on one other 28 October … that of 1991, common era

from Chapter 28, pp 313 - 324: 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.

NOT Independence Day –– NO FREEDOM –– in America for DEhuman Mamas

"I could do something, however, about the remainder of Youngest Son Mirzah’s high school experience. Immediately I made an appointment for the 22nd of August, with Mirzah’s former pediatrician’s office to have done for him that very vaccination pronto: the MMR. School –– Mirzah’s sophomore year at Ames High –– could commence then … unobstructed. As the two of us inside the beater – wagon turned the Teacup’s corner onto Havencourt Drive along around 4 that Tuesday afternoon and after just concluding less than an hour earlier this so simple chore over to the Clinic, Mirzah and I smiled about the ease of this particular visit to the doctor –– in contrast to those of tiny children when they have to periodically go in for their shots. Almost simultaneously, we together spotted in the distance sitting alongside the curb of 6143, our condominium, something looming there about which I had such the ominous and threatening flashback: a Ryder rental truck.

Ol’ Black crept closer and closer to our driveway, and the smile vanished from my mouth. I cast a jerked and frightened gawk at Mirzah who exclaimed as he leaned forward toward the dashboard, “It’s Herry!”

“Om’god! A truck just like when he first took you all away, Mirzah!” Immediately thrown right back into hypervigilance mode, I remembered out loud that horrible Saturday morning of the 13th day of October almost five years previously! “What’s he doing here?! What’s he doing here with a truck, for chris’sake!?”

“I called him.”

“You called him?!”

“Wull, yeah. But. Um.”

“You called him an’, and … an’ right away out he comes?! But why?!” I was stunned. “What’s he gonna do?! He’s got a truck, for chris’sake! What does that mean, Mirzah?!”

“Well, ah, I … I, um, I think it means I’m going back to West Virginia, Mom.”

I was sick! Literally … sick. Nauseated and throat – choked, my breathing ceased again! Sure enough. “In and out in about an hour,” just like that television commercial beckons a viewer to go get himself fixed up with a pair of new eyeglasses of that hawking store’s particular brands.

“In and out in about an hour,” my whole life was stolen from me … yet once AGAIN! By now –– Daddee – Herry’s so infamous bait – and – switch gutting of the Bitch’s whole essence. And of at least two of those three Truemaier Boys’ beings, of course, as well. Yet once AGAIN!

As much as my remembering that so twisted whirlwind of those 60 – some minutes’ worth of both of these Truemaier Boys’ last moments beside me there on Havencourt Drive, I recall Herod Edinsmaier’s … signature snide smirkface. The Good and Wonderful Doctor – Daddee was on … The Take again! From specifically me –– on the prowl and on His Take … AGAIN! Taking back –– from me, the Kiddos’ mama –– both Mirzah and Jesse! “SONS, YOU HAVE NO MOTHER! MOTHER, YOU HAVE NO SONS! I say so! Therefore, Pussy, it is so!”

As with very many a hating and violent man, I am thinking now as I type, Jury, that if joy ever comes to this guy from anywhere or from anything, –– ever, truly –– then its emergence for him must almost always be tied to: how great is the pain and the grief and the sorrow –– how great is the vengeance –– that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier can manage to reign in and to rain down upon Legion True. What an insecure man! Dry – Drunk and Addict Herry’s happiness depends, daily, upon taking –––– upon his taking away … mine.

Pretty much the exact same assessment of and sentiment expressed about Herry –– precisely as a father –– by Iowa Court of Appeals Appellate Judge Pansy Shawshank –––– within her six – page majority decision! … … ah, er, that is, inside the one which, of course, became … because of sexism and chicanery by that court’s Chiefy Donnellson plus a couple other of his specific judiciary’s hench –– ah, er, um, … bench – men … the woman’s dissent, instead! She, naturally its one and only token DEhuman jurist, so saw Hardhearted Herry for who he was, too –– and she did so in far less time and scope than most other folks who come into Dr. Edinsmaier’s sphere have had at their disposals in order “to measure” him. Him … daMan. A destroyer doctor. “First, do no harm?” As so decrees the very first dictum to which all health care providers pledge themselves? This one also an alleged daddee, granted the M.D. degree in March of 1980, when Mirzah Truemaier was but a wee six months of age and Brother Jesse a 19 – month – old, is not an honorable and healing lifter – up of humankind but, instead, an insecure, ruthless –– and measurable –– rot who denies, ruptures and annihilates.

I had already forgotten about the disagreement Mirzah and I had had sometime during the previous week. And, now, I cannot even remember the cause at that time of my vexation with my so soon – to – be sophomore Son nor the scrape in which the two of us must have earlier engaged. I am said to have been so ireful at whatever it was that Mirzah did or said or wanted or decided on his own that I locked him out of the condominium declaring as I did so the directive, “My house. My rules.” I don’t believe the squabble could have been focused on something Mirzah said and certainly nothing that he did to people whom he considers his friends and acquaintances. He is just too sweet – natured a human being, then and now, to have purposefully and calculatingly with nefarious motive, hurt any one of his contemporaries intentionally.

Except for one matter –––– pornography. What hath Herry Edinsmaier wrought?

With his gonzo mind and his snide mouth and Corrupt Herry’s dastardly deeds against women, I suddenly remembered about, as Ol’ Black inched into the condo’s driveway, those two DEhumans whom Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had not even cared enough about to have bothered himself to get out of bed in time to show up for the women’s breast biopsies as their frozen – section pathologist whom he had been hired by Kansas City’s Downshim Laboratories to be! With Herry’s bestial (literally, –– Jury, remember the cows – / dogs – / pigs – / chickens – / and cunt models – fucking) view of womankind –– that same contaminating contagion which he had inherited from Detanimod’s Grand – Dominating Poker – Patriarch Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier and the one which both That Old Mother – Fucker and the sooooo, so christianizingly DEhuman – fucking Martin Luther King, Jr. held about aaaall of us females, –– why, Daddee Herry had easily, readily –– and happily –– passed woman – loathing and his concerted DEhumanization of well over half of the World’s populations anywhere on … to all of the sons. And, most especially, Model Parent Edinsmaier, relying upon for his “excuse” to do so the Truemaier Boys’ and his most entitled of “cultural” speech freedoms, could voluminously secure as he so desired to procure for his own addicted neediness then, more and more and more pornography, “Stupid – Ass Heifer, now doncha’ be a – messin’ with my and m’boys’ First Amendment Right, You Whore!”

