A Rose by Any Other Name...
Feb. 15th, 2008 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
porphyryShortly after meeting Mme Malkhos many years ago I asked her about a small town in Southern Illinois called Mulberry Grove. She said she had been there once, on a buying expedition when she had worked in an antiques store. She thought it was the creepiest place she had ever been. The people reminded her of the Peacock family from the television show X-Files: looking inbred and dangerous.
I asked because some time before, I had known someone who came from that town. I am going to write not strictly of her, but of her father, or, rather, her perception of her father, because it was quite remarkable. When simply asked about her father, she would say that he had owned a tiny, miserable farm. That he worked when he had to as a day-laborer and that everything he made went to booze. All he wanted to do was drink till he passed out; it was just as well she remembered him so often sprawling unconscious since he was not one of those cheerful, happy drunks. Like St. Anthony, he had never learned to read, but had memorized most of the Biblical corpus from hearing it read aloud as a child and so became a lay-preacher in some sect that viewed itself as the purification of the liberal, modern, secularized 7th-Day Adventists.
Among the poverty and squalor of Mulberry Grove she had been mocked and tormented at school because even there she was an outcast—she had had to wear homemade clothes, and not well-made ones either; baths seem to have something of a luxury for her. Nevertheless, she made her escape. She was accepted at a University about a hundred miles away and completed a course of study there, majoring in drama and taking the certification to be a high school drama coach. To give you an idea of her talent, she was selected to act in just one play put on by her department in the 5 years she was there—taking in a murder mystery the role of a corpse lying on a bed before which two policemen discussed how she might have been killed (Mme. Malkhos, by contrast, attended the same school a few years later and, although she was not a drama major, auditioned and received the roles of Medea and Miranda in productions of the same department).
The refugee from Mulberry Grove also acquired a husband who, after graduation worked inspecting machinery at an oil refinery. She did not work but tried desperately to become pregnant. After a few years they went to a fertility doctor. After several months of fruitless treatment, the doctors finally discovered through a blood test that she was taking an anti-psychotic drug that was an abortificent. She has been pregnant many times, but the tiny embryos had been dislodged within a few hours or days, passing out unnoticed. She had not told the doctor about the medication since it wasn’t any of his business. Why she had needed and how she had started on this drug I never learned. After she went off of it, she did have a child, then a divorce, then a psychotic episode. She spent about a year in a mental hospital.
When she was released, she finally found a therapist who understood her. At the first session she realized something all the other doctors had missed: she suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder. Hypnosis soon brought back all the repressed memories, and recalled an entirely different father in Mulberry Gove.
Her father had begun to rape her almost as soon as the midwife left the house. Every year between menarche and the time she left for college she had been impregnated by him and delivered a baby.
Why didn’t the teachers notice? She wore baggy clothes and they didn’t like her anyway. Was she sure of this? Wouldn’t the fertility doctor have noticed some sign? He should have, but he was incompetent, look how he had mishandled her drugs (he had mishandled her drugs? Really?)
What happened to these babies? They had each been delivered at home and promptly sacrificed to Satan by her father.
Really? Yes. He was the high priest of a witchcraft cult. Not just in Mulberry Grove, but he had been the leader of all the witches throughout the Midwest. The babies of other ‘breeders’ like herself were brought to him along with countless others kidnapped from hospitals, daycares and preschools all over the country. He had sacrificed infants to Satan as fast as Julian had bulls to Zeus.
And how did he get away with this? Police captains, FBI Agents, Prosecuting Attorneys—they were all in the cult too. They were his servants.
Then why was he so poor? He didn’t want money, only to exercise the lusts to murder and rape.
If he got drunk and passed out every night, when did he have time to do all this? Those were on different nights.
Why did he let you go? Because I could have testified against him. But I thought you had forgotten it all? That was later. Why bother to ask about the Prosecutors he controlled who would hardly have used her testimony? Why not put her on the altar too?
You said he hated everyone in town because they humiliated him all the time. Why didn’t he use his power to take revenge, or at least get enough money to be free of the need to work for them? And his underlings must have been vicious, savage killers: utterly depraved; why didn’t one of them kill him while he was in a drunken stupor and take his place? That is about the time she would start to cry.
_______________________
Once we watched an episode of the old televisions series Star Trek (the one based on The Tempest, oddly enough). After a few minutes, she described how the rest of the plot was going to unfold from having seen the episode before. I asked her if she was very certain about what she had said. She became adamant about it; for some reasons she was very defensive about having her memory questioned.
