Chapter Twenty – One The Beginnings of the Bureau of Loss
Chapter Twenty – One
The Beginnings of the Bureau of Loss
“We still discover the church, the
state, the world, all … regarding the
exercise of her own judgment
even upon the
questions most closely related to herself as … woman’s greatest sin.”
--- Matilda
Joslyn (Gage) on page 310 in Chapter Six, “Wives”,
of her 1893 work, Woman, Church and State
http://www.sacred-texts.com/wmn/wcs
Forty
years old I had turned on my last birthday, the 1987 Winter Solstice. AmTaham’s birthday too, he was, therefore,
now exactly 68 and still working full – time as the farmland and small town
real estate broker he had been for probably 15 to 18 years or so. I had been off to New York City, Woodstock
and other points east when he had first taken up this endeavor at around his
age of 50 or a bit after so I’m not at all sure when he actually began in that
line of work in Williamsburg which related fairly well, as a matter of fact, to
the graduate studies he had completed at Iowa State University in the early
1960s in agricultural economics.
AmTaham
himself conducted all of his own clerical duties associated with the
profession’s transactions inside quite a cozy little, dark wood – paneled and
self – built office immediately off of his and Mehitable’s kitchen to its
east. His walls there were decorated in
many, many things most AmTaham – like.
While the early 1970s were the beginnings of the heyday of the home
office, there was no computer and no fax machine yet. Not even a decent copier, let alone, a
cumbersome, inky mimeograph machine.
Just
a black, one – line, residential – style telephone with a number different than
his and Mehitable’s personal telephone number and two typewriters. One for show; that was the black antique one
with gold lettering on it which dated from somewhere around the turn into the
20th Century. And another, a
small old bluish manual Smith – Corona upon which AmTaham hunted and pecked and
plinked his nine digits, the left pinkie having been whacked off at the age of
17 when he, alone and at its summit, unfroze with buckets of steaming hot water
the apparently scalpel – sharp blades of the steel windmill east of that red,
bedrock barn on his mama’s and daddy’s homestead, said barn with the hayloft in
which, day after day after school, AmTaham had grown up to be so
brilliant.
While
AmTaham may have wished for in his wife the skills of a secretary or a
stenographic and bookkeeping assistant, Mehitable was legally blind, had never
typed and more than likely would have, unlike any secret – keeping secretary
worth her or his paycheck shekels, meddled.
Pried and butted in to the point that AmTaham probably would’ve had to
fire her, an event that would have gone over much like a completed terrorists’
plot so, to prevent this future outcome, AmTaham, when he started in the
business, just took it upon himself to do it all, every aspect of it.
Same as the micromanaging approach that was his as a farmer, as a
steward and custodian of the animals and lands:
better to do it himself – and to be certain – than to place trust in
someone else to get it right the first time and on deadline using the utmost of
up – to – date information to be had at the time of the endeavor. This was AmTaham’s style.
It
wasn’t as if AmTaham had always or only functioned in this fashion. Like many, many landowner fathers, he
assigned several chores and duties to typically be done by my brother,
Sterling, and by me growing up, even some that, with more than a modicum of care
on our parts, could still result in great harm to limb or life should there be
something go amiss.
And
awry things did go. Often. It seemed my bro was forever tearing out the
fences when at the ends of rows he turned around the tractor dragging machinery
behind it; and for that, he took a heckuva lot of ribbing from AmTaham. And from me.
Good
fence – making in the 1940s, 50s and 60s was a religious sacrament with Iowa
land stewards. One does not see too many
fences of any kind anywhere in Iowa nowadays, probably because of more cropping
than the raising of pasture animals or the shepherding of cattle to clean up
the cornstalks; but back then, AmTaham was peerless. That man could string the straightest, sturdiest,
finest fence around. And did. His was a farm surrounded and contained by
premium creosote and green steel posts strung with the tautest of barbed, #9
brace and plain, even – squared fencing wire.
Perfectly leveled. Always
perfectly plumbed and leveled fences AmTaham’s were.
So. Sterling’s regularly ripping out AmTaham’s
sculptures was somewhat of a test of Daddy’s temper, as you can imagine. AmTaham had made a lifetime career out of
perfectly leveled structures be they studied opinions on the day’s stock
options he could never afford to own or his unstudied but deeply experienced
feel for humanity’s and civilizations’ interactions, his essays on various
aspects of agricultural economics and policy or those field fences encompassing
his and Mehitable’s 240 acres which a few seconds of slacker indifference by a
teenager hauling heavy – duty farm equipment who didn’t seem to take enough
care to understand AmTaham’s culture could annihilate.
It
was to that pristine little office and business phone line of AmTaham’s then
that I placed a call early one morning near the end of this first week in
October. The Truemaier Boys were all off
to school; it was probably Friday of that ‘being – served’ week … and I was so
wanting not to get my mother’s voice
in my receiver. This timing worked; and
since I was already on his business connection, Daddy would not be
interrupted. To AmTaham’s standard
method of answering the telephone, “Yes?
AmTaham True here,” I greeted him back with, “Hello, Daddy, it’s
Legion. How’s your humor today?” That’s code for, “I really don’t need to know
your temper, Daddy; it’s mine I’m calling you about” – of which,
of course, he was well aware.