Exactly the very escape from accountability –– this paternal – filial pornography – ‘sharing’ camaraderie is –– as the alcoholic father who purposefully places himself in situations in order to be able to drink with his kiddo. And jokingly but yet loudly terms it to them and to all the World as … “bonding” –– instead of as the addiction it actually is! “How can ya’ come between a man and his dad when they’re just out enjoyin’ a coupla’ brews together at the ballpark, Bitch?” Pops gets what he wants, doesn’t he, Jury? More and more and more booze. And the adult child? Why, the kid also gets what Bucko – Pappy –– and Attorney Jazzy Jinx some time back had counseled that Slacker – Slick Daddee –– always wants: Father as the picture – perfect “parent who just likes to have some fun, ya’ know. To show ‘his good, good buddy’ a mighty fine time, that’s all!” But it –– the sham –– is soooo not all –– at all, is it, Jury?

The one child likely most influenced by the twisted yet so commonly “accepted” recesses of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s deviance was the one child actually with his mama the least amount of time –– Mirzah.

If the quarrel had been about print pornography or videotape pornography run and viewed upon my condominium’s VCR machine or if I had come across other formats of woman – loathing, then I certainly can see where I would have acted on the “my house / my rules” declaration. I had explained –– repeatedly and try to do so to this day –– how the production and consumption of pornography by any person is the purposeful and intentional harm and destruction and loathing of female human beings –– 53 percent of and, therefore, the majority of the entire Earth. A DEhumanization with proportions not equaled by any other matter in the whole wide World; but I was with Mirzah, and, therefore, to date his maternally parental influencer, … the least amount within his lifetime.

And Herry? Herry, as husband and as ex – spouse, has plied his addiction and purposefully involved his minor children with it in quite the silenced and secretive way that that alcoholic daddee carries on with his hooch, “The more my sons drink with me, the more I can, too!” Whether that juicing jag takes place at home or in bars, in cars or during a day at the beach. Anywhere. “The more my kids use porn and think it fun, humorous and entertainment, then the more of it my brain gets to have?! Well, that’s just A – okay, too! After all, we’re bonding! Me an’ m’boys! Father and son –– we’re buds! Jus’ engagin’ in a … ‘bonding’ … activity together, for chris’sake, Twat!”

When those 12 issues of Playboy had, regular as the moon’s cycles, crept into his Othello Drive bachelor – pad starter castle under the subscription Daddee – Herry had corrected for nine – year – old Zane Truemaier’s ordering of it and all four of its household’s males had retired together to King Herod’s den with any one of the particular, newly arrived issues of it … “to check on the Boys’ development,” Mirzah and Mirzah’s brain had been only six years old. When the separation and divorce was pending and Addicted Herry, right straightaway, ‘chose’ Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive with whom to start keeping company, it was Mirzah, barely seven and eight years of age, whom Herry took with him when he went to buy for her a gem – studded condom and a “hormones are raging” greeting card. All three Truemaier Boys were present during a mandatory visitation (Of course! Of course, these sojourning soirées were androcentrically and sperm – exaltingly … daddee – mandatory!) with Herry when Daddee Dearest, smirkingly I am sure, told Ms. McLive a three ducks’ anuses’ joke inside a booth at a Fatlantic café –– that particular tarriance of the Wooing and Courting King Herod’s having been the Boys’ –– any of my three Truemaier Boys’ –– very first time meeting The Other Snide Person who in such short order was to become their … so, so unwilling to – step – back – from and to – step – out – of – the – Real – Mama – position’s step – mother.

And through the years, there had been more. So much, much more. The Boys had been inundated when they were still in and then, even more frequently, just passed the primary grades and going, going, going, … then finally altogether … gone from me. Gone –– Zane, Jesse and Mirzah –– from me, their mama.

All crimes, of course. Every instance a crime. All of it criminal and perpetrated by one abusing, violent and violating man, their own biological father, that Great and Wonderful Healer, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier.

With Mirzah always then the youngest –– both in terms of the Daddee Herry – “approved” and – facilitated exposure to and use of pornography and of a child’s perception with regard to the whole and utterly complete disappearance so fashioned and brought about by that same father of the kiddo’s own mother –– there came into existence then the altogether determined wiping – out, the absolute erasure and deletion of a so inconveniently protecting mama who would have tried, had she physically been around, to put a stop to Daddee – Herry’s (and, generationally, to Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier’s) insidious inculcation and passing on of woman – hating to her children, all of them happening to be, of course, in Dr. Legion True’s case, … male children. That is, the World’s women’s worth of at least three of its very next generation of marrying and / or fathering and / or ancestoring … men.

Right in line soooo Catholic Edinsmaier’s christianizing of my three Sons is –– exactly as had been the schooling of Ms. Soraya Manutchehri’s two eldest boys (out of her nine – born children in 14 years’ time … rather precise shades, not so Jury? Anyone? of Juggern Aut’s perpetual poking of Detanimod … ) by the woman’s sharia “law” – spewing Sperm Donor, Ghorban – Ali Manutchehri. Wanting to mawwy another much, much younger DEhuman, a teenaged schoolgirl actually, and to support only one wife, Mr. Manutchehri, the mama’s two oldest sons and her very own father –– in full and hooting view of the entire town and right alongside all of those ‘educated’ males of ‘The Court’ which had just condemned Ms. Soraya, falsely accused of infidelity but such for that specific daddee … The Inconvenient Wife so by its islamic “law” on “these matters” so, so easily manmade now “no longer a human being” –– “freely” set about murdering her, this suddenly made Non Human, by hurling stones aimed in 1986, right at and striking her head, throat and thorax until this battered, eviscerated and unrecognizable corpse of a cur –– “That Bitch!” –– she, the mother, altogether stopped breathing. Gutted. Made gone … she. In and out with ‘The Court’ ’s ruling on the woman in about a dusty and bloodied hour’s time –– is all.

