soon as I knew I was headed to the courthouse. I did not call Mehitable. I did not call Ardys. I did not call Sterling. And none of them and no one else would have known how to even get in touch with my younger sister Endys anyhow, a person who never did want to be found by any of us blood. No, my immediate biological family, the ones of it still living and breathing, none of them, not a one of them, could I contact. Ms. Grace Portia and I belted ourselves into Ol’ Black’s front seat and took off flying east. Hope is a woman – killer, especially when it hits ya’ on that same stretch of Highway #30 as had always been such a murderous expanse. But Grace was with me; I slowed down to the limit –– and the county’s deputies were out in fine force on that particular middle of the week’s late, late autumn day anyhow! In this, the month of just another one of those religious patriarchs’ christmases, of the New Year’s Eve –– and, as well, … of Righteous Ancestor AmTaham True’s and my upcoming Winter Solstice birthdays. He? 73. I … to be 45. What I forgot to even know about, all on my own since no one was telling me either, was that my asking for a copy apparently out of sync with the rhythm of the Clerk’s Office was going to cost me –– and how! We arrived –– and found out I had to pay. Indeed, Judge Butcher’s document cost me 50 cents a page! In other words, for Dr. True’s being allowed to own, let alone, to read it the very day that the decree was file – stamped, to read its entire 26 pages, I found myself suddenly writing a personal check for $13.00! And while the next day and the next and the next, themselves, did arrive because, of course, the sun had come up upon all of them since my telephone call into the courthouse of the 09th of December 1992, no other copy, that is, the supposed free one promised to be sent out to my incoming, usps mail “the next morning,” … ever did arrive! So. What did daJudge say? On Monday, 08 March 1993, nearly an entire year after I placed Righteous Ancestor AmTaham True into the ground, there was a 3½ – page “Statement of Case #93 – 194755” put, along with several documents attached, into the record of The Supreme Court of the State of Iowa, a statement that became the essence of the beginning of something also known as Part Five of The Opera, that is, Appeal Number Two –– exactly because of what Judge Harley Butcher of the Second Judicial District Court of Iowa wrote after the conclusion of Part Four of The Opera’s Act Three on Friday afternoon, 30 October 1992. The Statement explains, of course, why the appeal became necessary; and one of the first accompanying documents necessarily submitted within Part Five of The Opera are the 26 pages written and signed off on by the High Courtier himself: Judge Harley Butcher. The Statement in its entirety I myself, The (Apparently Angering Blonde Bitch –) Appellant, known within the document henceforth as Dr. Legion True, of course, wrote, “COMES NOW the Appellant, and pursuant to the Iowa Rule of Appellate Procedure no. 15(f), makes known by this document to the Supreme Court of Iowa her narrative STATEMENT OF CASE in re to her APPEAL from all parts of the 26 – page 07 December 1992 ruling signed by Judge Harley Butcher, Second Judicial District, and file – stamped and entered into the record of the District Court for Storm County, Iowa, on 09 December 1992. Trial commenced on 26 – 27 August 1992, and continued on 28 – 30 October 1992. Dr. Legion True appeared pro se due to indigence. Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, the Appellee, was represented by Attorney Shindy Scheisser of Des Moines, Iowa. Dr. Legion True had filed a timely and proper Petition for Modification of Custody (No. 9215 – 8801), on 29 April 1992, in Storm County, Iowa District Court. With enclosures here and with her case having been grounded rock – solidly in Truth, proven with witnesses and tangible exhibits, in addition to the legal civil procedures and the formalities having been done by the Iowa Code book to the letter and on time, Dr. Legion True affirms that: the 07 December 1992 ruling rendered is wholly illegal, wholly gender – based, gender – biased and gender – discriminatory. It is illegal because Dr. Legion True was not even afforded her own Trial for Modification of Custody in response to her filing a Petition for one. The 26 – page opinion is only “Supplemental,” an “addendum,” to the 21 September 1990 ruling rendered by Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor after the Trial for Modification of Custody that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier was granted. A fair hearing by trial of Dr. Legion True’s own Petition for Modification of Custody did not even occur. It is illegal because in all 26 pages of the ruling Judge Butcher fails to mention even once any of the 15 witnesses (including three expert psychologists trained and licensed in the counseling of children and families), let alone, any accounts of their testimonies anywhere, that Dr. Legion True had brought forth to give evidence. It is illegal because all 26 pages of the ruling refer to, rely and are based solely on Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s and his current wife, Ms. Fannie McLive’s, testimonies on cross – examination from his own attorney, Mr. Scheisser, after they were both first called as witnesses by Dr. Legion True. Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had NO witnesses. There were NO other witnesses: no mature, teenaged, talented and gifted – caliber Truemaier Brothers, no family therapists, no counselors of individuals, no school officials, no physicians, no friends, no neighbors, no coaches, no relatives, no alleged boyfriends of Dr. Legion True’s, let alone, no alleged lovers of Dr. Legion True’s, and no tangible exhibits admitted to by any of Dr. Legion True’s witnesses including the Appellant herself. The Appellee, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, had NO child experts nor mental health experts recommending anything that is ruled; nor any mental health examinations or reports of himself, the Appellee, let alone of Dr. Legion True, the Appellant, that recommended or confirmed anything. Three times pre – trial, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier was denied his “Applications” to have Dr. Legion True “mentally examined” –– all times denied because the requests against her were held as “inappropriate” and “unwarranted”. Yet Judge Butcher’s ruling, made without any previous cases cited or precedent opinions referred to, also occurs without Dr. Herod Edinsmaier calling any witnesses. It is illegal because Judge Butcher fails to also mention anywhere in 26 pages any of Ms. Canard’s 26 August 1992 testimony: that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier and his next wife, Ms. Fannie McLive, had both withheld from her during visits to her for custody evaluation, the exhibited facts that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had written that he secretly harbored “fears of other people learning the truth about me,” had written and thought about himself as a sexual addict and of Ms. McLive as his “refuge from parental responsibility” and that his current wife, Ms. Fannie McLive, has a recent medical history of both Post – Traumatic Stress Disorder and Panic Attack Disorder. Dr. Herod Edinsmaier and Ms. Fannie McLive had willfully, knowingly and calculatingly withheld these pieces of information during custody evaluation sessions. It is illegal because Judge Butcher does not even follow his own recounting of Iowa Code Section 598.41 (3), items b, c and e, that set forth factors the Court is to consider in determining what custody arrangement is in the BEST INTERESTS of minor children. It is illegal because it offends and violates the United States Constitution’s First Amendment Civil Rights; that is, Dr. Legion True’s and the Truemaier Boys’ Rights to freedoms of speech and assembly with each other, their freedom to practice their Quakerism unmocked and unthwarted, and THE most basic of all Civil Rights: that of children everywhere to their having the love, comfort and fellowship of BOTH parents in their lives. Murderers, thieves, drug dealers and even child molesters (the vast majority of these people being male) get contact and visitation rights with their biological children. It is illegal because every day of Trial, Judge Butcher repeatedly chastised and censured Dr. Legion True never to bring up any matters preceding 21 September 1990, while allowing Dr. Herod Edinsmaier to do so; and then fully 11½ pages of the 26 pages of his ruling became the Court’s version of bringing up matters all preceding 21 September 1990. It is misogynistic and discriminatory because nowhere and at no time can a mother, a woman, EVER do to a father –– including a father not paying his Court – ordered child support –– what Dr. Herod Edinsmaier did year after year to Dr. Legion True to keep her from all forms of contact with her sons, to disaffect and isolate her from them and to make her invisible to them –– and then to be REWARDED by the Courts for doing so. She would not only suffer great reprimand and censure from the Courts; but IF the father pressed for it, she would in reality LOSE the custody of her children over TO that non – paying father for doing such acts. She would never be rewarded with arbitrary and capricious “powers” to deny visitation and all forms of contact with the minor children, let alone, be given any form of dictatorial powers over her ex – husband in any of his matters. The greatest nightmare Dr. Legion True feared and learned of 01 – 05 June 1988, from counselors with the Ames, Iowa Women’s Assault Center in breaking the silence of domestic violence in the first place came true with this ruling: that not only would Dr. Herod Edinsmaier deny and lie but that those with the power to effect change would disbelieve, discount, dismiss and ultimately discredit Dr. Legion True and that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, a moneyed doctor and, therefore, a ‘community pillar’ after the same fashion as judges and lawyers in communities are, through such passive – aggressive, narcissistic ease in giving perjured, unsubstantiated, undocumented, uncorroborated and unchallenged testimony, in denying and in the age – old ‘she’s just crazy, Your Honor’, would succeed in taking away her children whom she was trying to protect by finally ‘telling’. It is illegal, misogynistic and discriminatory because Judge Butcher rewarded Dr. Herod Edinsmaier for his perjured testimony: witness statements and exhibited documents from the counselor himself proved on 28 October 1992, that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had lied repeatedly on 26 October 1992, about his and his family having received individual and family counseling. No woman would ever get away with the destruction and the child abuse, named as such and attested to by Ames child therapists, Mr. Keith Log, and Mr. Lance Rowe, on 27 August 1992, perpetrated by Dr. Herod Edinsmaier through his ‘employee’, Mr. Shindy Scheisser. Mr. Scheisser telephoned and faxed lies and the Truemaier Brothers’ names and minor ages into the Ames Tribune newspaper, owned then and now by the fired former NBC executive, Michael Gartner, on Monday, 24 September 1990, immediately after Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had won custody resulting in the first of numerous acts of estranging the Truemaier Brothers from their mother and their chosen community. Dr. Herod Edinsmaier and his current wife, Ms. Fannie McLive, subsequently disseminated copies of that article for months and months after its printing to the Truemaier Brothers’ school officials and to at least three of Dr. Legion True’s prospective professional veterinary employers to economically sabotage her, crippling her from ever acquiring positions capable of providing for either the Boys or for legal fees To Appeal and continue legal action to protect them. Again, the ruling of Judge Butcher never in any of its 26 pages even mentions this stunning evidence of heinous and immediate revenge, alienation, child abuse and economic sabotage done by a man who had (just) received a 1990 ruling … FAVORABLE … to him. In fact, in 26 pages, Judge Butcher does mention –– repeatedly and with great flourish and ‘itemization’ –– that as regards Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, he has only ever in all his years been nothing but stellar and exemplary; whereas in all her years, Dr. Legion True has been nothing but, in one word, evil. It is misogynistic and discriminatory because a man who had sought employment of a nature that was compatible with his ‘spending more time with his children’ would be lauded and honored as a true family man of the 90s yet Dr. Legion True is summarily chastised by Judge Butcher in these recessionary times of high unemployment for not only doing exactly that, that is, wanting to spend more time with the children, but for her being fortunate enough and blessed enough to have found paying work at all –– in the face of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s years of economic sabotage. It is misogynistic, discriminatory and child abusive because, sadly, nowhere does Judge Butcher describe the angst, depression and hopelessness easily and repeatedly ‘heard’ in the Truemaier Brothers’ journals, diaries and letters home to their mother: threats of suicide by two of them, months of pain and boredom and hunger and physical sickness, accusations and snide remarks hurled at them by both Dr. Herod Edinsmaier and the Appellee’s next wife, Ms. Fannie McLive, including statements repeatedly made to them that they, the Boys, were ‘feeding’ their mother’s mental illness by their wanting her to continue to fight for them and that they, the Boys and she, were the financial reason that there was now no money for their futures later including college. The last sentence, page 21, of the 21 September 1990, Judge Seizor ruling, “supplemented” with Judge Butcher’s 07 December 1992 opinion, states in essence that what Dr. Herod Edinsmaier has done since at least 21 September 1990 –– IF he were a woman –– would be “grounds ALONE sufficient to CHANGE custody” –– but SINCE he is not, and SINCE those acts are and were committed by him, a man, proven by his own perjured testimony to be as Ananias of the Book of Acts, Chapter Five, he is rewarded by Judge Butcher with grand and sweeping dictatorial oppression over his children and his ex – spouse, a woman, sentencing them all to no contact of any kind with each other throughout all of the Truemaier Brothers’ ENTIRE middle school and high school academic and athletic careers. This is nothing short of backlash, misogyny, discrimination, illegality and more. Respectfully affirmed and submitted” and I, ‘the Court’s’ and Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s apparently cunty, blonde bitch, signed it with the 08 March 1993 date of the Planet’s International Women’s Day –– plus … notarization. Copies went out not only to Mother – Fucking Shindy Scheisser but to all of the Act Three / Part Four, that is, the Trial Three witnesses, to the Inequity in the Iowa Courts Task Force Chair who was another male Iowa district court judge named James R. Havercamp, the Iowa Attorney General, the United States Attorney General Designee who was, at the time, Janet Reno, to Hillary Rodham Clinton, to Tipper Gore, to Dan Rather of CBS News, to the producers of 60 Minutes and the Oprah Winfrey Show and to the editors of the Des Moines Register. Of the three major networks, Dan Rather’s CBS Evening News I had singled out because on the broadcast of Tuesday, 21 January 1992, when there had been a presentation “on custody wars and charges of child abuse pushed to the extreme” by then – CBS Reporter Erin Hayes. She had featured a losing mother from Alabama who one attorney interviewed by Ms. Hayes stated was representative of “over 100 similar cases” of which he himself knew. Reporter Hayes stated that, “Critics charge in county courthouses across the country, women are being punished severely for fighting judges when they believe their children are in danger.” And a psychiatrist on the piece stated, “It’s as if the messenger is the one that gets punished because the message they’re bringing is one that people don’t like to listen to and don’t like to believe.” The judge in this particular woman’s ‘case’ had given the woman’s daughter over solely to the custody of the violent father with the threat that if mother persisted in saying her ex – husband abused the child, then her “visitation rights” would disappear –– which is what happened. “Visitation rights” here, too, in her ‘case’ meant no greeting cards of any kind sent, no telephone calls and no mama going to the T – ball games … to just watch even. Living within the same town as her ex – husband and her child then, the woman started to picket and, with friends, became vocal in the community. Her own attorney then finished out the guests presented on the Eye On America segment with, “Judges who are used to people respecting their power get very angry and vindictive against mothers, especially if she is a poor, inarticulate mother who defies their power. ‘The issue’ in ‘the court’s’ mind was not whether this child was being abused by the father. ‘The issue’ in the judge’s [daMan’s] mind was the integrity of the judicial system: how was he [daMan] going to deal with a woman who refused to follow his [daMan’s] orders!” And Reporter Hayes clinched the feature with, of course, “The bigger tragedy though, many say, is that in trying to stop these controversial court battles by taking mothers out of their children’s lives, judges may be punishing the children as well.” Note CBS’s Hayes never said, “… by taking mothers or fathers out of their children’s lives …” And that, along with the perpetrator’s actual crimes against the children, has always been “the issue” –– gender discrimination and sperm exaltation. I received replies from none of these people or shows, not even a notice recognizing receipt of the materials which I had sent –– with the exception of the Oprah Winfrey Show. An acknowledgment did come to me from that woman’s producers; a mere postcard it was. Defiance is … The Standard Measure. * * * * The 07 December 1992 ruling by daMan required an appeal or Part Five –– which effectively went up, as it had done before with the first appeal or Part Three of The Opera’s Act Two, to the appellate – level echelon known as the Iowa Court of Appeals –– because of all of these reasons. And because of one more. Grace Portia, in the car ride back from the courthouse to Ames and our Teacup neighborhood that horrid wintry afternoon of the 09th, made me promise never to do Judge Butcher’s bidding on, at the very least, that one other account in his ruling. I promised both her and myself that I would not do what daMan had ordered me to do. I subsequently did not. And have steadfastly refused ever to do so –– and, of course, the Truemaier Brothers have become … well, what all living children go on to become without their mothers in their childhoods: the Boys have become … of adult and legal majority age. This is not the same at all … as being “grown up” nor is it the same at all as having become … “adults”. This defiance, pissing off now not only the kiddos’ fathers, their ex – husbands and daMan in general … but also judge after daJudge after daJudge by us mothers nationwide has become: The Standard. It has become Our Standard Measure of Things of Worth When Mother – Fucked. Bearing in mind the absence of a separate trial on my own Petition for Modification of Custody, the absence of the High Courtier’s taking into any consideration whatsoever in his [daMan’s] ruling the overwhelming preponderance of hard – copy “evidence” of Herry’s unaccountability, sexual addiction and physical, sexual and emotional abuse of all of the Boys as well as of me which I entered as “exhibits” and the absence, totally, of any witnesses including no experts brought forth by Mother – Fucking Scheisser to testify on behalf of Herry’s cause in this Trial Three / Part Four matter, pages 23 and 24 out of Judge Butcher’s hand stated, “Visitation between Legion and the boys will not resume until she does the following: 1) She must obtain psychiatric / psychological therapy and counseling. 2) This counseling shall be with a psychiatrist or psychologist who must be duly licensed to practice his or her profession in the State of Iowa. The psychiatrist or psychologist must be someone who has no prior knowledge of or association with Herod, Legion or the children. 3) Visitation between Legion and the boys shall not resume until in the opinion of her psychiatrist or psychologist visitation can occur in an atmosphere free from accusation, recrimination and deception. 4) Prior to the commencement of any such visitation, Legion must file an application with the Clerk of Storm County District Court seeking a hearing on her request that she be granted visitation. Until such time as Legion has met the foregoing requirements, the order of Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor of 21 September 1990, allowing Herod Edinsmaier to terminate visitation and the decision of the Iowa Court of Appeals affirming that order shall continue in force and effect.” What is this proclaimed and imposed “edict, dictum and judgment” then … effectively? What Judge Butcher, The Opera’s High Courtier, just stated and ordered in an American civil court of family law adjudication in the latest and last decade of the 20th Century was merely a reiteration of the High Aggrandizier’s or Judge Seizor’s. And, thus, the following: Physician – Pillar Herod Edinsmaier, my ex – husband, could –– if he liked –– continue to deny the ex – Cunt visitation and all contact with the Truemaier Boys IF he himself, IF he … the woman’s, the Boys’ mother’s former spouse by mawwiage … stated that he: 1) did not like who my therapist was, 2) did not approve of the design or plan for my mental counseling and therapy, 3) did not approve of how I went about obtaining the counseling or therapy, and 4) had decided, ‘in his estimation’, after I were to have taken on all of this accountability that indeed I had not met daJudge’s “foregoing requirements” by ‘his merely saying so’ to whatever judge presided ‘over’ / had dominion ‘over’ the ex – Cunt’s re‘application’ for visitation upon the alleged completion of this order. Exalted Herod Edinsmaier, daMan with domination over the woman in the pairing that used to be legally mawwied in a union with each other, COULD –– if he liked –– in the 20th and subsequent 21st Centuries … still … … inside the United States of America … … 5) UNconstitutionally hold us four –– Zane, Jesse, Mirzah and me –– hostage and continue his terrorizing and violence for all of those years and years and years to come and until he decided upon whatever plan or design for “a program of mental therapy” on the uppity, blondie ex – pussy suited him … daMan. Which would have, of course, never been at all –– any plan. Grace Portia, right off recognized that no plan would ever suit Herry –– unless, of course, it meant an expansion of the SpaChezResort Sixth Floor Hotel one with committal, perpetual shock – and drug – doping, total physical lockdown with isolation and eternal invisibility and disavowal. A plan wherein: I ceased to exist. To anyone, even to myself! How utterly and ultimately … mother – fucking. DaMan and daJudge together, daMan and all of daJudges together! It is obvious to us mothers … to us women: “justice’s” rulings are not about the (Exalted) Sperm Donor’s fitness to be father to minor children. Never. In these proceedings, it is never about him. It is only and all about us mothers’ fitness. Our fitness to … have power. Or not. Mehitable – fashion, Buddhists ‘defer to’ and (s)hell out homage to daMan who mother – fuckingly states to them, “The body of a woman is filthy, and not a vessel for the Law.” Hhmmm: Dr. Legion True is soooo not a “vessel” for any Law of the Land of Iowa, now is she, Jury?! daJudge twists she is not. daJudge tweaks for you, Iowans of the Jury and All Others. She, the Truemaier Boys’ mother, can never be, “I say so!,” any “vessel” owning power of the Law. Sexism: the Original Sin. And all during this length of time through which I was ordered to await “Herry Edinsmaier’s approval” upon anything, everything and, of course, eventually for me … upon squat, I was to pay him monthly for three children I could never even talk to … let alone, see, hear, smell or touch. I was to pay him monthly child support stipends even though Judge Butcher the High Courtier wrote on his last of those 26 pages of mother – fuck, “Herod’s earnings exceed those of Legion’s by nearly twenty – fold.” Even though, too, I had testified under affirmation of its veracity that I had simply stopped wasting my dime by calling out to Grubtrop. I had placed my last telephone call to Herry’s number there on Wednesday, 05 February 1992, since I was never granted a conversation with any one of my three kiddos anyhow. I could never get past the Sheriff of Nottingham nor Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s dementedly devoted implementation of her King’s folie à deux directives to forswear all knowledge of his ex – Cunt. My calls all went for naught. All of them. The Boys were never even told of the gazillions of times when the Bitchy Witch had tried to call them. And certainly never informed that I, in a telephone call in early December 1991, had asked for them to come visit me on their break. It was the winter holiday season after all –– a time off from school during which the Boys and I had not been together since December 1987! The few words of a response which that particular phone communication request to Herry through Ms. McLive, the King’s Interim Cunt, had produced from her only thus, “They most surely are not coming to your house for Christmas! You sure have a glorified sense of importance of yourself!” JYeah! Maybe I do! I am their ma! Years later I would learn that, although the Boys could not come to visit me then –– even though they had had the time off anyway, the Daddee had taken them all out of school a month after that very Winter Solstice … … and in late January 1992, flown them all off to Oxnard, California, to attend there the mawwying of a cousin Mirzah, Jesse and Zane barely even knew. But who, apparently to Herry – Daddee and his Interim Cunt bore and carried far more “glorified” importance and weight in my Boys’ lives –– plus, as well, warranted their all missing class days! A total of 27 more months were to pass by before I would even lift the receiver and attempt … once more … another telephone connection to Jesse, Mirzah or Zane inside West Virginia. Instead and again: I merely wrapped up –– and rocked. With the notice of appeal document filed then, also pro se, I set about trying to raise the amount of money from Adam and Abraham and László that this particular judge’s court reporter stated would be the estimated fee for the five days of Trial Number Three’s transcripts –– and, of course, I, the appellant in Appeal Two or Part Five of the Opera, was liable for the securing of and payment on the 21 copies of the entire transcript required by the Iowa Code. One copy came back to me, one went to the appellee or Herry for which I had to pay too, of course, and 19 further copies accompanied the other sets of 19 copies of documents that were filed in the State of Iowa’s Clerk of Court’s office. So massive an undertaking were all of these sets of documents that I required numerous cardboard boxes in which usually arrive new reams of an office’s copier paper, the help of my girlfriend, Teri Lynn who to this day commutes in from Goodair County to work in Des Moines, and a flatbed hand truck to cart all of this mother – fuck into the Capitol from Ol’ Black backed up to that allegedly austere building’s loading dock. The man who typed it all up from those court – reported tapes of 22 – keyed, gobbledygookish mumbo jumbo told me initially that he needed a thousand dollars before he would ‘be able’ to type Word One of Day One of Trial Three. When I secured that amount … and showed up with it all … just moments before his arbitrary deadline for this task, he suddenly then … set a different amount. He ‘unexpectedly needed’, instead, he claimed … … another couple thousand! One notices that the folks I borrowed from were all … male. Only those of my numerous friends are the ones with chunks of money huge enough to lend. Even today, years later, most certainly true this still is. When an ally loans me $5, that is truly lovely –– but that amount from one hundred of my closest friends will not buy me an appeal –– not from even just a civil county court decree. If one hundred girlfriends loaned me $10 each, that would not do it either. This second appeal would go on to cost me, without $1 of its total given over to any professional attorney to litigate, on my employing behalf, one iota of any part of this appeal, a vastly conservative estimate of around … $8,000.00! That amount, I am stating, was required for only the appeal and for only the appeal, Part Five of Act Three, done –– all of it, that is … pro se! And women, who are most of my friends, just do not ever have this kind of money themselves, let alone, have it with the capability of forking it over indefinitely to others … like to me! At this cautious guess then of 8K overall, why, 100 of my nearest and dearest would have had to hand over $80 each … without so much as a date of when, and only a promise that, they would ever be seeing it back in their own pockets. Women routinely, that is day – to – day, do not have these amounts to loan and, likewise, this is the very same reason that, in this United States’ “justice” system, wholly wronged women cannot … even appeal! Hence, … our second scream! So I went begging to the few men in my life. Borrowed from them each … big – time! And filed. But not until after that recorder [daMan] had raised his ‘unexpectedly needed’ amount … yet a third time! Judge Harley Butcher’s man just kept raising it and upping it; and I know he thought he had stopped the Blonde Bitch with his third, precipitant hike. Upwards as it was by this third increase of the Iowa Code’s permitted allotment that year of the highest outer limit for charging litigants for typed pages: that is, daJudge’s own man’s fee abruptly became $4.00 per page! Five days of trial at 4 bucks a pop per sheet of it?!! But daMan had not stopped me. Everyone needs the kind of friends … I am privileged to call mine! When visibly handed its complete amount … $4,125.00 … the recorder no longer had an excuse either. DaMan had to … finally … get started typing up five days’ worth of testimony after all. And whilst he set about doing so, he did so none too swiftly whatsoever. I had to call and to call and to prod and to remind him of my deadline dates and to extract out of him promise after avowal after promise after avowal that, indeed, he would have the third trial’s transcript and its 20 other copies completed within the time frame by when Appellant True needed them all to be done. After all, daMan had, in his hot typing hands, not just an installment or some of it –– but all of the money. And I wanted the completed product for which I had so dearly borrowed –– and paid daMan in full. My entire payment to him, I believed, entitled me to a product that was one of service as well. My met obligation meant to me that that recorder have back to me a completed and correct transcript with appropriate copies in a timely manner! Meanwhile back in my own life, I am some nights and every single Saturday and Sunday, 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the supermarket delicatessen with its breakfast grill … my accompanying there plucky Gert and others far more punkish in their late teens and early 20s, the student – employees all widely yawning at those earliest of weekend working hours far more than Gert and I. As well as ¾ – time days at the Forestry Department with ¼ – time additionally, there now, even more fully devoted than ever before, also some nights and on weekend evenings, over to finalizing the Third International Agroforestry Conference plans –– and about which not only were the professors excited but so was I. Very much so. Just as the Forestry Department’s Annual Wild Game Banquet approached in early March, an event the students and I both especially loved planning and during which awards for the previous year’s accomplishments are given out, the Sunday Des Moines Register led Valentine’s Day that year, 1993, on its opinion page with an incredibly disturbing headlining editorial … entitled as it was: “Equality not always present in Iowa courts: A biased judicial system cannot adequately dispense justice.” “Well, dah!” came back nearly my entire response! I utterly loathe the writings and speeches wherein we DEhumans are continuously and as “just a matter of fact” – like pointed out and specifically delineated as “the Other”, as “the (AB)normal,” as “the Less Than Usual Standard Measure of.” This is sooooo the case when writers and speakers preface nouns with the adjective “female” or “woman” as in the two – word phrases “female farmer” or “woman athlete” or “female researcher” or “woman lawyer.” Nevertheless, the editorial opinion of the Register ran with that very phrasing, of course, “Put yourself in the place of ‘a woman lawyer’ seeking nomination for a judgeship in Iowa, only to be told that you are too ‘nice’ to be a judge. Or put yourself in the place of a black woman seeking a job with a law firm, only to be told that you would have a tough time finding a job in certain parts of Iowa, and to be later asked if you would be interested in a nanny position for the person conducting the job interview. Now consider the case of one Iowa woman involved in a divorce, who said that ‘The judge leaned across and pointed his finger, asking how I thought I could ever possibly share joint custody with my ex – husband when I couldn’t make the marriage work. He was holding only me responsible even though there were two people involved, not just one.’ Or consider that, if you are a black person or a member of another ethnic minority, your chances of receiving harsher treatment from the Iowa criminal justice system are quantifiably higher than if you are a white. Now consider this: Can a judicial system that is biased, even if marginally so, against women and minorities adequately dispense justice? If you are a woman or minority standing before such a bar, can you have a high level of faith in the credibility of the decisions handed down? Fortunately for all Iowans, those kinds of questions are being asked at the pinnacle of the state’s court system. Two years ago the Iowa Supreme Court formed a Task Force to consider thoroughly the issue of equality in the state courts. It was a bold move, not so much in terms of setting any precedents –– at that time more than 30 other states already had examined the issue in their courts –– but because it represented a challenge to the conventional, but in many ways biased, judicial system. The 312 – plus page report issued by the Equality in the Courts Task Force last week is broad in its scope and eminently fair, its recommendations cautiously drawn. Task Force chairman James R. Havercamp of Davenport, chief judge of the Seventh Judicial District, took pains to emphasize the report’s finding that most persons involved in the court system see it as fair and that most attorneys and judges rarely if ever engage in biased conduct. But he also made it clear that while a court system may never be perfect, Iowa’s courts have not yet reached the ideal. Says the report, ‘There is no question but that some quantum of gender and race bias exists.’ It exists in three ways, says the report: 1) Women and minorities are underrepresented in important sectors of the legal profession and the courts; 2) a majority of women and minorities report they experience bias in the system; and 3) gender and race bias may adversely affect the interests of certain classes of litigants involved in everything from domestic relations to criminal justice. What should be done? The Task Force offers page after page of recommendations. Some –– particularly in the area of judicial appointments –– are, frankly, timid. It is not enough just to encourage that more women and minorities be appointed to judicial positions. Other recommendations, however, are specific and more far – reaching. They include proposals that all Iowa attorneys and judges complete continuing legal education relating to gender and race bias; that the Supreme Court adopt policies making judges and lawyers more aware of the value of the services of women as wives, mothers, and homemakers in relation to the division of assets in the awarding of family support and alimony; that in matters of temporary child custody the system be more open; that there be better record – keeping of charges filed and the gender and race of alleged perpetrators; and that ‘the present and future court system database should be monitored periodically, and patterns of racially associated disparities noted, publicly disseminated and specifically brought to the attention of districts where disparities occur.’ Finally, the Task Force recommends the creation of a follow – up group to ensure that education programs continue, to monitor progress and identify new problem areas. Some Task Force members, in discussing the report with Register editors and reporters last week, candidly alluded to differences among them. But there also seemed to be a very high level of mutual respect and, just as important, a willingness to listen, to study and to accept the need for change. The Task Force report notes that ‘more work and understanding can make a difference.’ If the report is accepted by the legal community in the spirit in which it has been presented, it not only can make a difference, it will.” Blah, blah, blah and yada, yada, yada. “More education, willingness, change.” “It will make a difference.” These are bullshit, feel – good phrases of more mother – fuck! I have repeatedly said we all, to effect change, only need two, frickin’ really, really cheeeeap tools; and because we have all known since we were frickin’ eight years of age what The Right Thing to Do in such matters is, then we sure as hell need not one more goddamn minute of “more education” or “more programs” or “follow – up focus groups!” No “more gaaaaawddamn talking.” We just friggin’ need to do the change about which we already soooo know … needs doing! So. Where the fuck is the “willingness”?! I also took truly, truly big issue with the Task Force Chair’s assessment, “… that most persons involved in the court system see it as fair and that most attorneys and judges rarely if ever engage in biased conduct.” Because in just a very few short lines a wee bit later on, it was, in an obviously gargantuan discrepancy with the Chair’s assessment, pointed out that “a majority of women and minorities report … they experience bias in the system! ! !” Aaaah … JYeah, Judge Havercamp, … buuuut … you daMan, of course, aren’t jya’?! Well, what the fuck is this … actually … saying? ! ! ! It is in direct dispute of and opposition to the sentence just before it: the one about how “most” see everything and everybody as “fair”. Nooooo, they do not! MOST do not view the judicial system as anything close to “fair”! Because women are … “the most” ! We are 53 percent of the entire, goddamn World. So. We are “the most”! And we do not see –– justice! Male Task Force Chair Havercamp was just assuming that by the term “most”, it was meant that the most of “them like himself” who are the white guys, the Good Ol’ Boys, “feel” that way –– that is, they “feel” that in the courts … things are fair! And, lest we forget, Jury, Task Force Havercamp is a judge –– who is sooo not about to disparage his own workplace colleagues (–– just as physicians also ‘protect’ and keep soooo, so silent about other errant doctors), thereby having to bring his own judge – self … to account! ! ! No! No! Not that! Crikey! Transparency! Yikes! And he is always, too, first a lawyer even after becoming appointed a judge –– so then, likewise, not at all about to criticize himself nor hold to changing his own views or changing his own behaviors. He is … already … one of those other men who also sees himself not only as the interviewee in the CBS Evening News piece said as “used to people respecting their power” and, when we do not blindly abide the biased and bad judgments and the judges’ powers, then getting “very angry and vindictive against mothers who defy their power” … but also as … a ceaseless (so – called) … “pillar of the community!” * * * * While I listened very carefully to Grace who counseled defiance of The High Courtier Judge Harley Butcher’s dictum which screamed, “She must obtain psychiatric / psychological therapy and counseling,” and heeded her and my own self’s solid advice to not comply in the least on this, daJudge’s madness and anger at me, I am ashamed to state that even as late as now, 08 March 1993, even after the few reports I had been hearing in the media –– and, believe me, Jury, these newspaper editorial and television accounts were only inklings and, in no way, massive blitzes of the Truth at all … as there should have been –– even after these couple of times of “warnings” of what was happening out here in the hinterlands of America’s family law courts, I am ashamed to have to declare that I still believed in … America’s Rule of Law. And that, at least inside the courtrooms built up upon the grounds and the very foundations of my ancestors’ ashes, I, the human being I had always thought of myself as, and a caucasian and a highly educated one at that, would still receive justice after the right I thought I deserved to petition for a fair hearing. I still chose to ignore on this date of all dates –– that is, after nearly a century’s worth Worldwide of marking International Women’s Day on the 08th of March –– the years’ and years’ worth of noting injustices to us females. I still chose to ignore the amassing collection of “evidence” beginning to push out of its subtle and shrewd shadows everywhere –– which is: that sperm and fatherhood exaltation overruns the true Rule of Law. That, in deed and in fact, sperm and fatherhood exaltation is its own Rule of Law instead and that any woman, no matter how allegedly “a have” rather than “a have not” she be, is quite a fucked fool to believe, in an American court of civil law, that she is anything more than a DEhuman. And I still went ahead and filed – stamped the second appeal –– Part Five –– this 1993 International Women’s Day. Hope is, as I have now twice before said, such the woman – killer. Consequently, I borrowed and borrowed and paid out and borrowed more and continued “to exist” –– if one could call it that, in 37 – to 35 – degree interior temperatures throughout Iowa’s brutish winter. And Part Five, Appeal Two went forward! Whilst I never … not even one time … missed being early at giving over in full to this man the “decreed” child support payments for the very three children I myself, alone, chose to grow but to whom I still had NO RIGHTS at all. Much later I was to learn that meanwhile back in Grubtrop, West Virginia, one of the (who – the – fuck – knows – how – many?!) “overheard” names used by Role – Modeling Herry and by Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive to refer to Dr. Legion True in their ‘private’ talks and massive efforts and stratagems to keep me invisible there –– all of which occurred daily –– was that of “the non – Edinsmaier.” While that appellation certainly did fit, I have since considered it an honored moniker and far, far more complimentary than what Zane is reported to have called Herry, that is, “the Warden” and “the Step – Dad!” And certainly a far kinder handle than the one which Herry – Daddee once gave to Zane after a skirmish with Mary Jane –– that of “female batterer”. And then … then when Herry was called on it by Zane to account for Zane’s behavior with Mary Jane, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, the Father and my three Boys’ Role Model, actually stated to all present at the time that: Herry – Daddee’s own beating up on Legion, on Zane’s and his brothers’ mother, was warranted and justified as necessary because “she was crazy” and needed … her mental condition did … to be treated with … the Good and Wonderful Healing, Husbanding Doctor’s specific brand of domestic violence and narcissistic passive aggression! To this type of a person Herod Edinsmaier then, one who had had a modification of child custody decision on 21 September 1990, favorable to him and really only supplementarily redone again on 07 December 1992, by Act Three or Trial Three and The High Courtier Butcher in cahoots with The High Aggrandizier Seizor and their own Pillared Boys’ Rule of Law, Mirzah, Jesse, Zane and I were still sentenced. To this very man who had himself ordered all three Boys, when they became old enough to talk and to understand the concept of “father” or “dad” or “daddy” … to this daddee who had strictly ordered each Truemaier Boy never.never.never to call him by any of those designations. Dr. Herod Edinsmaier only wanted the Boys to call him Herry or Herod and never, ever Daddy or Pops or Pa, Dad or Father. Yet, in order to fuck with specifically me, Dr. Legion True, Perfectly Pissed – Off Porno – Purveying Pappy Edinsmaier absconded with them –– completely stealing away from me all of the Children who had lovingly called me … Mother. I had to appeal. I also had to see my Boys. It was now over a year; not since the 05th day in February of 1992, had I picked up a telephone receiver to even try to speak to one of them so the only way that that was ever going to happen was to go there to Grubtrop, West Virginia. And find them. Actually Grace, Frieda, László, Linda and I –– and no one else did we tell –– truly started planning my clandestine journey back during the Winter Solstice on which AmTaham and I always turn another year older and, I am thinking, … wiser. That is, just as soon as The High Courtier Butcher had ordered me nowhere near Zane, Mirzah and Jesse –– until Mother Mehitable – fashion, I softly deferred to and complied with all of his and Aggrandizier Seizor’s and (O – So) Small Man Syndrome – Afflicted Herry’s machinations for my whoring and demented “DEhuman mind,” we all began my defiantly wicked – badass underground railroading exactly there! The bit more than a week of it was set to begin the next April 1993 then … right around the weekend some holier folk term eastertide. That Winter Solstice 1992, was not only the turning into the 73rd birthday of Righteous Ancestor AmTaham which he never realized –– breathing –– and yet another unrecognized, unheralded and unobserved one for me, but I also knew in my core that I myself was finally turning as well! I no longer at all sought externally for happiness and protection, two “things” for which Mehitable certainly castigated and chastised me long into my 40s and continued to harp at me to look for from men –– even after the main fathering man to me was now dead. Well, to seek my happiness and protection from well – positioned ones, that is. Then again, this so – called ‘good’, bible – quoting and keeping – up – appearances woman was the one and the same who in ‘conversations’ often employed the word “j e w” as a verb, routinely labeled brazil nuts of the scientific name Bertholletia excelsa as “n i g g e r t o e s” and, when describing folks from a certain Asian island, only ever did so using the noun “J a p s”. Even around Jesse, Mirzah and Zane. Even when I specifically told her not to spew her swill. Even when I threatened to –– then did –– leave her home and her town if she continued to do so. Taking my Boys with me and away from her and her fuckingly foul mouthings. use Sitting in Friends Meeting one First Day I heard, … I mean I truly, truly listened to Yanira –– out of our collective Silence –– telling us all assembled there that her brother, as the adult he now is, was so angry with their parents. Their mother and father, both Quakers, it now seemed to both of their children had never truly prepared them in their broadminded and so unprejudiced, generously patient, progressive and merciful household. Had never from their childhoods prepared their two children to protect themselves from the real and angry and hard – hearted and mean – spirited persons who exist everywhere, especially in posts of power which, daily, impacted their very selves, –– in those now same adulthoods of theirs! That her brother was so, so pissed as a 20s – something because he had not had the self – awareness fostered in him by parents who should have about how evil many, many people truly choose to vengefully and everlastingly be. His parents, too, should have worked to cultivate in him when he was still a minor kiddo his own tools for the very “protection” of the self which I was now having to forge out of my core for my own person –– and I, the nucleus of the self who was Legion True, had just become that 22 Twelfth Month 1992, already, 45 years old! The Agroforestry Conference was developing nicely, the call for papers yielding massive numbers of interesting ones; and it certainly began to look like attendance with Iowa State University’s hosting of the third such international conference in early August 1993, would hit a registrants’ record of from between some 350 and 450 persons headed into Ames from all over the Globe. Evenings I visited with Frieda at the delicatessen and weekends she came there, too. Between the support from her and from Gert while I was there scrubbing its so slippery, greasy floor and equally dangerously filthy men’s bathroom, flinging chicken parts down into the two deep fat fryers, slinging macaroni salad into pint Styrofoam containers and grilling up Ames’ finest breakfast for a buck and from the support and counsel of my other friends, especially from Grace and Linda and a new one, Cyan Song Goodwater, all three Boys’ art teacher just before they had been forced to go missing from Kate Mitchell Elementary, I managed to write appeal documents and to plan the secret sojourn east. Cyan Song was, literally, also raising up five boys of her own … herself –– out of which “five” … one of them was, in actuality, … the spermatozoal donor for the other four … that is, her husband. Except for that Stupendously Slacker – Spouse of hers about whose uselessness she more than hopelessly acknowledged, Cyan Song’s situation was a breath of fresh air to me, as a matter of fact. Her four boys started in ages just about where mine ended; that is, her eldest James who had testified in Trial Two was my Youngest’s exact age and had, in fact, been to visit with Mirzah by way of my driving James there one time when Mirzah had had to go live in Urbandale. She and her entire family of testosteronal molecules had just come to Ames and the Teacup ’hood during the earlier and ongoing acts of The Opera –– most recently from Wisconsin by way of, really, the Carolinas first. Cyan Song loved acting in community theater, art with the teaching of it as well as the actual wearing of it all over upon her very person –– from her near – baldness to, later, those fiery locks to always her decorated toenail tips –– and she loved her (three, then whoopsydaisy an entire decade later) four baby boys. This mother rocked. And she knew it. I do not remember how we first connected, but I am so glad that we did hook up. On the early morning of Thursday, 08 April 1993, I left Ames. I mean it was 4:00 a.m., and I was securely belted inside the driver’s seat of the Ol’ Black Eurosport wagon –– loaded down and hauling out. The plan was for me to become –– a man. In as many ways and for as many days and events and functions as would be necessary to get done this being with my Boys in Grubtrop, West Virginia. Good weather, good roads, and specifically the ending of the Grubtrop Community School system’s week of its annual Spring Break. Why, Jury, the end of that particular week on the academic calendar? I figured it would have been just my fucked luck to have planned, spent bookoo dollars for, entirely used up all of my vacation – leave days and done this whole covert operation to the center of that state only to discover, when I finally arrived there, that Sooo Moneyed – and Joy Toy Boy Older Bro – Daddee had, over their time off from school, up and spirited the three of them all off to some true spachezresort hotel – destination hundreds to thousands of miles away, thus leaving me –– and them –– so screwed … yet one more time again. So, instead, I put in for all of my earned, saved leave to be taken … beginning with that Thursday through my being back at my Iowa State University Forestry Department’s workstation desk on the morning of Monday, 19 April. And, thus, determined with the Boys at their high or middle schools in the mornings, that I would be able to more than likely find one, two or all three of them around 3:00 p.m. or after –– out at the baseball fields or the cinder track or even just leaving the schoolyard –– once Zane, Jesse and Mirzah Truemaier were done each weekday with formal classes. Interstate 74 caught on the west side of Illinois snakes rather quickly down to and through Peoria and Champaign – Urbana. Ol’ Black had on him a tank which held enough gasoline at the speeds which I drove, always … and I mean always, within the limits of the various states’ laws or just below them, for five hours’ worth of travel time so the next stop up for fuel – filling and planned – peeing came out at Cincinnati. Final third leg of the tour via the southerly and good State Route #32 through Ohio on into West Virginia was to get me and Ol’ Black, bearing as it was its Iowa license plates, into Fairvale, a town about 13 miles north up Interstate #79 from Grubtrop, right around the sun’s setting time of approximately 8:00 p.m. Eastern –– with daylight savings having just commenced nationwide the Sunday morning four days previously. All of this part of the preparation did occur happily enough –– except nearly exactly 24 hours later than originally set. Trying to exit the east end of Cincinnati yet still on the south edge of the old Reds Stadium, Ol’ Black … quit. Just as quiet as he could be. No cell phones had any of us then –– so I waited within locked doors wondering where a safe payphone could possibly appear to me when, upon cranking over the ignition one more time, Ol’ Black started up just as keenly as always –– and, outta there, flew the two of us! Until that Thursday, 08 April 1993, I had never used before any sort of credit card. I had never owned one. And the only reason that I did so this trek was to be able to rent a cheapest, wee vehicle once I woke up in Fairvale, West Virginia. A farm kid who dealt only and always in cash, paid my debts at nearly all costs and strictly of the ya’ – didn’t – buy – it – if – ya’ – didn’t – already – have – in hand – the – bucks – for – it mindset, I simply abhorred plastic –– and refused, until age 45, to even possess one. Of course, my utter loathing the so – real deal at this time … where we females, we DEhumans had to have our male significant others’ “permission and signatures” before being “allowed” … as “the second” individual on the ownership of a family’s credit card … played the major role in why I had always defied and eschewed possession of any. Until that day. Ol’ Black made it out of Cincinnati proper and slogged on into its eastern suburb of Milford –– without a(nother) hitch. But he did not make it out of there –– except by way of a tow into the business confines of the kindest mechanics residing within the State of Ohio! These folks, a wife – and husband – owned outfit randomly selected out of those proverbial Yellow Pages, determined in short order and now around 4 o’clock Eastern in the afternoon of my first travel day, that the wagon’s fuel line was faulty, appropriate parts existed in another part of the state, those parts could arrive the very next weekday morning, that is Friday, “Such is your luck that it’s not the weekend, Ms. True!” And they all could have Ol’ Black and me up and running and done with southwest Ohio within 24 hours were I to approve of that arrangement. Well, I had no choice, of course, and began right then and there on the greasy, oil – stained cement floor of their auto repair shop my hate – love – mostly hate relationship with MasterCard. One thing further this woman and man did for this poorer mama. She ordered Ol’ Black towed over to the rear of their concrete block building at where he was backed up alongside its west exterior wall away from any view of the street out front and then allowed me to do there inside him, with one window cracked ever so narrowly for that ‘fresh’ city – suburb night air, what was going to become my design with Ol’ Black once I got inside West Virginia: lock, recline in his turned – down backside, cover up and drift off to sleep. It was now supposedly a particularly extra ‘good Friday’ according to folks calling themselves christians, and the excitement I felt within my chest was literally palpable –– as in palpating. My cardiac muscle was thumping so thunderously when I throttled Ol’ Black via US Federal Route #50 into the west side of Montclank, West Virginia, aimed toward the mixmaster of intersecting interstate exchanges connecting it to Grubtrop with a separate stretch of highway exiting off right there north up to Fairvale … that I could barely breathe. Not much different about that, though –– the not – breathing part –– than from all of those times so far to date when I had walked out of county courthouses with absolutely crazy – making family law custody judgments in my hands, however. Yes, the scenery since leaving all of Ohio and entering this state had certainly been exactly as wise Other – Mother Frieda Chicken Guthrie had earlier told me that it would be, “Poverty with a view … ”, but I hauled in my heart such a hateful heaviness about this place which I had never before seen –– and only because Herry inhabited this space holding hostage here from me my Kiddos. Montclank is a town of approximately 23,000 – plus spirits immediately conjoined to Grubtrop’s 6,000 to 7,000 more. The only spanse of it which I at the first saw, motoring directly through it, was of nearly all very, very old brick, dilapidated and boarded up structures with splashed graffiti, ripped – up posters with edges flapping in the breezes and Italian – appearing last names on the aged buildings’ masts, almost all of these with letters missing or broken off. I left this entangling mess of concrete on its east side and schlepped up north just as fast as I possibly could, the sun still with me although now around 8:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight –– just as about when I had originally planned to arrive there except with that one, full missing day … later. Once inside Fairvale, WV, I drove directly over to the rental car agency just to scope it out as to its distance from my planned parking spot for Ol’ Black. No internet yet so I truly did not have much of this part of my Operation BWB, that is, Be With Babes, exactly researched too well –– as would have been the case had there then been a world wide web with Google – search capacity! This municipality proved itself in physicality as I would later find Grubtrop to also be –– that is, with almost all of its streets as very, very narrow pathways and headed up and winding around and around extremely steep inclines to buildings atop them –– almost upon precipices. One such building had two parking lots, layered – like, in tiers cascading down from the rather massive main configuration upon its peak. This specific structure was that of the Fairvale City Hospital, and the two lots most physically separated the physicians who had medical practice privileges there –– away from –– the hospital’s other ‘regular’ employees, its day laborers, its temporary staff and from us visitors. I say ‘us’ because it suddenly struck me that Ol’ Black, with his out – of – state, even Iowa plates on him, could very easily “have reason enough” to be parked in such a building’s lot –– and for days and days on end even … since, of course, would not it make sense to patrolling security, in either town cop form or the hospital guard system, that this beater wagon’s owner or driver or passengers had motored in from elsewhere and were themselves inside visiting with and comforting their injured or sick loved one who was, therein, … hospitalized!? Furthermore, the littler lot of the two all the way to the back of this hospital’s northeast side and right beside the emergency room entrance there with its “no blocking” sign had regularly spaced and conveniently read small white crosses of wooden laths upon which were painted in black letters the doctors’ names. One such cross bore not a name upon it but the one word “Pathologist,” the first letter a capitalized P, for sure –– and I knew, in that second, just exactly where I could squat Ol’ Black for about a week’s worth and not have him, well, ever Elitist Edinsmaier – discovered by the Good and Wonderful (and quite a ways away – parked and self – segregated … ) … Doctor! Out in the much larger front one to the southwest, us peons’ parking lot, and down onto its lowest tier of graveled spaces completely out of view of the entire hospital’s height of windows even, I descended the old black station wagon which was to become my temporarily stationary hotel room’s bed and from the front’s bucket seats climbed into its backend. From off of Havencourt Drive’s battered and tattered sofa, I arranged back there, then, the three foam rubber cushions into a linear pattern, having, in order to create enough room, to move up to the front passenger seat several bags of stuff which I had brought along. I crawled under the sheet plus the couple of blankets topped with our ancient navy down comforter. My heart slowed. I slept. * * * * No, there hadn’t been any curtains on the wagon’s windows –– and such a vista it always did afford to me, something about the station wagon which I very much liked actually … especially when I was backing up or checking for oncoming traffic to my rear or right side. No, I had just spent about the last eight hours there in the midst of West Virginia’s night air covered and shielded only by Ol’ Black’s metal and glass –– as wholly transparent as it could all be. With success. I awakened, the dashboard clock indicated, around 6:00 a.m. and, of course, had right off that Saturday morning … ‘business’ … to take care of. The first of many such, exact, early – morning affairs, er nature calls, to continuously … ‘manage’. But I had been mawwied to Herry Edinsmaier. I knew that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, at that hour, would himself be physically located nowhere near this –– nor any other hospital. After all: this was the same guy who, in his soooo unprimed although quite privileged mornings, had peacefully snoozed clear through two –– not only one … but two –– different women’s breast biopsy operations!–– during which procedures he was supposed to have been present! right there alongside the surgery table to perform and to analyze for the surgeons, as malignant or not, frozen sections on tissues just taken! This was daMan who had not only brushed off those two DEhumans’ days, futures and families by utterly dissing and ditching the importance of them altogether –– their very lives –– but who had also kept hidden from me and from my Truemaier Boys in October 1987, back when I was dusting off his pornography – purveying den on Othello Drive the Kansas City White Law Firm’s equivalent of a pink slip … sanctioned and sent from Lawyer White to Herry by his Missouri – based employer, Downshim Laboratories –– for his, daMan’s, doing so! For Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s … gross incompetence … as a medical doctor! Nah! I so did not need to worry about unluckily waltzing into Herry at that hour; there was no way that that particular physician would be walking the hallways of Fairvale City Hospital on his way to important shit or something. So. I bopped right in the front rotating, round door and boogied on over to the very nearest women’s restroom –– clearly marked as such and quite easy to locate. Something else I noticed while in there was whether or not the facility had an electric socket … to accommodate a blow dryer or curling rod. This one did; I was to learn that many, many public bathrooms do not. Done and back down to the car with not even one security guard in sight, I breakfasted on leftover snack food from the previous day’s journey: peanuts, raisins, a banana and water. And prepared to walk from that spot to the rental car agency figuring it to open up around 8:00 a.m. One would never have known that the 45 – year – old Dr. Legion True was such a credit card – using greenhorn –– my having only inaugurated the new plastic on its very first voyage out of my jeans pocket just the day before within Milford, Ohio! It took approximately half an hour to arrive at my destination and another 30 minutes or so to get fixed up with the World’s most stunted and puniest vehicle, I declare! It was no small wonder as to why –– when she handed me the keys to its ignition –– the Ford Motor Company had named this milky white fleck, now with West Virginia license plates on it, an “Aspire.” Hell, this itty – bitty metallic bump on four tires was trying so hard to grow up to be a real goddamn …car, for chris’sake! But I didn’t care; it was what I could afford, and I had it for a week, no mother – fucking questions asked. Only queries asked of me were ones on which I could legitimately and truthfully answer, and I was in it and driving back over to the Fairvale City Hospital parking lot to exchange into it the items which I wanted from out of now safely parked and static Ol’ Black. Then I was off to Grubtrop and, at last, … to my Truemaier Boys! Headed back down south on I – 79 the same way that I’d come up to Fairvale the night before, it never even crossed my mind –– in the very same manner that the thought hadn’t entered the brains of Grace or Frieda or Cyan Song, of Linda or László either –– that Mirzah, Zane or Jesse, when I found them, would tell Herry or Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive or even Mary Jane as a matter of fact, that I had come to West Virginia. And, now, with my provisional acquisition of this little, amorphous cardboard pedal – box called Aspire … The Plan was beginning to gel. The difference, however, on this particular 13 – mile stretch over to Grubtrop from the one on it of just the evening before was that now I, on this bright, beautifully clear Saturday morning in April, was tooling ass into Herry’s town inside this tiniest of tooshes dressed as Sam, the concrete truck – driving man. My Iowa driver’s license which the rental agent, of course, needed to see had on it the picture of a caucasian, saffron – coiffed woman and showed a birth date of the Winter Solstice in 1947, and that is exactly who had just rented a week’s worth of use on their two – door Ford. While no cement truck was Aspire and no man was this particular Sam, there was some amount of irony in the whole subterfuge –– in that daMan, Herry, before I’d ever known him and, back then, quite the imbiber of all beverages brewed, had once hired on to an Iowa road construction crew during the hot summers between his undergraduate years in college and, there, drove nearly the exact same type of truck as was now slapped onto my covering’s lapel. As a ‘man’ I hauled in from out of town defiance and mockery of Herry Edinsmaier and of his and daJudge’s’ “laws” inside itty – bitty Aspire. And Herry, inside his typical passive aggression and narcissism with laissez – faire / lazy – ass attitude, had hauled in not only that as his waxed version of fathering but also as a drunk man … driving … concrete in for the paving of highways similar to the ones which had just ferried me there into Grubtrop. The jacket in one of my favorite hues of all time, chocolate brown, had on its nylon windbreaker fabric on my left chest not only the name “Sam” in black stitching but also the picture of a white concrete truck and in white letters on its back the title of Sam’s company, “Weldon Ready Mix,” apparently one situated in a town with no state printed at all and whose letters were too small to readily read from the distances I intended to keep from Herry, from Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive and from anyone else whom I saw quite fit to distrust! Cotton twill workpants of the hardy type day laborers don in the same brown color also came from Ames’ Salvation Army Store. I had a matching, two – piece outfit but not only in the cloth items into which I had changed before leaving Fairvale. A few other of this androcentric countenance’s accoutrements for the role and expression of Sam came out of Ol’ Black and into Aspire as well. Des Moines has a wondrous collection house called The Theatrical Shoppe. There, I had obtained a salt and pepper wig in the loveliest of Sam Elliott – lengths of waviness along with a similarly speckled piece to adorn my upper lip mustachioed there as it was with its own special glue. Even Mr. Elliott, I am thinking, would have perceived this likeness to his own as … pretty damn close. On my cinder path strolls into the Forestry Department from stashing Ol’ Black in the Brookside Forest in order to save on the University’s parking fee, it occurred to me that I could hide my peaches – and – cream complexion, the only one thing of colossal worth which I had, indeed, inherited from Mehitable, with shards of charcoal lightly rubbed onto my cheeks … in order to simulate Sam’s five – o’clock shadow. Dark glasses with tortoiseshell frames and a simple white baseball cap sans any decoration whatsoever completed Dr. Legion True’s ensemble. The one feature for which I had no cover – up were my hands. I had brought along a pair of chocolate brown, cotton flannel chore gloves made in the genre of which AmTaham and we other farmers, for years and years and years, always have multiple pairs; but I truly thought it already too warm outside to wear them without appearing really weird. Fingernails clipped as short as possible, unpainted of course and with all rings removed, I resolved to keep attention away from my hands by engaging others’ eyeballs directly while passing them cash or other objects and when receiving back change or groceries or other purchases. I drove on into Grubtrop and, perchance, immediately passed by the port’s police station on my left in the northwest corner of the burg … as I did so. I so dubiously doubt, all pun intended, that anyone, flipped and reversed as a Mrs. Doubtfire – like individual, would have given this crazily cogged confluence of cop and con nearly the contempt that I myself, the newest “Sam Elliott” actor, attributed to it! Off I – 79 South then, I took the exit east into Grubtrop proper for the first time in my entire life –– although certainly not my last. A squatty little place, it is probably, having never seen it from the air and just guessing after my having been there now a number of times, west to east far shorter than in its north to south direction and is aligned much of that longitudinal stretch right alongside I – 79. Within moments then I was at the far east end of Grubtrop and, in getting there, again back to using the highway which was Federal Route #50 from the day before –– when I had first entered the west side of Montclank. Aspire needed to be turned around so I did not wind up leaving the city’s limits entirely … so he and I came back west to the first of only two intersections in Grubtrop at which stoplights exist on Route #50 … and took a right, up north –– for the hell of it. Learning the lay of this land was my first priority, especially to discover as I had just done, easy exits the fuck out of town –– in the case that I ever found myself needing any! This bearing to the right or north took me into the very hilly and, as I was later to know, … newer parts of Grubtrop, West Virginia: –– the community’s recreational center consisting of a very small swimming pool and concession stand with a couple of tennis courts and an outdoor basketball arena, a shopping center with just a huge number of stores and miles of parking lot and, overall, more massive than any Ames has ever had with yet another smaller mall or maybe its extension just across a highway divide as well as an extremely tiny park with only one shelter, a walking path and no playground equipment in it at all. And ... to one of the three Boys’ two schools for that academic year, that is, to Zane’s high school. After Herry’s late October 1991, heinous and secret flight out of Iowa where Mirzah Truemaier had just become a new middleschooler rehearsing for his Mock Trials’ regionals, my youngest Child, to finish out his sixth grade year, was taken aback and put into an elementary school inside Grubtrop, one built in 1909, which today sports on its website … little American Indian – looking children with feathers stuck in the beaded headbands of their black hair. Now, in April 1993, Mirzah was a seventh grader and stuck inside Grubtrop’s big, boxy structure on its south side which was designated as The Middle School –– along, as well, with Jesse who was finishing his eighth grade year there. That particular middle school building has subsequently been shut down, its age unknown to me but, to be sure, one at least as old as Grubtrop’s … and Mirzah’s former … elementary school. Here, however, up north was Zane’s high school, put up in 1963, with a severely bland and ochreish color upon its exterior, not at all a hue of the lovely saffron – blondeness of Zane himself. This place was at where my Truemaier Teenager labored at finishing out his sophomore year and, thus swung heavily as well, into springtime baseball practice –– while, after seventh – and eighth – grade classes dismissed for the day, both Mirzah and Jesse for their particular workouts took a schoolbus ride up and over to the cinder arenas near Zane’s ball diamonds as the two of them trained in track and field. Their dark red brick middle school was, as I had found true of many of the buildings in Fairvale too, built atop a tall hill, not really a mountain, but with no other facilities about it –– not even having what appeared to me to be much in the way of staff and teacher parking except on steep, side street inclines. I left its presence quickly –– having seen all I needed to see and returned to the area of Zane’s high school … not far at all, I figured out, from an I – 79 exit headed back up north to Fairvale … and my Hotel Ol’ Black. Realizing that after dismissal, Jesse and Mirzah would be coming to the outdoor areas of the high school for track practice, I decided to concentrate on learning all that I could about various folks’ comings and goings to this tract of Grubtrop property. Then, there was the external evidence all over the region that the symbol of this “educatory” place was an American Indian chieftain: headdress, feathers, distinct savage profile and all –– including the phrase repeated on concession signs and fencing backdrops in several spots of … the Grubtrop Indians. Today, after a decade and more of other communities grappling with the same racist blatancy as this school’s not – so – charismatic portrayal, when one surveys its high school’s several web pages and citations, no outright reference to the town’s actual honoring of any real, residential Grubtrop Indian, past or present, is anywhere online –– only an upper left – hand corner pictorial … displaying a generic chieftain which alludes, of course, to the school’s team name and, thereby, … its “native arrowhead” representation. Recalling Ames’ loveliest of school networks, Herry – Daddee’s affidavit – LIE to the Aggrandizier that “all Truemaier Boys would finish out their secondary educations in Ames” with its mascot, a wee, black tornado … The Blonde, also victimized, maligned … choked hard. And continued with my local explorations of this xenophobic land. Sam Elliott talked to nearly no one, the Aspire’s tank full when I had initially left the rental agency so its driver need not gas up but only … carefully … get in to use those stations’ restrooms for bodily elimination. Other good such venues came to be the local Wal – Mart store’s bathroom and the Grubtrop Hardee’s and its McDonald’s as well. The Wal – Mart women, who were its only clerks of course, seemed to love to open up to Sam about everything going on up at the high school –– right down to the fact that Spring Break was ending that very weekend with “Easter an’ all” and if it weren’t for “wonnerful, wonnerful” baseball, why then the kids’d “be left with just school to go back to.” Apparently baseball was king in Grubtrop … literally. Like most places everywhere, only the boys participated, that is –– with its girls either in track or stompin’ and a – hollerin’ from up in the bleachers and, thereby, so “whooping” on their favorite team of “warrior” ballplayers, these “Indians” somewhat bigger and taller apparently than the bigoted town’s elementary ones. By late that very Saturday afternoon of the 10th, I had pretty much gotten the entire grasp of the full feel for Grubtrop, West Virginia –– especially for those places where 13 – , 14 – and 16 – year – old Boys might hang out or spend time of any sort … all of its four schools with two of them elementary and each having some semblance of playground equipment in their yards, the public library crazily cramped with books –– even stacked up helter – skelter on every one of its windowsills, the few town parks tiny for the most part and absent nearly any structures for kiddos to play on at all save for one in the southwest part of town with a rather lovely pond in which I thought perhaps Zane and Jesse might try to fish. This specific park spread itself out not very far at all from the town’s main post office –– at exactly where King Herod with his trusty Nottingham Sheriff McLive had, again, fucked me over … nearly right away shutting down that rented postal service mailbox which I had from such a long, long distance leased for the Truemaier Boys’ receipt of Dr. Legion True’s letters and packages. I now knew of, too, almost all of Grubtrop’s individual stores, gasoline stations, grocery outlets and supermarkets –– a whole passel of these it seemed, its fast – food joints and pay phones … most easily accessible from Aspire’s narrowly opened driver’s side car window, its small municipal airport onto which unaccompanied Mirzah, Jesse and then – vomiting Zane had landed after the mother – fucking fiasco with Mehitable … upon our all burying Grandpa AmTaham just the very April before and out of which, I came to later know, Fairy – Pixie Herry nearly every Saturday morning sucked up bookoo time and many, many dollars just flying around for fun almost always alone but also with Mirzah alongside a couple of times. Loathing shopping at all as much as I do, I had by this late hour even scoped out Grubtrop’s four –– count ‘em … four! malls as well as its one old banking structure and its one colossal catholic church done up in newly appearing white stone slab with a mighty saintly sounding name on its sign. City hall, the police station, the firehouse –– and, quite importantly, safe and quick routes out of town … including even the railroad crossings and how and where the train tracks ran through parts of Grubtrop. The favorite spot I located was the east end cemetery –– almost within shouting distance of the Edinsmaier residence. O JYeah, by now, I knew where that was situated, too, also inside a nice – looking neighborhood, one without adult trees yet of course, of that upper north side of really, really red rose – brick, ranch styles –– all of them trimmed in white. It arose out of one of several newer residential sections of Grubtrop although quite a step less in grandiosity than the one – story with its so frozen, unstable and utterly unusable basement back in Ames but, like Aspire in the vehicle genre, this current house of Dr. Edinsmaier’s from its exterior at least appeared as if also “trying to grow up” to become as the Slacker’s former bachelor pad back at 5221 Othello Drive, his fucker which had abutted itself upside the Brookside Forest near 13th Street! The Good and Wonderful Doctor’s residence now, like many in Grubtrop, also sat propped on top of a bulge leading as it did to a very, very fine, skinny line of a paved street out in front which dropped straightaway down from its precipitous perch way up there. Narrow avenues meandered everywhere throughout this entire town. One traversing in a vehicle was required to stop all of the time in order to just go on down the street. Needed to stop in order to allow others with the right – of – way or at least the appearance of that right to pass me by, and then it was my turn to proceed forward. With cars parked on either side of the streets, there was in most places then and almost all of the time that I could see, only one lane open to motorists. The Grubtrop graveyard rolled itself out on the very east edge of daMan’s neighborhood as well as that of the whole community and simply bore the town’s name as its own, Grubtrop Cemetery . It was sparse in tall trees, too, though not in hilltop headstones and monuments of course, but did have some strategically situated stands upon its two, far mountainsides that afforded not only cover and privacy but also cool concrete benches constructed just for my visiting and reading and meditating and, I suppose, others’ crying or lamenting, too. Of all of the locales researched so far in Grubtrop, I thoroughly liked this entire space and resolved, aprovechar – fashion, because of its proximity to my Babies to use it that springtime to my fullest advantage. But it was Saturday night, darkening now around 9:30ish and with my already losing an entire day of my planned eight, there was one thing about this odd West Virginia community which was truly, truly weirding me out: noooo kiddos anywhere. I had seen hardly a child out and about in this town anywhere where I had thus far studied. It was a christian holiday weekend, that was true; but still, Jury, almost no one around after their Spring Break week just ending? Another fact was so also: the very few playgrounds I had encountered did not have much in the way of interesting, colorful or strenuously and physically challenging equipment inside them all –– over which children could romp. Mirzah loved to swim but it was April, and its pool had not yet opened; still no one was even down at the tennis or basketball courts that lay out alongside the pool. A few children accompanied adults inside the Wal – Mart Store, the shopping malls and the supermarkets which I had investigated, but uncannily it appeared to me to be a town of very few kids –– outside, at least. The necropolis where my day so far was ending and turning into nighttime seemed far less eerie than the sites I thought should have shown little spirits breathing –– and running around and screaming and laughing and … being! On this particular weekend of the year I’d seen plenty of commercial evidence of easter inside all of those stores yet not one dyed egg hunt nor a bonny bonnet nor yellow chick or pink bunny in sight outside anywhere. The patriarchy’s horror house of things catholically magical, mythical and soooo unreasonable … at where Grubtrop’s newest, pillared Good and Wonderful Doctor now weekly genuflected … splayed itself out, appropriately enough, at the very bottom of Horrid Herod’s hummocky hillock. His constricted street tumbled and rippled south down from his double driveway about nine or eleven shortened blocks’ worth or more past older homes, mostly wooden two – stories, almost all painted white and built I guessed around the 1920s and 30s and 40s and, at its end finally, rather t – boned right there with the entrance into the church’s parking lot. The perpendicular throughway east and west past this churchliness then is Grubtrop’s Main Street –– simultaneously stretching latitudinally … as that federal highway thoroughfare also known as … U.S. Route #50. Even around that large asphalt area with narrow strips of grassiness and some low – growing, dark evergreen shrubbery planted right up around the minister’s massive narthex, not one child scampered here or there grappling for a blue – or an orange – colored egg. I parked Aspire compassed due north toward where I perceived my Boys to most likely be … inside Herry’s house. The wispy white car was stopped on the west side midway up from the t – intersection along daMan’s street, still probably five to seven blocks away from the actual Edinsmaier domicile, however. The sky was now completely dark, its only illumination coming up the street to me from a yard lamp hovering high over and probably protecting the property of that catholic church; and at 10:30 p.m. Eastern, Sam was trying to admit to myself that while the day had been most productive in that I had certainly learned a lot, it was time now to close down this week for good, drive back on up to Fairvale and Ol’ Black, turn in at my mobile motel there in its hospital’s parking lot and get some sleep. Heavy – hearted, I was so disappointed. But not crying. I was not crying. Dr. Legion True had made the deal with myself the evening before whilst crossing the state line into this land of “poverty with a view” that though a man I was not, while Sam was in the King’s current Kingdom –– this West Virginia territory, perhaps I should become there, as necessary for the time being and the Operation BWB project at hand, as hard – hearted as the inglorious one who occupied the manor grouted with maroon mortar on his mount. I swallowed that throat lump again arising and put my right hand to the key in the ignition … catching sight, as I did so, of a sashaying silhouette in the rearview mirror. The entirely blackish person backdropped by that pole light towering beside the church had to still be a good 300 yards, maybe four football fields away, and was just turning into the street off of Route #50 but definitely ambling up the roadway in my direction. I adjusted the mirror in the middle of Aspire’s front windshield so as to keep in my view a fuller back – directed vista of this person as the walker drew nearer, straightening my wig and checking the positioning of the matching moustache and baseball cap as well. When the figure actually got close enough to pass by the car, I intended to point my covered head downward as if studying something in my lap in front of me; and of course, both of its doors were already locked. “O, m’good goddess. Dare it be?! O, O, O my. My, my … my, my, my. That’s pretty much about how tall he’d be. Truly! An’, and, even more than that, that just simply has to be him! That is his gait. I know it. I just know it is. Only my Zane carries his shoulders and his trunk thataway. Truly it just might be him. Alone? 