Bishop

PART ONE

         I was ten when mom left. Isabella was eight. Dad said that mom was sick. Isabella and I were already past our Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplain, Laurel and Hardy phase and well into our elementary school obsession with James Bond. I can still picture Isabella screeching out, “He’s so-o bad,” after less than fifteen minutes of Live and Let Die. Dad told us to shut it off. He had to tell us something. Isabella said that was fine with her; she didn’t even believe that “he could be James Bond.” “Girls,” Dad said. Dad stepped in front of the TV and then sat down cross-legged on the floor, broad shouldered, looming, blocking our view. Isabella reached out and grabbed my hand. I kept my eyes on dad and squeezed Isabella’s hand when she started sniffling. Dad looked down at the carpet in between his words, during pauses that were too long to hold his gaze, through the grief or shame or guilt–whatever emotions were going through his head, like the ones I’d come to know oh so well. When he looked down, he’d start tracing small patterns into our carpet. I watched his nose scrunch, his brow furrow. His mouth fell open while his tongue pressed against the inside of his lower lip like it always did. And then he’d continue talking. Looking at us. Trying to be honest. Scared as he was. Scared as we were.

“You remember how your mother went on vacation last summer?”

“Uh-huh,” we nodded.

“You remember how when she got back from vacation she didn’t look sick anymore?”

“Uh-huh,” we remembered.

         Loose skin that had hung at the jowls of her neck had tightened. Dark bags under her eyes had lightened. She’d didn’t look so thin anymore. Her chest and ass had filled out a bit. We’d seen the signs, but we just didn’t know what they meant. We didn’t know that the sound of an ice cube and then another and another meant that mom was sick again. We didn’t know what new cigarette burns in the carpet meant, exactly. We didn’t know how that could start an argument that lasted an hour, two. A week. We absent-mindedly fingered and plucked at the tiny, charred holes in the rug while watching Sean Connery bed another damsel, Harpo Marx give someone his leg, Laurel and Hardy move their piano for the 20th time. What we learned was that mom was sick, and now she was gone. Was she coming back? No.

“Why not?”

“Because she’s sick.”

“Why won’t she get better?”

“It’s not that type of sick, sweetheart, I wish it were.”

“But where will she live?”

“I don’t know, Inez, it just can’t be here.”

“When will we see her again?”

“I don’t know, honey, I don’t know if you’ll ever see her again.”


         And he was right, we didn’t. They found her blue-lipped, lifeless body full of pills and whiskey three days later. She was 37.



         But those early days weren’t so bad. It’s not like we missed her all that much. We didn’t miss her cuddles or caresses, because there weren’t any to miss. She wasn’t that type of woman, that type of mother. I didn’t understand it until I was a few years older–in my teens. She’d always been absent, even when she was there. What we had lost wasn’t a mother, but a physical presence. A being. An occupier of space. One day she was there, and the next she was gone. Gone for a week. Gone for a month. Gone for three months, and then she was gone for good. We were so young. So little.

         What I know now, what I understand, is that mom was looking for a change. She had tried to reset. Tried to start over numerous times. Gone to rehab. Dried out. Fought. And in the end, she couldn’t do it again. Maybe life was something that had been eating at her, consuming her. Maybe that’s how it worked. Or, it could have been just what she was. In her mind there was only one way for her to escape. What she was, what she had been, what she always would be. And she did it.