“O
O O, if I weren’t ‘bout wore out, then I guess my temper’d be right on
track. You, Kitty? How’s yours?” A woman couldn’t ask, I have often thought,
for a kinder or sweeter sobriquet from her father than … Kitty. Daddy had called me that since I was old
enough to understand the meanings of any words; and for a rural farm kid
who, at any point in time, could count
from 13 to 40 felines gathered around her feet as she supplemented their raw,
wild diets with the table scraps slopped into the several cast – iron skillets
and battered metal pans behind the back porch which Mehitable no longer wanted,
Kitty was a label on me that I took from my father to be as one of the highest
esteem and regard. As big and as tough
as a farmer has to be, my daddy
revered the cunning and independent yet soft and purring but ever vigilant
cat. Unlike some farmers. Some who decidedly drowned the littlest ones
in the cow tank or aiming from off the tractor fender shot them for target
practice, same as they did the rodent and crop – destroying ground squirrels,
as the felines hunted in the tall prairie grasses or, simply from time to time
without even a pang or one twinge themselves, wrung their wee necks and tossed
their still – wriggling corpses up on the scrub wood pile to burn. He didn’t call me Kitty in order to shun me
or as a way out of using my given name Legion – such as Herry deliberately
always has or because dozens of daddies all the time everywhere seem to almost
purposefully degrade their little girls by using diminutive names such as Missy
or Sister or Mary or Littl’ that aren’t really their names at all. AmTaham True simply respected cats and
respected me so it was so by that extension.
“O
Daddy, it could be better I am thinking,” I said. “Of course I have a reason for calling you,
don’t I? An imminent one, I would have
to say,” I went on, expecting no answer.
“One, ah, … I’ve … I’ve never really had to discuss with you before.”
“O?”
AmTaham, as we know, rivals Grace as the greatest of the Great Listeners. Superb enough at it AmTaham is to teach at
her Listening College; that’s for sure.
Even as deaf as he now was.
Nearly always a man of few words but with massive amounts of patience,
too, almost beyond reason when it came to his kids. That tiniest of questions was my cue to
continue; I had his full and complete attention.
“Yeah,
Daddy, I’m gonna need a lawyer here.
And, as a matter of fact, ah, … right quick.”
“O
– O. We e e e ll.”
“Yeah. Anda’ I was wonderin’, umm, how does a person
go about deciding on which one to pick?
Ya’ know, besides the money? Ah,
… ah, besides needing to worry about the money, how much they’re gonna charge
and all, how do ya’ know who’s a good one to get or not?”
“Oooo,
Kitty, that one’s a doozy, all right.
Well, I guess before I can advise you, I’d have to know what your reason
for needing one is. You know as well as
I do, they’re not at all like veterinarians but, instead, a whole lot more like
physicians; attorneys specialize in different aspects of the law. If you don’t mind my asking, about what
aspect would your need be?” Since I’d
gone off to study veterinary medicine and had become a veterinarian, Daddy was
most careful in his speech about who was or who was not acclaimed a
doctor. At least around me or when I was
in the company of folks with whom he was conversing, AmTaham took to calling
doctors of human medicine physicians since I, in his and my minds, was every
inch and neuronal cell as much a doctor as Herry extolled himself off as
being. And at least AmTaham hadn’t used
the mistitle that it so, so is of ‘counselor’ in order to identify lawyers!
“Ah,
I s’pose it’d be family law then, Daddy.
Whoever handles divorces the best.
Umm, this one,” I had continued right on without missing a beat so as to
sound sort of nonchalant and unalarmed about it all, “aaah, … this one won’t be
like the divorce from John where it took, ya’ know, all of 30 minutes of a
general lawyer’s time, Daddy. This one’s
gonna have to do a lot more, I am thinking.
Anda’ … and, ah, ah, know a lot more, too.”
“O
sure. I’m sure you’re right about that,
Legion. So. I’d start with asking people you might know
from the Boys’ school as to whom they themselves use locally for
attorneys. Or maybe these same people
know of other folks’ divorces and who the lawyers were and how they went, the
outcomes, ya’ know.”
“Okay,
okay. That sounds good. Umm.
Then. About the money to get one
with, ya’ know, the retainer fee? What
should I expect to have to pay for that, do you think? And, ah, the hourly fee, what do lawyers
charge by the hour for this sort of thing, any idea?” This one really stymied me. I knew enough to be scared just to even hear
any answer to this query of mine. And I
had no idea how I was going to pay
for one except to try to borrow from the bank or from him and Mehitable.
Of
course, those most grateful words did come next, “If there’s anything else you
know of that your mother or I can help you out with, Kitty, then you’ll just
let us know, now won’t you?” The last
thing I needed right then was to hear Mehitable’s take on the subject matter of
this discourse of his and mine so I didn’t bother to ask AmTaham what he
thought she’d say about any of it. I
didn’t even ask if she was there and could be overhearing his side of the
conversation. As blind from her late 20s
as Mehitable has claimed for years and years to be, she has for hearing the
alleged auditory nerves of an elephant; and if she is anywhere nearby to the
vicinity of your conversation, then you can bank on it: she has heard the bulk of it. And, subsequently, is always, always right
ready to comment on any or all portions of it, too, as well as to pass on her
judgements regarding the matters and issues thereof. Verbally.