10:30 at night? Out in the late dark like this all alone!? O Jeesh!” Any mother I know, and have recounted this episode to since, likewise thoroughly thus knows her kiddos –– even the ones whom she has not actually even seen for, well, … by this mid April 1993, we four were traipsing into our 18th month … physically separated from each other. Except for the hurried – up grief, the irritable bowel and gastroenteritis – type sicknesses, Silly Sister – Ardys’s refutation and Sterling’s and Mehitable’s outright screaming rejection that had all been the true character of their dying and death ceremonies for Righteous Ancestor AmTaham, not since the flop of the Agnes and P.M. Flunk evening in Ames on the Monday night of 28 October 1991, when Jesse’d run away and those weeks just prior to that whole Herod Edinsmaier – generated and – visited – down – upon – us gutting and carnage … had the Truemaier Boys and I spent hours of close – up time with each other. Still, a mama just does not forget. In my back – ass envisioning I could not make a thing out about this person other than the height and the carriage, so blackened was every other bit of the creature –– yet all of that obscurity notwithstanding, I refused to lower my head as I’d earlier planned to do and, instead, as the person was upon Aspire and me and approximately seven or eight feet parallel to the car’s frame, my eyeballs gazed straight onto his profile through the passenger window’s glass. The lock was up, the driver’s door flung open and the left sneaker planted out onto the concrete with my right still on the floorboard in what must have been an instant, “It is you! Zane, it is you!” No caution whatsoever on my part did I now demonstrate, that was for sure! Sixteen – year – old Zane Truemaier was probably ten feet onward northerly beyond the right front end of Aspire when he heard the unlatching car door’s – and – my words’, almost simultaneous noisiness. His torso spun around an imaginary axis on his left side to, in the solid blackness of this nighttime, face Sam square on, yet with my right foot inside on the car’s floor. In so, so typical teenage – ese, Zane dropped his jaw and, with both arms and palms splayed out from their sides, exclaimed, “Wha’th’FUUUCK!? Mom! What?! Wow!” “Zane, you can tell it’s me?!? Shit, you should be running off as fast as possible the other way,” Zane was walking back toward me now and over onto the driver’s left side of Aspire. “I taught you, didn’t I, to run away from strangers! Ya’ know, from strangers acting like they know you or are coming toward ya’! Not to stick around and certainly not to talk to ‘em! Right off you could tell it was me, could you?!?” “Hell YES, I can, Mom!” “Shii – iit! I thought this was a better disguise than it’s turning out to be, Darling!” We hugged and hugged and hugged. I kissed his neck and both of his cheeks and breathed him in as deeply as a mother possibly could … the scent, the all – ‘round aroma of her own son. I just could not let go of him. Sooo fortunately for us, … there occurred not another spirit in sight on that Saturday night street! To this hour, knowing from such the faraway distance that that total yardage must have been after my first just catching a glimpse of him in the mirror like I had, knowing then that this silhouetted stature was most likely my child, well, … I count the serendipity of that night and all of my Ames friends and those two car mechanics in Ohio who had been my supporters along the way to that very point as having eventually also led on up to my very own … restoration. “Mom … Mom, stop for a sec! What’s with the man – getup?! Ya’ think Herry won’t find out you’re here?! Ya’ think this’ll stop him an’ Fannie from knowing you’ve come out here to Grubtrop?” “Well, aaah yeah, I’m wanting exactly that actually, Z. O, O god, you look wonderful, Babe! How are you? O, just get in the car. We’ll go off somewhere behind a mountain and talk.” “I can’t. I can’t.” “Ya’ can’t? O. Aaaah … Okaaay.” “Well, it’s jus’, um, it’s just that I, ah, I’m out after, um, aaah, … after curfew, Mom!” Zane really wasn’t too, too worried, I could tell, about what would be my take on this specific behavior of his –– let alone, about my telling anyone, that was for damned sure. His hesitation in telling me this, I am thinking, was merely because teens are supposed to be reticent about admitting such activity to any parent! Plus, furthermore, the two of us in particular –– as parent and adolescent youth –– hadn’t actually interacted for 18 months or more! “OOOO! Jeesh! Curfew?!?” “Yeeeeah, Ma, this town has a 10:30 curfew!” “Whoa! No! No, I certainly didn’t know that, Zane! Of all I now know about Grubtrop, I did not know about its curfew!” I was smiling and shaking my head and trying to hide from him, not so well I am certain, my mirth at his resourcefulness actually! It … reminding me of my own now and also way back then, too –– when I had been 14, 15, 16, 17 and …, as a female with a tyrannical and puritanical parent within the likes of Mehitable, even so much older than 18! … that male – identified woman’s condemning judgment and controlling manipulation loooong into my DEhuman’s adulthood. “Yeah, it does. I was just coming home from Huck’s; he’s a friend of mine, Mom. I was trying to get back ‘fore Herry gets home. Cuz, aaah, um, Herry thinks I’m already home. He went to the movies, and I’m supposed to’ve been home tonight … all along; I wasn’t supposed to be out. He said so. Aaah, aaah. Yeah. That’s why I can’t get in the car, ya’ know.” “O! Well! … Aaah, no! Ya’ can’t. Ya’ better hurry on up there then,” and I motioned in the direction of on up the street that would, at it progressed somewhat skyward in the little lofty route I had just corralled Zane from earlier ascending, put him in about ten minutes’ time or less right at Herry – Daddee’s driveway –– and, with a bit of kismet, also at the safety from all things untoward. “So, Z, can you bring yourself and your brothers to the far east side of the Grubtrop Cemetery tomorrow on Sunday at, O, let’s say, noon? Think you and Herry and the rest of allya’ll be having a holiday dinner then? Ya’ know, ham and all the fixings? Or … or not? Cuz, if not, well, by noon then, why, the three of you all wanting to go out and find your friends or go off and do something on Sunday, well, that wouldn’t look too suspicious by that time at all, would it?” “Hell! A family dinner?! You’re kidding, Mom! No! No, there won’t be any family dinner?! Yeah! I’ll tell ‘em and we’ll all try to come. Far side of the graveyard! Tomorrow! I love you, Mom. Be careful! I gotta go.” Hug, hug, kiss, kiss, quick, quick –– and off he dashed sprinting uphill north into the complete darkness. “O I love you, too, Zane!” He glanced back around at me one time and then continued his swift departure and promising evasion from Herry’s detection. From inside Aspire I just watched my loveliest, eldest Son fade off until I couldn’t make him out any longer. All of this encounter had left me breathless yet utterly calm and buoyantly brimming. I sighed, “Mission accomplishing! Mission BWB is actually happening! Whoa! Just when I was thinking I’d up and lost another day to just searching and searching for Zane and for Jesse and for Mirzah, I haven’t! I found ‘em! At last, I’ve found them all! O, it’s early in Iowa, only about 10 p.m. there. Love that Central Time Zone!” Still a darkened and deserted street, still with no one venturing out upon it anywhere and certainly, right then, not Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, nor Herry and Fannie together, home from the theaters just yet, on its narrowness I pulled a three – point, 180 – degree turnabout and straightaway headed for the payphone one could use from inside a vehicle, a telephone which I had spotted at the corner convenience store on Grubtrop’s Main Street, its Route #50. While I may have looked somewhat manly to some, the less Dr. Legion True was fully exposed the safer I felt –– plus it was nearing 11 p.m., and I truly did not know the flavor and tenor of this town specifically with regard to unaccompanied females out alone long after darktime –– and I was not about to risk this wondrous upcoming week with my Boys by putting myself into settings from where I couldn’t escape safely enough. I would work to take back my nights from their endangering and evil thieves … later on. For now, I was just content to tell Grace and Linda and Cyan Song and László my so, so happy tidings. After all, for all of their planning and support and endeavors on my and the Truemaier Boys behalves, they, too, deserved this particularly fabulous news –– that Mirzah, Jesse and Zane had all been found! And that, fortuitously, I had not been –– that is, that I had not been found … out about! So far –– soooo, so good! * * * * Back at the far bottom corner of the Fairvale Hospital’s visitors’ lot, Ol’ Black and I reconnected –– or rather, the cushioned bed in its “back room” and I did! It was midnight local time. What a fulfilling day’s worth I had had –– and probably one of those changing moments in a person’s life when she or he begins to thoroughly take in the tremendous value that one fulfilled day within her or his lifetime truly, truly has! On 11 April 1993, others’ day of irrationality, unreasonableness, bunny – chicken egg non – science and, specifically, dead man – (and, most certainly, not dead woman – ) rising – back – to – breathing magic, and nearly at high noon … my breath was again taken away. I purposefully left off Sam’s accoutrements and in the back seat of Aspire, at hand if quickly necessary; but I did not want in the light of our first daytime in months together to frighten Jesse or Mirzah or even waste visiting time trying to explain to them the necessity of why the costume –– although, with those specific two, explanation wouldn’t at all have taken up much in the way of time. I was atop the second, long hillock on the backside of Grubtrop Cemetery ––probably a distance to the east of another four football fields or more from the town’s last north – south traversing street. That one was three streets east of and about ten blocks south of Herry’s house, and, after knowing the path and neighborhood now, I estimate in walking time maybe a strong 20 to 25 minutes’ trek from daMan’s doorway to the concrete bench I was occupying. Of course, this day would be an easy one in the cemetery; it was a holiday and not Memorial Day so folks would not be disturbing there the peace of their dead nor, for that matter, that of me, its latest Phantom of the Graveyard, because most all would be enjoying family time together in backyard barbecues or sumptuous sit – down ham dinners. Arriving early and in the broadest of beautiful sunshine, I stood up on this knoll and gazed and gazed and searched and searched –– watching particularly another t – boning intersection, the one where that last avenue of the town ran past a west – east street which I thought might be the one the Truemaier Boys would take to come to me. They did. I gasped. Again –– at that great of a distance, three entirely familiar figures finally emerged, the only three people out and about! Upon any of the streets that, from that superb, skyscraping spot, I could surveil. And, again, like the night before when I could just tell by the height and the gait of the mystery person at such a stretch of street when it was Zane solo, I could also, with these three people, immediately just tell they were, indeed … my Boys! I have – since that first sighting of all three of them that far away –– often, often pondered how we mothers do it. How do we do it: how do we stand this? How do we stand for this, Jury, –– this forced isolation and invisibility to each other? If, as it most surely is, war is the leaving behind of every child, then “civil” family court in custody battles is the leaving behind of every mother who has ever stood up and finally said something which daMan and daJudge did not want to hear, certainly did not want to be held accountable for and absolutely with what neither man wanted to –– justly –– deal! Not exactly Gettysburg and, indeed for us struggling but immutable mothers and women most certainly not 1863, this particular Cemetery Hill, the Grubtrop one in the Union’s breakaway state of West Virginia where two years earlier in that mid 19th Century one could be certain that a total of zero of its legislative delegates were mothers because none of them were female, afforded the passionate four Iowa Yanks of Jesse, Zane, Mirzah and Legion then, the most ghostly of secret yet stalwart strongholds in our ongoing battle against … being kept apart. Against the bloodying and conquering, divisive troops maintaining the Virginian manner of mindlessness –– that is, of secession between children and mother maneuvered by King Herod and all of his judges, Shyster Shindy Scheisser, Nottingham Sheriff Fannie Issicran McLive, even that corralling daughter of hers, Mary Jane. Over its periphery’s four foot – high wall of mortared stones in different colors of mauve and gray and slate and charcoal all three of the Boys scaled and now inside the confines of the graveyard grounds per se, they made this bright, bright sunshiny holiday their sauntering promenade around similarly hued headstone and monument after headstone in full view of all of the partying townspeople apparently totally self – involved and, most helpfully, … indoors. And up the hill on its far side. To me. To me, their ma! The “property rights” of ownership and sole access to these children by only Father Herod Edinsmaier, the Exalted Sperm – Donating Biodaddee –– be itself … fucked. As the Boys advanced toward me, I couldn’t then think on the untold numbers of exhibitionism incidents, the frotteurism with indecent liberties and outright groping perpetrated on Grace Portia at my and her sons’ youth basketball game and gawd knows upon who else –– including possibly deep inside that damned pornography – purveying den on Othello Drive upon my very own children, Herry Edinsmaier’s scripted admission of the bestial acts which he executed into cows, dogs, pigs and chickens, the innumerable forms of and daMan’s long – term consumption of pornography and voyeuristic actions, his visits to strip bars that included for those same years and years and years King Herod’s absolute abhorrence of my nearly always being able to actually find him, the Boys’ biodaddee, when he was gone off alone to all of those out – of – state medical meetings, Herry’s similar span of time –– conservatively, at least 14 years’ worth –– spent spewing malignant and pernicious, everyday language mostly at me … around the many measures of geography we had called our homes. And all of these sexual addiction behaviors, particularly at sexologist and psychotherapist Dr. Patrick Carnes’s Level Two denotation of them in his work, Out of the Shadows, were not to even begin to address, let alone, just mention, how many actual … “such encounters” with “other women” there have been –– while “bound in legal union” to me or to Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive. Nor those Shameful Eight Pages’ disclosures: the proof of daMan’s prurient proclivities from directly under Herry Edinsmaier’s own hand. Nor the non – existence, the absolute absence actually, … of any emotional components to any of Herry’s relationships … sexual or otherwise! I just could not think, right then at any rate, on all of the years’ worth of holocaustic destruction which Herry, as the Truemaier Boys’ custodial daddee with his ongoing behaviors, had wrought down upon my children –– especially now in their adolescences … this mother – fucking. Thoroughly sanctioned, as it so is, over and over by family court judges … about whom my obstetrically beleaguered and harassed, 28 – year – old girlfriend and discriminated – against mama – also – without – custody, Rachel, is known to have so wisely observed … and advised me, “And, ya’ know Legion, there’s no judge who himself doesn’t surf porn!” And, at this moment most grievously, I also could not let weigh in on me the very fact of just exactly who Juggern Misein Aut Edinsmaier was. Or, of how most sexual addicts are begotten … from out of … close familial association with sexual addicts, not just the almighty paternal Juggern but also some of Herry’s brothers, too, especially Atwater, and that this cycle of violent depravity and degrading perversion might so very well be slowly yet ever so insidiously traveling from sly Juggern through slick Herry and right on into the essences of grandsons –– these persons who are mine and who are soooo not Juggern’s and not Herry’s in any way whatsoever … except by way of the androcentric judges’ sperm and fatherhood exalting of patriarchal “laws” which only they, the men, have the power to make and can, then, rain down upon me. All of these things I just could not think on … right now … as Mirzah, Zane and Jesse Truemaier, at this moment, wound their very paths through this burial ground. I only thanked my newly flowering inner strength, truly flourishing for the very first time in all of my life there inside my 45½ – year – old core, and the support and the faith of my fabulous friends from back in the one place where it all initially went down –– or, more appropriately worded, came crashing down –– and in which place I then had steadfastly, these many long, long months which had by now melded into years of suffering, also determined to live out the rest of my days –– Ames, Iowa. Not a one of the Boys even looked back around themselves in fear of some others following after them! They just came straight … at me! “Mom … Mooo - om! Hi! Hi! You’re here! Wow! Zane said you were here –– and you … you are! You’re here!” 13½ – year – old Mirzah hugged and hugged and hugged my neck, and I was so trying not to cry in front of them all. This was the person whom I had remembered as … the kindest one to ever walk the World. What a smile Mirzah has always had! Of course, nearly right off, judiciously practical and orderly Jesse Truemaier wanted to see Sam’s costume –– all parts of it and to get from me the skinny on just exactly how all of that disguise was working out for me so far! And what were my plans to be for it and the three of them, with it, in the very next, upcoming days? Were they to call me “Mom” or were they supposed to call me “Sam” –– even right there on this sacred soil when no one appeared to be around us? We four sat on the stone bench and the grassiness out just in front of it and talked and talked and talked and talked. Completely hidden from and oblivious to the rest of … West Virginia and just exactly who the hell else resided there. O, they were so … well, so big! All of them teenagers! I’d brought along plenty of beverages and snacks, enough for days’ worth of legendary bottomless pits. Three hours passed by in catching up. Every single one of the three required an update on every single one of their friends back in Ames and extending down to DeAndré Taylor in Urbandale … and whether or not I knew anything of the other one of Jesse’s compadres there who’d aided him, now 14½ years old, in running away into the forested, urban fort that late October night … nearly now some 18 months ago. Peer – reviewed research, since, specifically on “relocating” parents clearly shows the destruction done to children by fathers who isolate and keep away the mother from the children by their vengeance – waging, moveaway strategies. And, as specifically, not the other way around! That is, there is not only no damage done to the children if mama moves them far, far away from biodaddee, but the kiddos actually thrive! Children do best when not moved away from either parent (defined as “beyond an hour’s drive”); but when it happens, which is more frequent than not, then the children do best –– in all parameters studied –– when moved away by only their mothers. So astounding are the scientifically collected and gathered data now –– results that any mom just about anywhere in the World even without the science and merely basing her instincts in this matter upon Nature, the World Order of Things and Women’s Ways of Knowing alone could’ve told us –– … so astounding are the data now that Fathers’ Rights groups have had to back way the hell off on their manipulation of this “excuse”, one which they had so been contriving … in order to promote it to their aprovechar advantage. Trying to hide the fact that the majority of fathers’ moveaways are, indeed, revenge – taking, plain and pure, “We have to gut the bitch in the belly … but it will get you, Daddee, what ya’ want: the Crazy Pussy … mother – fucked!” This revenge – taking is accomplished by the biodaddees’ using the “excuse” that these resettlements are “needed” or are “necessary for job placement or career advancement,” … matters which happen to be, actually, quite true for mothers who work outside of the home! The Fathers’ Rightsters seek to stop custodial moms from moving away while, at the very same time, stating that relocating is, “without a doubt,” “a necessity for custodial dads,” … for themselves! Activists and advocates for justice and for children’s health, from http://angelfury.wordpress.com, http://www.thelizlibrary.org and http://www.nnflp.org to http://www.nnflp.org/press/030630-1-braver-study.html, http://www.nnflp.org/press/030630-2-braver-study.html and http://dastardlydads.blogspot.com from all around the country then –– have had to long and loudly expose the Fathers’ Rights’ factions on this massive matter of custody after divorce and these groups’ trickery in deploying the word “parents” in these studies’ results and conclusions now … instead of the Truth which is that children do better when they stay and live with their mothers –– wherever she is! What fathers rights’ groups had really wanted from the research data in their aprovechar abuse of the children as their own property and as their pawns is to exact revenge against the children’s mothers by either preventing her, if she had physical custody, from leaving the territory to better herself or, if biodaddee was the decreed custodian as in the case of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier with Zane, Jesse and Mirzah, by stealing her kiddos far, far away, thus for a poor woman, to enormously effect the stoppage of all contact with her … thereby successfully crafting and rendering mother invisible to the children –– and, likewise and most intentionally, them to her. While it was nice to finally now have the official, scientific research results that demonstrated and bore out this fact of children’s welfare and upbringing, women’s ways of just knowing these things about the nurturance of kids, our knowing plus the actual knowledge and information that we do know –– both aspects repeatedly dissed in The Opera by daMan and daJudges –– would have meant nothing to ‘the Court’, nothing to Sol Wacotler Seizor or to Harley Butcher, even if, back that decade and more ago, there had been this official data, let alone, research work performed by … male investigators! What only mattered to all of these men, laws or no laws, research data or no truthful research data, was not being challenged any which way, and definitely not being called to accountability for their respective behaviors and possibly ultimately thwarted in their chosen ‘conduct’, by … a woman. And a gaaaawddamn uppity blondie woman –– at that! “These guys tweak and twist the laws!” Political Science Professor Schmidt had announced about the men of the judiciary –– even before there has been any so – called “evidence” of any kind … presented! I told the Boys all about my job at the Forestry Department. Jesse and Zane, my certified safe Iowa hunters, particularly wanted to know what all of that entailed as well as about the stuff college students learned in that major! They especially liked hearing about its Wild Game Banquet activity! This was most pleasing to me, and I was honored to tell them all, too, of the upcoming Third International Agroforestry Conference and my role in our Department’s hosting of it. It appeared not to concern any one of them whether or not I, now a Grade I, ¾ – time secretary in the Merit echelon, the lowest of the three levels of university employees, who worked evenings and weekends as the breakfast grill cook and pots – and – pans scrubber at the supermarket delicatessen, would ever attain the alleged status and glory or acquire the usual $assets$ of … a practicing animal doc or, particularly, of a veterinary microbiology professor … again. Even eldest Zane was still too naïve to fully understand the impact on that whole section of my life of Gutting – the – Bitch Herry’s vengeance and sabotage. That by way of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier with the androcentric assistance of ‘the Court’ and definitely with the fully cognizant and cooperating Shyster Shindy Scheisser and the matching folie à deuxs of the King’s with both Scheisser and Ms. Male – Identified Fannie Issicran McLive so manipulatively wielding … multiple times … that career – smearing Ames Tribune roadside bomb blast, my calling as a healer of critters and as the teacher of the next generation of us healers was … haltingly, compulsorily, forcibly blown to bits. It was now around 3 or 3:30 p.m., and I became concerned –– as a parent of minor children –– that wouldn’t … also … Daddee – Herry, wouldn’t Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, themselves parents of minor children as well … both be wondering and questioning where the Truemaier Boys all were ... by now? “Hell no, Mom. That’s a laugh!” Zane replied, “although maybe we outta think about getting back. Just cuz all of us’ve been gone at the same time. And, ya’ know, for the exact same amount of time.” “Okay. Well then, aaahh, what’s with tomorrow and school with spring break over now?” “What do ya’ mean, Mom?” asked Mirzah. “O, I mean like with sports’ practices. Ya’ know, like with your and Jesse’s track and Zane’s baseball? I’ll just hang out at the state park east of here till you all get done with school. The one off Route #50? I brought along a ton of things with me to read. And springtime in the woods? Why, it’ll be just like a real vacation at the lake for me, not?! I looked up some about it when I was making my plans to come out here. Say, you all probably know of it: Tygart State Park ?” “Yup! Well, Jesse does. That’s for sure!” Mirzah with that so endearing turned – down, left – sided lip commissure of his grinned at me and at Jesse, like he knew more than he was acknowledging or saying. “’For sure’? By that, Mirzah, you meeeeean …?” I purposefully stretched out the last word and coaxed both him and Jesse with my questioning gaze first to one, then to the other of their two faces. They were both fit to burst, more or less, and it was obvious that they so wanted to tell me –– but, at the very same time, worried that … well, that I myself would be worried –– once they did so! They were right! Those three guys definitely still knew me! I half expected to hear, or not –– depending upon whether they decided to tell me or not –– sordid tales of just barely 14 – year – olds parking together in the backseats of 16 – year – olds’ cars or, worse yet, alcohol and illicit drug use within the confines of Tygart State’s campfire areas or, the worst, the use of handguns or long guns and target – shooting within its public grounds but, say, alone or with other young adolescents but unaccompanied by and not under the watchful eye of their father –– something along those lines. What activity I never even considered was the one ‘behavior’ behind their nervous chuckles and sideways glances to each other. By lifeguards, I have had within my lifetime to be pulled out of deep water on three, separate occasions. Three times! And all of these events occurred because of panicking episodes during swimming excursions within pools, not even one time from out of a calm pond or a placid lake, let alone, from, say, my having been thrown overboard into raging ocean waters! When the Boys, Husband Herry and I all lived in Columbia, Missouri, in the mid 1980s, there had been that nursing student / babysitter, Stacey, with whom Herry had so often loved flirting, only about 20 years old and although studying to be in “the health care – providing” business, not too friggin’ smart at all about providing it herself! One summer afternoon when Herry and I were both at work, she let Zane, Jesse and Mirzah, each without one lifejacket between the three of them, occupy and paddle – kick from the sides of … one, mostly flaccid air mattress … as they, only 8, 6 and 5 years old! ! !, all struggled to swim some 500 yards! ! ! there in deep, state park waters out to an island! When that night I learned of this stupidity, this idiocy, I was simply horror – struck! I wanted to fire the woman on the mother – fucking spot, but no! Herry –– who, no doubt, would’ve whiningly missed his sweet, widdl’, coquettish tête – à – têtes with Stacey, thought I, the children’s mother! should just shut my whacko – crazy fuck up, be quietly grateful and forget about it –– since “nothing happened. Nothing at all!” Fahgettaboudit! ! ! Dr. Legion True did not prevail: this person did remain on as the Boys’ … daily “care”giver! I actually had to not only keep her as the Kiddos’ nanny –– but to also handsomely pay the mother – fucker for “this watch” … to boot! And? And I did have to shut my fuck up about it all! From that point forward! Loving – Husband Herry … thus … commanded! ! ! Now within Tygart State Park right there inside gloriously beautiful central West Virginia it so seemed that, likewise unbeknownst to Dr. Herod Edinsmaier who wouldn’t have cared even if he had known, Jesse and some of his new Grubtrop friends had many, many times visited the 30 – to 40 – foot cliffs above its lake –– and, from atop there, jumped the hell off! “O, m’god!” gasped I. “You what?!” “Told jya’ she’d freak out!” Jesse didn’t hide his disgust with Mirzah’s telling. He had but he hadn’t –– wanted to tell me himself, that is. Jesse was … I could definitely see this … wholly proud of his supposed prowess and wanted me to be, too –– but for a teenager who hadn’t seen nor spoken to his mother in over a year and a half, Jesse was not the slightest bit concerned about his being stopped from continuing those solo flights off the lake’s rock face overhangs. He just didn’t want me thinking he would die –– or worse, paralyze himself –– which is exactly what I was thinking! Jesse knew I couldn’t stop him –– if he wanted to keep doing it. For that matter, Mirzah and Zane knew I couldn’t stop Jesse –– or them either –– from doing anything which they all three might have been “up to” because of, well … because of my lowly level to nonexistent position within their sperm donor’s mind. The only good thing about this standoff of sorts, this impasse, was that, without my ever even having to ask any one of the three Boys –– to be sure, I totally trusted that their tattling to Daddee – Herry or the Next Cunt in His Stash that Dr. Legion True was “around” wasn’t even in their own minds either! Thank goddess that I had given the Boys swimming lessons, though, back in Columbia –– after learning about the Finger Lakes State Park fiasco there. Lessons for which fees I myself slaved and paid out a couple thousand dollars’ worth –– private water safety lessons for all three of them then –– to which Herry, at the least, rubberstamped his patriarchal and paternal sanction … that Stacey should take them! Of course, I knew those lessons of the preceding decade would not protect Jesse against jagged rocks, protruding boulders and other hidden menaces, but he was o – so smart and wise beyond his years and most certainly, beyond those of Stacey’s and even of 17 – year – old, older brother – like, Joy Toy Boy Herry’s, so I simply had to believe that Jesse would take good, vigilant care of himself –– even if he persisted in taking these flying leaps. One other thing: If there is anyone I have ever known who has had a knack for making friends, it is Jesse. He learned this art form from Zane –– and, together, the two of them passed it on over to Mirzah! These men never, never, ever lack for having at their sides admiring and honoring friends who will follow them into whatever adventure is on tap –– even if it is into hellfire itself –– if that is where the action is going on today! Take it from me, that is, take this knowledge and this knack from one who truly knows: for that there is no price equal! We four wrapped up the gathering; and from my distant deportment on that ghostly rise, I watched the three of them till they completely disappeared from view. Again as I stood there alone I wondered, “How do we do this? This’s just got to be the second hardest thing that a woman –– in her lifetime –– ever, ever does … ‘let my peoples goooo – ooo’ … ” And, of course, there in literally a land of the spirits the answer ethereally wafted from AmTaham True’s secreting of it back to me –– for then, for right then: splitting. I just split. This specific spell Legion True split off back … into ‘safe’ Sam … who got into ‘his’ Aspire and drove on out of the cemetery. And … off. * * * * I was correct. Not a soul did any of the three tell. No one. No one, that is, capable of exacting untoward consequence from me or from the Boys. The entire week I came by the cinder track oval or stood alone and in back – fence, right – field solitude at the ballpark –– always as the Non – Edinsmaier, Sam, and quite a ways away from any set of bleachers where a couple of times that particular week I did happen to sight Herry Edinsmaier among all of the other players’ parents and friends who were actually watching Zane’s games. Only Narcissist Dr. Edinsmaier, as antisocial as had been repeatedly assessed within Dr. Shark’s four performance reviews of daMan’s mingling during his Hershey work in medicine, continued there in Grubtrop what Daddee – Herry’d always, always done back in Ames at the diamonds inside Brookside Forest for the Little Minors’ and the Little Majors’ baseball games: pretend to be present. Instead of actually ‘watching’ Zane, his teammates and their opponent players interact, Herry read –– the local day’s newspaper or his favorite book of the month or something else –– and rarely, if ever, did the man even look up. And, for certain, Herry Edinsmaier never glanced over in Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s direction either … because the Next Cunt in His Stash? Why, she was never even in attendance at any of these Truemaier Boys’ events anyhow! We went out for burgers and fries, not the four of us together, just one and me, and then to a Hardee’s over into neighboring Montclank so as not to be seen together at the one in downtown Grubtrop. Mostly we just sat at picnic tables in the town’s tiny city parks and talked or on the far sides of that one Grubtrop Cemetery. I never moved Ol’ Black one time, and it appeared to me that setting there in his lowdown, graveled parking space on the very bottom rung of the Fairvale Hospital visitors’ lot, he hadn’t been –– that I could see –– tampered with in any way whatsoever. For myself at Gabe’s Discount inside one of those four shopping malls of Grubtrop, I purchased a navy, white and yellow baseball jersey, my favorite color combination, and a pair of completely white sneakers considering these … the obligatory souvenirs of the place –– along with a silvery baseball cap from a local musket and archery shop right on Route #50. Dr. Joplin scored a pewter wind chime of John Deere tractors and for Rosalind Franklin, my immediate boss, and all of my other friends I purchased candles at the gift shop of a local artisan who lived above her store. She thought it “sensitive” –– and pleasingly told Sam so –– for a man to be buying his co – workers candles! I sewed –– patches and rips, tears and buttons, things for which mending, with the three jobs, I had had absolutely no time … so’d brought these tasks along. I telephoned friends daily with reports and updates –– and always to let someone back in Ames know every 24 hours or so that I was okay, and even at times … ecstatic. And I read. O, did I ever read! Best, uninterrupted span of reading for pleasure –– since my teenaged youth! But constantly I am so slow, a reader for three decades utterly accustomed to perusing only matters of scientific endeavors who still has to friggin’ study every damned nuance and phrasing to make certain that I’ve … got it! –– the curse, I have learned from several professors at Iowa State with whom I have since discussed this illogicality, … … of many a scientist. Time there even was to teach old Sam a new trick –– that of taking showers at commercial trucking concerns’ rest – stops! My friends, Grace, Linda, Cyan Song and I, with our midwinter plans previously, had not forgotten to make special note of how I could handle my hygienic measures for the ten days when I was, more or less, to be on the road. And I had learned about how, with even a credit card, to buy the service and use of a truckstop’s bathing or showering facilities. Besides having my long, blonde hair shampooed and all over getting squeaky clean myself, the mighty finest thing about this whole undertaking was, though, that this woman did not have to, for the three showerings which I bought there over that total time span, … I did not have to one time feign myself off as Sam. Up Interstate 79 and just outside Fairvale sat a small and surprisingly scoured and bright – appearing combination gas station and greasy spoon with a game room space, television, washing machines and four showers on its second, loft – like level. From my friends’ prior planning and with the further aid of the most current Rand McNally Road Atlas, why, I found it lickety – split, no trouble at all. Sashayed on in with a tapestried bag containing bath soap, shampoo, wide – toothed hair pick and blow dryer, whipped out the old, (well, … the really, really new!) gold MasterCard and, at a rather tiny, glassed – in countertop harboring on its inside casing just a couple of big, heavy, dusty silver belt buckles with raised emblems of encrusted Peterbilts and as many round snuff cans of Red Man and Top Mill alongside a few rectangular tins of Altoids peppermints, I asked to purchase a hot shower. Not even a batted eyelash nor five minutes’ time later Dr. Legion True was climbing the staircase to this establishment’s loft, Jury, with the truckstop’s provided and freshly laundered and loaned Barry – cloth towel and washcloth included in its rental price … to Shower Closet Three or Four or whichever numbered one, each enclosure