* * * *
Early Spring 1988 arrived. Its Vernal
Equinox was followed in just a greening month’s time by its Earth
Day. One of those other people was about to enter my life, a
woman this one was, by the simple name of Li Zhang, a name which
probably, right now, labels nearly a million or more people in the
World – both women and men alike. That’s a point. This not
keeping my little self within, literally now, my very own homeland
protected from other people can arise from so many, many
angles that these unsafe people might as well all have the same name
and I not be able to tell them apart. They’re so alike in several
ways, the least of which, of course, are their own names. I, to this
day, have never met this woman face to face. She was lodging one
particular March day and night at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Chicago
and, while conferencing there, was apparently victimized by theft of
some valuable stuff of hers I was told, a camera or a purse or a
microscope. Something like that.
There’d been a medical meeting. I
believe the umpteenth medical meeting in my and the Truemaier Boys’
lives. When Herry left Othello Drive for it, I was only given the
same ol’, same ol’ as I had been so passively and so wickedly
told at the outset of all of the rest of the local and statewide
medical meetings or national, cross – country trips Herry had
taken and attended before this 1988 one. That being, at a minimum,
two per year for 11 years so not umpteen of them but, as a matter of
fact, about 22 or 23 for certain by now, “Where am I going
to be? You don’t need to know that, now do you really? Do ya’?
If an emergency came up, well, … well, you’d have to go on
and handle it by yourself alone anyhow, now wouldn’t ya’,
Cunt? Well, wouldn’t ya’?!”
“Yeah. Yeah, Herry, I suppose so.”
“Well, then. I’m off.”
And that was it. Gone. No kiss. And
no telephone number. At where to try to get a hold of him.
Hell, Herod Edinsmaier wouldn’t even
know himself the first names nor the last ones of the vast majority
of our babysitters, let alone, their home telephone numbers
around the towns where we lived; that is, the Boys’ surrogate
caregivers – when their primary one wasn’t I, that
person never being he. In case when he telephoned
home to say that his plane had arrived to wherever safely and we four
were unavailable or out when he called, then Dr. Edinsmaier could
ring up one of them instead with the message that he was okay and ask
them to get it back to us. We didn’t always have an answering
machine in those days. Then Herry could go on about his medical
business meeting there knowing that we, his loving family back in his
homeland, were reassured about his safe arrival and subsequent
sojourning, too.
Shit! For what did I just the fuck go
and write that down? He never called back to say that. No,
he never, ever did. Not one time did Dr. Herod Edinsmaier even try
to telephone back home or to anyone else near our several, various
homes – nannies, neighbors, my friends – to say anything like
that at all: that he was safe. Much less, to find out … if we
were!
What am I thinking?! Herry never even
locked the homeland doors before himself retiring to bed at night.
Actually outwardly stating to me that that was too much work
to do, that he was too tired and that it wouldn’t matter anyhow:
if someone really wanted to get inside and do us all in, why then
they’d find a way to get that done – with us all locked in or
not.
So. I, every single night of
the 12½ years which he, according to mother – fucking society and
according to himself, headed up and was socially credited as its
bloomin’ lord and master with keeping safe our household, locked
all of our homes’ doors myself. If they were going to be secured
at all, then it was up to me – – no matter how tired I may have
been, too. No matter that. That little itty bitty thing. No matter
that it was every single night. The man, he is especial. He is, ya’
know, so off to bed he goes whenever, however. Don’t you be
expecting him to do any of the work of protecting and of
keeping safe you, let alone, his and your kids, by his having to do
the work of remembering to and then actually getting up off of
his ass and going to the ridiculously stupid effort of locking the
family home’s mother – fucking doors.
Fuck, Dr. Edinsmaier gets to sleep
right through anesthetized and unconscious women’s (that’s
plural!) scheduled breast biopsies without actually
losing anything, like ya’ know, his job, let alone,
his medical license! Why shouldn’t I be thinking that Herry
would also get to sleep right through basic home security, too?!
“Fuck!” I used to think every
single time but dare never state to Herry for fear of his upbraiding
and dressing down, “Mirzah could be dead, Herry! Mirzah could be
stone – cold dead – and … and Jesse and Zane and I have him
buried already! And you would never even know to care to be back in
town in time from any of your bloody fucking meetings to kiss him
good – bye. We could actually do that! We could actually bury for
you … all – absolutely all … of your
blesséd children for all you knew and cared! Many times over
we could actually have done this! For all that you cared.”