As with some other folks such as Herod Edinsmaier and the next DEhuman
inside his stash, Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive, Mehitable’s insatiability and
neediness for attention extends from not only commenting on your particular
situation or plight when it is absolutely none of her business and, certainly,
hurtful and damaging things come out of her mouth … but also right on in to
judging you. At the least, this genre of
persons must figure, they then have you focusing upon them your full and
complete attention!
That is what I was
in no need of this particular morning … with just 2½ weeks left in which to
file a legal response to Herry’s heinous papers which sat under their
periwinkle cover – up up on his so – prized, pull – down escritoire in his most
favorite of rooms, the den, in that bachelor pad. That “home” on Othello Drive Herry’d coveted
upside the Brookside Forest which, with Herry fixing to divorce me, would now
so surely have to be sold.
* *
* *
Loss
I was to become very well acquainted with; but about the amount of which, the
sheer volume of loss to come, just the mere concept of it in life and family
aspects, I was, even by 40 years of age, still so, so naïve. I was staring at not only a lost house
because of an already lost husband and lost marriage; but, though it wasn’t
crystal clear to me at all yet, I was also about to give up my entire career as
a veterinarian and as a professor of veterinary microbiology.
It
had been nearly a year and a half since leaving my professorship in Kansas
which, in then’s as well as in today’s parlance of careening through the early
stages of one’s career, is also around halfway through to … not ever working in one’s field
again. Three years out from using one’s
professional area is its absolute outer limit.
If you have not exercised your PhD degree in a PhD degree – requiring position in three years’ time,
then you are most definitely out of the loop and can … and will … most easily be
kept out of it thereafter. Fresher and
far more sprightly minded, up – to – speed PhDers are being churned out and, by
the end of their grad stints, poorer than field mice during a drought. Turned out of doctoral and postdoctoral
programs one right after the other from academy to university to
institute. And each one of the very,
very many of them within this glut in any field of expertise as a matter of
fact, needing to get started right away on earning bucks to pay back all of
their educational loans, is eager and most willing to swoop up any open
academic or far greater salary – generating industrial spots than those same
jobs’ human resource personnel and principal investigators are willing to bother
themselves with by their wading through the obsolescent and quaint résumé of
one rusted, housewife – type … Dr. Legion True.
Still. I had had no idea into what dangerously
stormy and shark – infested waters my not working as a veterinary professor nor
even as just a non – owning, employed veterinarian in some nascent, no –
account practice was sailing me. This
journey of staying home instead and of being a mama – and, now with its added
sidecar spin of coping with getting started a divorce wherein three little
children were involved – was literally, just as … hope … also is, a professional woman – killer for me.
Yet. No one, not one individual among all of those
years along my pre – professional way during formal higher education had ever
counseled me regarding two facts: i) the actual number of positions ‘out there’
for which
I
was obtaining my PhD, ie, that there were only 13 of them nationwide!!! nor ii)
that if one doesn’t – especially a woman and
a parent – like woman at that – if she doesn’t work for three or more years
or thereabouts, maybe even a shorter sabbatical off than that in many
geographical areas, why, she’s outtathere!
I had gone on for the PhD degree because I’d wanted to be home nights,
as university professors can be and to be off night and weekend emergency call
which field practitioners are routinely saddled with, when my sons were
entering their teen years, true that is.
But I had also pursued the PhD doctoral degree, the at – one – time
prestigious doctorate, because it was needed over and above the doctor of veterinary medicine doctoral degree,
the DVM, in order to be at all qualified for consideration in being hired on to
practice the love of my loves professionally.
And that was?
That was to work as the clinical bacteriologist at a
veterinary diagnostic laboratory which was located within the same town or city
as a college of veterinary medicine whereat I could then have the added duty –
– in addition to the clinical diagnostics’
practice – – of teaching senior veterinary medical students clinical veterinary
bacteriology! Doesn’t that just sound
like the most major of the cat’s meows … job – wise!? Well, it certainly did to me!
Another
graduate student in my University of Missouri – Columbia Veterinary Microbiology
Department, one without a DVM but working on a master’s degree, put his hands
on a certain book late into my program there.
I had never heard of nor been told of this book before. In fact, he handed it to me, a little pale
aquamarine – covered paperback, to take a look at just as I was enduring 4½
months of my second to last semester cramming day and night – including
studying on Friday and Saturday nights finally for my first times ever – for
the written comprehensives.
During
a break from my crushing labors and just a day before I was to begin writing
said examinations, a mere and simple
15 minutes of studying the mathematics in that book, a directory of all of the
veterinary diagnostic laboratories in the United States, turned up one stunning
and glaring, very, very plain statistical Truth: Of the mere 27 colleges of veterinary
medicine that exist within the United States at all, only 20 veterinary
diagnostic laboratories are located inside the same town as a college of
veterinary medicine. Of those 20 such
laboratories, only 13 of the them have within them a position for a veterinary
clinical bacteriologist. And the key
here? Of those 13 labs, there is only one such position funded. Period.
One. Only one. Not two.
Not ever two even. Only one. Well, that
was certainly an eye – opener. What
an idiot I had been to think that I was ever going to be able to retain a precious one of those! Of those 13!
And, of course as it so turns out, I was quite right!
