These Broken Pieces on the Floor
February 10, 2018
Bishop Residence, Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York City
The sound of a door slamming echoed throughout the apartment. Sneakers were thrown off and a backpack tossed in a heap near a shoe rack. The air was thick with tension as a girl shaking with rage stomped towards a small kitchen. A woman followed behind her firing insult after insult, each one barbed with frustration and another emotion the girl couldn’t place. Instead, her focus was each word that came out of her mother’s, no the woman’s, mouth.
Idiot.
Monster.
What did I ever do to get stuck with a kid like you?
Any kid who had ever argued with their parents knew that they would never win. So, she inspected the fruit bowl, wanting an apple, but of course, the apples were rotten so the orange at the top of the pile was her best bet. Behind her, her mother was still going on and on like a broken recorder about how bad a daughter she was, blah blah blah. Maybe if she would stop repeating the same things about what a failure she was they could have a productive conversation and solve the issue, but who was she kidding? Hypothetically, if such a conversation were to happen it would change nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nothing.
So, she settled for plucking the orange out of the fruit bowl and a dramatic exit from the kitchen to her room. Later they could pretend nothing happened, as always, pretend to be a happy mother-daughter duo, as always, and pretend that her father hadn’t forgotten her birthday two days ago, again, as always.
“Katherine Elizabeth Bishop! Get back here we are not done talking! What, you expect that after I get a call from the principal because you got into a fight you’re going to be able to get out of this without consequences?”
Ah yes, the shrill tone of her voice told her exactly what she already knew: she was completely and utterly fucked. In which case, the best course of action was to book it straight to her room, lock the door, barricade it, put on her headphones, peel her orange, eat it, and wait 3-4 hours before showing her face to the outside world.
She got about as far as booking it to her room and halfway through locking her door before her perfectly devised plan was crushed, all because of her mother’s, not mother, woman’s, cursed foot. If her mother hadn’t stuck her foot in as the door was about to close they could have gone on pretending. But it did. She wasn’t about to give up though. Her mother’s foot was stopping the door from closing? So what? If she pushed hard enough mother dearest would have to move her foot so that it wouldn’t be crushed and she could push the door closed and lock it.
At first, it seemed like a great idea. She was strong, much stronger than her mother (the woman goddamnit!) She couldn’t very well be a martial arts, archery, and swimming champion without being strong (well she was, until two years ago when she had to quit everything).
She had her back against the door and her feet braced on the hardwood floor pushing back as hard as she could. Then she felt the door crack a little. And by a little, she meant it had already been cracked (past arguments she was heavily regretting) and now it was cracking more, enough that if it had to endure much more pressure the entire door would break. And it’s more than likely she wouldn’t get another door if it broke for both punishment and money reasons. Therefore the most logical reasoning would be to stop pushing against her mother on the other side and let her in her room. Boom, pressure off door, privacy for at least another week. The downside though would be exceptionally painful, for her ears at least.
3, 2, 1… Get ready for fireworks (talking to herself was necessary to get out of this mess with marginally less emotional damage).
The door slammed open and hit the wall, there was probably a nice-sized dent in the shape of a doorknob in the plaster. The impact of the door slamming open also knocked over her messily displayed trophies (2-time state and regional champion here) and her band posters, which were gonna give hell when she tried to put them back up.
And here we go…
“Kate! You cannot act like that and just expect to get away with it! You never do anything to help around the house, you just throw your dishes in the sink, you never take out the trash, you never fold your laundry, and now you get suspended for the rest of the week and think you can just avoid the consequences? I am not your maid and I thought you were old enough to not need a babysitter to keep you out of trouble! You’re 14, old enough to do chores, old enough to go to school and not act out! You’re sister at your age never got into fights, helped around the house, and still kept up good grades at school! The least I expect from you-”
“Shut up!”
Saying she had had enough was an understatement. She kept up decent grades, she washed her dishes, folded her laundry, vacuumed the house occasionally. Okay, she was no big help, but her mother would never understand how hard it was to even get out of bed and brush her teeth. It was hard to do stuff a normal kid wouldn’t want to do when you didn’t want to do anything. Sometimes it felt like she physically couldn’t, that started about a month and a half ago. Her grades were slipping and she had missed about five assignments in the past two weeks alone. But burnout wasn’t something the woman would understand.
Why would mother dearest understand when she just had her golden child graduate from high school as valedictorian with straight-A report cards through all 4 years? Why would she understand when Susan Bishop was accepted into Yale on a full scholarship? Why would she understand when her oldest daughter’s name was etched permanently into a brass plate on a wall at Pace High School? She wouldn’t.
“You don’t get to talk to me like that! I am not one of your friends-”
“No, you’re not my friend, but you’re not my mom either! You’re just the woman who happened to give birth to me. And I’m sorry that I’m such a pain to you, I’m sorry that giving birth to me was painful, I’m sorry that taking care of me is painful, I’m sorry that having me as a daughter is painful, but I’m not sorry for standing up for myself and your other daughter. I’m not sorry for telling the assholes who were whispering in my ear during lunch that my family was so dirt poor that my sister probably had to sleep with half the college board to get into college, to fuck off. I’m not sorry for pushing them back after they pushed me into a trash can. And I am definitely not sorry for beating them up after they tried to smack my ass.”
By now she was swearing like a sailor and she couldn’t care less.
“Kate-”
“No. I’m done. I’m done with you, and you yelling at me, and you not giving a shit about me. Did you know my birthday was two days ago? Thank you for the cake, really, and thank you for the skateboard, but you couldn’t tell him to at least call? I get that he’s trying to get us back to living rich after he got laid off, I get that work is important to him, but he’s still my dad! It would have been nice, you know, to get a happy birthday from him.”
Her throat was dry and her voice cracked and tears were coming down leaving streaks that she wiped away angrily with her hands. Her mother looked angry, sure, but she also looked a different kind of angry? Maybe?
“Kate!”
The Woman practically screeched my name, like nails on a chalkboard. But after that, she didn’t know. She could see her mouth moving but she couldn’t hear past a few mumbles. A strange ringing started in her right ear and then moved to the left one. She was suddenly more conscious of the pain in her left ankle. Her head spun and to avoid collapsing and potentially getting a concussion she slowly lowered herself to the floor.
Her eyes zeroed in on her ankle, it looked swollen. She remembered it snapping weirdly during the fight when she misstepped but she didn’t think it was that serious. It wasn’t that painful then, but now it hurt like a bitch.
The Woman kneeled carefully in front of her, her eyes were worried, her breath unsteady. Then she noticed the dust swirling in the air. Not dust, ash. The Woman was saying something as she maneuvered Kate’s head onto her lap.
You’re okay Katie.
Don’t worry Katie.
You’re fine Katie.
She didn’t know what was happening as the Woman moved her. Why there was suddenly ash in the air. So, while the Woman (her mother) was occupied saying Katie, Katie, Katie, she decided she would take the chance to finally win a fight.
“We might be biologically related, but you are not my mother. Every time I think even in my head to call you Mom I feel like throwing up. You’re just a woman to me. A cruel woman that can’t even accept me as my own person. You can’t even keep a good marriage.”
She smiled.
Her eyes were triumphant.
She won.
She was ash in the air.
Eleanor Bishop cried every night after that for the daughter she watched turn to dust in her arms. Until her death, December 24, 2018, Christmas Eve.