In an’ out –– literally, –– in and altogether out of life –– in about an hour!

‘Member, Jury, how it is that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had, as well, wanted quite dead ... Dr. Legion True? Only difference? Offing the True Twat himself –– in this christianizingly patriarchal country –– may have cost him his doctoring position and, thus, his money. So Daddee – Herry –– as have as well so many, many spousal daddees including Ghorban – Ali – Daddee –– simply “used” the most willing men of ‘The Court’ … ‘alone’ … to kill her off. Apparently … “quite constitutional” –– and within aaaaall of their very, very manmade / “We tell ourselves thus and so –– cuz we, DaMen, sooooo can” ‘laws,’ too!

It would be no wonderment to me at all that a clash which the now nearly 16 – year – old Mirzah and I evidently had had … may have centered around something woman – loathing such as pornography. Mirzah had plenty of friends, of course, as agreeable, as kind and as amiable as he always, always appeared to me to be with other guys his own age. But it was also true that for almost seven preteen and adolescent years’ worth I had not a physical clue –– I hadn’t been (allowed !!! to be) around him since he was nine! –– about his dealings, about Mirzah’s … comings, goings, thinkings and doings … with that same age group of girls. And I do recall, with both Jesse and Mirzah back in Ames and Jesse’s so recent threat of alcohol toxicity, having laid down some parameters about the perimeter of 6143 Havencourt, one of which –– for a fact I know, –– would have been that no pornography of any kind exist on those premises for any reason nor possessed under its roof by anybody.

That summer of 1995, in Ames the Truemaier Boys and I certainly had had no home computer and, therefore, no easy internet access. The passageway, that is, to web – based pornography. It was not until the next February’s Leap Day as I cleaned out the Havencourt condominium in my preparations for altogether leaving behind our Teacup subdivision that I came across, wedged down behind what had been Mirzah’s mattress, a computer – produced ‘business card’ done up on cardstock – quality paper and sized appropriately to any general ones which I have ever seen. On white in simple, black – inked font were the words, “Your Friendly Neighborhood Ho Service. Dial 666 – 5678 for a really, really good time. ––– Signed, Mirzah and Matt, Pimps. Confidentiality GUARANTEED.”

By 5 o’clock that hot and humid August afternoon, Mirzah and Jesse –– again … viciously made no longer Iowans –– vanished.

The yellow truck pulled away; and with its doing so, I remember most … Herry’s smirkface. I also know that the pillared Dr. Edinsmaier took away with him more, however, –– that aprovechar of his again! –– … more that late afternoon than my two Truemaier Boys.

As I had scurried around the condominium, to its three bedrooms upstairs and down to the basement, rounding up every bit of clothing and equipment and treasures I guessed –– in my concurrent and profound sorrow! –– that the two Boys would want with them when back in West Virginia, my one – vehicle garage went … … ‘unguarded.’

And, a couple of days later, when I needed that pliers? The one in the vessel resting upon Mirzah’s wooden changing dais painted bronze with its so easy – to – clean Formica tabletop, the sturdiest ever with baby supplies’ drawers built in underneath, the table which AmTaham True had, just 16 years earlier, constructed from leftover scraps of remodeling materials when he first learned I had become pregnant for the third time and Mirzah’s Grandpa had not wanted his Legion’s backbone to ache anymore from my repeatedly crouching down on the floor multiple times a day to change his grandbambino’s diapers!

Well, my pliers? All of my tools had gone missing, too suddenly, as suddenly and at exactly when as had Jesse and Mirzah! Including the galvanized metal, standard – sized toolbox in which Grandpa AmTaham had collected them all for me, the general genre of receptacle which any respectable repairperson owns!

* * * *

This man was not done with that particular day’s worth of taking. Still. Of Herry Edinsmaier’s taking away from Legion True. With my Boys’ taking and with my tools’ taking, the man still had more –– much, much more of aprovechar –– on His Agenda to accomplish.

Here I had been left thinking that the Good and Wonderful Healer had swung my two Boys right out onto Interstate – 35 and was spiriting them out of Iowa as fast as that Ryder could possibly sprint, the entrance to that freeway merely a half a mile from the one to our Havencourt Drive! But I was wrong on this assumption!

Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, Mirzah and Jesse Truemaier –– my Boys –– and his Ryder took a wide, wide detour –––– one so wide its width matched that of my mouth’s gaping. And of both Grace’s and Lynda’s, too!

What bulk, what mass of unmitigated effrontery, insolent entitlement and flippant, filliping arrogance the entire bunkum of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier is –– especially when it comes to us … DEhumans. Lynda Kincaid lived approximately five miles from me on Havencourt –– through some of the most tangled web of streets and tortuous thoroughfares Ames possesses, particularly … at rush hour. It was to her home’s INTERIOR that Corrupt Herry Edinsmaier’s entitlement and arrogance –– his taking –– next appeared. And it did so … right away within that very same hour as when he had pilfered way away from me … both my two Kiddos and all of my several tools.

“I can’t believe it,” I gasped. “You have to be kidding, Woman. Are you sure, Lynda?!”

I am still incredulous as I am thinking on it right now. All –– absolutely all –– of my girlfriends remain so to this day … as well. It was a stunning performance by Herod Edinsmaier. Positively utterly staggering.