But. I was correct on that point because of, and only because of, that second fact
about which I had known nothing, the fact that if you don’t use it, you’ll lose
it. You rest, you rust. Et cetera, et cetera. I had
landed one of those 13. In Kansas. Probably because I was a female, now that I
look back on at it. I was smart, fully qualified, deserved in
every respect to get the position, all of that.
But. Realistically, knowing now
what I know of academic departments and their desperately wanting a
statistic on the faculty – hire data sheet, I was engaged and secured as the
professor of veterinary clinical bacteriology solely because I was to become that specific laboratory faculty’s …
token – for – a – little – time … woman.
But
then. Herry was transferred. Oops.
Guess I have to leave this – my dream job – after all. And with my concluding as its newest
professor within the department only one certainly non – tenuring year’s worth
of service.
Not
that Manhattan, Kansas, was the finest and grandest of wide – minded locales to
live geographically and to raise up and encourage babies – within their ‘sense
of place’ in the World – in the ways of sustainability, fairness and
justice. That it certainly was not.
Remind me to tell you about the story of our department’s Dr. Harold, the only serologist in it and an expert
in viruses and their goings – on in … the blood … of all places – – who in
1987, was himself diagnosed with full – blown AIDS and was, back then of
course, rapidly succumbing to the HIV virus within his own bloodstream and most
everywhere else inside of him. Remind me
… to struggle … to tell you what the
Kansas State University Department of Veterinary Diagnostics’ newest chief and
another not – so – old but long – time faculty member, Dr. Aires, both of these
men alleged experts themselves in, of
all things, microbiology, did to this
so, so sick man, Dr. Harold. It was
crazed and quite literally evil. And I
shall never forget it. Dr. Harold, the
Ancestor that he now is, I am certain does not forget Zane and me. That we both
drove out into the countryside to his tiny acreage home one weekend afternoon,
my firstborn only a decade old at the time and into whom I wanted to instill
even more compassion if that were possible, to bring to Dr. Harold where he lay
on his daybed dying a little something to munch on and, I am thinking, perhaps
at least two last rays of … sunshine … upon which to gaze.
No,
my not professoring at Kansas State University was no great loss in terms of
having peace of mind in one’s professional life because that, that is, kindness
and peace and compassion of mind and of heart, the adult and allegedly highly
educated people within that particular Veterinary Medicine College’s department
there certainly did not profess nor promote.
So, with Herry’s transfer, to Ames we had moved; and I’d determined to
be that full – time mama of whom I had been loving every minute so far. That is, of course … up until …
Now. Now I was not thinking of my veterinary or
university career as being trashed because
I was only thinking of my marriage as being so disposed! As so much rubbish. I should have been concerned, however. But. I
didn’t even know to be. Big, big
mistake of mine. Here I was asking
AmTaham for advice in retaining a legal beagle instead of, for the very – near
future, on retaining my potential as a veterinarian! Although AmTaham, too, wouldn’t’ve known to
be scared for me either – scared about saving my professional skin.
I
distinctly recall talking with myself about getting another teaching or
practitioner position – and then only one time or twice at the most, “Legion
True, you are smart. You are really,
really smart. You can aaaalways work. Right now, this gig – this being – a – mama
thing? You love it! You finally get to do this mothering deal,
away from – way away from – over two decades’ worth of studying and studying
and carrying out so many others’ assignments
for and to you – their directives – instead of your
getting to finally be the splendid ma
that you are and that you love being!
But now? Now, you do get to! So go with it, Girl! You can always work it, work it, work at it later, Woman! Be
the ma now that you’ve always wanted
to be – and just go out and get another position later on when the Boys are
near grown and the fun of their being around home with you is gone. Cuz they’re
gone! Just do it! You’ll be so, so glad ya’ did!” I remember this little conversation within my so steadied and studied Legion True –
brain of … reason. My sense of … place. My
nation, my ‘hood … Mother – Hood.
Hisssssss! I was dwelling, instead, soooo in the bliss
of willful ignorance, I was. O, fuck it!
And
now I was conversing with AmTaham, his speaking to me from that sweet, sweet
wee office of his, on a very, very related matter. I told him, “I have until the 24th
to get something filed; that’s a Monday.
Over in the courthouse in Nevada, I am thinking, not?”
“I
know that.”
“You
do? How do you know that?”
“Well,
I mean, I kind of know that. Herry told
us last weekend when he and the Boys were here.
You’ve been thinking about this for some time, not?”
“Aaahh,
no, Daddy, no. I didn’t know. Um, … aaah, I didn’t know till last
Tuesday. When the papers came.”
“Last
Tuesday? You don’t mean the 04th? You must mean in August or early September
sometime, not?” The two of us were
querying each other in English, of course, but kind of a low German – style
English. The ‘not’ at the ends of statements
AmTaham and I had both inherited from Ava Saffron True, his mama. She concluded nearly every question that
required approval or affirmation with ‘not?’, an addendum meaning and short
for, “Is this not so? Is that not
true?” And AmTaham and I both seemed to
sprout up where she, our Ancestor, had brought with her and planted this
linguistic pattern of querying into our True roots. In conversation I ask like that to this
day. Mehitable loathes it, of course,
probably because it reminds her of Ava Saffron, and points out to me and others
as often as she realizes I’ve uttered it that my use of this language is really
Dr. True’s having said something stupid.
