Chapter Three
Holocausts
“If you were not hysterical, Legion, then, … then is when I would be worried about you.”
--- Margaret Stanley, lifelong Quaker, on the telephone, while preparing for her nursing quest to China
It was some 50 – plus years ago that Auschwitz was liberated. I have, firsthand, known the suffering of
those so encamped there. Today the survivors of that unthinkable hell may shout at me that I don’t know,
that I couldn’t possibly know, that I even mock their memory by claiming to know; but I do. Yes, it’s true.
I do too know.
Their hell there is not unequaled elsewhere. And not unlike one of the millions who faced her end tortured
and burning not so long ago, that hell has existed in just such a scope as theirs in my core also. In the first,
Night, of his trilogy of the Pogrom, Author Weisel describes that, above all else, not getting separated from
his father was paramount to keeping the tiniest glimmer of hope alive. The image of desperation painted
onto that page is burned into my brain.
Schindler’s List I watched transfixed and quite motionless four times straight through time after time after
time after time. I know this: the scene where woman after seemingly endless woman suddenly realizes
that her child, sort of laughing, sort of skipping and jumping up into that stock truck, is really being driven
away, away, away, away from her touch, the forever touch of its mother, I nearly vomit through every time.
And cold, physically cold as well as spiritually frozen, I mean. Six Iowa winters I simply left the heat off
in the house, there was no money. So cold, 34 degrees Fahrenheit in the kitchen when I actually measured
it once, that Rex, a female, Eastern Florida kingsnake inside her aquarium’s hollow log, did not move for
months and months and months each year. So cold I often wondered, ‘til late April, if she hadn’t up and
died in some previous frigid period, and I, ‘course, during these spells just hadn’t known she was actually
frozen to death. When Jesse had gotten that black and brown snake with large, bright sunshine yellow
diamonds all down her back for his ninth birthday, just ten days or so after I actually did finish that Iowa
Games 10K road race, knowing and finding quite well the track to run it on, thank you, I remember his not
hesitating in choice a moment. “O, I want her, Ma. For my birthday? Yes, the snake. Definitely the
snake, Mom.” He could either have her or a black and chrome / silver trick bike, and immediately there
had been no question. It would be Rex. Rex for king – like. No matter that the serpent was a she – snake,
her name was not Regina; it was Rex. Jesse read a lot, and he liked things Latinized.
Jesse’d even called Iowa’s state herpetologist and inquired about the care, feeding and handling. “She’s a
Floridian in more than name only. Temperatures in Iowa are too harsh for such species outdoors during the
wintertime,” the scientist had told him.
And when the judge – mandated time came, Seventh Day morning, 13 Tenth Month 1990, 11:30 am, for
Jesse and his two brothers to leave 6143 Havencourt Drive, Ames, Iowa, forever, Rex, the she – snake and
all of her accoutrements were not amongst the belongings of Jesse’s that Dr. Edinsmaier hoisted into the
back of the huge Ryder truck he’d rented just for this occasion.
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Besides the vast amount of physical energy expended, I spent so much mental energy in just remembering
that the heat was off. Always, even when I was away from home. The pipes might freeze, the few plants
friends had given me and number one son Zane’s beloved dimestore zebra finch, Lady, might not make it
although she ruffled as much as she could on her perch. Lady and all of her trappings hadn’t been a part of
the baggage Dr. Edinsmaier had ordered packed up either.
If Herry’d only remembered what those animals did for me, taught me, he’d’ve probably taken ‘em both
with him. Those living things at my home meant there was a glimmer for me. One morning 4½ years later,
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Lady didn’t perch anymore, she didn’t ruffle anymore and she certainly didn’t chirp anymore. “Like a
canary in a mine,” I thought, “is that all she’d lived for? A barometer? My thermometer? A measurer?
This little bird mother.” During the night her Light had extinguished so where was that hope for me and
my Boys now.
I actually put her inside a sandwich baggie and onto a shelf of the freezer compartment in the fridge
thinking … well, I have no idea what I was thinking as I did this. That Zane might want to look at her one
more time? That he might want to bury her as he had so mightily and bravely and so compassionately done
with the countless finches and the baby bunnies and the grown pet rabbits and the downed crows and the
injured mice and voles and whatever else he had so tenderly maneuvered and extricated, during their dying
moments, from the clenched jaws of our own beloved felines … before Lady? That Zane would ever see
her – or me – again? And about that tomcat, the Boys’ largest pet, Zephyr, pronounced “Zay – fear”, kind
of Frenchy – like? Zane read a whole lot, too; and he liked words that sounded Frenchy.