We –– my friends and I –– we were never “used” to his taking, to Pillared Father’s Rightster Herry’s snatching up of my Boys whenever and wherever the time and the venue seemed to suit him; but we women, at the least, knew that So Predictable Herod Edinsmaier was entirely capable of this androcentric egregiousness, this patriarchal cruelty. We just never expected, although so very well – trained all of us should have been by now! we just never expected Exalted Sperm Donor Edinsmaier’s next fucking flagrancy. Let alone, so very, very mother – fuckingly soon! Within this very same –– “in – ‘nd – out – in – about – an” –– hour! that “Fuck you, Bitches” – hour!

“O, JYeah, Legion, I am sure!” Lynda Kincaid exploded. “They’re gone. They’re all gone. The guns. They are gone from the basement, Legion. Every last one of ‘em. Outta there! All of them! Taken.”

Months later, Jesse himself confirmed this home – invasion crime for all of us women: That Herry had actually driven up and out of his own gettin’ – outta – the – Gutted – Bitch’s – town route is one thing in and of itself. But Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had done so … for forbidden guns that he did not even own. –– And never had!

As soon as Absconder Edinsmaier pulled his rented transport, UNconstitutionally yet domineeringly –– and criminally –– loaded up both with Legion True’s two younger Boys and all of Legion’s garaged toolbox’s contents, out of my driveway and back on to Havencourt’s street headed, I had so incorrectly presumed, immediately on out to the interstate’s entrance quite proximally nearby and bound, yet again, through those same five states on back to Grubtrop, West Virginia, I had telephoned Lynda at her National Animal Disease Center desk. She had been the first friend to know –– to know of daMan’s same – style abduction … yet again! And … yet again! … of another of Legion’s ripping heartbreaks. Lynda left work to come to my side straightaway and, after cups of late – afternoon, hot sage tea and as much head – banging truisms together about our passions and our struggles as could be emotionally borne, had driven not back to work since it was now eventide but directly on over to her own home on Douglas Avenue.

I had not asked her to –– to do so; Friend Lynda Kincaid had thought all on her own to check. She told me on her commute on over to her street, a revelation had come in to her brain, “This is Herod Edinsmaier Legion’s dealing with. Of course, he just might do this. He just might! I’d better check the shelves downstairs. Just in case.”

My telephone rang not more than 20 minutes after Lynda had exited my condominium’s front door.

These were all of the guns given over to Jesse after … after … the divorce and, more importantly, given over to him by his Grandpa AmTaham but … but … but with one huge caveat: Given over from Grandpa AmTaham to Jesse by way of me, … first. That is to say, Jesse’s grandfather had made crystal clear to Jesse that his mother’s rules ruled … first! First and foremost. “Only when Legion says you may, can you have any access for any reason, for hunting or for target practice that is, at all, Jesse! You must obey your mother on this, Jesse. Verstehen? Verstehen, Young Man? I mean it. Do you understand me, Jesse?”

AmTaham True, as a matter of fact for years before this date of 22 August 1995, and when quite the Cinqué – of – the – Amistad style Ancestor – in – Training, that is, when the man was alive, and for years before Jesse’s freshest – ever 17th year (since his latest 15 August birthday had just passed) had tried and tried and tried to have all three Boys understand that the ownership and the use of any gun was far, far unlike the ownership and the use of any other item which the Boys would ever, ever possess.

Grandpa AmTaham had instructed all three Boys that at no time in their teen years’ development of “a relationship” between themselves and their firearms were any of the guns and / or their ammunitions to be brought out of safekeeping and handled by, or even just shown to, anyone else. As one may a new volleyball or a new bicycle or how it is a kiddo gifted with a used, let alone a new, vehicle might take her or his friends for a spin in it, for that matter. Developing an adult mindset circa the ownership and the use of firearms, AmTaham True taught, was akin to the learning of no other lesson. And all –– absolutely all –– of one’s minor years when she or he is still a teenager are to be determinedly spent up in the maturation of this relationship between the person and the owned firearm. By the time the person becomes 18 years of age, a parent or a grandparent –– and no other adult, that is –– needs to have instilled in this child enough then: enough protecting wisdom on this firearms’ ownership matter. AmTaham had stated, as had Dr. Powell during the several hunter safety session hours which Jesse and Zane had both enthusiastically, and some time ago by then, attended in Storm County, that the properly licensed parents and grandparents held entire and utter accountability in this endeavor because at no time did any other adult in the kiddos’ lives –––– not their Uncle Mark, not Daddee’s Pal Kevin home on his university’s semester break, not High School Voc Ag or Shop Teacher Dick, –––– actually care about the muzzles’ locations and the emptied or filled status of the guns’ chambers … as much as … does the children’s own –– properly licensed –– parents or grandparents.

* * * *

“And now … most importantly, … Jury, for the FLIP / REVERSE clincher on this specific Tuesday’s events: What woman do you know, Folks, can get clean, slick away with entering in to, home invasion – style … thus, with the criminality of it all, her ex – husband’s friend’s home –––– and abscond with daMan’s owned property, with all of his guns there for example, being stored inside his pal’s premises? Huh, Jury? Name one woman for me, please, –– anywhere in the Whole World –– who can get away –– clean, slick away –– with this act? One woman who can, in addition, TAKE with her inside this ex – husband’s friend’s home … her very own daughter, too?! Take the teenaged daughter criminally inside the residence, too, to serve as mama’s accomplice and as mother’s carrier – of – Daddee’s – guns back out to the truck parked outside?! With this mother – modeled ‘Fuck you, Bastards’ action of Mama’s and have back on herself for her having done these several crimes absolutely NO consequence whatsoever, Jury?! Name one woman anywhere who can do these very same deeds as Herry Edinsmaier’s, please. One.”

Because that is what Narcissist and Passive – Aggressor Herod Edinsmaier who “is above the law because he tells his pillared self –– and my three Truemaier Boys –– that they all are!” … did! And then, and by now well in to the 21st Century, daMan is known to have gotten his modeling self and my Boy Jesse –– with my Boy Mirzah serving as lookout sentry inside the truck’s cab … clean, slick away with it. Ex – Husband Herry took, aprovechar – style and criminally, whilst demonstrating for both of my teenaged sons then, how it is that men, just whenever and wherever they wanna, … can … simply take from women. From multiple women. “Because He Can.”