“Aaahh,
no, Daddy. I mean last Tuesday, –– last Tuesday which would’ve been the 04th
all right. Ya’ know, like I said – when the papers came. Being served the papers. ‘Being served’ I’m told it’s termed,
Daddy. They were brought here to Othello
Drive. That’s the first I myself knew of
it.”
“O
m’gosh, Legion! You didn’t know until
then?! Until after Herry’d already told
Mehitable and me, Legion?!
“Yeah,
Daddy, that’d be right all right. Herry
told me Sunday evening when he dropped off the Boys just after they had come
home from visiting you. But the papers? The papers didn’t come till just last Tuesday
morning; some really, really mean – acting private investigator guy brought
them from Herry’s Des Moines lawyer to the house here. So, ah, … ah, that’s the date that I have 20
days from to get something filed by, see?
O, and Daddy? Daddy? Herry told
the Boys in the car on the way back from your house. On their way back from the Burg. The Boys not only knew before me, Daddy, but I wasn’t even there with any of ‘em
to tell them this news myself.”
There
was phone line blankness then. Deadness
for several seconds’ worth, “O O O
JYeah, I see all right! What a plan
Herry had! I cannot believe that he told
your mother and me before telling you, Legion, and for chris’sake, he should
never have told Jesse, Mirzah and Zane before first getting it all straight
with you! Ya’ know, straight with you on
how you’d both together tell the Boys! Not
just him alone! With you nowhere
around. Both of you should’ve sat down
together to tell the Boys. This is crazy,
Legion! Just plain evil! What a coward! What a fucking coward!” More evil and more crazy – making right here
in Ames, Iowa, and not just back in Manhattan.
Committed by another allegedly highly educated man, I am left
thinking. AmTaham was fully stunned,
usually an incredibly difficult thing to accomplish with AmTaham. And angry.
Daddy was mad. He’d flat lost
it. AmTaham True never, never, never
used in speech outright any derivative of the word ‘fuck’. Never.
I clearly remember having never heard AmTaham use any form of the word
around me or his other children. Until …
now.
That
energized me; I needed AmTaham’s anger.
Up until this telephone conversation with him I had been too hurt and
too glazed to’ve had any nerve myself but, O, could I use some now! And Daddy’s being peremptorily pissed was
just what I needed to get going on finding a lawyer. Thank goddess, I hadn’t had to speak to
Mehitable. Thank goodness; thank good
goddess for that much!
* *
* *
The
telephone book’s Yellow Pages is daunting when it comes to researching someone
of the Law. Even in a small city just
over 50,000 such as Ames is. Of course,
all of these legal types aren’t listed under ‘Lawyers’. No, it seems, as far as
their phone book listing is concerned at least, they and the Yellow Pages’
formatters much prefer an up – front approach beginning in the As with an
apparently classier – sounding category title, that being one under “Attorneys”
or “Attorney Referral and Information.”
There a person finds as many specialties in different law aspects as one
does under “Physicians” for various medical practitioners. This, of course, is not true of and is in
stark contrast to the listings under “Veterinarians”. Veterinarians are lumped into one big bunch
who are assumed, because they mostly do, to practice generally. And, therefore, of course, they would have
to, because they mostly do, know more
… than their human medicine – practitioner counterparts.
At
any rate, there I was, knuckle – deep in the local Yellow Pages, not
recognizing one name nor one firm that I saw printed there. The Referral and Information service was
useless, a recording at its phone number’s voice mail with no real information
onto which I could quickly grasp. It was
Friday. I’d called Daddy; it was now
time to call Grace and Mona. Again. That is, for about the umpteenth time anyway
since The Horrid Herod Revelation of last Sunday night. But they too, like me, knew nothing and
hadn’t need of legal help themselves nor did they anticipate that they would
soon be needing any such thing.
The
telephone rang. I expected it to be my
girlfriends calling me right back with information or findings that might help.
I should have known; it was a person I always considered a crone, a very wise
woman and my other mother,
a
real mama rather, Margaret Sagely, wanting to know, as she had simply felt a
need to ask, “How are you doing, Legion?”
She’d seen me in Meeting once, eyes closed, not at all an unusual event
among members and attendees in Quaker Meeting anywhere in the World but
instead, this time, with just the slightest hint of a tear falling from my eye;
and she had felt the need to follow up.
Hhmmm, now there’s a lesson from her in ‘follow – up examinations’ which
almost all practicing physicians could certainly stand to learn. Including Herry, most especially. But, of course, that was not about to happen
in my or her lifetimes … with Corpses’ Vaginas – Examining Edinsmaier!
Margaret
said she knew something was terribly wrong because on First Day mornings the
Boys had ceased coming with me; and she conjectured most correctly that they
had gone missing from Meeting, an activity when I myself was in attendance they
did not forgo, because … they had to be.
Why, in this day and age, they had to be absent usually meant only one
thing: The Boys’ father had them
elsewhere … because he, their daddy, had himself also stashed elsewhere. “And
it’s First Day, that is, ah, well, on the weekend, Legion, so, ah, Zane, Jesse
and Mirzah, umm, they, they aren’t with you then, are they? Or, um, they’d be comin’ to Meeting with you,
ah, ya’ know, wouldn’t they?”
