No Rest for the Wicked

Well, well - Big Jim has had yet another victory. He has temporary custody of the three boys which means of course that he will most likely get permanent custody. I'm pretty sure Mama's not going to want to try and get them back for fear of them coming after Georgia.

When we got to the court house, Mama disappeared into a room with her lawyer and his assistant, leaving the boys and me divided among the benches in the hallway - Georgia was spending the day with a little friend from the homeschool group. I took out a biography on Franklin Pierce and tried to read, but then a door to another room opened and I heard Big Jim say, "Well, hey, boys!" and they went in there with his insane mother and insane lawyer and brainless sister and shut the door, leaving me in abrubt silence.

I never saw the boys without their dad from then on. They were so excited about the outcome and didn't bother to hide it. They and Jewell were goofing off together, and half the time I was there I was on the verge of tears. Even Mama was brisk and professional. I don't know why I took it so hard - we knew this was an excellent possibility. I just felt so bad and angry that Big Jim was the criminal here and yet all the kids were sitting on his side of the courtroom and he was acting like he deserved them. I felt awful for Mama, who was the victim and yet they chose him. I knew she was not looking forward to telling Georgia.

I was also fearful for my fledgling faith. There was so obviously a right and wrong here. Of course Big Jim should not be given any more children! Of course they needed to be with their mother! How dangerous would it be to these kids for the court to say that, yeah, incest was really not a big deal, their dad would make a decent parent. This, I told God even as I knew the judge was back in chambers approving the deal, was an easy one to decide. For Big Jim to get this was downright wrong - he's an evil man! Mama might could say she was okay because she knew that this was what God wanted, but how could God want something so wrong? How could he let the wicked prosper? At that moment I really didn't give a fuck about what would happen to Big Jim on Judgment Day - I needed to see this son of a bitch suffer NOW!

Not happening.

He wanted the boys to move out that very day, but Mama said since this was her weekend to wait until the end. I can't believe he conceded that to her. The kids still have two weeks of the semester of school so Big Jim is supposed to drop them off each week day at nine and retrieve them after work. After the two weeks is up they'll be over here every other weekend, as will Georgia over there, and it's arranged so that they'll be at the same house each weekend.

Oh, my god, I got so upset when I was sitting around the table with Mama and Tommy the lawyer and assistant - whose name I don't remember but whom I liked a lot - and Tommy, who'd just been conferring in the hallway with Big Jim's evil attorney, Van-something. Tommy said that Big Jim said he would come pick up the kids at our house at 2 in the afternoon on Christmas! Now Mama and I had just spent a Thanksgiving by ourselves so that we could spend Christmas with everyone, including Melody, who was going down to Alabama with Mike to his parents' place. The kids had practically spent a week with Big Jim and last year he had them for Christmas AND New Year's because they spent Thanksgiving with us. The plan had been that this year the kids spend Thanksgiving  with their dad and Christmas here and New Year's at Tybee Island with Big Jim and Mama Jean.

And here he was trying to insist that he got them for half of Christmas! Who did he think he was? He apparently thinks he has more of his DNA in those kids than Mama does.

I was about to spit bullets, but Mama said, "Rebecca, we can just have our Christmas on Christmas Eve." I guess she wanted to choose her battles.

Like the one in which Big Jim didn't want to pay the house payments or child support for Georgia. Get this, he told his attorney that Mama had access to bountiful sums of money through OUR trust funds - that's right, Grandmommy's money, which belongs to Melody and Jim and me. Grandmommy and Big Jim didn't even LIKE each other! Turns our Grandmommy was right for once...

Dude, Mama doesn't have anything to do with my money or Melody's. I send the amount I need each month to cover long-term care insurance and medical insurance and my meds and Uncle Doug sends a check. Mama has nothing to do with it! And she gets a check for Jim, but it's made our to him, and she has to send a list of expenses every month, which is aways a huge hassle. But the money's not for her!

Mama could be living on the street and Big Jim wouldn't care. Maybe he's trying to force her out so that he can take Georgia from her.

Now you can see why I was so angry and felt so horrible about this guy being handed more children to raise!

Fortunately, Big Jim agreed to pay for the house. Mama told him that he knew before they signed the loan that Melody was going to tell Mama everything and still didn't tell her - she sure as hell woulnd't have done so had she known! And also, Big Jim isn't paying anything on the house he's living in, and he gets 66 grand a year. As for child support, the lawyers should be filling our a worksheet to figure it out. Dude, he should be paying alimony as far as I'm concerned.
 
The three boys and Jewell, rot her, were sitting on the front row on the other side of the room with Mama Jean, and I was sitting by myself on the other front row, since Mama was up in the front of the courtroom with her attorney Tommy and his assistant (which, incidently, is the very place I sat with Lisa in this very courtroom in front of this very judge back in the days of my legal internship).

The judge, who should also rot because of his immoral behavior and had even gotten a DUI last spring and yet was still sitting on the bench, motioned at the kids to leave, but when Mama Jean got up, he said she could stay (it was supposed to be just the clients and the attorneys and the judge since it was a settlement). But he told me to go.

“I’m NOT his daughter,” I said, glaring at Big Jim’s florid puffy face, just as Mama said, “She’s an adult.”

“Come back to chambers,” snapped the righteous judge to Mama and Big Jim and the lawyers, and so they did.

Mama Jean laughed and looked at me and started to say something - who did she think she was? We wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for her oh-so-generous funding of her son, who should be in prison, buying the house he lived in, paying for his lawyer, offering her services as a live-in teacher should he get the kids. I very deliberately looked away, examining the portraits of previous judges at the front of the room. I couldn’t believe how good I had become at blowing people off! I remember how when all of this happened five years ago and I was angry at Big Jim, I wanted to bite his head off. My journal entries were filled with hate and rage - YOU know. I HATED him with all of my heart.

And yet, whenever we had a family discussion (actually, not the family since the kids from Jewell down had no idea what had happened) and we girls were asked if we had any questions, what I would have like to yell at Big Jim came out in a little squeak. It was so against our training and brainwashing to raise our voices at either of our parents that even now, even when I had the most legitimate reason in the world to be angry at Big Jim, I couldn’t even legitimately demonstrate what I was feeling.

I glanced over at Mama Jean again and saw that she was scribbling away in a little notebook in her terrible cursive. I felt like laughing when I found myself wondering incredulously if she was writing poetry. That’s the only time she ever writes anything. In spite of her Ph. D. in English, I literally have never seen her write anything but her trashy poetry. Mama Jean is actually quite proud of her poetry and has various poems framed around her house, and she has even published a book or two of her stuff - self-published, of course. Now you know as well as anyone, Journal, that I am no poet, but I appreciate and enjoy reading good poetry. I have always thought her poems were terrible, although of course I never told her that.

I wondered what she was writing about. I smiled as I wondered if she were writing haiku about my behavior, the fact that we used to be friends, that now I was being the smaller person who did not care what her younger brothers and sisters wanted, the oldest sister who once bathed them and taught them and cooked for them and read to them at night when they were smaller and now forgot that to side with her mother. Maybe she’ll publish it in her next book and have “for Rebecca” written above it like she had done for some people in her previous books. She had written a haiku for each of her sons in her first book, and Big Jim, when he read his, said, “What is the heck does that mean, Mom?” to which she sniffed in injured annoyance.