During the commercial, I told her that she had remembered some elements of the show, but had mixed them together with another episode and then I straightened out the plots of both for her. She watched for the next hour in bewilderment as we saw the falseness and distortion of her memory clearly demonstrated. Could she now admit that other memories might be confused and mixed up? That hypnosis might muddle memory rather than clarify it? That if she ‘remembered’ something that was impossible, then it might not be a true memory but some kind of confabulation? For a few minutes she admitted I was right, but then she burst into tears again.
Among the poverty and squalor of Mulberry Grove she had been mocked and tormented at school because even there she was an outcast—she had had to wear homemade clothes, and not well-made ones either; baths seem to have something of a luxury for her. Nevertheless, she made her escape. She was accepted at a University about a hundred miles away and completed a course of study there, majoring in drama and taking the certification to be a high school drama coach. To give you an idea of her talent, she was selected to act in just one play put on by her department in the 5 years she was there—taking in a murder mystery the role of a corpse lying on a bed before which two policemen discussed how she might have been killed (Mme. Malkhos, by contrast, attended the same school a few years later and, although she was not a drama major, auditioned and received the roles of Medea and Miranda in productions of the same department).
The refugee from Mulberry Grove also acquired a husband who, after graduation worked inspecting machinery at an oil refinery. She did not work but tried desperately to become pregnant. After a few years they went to a fertility doctor. After several months of fruitless treatment, the doctors finally discovered through a blood test that she was taking an anti-psychotic drug that was an abortificent. She has been pregnant many times, but the tiny embryos had been dislodged within a few hours or days, passing out unnoticed. She had not told the doctor about the medication since it wasn’t any of his business. Why she had needed and how she had started on this drug I never learned. After she went off of it, she did have a child, then a divorce, then a psychotic episode. She spent about a year in a mental hospital.
When she was released, she finally found a therapist who understood her. At the first session she realized something all the other doctors had missed: she suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder. Hypnosis soon brought back all the repressed memories, and recalled an entirely different father in Mulberry Gove.
Her father had begun to rape her almost as soon as the midwife left the house. Every year between menarche and the time she left for college she had been impregnated by him and delivered a baby.
Why didn’t the teachers notice? She wore baggy clothes and they didn’t like her anyway. Was she sure of this? Wouldn’t the fertility doctor have noticed some sign? He should have, but he was incompetent, look how he had mishandled her drugs (he had mishandled her drugs? Really?)
What happened to these babies? They had each been delivered at home and promptly sacrificed to Satan by her father.
Really? Yes. He was the high priest of a witchcraft cult. Not just in Mulberry Grove, but he had been the leader of all the witches throughout the Midwest. The babies of other ‘breeders’ like herself were brought to him along with countless others kidnapped from hospitals, daycares and preschools all over the country. He had sacrificed infants to Satan as fast as Julian had bulls to Zeus.
And how did he get away with this? Police captains, FBI Agents, Prosecuting Attorneys—they were all in the cult too. They were his servants.
Then why was he so poor? He didn’t want money, only to exercise the lusts to murder and rape.
If he got drunk and passed out every night, when did he have time to do all this? Those were on different nights.
Why did he let you go? Because I could have testified against him. But I thought you had forgotten it all? That was later. Why bother to ask about the Prosecutors he controlled who would hardly have used her testimony? Why not put her on the altar too?
You said he hated everyone in town because they humiliated him all the time. Why didn’t he use his power to take revenge, or at least get enough money to be free of the need to work for them? And his underlings must have been vicious, savage killers: utterly depraved; why didn’t one of them kill him while he was in a drunken stupor and take his place? That is about the time she would start to cry.
_______________________
Once we watched an episode of the old televisions series Star Trek (the one based on The Tempest, oddly enough). After a few minutes, she described how the rest of the plot was going to unfold from having seen the episode before. I asked her if she was very certain about what she had said. She became adamant about it; for some reasons she was very defensive about having her memory questioned.
During the commercial, I told her that she had remembered some elements of the show, but had mixed them together with another episode and then I straightened out the plots of both for her. She watched for the next hour in bewilderment as we saw the falseness and distortion of her memory clearly demonstrated. Could she now admit that other memories might be confused and mixed up? That hypnosis might muddle memory rather than clarify it? That if she ‘remembered’ something that was impossible, then it might not be a true memory but some kind of confabulation? For a few minutes she admitted I was right, but then she burst into tears again.
