Constantia “Connie” Munda

author and illustrator

Constantia “Connie” Munda is a multi-talented author, illustrator, and Child Protection Services officer, who has penned the compelling novel, Mother’s Day in the Empire State, Or An Answer to the Arraignment of Women. As a single mother of two children and a veteran military officer, Connie brings a unique perspective to her writing, drawing from her extensive experience in military intelligence.

About the Book

Set in the fictional town of Allegheny in the New York Empire State, Connie Munda (a single mother and veteran military intelligence officer turned Child Protection Services officer) investigates two mothers accused of child abuse. The novel provides a raw unflinching look at the challenges faced by mothers in both poverty and luxury highlighting the grim state of American children today.

Set as a deposition novel discovered in the Public Records of the Allegheny Family Court, Mother’s Day in the Empire State delves into three distinct stories of motherhood in America. Munda critically examines the concept of motherhood. Drawing inspiration from the original intent of Mothers Day by Anna Jarvis in 1906 as an antiwar holiday, the novel challenges the sentimentalized view of motherhood propagated by modern society.

Chapter One

Introductions, Comments, Suggestions

This Deposition is from May 9th, 2021, and it is being prepared in response to Complaint # 21–4532 and Complaint # 21–6154. Both child abuse complaints come from the Town of Allegheny, New York. They are anonymous complaints about two (2) mothers abusing their children. My name is Officer Constantia “Connie” Munda, and my badge number is number is three, one, four (#314). I’ve been a Child Protection Specialist (CPS) for twelve (12) years in the New York Empire State.

DEPOSITION TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:
5–9–21, 12:09 am

Dear Honorable Family Court and Good Reader…

Five Short Mother’s Day Videos 

1 – Connie Munda with Susan Dalton 1 –

She continues to rub her eyes as she runs into a
Few cars right in front of me. Then she bounces off my
Ford Interceptor, looking into the blacked–out win-
dows as a mirror. She looks directly at me, but she
is not looking directly at me. Susan, alternately
whispers and giggles to herself, “I can see, – see,
see, see – I can see, – see, see, see – I can see.”
I could scrutinize Susan’s burned out and melted
out eye sockets as she fixes her hair in my Empire
car windows. She is about to go in to “Shock”
as the convulsing in between seizures increases.
Susan slowly paws her way past me, blindly and
desperately walking down the street, bouncing off
the other parked cars. Still giggling and whisper-
ing words as if she is sharing a long-suppressed
secret: “I can see, I can see, I can see…. I can
see, I can see, I can see….”

2 – Connie Munda with Susan Dalton 2 –

Dear Family Court and Good Reader, I’m witnessing
Susan’s demise… it is a live rat-lab test and I
was a two (2) way mirror, I am an unreliable vari-
able, a blockade, a closed door. This rat test is
a nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) warfare
test. I pull up my satellite bird’s eye view and
Susan looks like a rat bouncing off test doors,
wandering down the road she grew up on looking for
her truth, looking for her Other, looking for her
remedy after swallowing her poison.

3 – Raft of Poverty 1 –

The porch is more of a raft than a porch. The Dalton
porch is more like, The Raft of Medusa (1819), a painting by Gericault that depicts a catastrophe in which a raft
of sailors are cannibalizing each other after their
ship was wrecked and they float around aimlessly. So
therefore, here in 2021 Appalachia, everyone’s porch
is not called The Raft of Medusa, but The Raft of
Poverty.

And Honorable Family Court and Good Reader, I don’t
know if you like to look at fine art paintings,
drawings, or illustrations, because then you would
be an aesthetician and/or “A Good Looker.” My watercolor painting which I will share with this Court will show a sad composition of mothers cannibalizing their family and
children with abstract trash. My watercolor painting The Raft of Poverty is “People’s Exhibit O.”

The Appalachian front porch and/or their Raft of
Poverty first and foremost has used tires hiding
underneath the porch raft, and in the corners, to
keep it afloat. Then beer can recyclables ($.05)
are littered and strewn across the raft / porch in
loosely tied clear bags that have thousands of beer
cans. The next great architectural feat on the Raft
of Poverty is the children’s colorful plastic fort
with slides that was used once or twice by their
insolent and discontent children and then forgot-
ten forever.

4 – Raft of Poverty 2 –

The forts /slides, quickly fade in the
sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays and become yet another
vessel to carry more unrecycled beer cans that will
never be recycled ($.05).

The third big improvement for the Appalachian Raft
of Poverty in 2021 is the kiddy pool filled with
green putrid water, and more beer cans. From the
mast of this Raft of Poverty swings an old car seat
crudely hung with big chains as some kind of swing-
ing Appalachian loveseat. On the sides of these
rafts are always dilapidated cars and trucks on
blocks. Because Barbara’s husband was an old rock
star of Allegheny, she had two (2) 1976 Pontiac
Trans Am hotrods on blocks. One (1) Trans Am was
smashed into a washer / dryer set on the porch /
raft, and the other was buried under more used tires
and beer can recyclables. Barbara, the mother of
the house, had magically planted yellow and black,
Black–Eyed Susans all around, and in the old Trans
Ams car. She perfectly matched the black and gold
Trans Am, with it’s famous,”Smokey and the Bandit”
color scheme.

This dreary black and white watercolor painting
of spiritual cannibals on The Raft of Poverty is particularly horrifying because no humans are there except their trash – their leavings… their compost. Because Appalachia is s vacant and xenophobic no one is looking to be “Saved.” No cannibal is looking for another ship on the horizon, poverty does not ask for help, poverty dies alone on its
own Dead Sea amongst the trash, which outlives pov-
erty by many decades.

5 – Book Reader Crater –

I ask my mother, my father, or perhaps my brother or sister operating the Remote Aircraft Pilot (RAP) circling above Us all right now with their Predator drone: Why are you Them? I ask this cockroach looking at Us via a satellite reading these same words you are reading at this very moment, dear Reader and Honorable Family Court….

Our letters, numbers, and spaces – nothing is private anymore, nothing is intimate anymore – even reading a good book alone is not yours and yours alone. The cockroach is never asleep. And these written words are not yours alone. The cockroach calls in your latitude and longitude coordinates and awaits the OK from their commanding officer (CO) for the order to kill–it. The cockroach alien looks at Us from his satellite in another dimensional space. The cockroach gazes longingly and emphatically at Us – the mother, the father, the brother and sister child – for a few moments. The Empire cockroach looks closer at their pixelated black-and-white Predator screen, looking at me reading this deposition novel. The cockroach looks at both the Real and the Other at the same time. The cockroach starts to tear up. A teardrop falls from the roach’s dead gaze… just as the Predator screen explodes into a fireball. The cockroach doesn’t blink as the dust clears. And now I – a book reader – have been replaced with a crater and not just a bug–splat, but a human–splat. The Empire’s danger–close life is getting droned while you’re killing it, fucking it, and/or perhaps, Good Reader… just reading it.