very well – lit and not only with electrical outlets but also secure locks from the inside, … to whichever one of these four happened to be vacant! All for only four bucks and two bits a splish – splash! As I glanced down through the clear glass while retrieving back my credit card receipts, I was glaringly reminded every single one of the three times when I showered there of Mehitable True’s newspaper clipping which she had mailed me earlier –– specifically warning of the dangers of West Virginia’s male children chewing tobacco, that under the age of ten years, the article blurb had announced, six out of every ten of this state’s boys … for a total of at least 60 percent of these kiddos (not to mention, its ‘adult’ … good ol’ ‘boys’) … chewed or sniffed or sucked or plugged smokeless tobacco. Of all of the activities I did there, alone, in and around Grubtrop, Montclank and Fairvale, … and excepting the taking of my noontime leave of West Virginia altogether upon the very midday of my furtive visit’s second Saturday there, the 17th day of April, … the most heartrending were Sam’s two sittings through Steven Spielberg’s latest blockbuster of the time –– up at their largest mall’s theater complex … Schindler's List! The scene with all of the little children scurrying up into the backend of the Nazis’ stock truck I have already written of: the one where the mothers hear their laughing, singing kids and see their antics but then, way, way too late, suddenly come to realize their babies’ fates! The tot in the little red waistcoat: the littlest, yellow – haired girl in all of that black and white. The small child who ran and hid, also like Jesse, by jumping –– only the hideout spew into which the little Hebrew boy quietly sunk himself was human excrement and waste –– and not at all clear Tygart – Lake liquid. I cried and cried and cried. Tissue after tissue after tissue. Felt sickened. Literally. “How do we do this? How do we mothers do this? How dare we, Jury, … ever, ever … be made to do this?” And –– then –– it was, indeed, Legion True’s time to leave this place. This temporary place of my three Children’s footings. Barring another Ol’ Black breakdown and in order for me to be back at my Forestry post early on the Monday morning of the 19th, I felt I needed to leave the central West Virginia areas not too much later than high noon of the first day of that weekend. And I did. But all throughout southern Ohio I was still weeping … after exiting the western border of the state off to which my Boys’ sperm donor had literally, even though allegedly “legally” by the various judges’ pen strokes, … kidnapped them. The backend of Ol’ Black was rather completely disheveled by now after so many days and nights of hostelling use –– with blankets, sheets, pillows, papers, books, bags and other items of the Truemaier Boys’ play scattered all about behind the front seat bench. In addition to this back – of – the – wagon scene of the heartbreaking memories which I’d just made, into my rearview mirror flickered flashing cop – car, trooper lights. “O – O – O shit!!! This is just what I fucking need right now! What the hell could be wrong?! What was I doing?!” my thinking jostled –– as I, of course, found the first, safe shoulder off onto which to pull, gather my license and roll down the driver’s side window. I couldn’t even see above his khaki – uniformed chest wall … he was so tall. “Ma’am, I need to see your license, please,” he boomed. I mean that I literally, out my car window at the levels which both of our visual fields scanned and without either of us straining this way and thataway, … I could not see his face! What I had remembered seeing with that last look of mine into the center mirror before noticing those flashers of his aimed at me … was my face: brown – black mascara had made inroads, forays and encroachments all over and down my cheeks and chin. I looked like shit! The sclerae of both of my eyeballs were as red – streaked as my facial skin sooty – streaked and inked. And I felt like hell, too. “Okay, okay, here ya’ go, Sir. I have it right here, Officer,” I sobbed. And tried, simultaneously, to smear the streaming nasal mucus away with a very, very used and spent Kleenex as delicately and daintily as I could manage. Tallest – Ever Ohio Trooper Man took it from my left hand and, with the obvious sounds floating up to his eardrums from Ol’ Black’s driver’s seat as the license was passed to him, his waist did bend to his right side and he did then sort of come down out of the clouds to see who, indeed, had been cry – driving. Or, more accurately according to him, weep – speeding. “Ummm, from Iowa you are?” Tallest Trooper Man half – ass asked, full – well knowing this fact … from his having just read both the vehicle plates’ and my license’s information. “O yes … yes, Sir. Yes, I am,” Boo – hoo, sniffle, sniff, sniffle, boo – hoo – hoo. “Ma’am … Ma’am, did you know you were speeding? Have you clocked, Ma’am, I do, at, ah, ah … … at 75 miles per hour, Ma’am.” Wail, whimper, sob, sob, “O no! No, I wasn’t! That can’t be!” jettisoned those very words right out of my mouth and now shot straight on over onto a bent – over cop peering at me sort of sideways through the rolled – down window space, a face with no expression whatsoever on it but one with a voice emitting out from under that boulder – size of a trooper hat that definitely matched any timbre and tone of that which belonged to the lovely, although now – late, Barry White! O, Tallest had a voice on him! “Ex – cuuuu - ze me, Ma’am?! Are you saying that I, um, I, I …?” “O my, my … my, my, myyyy NO! No, Sir. Not at all. I am not saying that you’re not telling me the Truth, Officer. O my, No! That idn’t what I’m saying at all? I mean …, ah, what I mean, Officer, is that, um, Ol’ Black here, he can’t go that fast! He can’t even get up anywhere near like that fast, Sir! That’s what I’m saying! He’s just too much an ol’ beater, and he can’t get it up that far a’tall. I jus’ don’’ think he can go that fast, Sir!” “Aaaah – aaah, I see.” And Tallest, whose back must’ve been mightily stressing him by then, straightened himself all the way up once more so that I, again, could not view anything more than his torso’s khaki shirt buttons, the solid, chocolate brown tie and the two most massive of human hands of the very same hue. “What is all that in the back of your station wagon there? And what’s the matter anyhow? Why’re you crying so much? You were crying before I stopped you, weren’t you? What’s the matter? What’s the real matter, Ma’am?” Words that wafted down from his humanistic heights that I couldn’t anymore see all the way up to … yet were now said with a resonance and pitch that seemed ever more gentle and tender than some of the phrases he had stated before. In full view to the outside of the car and, therefore to Tallest too of course, had been one of the items from the wagon’s messy backend, a neon orange – colored, three – ring binder with the black letters on its cover identifying it as a manual for Safe Iowa Hunter Education with the silhouetted logo of a young man cradling a long gun with a similarly shadowed, four – legged retriever walking along beside him. And, again, Tallest – Ever asked, “What’s with all that stuff in the back there?” “O, aaahh, O, I, uh, I just left … um, I just left my Boys.” “What?” “I just left my Boys. Back there in West Virginia.” “What? What do you mean … ‘ya’ left ‘em’?” Tallest – Ever Ohio Trooper Man was bending over again and gazing at the left side of my down – facing profile. I was staring into my lap … remembering, of course. “O,” I turned toward him once more, “I was … I was visiting my three Sons in West Virginia.” I didn’t see any true threat now nor need to lie anymore about the purpose of my trip or on my being found here on Tallest – Ever’s particular piece of pristine and sunny roadway and, thank goddess, I wasn’t wearing the Sam stuff because Tallest – Ever Ohio Trooper Man would have, I am sure, seen right through that disguise … first thing! What … with my tears and bleary, bloodshot eyes and all. Plus all of it, the Sam costume, was stashed away in bags which the cop could not see from his stance at Ol’ Black’s door anyhow. “And, an’, aaahh, now I have to go back home to Iowa without them. And, ah, an’ I, uh, I don’t know when I’ll ever see them again. Or how long it’ll be. Ya’ know? That’s … uh well, that’s what it’s about, Sir.” “O. Yeah.” “Yeah.” “Um. Well, Ma’am. Ah. Um. Why, you … you got a heckuva haul ahead of ya’. You thinkin’ of getting there yet today, are ya’? Ya’ know, all the way back to … to where is it now?” And he glanced back to the driver’s license, “to, ah, … ah, Ames, Iowa, there? Yet today still?” “O, O yeah. I gotta. I don’t have the money for … ah, well, yeah. Yeah, I am. I’m gonna get back to Ames yet today. That’s the plan, all right! Ya’ know?” “Okay then. Well. Well, you better get a – goin’ there then. Not a rush, I mean. Don’t be speedin’ now. Not that ya’ could, I mean, with your old beater wagon here ‘n all. But you jus’ best be gettin’ on your way there then.” “Soooo ... So?” I looked around to him again just as he was straightening himself all the up again –– for the last time. In an asking mode, questioning without so many such, exact words about what was to be done with me –– now that an Ohio state trooper of the tallest, mountain – like manner had just stopped and pulled me over for an alleged speeding violation on the interstate. “So, so … ah, so that’s it then, Ma’am. So, so … you just be safe out there then.” And he turned back around and strode to his unit. I watched him from the rearview mirror crawl, nearly literally back into it, take its gear out of park and into drive, pull out around me and Ol’ Black and without facing me again then, his eyes glued on the straightaway in front of him, his right arm and hand waved to me as the trooper’s vehicle tripped off westerly out in front of me –– me … still pitched there on the side of the highway. No ticket. Not even a warning. I could not believe it. Tallest – Ever Ohio Trooper Man, that is, this dude’s involvement in my life and in my life’s story, … as far as I know … , had forever vanished from it now. Yet, within just a very few more miles on up this stretch once Ol’ Black and I maneuvered our way back onto the westbound thoroughfare, there appeared off to the right side a rather large and, therefore easily readable, white, rectangular road sign. It was placed there by the State of Ohio’s Transportation Department and in big black letters delineated on it with succinct wording and numbering the gradations of amounts that a speeding motorist could be fined. Totals that that state levied in tickets which could be issued for specific, set increments of miles per hour over the posted limit. In just the time that it took for me to notice the sign and drive 65 miles per hour on passed it, I could see that Tallest – Ever Ohio Trooper Man had just saved me, those few miles back there on the interstate, at least $85.00. The sign stated that Ohio’s very first ticket amount, for just ten or fewer miles per hour over the speed limit, started at a fine of $85.00 –– and increased upwards from there into the hundreds of dollars for possible violations incurred, depending upon at what rate a speeder was clocked. And that, likely, did not even account for the extra court costs and all of those other specious fees tacked onto a person’s assessment at time of payment besides! I knew Iowa’s fines weren’t that high, and I had not really recognized if penalties in any other of the states through which I had traversed during those past ten days were so huge either! * * * * Hauling Ol’ Black back into Ames finally and returning without any further breakdown or other untoward incident whatsoever, I was, indeed, back to work Monday, the 19th of April bearing not only my gifts but, of course, also such great, great news to all of my co – workers. Yet not before remembering and marking well Zane’s last West Virginia words to me, “Ma, uh, Ma, if you try this again, can you please let me know you’re gonna?” “Ya’ mean, somehow get in touch with you that I’m coming to see all of you again? Disguised or otherwise?” I asked. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Zane had appealed to me. I knew that in one way, notably the secrecy and the clandestine nature of the past surreptitious week, my coming had been difficult for all of the Boys –– but especially for him. Zane the Eldest. He had always shouldered –– all on his own and never because of any request of mine –– that silent yet so heavily burdensome task of the role of My Siblings’ Protector. By him, … the Eldest. That most solemn of jobs of where the older brother is supposed to look out for his little ones. Zane has always taken that all on not only willingly but very, very seriously. And he was letting me know that for that specific, self – assigned labor of his, he just needed some heads – up’ time in order to prep himself and his two younger brothers –– in the case that, well, that “Sam” may one day again appear to him alongside a darkened Grubtrop street in the very midst, actually, of some future nighttime. I assured Zane that I so would get that done –– because their mother soooo would be coming back out to see him and Jesse and Mirzah! 1993 was, of course, before email and even really before faxing had become widely available to individuals. While the Truemaier Boys didn’t have, even between the three of them yet, one personal computer I so hoped that because of their own proclivities and because of Dr. Edinsmaier’s money, my particular three Children out of all of the World’s kiddos soon would. At the moment I vowed to Zane that I would get him warned of my intentions to come see them all again, I did not know how I would accomplish that –– but I? I had friends so, well, … so that would just get done. I knew that it would –– and, therefore, I meant every word of it when I made Zane my promise. And then? Then … the Truemaier Boys’ mother was gone. I liked the smiles on Dr. Joplin’s and Rosalind Franklin’s faces not only when I walked through the Forestry Department’s door but also when they saw what souvenirs I’d selected for each of them. That pewter wind chimes of John Deere tractors –– well, who knew it’d be such a smash hit!? And then it was right back into the mix. Those International Agroforestry Conference dates were fast approaching, only four months to go now. With 350 to 450 expected to register. From all over the World so many, many different persons where the English language would not be their first tongue at all. This was truly fun. I was experiencing not only something at which I, with details, details, details and excellent writing and editing knowledge was very, very skilled, but I was having a whole passel of fun putting this deal together. And, no, I most surely did not do all of its prep alone; but by almost every single male (as well as each female) professor and colleague in the Department, I was given the respect and the honor certainly due me –– and professionally due any lower – level clerical type at all times actually –– but which was a completely unusual, even nearly foreign thing for me. What … with all of the name – calling, the evil appellations, his degrading sexist jokes, the mere questioning of my validity as a human person, let alone, as a mother, a good – enough one at that –– not to mention my very sanity and the overall selfish narcissism and silent, shunning and shaming passive aggression with which Antisocial Herry treated me! With which, also, all of daJudges and ‘the Court’, the American family law court system –– without policing check and balancing self – accountability whatsoever –– had behaved! As can be imagined, I had a radar. One of sorts mightily finely honed by this time. In only one colleague, did I sense discomfort, no, disgust it was actually –– of the likes of which I had known with Herry. To the same painful and abusive degree of sexual innuendo and actual assault, either emotionally or physically. A tenured professor, without his initially asking and clearly out of the blue without any warning or impending insinuation to me at all, proceeded one workday to put hands onto me and initiate a massage of my neck. Immediately, he tried to extend one paw further downward into an upper back and shoulder rubdown –– all the while stroking my long, blonde tresses with his other hand. About this particular action of his? I was, at that instant, consciously aware that to my knowledge, this man had not done nor offered this “service” of his to anyone else in our realm. Not even, at least on professional work time in the office in my purview, to his supposed significant other, a second wife who was also an academic researcher, the spousal – hire, inside the Forestry Department as well. I winced and pulled away –– having been seated in my office chair before the computer monitor. He did not apologize, just Dr. Edinsmaier – smirked and sauntered off from my workspace. He never tried these indecent liberties, this frottage with me again. But the Ick Factor was definitely set loose! Let loose onto my screen now; that was a certainty! My invisible, safety – screening radar picked this particular man up every single time that, from that day forward, he entered the Front Office –– until I eventually left the Department for a promotion into another one. I knew nothing else personally about this individual, but all of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s triggers, Herry’s frotteurism and indecent liberties as with Grace Portia for example, Herry’s use of pornography and its consumption with and around Zane, Jesse and Mirzah, Herry’s thinking and statements about wanting to drop his pants and fuck there on the spot vaginal – exam models in obstetrics laboratory, all of the forms of Herry’s exhibitionism from holes in his jeans to answering the door in only his underpants to leaving wide open the draperies when getting undressed at night on Othello Drive by the Brookside Forest –– all of Herry’s sex – addict actions would come flooding forth every time Professor Ick came around the corner of my workspace. It never stopped. Every single time Professor Ick triggered the memories of Herry’s sexual addiction around me and around my Truemaier Boys. It rained one day. And then it rained the next day. And the next. And the next. After the 09th day of July 1993, with the Agroforestry Conference merely a bit more than a fortnight away, it became exasperatingly clear –– and immediately so –– that its venue would suddenly have to change. Because its original one was … all of it … under water. The muddy flooding from Brookside Forest’s now – raging Squaw Creek reached into the second level of the Continuing Education and Conference Hall as well as into a host of other University buildings including its enormous sports arena and entertainment coliseum indiscriminately knocking out records and computers and all other equipment as well as the buildings’ structures this way and that –– and, of course, totally blocking off complete and main thoroughfares leading into the entire town, let alone, into the University. It was a fucking mess. Everywhere. Everywhere in Iowa, too, as a matter of fact! Before it was all said and done and subsided and the waters back inside their respective river banks all throughout the state, why, even our capitol city of Des Moines, population over 300,000, would, for over three full weeks, be without safe drinking water because its municipal waterworks’ operations became utterly contaminated by overrunning flood waters as well. And in Iowa’s 90 – to 105 – degree heat with its humidity set in the same numbers’ range! Karma sucked. Kismet was hell. Of the colossal kind. Life hurt. I still had my other job, too –– the one as delicatessen breakfast grill queen, of course. Only not as grilling or as cooking or as baking anything … now. At weekend brunch fests or at any other times whatsoever. The supermarket was not only flooded, situated as the entire grocery store was in the worst location of floodplains possible, the waters rose inside the store, despite sandbagging around its entire outer periphery, to the sixth echelon of foodstuffs’ shelving –– around eight feet high in places, that is. For the next six days then, the folks at the food chain’s parent headquarters not only trucked in busloads of workers from its other locales in other towns but also hauled all of us over to the makeshift free clinic especially set up to administer us flood workers tetanus boosters. I want to never work at mud – scraping and mud – scrubbing so hard again. Hands and arms and legs, and lungs too I am thinking, rubbed raw. And then –– well, then … Voila! –– we were back up and running and in the business of selling all manner of grilled stuffs again! Frieda Chicken Guthrie’s presence from leaning across onto the top handle of her black and twisty cane to her cheerleading – like promotion along with her storytelling whilst setting on a bench off on the sidelines –– hell, she was pushing nearly 80 years of age … yet so wanted to contribute in some way, so during all of the store’s cleaning, this was hers all right –– was most encouraging to me! It was during this six – day, free – for – all scouring melee spree that Frieda reiterated to me an offer which I would not refuse, “Now, Legion, if there’s ever a time when you think you jus’ can’t make those monthly premiums on that Ex’s life, why, Dearie, you jus’ let me know that –– an’, and I’ll make ‘em that month for ya’! You can pay me back later –– when ya’ can manage it then, ya’ hear me, Woman?” Frieda was, yes indeed, referring to the term life insurance policy amounting to $100,000 of coverage which in 1988, Herry had taken out upon himself as the insured and had done so through no participation and certainly at no request nor behest from me … just months before daMan had walked. That is, Herry had gone and had a physical examination performed and had filled out and signed all of the proper forms –– including the special one because he fancies himself a small – plane pilot with the very real possibility then of one or two or however many of his actually owned little planes suddenly falling out of The Blue at some future date –– and apparently made the first premium payments back then for a few months. All of that, of course, because he was accountably attempting to look out for the spouse’s and for the Truemaier Boys’ futures? Hardly! That’s a jest, a mother – fucking joke! After just moving to Ames from Kansas, the Good and Wonderful Doctor Edinsmaier by wielding his ‘wealth’ was trying to impress a dimwitted nincompoop, some fawning ignoramus … one working in insurance sales whom Herry had just met in alcoholics anonymous! Herry, of course, does this a lot –– that is, he is really, really into the fucked craziness of trying to dazzle, to amaze, to wow, to awe, to fascinate and to influence people whom he hardly knows, especially females. Especially DEhumans –– whom he considers, overall anyhow, less in stature … than he is. And particularly if they are in occupation and paid endeavor then … such as, in his thinking, insurance agents would be … compared to, say, physicians such as himself … if they are also what he wants to believe are less in their working – order castes than his. A very Mehitable – like practice. I say ‘practice’ and not ideology –– because Herry knows he is not ‘any better’ than others, including DEhuman – Others or their efforts, studies and endeavors; Herod Edinsmaier just wants to be able to act like he is. At any rate, however the existence of this insurance policy came about, it … for certain … was mine! That is to say, I was not only the primary beneficiary named on it with the Truemaier Boys, equally in thirds, being designated as its secondary beneficiaries, Dr. Legion True was also … the policy’s owner. That is, in every way, I controlled it –– and its continued existence! Or, not. It wasn’t like it was for a million bazillion bucks or something; the policy was for only a hundred grand is all! Enough to –– if ever I managed to retrieve my immediate footing again and eventually acquired for myself some paid – off debt load and present – day financial stability and if ol’ Herry were to swiftly and unexpectedly buy the small – plane farm, why then, Jury, barely enough … $100,000 is … to bury me and to settle my estate –– thereby leaving my Mirzah, Jesse and Zane with no unforeseen burden and probably without any other problematic money matters brought about on my account! To which end … I had faithfully, then, been making every last one of its monthly premium payments … since the divorce! Yeah, about that … about the divorce. That is, Attorney Jazzy Jinx had furtively and o – so quietly explained to me –– right off –– one huge part of his dissolution of marriage law practice: Jinx stated to me that he absolutely never let such policies as mine … continue to exist. “Uh – uh, Legion. Were the one that you now own on Dr. Edinsmaier to have been, instead, the other way around? Like taken out on your life as the insured –– and not on Herod’s? Why, I would require –– as it would be our right to do so, Legion, at the time of the Discovery procedure where Herod would be, by law, required to let us know he owned such a policy on you –– why, I would require to have it, the entire policy, retired and canceled at time of divorce! O yeah! I would never, never, ever let such a deal continue on. Nope! No! It would have to be voided out!” “No?!” I had asked. “Absolutely never!” Mr. Jinx was forcibly adamant. “O, if my client were stupid enough to say she didn’t care, why the policy, even after the divorce, is still good. Yeah, with almost all of the insurance companies that I know of … it is. And we’ll certainly check with that company anyhow –– on this policy of yours; it doesn’t have to know who’s asking. But, yeah, whoever is the owner of the policy before the divorce –– is still the owner after the divorce. That doesn’t change –– unless … unless at the time of the dissolution, one or the other of the attorneys declares that the policy be made void. Then it has to stop. It does have to be canceled and stopped. And I always look inside the answers given back to me on the preparatory procedures called Discovery and Production of Documents, I always look especially for exactly these sorts of policy deals. And I’d never, never let my client make such a stupid, idiotic move –– as to let it go on, the policy … that is. It would not stand. It would never continue. I would demand to have the policy, where it has been taken out upon my client as the one who is ‘the insured’, I would demand to have it canceled and retired. Ya’ jus’ never know what can happen after a divorce, do ya’? “Well, after? Like what? What do you mean?” I truly hadn’t a clue … right then … what Mr. Jinx meant. “Legion! Leee – gion! Come’n! What do you think can happen?!” Mr. Jazzy Jinx grinned. More or less. “Besides, didn’t you tell me he’s the guy who never locked the front door, let alone, the back door –– before the family went to sleep at night? Well, he’s probably still not lockin’ ‘em, ya’ know, … now that you’re out of the picture, don’tcha think? Ya’ know, like someone could come in and, well, come right on in an’, and … take him out. Ya’ know, whack him. Ya’ just never do know.” “Whoooa! I never thought of that, Mr. Jinx. With the life insurance, I mean. I always did worry, though, about trouble like that with the Boys and me being the ones getting hurt. Because Herry wouldn’t lock the doors an’ at least try to keep us safe.” “But. That isn’t the case here, now is it?! You are not the one insured … Herry Edinsmaier is. And he is not the owner … you are! Therefore, it’s up to Mr. Shindy Scheisser to recommend to your soon – to – be ex that he –– they –– that they demand to retire and cancel the policy! And Herry, if Mr. Scheisser does recommend that, most certainly will demand that then, too, won’t he? But. If they don’t, aaah, … it’s right out there in the Discovery for both of them to see. But if they miss it? Why, it’s yours! Still. You own it and you control it and –– well, for that matter, for as long as you desire, you’re home free with it, Legion. No matter what Herry thinks later! Or, wants done with it. He can’t do a frickin’ thing about it to stop you from having it. So. Well. We’ll just keep quiet. It can work.” “O, they’ll find it. Herry’s a smart guy, and he’s paying that downtown Des Moines attorney of his twice what you charge me, Mr. Jinx. Mr. Scheisser, he’ll … O, he’ll find it for sure. For all that he’s being paid? Why, Herry’d be totally pissed if Scheisser didn’t find it, don’tcha think?” “Well, I know my clients would be! Really, really pissed! That’s what you pay me to find –– after all!” Mr. Jinx was smirking now, a Herry Edinsmaier – smirk! “And if they do find it, why, it’ll just be cancelled and retired as is requested. We’ll make no never mind about it –– as if we just expected that to happen –– and Dr. Edinsmaier’ll be none the wiser about the fact that you and I were ever even wanting him … to miss it!” It had been some small measure of pleasure and fun. In all of that sorrow and sadness before the divorce, every once in awhile just thinking about and pondering on that little bit of possibility. The one that wouldn’t happen for me –– ‘cause Herry’d, for sure, find out about it, wouldn’t he? But, ya’ know, Jury?! He hadn’t! And in all of the fucking mess during and after the immediate dissolution, all of the travel and all of the paperwork and all of the settling of the sale of the ignoble Othello Drive estate and of the bills with Attorney Jazzy Jinx and all of the sleeplessness and all of the tears and the hugs of just Act One Part One alone, there between my lawyer and me –– and my old girlfriend and “Other Mother” Frieda, too –– had been this little snide smirk all our very own: Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had outright fucking missed the life insurance policy –– and I … also outright … owned it! And I, only I, … only Legion True controlled every little friggin’ bit of it! True it was: Herry didn’t know I still had it or owned it: it was my sweet secret from him –– but the delight, the delectation, the little luxury of it all in Herry’s paying out so, so much to someone else, to Shyster Shindy Scheisser, as passive – aggressively forgetful and as narcissistically incompetent as himself –– why, that was still there for us, for Frieda and me. Throughout all of those hours and hours during which I toiled at my various jobs to pay a doctor child support … for babes whom I couldn’t even talk to and the icy cold ones after I crawled home late at night to finally slumber bundled under heaps of comforters in my little Havencourt apartment without so much as its furnace’s pilot light burning. And it was to that confidence of only ours, almost a cryptogram, a cipher that insurance policy was, one that belonged only to us two and was entirely away and utterly out of the range of Heinous Herod’s evil powers, that Frieda was speaking when she had made me her pure and dear offer to spring for the monthly premiums –– if I could not manage them. Frieda never had to, though. I managed. And I made them all. Myself. True it was, too, that I did not own such things as any visits to the dentist yet or even enough gasoline at times for an entire month, but I made all of those premium installments right along with the child support amounts and the monthly $15 toward “retiring” the huge, Herod – induced hospitalization bill … every frickin’ last one of them myself. That, too, to get that done, to succeed at bringing about these payments on my future –– and on my Boys’ –– all on my own, that had been a private goal which I’d set for myself. My own private quest that had to it a helluva lot more substantive depth and meaning than the rich kid – Idaho film’s had had, that was for sure! Especially since this mission of mine included for me the knowledge that Herod hadn’t beaten me down –– completely. Not entirely had he. Not even from the days of the very First Act had he! Let alone, after those times of the SpaChezResort Sixth Floor Hotel and the Ames Tribune article either! It was clear that I –– I –– had not been the one in this particular dissolution of marriage action who had been … Ames’s village idiot here! * * * * Hustled! A mighty hustle it was! All of us Forestry personnel really had to move. To scurry around –– because of that Great Iowa Flood of ‘93, in order to get other University buildings and new workshop and seminar rooms reserved and scheduled and along with all of that, different traffic routes, bussing and shuttling planned as well as food and meal – serving events, all redone away from the swamped – and – inundated – up – to – its – second – floor! Scheman Continuing Education Building and rushed into the now – changed program for the entire International Conference. And, of course, we did it! A thundering success this specific Conference was –– along with the lightning bolts and the torrential rains which only continued! One of my most prized possessions exists from the presentation to me months later by a Conference principal, one of the Forestry Department’s kindest and most eminent professors, of my very own bound and glossy copy of the Proceedings from the Third International Agroforestry Conference –– personally inscribed to me and autographed by all of my immediate Forestry bosses. I felt loved –– and, even more importantly to me, I felt … worthy. Once again. For as much as I so needed the little extra paid to me from the evening and weekend work at the delicatessen and for as much as I, while there, so appreciated knowing and being around Gert, nearly an octogenarian herself as was Frieda Chicken Guthrie who continued, after Al’s going off “home to the angels,” … naaaaw, off to the verms, to come around the deli, too, at dinnertime, I did not treasure at all the treatment there that the other male workers gave to all of us female employees –– of any age. With the exception of only the delicatessen manager, Mr. Jim Shiloh, who was indeed very kind and as egalitarian in his assignments and approach to subordinate workers as I’ve ever seen or myself experienced from any blue – collar, mid – level type, the entire store’s executive manager, about 45 years old, and all of the other men assigned to work in the deli, all of whom were under 30 years of age and many, but not all, of whom were college students, … harassed and discriminated. And only acted their crimes out onto the others of us there in the delicatessen who were female, never to or upon each other. The rumor mill had it that that executive manager himself was, by the company’s HQ folks, transferred in to the Ames store position just a couple years before I had begun work there –– because of his being legally banished from the residential and employment vicinities of two, unrelated women back in his former city of work in western Iowa. And since that court decree of geographical expulsion included almost all of that previous municipality, then in order for this frigging predator to continue in ‘workplace management’ with the supermarket company chain at all, he had had to be moved all the way out of and completely away from that town! Same exact androcentrically ‘accepted’ maneuver –– in ‘business’ –– as to how … predator priestly fucks are from one parish to another, different one … ‘re – arranged.’ Sure, it was only scuttlebutt and lovely, soft, servile and deferent persons are not supposed to judge nor to base lasting viewpoints on speculative guessing, are we DEhumans?! But I, and other women, too, have a radar –– and the Ick Factor with this marauder in motion anywhere around a particular milieu where I was also moving was …, well, massive! And Mr. Executive Manager came cuntily bull – snorting and vulva – sniffing around … me … a lot! Mustachioed Manager Man ordered the same thing, the same fuckly breakfast meal, never paying for it. And, therefore, I fastidiously grilled up for him two eggs over – easy, two strips of bacon extra crispy and prepared two pieces of buttered white bread, untoasted and spread by my hand, never by his, with only strawberry – flavored jelly plus a bowl of Quaker – brand instant oatmeal, two sugar substitutes and not pure sugars, and with only one ounce of the deli’s Half and Half, every single Saturday and every single Sunday morning that he worked –– which was every single morning that I did ... because, of course, I worked every one of the weekends … when he’d had some of them off! O, and a medium coffee, black –– with one refill, too. Which always gave him the opportunity to ever so slightly rub the backs of my right fingers as his gripping hand grazed mine when he gave me back the white, paper cup to replenish ... I loathed the very sight of Mr. Executive Pervert’s coming, always early and almost like clockwork around 6:20 or so on those two mornings, coming around the fresh – produce displays and on over to the delicatessen’s grilling counter. The Worst –– the absolute worst encounters were the not too infrequent mornings when Depraved Fuckface – Dick chose to test the limits of his frotteuristic indecencies and actually entered the deli area through its aluminum half – door swinging it inwardly instead of out the other way so that his torso and trunk covered in the store’s regulation long – sleeved white shirt and black trousers were more or less forced to barely brush my back and buttocks as he squeezed his garbed genitals between me, my administering to my duties over the blazing – hot grill, and the gargantuan butcher’s block tabletop upon which we deli workers prepared the day’s worth of foodstuffs and which was situated just opposite and only inches from my stance at the front of the grill. Like I said –– Ick Factor big time! But. He was the boss, all of the divisions’ bosses’ boss actually. An’ … and I? I needed the money –– so what was I going to do? Say something?! Say something even to Gert –– Gert … whose very pension depended upon this store and her gazillions of years of groveling there in it for her retirement? Rrriiiiight. So NOT! One hot and steamy August Iowa day, and ya’ might know, it was not only its 13th but also a Friday the 13th, along around about 7:10 on that extra morning for which I had even taken off from my Forestry Department as vacation leave from there a couple of days right after the conclusion of the International Agroforestry Conference in order to help out Mr. Shiloh who needed to absent himself from the delicatessen because of sudden, personal family business that arose, I undid the tied bow of my royal blue, full – length apron. And hoisted it with its skinny neckband and all gathered up over my head and slammed it smack down onto the greasy floor just the grill’s side of that specific half – door. I had had it. Had it, I tell ya’. Four of us flunkies were on duty that Friday morning, two women and two men, and the female one other than myself wasn’t Gert but, instead, an early 20s – something woman just moved up to Ames from Atlanta, Georgia, a nice person whom I’d taken a liking to right off. She very soon had introduced me to the superbly exquisite and enchanting aroma known as Love’s Baby Soft cologne. This job at the deli was her sole means of support, so far, except that she had had the lovely good fortune, at least, to be able to live here in Ames with her grandmother. Ms. Georgia was trying to save up to enroll in the practical nurse’s program at the local community college but hadn’t enough yet for even one term’s worth of its tuition. At 6:30, 6:45, 7 o’clock then, folks were stopping in and coming by for their mighty fine and cheap morning meals before heading out into the community for their usual, heavy workdays, of course. I had had this experience many, many times. Men on all manner of central Iowa’s construction crews especially seemed to truly enjoy what I could routinely cook up for them at that hour. And at that price! Of merely a buck or two –– plus all of the great – tasting java one could chug. With no pressure to tip; there was no added cost to the customer for gratuities whatsoever! So except for that no – tipping part, a regular Louise Sawyer I was –– ya’ know –– Louise of Thelma and Louise! I can even say that I actually liked, except for the ungodly time of the early mornings at when I had to get up and get going, I actually and actively liked what I did, that is ... cooking! Of all things! Mehitable’d’ve been soooo proud of me, I am thinking –– if she’d ever known –– which, of course, she never did. But, then again: No! Probably not at all proud of me would my elitist mother have been –– since this work was for menials, a job only for minions, for fuckers far, far down on labor’s pecking order … come to think of it! Actually it was AmTaham who would have been pleased for me –– had he been alive. Never had AmTaham been one to turn up his nose at another’s honest day’s worth of work nor, for that matter, turn down anyone’s effort at good cooking either! I liked my charge though –– because, for one thing, I was damn good, –– hell, I was great at it, and, two, the folks who purchased ‘my product’ seemed genuinely appreciative of what I could do. Every day that I did it! And it was, like my working inside the Forestry Department, a damn worthy product that I, Dr. Legion True, created there, too! So. This specific morning then I had had six sets of eggs and omelets already spread out on the grill with fresh, raw hash browns crisping up and some sausage patties, some links and some bacon strips on the griddle besides a pair of hotcakes. Those other foods, the potatoes and the meats –– they did not require as much care nor as much watchful vigilance as the hens’ eggs and flapjacks, of course, did. The eggs though were especial; one needed to be right on top of their cooking time always, and a decent – enough cook