Dr. Edinsmaier didn’t take him along either.
More than once no water came out of the dilapidated apartment’s shower faucet and the slop water in the
toilet would nearly overflow until I could pour enough boiling water over the tub tiles or down the stool
sewer, and the water pressure from behind the thawing obstruction could finally force the rest of the ice
loose and down. Nearly every January and February noontime, many years oftener, I raced home from the
university to check on the plumbing and the pipes. This meant, of course, usurping all the lunch hour in
this endeavor. Parking around campus was so far from the office that half the time off for the noontime
break was used up just in getting to, and back in from, the heap that is Ol’ Black, my incredibly faithful
1986 Chevy Eurosport wagon. Which I own and drive still today. Luckily, that rundown joint on
Havencourt Drive with the mailbox – sized chunks of orange and brown wallpaper splashed upside the
kitchen walls that had been my, the Boys’ and their pets’ wonderful little home now that Herry and I were
divorced, was an inside unit of four of them lovingly referred to by its absentee landlord as condominiums.
Had it been an end condo, the pipes would, indeed, have burst more than once. By my bedside, I placed
two alarm clocks. One for the middle of the nighttime was set to scream at me at 2:30 am so I could rise to
run all the faucets and flush all the drains. The second was set by which, then, I rose a second time – that
time for the day’s labor. Every night. Four months. Six winters.
Unlike Auschwitz and Dachau guests, at least I was clean though shower time was the worst. I simply left
my body in order to survive the cold. I cannot remember what that is called, to be able to not physically
suffer the pain or cold because it hurts so much. But I got really good at it. Isn’t that the so – called ‘out –
of – body’ experience some folks recount having had when they were being molested or when they haven’t
yet actually gone over to the light at the end of the tunnel at the end of a car crash? I could bring myself to
such a state of mind – and body – quickly, seconds actually. And then the shower was over and I could
bundle up again. At least I did have water, hot water even. I never, during those cold months, took the
painful time to shave though. I had learned quite some time before this once during a Woodstock – like
period of 14 years in an unshaved condition, southern European style, that shaved legs and underarms did
not a man get nor keep anyhow so why extend for any moment longer the torture of my extremities in their
wetness and the 40+ - degree, steamed – up cubicle just to have glistening calves post shower.
As it was then, at the end of the pain that I had refused to feel, the gain was that I was at least clean and
smelled so – so. But good enough. I know; for that I should be ever go grateful. I am.
Speaking of thankful, I also had food and rarely went hungry for very long. Milk, baked potatoes, bananas
and water. Potable water even. Water I did not have to haul very far either. Meal after meal after meal
and months on end. But I rarely went hungry – feeling for very long. ‘Til the next potato. It is a
miraculous wonder, the potato. No cook I, I must have learned 100 variations of preparing potatoes with
milk and salt and pepper. Sometimes with margarine, too. But never peeled. Never.
And as for spiritual food and sustenance, the god of my brain and I communed a lot. For which I am also
grateful. If any gain from the pain of these immediate past years was realized at all, I would have to say
that it has been in the massive purifying, the refining of my reason, the clarity in defining what god really is
for me. She is witch – like. And very, very old. Ancient really. And inside … me. Just ask Herry.
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When I had no money to spend for weekend leisure purposes which was every weekend, I would read,
over and over, the primmer on Gandhi I had purchased in more prosperous times. God is Truth; Truth is
God. Whichever way, forwards and backwards, backwards and forwards, it was exactly so. And that,
that Truth, became for me the “that of God” in me. George Fox, Quaker leader, often used to exhort in the
17th Century, and still does today in his writings, that folks really need to learn to, “Walk cheerfully over
the Earth seeking ‘that of God’ in everyone.” And Gandhi told that British – controlled courtroom time and
again, “Even if I am a minority of one, the Truth is still the Truth.”
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American courtrooms have a way of not listening to – or for – the Truth, however. The legal system is not
a god – like institution at all. It is not there to seek the Truth despite any, and sometimes every, pretense of
that. Yet people there, isolated and insulated and unpoliced by anyone and not accountable to anyone, least
especially not accountable to their taxpaying ‘employers’, you and me, that is, the American public masses,
play god with the lives of us humble payers and those of our children’s every hour of their working week
all year long.