We all know this, do we not, Jury? Because he can. “These are mere women, conscious these two happen to be and not anesthetized,” Corrupt Herry reckoned, “but females, none the less. How utterly UNimportant … DEhumans are! And to her Boys, Jesse and Mirzah, as well! I will demonstrate these very same thinkings and doings, these comings and goings about women to them, too! And absolutely looooove doing so!”

Noooo different. The very same this is as … the two, elder boys who ‘helped’ their daddee, Ghorban – Ali Manutchehri, murder stoned – to – death Soraya, their very own –– and siblings’ –– birthing mama. Not a human being … she; their laws so state, the laws the men themselves “make” –– particularly as any of these, on the whole of them all, pertain in any way to us DEhumans’ general slutlery. Remember, Jury, that so common Arab maxim regarding the insatiability of graves, deserts and, of course, all … cunts? The males? The men and the boys? They are … The Human Beings. And … The Only Human Beings.

Just exactly how UNimportant is … specifically … the one DEhuman, Dr. True? Whose first name, Legion, is never to be Edinsmaier – uttered?! –– Ever?!

Consider –– yet again! –– that I had admonished us all, hadn’t I Jury, from deeeeep within Chapter 28, to be certain to so nota bene the following phraseology out of Herry – Daddee’s 02 July 1994, quite queer letter – thingy mailed to me?! That grammatically incorrect missive, displaying its stupendously stupid sentence structure, which had been sent to me, the woman whom all of DaMen of ‘the Court’, an American court –– it needs to be marked, remarked and so, so … well – remembered, an American court! –– had ascribed as the Crazed and Whoring Mother –––– yet, as well, to whom Herry – Daddee, that flouncing and professedly accountable father!, suddenly and right then so very, very soon after Jesse’s release from hospitalization at the Blue Hazelnut Ridge, had decided to entrust to lovingly and correctly shepherd one minor teen, Jesse, with as well in such a short, short span of time thereafter another, second one, Mirzah?!

“#8. 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,” yada, yada, yada and so forth.” Signed, “Sincerely, Herod Edinsmaier” …

Only it is most clear, isn’t it Jury, that i) from Mirzah’s one wee, apparently whining telephone call back to Daddee – Herry when the Evil – Mother Monster quite torqued him off some –– “she pissed off daMan” (as with Ms. Soraya’s sons, Mirzah equaling this particular male this particular time) and ii) from Jesse’s desiring for himself Legion True’s guns back in West Virginian woods, it is most clear, isn’t it, that none –– utterly none–– of Proviso #8 had to its “declaration” any “sincerity” or any Truth … WHATSOEVER?!

Because it did not have to. Whether inside a courtroom with daMen’s status as “under oath” there or with their promising or their avowing –– or even with their “evidence” – and witness – wowing there! True it is. O, so head – bangingly true it is: Depending upon who you are, it is easier to lie to and deceive anyone inside an American civil court of law and get clean, slick away with it than it is to lie to and deceive one’s own mom and dad. It is easier to lie to and deceive an American civil court of law, which, we all know from long back within Chapter Eight, is a judge or nearly an entire state’s district and appellate court system’s worth of them! –– circa 23 or so of them! than it is to lie to and deceive your own minister, your own teacher, your boss and co – workers, your spouse or even all three of your own children. It is, mind you, easier to get clean, slick away with lying to and deceiving an American civil court judge about anything, depending, of course, upon who you are, than it is to lie to and deceive yourself, Corrupt Herry!

Or outside of one. Outside courtrooms. As with Liar Herry’s mid – 1994 letter to me regarding “our both agreeing” if “any matter arises.” “Heh. Heh. Heh, Woman!” I am yet again! reminding my own brainy self. “These are men making ‘the rules’, the ‘laws.’ And no amount of, no accounting of Flip / Reverse as to how these same men would feel or as to how the humans would like the trashing and the smashing, the utter mucking up of their Constitutional rights to, O say, … breathing … if the DEhumans’ mother – fucking –– if, O say, father – fucking –– is visited down upon them … matters … squat at all to them!”

"I ask, Jury, only one thing about the aprovechar – absconsion of my Boys and of my tools and guns, about this home – invasion crime, on all of this one particular day’s worth of mother – fucking –––– all of it perped by Hosing Herry, the Pillared Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, against Lynda Kincaid and against me, Dr. Legion True, as well as against all three of my Truemaier Boys, … … the fucking outrage?! Where is the OUTRAGE?!" "

From the same Dr Phyllis Chesler of ! 1989 ! ’s 1556529993

And just as true then as it is ... now. Now ... on y2011’s ... Father’s Day. Regarding, of course, those of us many, many mamas "insanely long - suffering" with various DSM - V's "Patriarchal Defiance Disorders" ...

"Sure to inspire anger, understanding and action." Gloria Steinem
"Extremely subversive. It should and will enrage, entice, incite and liberate." Kate Millett ... ... "An essential work." Erica Jong

i) "The 25th anniversary edition of Mothers on Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody (with eight new chapters) is just coming out. It is the best and only book of its kind and, over the years, has been referred to as THE DEFINITIVE WORK for mothers who are faced with a custody battle.

Mothers have described underlining the entire book, taking it to court with them, begging their lawyers to read it –– and keeping it near their bedsides.

Over the years, with some very few exceptions, things have gotten worse in the court system, not better. This is one of the reasons
I decided to both update and add to this important work.

This book is now available online [ http://tinyurl.com/3o7l6an ] and in paperback. In terms of helping a book find its natural audiences, online reviews really matter.

Therefore, if you are moved to do so, please write an online review of this book wherever you buy books online. It is currently for sale at Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Powell's, etc.