had better not leave unattended the three – dimensional, white and yellow ovals for too damn long a time or she would just have to friggin’ pitch ‘em entirely and start the fuck all over again. In order for the cook to be correct –– as regards to that which had been her customer’s original order on how he wanted his eggs done. Ms. Georgia stood in the back of the delicatessen –– completely away from the cash register and countertop and fully out of its and my view humped over the hot and deep, stainless steel, dual sinks scrubbing therein … the entire lot of pots and pans with their baked – on and now – dried slop messes which had been left piled high there and wholly undone by the young shift workers of the evening before! This particular event, too, occurred all of the time it seemed: that is, the employees from the night before, ISU students for the most part, just left the worst of the worst for those of us who came in to work early the next morning … to do! And, as I have mentioned before, except for Deli Manager Shiloh himself, only we female laborers ever, ever went back there to the double, vat – sized tubs to take on the sometimes hours and hours of scalding spray which the sweaty burden of scouring out these individual vessels and kettles oftentimes required. Baked beans’ and pot – roast containers were killers on the fingernail lacquer. No way with her location and the clamor of the clanging cauldrons and the whooshing water from its splashing sprayer could Ms. Georgia have heard, and therefore known, what along around 7 a.m. was about to happen. A line of customers, all male and mostly young, I’d surmise all of them under 30ish or so, began to materialize at the cash register. I had started already those six breakfasts at least and just clipped into the wire’s line up in front of me a passel more order slips when it became crystal clear to me … and to the other two workers who, in full view of and speaking – voice volume from the ordering countertop, were shaving that next noontime’s supply of sliced ham and turkey and coating the raw pork tenderloins … … that Dr. True, the lone – ranging grill cook, would not be able to verbally attend to the rest of the newest customers, to write down these latest requests and … yet, at the very same time, to keep a truly close lookout on the progress of the eggs’ yolks presently frying on the hot grill. Spatula in right grip and flipping flapjacks and over – easies this way and that but not yet onto flimsy Styrofoam plates, I glanced over my left shoulder at both of the employees and, without a word spoken, swung my head back over to my right side in the very direction of the languishing customers. Both men’s heads were already oriented in my view; they stared straight at me. For at least 10 or 12 seconds I could ‘feel’ them watching me although I set my field of vision again back down just in front of me and at the yolks’ work right there at the grill. But there could be utterly no mistaking my nonverbal gesturing in seeking their help to follow up with the taking down of new orders. The two guys then turned their heads. Both pairs of their eyeballs looked straight at the row of fellows, some of the patrons now beginning to shift their weights from one foot to the other as folks will do when they tire of standing in the same place without respite, without satisfaction or, in this specific store’s delicatessen venue, … without due attention paid to them! But for the particular two of these slackers to leave their individual tasks not at all necessary at 7 in the a.m. to go attend, instead, to the smooth functioning of the deli’s early – morning breakfasting operation, for these two men to step aside to the nearby faucet, to wash up their hands and to go take up a pen at the countertop to receive and write down food orders –– for me? For me, who was not only a pissant, old bitch but had apparently had the impertinence, the absolute arrogance, the uppity brazenness to actually appear to make commands upon them? Let alone, to make said directives to them right in front of all of those other males waiting up at the cash register? Uh – uh. Noooo way were the two sexist machismos going to budge. No way were these two little shits going to show me any respect whatsoever, not to mention, help me out. So they didn’t. They did not. And the eggs burned. All 12 of them. One dozen yolks! Well, not burnt – burned. But definitely the ‘now’– finished style for every single, last one of them had become … over – extra hard ... when absolutely none of those first six customers had ordered his eggs prepared in any way approximating stiffened sheet rock. Indeed, this grizzled grill cook then had had to throw out the lot of them all. And … to altogether begin over again. So I did. With the first several orders then commencing one more time anew on the hot top, … why, Ms. Georgia happened to come around to the front for a bit of a break to her back, her arms and her fingertips. “You know how to do a number 1 and a number 2 and, ah, ah, a 6 and a 10, don’tcha? I think I’ve seen you cook those four breakfasts before, haven’t I?” I looked at her face squarely. She scrutinized the setup on the griddle at that point. Ms. Georgia nodded and with ever the slightest lip – pursing asserted, “Ah – huh. Yeah, I can do those. You bet.” “O goooo – ood. That’s real, real good. Cuz, ah, cuz, I’m gonna, um, … I’m gonna need you to take over here in just a little bit,” and without one more moment’s hesitation, I had that tied bow behind me undone and was reaching to gather up the mostly – still – fresh whole of that supposedly “protective” blue cloth out in front of me with one hand while transferring with the other to Ms. Georgia the wide – plated, stainless steel spatula. The apron flounced onto the floor; and before those two slacker shits could spring over to the cash box area this time to register there with me any kind of complaint they may have been a – harborin’, that same metal half – door was brushing someone’s backside on my own way out of it! And … without another part – time position, thus no little extra coin on the side, to slip right into, I quit! As well, of course, no past – employer recommendation to be forthcoming on my behalf from this grocery store’s supervisory folks toward my application for another such job either! Friday the friggin’ 13th –– and I frickin’ walked out! Times such as those, one wants eyes in the rear or sides of one’s head –– as it’s most exhilarating, I tell ya’, to watch jaws drop as her strolling – saunter out their portal more or less silently shouts back over her shoulders, “Fuck you, Mister!” In this case and on this specific early morning, I was flipping off about three of this establishment’s misters as I sashayed … … those two turkey – fucking grunts still whittling ham and their eerie, creepy store manager, Mr. Big Ick Factor himself, of whom I’d just caught a glimpse parading around the piles of potatoes apparently feeling a hankering coming on for a bowl of Legion’s hot oats or something and almost an hour later than had been Depraved Executive’s usual harassing time, was about to join that line of milling – around men waiting at her countertop … when, all of a sudden, the woman’s apron popped a wheelie and spun out! Landing right down onto that deli workplace’s floor! Dr. Legion True was soooo … outta there! * * * * zzzAugust in the Midwest, of course, is a damn good time for a person to keep refreshed in her brain the raw cold of bone – chilling Februarys in Iowa . At Havencourt’s kitchen table that next day, I immediately got a move on towards brainstorming on what other skills I had or trades I could do –– at what else, by next Winter Solstice at the least, I could be working in order to earn –– so as not to be completely and literally out in those frigid snow banks without so much as a wee stake back at the bank. Thus began for Legion True, BSN, DVM, PhD, “a linguistics position” the likes of which were to serve me to this exact hour very, very well –– that of medical transcriptionist. I took a typing test and correctly clocked in at well over the necessary 65 words per minute … my having been required to bang it all out on a standard – issue and soooo old Swintec electric. And of all things, I accurately spelled, well, placed right at 100 percent actually, every test expression on the grammar and term identification examination … including the one word I was to later learn happened to be the transcription division director’s pet trickster: gallbladder. Evidently folks seem to nearly always want to make that particular pouch two words’ worth when any standard – issue Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, including now its online version, claims it only ever as ... one! So since I could not only type, and type swiftly enough, but also appropriately place all of the commas, semicolons, hyphens, apostrophes and periods in between perfectly spelled words of lexiconally behemoth proportions, I got the lingo gig! My knowing Latin helped too, of course, and in no small measure. zzzThe pay was crap, but we were women! DEhumans. Word – processing fembots the lot of us. Not a man in our midst. A couple of bucks over minimum wage to start –– and then for all of the eleven years since, the advancement in raise at performance review time, which was only annually, if the transcriptionist consistently had measured above the national average in her monthly keystroke and line counts, … the raise of which successful review was … a whopping quarter. Not so the gargantuan leap in salary when contrasted with and next to the $25K! bonuses which the Clinic’s doctors each gave to one another at the holiday ends of their calendar years! I am serious here: $25,000 gift checks made out to themselves … these guys realized on or before christianity’s 25th of December! zzzIf I had known that my one Gregg course in typing taken for just seven weeks in the couple of summer months after my seventh grade year in junior high school, I am thinking I must have likely been 12 years old or possibly 13, would ever be my “higher education” – ticket to life – saving employment, why, hell, fuck that friggin’ veterinary microbiology PhD program! Transcribing dictation for health care providers also offered two extra rewards: more truly warm friends and fantastically fabulous flexibility, two features I still quite appreciate today! Upon finding themselves down and out in society and if they even hire on at such positions at all … instead of traipsing their crest – fallen carcasses out into the garage and either gunning the truck engine on a plugged – up exhaust till they asphyxiated or simply slipped the barrel and muzzle of a Ruger or a Rossi revolver down their oropharynx … these couple of prized job components are the ‘currency’ and wealth of which many, many men just do not want to even appear to value. Or, so it seems to me. zzzOne could if one wanted to … because there were always, always dictated tasks in the system to transcribe … type all night and 25 more hours’ worth on the weekend. I did not, ever, type all night although, for my first two years’ worth, I did transcribe from 5 until 11 p.m. Monday through Friday right after leaving at 4 in the afternoon my six daily, weekday hours with the Forestry Department –– and I did type those marathon weekends, one right after the other after the next and the next and the next. By February 1994, then, when the wintry winds howled and the flurries flew and my condo’s furnace remained mute without a lit pilot, I endured –– warmed by these multiply stroked keyboards but, really of course, by the even hotter ambient room temperature there –– since I was not ... at home on Havencourt. zzzI’m not sure when it came to me, the mantra, the saw … The Sun Comes Up –– And Goes Down. It is curious how, in looking back, those dark, dark nights now appear to have just leapt this cubicled, lone typist by, one right into another. No view to the outside world. Absolutely not one window through which any particular evening’s weather, say, could be discerned. Until months and months and months had zoomed passed me. Each singular day, however, did not at all move through itself rapidly enough for me –– although I did not need to rock myself in tightly wrapped blanketing nearly as much as many a night before –– and my eyeballs actually stayed not only on the page of words but inside the correct paragraph. Having up and fucking quit the psychotropics, lithium in particular, those which had been forced into my jowls from the bowels of The Sixth Floor Hotel and from the legendary Dr. Singh’s year of “required”, that being “court – ordered,” er, Edinsmaier – ordered! outpatient care, I could frequently get an entire newspaper article read without thinking that I was losing my optic nerve –– or any other nerve such as ... my very last one! zzzBut my own aging I couldn’t hasten fast enough –– since that meant another 24 more hours’ worth of moments had vanished, all in such painfully slow motion. Only in retrospect do I, now, see that since taking my leave of Tallest Ever Ohio Trooper Man, the Boys and I had already lost to each other yet another nine or ten months’ time! The entire length of expanse, that lost time was, that it had taken me once upon earlier times, individually, to successfully grow each one of these three babes. And another loss of every last one of their end - of - the - year school events, the track meets, and all of the 1993 summer soccer and baseball games and barbeques and pool activities and the back - to - school shopping spree frenzy and the entire set of that year’s fall and winter holidays. Fphfffphphfffttt! Just evaporated. The Sun Comes Up, The Sun Goes Down; The Sun Comes Up, The Sun Goes Down; The Sun Comes Up, The Sun Goes Down. And One Day The Sun Will Come Up - And Mirzah Will NO Longer Be ... 17! Whimsical? Never, never. Never did I chant these words in dream – like, light – hearted fanciful whimsy. Nor, without the gaaaawddamn drugs within my very own constitution anymore, inside a mother – fucking, stuporous, “power – failing” blackout either. I declared them, daily, to the three – dimensional image inside my bathroom mirror as if her very strength and continued “breathing” there depended upon them. Because it did. These words were, indeed, medicinal. “Alternative” therapy. Solitudinous “psychotropic” medicine. For as much as King Herod and the High Aggrandizier and the High Courtier and Dr. Edinsmaier’s Court Jester, the Shyster Scheisser, and the faceless, mostly nameless magistrates of the appellate court, even as much as Nottingham Thug McLive and her own footman, or more accurately, footgirl, Daughter Mary Jane, “lived” to control and life – kill Dr. Legion True, not a one of them could successfully control and kill off my clock! Its metronomic innards fucking ticked away to just the exact same rhythmic speed as did theirs! And there wasn’t a friggin’ thing that any one of the tyrannical bunch could do to me –– short of one or more of the terrorists themselves actually murdering me –– to stop the three Truemaier Boys and their mother from having the seven decades of Mirzah’s, Jesse’s and Zane’s future adulthoods given back over to us four –– after the two of their childhoods had been essentially, effectively … stolen from us. Act Three Part Five of The Opera inched forward –– with more copies upon copies upon stacks upon flatbed hand trucks and eventually up into the guts of the state’s Capitol Building in Des Moines . My Goodair County girlfriend from the countryside, Teri Lynn, left her job in that city to which she still commutes some 14 years now –– and 50+ miles one way … since her mate Dixon’s death by lightning strike on a bone – dry haying day, … left her downtown job to come help me once again with the sheer loads and the lifting of it all. * * * * There might have been an appellant’s legal argument to practice. After all, represented even in The Opera’s entire Act Three pro se as I indeed was, I was headed up, as its Part Five, before the panel of three state appellate court judges ... by myself. Alone. Time limit? An exact ten minutes flat –– and not five seconds more. I even, I mean, I even had a court date set! The 07th day of June 1994, a Tuesday morning, 10:00 a.m. So perhaps I may have wanted to practice my speech, one would have thought. I am thinking instead, however, that there’d be no better practice for what I am about to beg appellate court judges than to be honing my acting skills, especially those as a mama, … at The Source, again, of the very deal for which I went through all of this suffering: I went to visit, ‘temporarily’ as a man again, as a matter of fact as ‘Sam’ again, … the Boys! What better plan at “play practice,” at opera rehearsal, could there be then for that upcoming, late spring Court of Appeals hearing date than to head on over, disguised, to 1994’s version of what was becoming … my Annual April As West Virginia’s Witchy Graveyard Phantom? Yup! The mother, Dr. Legion True, hauled on out of Ames having accrued again another seven days’ worth of leave over that past 365’s worth finally gone by and having left Iowa during the very same period again, that is, just the week after Grubtrop Schools’ Spring Break had concluded and the country’s daylight savings time begun; and I found my Zane, Jesse and Mirzah! About this 1994 trek, though, I first did let Zane know of my coming, and again just as had been the case the April before, took trusty Ol’ Black the nearly 900 miles and 15 hours’ travel time … in one fell swoop –– one really, really full day’s swing easterly. Neither Zane, fuzzy on that point he states to me now, nor I can recall a decade later how it was that Sam managed to let him know I would be on the road again; but I’ll bet that this had to do with my telephoning one of his friends from school or baseball or something like that. In fact, Zane cannot even remember my actual visit there to Grubtrop this second time, April 1994 –– and he is the eldest and, most likely therefore, the child of mine with the longest memory for such of those moments. I haven’t asked Mirzah and Jesse; but it is probable that if Zane doesn’t remember my second coming … at his age at the time of over 17½, why then, neither do the younger two Truemaier brothers who were 14½ and 15½! For me, though, it was a carbon copy of the spring the year before, and I loved having gone. Being present in West Virginia I did not like –– that part of it, that feeling was still very much the same sentiment as mine of the April of 1993, but I was able to touch and to talk to Mirzah and to Jesse and to Zane once again! Priceless! That year even though the wintertime had passed and I was living, once more, with the promise of ensuing months of upcoming warmth on Havencourt again, because of Act Three Part Five of The Opera looming, I was not at all as extravagant this visit in the buying of gifts, and I so had not forgotten my erstwhile rendezvous with Tallest – Ever Ohio Trooper Man so with this entire trek I more than faithfully kept my eye on Ol’ Black’s needle. Before I knew it, I was traveling back to Ames. Crying. That had not changed either. But not before two truly funny funnies had occurred! And one soooo very not funny one … All three events that brought a grin to my lips … through the tears falling from my eyes! One night, it must have been around about 4:00 in the a.m. of my second Saturday there –– and actually the day before had been Tax Day 1994, deliciously deeeep into somnolence sawing away on dream logs I lay in the backend bed of Ol’ Black where he was parked in his very same graveled parking space at the end row of the bottom tier inside the really hilly Fairvale Hospital visitors’ lot. Because of the full lunar effect this night I had purposefully retired my head at what had usually been the foot of the cushions so that anteriorly I could throughout my slumber tilt into the night sky and receive onto my face through Ol’ Black’s clear and undraped hatch window then … the moonbeams. “Knock, knock, knock. Boom, boom, boom.” “Huuummm. Huh? Hhmmm,” and I slept on. “Knock, knock, knock. Boom, boom, boom. Knock, knock, knock, knock. Raaaap, rap ... rap, rap, rap. Hey! Hey, Lady?! Lady?! Wake up there, Lady!” “Huh? O? O, O, Okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Aaah, ah, wakin’ up here, Folks. Jus’ give me a minute. Aaah, ah, … ah … ” and Legion True struggled, O did I! not only to gain mere consciousness but to also achieve bearing onto my right elbow and get it under my right thorax, swing up my legs to near chest height and get myself sat up inside Ol’ Black’s backend –– all the while trying desperately to just open up my two eyelids. I know these machinations all had to have gone on on my right side because I always sleep “quiet as the dead” –– funny, funny Actress Jean Smart calls herself in Bruce Willis’ film “The Kid” –– on my right side. Always. Because my deaf left ear is out to The World then and shields the reposing Legion from every last waver of noise waves that may interrupt my recumbent tranquility! Only the hilarious Ms. Smart, what with her actress’s southern drawl an’ all, very much, as a matter of fact, like that of West Virginian women’s, drags out that last word and syllable, “deeea – aaaahd” – like. “Quiet as the deeea – aaaahd!” I got it done –– finally –– and sat up cross – legged, looking straight out the backside of Ol’ Black into the awakening darkness; but with the overhead yard lamp burning onto the parking lot, there stood before me two men in like, blue – black shirts and long ties with the same – hued hats, policeman – style, atop their heads. When they saw me, more or less by then, acting somewhat alert and fairly lucid, both of them almost simultaneously removed their hats, “Excuse us, Ma’am. Sorry to have waked you up there,” one of the men apologetically began his O’dark – thirty monologue. “But you don’t have to sleep out here. O, no. No, no. We can find you a bed inside so’s you can be close to your loved one. Ya’ don’ ’ hafta spend the night out here. Seriously. When you get yourself together, Ma’am, why ... um, you jus’ come on inside –– an’ … and we’ll find you a place to sleep so’s ya’ don’t have to do it out here. Okay then? That, ah, ... that’d be better there, don’tcha think?” They nodded a lot. Looked at each other and nodded a lot at each other some more. I nodded back. And then I nodded back at the other one, the silent one, too. Through the hatch’s glass then I managed an utterance not much above a whisper, “O my. My, my. That’s just so lovely of you. Why, gosh, thanks just ever!” I polished. Then I nodded once more. And they both, again nearly concurrently, backed away from the rear window, replaced their hats nearly simultaneously upon their heads, turned around and strode toward the wooden beam – steps which led upwards to the main driveway that then wound on higher up eventually to the Fairvale Hospital’s chief front entrance! I was literally flummoxed. So nice they had been. I rather hated not having at all to take this hospital’s night security guards up on the generous offer which the two of them had just so kindly presented to me! I had already the evening before delivered the rental car back to the agency, that same agency from my having leased Aspire there the April before –– so there wasn’t that task and settling up yet to do. There seemed to be no better reason to permanently skedaddle from that specific West Virginia spot than the one which I had just been handed! A bit early in the morning it was, yes; but I made record time dropping out of my grogginess to clean up and pack away the stuff of the backend and to hustle my little self and that trashy, old Ol’ Black station wagon utterly and all … gone! Now picture the morning in full light of day … this particular Saturday of departure entirely out of West Virginia and most especially out of the Grubtrop / Fairvale / Montclank area. Also the second Saturday into ‘the savings of daylight’ during the springs and summertimes, or the setting of clocks ahead one hour, it was. I had, as Legion and not as Sam, both while dining out this last morning and while sleeping the few hours earlier when the security guards had chanced to happen by, just enjoyed my last breakfast – like repast with Mirzah only –– the two of us alone at one of the big – box chain’s many Bob Evans’ restaurants in that state. This particular one is located on the outskirts of Grubtrop nearby to all of those interconnecting interstate mixmasters so I parked Ol’ Black as out of sight as I thought possible and where its Iowa license plates weren’t likely to be noticed by anyone who mattered to me. And then, of course, it was –– all too soon –– time for Mirzah Truemaier to leave me and me him, and the mother knew that I would not be seeing Zane or Jesse again. Those two and I had already had our good – byes to one another said the day before. O, this was hard! Soooo, so very hard! I was again reminded of that ruthlessly merciless and mother – fuckingly sperm – exalting question, “How do we do it?!” and of us mothers’ incredulity, “How dare we have to do this!” I dropped Mirzah off at that itty bitty park just a few blocks southwest of the ‘hood which Grubtrop’s Pillared Edinsmaier calls his own. I say it that way because I have never, in my heart and in my brain, thought of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s houses anywhere … since his divorce from me … as the homes of my Truemaier Boys. Just have never done that myself. No judge can make me think that way either. No judge whom Legion True has yet to meet can –– at any rate. Anything, anything at all with Herod Edinsmaier, or with Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier as a matter of fact, connected to it … has been associated, to me anyhow, specifically and only with Herod. And just as specifically not with Jesse, Zane and Mirzah. And, of course, not with me either! The entire Opera’s finest aria I alone, its lead and only soprano, sing. That is to say, no frickin’ judge of any level, no High Aggrandizier, no High Courtier, no appellate judge of any state nor of this entire, allegedly mighty nation even –– and no fancy – shmancy, high – dollar Attorney Shindy Scheisser of Predator Herry’s, no screaming and gasping and finger – pointing from Male – Identified Fannie Issicran McLive and no passive – aggressive and narcissistic dicta hurled at me from any of Herry’s orifices near compares … to my solo! Its verse lyrics and tune, coming as they do from the French legion of Quakers in Alsace during the last century’s occupation by Nazi men over much of Europe, are the sweetest, the truest, ever: “My thoughts are as free As wind o’er the ocean. No one can see Their form or their motion. No hunter can find them, No trap ever bind them. My lips may be still. But ... … I think what I will!” The thinking woman that I was, Ol’ Black and I watched Mirzah leave me till there was nothing more of him to see. This, too, all mothers I happen to know ... do. Watch and look and see their babes’ departures from their arms –– until they just cannot anymore. I exhaled, then breathed in deeeeep … and exhaled once again. It, indeed, had come: the time to go away. Right now. I had to go away from this wee park and from my darling babes for good this 1994 spring. Back to Iowa. … Again. Ye’ Ol’ Wagon and I, alone then, pulled up to a four – way stop. Stop signs at all its quadrants, not stoplights, as the intersection was at one of those incredibly frickin’ly narrow pair of perpendicular blacktops that this Grubtrop metropolis everywhere inside it terms its … ‘streets’. At what I thought was to have been the way out of town, the particular route out of it anyhow that I had been, in my mind’s eye, intending to take –– the one that was along Grubtrop’s main street, Route #50 West. I was headed north. Nothing oncoming. I looked to my left and no one there. Then to my right. “O my fucking goddess! It’s she!!! Thuggish McLive in the flesh! Her footgirl, too! In their vehicle’s friggin’ front passenger seat!” For the very, very first time in two spring weeks’ worth of both years, I bloody hell ran right into two of the three people whom I had been sooo, so careful to always avoid. At the Truemaier Boys’ mama’s very moment of departure out of and away from that entire port, I fucking drive right up, in Ol’ Black and not inside the rented Aspire with its West Virginia plates and attired in my own get – up as Dr. Legion True big as she pleases and not at all decked out as Sam the Concrete Truck – Driving Man, to a stop sign at where Nottingham Sheriff Fannie Issicran McLive not only clearly sees me –– and obviously, cavernously gaping dropped jaw on her an’ all, recognizes me, but also has ... the driver’s Right of Way! Wouldn’tcha’ just know it!? Why, this spring visit’s final scene was ending far, far funnier than a Friday afternoon, cliffhanging episode on a daytime television opera concludes out its week’s worth of soap sagas! Thinkin’, thinkin’, O ever so fast – thinking here, … I smiled! The most gawddess – awfulest, biggest grin plus Groucho Marx – style, raised eyebrows repeatedly flashing both of them simultaneously up and down, up and down, up and down –– as she, Ms. McLive, began in that old battleaxe, Humvee – sized Chevy woody wagon of theirs … from Urbandale, you’ll recall, Jury, … to inch forward and proceed with the left turn just around and directly passed me which she and daughter Mary Jane had apparently been planning to make …when they’d first come up to their stop sign! My right hand and arm, flexing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in the precise manner of Princess Diana’s acknowledgement to her adoring masses, I beamed the biggest snide smirk I could manage right into her window, Ms. Fannie McLive’s mandible still on her lap. ‘Cept that now and again it appeared to be flapping as if she were yelling orders or directives or shouting news bytes to the footgirl or something. Probably to the screamed twist of, “Fuck her, Mary Jane! Wha’th’fuck does she think she’s doing here in Grubtrop?! Whereth’hell does she think she’s going, Mary Jane! We gotta get to Herry! We gotta call Herry! Or the cops! Or, good god, or, or, ... ah, ah, um, ah, it’s The Fucking Witch herself, Mary Jane!” Ms. McLive’s head turned back to check out the windshield in front of her –– for oncoming and other traffic, no doubt; and she and the daughter in that tank of theirs crept up then quite a rise, one of those hilly streets not at all a mountain. Slowly, slowly they crawled; and I in my rearview mirror could see an entirely turned – around Mary Jane and a Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive straining herself in their vehicle’s inside center rearview mirror to see as much of Dr. Legion True as she could see –– me now 180 degrees from the two of them and still stopped in my tracks headed north at my stop sign. They were proceeding south sooo slowly that it began to appear to me that Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive may, indeed, stop and try, perhaps, to turn all the way around right there on the so – narrow blacktop … in order to follow me. Thinking, thinking –– I don’t know what possessed me, but it had to have been from the sheer and, of course, invisible intellect and direction and protective teaching of my dead Daddy AmTaham True probably! And he and I are atheists! Or maybe mystic atheists! In Ms. McLive’s and daughter’s certain view and the very full light of near midday, I shoved Ol’ Black’s gears into the reverse one and backed him completely up into the vacant driveway of the home on my left, exactly there at my stop sign and to his rear! Exiting out of that residential entrance, I then turned him precisely into the direction which Ms. McLive, her daughter Mary Jane and their Chevy monstrosity were headed. I was following them … instead! South – going we all now were! “I must be nuts! What now?!” I am thinking, thinking, thinking here! “O yeah! O yeah. They’ll have to go up that hill. All the way up it. And then, … then ... down it, too! Only the deal is: When they’re going down it, I won’t be! I’ll follow ‘em up here. I make ‘em think I’m following them up here. But then ... well, then? Then, I’ll jus’ up and frickin’ disappear!” So that’s what I did! They shuffled all the way up to that hill’s crest and gratefully left my range of vision altogether –– as fortunately down it, on its other side, … the two McLives fell! I can still, today, imagine the scenario with the Sheriff’s dialogue to her Deputy Daughter, “See her yet? She there? Where the fuck did she go? Why idn’t she coming up over the hill behind us? She there? She there yet? She idn’t there?! Wha’?! What the hell?! Where is she, That Fucking Witch?!” True it was. Ol’ Black and I never did come up over that hill and into their view … ever again! We be gone! Witch that I am an’ all. Fucked, bleached Blondie Witchy – Woo! Poof! Magic! Vanished! Gone! Well, actually, I had sashayed Ol’ Black’s behind into yet another one of those reverses and up in to the driveway of someone else, a three – point turnaround which I had literally and artfully perfected as a nine – year – old kiddo from the farm tooling around our countryside’s gravel roads in AmTaham’s 1949 sylvan – green Dodge, checkerboard grill and a standard transmission but one with overdrive! With his permission, of course. Whoa! Were those ancient chariot – driving lessons of the goddesses ever wholly serving me well now! And, once again, with a 180 – degree turnabout, well, I was headed north, of course, and took, quick as a flash and without one more moment’s concern on where she was or what Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive and her man, Predator Herry Edinsmaier, might “do” to me, … Dr. Legion True’s Ol’ Black wagon sought out and took … the very closest, alternate course completely out of town. By this second spring soirée I pretty well knew all of Grubtrop’s crannies; it was noooo problem at all finding my way around –– and out of –– it! Gone! Beaming. Well, ... smirking, actually. Well – … very, very well – satisfied with myself, I have to say. Furthermore, I must mention, too, that my dearest machine friend, Ol’ Black, did not fail me then nor after –– all the way back home to Iowa! Never. Nevermore. In fact, I continued to drive him, rusted – out body and all of his side trim totally fallen off, until nearly the Autumnal Equinox of the Y2002, as a matter of fact, when for the umpteenth time yet another hole, this one this time incapable of stopgap patching, appeared … with, resultantly of course, a far too – loud exhaust … the crusher at last put him down to final rest. I myself drove him to it –– his final ‘peace’, … er, piecing. And I was not at all worried about repercussions and reprisals upon my Truemaier Boys. They could handle her, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive. Lord knows she required ‘handling’ –– and all three of them were more than up to the laborious chore of that! And I knew Herry! I knew exactly what he would do –– upon daMan’s discovery that I had been out there to central West Virginia. She? Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive? She might try to say something to Zane or to Mirzah and to Jesse, but Herry? Why, Herry would be so fucking pissed that I, that wicked and crazed competitor, his nemesis, his opposition of the most odious kind, that good – for – nothing former cunt of his, not the no – name, ex – wife non – Edinsmaier but the one where the only labels suitably fitting for her are those of Bitch or Pussy or Whore or Stupid – Ass Heifer or Twat, … that loathsome one, … why, daMan’d be so fucking pissed that the ex – Cunt had ... outsmarted, outwitted, outfoxed and, overall, outmaneuvered and outdone him … him, Herod Edinsmaier, the Great Doctor Wonderful, in any way at all –– let alone, for days and days and days’ worth, … twice, –––– let alone, with that pussiest of a dumb – blonde brain o’hers had outthought! all of them there including the Grubtrop cops and even his moneyed Shyster Shindy Scheisser –– twice! So incensed and so enraged would Herry Edinsmaier be, same as he was when he learned for the very first time just last month that I still owned … and completely controlled … a life insurance policy on him, on him as the one insured, after 14 years of divorce! –– that he would immediately do two things. First he’d shut Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive down; she would be ordered literally to “Shut up, Bitch!” That’s what Herry does to “his” women; besides ruling us DEhumans in all other respects, he likes nearly most of all to silence us –– because the attention and the focus is to be narcissistically shed upon him. Not wasted upon any of us in – the – King’s – ‘realm’ DEhumans. And then? Then, secondly, would come The Spin, the verbal fuckage on Legion True: just how “she, truly once more, has proved herself” to be “so, so evil and how we all again must band together, Boys, to fight The Witch and ban her from our minds once again so that she can’t hurt us. Yada, yada.” This –– this Invisibility – Making form of Mother – Fucking –– this Herry – behavior would continue … but not for very long. After all, Herry’s goal is control. Control by way of his passive – aggressive, yet outwardly laissez – faire, management and “administrative” fathering, Herry can bring it all about … as before: the utter and entire demise of the mother from the brains and the thoughts of Mirzah, of Jesse and of Zane. Just like all of the mothers, whether human or animal, and most of the other women characters in Walt Disney’s movies, that is, these Disney DEhumans, in their ponderously influential portrayals to vast numbers of children worldwide, are either invisible or … they are, early on, … dead. Bring about the parental death of Legion True, mother, by Herry’s manner of the silencing with folie à deux – obedience of Male – Identified McLive and, therefore, his making Legion True … again … invisible altogether –– in West Virginia at least. No voice from the McLive mouth. And Legion? Well, Dr. Legion True was to be vanquished and driven out of and away from Zane’s and Jesse’s and Mirzah’s minds for certain! “MOTHER, YOU HAVE NO SONS! SONS, YOU HAVE NO MOTHER!” Mostly though? Mostly … Herry Edinsmaier would be so fucked that I had bested him. “Fool me once?! Shame on you, Legion! Fool me twice?!! Shame on me, Herry!!” That, that … is what so sticks in Herry’s craw. The most. I had had … him … fucked –– instead of the other mother – fucking way around! And –– And –– Dr. Herod Edinsmaier was soooo not about to let the Truemaier Boys in on this shame of his. The very best and most male way he knew of to guard against their ever knowing just how thoroughly chagrined, disgraced and humiliated he truly was ... was to act like … I had never, ever even been out there. Denial. Silent, shunning denial. I was not there. Her coming to West Virginia –– well, it just hadn’t happened. No problem for Legion to become deadened … as deadened as before and he knew the doping, psychotropic junk – fuck drugs were deadening her … because, after all as before –– the mother never, ever even existed. So. Retaliation by him? Back onto me or on the Boys? Well, yes, but only in the sense of Herry’s mind – fucking me back –– –– so that Legion’s very own babes won’t even remember their mother. That much daMan could, at least try, as Disney and that man’s film gang, to control. * * * * And the one sooo very not – at – all funny event of this second April’s excursion out to Grubtrop –– through which I still managed to smirk to myself? Well, that one would be the occasion of my and Jesse’s little car ride on over to a small city park on the outskirts of Montclank on the 08th day of April 1994, when I had had, on this first Friday out, the rental’s front passenger seat rather stowed with much of the trip’s stuff. Jesse traveled to this surreptitious site, then, sitting just behind me –– where it was that I could see his face fully in my rearview mirror. Allya’all will recall, Jury, from Chapter Four: This was the incident of the white knuckles on Aspire’s steering wheel. Jesse had seen me as Sam around the track after school and approved of leaving the grounds to quickly get away from the other athletes, I am thinking, so as not to have me not only possibly discovered but also so that there would be no need for Jesse’s explaining to anyone who the freakin’ hell I was to him and why someone such as this ‘Sam’ dude came around the schoolyard practice. “Before I die, Jesse, I am getting this down on paper. I have to write this down,” I had told him –– into the mirror just as we were pulling over to a complete stop inside the Montclank park in order to be able to visit freely. “I am not going to be dead and have had no way of leaving my Truth for you three to know. All you know now is what the judges ordered and what Herry and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive have told you. So then: you don’t know. You all just don’t know. I have to write a book, Jesse. I have to.” To which statement of mine, Jesse, not batting one eyelash even and just exactly as distantly aloof and as detached and as indifferent … as freaking unfeeling as Herry himself is in all matters ,,, earth – shattering … replied, “ ... Okay, okay, sure. Sure, Ma, but the TV movie deal fell through cuz of you, didn’t it?” Predator Herod Edinsmaier tried to connive and to contrive with high – dollar Attorney Shindy Scheisser to make money off of my and the Truemaier Boys’ horror. Principally by using his and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive’s and aa’er Varry Wussamai’s lies. Even the flamboyant, bloviating stretches that weren’t even near half – truths uttered from Dr. Edinsmaier’s former employer, Dr. Freddie Goldstein, as that fat man had flounced himself so as to sprawl out upon the witness chair during his testifying. That