Shit,
she knew it all, Margaret did, even before being told any of it as fact – with
the very same prescience which I knew
her to own in many other matters as well – and was on the other end of the
telephone line there now, a little hesitant about what her reception by me
would be – – because of her intuitively knowing all of this but there, nonetheless, for me to be able to
vent to, to bleed in front of, to regroup around and, most of all, to learn
from. There, in the capacity she was …
as that of a mother of an adult daughter, bleeding badly, – – in fact,
hemorrhaging really, as one who should be
there for and protective of her own child.
There, and ready to go to the Mat and the Ends of the Earth for me if I
needed her to. A Righteous Ancestor.
Margaret,
about 70 years of age, knew also that, for boys especially and really for all
children in general, church attendance ranks about dead last on their litany of
weekly things to get done. Fortunately
Quakers, the Religious Society of Friends, maybe a bit christianesque, a lot
more pagan and most definitely with the many secular and humanistic atheists
such as Margaret herself and I among us, at most times and in most places do
not call their gathering site a church.
So Quaker Meeting, held on First Days’ mornings in Ames in a
meetinghouse and where pretty much everything’s okay that, first, does no harm
and which also uplifts and sustains others, had certainly not turned off the
Truemaier Boys. They came.
After
all, it was a fine hour for pastime – planning moments. With peanut butter cookies, hot cocoa, slices
of Jonathan apples and other treats after Silence or First Day School besides! Zane, in his reverie, divined the fanciest
and finest of fishing trips as well as Little League strategies when next he
hit the diamonds. He told me so on
several occasions. Jesse, during his
meditations, probably planned soccer maneuvers and reviewed the last tournament
plays. Maybe even how it was he sounded on
the flute like the cassette tapes he owned of James Galway or, more likely,
Mozart on the piano. Eyes closed, his
silent digits fingered out the Suzuki piano pieces on top of his blue jeans as
he sat slouched in a corner easy chair, yet a part of the Meeting circle. Jesse didn’t tell me his mind’s goings – on,
but he never balked at coming along with us all to Meeting either. Mirzah, who was forever reading in the
backseat of my Shitbox Dodge, was also reading and reading and reading First
Day after First Day in Meeting, all the while getting better and better week
after week about being o – so quiet with the turning of the various books’
pages. Mirzah, just like his Grandpa
AmTaham, could read until there were no more books around to be read. So his hour of Meeting flew by, too, and he
always willingly came as well. Often, if
an adult felt like taking them all out of Silence, off they’d go to another
room for fun activities or, better than that, outside for a walking or
raspberry – picking, garden – planting adventure. This was no church such that their
schoolmates had to go to on the weekends – and would then lament about to the
Truemaier Boys at recess on the playground; this was, well, fun. This?
This was in every sense of the word … Friends … Meeting. The
Truemaier Boys came with Legion, Margaret knew, when Legion herself was in
Meeting.
Only,
now, they weren’t coming; and Margaret knew why that was so, too. “What can I do? I don’t often say anymore; but, Legion, maybe
you know: I have children. Maybe I can help you?”
“No,
Margaret, I did not know. How
many?” I knew Margaret from her vocal
ministering in Meeting to be so smart and nurturing, mother – like; and I had
for myself sort of adopted her and two other old women in Meeting as my mother
types, my ‘other mothers’ I called them – since Mehitable was never, ever going
to be willing to fill this yearning for respectful mothering that I so
wanted. I assumed because she was so
wonderful and crone – wise to me and to other people my age as well as to
little, little kids that Margaret must’ve had children, but I’d never really
heard her say, come to think of it.
“O
… five, Legion. I have five children.”
“No!?”
“Yeah. I do.
Well, they’re all grown now, o’ course.
And none of them live around here.
Nor … nor do they come here either.”
This
announcement just shocked me. Margaret
had, for years and years right after the end of World War II, gone off with the
American Friends Service Committee to China to help that country’s ‘comfort’
women recover and rebuild after the Japanese surrendered and left it. How could she have possibly raised up five
kids and done this mission of hers as well?!
She was barely 5’ tall, maybe 100 pounds now; I’m sure she hadn’t been
much bigger than that ever! Margaret
spent all of these most recent years when I had become acquainted with her
taking in Chinese college students under her wing and helping them adjust to
this country and system of education when they came here to Iowa State
University for graduate school. In her
tiny duplex apartment just four westerly blocks off campus, Margaret Sagely
played her old upright beater piano and nearly daily steamed up white rice and
simple vegetables to facilitate her bringing to innumerable Chinese nationals
such familiarities of their far – off home fires. I’d known some, too, about that AFSC mission;
it’d taken up most of the rest of her 1940s’ decade, and even into the 1950s
for Margaret.
I
just had so not known about the
incidental five children whom she had evidently also found the time and the
space to grow, to bear and to raise up!
“They
don’t come here either, Margaret?”
“Well,
no. No, they don’t. They really never knew Ames as a home for
them, I’d have to say. They were gone
from me for most of their late childhood and teen years. And, well, ever since after that time then,
too, of course.”
“O
Margaret. That was because of your work
in China? Not?”
“Ah
well, no, not exactly, not really actually.
Their father, uh, the children’s dad, well ah, he was a college
professor in Minnesota, and they, well, … ah, they stayed there to live with
him when, well, when he didn’t, ah, … when he didn’t want to be married to me
anymore.”