I am attaching a June 2011 Library Journal review of the new edition of Mothers on Trial. I am also attaching selected endorsements and reviews that appeared in 1986 – 1987. Some of you may recall that I also coordinated a Congressional Press Briefing with then – Congress members, now Senators Chuck Schumer and Barbara Boxer and a large, well publicized, and well attended National Speakout about Mothers Losing Custody of Children. If you can, if it's easy, please send me your review when you have posted it or simply tell me that it is up.

All best,
Phyllis"

ii) "Custody Disputes Now Tougher for Battered Moms by Phyllis Chesler, WeNews guest author -- Sunday, 26 June 2011

It's been 25 years since Phyllis Chesler wrote "Mothers on Trial" to help women fight their child-custody battles. In this excerpt from her revised book, she reviews what's changed, for better and worse.

(WOMENSENEWS)--Going through a custody battle is like going through
a war. One does not emerge unscathed. Yes, one may learn important lessons, but one may also be left broken and incapable of trusting others, including our so-called justice system, ever again.

Custody battles can take a very long time. They range from only several years to more than 15 or 20. They may have profound legal, economic, social, psychological and even medical consequences for years afterward, perhaps forever.

What's changed since I first started researching and writing about custody battles?

Documented domestic violence does get factored in somewhat more than before. Where real assets exist, judges have the power to award more of them to mothers and children. Fewer mothers and fathers automatically lose custody or visitation because they are gay or because they have high-powered careers.

However, certain injustices (crimes, really) that I first began tracking in the late 1970s have now gotten much worse.

For example, battered women are losing custody to their batterers in record numbers. Children are being successfully brainwashed by fathers, but many mothers are being falsely accused of brainwashing. Worse: Children with mandated reporters--physicians, nurses or teachers--who report to them that they have been sexually abused by their fathers ARE USUALLY GIVEN .TO. THOSE VERY FATHERS. The mothers of these children are almost always viewed as having "coached" or "alienated" the children and, on this basis alone, are seen as "unfit" mothers.

'Parental Alienation Syndrome'

I understand that this sounds unbelievable. But it is still true. The mothers of raped children, who are also described as "protective" mothers, are seen as guilty of "parental alienation syndrome." The fact that this concept, first pioneered by Dr. Richard Gardner and widely endorsed by fathers' rights groups, has been dismissed as junk science does not seem to matter. Most guardians ad litem, parenting counselors, mediators, lawyers, mental health professionals and judges still act as if this syndrome were real and mainly find mothers, not fathers, guilty in this regard. In 2010 the American Psychiatric Association was still fighting to include a new disorder in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders": the parental alienation disorder, to replace the debunked parental alienation syndrome.

In 2009 and 2010 more than 50 mothers from 21 U.S. states and a number of foreign countries all shared their stories with me. Their cases took place between the late 1980s and 2010. Some cases are still ongoing.

In some instances, I spoke with the mothers in person or at length on the phone. Some mothers filled out questionnaires, but many also sent additional narratives and documentation. Some mothers sent me eloquent, beautifully written, full-length memoirs. Some wrote pithy but equally heartbreaking accounts of their marriages and custody battles.

With a few exceptions, most of my 2010 mother-interviewees said that the system was "corrupt" and that lawyers and judges don't care about "justice," are "very biased," or can be "bought and sold."

Feeling Actively 'Disliked'

These mothers said that social workers, mental health professionals, guardians ad litem and parent coordinators--especially if they were women--actively "disliked" and were "cruel and hostile" to them as women. (Perhaps they expected women to be more compassionate toward other women. In this, they were sadly mistaken.)

Also, MANY mothers found that female professionals WERE OFTEN COMPLETELY TAKEN IN BY charming, sociopathic men ("parasites," "smother-fathers"), dangerously violent men and men who sexually abused their children.

Perhaps the mothers who sent me their stories were married to uniquely terrible men who used the court system to make their lives a living hell. Perhaps mothers who did not write to me had the good fortune to have been married to and divorced from far nicer men.

Good fathers definitely exist. Some fathers move heaven and earth to rescue their children from a genuinely mentally ill mother but do not try to alienate the children from her. If the mother has been the primary caretaker, some fathers give up custody, pay a decent amount of child support (and continue to do so) and work out a relationship with their children based on what's good for both the children and their mother.

These men exist. They do not launch custody battles from hell."

Phyllis Chesler is an emerita professor of psychology and women's studies at City University of New York, a psychotherapist and an expert courtroom witness. She is the cofounder of the Association for Women in Psychology and the National Women's Health Network, a charter member of the Women's Forum and the Veteran Feminists of America, a founder and board member of the International Committee for the Women of the Wall and an affiliated professor with Haifa and Bar Ilan Universities. She is the author of Women and Madness and Woman's Inhumanity to Woman. She lives in New York City.

---- June and July 2011 reviews ----

i) by (multiple - works') Author Talia Carner

Not since slavery in the USA were mothers punished by having their children taken away from them. Yet, in family courts all across America, judges and quasi-judicial officers of the court do just that: children who are abused or molested by their fathers are removed from their primary-care good mothers and are placed in the hands of their molesting fathers.

How this scandal can go on for decades with hardly any change, without any public outcry, and without any protest from human rights' activists is due to the fact that outsiders to the gutter of our family courts' justice simply refuse to believe it.

In her revised and updated milestone fact-filled book, "Mothers on Trial," Phyllis Chesler fights to save thousands of children from becoming yet another generation of victims of a court system that betrays them time and again. She points out that while adult women often recount childhood sexual molestation at home by close relatives--and these women's stories are believed--people tend to disbelieve when actually facing such cases as they happen in real time, right in front of them.

It is a documented fact that when fathers fight for custody, 70% of the time they obtain full or partial custody. People often assume that the reason these men who, in most part, have not been fully involved in their children's lives--sometimes have been absent for months or even years--now gain custody is because the mothers are unfit.