pretentiousness and posturing which amounted to courtroom theatre in order to cover up the reality of the unaccountability of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier –– even in his workplace situations as a pathology resident at a university’s medical center. Those falsehoods including Pedophile – “Doctor” Richard Gardner’s fictitious, bogus yet so, so brutalizing “parental alienation syndrome” –– but only as his woman – loathing, fake fuck is exclusively used and accused against and clobbered onto mothers –– now permanently entered into various courts’ documents everywhere as ‘evidence’. And those very same lies and denials all, every last one of them, bolstered and backed up by reams of so – respectable – and so – honorable – sounding judge names and those men’s androcentrically decreed, thus, certainly – so – set – in – stone and binding words. Lots of money. Through the based – on – a – true – story Hollywood or New York City film industry. Well, as a matter of fact, Jury, for about as exactly as much worth as that term life insurance policy which, along with Frieda Chicken Guthrie’s mothering encouragement, I still own –– and which is most current and active … and seemingly enrages Pissant, Tiny – Plane Pilot Herry –– to this actual day, that is. “$100,000 plus 5 percent,” Jesse, blasé and carefree – like and seemingly himself already very, very much desensitized to the complete revulsion that all of this revelation rather was, announced to me from the backseat that he had actually seen that figure stated pretty much in that exact phraseology and positively confirmed to his satisfaction the fact that the made – for – television movie rights’ contract itself was in thickness and breadth … “many, many pages” long. Two things Jesse did not know. “What’s the ‘ … plus 5 percent … ’ mean, Mom?” and whether or not, for sure, it had been because of me –– and because of my not consenting on my end of the industry’s handshake to the whole quite – literally mother – fucking deal altogether, that the entire filming fuckage had ( … apparently … ) fallen through! “Wasn’t it, Mom?” Of course, stunned, I had not one frigging inkling about the whole damn shebang, let alone specifically regarding the “5 percent” part of it all, so had lamely mumbled something back to Jesse about how all of this was probably just a pretty ordinary matter, “Ya’ know, made – for – TV movie contracts, no doubt, are, Jesse, ya’ know, kind of standard stuff. Routine and all. Prob’bly.” Trying so, so hard not to let Jesse see the hands quaking in their grip on the steering wheel and the lone tear tracking its way down the cheek to my chest. “M’god, om’gaaawd , m’fuckinggaaawd, what the hell has the Great and Wonderful ‘Healer’ Herod up and fucking done now? What has Herry – Daddee bin Terrorist in his predation gone and done now?!” These words in my mind’s ear by the voice of the DEhuman who’d thought she could conjecture virtually all of what Herry could “come up with” to soul – murder me. But this? This one had me entirely off guard. Off hypervigilance, actually, is more like how completely I had just been caught. I was mortified, I am ashamed to say. Humiliation I can handle; hell, degradation is so very commonplace for us DEhumans and geometrically multiplied so for those of us DEhumans who are court – bashed mothers. The shame and embarrassment I had was not in knowing Herry and Mr. Shindy Scheisser tried this. It was in now knowing that Herry had surprised me at his trying to get this particular subcategory of mother – fucking accomplished. Thinking woman that I am, I was pissed at myself that this had not come to my mind on my own, that I hadn’t thought up first the fact that Herry Edinsmaier would, indeed, try something so evilly walloping as this movie deal … in order to just stash more $cash$ into his wallet. So that I could have been a step or two or three ahead of him on spilling such pigswill, on felling such fuckage. The very next afternoon after this Montclank exchange with Jesse inside the rented Aspire, I had met up for an outing with Zane. We had agreed to get together for a visit in the one shelter with its two picnic tables of that itty bitty park, as a matter of fact, not too far from Herry’s house –– the same one actually at where, several days later, I dropped Mirzah off after our last breakfast with one another at the Bob Evans’ Restaurant. There, Zane confirmed all of what Jesse had told me –– right down to and including the fact that it was Herry’s wholly known and utterly attention – grabbing intent ‘to prove’ to ‘the public masses’ inside the entrails of this television film special … just how it was that Legion True had killed him, … him, the poor, poor innocent biodaddee, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier. “Well, you know, don’tcha, Ma,” Zane finished his query more in the style of a declaratively stated fact than at all a question, “in it Herry was gonna make you out to look like … the murderer.” This unnerving unearthing necessitated telephone calls home to Grace, to Linda, Cyan Song, Stormy, Teri Lynn and to László. We all agreed that there was probably nothing, without my and my contractual dealings with film officials through attorneys, nothing at all that Horrid Herry could actually ‘do’ to go ahead with this made – for – television movie thing. I calmed. And exhaled –– even without my rocking chair … there in the back of Ol’ Black, … to expedite and advance sleep. A thing –– sleep –– for which I have great reverence. Speaking of movies and matters theatrical and Herry’s many, many – page, very thick film contract for $100,000 plus 5 percent of something else, I am reminded, the similarities are so stark, so blatant ... of Rabid Woman – Hater August Strindberg, a Swedish playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In his 1888 play Miss Julie, rapist and hypnotist Jean, who is of course the author himself played out in the 1999 movie by Mr. Peter Mullen, states to Miss Julie, that role blazingly portrayed by Ms. Saffron Burrows, that “sleep should be respected.” This from Jean’s lips just before Strindberg’s character rapes Miss Julie, then hypnotizes her into committing suicide! This from out the pen of the guy who believed in his time as single – mindedly as Pornography – Purveying Pappy Herry does now in the rotgut inferiority and filthy, wiling connivance of us DEhumans, … actually writing Poet Verner von Heidenstam this mother – fuck, “ … and if I had to define my present standpoint it would be: Woman, being small and foolish and therefore evil, should be suppressed like barbarians and thieves. She is useful only as an ovary and womb ... ” and in 1887, this separately written fuckage from daMan Strindberg: “ ... all the things I have tossed off! ... four kids, the fifth on its way, and two wives.” Herry didn’t exactly get me as hypnotized as he would’ve liked to have – after successfully wresting away from me the Truemaier Boys and vanquishing me to invisibility: I never did seem to ‘do’ for Herry what he so wanted me, by my own hand, to get done for him: that is, the killing of Legion True ... by my own self. By my committing that particular suicide so as for Herry to have succeeded in getting me … dead –– dead, dead, dead as he had long, long wished for me to be! Yet, of course, … without Dr. Herry Edinsmaier’s actually having to do the messiness of murdering me himself –– and, thereby, saving his own skin with his own money – earning prowess left quite intact and very much untouched, unthreatened. * * * * The based – on – “a – true – story” thing? I have had a long, long time, most of it all quite alive and deeeep – breathing myself actually, to ponder on what Herry Edinsmaier would have coached “his” movie’s producers, its director, the writers and screenplay artists, the movie’s casting chief and its technical – or content – authenticity people … about what he would have advised crew members into actually placing into the context of its filming. Into the plot, the drama, the story itself! Would Dr. Herod Edinsmaier have really, true as they all are, tried to include in the Strindberg – styled movie all, or any, of his behaviors, of his own comings and goings and thinkings and doings, his daily itty bitty indecencies and, well, those entirely and mother – fuckingly evil ones also? Those, too, of Herry’s own woman – loathing dictator, the effective, mighty mentoring and wife – and daughter – crushing guru, Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier? The true memoir, the real life and the rurally isolated and roughshod – ridden “times” of his sooo, so dominated mother, Detanimod, 14 “times” made pregnant in 20 consecutive years’ worth of her very own breathing!? The “workings” or, more accurately and importantly, the utter absence of any work by Herry’s sister, Dr. Mi Sprision O’Revinnoco, to ‘do’ as she, a pediatrician, was required and mandated by compulsory United States law to do! Mi Sprision and O’Revinnoco –– as in … misprision and conniver. Instead of her reporting the crimes of dissemination of harmful materials to minors, of child endangerment and reporting her brother, Herry, Dr. Mi Sprision O'Revinnoco concealed knowledge of Herry’s felonies, ones in which she did not assist him nor ones in which did she participate but, nonetheless, crimes of which she was most, most aware. Hell, I’d fucking begged her! Begged her for her help. So, she knew of them. Hers merely an itty bitty, little neglect of duty by a public official, a doctor, a children’s physician, a pediatrician!!!, for chris’sake? Suppose Herry would include all of that in his film? And the acts of those other Edinsmaier family members of his in the movie, too? Like his brother Atwater’s as well as his own, Herry’s, fondling (at a minimum!) –– and worse! Worse than their frotteuristic liberties! Those of the two brothers’ actions just taken and perpetrated –– perpetrated by them upon their three littlest sisters, Murielle, Celeste and Kay?! For the teevee audience’s “education!” … any of these behaviors, too, in Always – a – Teacher Herry’s ‘edifying documentary’ for the masses, do you think, Jury?! Would Herry recount in his movie how Daddee Juggern, daMan’s very own wife – loathing father, had forced Detanimod to climb and take harvest from the mulberry tree, pregnant for her very, very first time –– and then tell and show us all, in it, how the first – time mama – to – be had slipped and fallen down out of the tree … but caught herself yet, of course, not before mightily pulling and stretching herself so!?! Such that she ... well, she fucking miscarried! Detanimod aborted! Forced his spouse, Juggern had, into this heinous and entirely preventable “accident” because of his own tyrannical commands as a ‘husband’. “Just cuz a woman’s pregnant doesn’t mean she can’t work like a slave,” Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier had mother – fuckingly maintained. “Like the slave she truly is for you,” he, indeed, most certainly got across … seeded … to his six, strapping male offspring. To his six sons! Exactly such the same androcentrically generated tripe as had been patriarchally religious “leader” and “reformer” Martin Luther’s and playwright August Strindberg’s assessments of us DEhumans as well. Before cancer besieged and overtook her daily breathing, in her own few yet forceful breathes, Detanimod herself revealed to two of us daughters – in – law that that “wife – as – slave” directive –– had been one on which she, right around the 1930 – decade’s midst after the Great Crash and Depression, had repeatedly been soooo, so well – instructed –– “till I got it!” “Taught” to her … by the DEhuman’s very own nasty ( … read that, male – identified) … in – laws! Would Herry have the screenwriters compose the parts with the scenario which was the one accountable for Detanimod’s “need” for Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier’s two – month (at the least!) banishment from her marital bed, … hell, from the entire physicality of the gawddamn farmhouse altogether!?! Exiled by her, his very own wife, by overwhelmingly fucked Detanimod he was, Juggern Aut the great Bass County republican party leader and lay priest of Fatlantic’s saints john and jude roman catholic church, to live all of those days and nights of his down at the Holstein beasts’ milking parlor, she in outraged and constant fear for the past, real or future, impending rapes by him of her very own baby girls!?! Would Herry tell the Truth?! Finally?! Would Herry tell the Truth?! The outrageous and so sick, sick Truth that never, never, never in all of those 49 years and 11 months before she died in her lovely springtime, before she died then on the 10th day of May 1985, of metastasizing and fulminating ovarian … ovarian, fucking mind you !!! … cancer, just one month’s worth of time shy of what would have been then that very June her 50th wedding anniversary to that tyrant and terrorist, the Truth that not one time ever did Juggern say to her, “I love you. Detanimod, I love you.” The literally mother – fucking, head – banging Truth that 14 pregnancies later, that 12 full – term birthings and 11 babies, five girls and six boys, later –– all of them in the so short period of just 20 consecutive years’ span of one woman’s lifetime, all in just two decades’ time, and all, every fucking one of the 11 of them, all of them raised up to and through at least one college degree each, the Truth that: this specific woman – hater, Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier, Herry’s very own father, had done to his wife Detanimod just as he himself Herod had done to his own wife Legion: never, never, never, one time even, telling her that … he loved her. The sick and twisted Truth would Herry tell? That Juggern, that roman catholic force of a violating and terrorizing old man, thought during all of his days, including those when he was actually quite a young man as well, that saying those three little words to a woman meant that he wanted to fuck her? To have sex with her? How would –– in this film of Healer Herry’s … how would that stinking thinking play out, Jury? And so, well, did he? In my head I screamed to that old despotic rapist, “Well, did you?! Did you, Juggern? Well?! Did you ever the fuck, fuck Detanimod!?! Even just 14 mother – fucking times in 50 frickin’ years, for chris’sake, Juggern!?!” Talk about Swedish Strindberg’s and German Luther’s incubator !!! “To bear babies for him till she dies of it! That is all woman is good for. That is all she should ever want or need to be,” Luther declared once upon another mother – fuckingly sick, sick and European Witches’ – Burning time. Well, the mother – and probable daughter – raping, pernicious savage who Juggern himself was, … he, at the least, didn’t kill the family’s farm dog or deliberately cause the deaths of Detanimod’s heifer calves –– as other isolating and terrorizing, rural husbands most certainly have done –– and, for that? For that she must have been ever, ever so grateful. Workers struggling against domestic abuse and violence and persons laboring at such battered women’s shelters today would be able, I am thinking, to use the patriarch, Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier, as the poster dad for … well, for literal father – fuckingness. And to show, to demonstrate, too, in Atwater Edinsmaier and in Herry Edinsmaier (at the least!) the veritable ‘ease’ by which such entire family fuck becomes cyclically … generational. Would the Good and Most Wonderful Bull’s – Snout Sniffing Jokester have the movie’s scriptwriters interview and portray any of, let alone, the majority of the 40 to 50 DEhumans whom Herry himself had degradingly described inside the pages of his little blue, half – pint, spiral notebook with the Creighton University emblem on its cover? And, particularly from out of said notebook, about Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive would Dr. Edinsmaier carefully explain to the film’s directors what –– as Herry had also long, long ago whispered to me in his version of ‘sweet nothin’s’ during his rendition of ‘foreplay lovemaking’ –– … what his Next Cunt in the Stash, his Sheriff of Nottingham to the Boys and to me, had really been to him when Herry was a student back at Fatlantic High School, that is: “a very fat girl who used to talk to me between classes at the lockers at school” instead of … his “high – school sweetheart” –– which was, now, how he was trying to verbally parade her around as, then, having meant to him. And since inside an American “civil” court of family law it is easier there to lie to and to deceive others than almost anywhere else in the entire World, would Liar Edinsmaier merely continue as Pants On Fire or would he at last come clean about his having schmoozed and hoodwinked the mousy, frumpy custody evaluator, Ms. Male – Identified Carrie Canard? About his having been throughout every single one of our 12½ years of married and parenting lives together a praetorian, diehard atheist suddenly gone back, when pressing for custody of Zane, Jesse and Mirzah, to disingenuous genuflectin’ and to faking fundamentalist – faithfulness to the bazillion canons of roman catholicism in order to fool deciders in charge of custody determination? Would Dr. Edinsmaier in made – for – television “reality” finally be at all truthful about those two women whom he, on two separate occasions, left lying anesthetized, unconscious and unattended by him and his “professional” expertise upon small Iowa towns’ operating room tables –– without his services as a frozen – section pathologist upon whom they, their families, their surgeons and their OR staffs all absolutely depended? Left them both there Narcissist and Duty – Derelict Herry did, whilst he slept in, the two DEhumans to be later awakened from their unimportance –– but yet to not know if they were or were not … whole, fine and healthy! Would we all view in the film, Jury, Dr. Edinsmaier’s slashing, under – his – breath, verbal assault along with his sideways smirking sneer over to Zane and to Mirzah and to Jesse in my presence and all of us constrained and, thus, captured within the Shitbox Dodge wagon? The one about my participation in the 1987 Iowa Games road race? “Finish the 10K?! Hell! Legion couldn’t even find the track to run it on! Let alone, finish it!” And would that particular truth – telling be followed by an accurate accounting of the snidest attack on me of nearly all time: Herry Edinsmaier’s Sunday, 02 October 1988, upside – my – skull wallop –– wherein the Teacher, with all three Truemaier Boys again listening, picked up that nearby object off his Othello Drive rolltop escritoire, the thing that turned out to be a used, unwashed, stainless steel (and not a sterling silver) teaspoon and possessively swung it pendulum – style betwixt his right thumb and index finger back and forth and back and forth like a metronome directly in front of my face, “Fuck, Cunt! I don’t have ‘my doctor – doctor wife’ to dangle in front of anyone or show off to my family and friends anymore!” Me –– me, the mother who had literally grown out of herself the three most perfect, most Aryan, blonde, blue – eyed boy children ever. EVER. About and to me the Great Healer had just called me the most massive behemoth of a fucked – mother failure. Would we see in the movie how Dr. Edinsmaier had helped his eldest subscribe in 11 – year – old Zane’s own name to a year’s worth of Playboy magazine and then, when it arrived every month in its blackened, plain, plastic wrapper, how it was that all four of them, the Great Healer and the three Truemaier Boys, retired with that particular month’s issue behind the locked Othello Drive den door so that Herry could, physician which he indeed was, “check on” their emerging, pubescent physical development –– or so he would tell me (who wasn’t, of course, allowed inside the room) that Daddee – Herry “needed” to do? And later on, when Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive and Minor Daughter Mary Jane entered their lives, would all we viewers get to know about the jokes, the horrible, degrading jokes against us DEhumans, and to see examples of the gem – studded condom and the pornographic greeting cards and other sex toys which the Boys had been encouraged to help their father pick out to send Ms. McLive? And about his perping upon my best friend Grace, after Herry and I were separated and awaiting final divorce papers, of his indecent frotteuristic brushing against her thigh on saint cecil’s catholic and most ‘holy’ of private, elementary school bleachers at our two sons’ crowded basketball games? That would be part of the movie, too, would it? And would Homophobe Herry have the scriptwriters make sure they told the truth about Scheisser’s accusatorily suggesting, in court to the custody – deciding judges, that László and I were lovers –– when László is ... gay!?! Maybe, however, that alone about László had been enough to have, in the movie, the judges deem me unfit and unsafe and unstable as a parent, that is, because of my having a gay male friend, distinguished and decorated university organic chemistry professor though he be, … sometimes around my Boys! About Herry Edinsmaier’s forcing the Ames Tribune pogrom against me and against Reporter Abbie Gaffey and the identification in it of all of the Boys by their actual names as well as that 25 September 1990 front page article’s subsequent disbursement to all of my Ames area veterinary job prospects which, afterwards, to the Boys Herry cowardly tried to pawn off this action of his as having been done by Shyster Scheisser … all on that lawyer’s own and ‘not at all because of Herry’s goading on’ of Dr. True’s career – murder and his paying off Scheisser, his employee, to perpetrate such retaliating and punishing and life – altering reprisal! Would Herry – Daddee have the film folks depict even one or two good things about my parenting devotion? For examples, my 1½ hours of daily dedication with the mother’s personal mentoring throughout all of my graduate school program and the writing of the PhD dissertation to all three of the Truemaier Boys’ learning piano by way of the Suzuki Method of instruction with its purposefully intensive parental involvement? … Teacher – Daddee having spent exactly zero minutes of keyboard involvement! Ever! And of my becoming myself a certified safe Iowa hunter educator because Jesse and Zane so loved to hunt and the woods and the waters? –– as did their Grandpa AmTaham and I! … Teacher – Daddee having spent exactly zero minutes of safety mentoring with the hunting sports! Ever! And speaking of AmTaham and Mehitable, would we even view how, before the child could on the very morning of my father’s death go home to mourn his –– and my –– loss, Legion True, the DEhuman child, had had to –– first –– visit the Storm County Courthouse to, there, literally beg before daJudge, High Courtier Butcher himself, for maternal grandchildren Mirzah, Jesse and Zane to even “be allowed” to come home to Iowa in order to serve as AmTaham True’s pallbearers at his funeral? Of how Mother – in – Law Mehitable, cowed and browbeaten and herself utterly mother – fucked by Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, after the rites surrounding AmTaham’s death concluded, had forced onto an airplane a vomiting, 15 – year – old Zane along with his two littler and so frightened brothers and coerced her three grandsons to travel alone like this, through two more flight changes, all the way back to the Grubtrop, West Virginia father’s?! Over and above any repeated pleadings which I, the Boys’ mama, had besought her! While the idea of and certainly the main motive behind this made – for – television movie was most definitely to wrest vengeance out upon me, it was also to knock together, to conjure up and to churn out for the three of them … even more money. Even more than the mere … $child support$ … already “legally” thwacked out of the Witch. Perhaps Jesse’s queried contractual segment about the “ … plus 5 percent …” of something meant that Edinsmaier, McLive and Scheisser would each share in not only the flat, lump – sum fee of $100,000.00 paid out to them from the film’s producers but also in their aprovechar – taking of another 5 percent more of whatever profits could be seized and absconded with by the movie’s promoters from off of the sales of this “documentary” to individual distributors and broadcasters or to various other television stations, fathers’ rights organizations and, as well, to the whole of “the Custody Industry” including seminars and workshops at continuing education credits’ conferences for attorneys, social workers, guardians ad litem, custody evaluators … ad nauseum! I certainly did not know if … but would any of us all know from its depictions … … if Herry Edinsmaier, when he finally realized the movie was not going to materialize at all, that is, when he, at last, knew that a signed contract for the production of his “documentary” was not going to happen, … if this contrariness of mine, if my defiance in not complying with Herry yet one more time again! in mightily, yet one more time again, my pissing off daMan! … if this impugned … specifically me. Did this realization of the Daddee’s, thus, cause daMan’s clearly explicit pronouncement to all three of the Truemaier Boys that their having no future monies available to them for each of their respective college educations was because I, Legion True, DEhuman, had refused to sign … I had refused to sign off on and, thus, to permit the proceeding with Herry’s movie – making deal … its filming, its televising and the subsequent sales off of it?! Because, … according to Zane and to Jesse, that, indeed, is exactly what Herry the Daddee did declare to my Boys! Profoundly, would the mother – fuckingly incredible TRUTH have been revealed in this “documentary” that inside Trial Three, that is, within Act Three, Part Four of The Opera, … NOT ONE WITNESS, … not even himself, had Dr. Herod Edinsmaier bothered to call to the witness stand!?! And yet the Pillared Doctor had, more than easily, succeeded, in America, in “legally” pilfering away from their actual growth and birthing source, from me that is, every single one of my sons and in squeezing and sucking out from all four of us, then, our very lives’ juices … for most of the two decades through which three of us were … children! Lastly, while I possess, as its owner and as its primary beneficiary both, a current and active life insurance policy in force on Herod Edinsmaier –– and apparently by flaky, fluky chance, snookered it past both him and his highfalutin, grandiloquent Attorney Scheisser at the time of our divorcing in early 1989, which Herry, who, now too, knows of it, sooooo loathes that I do enjoy and control, –– that is not at all, by far, how it is that I piss him off! What does so piss him off … is that I –– finally … finally –– I have called him out! Legion True, DEhuman, has called Herod Edinsmaier, daMan, … to account! How dare I?! I hold Herod Edinsmaier publicly accountable for all of his fuck. Right down even to the Doctor’s notion about all of us women upon whom daMan learned his life’s sooooo “respectable” skill and lucrative trade: that is, how it was that when Daddee – Herry and his colleagues were still studying to become physicians, to become those alleged pillared persons within their respective communities, they as medical students learned to perform vaginal examinations and he, Herry, outright stated to me, to me his supposéd belovéd, that he wanted to “Drop my pants and fuck ‘em all right there on the spot” but that, because of the physical circumstances, Pillared Daddee could not contrive a “discreet enough” venue for … his sexual addiction. “Discreet enough,” … … Daddee – Herry’s own phrase! That: my holding the Great and Wonderful Healer Dr. Herod Edinsmaier to accountability … … that is how I, Dr. Legion True, most piss off Herry! The movie? Why, the movie would have been just a freakin’, crap – shit, hoot – shoot load of fiction! –– for sure, I am thinking! Another true … mother – fucking! * * * * Perhaps Zane cannot just now call forth my second visit to Grubtrop and to West Virginia in his mind’s eye; but there was an event to take place over the very next three weeks, that is, the last of that year’s April and the first part of its May, nearly immediately after Ol’ Black and I had bustled ourselves way away from Tank – Driver Fannie Issicran McLive about all of which –– he most certainly does recall. It actually involved Jesse more than it did Zane and more than Mirzah although they definitely were affected by it all. It involved Jesse and, of course, the Great Doctor Wonderful and Ms. McLive. To date I have never been told either verbally or in writing just what exactly transpired –– other than in Herry Edinsmaier’s own typed words in a letter which he signed on 08 May 1994 –– on Mother’s Day! that is –– and mailed directly to me in order to project purposefully onto me … the blame … for it all … because of their True mother’s having been out to visit with her Boys! From piecing together little bits and fragments of information which have made their way back to me over the past decade and a half from several different sources, the least of whom were Herry, Ms. McLive and Mehitable, I am thinking that apparently for the very first time known to or at least recognized by others, Jesse at age 15½ began to lack large chunks of sleep –– to the point that he actually became unable to sleep. That is, I am thinking that his adrenaline, the epinephrine chemical produced endogenously, kicked in to such an extent that after a while of wakefulness, it simply took over his body in toto and no amount of wishful hoping nor even concerted biofeedback can cause someone so long awake as Jesse had been to be able to slip into much –, much – needed, consequential slumber. The epinephrine chemical rules and the only thing that will override its glandular production and secretion and bring on sound somnolence are other exogenously administered chemicals … therapeutic soporific drugs given intramuscularly or intravenously or, perhaps but usually less successfully, orally. Sleeping pills, in other words, are very often completely ineffective –– until such doses of them are reached and swallowed that, instead, spell lethality. Along with the insomnia, days and literally consecutive days of it that can stretch into nearly full weeks of it at a single clip, came for Jesse what comes for anyone in such a state –– paranoia. Any psychiatrist or family medicine practitioner or internist, for that matter, worth her or his salt ought to know and to advise patients and their loved ones regarding this phenomenon –– but, in my experience, rarely do they advise such –– if they, indeed, do know of it. The same thing is notoriously common among foot soldiers in warring episodes of battle with its subsequent fatigue that brings about, however, no such – needed sleep. Instead, it appears easier, so, so much easier, for doctors and for platoon commanders alike to cavalierly label such folks as “paranoid,” and therefore “crazed,” and subsequently to isolate these people off either to Sixth Floor Hotel – type mental wards drugged and drugged and drugged or to their families’ back bedrooms back home … also drugged and, … there, forgotten. When all that is needed is so simple and so tender and so fucking cheap! I mean it: All that is needed are about three to four days’ worth of uninterrupted, intramuscularly induced and sustained deeeeep sleep … brought about by gentle, somniferous medications –– and not by the vastly over – prescribed yet chronically debilitating and so, so evilly harsh ones. The perniciously injurious ones like haloperidol which cause, over time, in about 100 percent of the persons who ingest it … to involuntarily assume the rigid, unanimated, unsmiling, stupid – as – a – stump – post stance with a glazed – over eyeballs’ stare –– about neither of which positions can the dope – fucked patient do a gawddamn, mother – fucking thing although … although deep inside themselves these people are quite lucid, can correctly hear and see everything, know exactly what is going on and, worst of all, know just exactly how horrible and how awful they, now capable outwardly of only physically achieving the Haldol Shuffle when they ambulate, … … we know just exactly how we look to all other passersby. It was to this end that Jesse eventually came then –– when sleeplessness and paranoia took him over. Something happened at school, Jesse was finishing the ninth grade that spring, that caused teachers to report back to Daddee – Herry and to Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive and, voila, ‘fore one could blink over the utterly ridiculous disbelief of it all, Jesse was in absentia! Gone! An English teacher had assigned a project; and when Jesse conducted research for it, he started asking questions of school librarians that seemed to them perverted or areligious and atheistic or blasphemous or whatever the fuck. And this state, the State of West Virginia, allegedly all of them there being the godfearingest, purest, most worshiping folks in the entire gawddamn Union, why, these public school officials so fast jumped so far up and down to put an absolute silencing kibosh upon Jesse’s queries as to have made an Olympian contender’s high – jump coach proud! As regards this fateful first disappearance of Jesse, I do not know and am only recounting from here on out, now, upon supposition; but perhaps he felt threatened, perhaps he felt like folks who, of all people, should not have been, … that is, his public schoolteachers and Daddee – Herry and Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, like supposedly trustworthy people were out to stop him from his native nation’s First Amendment right of free inquiry and his freedom of assemblage … with whatever knowledge and information he desired to keep company! When he was trying to accountably accomplish his teacher – assigned school project, no less! At any rate, Jesse began not sleeping well, then not sleeping at all, then experiencing “incidences” wherein he appeared paranoid in his verbal responses to some teachers and to restaurant shop – owners (at least once at the local Grubtrop Dairy Queen, I am thinking). This is the exact extent of what I know as far as triggering and precipitating factors that were then to lead up to consigning Jesse Truemaier among … The Disappeared. Return now, Jury, to the Transcription Department of the major central Iowa clinic at where I had been on the … part – time, second – shift, second … job now all of exactly 5½ months, not even half a year yet, … in fact, since precisely 09 November 1993, my ‘anniversary’ date with said clinic as employers are known to mark a staffer’s beginning. So … “meanwhile, back at the” (as is infamously expressed in the movies, ya’ know, the movies, Jury, … such as the one Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive and daMan’s employee, Mr. Shindy Shyster, er, ‘cuse me, Scheisser, had all connived to construct about me … ya’ know, the one to allegedly raise money enough in order … “for Herry – Daddee to be able to finance the Truemaier Boys’ college educations …”) … meanwhile, back at the basement area of the Transcription Department where there were no windows, no outside lighting, only cramped cubicles, stuffiness and loooong, long evening shifts without any co – worker conversation, with ears plugged in, with right foot on the pedal and with both eyes and both hands screen – and keyboard – glued for hours and hours and hours which stretched consecutively and nightly until 11:00 p.m. and after … and with my having to, then, rise for the secretarial, day position as the Forestry Department’s Undergraduate Advising Secretary no later than 7:00 a.m. every weekday morning, Dr. Legion True was “fresh” from a break taken for a trip out east … my supervisor knew. Purportedly gone to visit family, I was now back to work typing away far into the night –– same as always. From the git – go upon my pitching down that blue apron onto the greasy spoon’s so, so slippery delicatessen floor, I had been just a bit remiss, purposefully, in deigning to tell this clinic’s transcription personnel when applying for their position that I had me … a few college degrees. Fuck, I needed work. Hours. A job. There was no way that I was going to be able ‘to tell all’ on the application categories marked “Education” and “Job Experience” … and ,yet, get … hired! So, I simply didn’t. In fact, I had left approximately ten years’ worth and more of my life and my brainy, blonde self utterly blank on these two categories –– except for stating there the one fact which seems to help out persons like me with our “résumés” when we complete such job applications during hard times: over these particular vast spans of degree – achieving endeavors and veterinary medical – practicing and professorship employments, … why, Dr. Legion True simply stated the ‘other Truth’, … instead! As far as how it was, that is, that I had spent all of those years in child – bearing and child – raising. And no one, absolutely no one then nor now, questions this “absence” nor asks for supplementary, in – depth detail about these chunks of time spent away from what they are truly perceiving to be … “one’s real work.” No one appears to think that this manner of ‘employment’ and ‘acquisition of higher education’ –– mothering –– is even worthy of bothering at all with further querying at the times when women come out of their houses and back into the workforce to interview for their wages’ paying jobs! As they did know and as Dr. True did state, I was an ‘old nurse’ from before the years of even first getting pregnant … so employing officials just assumed that, from that education and from that work experience, Dr. Legion True had obtained my ability to know and to spell and to punctuate such medical jargon and, with my passing and surpassing the practical typing skill tests, … well, there apparently had been no further need of any transcripts which are the college – grade or – degree kind! And I had been hired on. And, thus: child support payments, therewith, to continue to be paid up in full and ahead of their due dates every single month. Noooo interruption in these whatsoever! Transcription was such easy work. Easiest I’d ever done, I am thinking –– in the sense of technicality. From the standpoint of warding off boredom and forcing oneself to stay entirely put, not kaput, inside one’s chair for two hours’ straight followed by a rise out of it to the bathroom and the lunchroom to make a cup of hot tea of from between ten and 20 minutes’ worth before submitting to another two – hour stretch of mandatorily plugging in and tuning everything else out, well, that has to be nearly the hardest of all of the jobs which the Truemaier Boys’ mama has ever performed time after monotonous time after monotonous time. One’s staying on with the department at all, not to mention a woman’s getting a quarter raise at annual performance review time, depends squarely upon ‘line count’ as well as even down to her ‘keystroke count’ so, well, … … one types. And that is it. That is that. That is all that one does when she is ‘at work.’ Nearly. So if you’re often enough an outgoing and convivial person … as am I, why, you’re fucked. As far as having a whole helluva lot of fun at work! Yes, I do like the mental exercise of knowing and continuing to use, if only to correctly spell, those lovely, gargantuan, Latin – based words, … I do! But the sameness in the methodical mechanics of it all is tedium to me, more than factory assembly line – like and nearly to some of us, as hope most adamantly is, a woman – killer. I love working alone and am never lonely. Loneliness, different that it is from yearning specifically for the presence of Mirzah, Jesse and Zane, I do not experience; and, in this job, it also does not exist there for me. Working well alone and only by myself probably has a lot to do with my being so deaf. It’s just that the fixed, standstill position can be quite wearisome, to not be physically moving about accomplishing different tasks during such long stretches. Fortunately for me and as physically tired as this night job caused me to feel by the weekends, our evening lead and supervising transcriptionist was a hoot! Because of those few – minutes’ breaks between the two – hour grunt stints, she and I not only bonded but have remained friends since –– since she, already several years ago now and mother to two school – aged children when I first met Stormy, left the bricks – and – mortar physicality to go home and begin her own solo, transcription business out of an office which she prepared for herself there! One night from the wall telephone in the clinic’s break room and using a then – newfangled thing known as a prepaid phone card, I tried calling out to West Virginia, to Grubtrop, specifically to try to connect with any and all of my Boys. For the umpteenth time since returning to Iowa from my recent rendezvous with them. And did! I was absolutely breathless when none of the Second Family – Troika –– not Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive nor Mary Jane nor the worst who could have picked up my call, Terrorist bin Herry, was on the other end of the telephone wire! I was also almost as speechless when I realized the answering person was actually Mirzah! We talked and talked and talked and talked; “No, all three of ‘em ‘re out, Ma, it’s okay!” It was grand! Not only had consecutive chunks of months passed by without my hearing his or Jesse’s or Zane’s voices, but over two years’ worth of monthly pages had been ripped off of our respective calendars … since I had. Except for my in – person, April visits of one week each out to central West Virginia in 1993, and 1994, not one telephone call in over 24 months’ time had I managed, costing me as hell of course, … had these Boys’ mama managed to get past the Sheriff of Nottingham in order to be able to reach any one of my Children. It hadn’t even been me, their mama, that late, dark March of 1992, who had been the one to try to gently let all of them know that AmTaham True was dead! Their belovéd Grandpa! It should have been me! The kingly Coward never answered the residential telephone. ‘Twas against his home – ruling policies apparently. So as to avoid me and any other perceived confrontational shit, the Gutless Wonder simply and spinelessly refused to acknowledge, let alone, to handle or to be the first in the household to field … any incoming calls. Ever. Even, and yes this is only supposition, … even when Herry Edinsmaier was the only individual at home at the moment a ring came in! Just as had always been this very scenario in all of that mustachioed bull – snout’s barnyards when I had been the King’s First Cunt –– er, not the first one, of course, but back when I had been one of the royal herd’s many such stupid – ass heifers, one actually mawwied to daMan! Consequently, Dr. Legion True had been entirely unable to ever get past the King’s henchwoman, Ms. McLive, who always, always, always sounded more than chirpy, pleased –– and mocking –– to have been suborned into doing His Majesty’s nastiness and atrocities for him. So as to get back to my typing in just a little bit more, I asked Mirzah if he could put either Zane or Jesse on the telephone as well. ”Ah, um, yeah, but, ah, I can’t,” Mirzah wavered. “O?” “Um, I don’ know where Zane is.” “O. Okay. Sure. Sure. Ya’ know, Mirzah, I’ve been calling a lot. Well, come to think of it: no … no, you wouldn’t know that. How could you? Beings how you and Zane and Jesse never know when it is that I’ve been trying to call any of you. Anyhow, I have been. And, ah … ah, Ms. Fannie McLive’s just been hanging up on me right off. She hasn’t even bothered to taunt me or insult me –– like she usually does. The woman usually has about 30 seconds’ worth of crap which she always wants me to eat first –– and … then? Then, … she hangs up on me. But these last two weeks, Mirzah, when she finds out it’s me who’s doing the calling, why, she just disconnects right away. Everything’s okay there, isn’t it? Can I talk to Jesse then? If Zane isn’t around, maybe Jesse then?” Dead Silence. For a moment there I thought I had been disconnected. “Mirzah? Mirzah?” Nothing. But the line was open, and I knew that it was. All of the senses quickened … That loathed dread which comes on to us Mothers on Trial at the oddest times of nearly every day and certainly on the ones when those lengthy, whacker, thumping legal documents arrive in the mailbox, why, the alarm was right there to the fore … again. On the Iowa side of the open telephone link I simply waited, receiver gripped, much in the same way as I had been taught to do by my former dean when a veterinary medical student; he had been a guru to me regarding the Zen of listening. Just like Grace does, too. Still nothing. The Silence that does not … protect … one. The longest pause, this one in the earliest days of May 1994, that I’d ever known in conversations with this child of mine, Mirzah. “Mirzah … ? Mirzah, Jesse’s not there either, is he? He hasn’t been there either, has he? For quite awhile. He isn’t home now and, … an’, aaaah, he hasn’t been. Am I right? Mirzah?” Then, Mirzah spoke. The words were leaden. And to my knowledge the gravest that Mirzah had ever in his mere 14½ years uttered, I am thinking, “If Jesse were, aaah,… ah, if Jesse was, um … ah … ah, dying, ya’ know I’d tell ya’, don’tcha, Ma?! You know I would, don’tcha?! If he was dying, I would tell ya’, Ma.” What?! ! ! What exactly was the news my only functioning ear had just received?! More of this bone – crushing mother – fuck to that poor, poor ear of mine –– and this time, coming innocently as it surely was, from my baby! “Mirzah? Dying? Jesse? Where is he?! Where is he, Mirzah?! He’s in a hospital somewhere, isn’t he? He is. You don’t even have to say it, Mirzah; I already knew it! He is!” “I can’t! I can’t! But if he were dying, Ma, … ” “I know, Honey, I know. I know. Don’t worry about it; I’ll find him. I will. But, ah, but if … if you get a chance to see him or talk to him, ah … aaah … can you at least tell me –– it is or it isn’t critical, Mirzah?” The mother staggered a little in my voice delivery yet recognized in it its potential for transmitting horror and terror to Mirzah –– so staggered, instead, … inside myself! … in order to try to keep solid and constant. “I don’ know. Really I don’t, Ma. Ah, um, I don’t think he’s critical. I just don’t know though,” it was blatant Mirzah had been threatened. That meant Zane, too, had been. And the two of them certainly had been told precisely squat about Jesse. Calculatingly so. I couldn’t compromise Mirzah’s being sworn to secrecy from me much further nor did I want to: Mirzah was clearly shook and helpless –– even though a teenager now –– helpless to aid his year – older brother in any way, and it was telling in his tone back to me. “I’ll find him, Mirzah, I will. If you get a chance to get him a message, tell Jesse, too, that … I know now –– and that I’ll find him. I better let you go, Honey. I love you. And I love Zane; please tell him. And I love Jesse. I’ll find him, Mirzah; I will. Good – bye, Honey.” Wha’th’hell?! Om’gaaawd!. Again … another scene in Herry’s horror movie –– twisted. Twisted all inside out this episode, hell, this entire, mother – fucking chapter would have been. The one that was yet to completely unfold for Jesse and for me. From the break room I returned to Stormy but not to my specific transcription cubicle, not just then. “It’s Jesse, Stormy, he’s in a hospital somewhere; but Mirzah couldn’t say where? O, my fucking god! What can I do? What can I do? Go home; I gotta go home. But … but, ah, … it’ll only be even later out there, there in West Virginia, by the time I, ah, I … I can figure something out!” Immediately Stormy sensed the urgency of the matter, too; mothers are like that about children and family. And only mothers, I mean. Sometimes a few fathers are, too, yet only a very few are even attentive enough to ‘get it’, to get … right off … the gravity of such a deal. But always, always, always mothers are. “Um, ya’ … ya’ have any more time left on that phone card, do ya’ think?” Stormy asked. “Sure. Sure I do.” “Come with me. I’m punching you out; ya’ got sick here at work. Wouldn’t that be about right?! Given the way ya’ feel right now, that’d be the truth, now wouldn’t it be?!” Supervisor Stormy didn’t even hesitate. “And you … you had to … ah, you had to take off … I didn’t say ya’ had to get home … you just had to take off ‘fore that Ménière’s came over you, right, Legion?! I know where there’s a stash of phone books with lists of a whole bunch of hospitals in the U.S.; I’m gettin’ it. You can jus’ pick the most likely ones and start calling ‘em. Get in here,” Stormy opened the passageway through to a back, back room, through at least two more doors, “there’s a phone over there in the corner, and all of these doors’ll just be shut. Hell, I’m not leaving till you are. Get goin’. I’ll bring ya’ the books.” Whirlwind and dynamo, Stormy’s name certainly stuck to her! Operating only on intonation and mere supposition from Mirzah’s voice and his very few, “allowed” words to me on the gravest of concerns, I, the mother, indeed commenced calling; the time was 8:30ish Central Daylight, therefore, an hour later out in West Virginia. Beginning with the most obvious place to start, I tried first the medical center of the Great and Wonderful Healer, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier. Receptionist after hospital receptionist began telling me what I, before initiating this endeavor, … what I truly feared almost as much as finding Jesse and learning what was actually wrong: every single one of the women, and they were all the voices of only DEhumans, about a baker’s dozen or so all over central, west, north and south West Virginia, came back at me with the same, very practiced script, “Ma’am, that is information I am unable to provide you over the telephone. You’ll have to come in … in person. He’s a minor and your son, you say? Well, be that as it may; I am not able to release any such information of that sort over the telephone. I’m sorry.” All of them were cordial. All of them were as adamant as they were pleasant. Just as –– ordinarily –– Jane Q. Public would want them all to be! That is, strictly adherent to medical records’ confidentiality !!! But this was no fucking ordinary night, and I needed information. The not knowing, the withholding of knowledge, purposefully, is such power, such control over. And in mothering situations? This is the worst. The absolute worst. Next, of course, to her child’s maiming or death. As a matter of primed and skillful fact, … hateful, spineless, gutless cowards for fathers … sooo know this. They know this very, very well! And work it. O, O, O how they work it against us mothers! This particular evening the loaded charge of “not gonna tell ya’ ”was forthcoming out of the mouths of only women –– but you can bet … yeah, you can bet upon your own hospitalized children, Jury, that this ‘policy’ was put there in front of these DEhumans to read to fraught mothers such as myself, put there in front of them at their telephone reception units by medical boards packed chock full with the majority of them men making such ‘policy’ and the rest of such boards’ members … male – identified women … most of whom will not have been, nor ever will be, mothers, let alone, frantic ones, … of minor children themselves. I rang up every single hospital that I could find there in Stormy’s stack of phone books which she’d brought to me inside the Transcription Department’s far back room –– that is, the ‘general information’ numbers of the ones which would fit even a remote possibility that Jesse might be a patient there. Around 10:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, I dialed the main switchboard number for a lovely sounding place which called itself the Blue Hazelnut Ridge Hospital in Morgantown, at least about a 45 – minute drive from Grubtrop and apparently affiliated, perhaps in some teaching way, with a university there. “Hello, ah, my name is Legion True, Ma’am. I’m sorry to be calling you so late, but I need to be connected to Jesse Truemaier’s room. It’s very urgent, and I am his mother.” “O well, that will not be possible, I’m sorry, Mrs., aaaah, ah, what did you say your name was?” “Legion True. I’m Jesse’s mama.” “I am sure that you are, Mrs. True, but, ah, um, … I am not allowed. I, um, I can’t connect you because, well, how to put this, well, … ummm …” and the receptionist’s voice trailed off a wee trace … amongst what sounded over the wire to be a bit of some shuffling of papers. Then the woman continued, “O yes, now I know. Um, I can’t put you through to any such room of that person because, um, well, because I am just not at liberty to tell you, or anyone else for that matter, over the telephone whether or not any such Jesse Thaddeus Truemaier person is or is not a patient here at Blue Hazelnut Ridge. I’m so sorry to have to tell you that, but I just can’t say a thing one way or the other about our patients here at this time, Mrs. True.” But she just already had! And purposefully, too, I could tell it in her voice! She must have discerned sincerity, authenticity and legitimate substance in mine because she had clearly searched for –– and found –– a very, very telling way to get to me the answers to everything I’d asked of her … without compromising her duty and, ultimately, her very job, of course. “Of course,” I replied with probably too much enthusiasm to my pitch and timbre, “ … aaaah, of course! Ah, um … I won’t bother you any longer. I know it’s really, really late. Thank you! Thank you ever! For … for, well, thanks so much, Ma’am. Good – bye now.” I have never known her name, but … but I know her. And thousands of such mothers like her do I know! At no time had I ever given over to her or to any other of the receptionists or nurses who had answered the late – night, infirmary switchboard sets at those various easternmost hospitals … Jesse’s middle name of Thaddeus. Coming as it was back to me and mentioned for the very first time all evening, exclusively and singularly throughout its pronunciation, there could have only been one way that that had happened: Jesse was, indeed, a patient there –– and currently there as in –– “… our patients here at this time, Mrs. True!” which she had, with me on the wire still, just looked up inside all of the reception registry’s chart – related mishmash which I had heard this other, West Virginian mother pushing around and so swiftly jumbling through. I was as thrilled as a mama could possibly be … … who has just learned the news that her child has been hospitalized. This is not electrifyingly delightful news –– yet it could be described in that moment as … breathtaking. I’d found Jesse! –– and obviously he was alive! Trying to piece together the time and date just then with what I could intuit from Mirzah’s overtones and inflections and with how many times I had tried telephoning out to any of the Boys since my return back to Iowa, it appeared to me that it was quite possible Jesse Truemaier had been in Blue Hazelnut Ridge, or at least gone from Herry – Daddee’s Grubtrop residence, for at least two weeks or longer. Perhaps from about as many weeks as I had been gone from Grubtrop in mid April 1994, to the initial time that Jesse … went missing. But Jesse Truemaier was alive! This much I finally did know! And, for the little bit of present time directly in front of me, this information and knowledge in to the mother and no longer withheld from me was … enough. That night at work was nearly a decade ago and still so harrowing for me that I remember it as if it were just last night’s endeavor! And Stormy? I’ve said it before –– in Ms. Emily Dickinson’s prose, “My friends are my estate.” … “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Stormy and Unidentified Blue Hazelnut Ridge Worker Woman!” Only vengeance – wresting, loathing fathers would ever cause a mother nearly a thousand miles away –– which might as well have been as far away as the other side of the Planet –– to have to hear from her 15 – year – old child’s brother, that is, from her other child, her 14 – year – old Mirzah, the following words, “If Jesse were, aaah,… ah, if Jesse was, um … ah … ah, dying, ya’ know I’d tell ya’, don’tcha, Ma?! You know I would, don’tcha?! If he was dying, I would tell ya’, Ma.” That was, however, the life stratagem and style –– indeed –– of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, Alleged Daddee and Healer. At the time I did not know that Blue Hazelnut Ridge Worker Woman was, after all, a nurse. When I first asked, she knew right away that Jesse Thaddeus Truemaier was there because … Jesse was her patient! She just didn’t have on the tip of her tongue his middle name so, hence, her need to quickly consult documents which held this all – important clue –– the one which she gave right back to me. My home telephone on Havencourt Drive rang there about 11 p.m. on the late night of Sunday, 08 May 1994, nearly a week after my wired encounter with Blue Hazelnut Ridge Worker Woman when we two were both at our respective places of work. “Hi, Ma, it’s me, Jesse. Happy Mother’s Day! I couldn’t call ya’ earlier today cuz I couldn’t get to a telephone by myself. Just wanted to tell ya’ that. An’, an’ that … I’m home. An’, O … ah, … ah, the nurse? She came and told me right after she talked to ya’ that you’d called for me.” Jesse didn’t say it, but I knew it: Blue Hazelnut Ridge Worker Woman was smiling directly at him that night when she told him I had found him; I know it. “Mom, they thought I was on drugs. That’s why they put me there. But I wasn’t, Mom. I wasn’t. You were just out here; I wasn’t on drugs, was I?!” It wouldn’t be that Mother’s Day 1994, when I also told Mirzah and Zane that I’d found Jesse the very night I promised Mirzah on the telephone that I would: it was too late on that specific one. But at some later point, I did tell both of Jesse’s brothers that I, indeed, had had two friends that frenetic night, one my boss and another whom I shall never meet nor know further … guide me straight to Jesse. Jesse didn’t know it either, and this fact I have never told any of the Truemaier Boys: that when Jesse phoned me up that Sunday night in May, his late – at – night call to me had been the first Mother’s Day in six years’ worth of Mother’s Days that I had had a call or a contact or any form of a remembrance from him or from Mirzah or from Zane because Dr. Herry Edinsmaier, with the more – than – willing, folie – à – deux assistance of Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, had in his notorious kingly reign kept such a tight rein in on them all –– including the earlier times even –– when they lived with me but were gone over to Herry’s house or had been with Herry on weekend visitation when this one particularly special May Sunday on everyone’s calendars came ‘round! * * * * Just a few weeks before my pro se Iowa Court of Appeals appearance with those treasured –– and exact –– ten minutes’ worth of ‘argument’ time in front of a panel of three, even higher black – robed courtiers than ever before, that is, the thunderous ‘legal’ conclusion which would become the Part Five of the Third Act of The Opera, a letter arrived in that same, now infamously tarnished mailbox on Havencourt. From Dr. Herod Edinsmaier and one page only, the typed letter was addressed singly to me and described from its git – go how Jesse’s hospitalization, the ‘need’ for it and ‘everything else’ leading up to it, had been … all my fault. Not a mention about any adults’ ‘beliefs’ that Jesse had ingested illicit, street drugs. Not one word on that. Dated Mother’s Day 1994 also, apparently the day of Jesse’s discharge so no doubt written somewhat earlier on the very same day on which Jesse telephoned me … after soooo Small Man Syndrome – Afflicted Herry Edinsmaier had blithely drifted off to sleep, the Great and Wonderful Healer bitch – slapped me, the youth’s mother–, with the following three, slamming paragraphs of patriarchal, Hans and Franz – pump you up –fuck, “You deceived me and violated Judge Butcher’s ruling by visiting the children in West Virginia mid – April 1994, as you did in the spring of 1993. This last visit was emotionally traumatic to Jesse in particular, and immediately after he was unable to sleep. In a short time he was manic and eventually became so distressed that he required hospitalization. He has now been medicated and is to be discharged today. He will be taking lithium long term, but I expect him to return to all of his usual activities. I have been informed by the staff of the Blue Hazelnut Ridge Hospital at West Virginia State University in Morgantown that you have attempted to contact Jesse at the hospital. I object to that contact and point out that you are entitled to records only. I do not have the records of Jesse’s stay; you will have to obtain them at your own expense from West Virginia State. Because he is now beginning to take responsibility for himself, it would also be courteous to ask Jesse for permission. The shock of being approached by you in disguise in front of his peers and then beginning to realize the extent of your illness and his own cooperation with it was apparently enough to trigger a manic episode. I do not see how you (with probably the same illness untreated) could participate in a positive fashion in his recovery. To be involved in your plots, schemes and deceptions could only exacerbate his paranoia and delay his return to full integration into his school and social life. If you cared about his health as you say you do, you would stop doing that. You could help Jesse most by complying with Judge Butcher’s direction and seeking psychiatric therapy for yourself. Had you done so in 1992, you would probably have had your visitation reinstated by now and would not have to disguise yourself with hats, mustaches and rented cars in order to escape detection during your visits. Until you follow the court’s direction as regards seeking psychiatric therapy for yourself I believe that it is the Court’s desire and my duty to try to shield Jesse from your influence.” And then the Great and Wonderful, American State District Court – Decreed Ex – Husband Dominator – Doctor Edinsmaier signed it –– even signed it “sincerely,” according to the closure’s wording. But where was within the contextual body of this letter – and I searched long and repeatedly for it … over and over … a purpose. A purpose in sending this missive to me. O JYeah, there was one all right. That would be the one wherein … I fucking pissed Herry off! That purpose! Classic Dr. Herod Edinsmaier this patriarchal communiqué was with such of his slam – the – pussy catch phrases and domineering – doctoring jingoism to it as “your illness” and Jesse’s “own cooperation with it”!!! As well as the Jesse’s – daddy – gives – such – a – rat’s – ass – if – he – is – or – he – isn’t asininity of Herry’s phrase, “to take responsibility for himself.” “Take responsibility for himself” ?!!! I wanted to guffaw at the Slacker – Doctor’s hypocritical blatancy, “Hell, Herry, ‘responsible’? ‘Responsible’?! O say, Herry, then … then would that assuming of ‘personal responsibility’ have come on to Jesse, ah, um, before –– or would that be after … his paranoia and Jesse’s aggressiveness toward neighbors and teachers and his hospitalization for the label allya’all put onto him of bipolar or manic – depressive illness? Just exactly how and when had Jesse, at 15½, –– with a … literally … mother – fucking role model for a daddee such as your lazy – and laissez – ass – faire self, Herry ! ! ! –– when had Jesse become so friggin’ and personally accountable? When you … you Herry … soooo are not!? When you, Herry, are anything but. Are anything but accountable –– and, instead, have so secretly scripted in your own handwriting that you have “fears of others learning the Truth about me! ! !” I had fooled Herry. I had made a fool of Herry. I had … fouled … Herry! I, Dr. Legion True, that DEhuman critter, hell, that monster, who herself was so “ill” with such an “untreated” condition, ya’ know, ‘the psychosis she has there of … of yearning for her babes! ! !’ who, if she’d just been a good l’ttl’ girl an’ … an’ followed all the – big – men – in – charge’s directives, could have had her “visitation reinstated by now” –– had shamed him! And had shamed and foolingly fouled Herry Edinsmaier … baaaad. By successfully visiting two separate, consecutive years … no less … three different individuals –– over all four of whom Herry desired to have … total revenging control. ‘Cept he obviously … had had no such thing! And Herry –– … although never, never, ever telling such allegedly ‘responsible’ teenagers that he had deigned to physically send a tangibly berating and bellicose diatribe of a reprimanding reprisal, one so full of disdain and sneering scorn to their mother –– … Daddee – Herry Edinsmaier was, however, … not at all … about to let Legion True’s humiliating and mortifying him slip quiescently … by me. O, not at all! To follow? After Part Five of The Opera concluded there came to the foreground then in crescendoing clamor the utter, preposterous folly of Herry’s final sentence to me. The stupidity and silliness of the letter’s end was not in the fact that it was me to whom Herry stated the words: of course, it was to me –– because it was always … me … whom Herry blamed! For everything! The hypocrisy was in the very words with which Herry chose to upbraid me. Of all of the language Herry could have chosen with which to fuck me, he made a complete ass out of himself using the ones he did choose! “Until you follow the court’s direction as regards seeking psychiatric therapy for yourself I believe that it is the Court’s desire and my duty to try to shield Jesse from your influence.” Did Herry not just state there, lastly in this letterbox bomb of his blasted forth against me, that it was his “duty to try to shield Jesse from …” me, Legion True, Jesse’s mama? Was this not what the letter stated? Well, indeed, it most certainly was so stated –– … … –– just hours before Jesse himself telephoned me, … –– exactly, word for word, what Herry wrote to me –– purposefully –– upon the annual day set aside by others in society specifically to honor … mothers: Mother’s Day 1994. Interestingly enough and so, so the purposeful style of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, another harassing harangue arrived, as well. Dated 13 June 1994, it blasted forth one week after my Court of Appeals appearance, that is, just after Part Five of The Opera. Truly, however, this subsequent bomb equaled Herry’s rendition of an invoice, … his billing statement to me: I was being charged, that is, with all of the material expenses, the bucks, the money, for half of Jesse’s recent hospitalization at Blue Hazelnut Ridge. Merely three sentences long, Herry’s second letter began, “For Jesse’s recent illness the charges are as seen in the following table. Judge Seizer’s original decree directed the parents to share equally the uninsured medical expenses of the children, and that provision was never modified. In accordance with that provision, I am with this letter billing you for one half of the uninsured medical expense.” Meaning $3,529.17. I ignored it. More to my mind, at this very time, had just been … ‘the Argument.’ Before yet another elevated and funky walnut bench with black leather bumper trim and it loaded there with three, all frocked in flowing black robes, of Iowa’s allegedly most revered jurist – like folks, the date was Tuesday, 07 June 1994; and the appointed hour for our all convening inside their colossal Court of Appeals’ courtroom at the State of Iowa’s domed and gilded Capitol Building inside the midst of Des Moines and bearing there, as it did, its ornate ceiling – to – floor drapes, the carpeting of golds and browns and tart cherry red paisley and all of its solid wooden pews of the hardest and unkindest depths was … 9 o’clock in the a.m. Of course, Herry Edinsmaier did not show. As a matter of massive fact and in the exact manner as is Herry’s modeling from always before … that is, the one of women’s unimportance … the Esteemed Doctor’s Esteemed Employee – Attorney, Mr. Shindy Scheisser, didn’t even show up either! To the Court of Appeals’ precious ten minutes’ worth of my pronouncements, the two of them, Herry and Scheisser, thought it all so unimportant that for the Good Doctor – Daddee’s side of things they decided to send over to the State of Iowa’s Capitol Building the gilded legal firm’s most rookie, most junior, most inexperienced, most flunky lawyer –– only, … a Des Moines man whose name I was told then and promptly forgot, his statements so uninspiring, so without force and none worth remembering. And if I thought so and, subsequently did not remember them or him, … then, I am certain: the three panelist – jurists didn’t either! Furthermore, no one else at all bothered to come for Herry’s or his ‘representative’s’ support because, aforehand, all of them already knew it wasn’t one bit necessary to waste anyone else’s time doing so! They all already knew, aforehand, the Argument’s outcome. As it was a foregone, already decided conclusion –– only, of course, I was still hoping, still trusting … somewhat … which is why I pained myself to suffer through this tribulation in the first place. But it all … truly … was a done deal –– before any of it even started. After all, we were dealing here with males! And privileged ones at that! All of them … pillared ones! So screw … The Law. And fuck justice or what the moral and the Right Thing to Do was: ‘twasn’t necessary! None of it! NOT for us noncustodial DEhumans was anyone else’s time and efforts worth wasting! For damned, mother – fucking sure! Fuck The Law. Fuck us mamas’ perception of The Law. And we were dealing with male – identified females. Except, perhaps, besides me … for one –– –– with more on Dr. Legion True … later. A lone seamstress I knew who supported herself and her two, very young children by her tailoring talent sewed for me the perfect, three – piece, arguing suit replete with high – to – the – chin, ivory – hued, Edwardian collar and lace – trimmed jabot inside the exterior, western – stylized, pewter pinstripe blazer with silver buttons and solid yoke to match the similarly solid, full wool skirt to mid – calf. Blonde as sunshine, true enough, yet all of it coifed modestly –– swept upward into a prim and tight French twist, also Louise Sawyer – like … of Thelma and Louise … I thought. I applied the barest of matching ivory and gray eyeshadow and skimped ever so slightly on the brown – black mascara; we couldn’t have me painted for ‘the court’ like one of Larry Flynt’s covers or corner cunts now, could we? In gray flats I walked up front and sat down on the appellant’s side of this State’s stately courtroom, the leftists’, … er, its left one. Directly behind me and the four – foot wall of carved and shellacked walnut on the same, left side stretched an utterly filled number of pews. We had all had to come from various parts of Iowa –– “the We –– of Emily Dickinson’s ‘the estate’ who are all of my friends” –– and at least 45 minutes to an hour’ travel time down from Ames –– while Herry’s unremembered – , thus – nameless – rep ran himself up to the Capitol Building from … a couple of blocks away, that is, up from just downtown Des Moines. Almost all of the ISU Forestry Department was present including both Ms. Franklin and Dr. Joplin, and the Truemaier Boys’ and my personal friends since this shit all began … and many more since then. Sans Agnes and P.M. Flunk, of course, the supposed Quakers who were in no way quakerly, there were in attendance, however, Grace and Frieda with her cane and László and Linda and Cyan Song and Stormy and Teri Lynn, Adam and the Eldest Elder, Abraham. Slight in stature as she certainly had been in life, Margaret Sagely, now corporally … ashes only by then, flitted around inside my head, “If you were not hysterical, then, … then, Legion, is when I would be worried about you!” As did, too of course, … our belovéd Cinqué – styled AmTaham. In the very back row –– but on Herry’s side which was nearest to the room’s entrance and it is likely that they did not know there were two “sides” to the courtroom –– , my brother Sterling suddenly appeared … there accompanied by another – on – her – cane, Mehitable, almost right at 9 o’clock, she sporting that walk and the struggling, slumped stance of hers which all of the time silently shouts, “O, I’m sooo, so helpless here!” when … hardly at all … is that what Mehitable, most manipulative, truly is! Sterling arrantly and arrogantly refused ever to lock eyeballs with me. Not one time before nor after the entire proceeding did Sterling actually look at me, at my face, at my eyes. Needless to say then, too, there were no words of support forthcoming to me … from either one of them. Sterling and Mehitable simply strutted out as suddenly as they had surfaced … … when time was up. Their attendance at all, it certainly seemed, must have been out of morbid curiosity –– as Mehitable had yet to acknowledge, even one time, that she and Sterling, by their both, … behind my back and without ever telling me, let alone, even asking me if I needed for them to take my Boys anything, … by their both driving out to visit Herry’s next, haphazardly slammed – together, Grubtrop clan had –– at that previous October’s autumnal time –– wholly fucked with me. Let alone, acknowledged that Chicaners She and He had both been mother – fuckingly dead wrong to have pulled off that tricking thuggery of theirs at all. Not to mention that my own mother had yet to apologize to me for any of it. Morbidly meddlesome –– she, yes, … and serving quite possibly in the nefarious role of a proxy peeper, as a surrogate voyeur she was acting … on behalf of the Dick – Peeping – Tom Herry and the absentee King’s Cuntly Ms. Male – Identified McLive, as well. A court officer, male and nondescript, opened a door back behind the bench, proceeded forth through it and set down a timing device upon a stand – like structure to my right immediately between me and Herry’s no – name, ‘latest’ attorney. Within seconds after that was done, three people strode into the courtroom through that same door –– them all. Judge Pansy Shawshank first. Taking his seat in the black, leather highback in the middle was, next, this particular court’s worth of a chief, Allen Donnellson, and to his immediate left and lastly then came the Iowa Court of Appeals’ newest appointee, a man named Barry L. Crowrook who had only been added to and, thus, on this specific bench less than three months’ total time, … I was to later learn. A thing I noted right away was the fact that there were two different people this time: Shawshank and Crowrook –– different in the sense that, of the six possible judges for this particular appellate court, only one, Donnellson its Chief, had served for and decided upon … my first appeal. Gone straightaway against me, that is, … Donnellson had. Of The Opera’s appellate judges then, from its Act Two Part Three? Well, only one of these people was back now in this, its Act Three Part Five. And with that first appeal? Well, with that one, there had not been any courtroom presence for any of us ‘players’, er, ‘singers’ … at all. All, for it, had been done through Ms. Carlotta Klutz and, presumably, the ‘real’ Edinsmaier employee, Mr. Shindy Scheisser –– and, then, … all, for it, done only ‘on paper’. The people calling themselves judges, then, had decided from document arguments in briefs read, first, by their lackey law clerks with subsequent summarizations of same … by same … then given over to the ones –– or, quite likely, ‘their ghosts’ –– who actually performed the writing of … ‘their’ … er, these three judges’ … final decision. “Whew! Zero people calling themselves judges from that first appeal would’ve been best, but this? This is at least hopeful, not?” I am thinking to and querying myself regarding the two judges now, with Part Five, who were new to me … and to the Truemaier Boys’ and ‘my case’. With Act Three Part Five now, as with that first appeal ahead of and prior to this second one, there had been plenty of briefs and plenty of documents, a passel of paper again, all submitted beforehand –– as had been required by the Iowa Code and, following cookbook – like timeframes and formulations, almost recipe – like that is, I had met every single deadline on time and in its precise manner, right down to the correct colors of four different briefings’ and appendices’ covers: blue, gray, red and white! Twenty – one copies of each! Nineteen copies of all thingys up to the Court itself … inside that difficult – to – reach and hardly accessible – at – all, gilded Capitol Building … Nineteen! And one of absolutely everything else I was also required, by Code, to provide to as well as to deliver up to … the opposition! To the appellee –– to Herry! … by way of Dr. Legion True’s personally chauffeuring and acting as courier for them all … over to the Good and Wonderful Doctor’s team office of legalese gangbangers. Finally, of course, one copy, at the least, of all of these stuffs for myself! All of that printing –– at my entire expense of both money and time which equaled … thousands of minutes and thousands, literally, of dollars, too, which most folks, I have since found, would not believe … unless they had gone through the actual doing of it all … themselves! Most importantly to me about this gargantuan achievement of mine was my steadfastly constant, yet ultimately sooooo, so stupid, belief that any, let alone, all of it was, ahead of the Argument date of Tuesday, 07 June 1994 … actually being read. And thoroughly studied! And both read and studied –– by –– the exact folks … who were to become accountable for, as a matter of fact, the deciding of the Truemaier Boys’ and ‘my case’! All of this entire matter had certainly been submitted and file – stamped long, long in advance of this date so that there had been plenty enough time for all of it to have been meticulously studied, exhaustively researched, carefully cross – referenced and, quite literally, dug into for the very findings of all actual facts versus the ferreting out of fallacies! Most certainly this was so! Thus … I had believed that: THIS was so. Wasn’t it?! ! ! As did I aspire to myself, all of these people surely wanted to base their decisioning upon The Truth after all, didn’t they?! ! ! As would I of myself require, all of these people had, then, all of my copies’ matters completely read through and diligently studied up upon, not?! When, in fact, NONE of it all had been! ! ! Well, more on this in a wee bit! Back from West Virginia then and just passed the awful fright of Jesse’s latest nightmare, I had thrown myself into the writing and the oration of my words before these three. One of the thoughts that struck me as I’d drilled and rehearsed was the very real possibility that, for Iowa at least, ‘my case’ could be headed into the realm of legal … precedence. I thought on it seriously at some point before that Tuesday morning because I was beginning to catch drifts about far, far too many other of us DEhuman parents similarly threatened and terrorized with the state’s just swooping in and scooping up and away from us women … our babes! Was Dr. Legion True, the atheist feminist, being ‘blessed’ here with a ‘premonition’ about … precedence … as I wrote and as I practiced?! One of the thoughts that did not strike me, and one that, by now, so, so should have … was that no matter how important, how child – impacting I believed my passions and my struggles to be … all of them meant, as they likewise had meant to Herry, to Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, to Mr. Shindy Scheisser and, for that matter, to Custody Evaluator Canard and to my very own former Attorneys Jazzy Jinx and Carlotta Klutz, … all of them meant exactly squat to appellate judges. And … these people were not about to care for, let alone, to even read my documents. Nor … to study them, to research them, to cross – reference any and to look for buried, not to mention, obvious lies, errors and contradictions between my written statements and those of Herry’s or of Judge Butcher’s?! Well … forgeddabooudit!! NOTHING… absolutely nothing, when Dr. Legion True began what truly amounted to nothing more than my argumentative soliloquy moments after Mehitable had sat herself down, had by even one of these three appellate judges been read through … ONCE! NOT EVEN ONE TIME!