“All
of them stayed?”
“Ah,
ah, yeah. Yeah, they did. None …, ah, none of them lived with me.” I could tell Margaret was so not wanting to
discuss this or, if she were, she wanted to get it damn straight first that I
was someone safe with whom she could talk about this. Even though she knew me as a Quaker for the
last couple of years, I was sensing that Margaret really didn’t know me which was, as a matter of fact,
quite true; and before she was going to go on talking much further, she was
definitely testing the waters around her, about whether she could trust me … or
not … and for what she would hear back from me.
I
could tell this because that is exactly how I was feeling.
Hesitant
and so very, very guarded about discussing anything that smacked of mothering
issues, of how I was, as a mother, a
‘good’ (enough) one or a ‘not – so – good’ (enough) one, of the very thought of
children not being with their mama when they were still children. Margaret continued then but not very far, “He
got a new wife right away, well, really the woman he’d been with when I’d thought
he was the children’s dad and my husband actually. It was his house and his job there, and the
kids were all in school there. I found a
little apartment nearby; but then, ah, … um, then I couldn’t afford the rent
there and it was, well, it was no place for five kids. Pretty soon I had to leave so I came back here to Iowa, to where my folks’d
lived, the Sagelys of Muscatine, perhaps you’ve heard of them? Of the Sagely Foundation? Perhaps not, no matter. Eventually I wound up here in Ames. Sooo … so my children, well, they never
really knew Ames as their home. And,
yes, it’s true: I was gone a lot to
China. But … but that was mostly before I’d had the children and, umm …
umm, just recently again. Just the last
few years when they would’ve all been adults anyhow, ya’ know. He was, well ya’ know when they were all so
little – and then, well, when they all got older for sure, well ya’ know, he
could, … ah, he could, … he could … purchase their affection –
he could. So he did. And, ah, I?
Well, I couldn’t. ‘nd … ah, and I
just want to state: I wouldn’t’ve …
anyhow.”
Margaret
was done. That was the extent of any of
her personal history during the three decades that were the 1950s, the 1960s
and the 1970s about which I was ever to learn. I knew nothing more of her story during the
next 3½ years in which I came to seek out Margaret for solace and wisdom and
advice and even for a little bit of … joy.
Except
that an adult, pillared male human being who, apparently most willingly, had
seeded her very essences not once,
not twice but at least five separate times had then up and gone and physically
kept them all as his property, domain and dominion after he first dumped the
chaff which had been Margaret’s tiny frame of a hulled shell. And while, over the years, she got to see her
children pretty much whenever they chose to visit her (rather than, of course,
Margaret’s owning the choice of visiting them), she never one time ever again,
she told me herself, sought out the interest or the insight or the friendship
of another man in the sense of an intimate setting. Margaret was done.
Regarding
the trusting of at least one more such human myself I stated into the telephone
receiver, “I need a lawyer, Margaret.
Umm, I’m told by my daddy that I need one right away. It’d be in family law. I am being divorced, and apparently I’ve got
about 2½ weeks left to file some kind of a response to Herry’s petition for
that, Margaret.”
“O
my, Legion. My … my … my, my, my. JYeah.
Well. I knew I needed to
call. Um, let me see here. Yeah, you do.
That’s right, you do. Your
daddy’s exactly correct, Legion. You do
have to get a lawyer right away. Aaahh,
know any?”
“Well
gosh, no. Just before you called, I was
on the line to him about this and what I should do to get started with one
around here. Would you know of any who
deal a lot in divorce, Margaret?”
“No,
I don’t. Not personally. Not around here.” I felt my heart beginning to beat fast. Short of breath, my breathing was so shallow
and that throat – chokehold thing started in again. I might have begun panicking except that then
Margaret interjected, “Well, come to think of it, actually I do know of one
that a couple of women at the University used for their divorces. I really don’t know how they fared with him
though; they just didn’t say. And, ah, …
an’ one has left Ames to go back to China.
My own experience is that, well, what you’ll find is that, aaahh, you’re
… you’re entrusting over to this lawyer person what you believe to’ve been your
whole life up to this point, ah, up to now.
I mean, you don’t know it at the time you’re doing this … that you’re
doing this; but it’ll turn out that ya’ are.
That this is exactly what you are doing.
That this lawyer guy has your entire fate in his control.” She paused but not for long, “And you owe him
for it, Legion. You owe him for him
taking over, for takin’ over your entire life.
As a matter o’fact, a whale’falot you owe him.”
“Control? His control?
Aren’t there laws about what’s controlled and who controls what? Ya’ know, with divorce or, ya’ know, making a
marriage not a marriage any more? A
lawyer has to follow ‘em, right? He has
to follow those laws, right? What you
just said there, Margaret, sounds like, well, ah, …um ya’, it sounds like ya’
gotta take a lawyer just to go see your lawyer! That isn’t
what ya’ really meant, is it, Margaret?”
“O. O.
Well, actually, … ah, ah … – as a matter of fact, that is it, Legion. That just about hits the nail on the head,
I’d have to say. Still. If he handled these two foreign cases and of
Asian people at that, not even European or Canadian or somewhere English –
speaking and, uh, an’ … well, women from a way different culture than ours,
maybe he’s the one you should get, too.