The naked truth is that IN MOST of these cases, the father is emotionally and verbally abusive or outright violent. The mother, often the product of an abusive home, often abused for years in her marriage to the father of her children, now faces battle for which she is woefully unequipped to wage. Distraught, terrified, isolated, alienated in a system that scrutinizes her with the same critical and belittling attitude she's encountered in her private lives, panicked over the fate of her sexually molested children, she seems "emotional" "unreasonable" and "difficult." Her refusal to share parenting or give access to a man who sexually molest her children is viewed as her being "rigid" and "uncooperative."

Furthermore, with limited or no financial resources, she comes to court either unrepresented by an attorney, or by an incompetent lawyer with little interest in the complexity of such a case. Or, as is often the case, she does not have the funds to keep the protracted legal battle a high-conflict custody case requires. Filing fees, transcripts, payments to evaluators and her lawyer's hourly rate quickly rise to thousands of dollars.

In the 1990s I stumbled upon the phenomenon of protective mothers losing these battles in droves, researched it for a few years, and finally published a novel about one such fictional mother in 2002. (Puppet Child.) Since then, I became an activist, trying to find ways to save thousands of children each year from family court's "justice." What amazes me is HOW LITTLE HAS CHANGED in the over decade in which I've witnessed more mothers enter the nightmare of family court, where they are discredited, disenfranchised and disbelieved.

Dr. Chesler has been at it a lot longer. Twenty-five years ago she published "Mothers on Trial," a book that starts with the history of men's ownership of their families and the lingering feudal notion of male supremacy as the head of the household. She pointed then--and continues to do so now in this excellent revised edition--that society and court hold men to much lower parenting standards than they do women.

Mothers fail at every single checklist (Does the divorced mother have sex? Is she overwrought with anxiety? Is she poor?) while men can be cold, disinterested, dysfunctional or even violent and they will be excused. In fact, fathers are given new chances time and again to foster their relationships with their children regardless of their abhorant personal histories, while mothers' contact with their children are not only curtailed or cut down to expensive supervised visitations, but ALL TOO OFTEN ARE SEVERED COMPLETELY.

If a father poisons a child's mind against the mother, it does not enter into the question of his parenting skills. But all too often, a child's fear of an abusive father is regarded as the mother's brainwashing the child, rather than the father's own doing. A judge will then chastise the mother for not encouraging enough the relationship with the father--and ACTUALLY TRANSFER CUSTODY TO THAT ABUSIVE FATHER. The notion of the best interest of the child and how much the child stands to suffer from CUTTING THE BOND WITH THE PRIME CARE-TAKING MOTHER and shuttling the child into a new life with a man the child fears, DOES NOT ENTER INTO THE EQUATION.

In this revised edition, after editing out six chapters and adding eight more while updating the available research, Dr. Chesler examines closely MANY SUCH CASES OF OUTRIGHT INJUSTICE THAT DEFY ANYTHING PEOPLE KNOW AND BELIEVE POSSIBLE IN OUR SOCIETY.

Phyllis Chesler's book is a must read for every judge, court evaluation, guardian ad litem, social worker, psychologist and lawyer. But more importantly, IT SHOULD BE READ BY ANYONE WHO CARES ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS OR ABOUT CHILDREN, because it is time we raise our collective indignation to stop and reverse the life sentence without parole our courts inflict upon children placed in the hands of their molesters.

ii) by Paula J Caplan

Phyllis Chesler's work was brave and groundbreaking when the first edition of this book appeared many years ago and is equally brave and poignantly still much-needed, because things are no better and in some ways are worse for mothers than they used to be. Every parent going through a custody battle, every lawyer, and every judge should have to read this book. In fact, _everyone_ should read it, because I am astonished by how many people think, upon hearing a fragment of what Chesler reports in the book, and want to believe ... it cannot be true. That it is true, no one reading her book can ever doubt.

iii) by Lauren Crane

As an experienced matrimonial lawyer in Manhattan, this updated and modernized classic should be required reading in law schools. It should be in the library of every single professional who deals with custody, divorce, and children. That means judges, law guardians, mediators and mental health personnel. Child Protective Service workers should be required to read this. It is a solid piece of work about a heartbreaking situation.

iv) by Zara Feingold

As a college student and as a young feminist, I find Phyllis Chesler's Mothers on Trial to be a unique and invaluable resource. This book should be required reading for feminists, future lawyers, and all those who care about social justice. In her classic whistle-blowing fashion,
Dr. Chesler exposes America's courts as anti-mother. Chesler's thousands of interviews that span three decades tragically expose women as survivors of many different intersecting oppressions. White women, black women, American Indian women, poor women, and lesbian women are all victims of a sexist, racist, classist, and homophobic bureaucracy.

This book is not only for mothers who are going through a custody battle.
It is for young women who want to dismantle patriarchy for their generation. Chelser's interviews are heartbreaking and tragic, but can create real change within the American legal system.

Thank you, Phyllis Chesler, for your bravery and vigilance!

v) by Kerry V MacKenzie

Embroiled in a world and a system that I never knew existed, I felt lost and alone. More than lost and alone, I felt horrified. I was a fulltime mother fighting for custody from my ex who called me 'crazy, a bad mother, delusional.' The worst of it was that in family court I was presumed guilty until proven innocent. From the lawyers to the legal guardian to the judge,
I was treated as if I was invisible. If my forensic psychiatrist had not been unbiased and thoughtful, I would have lost my children to a bitter and vengeful man, and it would have been likely I would have never seen them again.

It was so bizarre that I thought I was the only person in the world to experience this institutional contempt, or worse, that I was imagining it. That is, until I read this book.

If you are going through a custody battle, your experiences need to be validated with this book. It is a dear friend during hard times.

vi) by Mordechai Stern

This book is not just for feminists and certainly not just for mothers. Anyone who cares about fighting injustice in the American legal system should read Mothers on Trial.

Reading about the pain of these mothers who have been robbed of their children, and about their courage and devotion to their children in the most trying circumstances has certainly made me a better son.

vii) by Fern Sidman

Feminist icon Phyllis Chesler does it again!! The newly released, updated version of her classic monograph, Mothers On Trial, is a powerful testament to the flagrant and continuing injustices that custodially challenged mothers face in this country and beyond. This compelling tome is a real page turner guaranteed to evoke palpable emotions as egregious facts about the patriarchal family court system are revealed in nuanced detail. Beautifully written, empathic and courageous, tremendously insightful.