But silenced I kept. Every single
trip. Herry always had at his ready that standard, pat ‘question
– answer’ sprinkled with those little extra loving terms of
endearment for departing from me, “Well, Bitch, you’d have to
handle it now yourself alone anyhow, wouldn’t ya’?!, Well now,
wouldn’t ya’?” That common genre of question that Dr. Herod
Edinsmaier had himself, often, already concretely – hard and cold
as concrete stone – answered ... as he was allegedly
mouthing its querying words. Same type of already answered question
as when Herry from those darkened halves of the bed simply took for
himself from behind those any – time – of – night, rocks –
off quickies which he unloaded up my anus.
Same as everywhere else we lived. If
I truly did need to know the name of the hotel, its phone number
for guest information, the name of the meeting, the length of the
meeting, the brand of flight or the route driven or, well, let’s
just say if I needed to know squat I would, now 22 or 23 times, have
had to call up Dr. Edinsmaier’s colleagues’ spouses and ask
from them all of this information. “Gosh, Ms. Goldstein, ah,
Ella, do you know the name of the hotel where Dr. Goldstein, ah,
where Freddie, is going to be? And they’re taking what flight?
And, … ah, ‘nd they’re expected back, ah, when exactly now?
Gosh. Thanks an awful lot. So sorry to’ve been a bother to you
about this.”
Never, in 22 or 23 times, was there
even the illusion to me that if shit happened to any one of us four,
Herry’d be like, “Whoa, Darling, I’m there! I’m on the next
flight there! Just hang on, Love! Hug the babes and keep your eyes
and your arms open. I’m almost there!” Never. Not one mother –
fucking time. Ever. O, wait a sec! It did too! Several times this
happened. But always in Another World … in my Fantasy World.
Just like Herry never once rang up my
folks living very near to Iowa City to ask them if his most belovéd
wife and his most belovéd children had made it there to Grandma’s
and Grandpa’s okay. Not one time. Ever. When all four of us –
alone and always, always without Herry – traveled to
Mehitable’s and AmTaham’s for any kind of those 12½ years’
worth of vacations or holidays or just simple, ordinary visits.
It took one hour to slide across
slithery Columbia one christmas eve the ice and the wind were so bad.
And it was now, on its northernmost slope, dark – time
treacherous.
A normal trip to Williamsburg in great
weather and with good roads? Six hours. Three little itty bitty
kids all lined up in the back in their respective car seats and their
mama. Christmas eve and an hour to navigate what normally took a
mere 10 minutes. I pulled into the last gas station before leaving
the City and rang up mom. To hear Mehitable’s response, you’d’ve
thought our not coming for christmas that year was going to bring
down the Fires of Hell onto all the little girls’ and all the
little boys’ christmases all over the World. “It’s noooot
that bad out. The reports here are not what you say. You’re
always exaggerating. You don’t know. What’s Herry say? I just
know it’s not that bad. You’re overreacting again. Just
take it slow. What’s Herry say? You’ve talked to Herry, right?
What’s he say? The Boys’ll be sooooo disappointed. How can you
take this away from them? Herry wouldn’t. You know he wouldn’t.
You know he wouldn’t say no to them. You know that. He wouldn’t
sooooo disappoint them like you’re goin’ to.” Mehitable, of
course, didn’t right out loud on the telephone say Bitch! Or
Stupid! Or Stupid Ass Heifer! Or You Don’t Have a Brain of Your
Own! But. She did.
Herry didn’t even look up when we
walked back in the door.
At least and, of course so alone the
next morning on christmas day, I thanked myself, “We didn’t go.
I stood alone. We did not go. I did not try to move
– with my babies, with my babies’ breaths – one
mother – fucking inch further. Merci. Merci. Danke very much!”
That particular 24 December evening I
probably saved all of our lives and the lives of folks we don’t
even know and will never know. Another one of those life –
altering events that night. Gone wholly unnoticed and unheralded.
Except by a mother fucked. I had only myself to give me gratitude.
Which is exactly how Herry would have it. What I am thinking now is,
“How many, many fucked mothers just like me were also trying to do
that, that is, trying to do the impossible that night and every
holiday eve before and since? The World over? How many?”
Because I certainly know why they are. And why they and their
babies die when they do try to accomplish the impossible. The
insanely and stupidly impossible dicta of allegedly powerful and
controlling others.
* * * *
Mother - Fucking:
Chapter 14, "Husbandry and Homeland Security," pp 81 - 83
Chapter 14, "Husbandry and Homeland Security," pp 81 - 83
No comments:
Post a Comment