… read through. THE CRUSH of this realization came crashing in on me within just mere seconds of my ending the Argument’s very first paragraph. Word for word, the whole of it began, “Good Morning, your Honors. My name is Legion True, and I am the mother of Zane, Jesse and Mirzah Truemaier. Zane will be 18 and Jesse will be 16 in August, and Mirzah will be 15 in September. As you know, I am here to beg you to reverse in full the 09 December 1992 Ruling made by Judge Harley Butcher in Storm County, thereby causing full physical and legal custody of all these children to be placed with me. I am here this morning with my friends from all over Iowa to highlight only a few points from my written statements that, I am told, you have already studied.” Within one – half of the first second of my utterance of this introduction’s last eight words, “that, I am told, you have already studied,” I saw something inside my already started, precious ten minutes which set my essence on fire. And I still had 9½ of these minutes yet to thrash through! Judge Pansy Shawshank cranked her torso around and, quite literally in such that tornadic twist of hers, shot over to Judge Barry L. Crowrook a dazed visage of incredulity the likes of which made it perfectly crystal clear to me and to all of us who witnessed her sudden head jerk and her entire neck and shoulders’ forward swing in Judge Crowrook’s direction –– and his countenance similarly then returned right back at her! –– that she, he and their stone – faced and silent centerpiece who was Chief Judge Donnellson had no fucking idea as to what … I had just made reference! Because not a solitary one of them had read even Word One of any of my previously submitted documents. They didn’t even know who I was! They had never even heard of me until just that second opening sentence of mine, and none of them had had any previous inkling at all as to what Jesse Truemaier, Mirzah Truemaier, Zane Truemaier and Dr. Legion True had all been through! I wanted to break –– as was my heart. Premonition … all right! The Boys’ and my lives I could foresee, for yet one more time again, were in that friggin’ toilet and about to get its royal flush. My eyes blinked and my head shook one time ever just so slightly off to my right. Like those two simple motions were, alone, going to make for me and for ‘my case’ an entire untruth … of that which I had just beheld. I, by virtue of momentary denial of what I’d just seen, could make it all … all right again, couldn’t I? And … I continued my Argument through … to its complete and utter end, “The issue, of course, is clear –– and explanation, argument and authority surrounding it begins on page 14 of my Blue Brief and Argument: THAT Judge Butcher’s December 1992 Ruling is wrong and illegal, and the Truemaier children belong in my sole physical and legal custody. Both my documents, the blue Brief and Argument and the gray Reply Brief, of course give great detail as to why this is so … however, the TRUEMAIER BOYS’ lives, their spirits and their futures as adults –– AND THE LIVES AND FUTURES OF MANY, MANY DISPUTED CUSTODY CASE CHILDREN TO FOLLOW THIS ONE –– will be summed up in your answering –– BY YOUR DECISION ON THIS APPEAL –– two questions that the 1992 Trial raised: the first one is: WHY IS DR. HEROD EDINSMAIER ALLOWED TO CROSS THE LINE AT ALL, LET ALONE, ENCOURAGED AND ‘REWARDED’ FOR STEPPING WAY OVER THE SANE, MORAL –– AND LEGAL –– BOUNDS OF CUSTODIAL PARENTING? and the second question raised by the Trial that your decision on this Appeal will answer is: WHAT IS THE LEVEL OF CORRUPTION, CONTUMACY, CONTUMELY, INEQUITY –– AND PLAIN OUTRIGHT JUDICIAL ERROR AND INCOMPETENCE THAT THE HIGH JUDICIARY IS WILLING TO TOLERATE AND TO ACCEPT? The answers to these two questions are under your control by your decision after today … and will be used in future arguments where the cases then smack of the same treatment in them as was accorded the Truemaier Children and me by the state district court in December 1992. You see, the first question doesn’t ask IF he stepped over the line? WE ALL KNOW HE DID … OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER … it asks how come the court didn’t stop him from doing so, and instead, rewarded him, a community pillar, one of the nobility, a doctor no less, along with his chosen step – parent for the Truemaier Boys, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, for doing so … and then for committing perjury and witness tampering to boot. And the answer you give by your decision to the second question will, you see, be along the lines of what high federal courts decide is their answer to corruption. For example, with Congressman Dan Rostenkowski having been indicted recently over what are, to me, incredible instances of abuse by him of my meager tax dollar, the federal prosecutor last week at a press conference asked America the same questions: Should we not expect to have and accept only ZERO TOLERANCE for corruption in our national government? So, ANALOGOUSLY, I am asking you this morning, by this second question, HOW MANY EXAMPLES OF INEQUITABLE TREATMENT, HOW MANY EXAMPLES OF COMPLETELY SCREWED – UP “FINDINGS OF FACT,” HOW MANY EXAMPLES OF ABUSE OF DISCRETION IN DOLING OUT AND / OR ENFORCEMENT OF COURT ORDERS BY A DISTRICT JUDGE ARE YOU WILLING TO ACCEPT AND TO TOLERATE? FOR ARGUMENT’S SAKE, THAT IS, IS ONE SCREWED – UP FINDING OF FACT ACCEPTABLE TO YOU? ARE THREE, SIX, A DOZEN? JUDGE BUTCHER, IN JUST HALF OF THE 26 PAGES OF HIS RULING MANAGED TO ACCRUE, BUNGLE AND RE-WRITE INTO FICTION, AT LEAST … AT LEAST 40 DIFFERENT EXAMPLES OF ERROR –– –– THAT’S JUST THE ERRORS ON FINDINGS OF SO – CALLED “FACT” … SO I AM, FURTHERMORE ASKING YOU HOW MANY INSTANCES OF HIS NOT ABIDING BY THE RULES OF PROCEDURE ARE YOU WILLING TO TOLERATE AND ACCEPT? I mean, just for examples’ sake, it took Appellee Herod Edinsmaier 118 days to reply to an Application to the Court re Visitation which is in blatant violation of Civil Rule of Procedure #53. Then when he got around to it, he decided to counter – sue for child support –– this from a man who sends me a letter recently saying he lost my December 1993 support check, and can’t find it … so that’s why it hasn’t cleared my bank yet … BUT with regard to the 118 days late, nothing, nothing at all happens to him for his being this incredibly tardy about a matter of CHILDREN GETTING TO SEE THEIR MOM … OR NOT … AND THEN THAT APPLICATION IS WITHDRAWN WITH A FORMAL PETITION FOR FULL CUSTODY REPLACING IT … BUT … JUDGE BUTCHER, BY DECEMBER 1992, “FORGETS” THAT THIS 118 – DAY ‘ANSWER’ FROM THE APPELLEE, THEN PETITIONER EDINSMAIER, ISN’T EVEN AT ISSUE AT TRIAL ANYMORE BECAUSE THE APPLICATION THAT IT WAS AN ANSWER TO, WAS COMPLETELY WITHDRAWN WAY BACK IN APRIL 1992, AND REPLACED WITH THE PETITION FOR FULL CUSTODY. NOT ONLY DOES JUDGE BUTCHER ALLOW IT, HE ACTUALLY MAKES RULINGS ON IT … HE ACTUALLY GIVES A MAN CHILD SUPPORT –– –– WHO OBVIOUSLY DOES NOT VALUE MY MEAGER SUPPORT CHECK ENOUGH TO HANG ONTO IT !!! AND MORE EXAMPLES … WHY DID JUDGE BUTCHER LET MS. FANNIE ISSICRAN McLIVE STAY INSIDE THE COURTROOM AFTER HER TESTIMONY WHILE, INSTEAD, WILLFULLY AND VERBALLY AND STRICTLY KEEPING ALL OF MY SUPPORTIVE WITNESSES OUT? WHY CAN’T I MAKE OBJECTIONS?? WHERE ARE DR. EDINSMAIER’S MEDICAL RECORDS JUDGE BUTCHER, HIMSELF, ORDERED ON 13 OCTOBER 1992, THAT I RECEIVE FROM DR. EDINSMAIER BUT NEVER DID RECEIVE … WHY DIDN’T MS. FANNIE ISSICRAN McLIVE, WHO WAS SERVED A PROPER AND TIMELY SUBPOENA DUCES TECUM, BRING TO THE COURT THE DOCUMENTS SHE WAS SUBPOENAED TO BRING … WHY DIDN’T JUDGE BUTCHER ORDER HER TO COMPLY WITH THE SUBPOENA –– –– OR FIND HER IN CONTEMPT FOR WILLFULLY NOT COMPLYING? WHY DIDN’T I GET A WITNESS LIST, DOCUMENTS PRODUCED UPON DISCOVERY AND ANSWERS TO ANY INTERROGATORIES? HOW COME JUDGE BUTCHER SPOKE TO ME IN ABUSIVE, PATRIARCHAL MANNERS WHILE CHIDING WITH THE PETITIONER’S ATTORNEY, MR. SCHEISSER, FOR EXAMPLE, ABOUT ‘WHAT THE HECK IS RANK HEARSAY? … IF THAT EVEN EXISTS!’ HOW COME JUDGE BUTCHER ALLOWED ATTORNEY SCHEISSER TO CALL ME ‘HOSTILE’ AND ‘BELLIGERANT’… SIMPLY BECAUSE I COULDN’T HEAR?! AND –– FINALLY –– HOW COME JUDGE BUTCHER DIDN’T MENTION IN HIS DIATRIBE OF A RULING, ANY, NOT EVEN ONE, OF THE INCREDIBLE NUMBERS OF INSTANCES OF ALIENATION AND ABUSE BY DR. EDINSMAIER OF ME AND THE BOYS, STARTING WITH THE 25 SEPTEMBER 1990 AMES TRIBUNE ARTICLE AND DR. EDINSMAIER’S LYING ABOUT HIS INVOLVEMENT WITH IT RIGHT UP TO MENTIONING HOW IT WAS THAT DR. EDINSMAIER AND MS. McLIVE BOTH FALSIFIED THEMSELVES TO A CUSTODY EVALUTOR TWICE, NOT TELLING HER ANYTHING ABOUT HIS ‘FEARS OF OTHERS LEARNING THE TRUTH ABOUT ME’ AND ABOUT HER RECENT, DOCUMENTED HISTORY OF HOSPITALIZATION FOR PANIC ATTACK DISORDER AND POST – RAPE STRESS SYNDROME. EVEN DR. CANARD HERSELF STATED THAT THE BOYS FEEL THEIR DAD NEVER ACTUALLY WANTED THEM; HE JUST WANTED TO LOOK GOOD, THEY FELT, AND THAT LIKE THE OLD DOG – IN – THE – MANGER STORY, HE WOULD DO ANYTHING TO KEEP ME FROM HAVING THEM AS WELL … And the STALKING PHONE CALLS … SINCE JULY 1990, TO THE PRESENT HOUR … these have shown up on MY OWN 800# PHONE BILL ! FINALLY … DR. EDINSMAIER’S INCREDIBLE PERJURY –– ABOUT HOW IT WAS THAT HE, DR. EDINSMAIER HIMSELF, HAD HAD FAMILY AND INDIVIDUAL COUNSELING REGULARLY FOR A YEAR DURING WHICH TIMES, DR. EDINSMAIER TESTIFIED, A PSYCHOLOGIST COUNSELED HIM TO KEEP THE BOYS AWAY FROM THEIR MOTHER –– WHEN ALL OF THIS TESTIMONY OF HIS ABOUT THIS COUNSELING WAS SUBSEQUENTLY PROVEN TO BE AN OUTRIGHT LIE AS WELL … AND WHY DIDN’T JUDGE BUTCHER MAKE ANY MENTION IN THAT HEINOUS RULING OF HIS ABOUT THE FACT THAT DR. EDINSMAIER NOT ONLY DID NOT BRING FORTH ONE WITNESS TO SUPPORT HIM, … OR, FOR THAT MATTER, SUPPORT ANYTHING THAT JUDGE BUTCHER RULED FOR HIM … BUT THAT I BROUGHT FORTH 12, A DOZEN WITNESSES, RANGING IN AGES FROM 77 TO 12 … TO A CHILD OF 12 … AND 49 EXHIBITS WHICH INCLUDED AMONG THESE EXHIBITS WERE ---SIGNED AFFIDAVITS FROM THE BOYS THEMSELVES, THEIR ONLY MEANS, AS TEENAGED TALENTED AND GIFTED KIDS TO EXPRESS THEIR VOICE IN THIS MATTER OF THEIR SPIRITS AND THEIR FUTURES, TO SUPPORT ME … AND … THEMSELVES! THIS RULING –– ACCORDING TO THE INCREDIBLE PREPONDERANCE ( –– MOUNTAINS OF IT –– ) OF EVIDENCE PRESENTED –– REPRESENTS A SIGNIFICANT, EXTREME, SEVERE, CRUEL AND BARBARIC DEPARTURE FROM, SHALL I SAY, … “SENTENCING” GUIDELINES! SO. … HOW MANY EXAMPLES OF THIS JUDICIAL ABUSE AND INEQUITABLE TREATMENT –– –– REGARDING i) THE “HANDLING” OF WOMEN AND ii) THE HORRENDOUS ABUSE OF CHILDREN BY YOUR LOWER JUDGES –– –– ARE YOU, THE COURT OF APPEALS, WILLING ***TO HAVE GO INTO THE RECORD*** AS ACCEPTING AND TOLERATING? OF COURSE, THE ANSWER TO BOTH QUESTIONS THAT I HAVE POSED HERE THIS MORNING IS KNOWN BY ALL OF US HERE TODAY … IT’S IN THE CODE OF IOWA … THE LAW SAYS: “THE ATTEMPT TO ALIENATE A CHILD IS ALONE SUFFICIENT GROUNDS … TO CHANGE CUSTODY.” THAT’S CUSTODY ---- NOT ANYTHING LESS. ANY QUESTIONS?” And I was done with the dinging of the time – bell spouting off just a couple of seconds afterward –– as if to gong, “O!? Okay then, time’s up! We’re done here. Let’s all go home now.” There wasn’t one question asked of me. Not even one. And then it was Lackey Lawyer’s turn. I was still so viscerally stunned from Judge Pansy Shawshank’s own evidential, gut physical reaction to my pronouncement that they knew ‘my case’ –– when, actually, they so obviously did not that, after I had sat down, I barely heard a fumbling, mumbling word Lackey gave to the panel of jurists. And then it was all over with. Done. It was so, so true: time for us all to go home again because they all filed out through that same back door. No questions. No responses. No further reactions. I have no idea to this day if any of these specific three Iowans even has inside her or his throats … a larynx! Folks smiled at me, shook my hand and kept nodding up and down –– like folks do as they try to reassure others that “everything’s gonna be all right” –– when it isn’t. And they already pretty much know that –– that it soooo is not going to be okay –– that that … is the TRUTH!. By only 9:30 a.m. then, all was over and done with and we as a posse, sort of, were filing out of the Capitol Building on the way to our cars in the parking lot. A dry and sunny day that Tuesday with the bluest of clear Iowa spring skies, almost The Opera’s entire end, its Act Three Part Five –– –– with only ‘the Ruling’ on it all … yet to be forthcoming. No, I’m no lawyer; but I thought I had done, presentation – wise, fairly well. I am certainly no public speaker either so I shall always be the very first to admit when things and events of mine like that go badly – but I truly did believe that I had delivered the actual best of which I was capable! I did believe that. Not knowing then, as I now believe any attorney licensed in Iowa would have or should have known, that there were startling, unpredictable, out of the blue, tricky little quirks and twists and tweaks moooore than likely with the empanelling of a given set of appellate judges, I sighed yet one more time. And blithely set about, again, awaiting for these three humans’ decision. They, of the nebulous term ‘the Court’, were really and truly just ordinary people –– and, most certainly, nothing god – like. Plain human beings they were –– just like me and the Truemaier Boys, not? With Grace’s lovely, quiet smile and László’s supportive – and confidence – inspiring handshake, I went back to my several jobs and my life as a daytime university secretary … again and a nighttime medical transcriptionist … again –– –– but, not yet anyhow, a true True mama … again. Returned I did to the Havencourt condominium and to my upcoming summertime of continued aloneness –– only to be slammed a week after the Argument by receipt via the United States Postal Service into its same ol’ nondescript, flap – style, black mailbox of that billing from, now, Ragingly Pissed – Off Herry … for Jesse’s Blue Hazelnut Ridge hospitalization to its wrathful tune in to that mother – fucking pussy of $3,529.17 –– to which, right then, she still paid no heed. And I never will. Anyhow, by now at least one of my always – ahead – of – deadline – time, in – full, three monthly child support checks which Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, soooo not in any need whatsoever at all of any of these, went on to lose! over the course of their 81 months’ total worth of counter – petitioned – for, thus, manly – man – decreed amounts, … daMan HAD already … lost! * * * * While I waited for The Opera’s end to come through these three people’s decision, a quite queer thing, indeed, happened. I was very, very happy about it. Of course, I was. But. But –– because of and by it –– I was also made all the more suspicious of Herry Edinsmaier’s true intentions as to not only me but also as to the Good and Wonderful Doctor’s very core ideas! regarding the actual welfare! of ‘his’ Truemaier Boys! Another of Herry’s stinging, thwacking and stabbing missives arrived inside that Havencourt mailbox which supplied the guts of my distrust about Herry’s designs upon my heart and actually upon my utter, entire life’s essence. The letter arrived on a late Tuesday afternoon, the 05th day of July 1994, following a three – day University holiday celebrating the country’s but certainly not my nor the Boys’ independence; we four were still so horrifyingly and inextricably indentured to Herry. So the letter and its contents make me, to this very day, wholly untrusting of a man supposedly so, so ‘certain’ and definitely so murderously public about how evil and how crazed an influence on ‘his’ Boys … Dr. Legion True is. Why would … at any time … during any year … whilst Zane Truemaier, Jesse Truemaier and Mirzah Truemaier were yet still minors and could be fatherly and custodially and –– now, for sure –– “legally,” er, “United States – Constitutionally!” kept away from an alleged demented monster, especially one allegedly so monstrous to and for and around children! –– –– then … why would this so – called Good and Wonderful “Healer,” if he were so truly worried, in daMan’s core!, about the supposed health and well – being! of his three kiddos, … … write me, Legion True, O She Who IS So Evilly Crazed, dated on Saturday, 02 July 1994, so very, very soon after i) my second, stealth jaunt into Grubtrop territory and then ii) Jesse’s April and May mind troubles and iii) the June Court of Appeals hearing and iv) Ferocious Herry’s fury in that subsequent billing for Jesse’s medical care just 2½ weeks previously and v) Dr. Legion True’s full and utter disregard for any man’s dictated – down – upon – her “program of mental therapy!” … a “program” never, ever, ever going to even begin to take place! … … write me, Legion True, these following words? Why would any professedly accountable father with his purported highest concern now even more heightened and his wanting, of course, not to endanger his children any further than they ‘already’ had been imperiled by such a heinous mother, write that Monster Mama – Legion these very words? Verstehen?!?! Verbatim. “Dear Legion: Jesse has informed me of his desire to live in Ames with you, and I am willing to consider it if you will agree to the following provisions: He will come to Ames for a minimum of one semester; and if after that time he wishes to return to West Virginia he may do so without question. I will pay you monthly child support while he resides with you, but in any case that support would terminate at the time he graduates from high school. Neither you nor he will ask me for additional money. I would be willing to discuss other arrangements should he decide to enroll in college near Ames and reside with you. I am not agreeing to joint custody. I have no desire to share the divorce decree and modifications with anyone and see no reason for anyone to ask after we assure them that the matter is not in dispute. If you will give all interested persons or institutions a written statement that it is your desire that Jesse’s father be consulted whenever parental input is required I will verify that fact. Should they require documentation, you may select, subject to my approval, appropriate paragraphs from the rulings. I will continue to list him as my dependent on my insurance policy and you will be responsible for one half of any health – related expense. Rather than reimburse you, I will deduct half of any payments you make from any outstanding balance which you owe me. My policy will cover 100% of emergency expenses, but will cover only 50% of any non – emergency services which are also available at United Hospital Center. Nervous, mental and substance abuse are subject to a 50% limitation with a lifetime limit of $20,000, now reduced to approximately $13,500 because of his recent hospitalization. I will provide you with a copy of the benefits booklet. If your insurance plan has better coverage and he could be listed as your dependent, I would consider reimbursing you for any additional premium, but I would have to see the details first. I will provide you with a release which would enable you to obtain an emergency medical treatment, but you will obtain prior authorization from me before seeking any other treatment including counseling. You will encourage Jesse to take drivers training for two semesters but will not give him permission to get a learners permit or drivers license. You will continue to pay your monthly child support for Zane and Mirzah, and abide by all existing provisions of the divorce decree with modifications as regards to them. Should any matter arise which we cannot settle under the terms of this agreement, we both agree to immediately return to the present arrangement as set forth by the existing divorce decree with modifications. You may indicate that you agree with these provisions by signing at the bottom of this letter and by returning a copy of it to me with a copy of the statement referred to in paragraph 3 above. Upon receipt of those items I will send you the medical release. The first month’s support and begin making arrangements for Jesse’s transportation to Ames.” And again, Herry closed the letter by stating that he was “… sincerely … ” signing off. Dr. Monster Mama – Legion True couldn’t sign fast enough. O’course, I signed! And sent Domineering King Herod my reply back in that very evening’s outgoing mail dispatch from Ames –– again giggling at Highly Educated Herry’s garbage for grammar. Shit, Herry bin Patriarch was so worried about and gunning to get ‘correctly accurate’ for himself the money angle and the insurance percentages that The Terrorist had not even bothered to use hyphens, necessary commas, possessives and apostrophes appropriately nor to give the two adjectives, “nervous, mental,” even a noun for these qualifiers to modify! And, as with all of his letters to me from the past, Pillared Edinsmaier certainly hadn’t asked Spouse Fannie Issicran McLive, supposedly, at one time, a high school educator of English, to proofread, let alone, to edit it either –– likely … lest she find daMan’s writing skill bereft or, as a matter of fact, in absentia altogether –– and, therefore, be capable of criticizing his fuckups! Cuz, too, … “If always a teacher, Herry – Daddee, then you’re ever yourself … hardly at all … teachable!” But … But ‘twas to itemization number 8 that I paid the most attention. Item 8: Herry’s caveat, his ‘way out’ of anything and everything, The Dominator’s despotic measure to continue wielding that ironclad and totalitarian control of daMan’s over me and all of the Truemaier Boys … always. Although it was, indeed, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier who did state there in item 8, I most certainly did not believe for a moment that Harem Herry, in regard to me, merely an ex – cunt, was anywhere near to the condition of “we both agree to …” “Fuck, Herry,” I am thinking, “Nothing else had you ever, ever –– with me –– done this way so … so why would you, with respect to me –– me, DEhuman Legion True, whose first and last names you will never even, one time, say out loud to me and whom you, with all of your dollars and with all of your patriarchal and androcentric powers, so cunningly and immorally! painted to all of the judges in many, many an American courtroom, and to a host of others from potential, high – level employers of mine to the lowest of the Boys’ school officials, as such a psychopathic and evil monster, start to … now.” Wise I was –– to be untrusting. But, happy! … O … O … O … so, so very, very happy! I was ecstatic! Jesse, Jesse, Jesse … at the least, my Jesse … was finally coming to … actually … be … with me. Of course, I made a flurry of telephone calls after posting the signed response –– from Grace and László to Frieda Chicken Guthrie and Cyan Song and Linda –– the family which I had simply gone ahead and carved out for myself; a kinder, more tender one I had honed with Grandpa AmTaham True now almost 2½ years in the ground and Mehitable’s and Sterling’s continued betrayals of my trust. Margaret Sagely, too, was gone –– ashes only, now, was she; but Frieda was perfect as my mother – surrogate and a more excellently compassionate one I, at the Save – U – More delicatessen’s customer line, could not have accidentally found. I had plenty of sisterly persons in my life and even a couple of truly brotherly and fatherly folks, too. And I myself was about to begin … breathing again! I set about reviving and refreshing my own role as that of mother! by making one more telephone call the very next morning to the administrative department of Ames High School! Even a bustling place in mid summer –– this school. Garnering in all of the information which I and Jesse would need for him to enroll for the upcoming academic year of 1994 – 1995, as, indeed, a full – time and permanent sophomore student there! The next month’s worth of days dragged by. Finally, then, Jesse was … home! I took in the deepest of breaths, over and over, just to make sure that my whole body was correctly registering the wonderment of all of Jesse actually being right next to me. He relaxed right there in that rocking chair exactly next to me just a couple of feet away from the sofa and to where I could lean forward and stretch out my arm and hand and actually touch someone, a human being who was He, … My Child! Since Jesse’s physical arrival to me and back in the Havencourt ’hood with its condominium complex’s itty – bitty swimming pool and its scorched – earthly August courtyard came, literally, within just hours of his very 16th birthday, Grace and Lionel rang us both up with their invitation to accompany Mama and Papa Portia for an all – out day’s activities down in Des Moines at Iowa’s famous –– or infamous –– State Fair! Our own little, four – person celebratory party. Perhaps not exactly replete with the homemade birthday cake and the vanilla ice cream and all of their young friends over –– as always before when Jesse and Mirzah and Zane had all been much, much littler on their respective birthday holidays and I, most alone and quite sans any aid at all from Selfish Daddee – Herry who was entirely loathe to work! at any of this effort! had put together all of the commemorative festivities for the Truemaier Boys –– but, nevertheless, as full up of the welcoming hoo – hah as possible now that Jesse was a big, big 16 –– and, most importantly, … here! Grace’s and Lionel’s middle child, Nathan, long, long the truest friend Jesse had had as a fourth grader at Kate Mitchell Elementary, was not in the mix of us at the Iowa State Fair; and I cannot recall why. It was still summer break, and Jesse’s 15 August actual birthday consumed by the Fair’s activities was a Monday. Perhaps Nathan was working –– putting in at MacDonald’s then as an authentic store manager there at such a young, young age some of those incredibly lengthy, burger – flipping hours which he routinely did –– and so was, therefore, simply unable to accompany all of us. Jesse spent this particular day rather reservedly taking in much of the Fair sights; but he, … upon which Grace and Lionel both remarked later and I too, of course, had most certainly noticed, … Jesse certainly did not talk much nor even display facial animation, not even on the Midway with its splendid and massive rides and games of chance, always a part of the Fair –– but an entire segment of it from which Grace and I both said we’d kept away in previous Augusts when it was just we adults who’d attended the Fair. Jesse was mighty, mighty quiet for several days thereafter, as a matter of fact, and some may have thought, but not I, that he was even somewhat sullen. I thought Jesse was scared. Outright fucking frightened of this new deal of his … of its not being real. Of its actually not being the real deal! So, “Why should I get comfortable here when it isn’t going to last past Wednesday of next week!” or some such thoughts I imagined crossing from one of his temples to the other. After all, I knew I myself would believe the same thing –– and, subsequently, feel it, too –– had I been one of the children let go of, one of them captured and then, years later, “released by” Stockholm Syndrome – Perpetrator Herry. School began at Ames High, and that brought with it not only the fall junior – varsity football season with its practices and games but also the return to his active acquaintance of many of Jesse’s old friends formerly from Kate Mitchell, kiddos just as happy as hell to see Jesse back, and a passel of new ones now that all those of his particular age inside the city were congregating in their various classes every day up at Ames’ one high school! * * * * Before much of any of these activities actually got underway and before Jesse resumed his piano lessons, before I could think about enrolling him in and paying its whopping, couple hundred bucks’ fee for the driver’s education course, the multi – page decision from those three black robes visited and filled that black Havencourt mailbox –– again: the conclusion of The Opera’s Act Three Part Five. Proverbially the fat lady, when I reached inside of that thickened manila mailer to retrieve its contents, Legion True again alone with the comfort of my trusty rocking chair on the very day after Darling Zane’s 18th coming – of – majority – age birthday, Wednesday, the 24th of August 1994, … that fat lady, … that so recognizably common one … got herself right ready to come onto and rock My World’s stage –– –– and … sing. She, as the Blindfolded Balancer of Justice, her orchestrated role, far, far and away puppeteered by men only who are aided by a few male – identified females also working in ‘the law’, actually brings us DEhumans in American courts of family law no justice whatsoever. Justice, the Fat Lady, warbled out all right, “It is the decision of this Court to AFFIRM that of the Second Judicial District Court.” And, then, there upon its first sheet appeared a few more doodle – type phrases of legalese before its being signed off on, first, by that dude from the middle, from the midst of the three judges, Chief Donnellson, a guy now dead, I am told. And who has been dead and gone for years –– apparently shortly after he signed that piece of paper. The one who obviously was not about to go contrary to how it was that he, Donnellson, had first decided and ruled for Daddee – Herry and soooo against me after my very first appeal, the one facilitated for me by Attorney Carlotta Klutz and also the appeal known as Act Two Part Three! Reverse his official stance? O, Fuck NO!!! No! Why, that’d be like, Jury, aaah, O … admitting that he, dah Chief! … the chief of some deal patriarchally huge! (ya’ know, big, like a state’s appellate court!) had, his first time around then, … MADE A MISTAKE!!! No way was there going to come such an admittance from such a pillared man, not to mention, an admission of guilt and initial wrongdoing to the face of … a cunty pussy – twat nor any of her whoresons! No fucking way! The Iowa Court of Appeals Chief Judge Donnellson, … instead … , strutted out onto those Wednesday afternoon golf greens or into the back lounge of some favorite fancy, shmancy local, Des Moines watering hole of his and over a couple of smoked – up meerschaum pipefuls and guffaws at Dr. Legion True’s expense, roped in two more of his old chums to sign on to this appeal decision with him! Two who hadn’t even heard my fucking precious ten minutes’ worth of argument on that Tuesday morning of the 07th of June! And two judges whom I utterly believe to this very day and before affixing their own two signatures, both of them with male – appearing names, to the appellate ruling, had studied up on ‘my case’ exactly … SQUAT. That is to say: I believe neither one of these two newest men ‘now’ put on to ‘my case’ had read NOT even ONE MOTHER – FUCKING WORD of what it was I had submitted in multiple documents or arguments before –– or on –– that June date to the State of Iowa’s Court of Appeals –– on … on the Second Judicial District Court’s UNlawful activities, that is, on High Courtier Harley Butcher’s district court decision fuck – ups! What ages’ old cronyism! A single, poor woman stripped of her three babies is supposed to deal –– squarely, ruggedly and fairly –– with that, is she, Jury!?! “Shit!” I am thinking, “Just where in this whole Mother – Fucking did those two names come from, …. now?!?!” Of these signatories I recognized one as its having been the name of one of the three men who had signed off on the documents of my first appeal, for Act Two Part Three, the farcical shambles done solely from paper only and handled to its unsuccessful and so – sad completion by Attorneys Carlotta Klutz and Shindy Scheisser –– so who knows if this particular second appeal’s ‘new’ man had studied, as well, even one word of that first one’s briefs … either?!?! But the other man’s name on the ruling of Act Three Part Five, this literal last – ditch appeal, I had never, ever even seen written anywhere before … on anything of ‘my case.’ These two ‘new’ motherfuckers –– but friends of the highest guy, the boss of that court, that is –– these fuckers plainly knew absolutely nothing of me and mine! Nothing. So my earlier thinking on that June’s Tuesday morning –– the thinking about how it was that at least my having, then, two new people of the three on the panel, Judges Pansy Shawshank and Barry Crowrook, hearing my arguments would be a good thing? “Fuck!” I thought now, “All — absolutely all of that goodness with mostly new people on the bench up there and with that phenomenon possibly working to my favor ‘nd all? Well, shit, that’s now, with one fell fuck of Chief Judge Donnellson’s, that is now … entirely lost!” I looked at the thickness of the appellate ruling and wondered, well, … why? Why so many more pages to it if Iowa’s Court of Appeals had just altogether affirmed ol’ Harley Butcher’s –– and then, too, Terrorist bin Daddee’s –– last, possible butchering of Legion True’s and the Truemaier Boys’ lives! “Wait! There’s more to this,” I saw six pages at its end, double – spaced, which began and which ended quite differently than any of the few front ones with Donnellson’s and his two know – nothing cronies’ names on them. “Well, well, well,” I saw the Truth of the matter, “Iowa’s Court of Appeals’ people had not just altogether affirmed damned Butcher and Mother – Fucking Herry after all!!! What in the hell do these last six pages truly state?” I read. And I was aghast! Flummoxed! The realization of what had just taken place, the Mother – Fucking, began to totally sink in! One of my children, so long not seen and not heard from, had just been declared the day before … an adult! By the factual singularity of his 18th birthday. And another one of my children was soon to come home to me from a first day in years and years back in the for – all – of – their – minor – educations’ – “vowing” – in – Daddee’s – first – “sworn” – affidavit Ames school system –– and this, this Mother – Fucking, was staring me square in my face! It began out of the keyboard of Judge Pansy Shawshank and was, with its very last sentence, ‘quietly’ signed off on … also … by Judge Barry L. Crowrook –– and all of it made, in the end, not one damned, friggin’ bit of positive difference to the actual day – to – day comings and goings and thinkings and doings of … any one of the fucked four of us, Dr. Legion True or Zane Truemaier or Mirzah Truemaier or Jesse Truemaier. TWO out of the three total –– of the state court’s appellate judges who had even bothered to be present on the 07th of June that year to supposedly listen to ‘my case’ –– signed off on what –– legally, er, …“constitutionally” !!! –– turned out to be known as Iowa’s Court of Appeals’ … “Dissenting Opinion” !!! In its beginning Judge Shawshank wrote, “I dissent.” She then, along with this biggy court’s newest – appointed high dude, Barry L. Crowrook agreeing in toto, continued in its dissenting entirety, “The majority has affirmed a decision that prevents Legion from having any contact or visitation with her three teenage sons. I cannot agree this mother, having devoted a substantial portion of her life to the careful upbringing of her sons, should now be totally isolated from them. I would modify the decision to provide Legion have visitation and the opportunity to contact the children, and I would remand to the trial court to appoint an attorney for the children. When Legion and Herod were divorced, physical care of the children was awarded to Legion. Herod asked for a modification of physical care and physical care was transferred to him. This court affirmed the modification and concluded its opinion with the statement, “This record reveals Herod is more willing and able to assist the children to develop a strong relationship with both parents than is Legion. [She inserts In re Marriage of Edinsmaier v True, 475 N.W.2d, 657, 660 (Iowa App.1991) here, that is, the nomenclature which was actually the Act Two Part Three appeal ...] Looking at the record before us in this appeal, I DO NOT THINK WE COULD HAVE BEEN MORE WRONG when we predicted Herod would help the children develop a strong relationship with both parents. I can only conclude from the record before us that after Herod received physical care, HE AND HIS CURRENT WIFE engaged in a course of conduct DESIGNED to TOTALLY CUT LEGION OFF from her three young sons WHO HAVE CONTINUALLY DECLARED THEY WISH TO BE IN THEIR MOTHER’S CUSTODY. The tragedy of this case is two intelligent, well – educated parents have not been able to put personal animosities aside following their dissolution to work collectively for the betterment of their children. Herod is an M.D. who has passed pathology boards. He is currently employed at an excellent job and has financial resources to hire an attorney. Legion has an R.N., a D.V.M., and a Ph.D. in Veterinary Microbiology. She has had difficulty in recent years finding employment. Legion attributes this in part to publicity Herod’s attorney caused to be disseminated following certain hearings. Legion has minimal employment and limited resources. She represents herself in this proceeding. Legion contends there has been gender discrimination in her case and she alleges a conspiracy in the judicial system. While I feel pro se representation has put her at a disadvantage, I do not agree with her contention she has been the subject of gender discrimination or there is a conspiracy against her in the judicial system. While I disagree with the majority decision on the issues she has raised, I am convinced my fellow judges’ votes with the majority are not the result of gender discrimination or a judicial conspiracy. Legion is devastated by being cut off from her children, and she is frustrated with the legal process. She has very strong love for her sons and they for her. She spent years as a devoted mother evidenced by her sons’ success and their affection for her. Her education, background, and interest in good education put her in a position of being able to enrich their lives. Legion has given her children much AND HAS NEVER HARMED THEM. THEY ARE STRONGLY BONDED TO HER. I recognize Legion was hospitalized for ALLEGED [… It was sleep deprivation!!! Heeeelloooo! … ] mental treatment. She has taken lithium [I was ‘court’ – ORDERED to take it!!! … then had to come in for years of monitoring –– ‘or else’ … ‘or else’ I would be involuntary committed to Cherokee State Mental Hospital !!! if I had refused to do so !!! … ] and other prescription drugs. Whether it was exhaustion and frustration or another problem, I am not competent to determine. However, WHATEVER her problem, THERE IS NOTHING IN THIS RECORD THAT INDICATES HER CONDITION HAS OR WOULD PUT HER CHILDREN AT RISK IF THEY WERE IN HER CARE. Herod, the father this court found would further a relationship with both parents, SUMMARILY CUT OFF Legion’s visitation with the children because he and his current wife determined Legion was communicating with the children and, in doing so, was derogatory to him and his wife and complained about a large number of letters Legion wrote to her children which he and his current wife obviously intercepted despite having been ordered by the trial court not to censor the children’s mail. Herod’s wife [This’d be, Jury, one kingly – identified Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive to whom here Judge Shawshank refers!] has summarized these letters with her editorial comments for the records. Legion’s letters had advice for her children on eating their vegetables, the dentist they were seeing, and the appeal of the former custody action. Legion sent magazine articles and poems to the boys with comments. Legion’s letters conveyed her concern Herod and his current wife might not provide for the children as they should and from the letters it is clear Legion has no affection for either of them. The stepmother’s reporting of the letters and her editorial comments made it clear the stepmother considered ANY ATTEMPT by Legion TO DO ANYTHING FOR THE BOYS, GIVE THE BOYS ADVICE, SEE THE BOYS AT BALL GAMES OR SCHOOL ACTIVITIES WAS AN INVASION ON HEROD’S CUSTODIAL RIGHTS TO THE CHILDREN. Herod lost his job in Des Moines and was looking for another. When Herod found a job in West Virginia he DID NOT TELL Legion or provide for her to see the children UNTIL THE DAY BEFORE he moved them. BY THIS TIME, ONE CHILD HAD RUN AWAY FROM HEROD’S HOME. WHEN HEROD TOOK THE OTHER TWO CHILDREN TO LEGION’S FOR VISITATION, [This would have been that very night and very laaaate, soooo unquakerly Agnes and P.M. Flunk – conspired fiasco!!! –– before Herry’s spiriting the Boys 890 miles away the next morning and the first time even that Zane, Jesse or Mirzah had learned of their leaving Iowa! …], HE DEMANDED TO SEARCH LEGION’S HOUSE [no warrant and the SEARCH WAS STILL DONE!], FOR THE MISSING CHILD [She was referring here, of course, to Jesse …]. The child was not with Legion but, rather, WAS HIDING IN THE WOODS NEAR HEROD’S HOME [… 45 MILES AWAY FROM LEGION’S HOUSE!!! And Jesse had now been missing for over six hours!!!] Herod moved to West Virginia THE NEXT DAY WITHOUT EVEN TELLING LEGION THE CHILD HAD BEEN FOUND AND WITHOUT ALLOWING HER TO SEE HIM. THIS CONDUCT BY HEROD AND HIS CURRENT WIFE IS NOT THE TYPE OF CONDUCT THAT FURTHERS THE CHILDREN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH LEGION. [Judge Pansy generously termed here King Herod’s male – identified Sheriff of Nottingham … “his current wife” whereas I, having “lived” that specific, exact “status” myself, thus knowing of it in Truth, have merely and more than one time and not at all so generously called “this condition” and same individual … … “his next cunt.”] Since the children moved to West Virginia in 1991, Legion has had practically NO CONTACT with them. She sent them a telephone and she has an 800 number [back in the days when a person had to pay for having such a number …] available to them. The children are forbidden to even call her. Legion rented a mailbox [It was a leased box at the Grubtrop Post Office; Zane clandestinely picked up the key to it although the post office was not conveniently located to a teenager walking.] at where she sent them letters but Herod put a stop to this, too. Legion has seen the children at their school and when Herod let one of the boys return to his grandmother’s in Iowa. Legion has used an alias to attempt to obtain information from the children’s school on their progress. I FIND THIS CONDUCT ON HEROD’S PART OUTRAGEOUS. IF HE AND HIS WIFE ARE SO INSECURE ABOUT THEIR POSITION AS CUSTODIANS THAT THEY ARE UNABLE TO DEAL WITH THE CHILDREN RECEIVING LETTERS AND PHONE CALLS FROM A MOTHER OVER 1,000 MILES AWAY, THEN I QUESTION THEIR ABILITIES TO BE CUSTODIANS. [Daaaah !!!] What bothers me the most about this proceeding is the children have not had legal representation; ALTHOUGH, IT APPEARS FROM THE RECORD, LEGION ATTEMPTED TO OBTAIN LEGAL REPRESENTATION FOR THEM. BOTH SIDES AGREE THE CHILDREN’S PREFERENCE … IS … TO BE WITH THEIR MOTHER. THE CHILDREN’S AGES AND INTELLIGENCE AND THEIR INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF THE CONDITIONS THAT EXIST IN BOTH HOUSEHOLDS … … CONVINCE ME [!!! … and, thus too, Judge Barry L. Crowrook !!!] … … THEIR PREFERENCE SHOULD BE GIVEN VERY SERIOUS WEIGHT and this is a case where the children should have had and should have an attorney representing their interests. [!!!] In denying Legion’s application for modification, the trial court criticized Legion for signing the boys up for activities in Ames when they were living in Urbandale with their father; publicly berating Herod; keeping Herod’s home under surveillance; encouraging the boys to sneak out without telling Herod; not informing Herod of important incidents in the children’s lives; taking the children to a family counselor in Ames without informing Herod and undermining his counselor; secretly sending telephones to the boys; installing an 800 number to receive calls at a reduced rate from Herod’s home without his knowledge; and having the secret mailbox in West Virginia and sending mail for the children there and to a friend of the boys. LEGION CANDIDLY ADMITS SHE HAS ATTEMPTED TO STAY IN CONTACT WITH THE BOYS through mail and an 800 number. She is upset these attempts have been thwarted. I AGREE WITH HER [!!! … and, thus too, does Judge Barry L. Crowrook !!!] THAT THESE WERE … CLEARLY … REASONABLE … ATTEMPTS TO COMMUNICATE WITH HER CHILDREN. [“CLEARLY” !!! … “REASONABLE” !!!] The majority has affirmed, VIRTUALLY ISOLATING LEGION FROM HER CHILDREN. [NOW … HERE COMES THE MOTHER – FUCKING IN ALL OF ITS ANDROCENTRIC, PATRIARCHAL, SPERM – / FATHERHOOD – EXALTING FUCKINGNESS: THE PRECEDENT!!!] TOTALLY TERMINATING THE VISITATION BETWEEN A NONCUSTODIAL PARENT WHERE THERE IS SUBSTANTIAL BONDING BETWEEN THE NONCUSTODIAL PARENT AND THE CHILDREN IS … WITHOUT PRECEDENT. Even in In re Marriage of Udelhofen, 444 N.W.2nd 473 (Iowa 1989), where the Iowa Supreme Court affirmed our modification transferring custody from a mother to a father after finding the mother told the child the father no longer loved him and the father was possessed by the devil, visitation was not terminated. Id. at 476.