Page 13 of Bad Bishop

“Get that demon out of me,” I signed in ASL. “I can’t take it anymore, Mama.”

“Still don’t remember his face?” she asked, ignoring my demand.

I shook my head. “It was dark, and he drugged me.”

She placed a gentle kiss over the crown of my head. “Don’t you worry,bambina mia. Mama will fix this for you. I always do.”

My body jerked forward. My mouth opened on its own accord, and another wave of puke tsunamied through me.

The devil put its seed inside me. That’s what Mama said when she thought I couldn’t read her lips. Her precious daughter was ruined forever.

I felt dirty. Used. Like my entire existence shrank into those few minutes when it happened. It defined me. Consumed me.

There wasn’t enough water in the world, not enough soap in the universe to make me feel clean again.

The bruises were gone, but the scars lingered. The phantom wounds tore open at night, gushing memories I couldn’t escape.

I hadn’t stopped bleeding for eight weeks, even though I missed my last period.

Defeated, I glided from the toilet to the floor, curling into a fetal position, closing my eyes and wishing, begging,prayingto wake up someone else.

_______

I came to half an hour later, still trapped inside myself.

Stretching my legs shakily, I slung my elbow over the toilet seat, pulling myself up. I treaded out of my bathroom and into the hallway.

I was about to go down the stairway and look for Imma, when I noticed Papa’s office doors were ajar. I stopped.

My parents were inside, standing in front of a grand, gold-plated mirror. This allowed me to read their lips. My mother was crying, her coiffed hair ruffled in disarray.

What did he do now? Take another mistress? Kill another one of her friends’ husbands?

I pressed myself against the wooden door, curling my fingers around its edge and watching them through the mirror.

“Let me take her to Italy. I know a doctor in Capodimonte who can deal with this discreetly. She’ll recuperate there.”

He gave her a cold, unnerving stare.

“Chiara,” he said. Even without hearing his tone, I knew this was a warning.

“Please. We need to get her an abortion.” My mother dabbed a handkerchief to her swollen eyes. “Before it’s too late.”

“Stai zitta! Out of the question.” Papa pushed his fingers into his receding white hair, yanking it about his scalp. “This is God’s will. I won’t defy Him.”

“She wasraped, Vello.Fuckyour God.”

He advanced toward her, slapping her hard with the back of his hand. My mother’s face flew sideways. The ring on his pinky left a stamp-sized mark. I pressed my palm to my mouth, muffling a gasp.

It wasn’t the first time my father hit my mother.

But it was the first time he did it in front of his sons.

Achilles, Luca, and Enzo stormed into my line of vision. This appeared to be a family meeting about my future. One I wasn’t invited to, as usual.

“Basta! Basta!” Enzo broke my parents off, giving Papa a violent shove. “My upbringing is fucked up enough without adding domestic violence into the mix.”

“The hell you think you’re doing, Dad?” Luca thrust my father behind his desk, using it as a buffer between him and Mama. “Next time you raise a finger to my mother, you’ll have no hands to wipe your ass with. Am I clear?”