I write of what I know to happen in civil courtrooms of the United States. We are battered into having to
swallow, first of all, that all laws surrounding our plight, ‘our case’, must be just. “You see, it wouldn’t’ve
become a ‘law’ now, would’ve it?” we’re lied to. And secondly, we are O – so slickly deceived by the
hammered dictum that American judges not only know but will also apply those so – called laws ‘justly’ in
our particular cases. Orders ooze out from behind courtroom walls as if they were scripture like that which
some men’s gods etched into patriarchal stone tablets. Or onto parchments by way of some Huge Hirsute
Hand deftly dipping down from out of puffy cumulus clouds to manipulate only human males’ hands
centuries before the printing press – so that these guys could have hard copies of what had previously been
only their oral superstitions, mythologies and, especially, their fantasies.
But they are not. They are not scripture. They are simply the thoughts and workings of men only,
simpleton men often, white men surely, and men who, before they were judges, were lawyers first and who,
after they become judges, are still lawyers. Check out the reality of the statistics, if you must quibble with
the gender and race I ascribe to American judges. You will find that, still, they are almost all white men –
when, still, women make up 53 percent of the population of this World, and still, women and non – white
races make up the proportionate bulk of the masses upon whom ‘the court’ renders its order. Upon whom
The Impact of the orders fall. ‘The courts’ are, themselves, pogroms, holocausts.
What is this ‘the court’ stuff anyhow? What kind of addressing of a person is it to call that person ‘the
court’? ‘The court’ doesn’t do anything, doesn’t say anything, doesn’t write anything down. ‘The court’
isn’t some inanimate, bronzed copper and ironworks statue in the courthouse lobby with a blindfold over
her eyes holding up two scales supposedly balancing something. ‘The court’ isn’t a book or a building or a
room.
‘The court’, in the event of deciding legally which parent now gets to be the children’s primary physical
caretaker, is merely a human being sitting in judgment over other human beings. So. Why doesn’t the
judge call himself by the first person? Like kings do. “I decree this …” “I declare that …” Does the
judge really think that using a third person inanimation, ‘the court’, takes the onus of his decisioning off
and away from himself? Away from himself personally and away from his accountability for that same
decision then, too? Because it doesn’t. It does not.
Those of us being so ordered? We know who is so ordering us. Does the judge really think his ass is
sufficiently covered if he writes that ‘the court’ finds thus and so? Especially when the so – called ‘facts’
that ‘the court’ supposedly ‘found’ aren’t, indeed, facts at all? That the ‘findings’, aren’t Truth at all but that
they resulted from mere words that a slick, sticky lawyer or witness, a so – called pillar – of – the –
community doctor or his next particular wife, just managed to conveniently ‘get said’ out loud?
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‘Testimony’ equals ‘evidence’ so that ‘the court’s’ ‘findings of fact’ end up showing, or more ridiculously,
end up proving ‘conclusions of law’? ‘Conclusions of law’ that then become the basis for and the
foundation of his judgment, his decree, his rendered Impact? My … my … my, my, my. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Does the judge really think that his using the title, “the Court”, to address himself makes us ordered ones
believe, let alone, have confidence and trust in him, makes us believe that he, da’ Man, really reads over,
reads again and then gives careful study and learned thought, rumination, pondering consideration and
esteem to all the exhibits and testimony and briefs and ‘evidence’? That he, the judge, takes all of those
submissions and ties any or all of them, in his effort to search out the actual and real Truth, to dates and
events and situations and to just how things in the lives of all the involved people of ‘the case’ really shaped
up? Especially without any 8½ x 11 transcript pages typed up from the court reporter’s machine strips of
testimony, that is, without any ‘evidence’, in front of him from which to read, to reread and to study?
Ya’ know don’tcha, Reader, that no such transcript is ever typed up at all unless somebody first offers to pay
something for it? Maybe like either romps on the conference table, rounds at the local club, drinks at the
clubhouse – or actual dollars to the clerk of court. Do the judges really think that their collective writing of
the appellation, “the court”, will connote to us, the ruled - upon, their such careful handling of ‘our case’?
When this is not at all what happens behind those small county courthouse chambers’ walls and those
appellate courts’ magnificent marble columns at the time a ‘court order’ is issued, affirmed and,
subsequently therefore, upheld!
The real reason Lady Justice, with the scales and her so – called balancing act in the courthouse lobbies,
wears that wool pulled down over her eyes? Know what that reason is? The sights of the goings on inside
courtrooms and behind judges’ office doors make her so sick that she cannot stand to bear silenced witness
to these holocausts any longer! That is why she wears that blindfold.
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