For all mothers caught in the maelstrom of a child custody battle, it is strongly recommended that you run out and buy this book !! It will serve as a soothing and compassionate source of succor while simultaneously educating, enlightening and empowering women who are faced with this excruciatingly painful tribulation. A must read !!

viii) by (multiple - works') Author Trish Wilson

I read the original edition of this book many years ago and I saw how well – researched and supported it was. This new version is even better. The additional chapters show the difficulties and impossible position mothers are in these days worldwide and throughout history. This is an important book that must be required reading for all students so they know the truth about child custody and motherhood the media refuses to report.

ix) by Lorraine Tipton

Thank you, Phyllis Chesler, for being one of the voices of reason, sanity and truth with these social injustices we have faced in family court. Our time is coming....our voices are no longer silenced...we have suffered...but we have persevered and grown stronger. There is nothing stronger than the mighty Phoenix who rises through the ashes. We are beyond "survivor" label and are now warriors...and we will be victorious! Hell hath no fury like the most dangerous place to be: between a mother and her child!

Twenty years later and now the mothers have figured out what they have been doing to us. We have social networked with thanks to the internet; and now we are never going to shut up, give up or go away!

x) by Valette Clark

For those of us who have been through this nightmare, this book is hope.
It is hope for the future victim families who will be discriminated against in a system and process that mirrors our societal views promoting institutionalized sexism.

It is at the base of who we are as a society and why violence is accepted in the home and continues to rise statistically each year. Violent crime in the home has been given a separate category governed by a separate set of "domestic laws" rather than criminal laws while all violence is a crime. The politicians could and should change this but I do not believe they really want to and this attitude is not gender specific. Women and men alike hold deep seated feelings and ideas that they learned from a young age that families deserve whatever they get -- from an abusive spouse to an abusive court system. I can only hope and pray that all family court systems in the US review this book and actually take a look in the mirror. They may not like what they see!

xi) by Judy Gee

Dr. Chesler has written this very important book that should be on the reading list for every woman who is unprepared for the way the world works. This book should also be required reading for every young woman who is considering marriage. If you are involved with a man who is controlling toward you and vengeful toward others while you are still in the enchantment stage of your relationship, you might want to reconsider. These are poignant and quite terrifying cautionary tales from women who desperately try to gain custody of their children. Their courageous struggle not to be overwhelmed by the injustices of our justice system as it applies to custodial mothers is an inspiration to fight on.

xii) by Louis Santacroce

Every word of this book is true! I see these guys EVERY DAY! They are the bane of my job. Right now, I have a guy calling me daily about how the guy his ex is now living with is a registered sex offender (he's not, not even an unregistered one) and how they sleep in the same bed with his five year old daughter.

Another calls to complain that his wife has him arrested for no reason whenever he tries to see his children, neglecting to inform me (as the police have no trouble doing) that he shows up to see his kids drunk and at 3 AM, and tries to run the mother over with his pick-up when she tells him to go away.

They all want custody because their ex's are no good whores who suddenly became alcoholics, junkies and sleep-arounds without them to keep 'em in line. But when I go to interview the kids, 90% of them are terrified of the FATHERS and beg not to be returned to them.

xiii) by Jennifer Jones

Phyllis Chesler's Mothers On Trial is a remarkable contribution to contemporary feminist activism. Current liberal academia completely neglects America's anti-mother courts. This is to the detriment of the millions of good mothers who are systematically robbed of their children every day.

Chesler writes about thousands of white, American Indian, black, and lesbian mothers spanning a wide socioeconomic net. Third wave feminists will find great profundity and inspiration in Dr. Chesler's analysis of racism and homophobia within America's custody battles. Chesler's experience as a psychologist gives deep and unique analysis to these devastating custody battles.

Well researched, intellectually ambitious, and highly emotional, Mothers on Trial is a sacred friend for mothers who have experienced unjust loss of children. Chesler's work is also a frightening cautionary tale to a younger generation of activists who are blind to this hidden manifestation of patriarchy.

xiv) by Ann

How can this happen in a "good country"; what is happening to families will effect the future. Most people turn a blind eye to what is really happening to good mothers. This book highlights the belief that "mothers who lose their children must have done something awful"----is a myth.

xv) by Fern

Feminist icon Phyllis Chesler does it again!! The newly released updated version of her classic monograph, "Mothers On Trial" is a powerful testament to the flagrant and continuing injustices that custodially challenged mothers face in this country and beyond. This compelling tome is a real page turner; guaranteed to evoke palpable emotions as egregious facts about the patriarchal family court system are revealed in nuanced detail. Beautifully written; empathic and courageous; tremendously insightful. For all mothers caught in the maelstrom of a child custody battle, it is strongly recommended that you run out and buy this book !! It will serve as a soothing and compassionate source of succor, while simultaneously educating, enlightening and empowering women who are faced with this excruciatingly painful tribulation. A must read !!

xvi) by Brenda

Mothers on Trial is eye opening. Per Dr. Chesler, most people who have never experienced a custody battle believe the myth that mothers always win custody as they are believed to be inherently more nurturing. This falsity has achieved prominence because most fathers do not want custody. However, when fathers do want custody, they usually get it.

Stereotypically nurturing women are held to completely different standards than are their male counterparts. Good mothers are shunned and abusive and neglectful fathers are rewarded for their "devotion."

Others have tried to shed light on this tragic problem. However, only Phyllis Chesler has done justice to these thousands of women's stories. Mothers on Trial incorporates rigorous research, including hundreds of interviews spanning a wide ethnic and geographical net. Mothers on Trial tells all those who care about children's welfare to rise up and create change. Beyond Chesler's tragic stories and psychological analysis is a plan for progress and human rights.