What do you think?”
“What
do I think? I think I need a
lawyer. And right away. Sorta sounds as good as any I guess, and I
really haven’t anybody else that I know of.
I’m so angry I could spit. Any
idea how much I should expect to have to pay up front, that retainer
money? Let alone, a reasonable fee to
expect overall? Actually, Margaret, do
you have any idea what this whole thing’ll cost me? And, will he take me on credit, do you
think? Cuz, because, um, I really need
to get someone started on this response thing, and I only have what Herry gives
us for the bills every month and some, ah, … for some groceries. That’s it.
I’ll have to borrow from somebody, my folks I guess.”
“No
Dear, I don’t. But you’re quite
right: you must get going on this right
away. Today, if you can. Ya’ know,
it’s Friday. Give his office a
call and just feel them out there. His
name is Jazzy Jinx, and here, I’m looking in the Yellow Pages right now. Yeah, here it is. His number is 555 – 1761. He’s in with a bunch of others; looks like
they’re all men. No women. You probably don’t want a woman, right? Ya’ know, the perception and all? Whiny and weak. It should probably be a man, don’t you think,
Legion?”
A
woman? A man? Why should that count? Laws are laws, right? How much money now? How much money later? When later?
Every month? Does it take a
payment to a lawyer every month? What
does it take? Who should I borrow
from? How much should I borrow? What should the interest and repayment terms
on my loan be? How often do I visit the
lawyer? Surely the Boys won’t be
involved, will they? If so, when do they
have to go to the lawyer? And to Herry’s
lawyer, too? There’s a three – month
waiting period in Iowa always, isn’t there?
If there isn’t, then what is there?
Mandatory counseling? No? Not mandatory counseling? Anything mandatory then?
“O
yeah, … and one more thing, Legion. One
more thing here,” Margaret was sort of picking up on my thought thread there,
“the divorce is mandatory. It will
happen. Whether you want it to or
not. Herod Edinsmaier will get his
divorce, Legion. Unless he rescinds this
action which he has started, then there is absolutely not one thing you can do
to stop it. Not now. What else can I do, Legion? I’m here whenever you need me.”
I
had no degree in this, not even one experience, in any form of, well, in legal
management of a family household.
Legally handling an estate and anything and everything therein, no less. I didn’t even have a will. Alone or jointly together with Herry. No will at all even. Let alone, skill in dissolving a household
that included in it very, very affected little persons, that is, my kids. How the hell should I know any of the literally mother – fucking
answers to all of these
questions?! It was Friday all right, and
I was far more bewildered than I had been before on last Tuesday’s
morning.
It
has been my experience that Fridays are horrible days, especially in the
afternoons, to call anywhere, to any place
of
business or level of government and expect to get a damn thing answered or
done. I made the call anyhow.
“Mr.
Jinx can see you next Tuesday morning at 8:30 am for approximately 20 minutes
before he leaves for the courthouse in Nevada.
He has a 9:30 appearance there.
Please be here 20 minutes beforehand to fill out the appropriate
paperwork, okay?”
“O,
um, it couldn’t be later, could it, I suppose?
Um, I’m still taking my children to their school at that time.”
“No,
it cannot. But he can see you at 11:30
am next Friday, the 14th .
That’ll work then, won’t it?”
“Aaahh,
ah, um, I’ll just take the Boys to school early next Tuesday I guess. I really need to get in to see him earlier
than next Friday, I am thinking. About
ten minutes after 8 then, you say?”
“Yes,
that’s right. I have you down.”
“Okay
… okay then.” I hung up. I forgot to ask one damn thing about
money. Why hadn’t the woman bothered to
offer me any information whatsoever on this matter? On this matter of the money thing? Why?
Must be they kind of know greenhorns such as myself are so stupid we do
this. We simply forget to ask about the
money, don’t we? Till it’s far, far too
late and we absolutely have to have something legal done so we just end up
paying whatever sum it is that’s simply put upon us.
Because
that’s what happened. That’s exactly
what I did. I entered the environment of
lawyering, of family lawyering, in nearly the most bumbling of manners
possible. I just called up a name, asked
nothing about money and, without any input or direction or control and
supervision on my part, wherein culturally and factually I should be my soon – to
– be hired lawyer’s employer,
assented to whatever this voice belonging to the total stranger on the other
end of the telephone wire told me to do.
Throughout
this wholly inept organization and retention of my initial legal “counseling”
and for months and months to come thereafter, little did I know and how in the
absolute dark I was – in that … I would never practice veterinary medicine nor
teach veterinary microbiology again. My expertise for which I had struggled
through, gathered and obtained over 14 years or, more accurately, 38 formal
terms of college education and that I, long, long steeped in the northern
European and Anglo ancestral culture transplanted now into generations of its
Iowans of utterly pulling one’s own weight had paid for entirely by myself save
for the mere $125 of it which my parents had ponied up during my very first
quarter back in the fall of 1966, at Iowa State, that expertise? –— Useless! Whatever genius and competency as a creature
healer and as the leader of young animal handlers’ minds which I may have had
outside of the home and of mothering, and I say genius because I was good at
both the healing and the teaching, damn good at them actually, well … my bones
would never realize the licensed use of this craft, this gift of mine, this
profession … ever again.
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