Bishop
“When are you coming to visit?”
I heard the intended plea in my mom’s voice. Grabbing my athletic duffle bag, I answered, “I’ll ask Bridge when she wants to head out and we can talk about holiday plans.”
It had only been three weeks, and while I knew that my mother was trying to build a relationship with me, what she really wanted me to say was when I was flying back with my sister.
Bridge started college two weeks ago and my sister had insisted that she wanted the full college experience. Translation: don’t contact Mom unless there’s an emergency.
“She’s doing great, Mom.” I’d texted Bridge this morning and she thanked me for waking her up since she had an early class. Between the two of us, she had a higher IQ, by ten points, but for the life of her, she had a hard time getting up before 9 in the morning. “She’s enjoying college and she’s happy.”
I heard Mom’s sigh over the phone before relenting with, “I know…I know. I still worry. She’s only nineteen and she’s on a big campus and she…”
…had a hard time speaking to people her own age.
I finished her sentence in my head because I knew that line from the time my sister turned four.
Bridge was exceptionally smart. She had a photographic memory, the kind where she’d remember what page number a paragraph existed on a book after seeing it for a brief time and recalling it years later. She remembered the smallest details. If you asked her what I was watching on TV when I was six and a half years old on the Fourth of July, Bridge could close her eyes and bring you to that moment in time. While the scientists and neurologists at John Hopkins loved to study the way her brain worked, Bridge always had a hard time making friends and keeping them. The hazards of having excellent memory was that you also remembered who stole your favorite teddy bear and who put gum in your chair in kindergarten.
She’d kept to herself and was always the quietest kid in class which made it almost impossible for her to make friends. Hence she had a hard time looking people in the eye and conversing with them in a normal manner. Normal in a way wherein society wouldn’t think that she was being rude or dismissive.
“We have to give her a chance,” I said, flexing my neck to the side as I jogged towards the field. “She says she’s doing okay…you have to believe that.”
Mom’s voice was soft and it was almost hard to hear her since I was closing in on where my teammates where sitting, “I just worry. I know that I’ve messed up a lot of things with her, but I’m trying, son. Dr. Fortez said that she needs to be out on her own and this is the best thing for her. Sometimes…the best thing is the hardest thing to do.”
I slowed my jog and breathed in, “Bridge is strong, Mom. She’s the bravest girl I know and I’m only a hundred fifty miles away from her. Plus, when I saw her, I could tell she was happy… She’s living a very different life here from the one she had in New York.”
Was that sniffling in the background?
The years may have passed, but I still didn’t know how to describe my relationship with my mother.
It still flabbergasted me that she’d carried me and my sister in her stomach and given birth to us.
It certainly didn’t seem like it years ago…
But that was a conversation for another time.
Aging must have a drastic effect on her because now she tended to become extremely emotional about everything.
“Mom, I gotta go.” I eyed Ian and Dante warming up, Jose and Jimmy were already on the field. “Bridge is doing great.”
That seemed to pacify her because her voice was steady, “Okay son. Tell your Aunt Nina hi for me, okay?”
I agreed and hung up.
She talked to Aunt Nina everyday so there was no need for me to extend the greeting; I think she just said it just to say it and diffuse her thoughts on patching things up with my sister.
“Slow poke! You coming or are you just gonna stand there and watch?” It was Ian, challenging me to run the field with him.
I pushed the soles of my feet into my cleats, feeling them get loose. New cleats always needed time to feel more comfortable. I had to practice on these for a bit before I could use them in a game. Never a good idea to wear new cleats for the first time to a game. Even my backup pairs had miles on them.
Stretching my legs, I let go of everything that didn’t belong on the field.
I felt the grip of my cleats on the grass and rocked my heels side to side then back and forth, molding the studs and blades to the center of my gravity, feeling the pressure bounce from the sole of my feet to my ankles and back, lessening the stress on my legs.
As a fly half, a position that I’d dominated for the past three years, I often decided which direction the game would go. Whether we go left or right and how close or wide we were going to be for the next play. I carried the weight of my team on my shoulders and powered through the scrums with my head and my legs. I had the power to run the ball or make a break and the cost of the decision was on me. Always on me.
“Come on, Princess!” Jose called out. For a full-back, his voice held that high-pitched quality, as if he’d never outgrown his thirteen-year-old self. “Are you going to do yoga all day or are you here to practice?”
Dropping my phone in the bag that I’d thrown to the side, along with my teammates sports’ bags, I checked my watch, I had five minutes to spare.
Slinging him a wave and a fuck you, I closed my eyes, lowered my body to a squat, ran my hands over the grass and closed my eyes, envisioning myself in the middle of the field, recalling the wise words of Confucius and quietly I whispered to myself.
“A lion chased me up a tree, and I greatly enjoyed the view from the top.”
I breathed, in and out.
One, two, three…five seconds.
I opened my eyes and checked the positions of my teammates on the field.
Coach Masterson was on the sideline chatting with Assistant Coach Derrick Larsen.
It was time.
Time for me to fly.
A towel was thrown up in the air and Ian tried to avoid it, but it got caught in his long hair.
“What the fuck, Cons?” He threw an annoyed look at Constantine, our hooker who had the habit of showering and wiping his ass in front of everyone and throwing the towel across the room. I’d been successful at avoiding it because I was fast and because I didn’t want any part of his ass or armpit or whatever shit part of his body touching me.
Constantine bellowed, “Be happy it didn’t hit your face or you’d be sniffing how Katya’s pussy smelled on my dick last night.”
Yep, he went there.
“You’re messed up,” Ian responded with an eye roll and aimed a tennis ball on Constantine’s head. Tennis balls were abundant in our locker room because they helped with sore muscles. Our team physio helped us out a lot, but when he wasn’t there, two tennis balls taped together were the very best tools to increase thoracic range of motion thereby loosening up tight areas.
A loud pop and a bunch of French words spoken in eloquent French mixed in with a different accent came out of Constantine’s mouth to which the rest of the team laughed at.
I grabbed a blue shirt from my bag and remembered that I had to bring a change of clothes for my locker. The start of the season meant my locker was empty so I made a mental check to grab the essentials – deodorant, extra kicking tee, and an extra scrum cap. I could do away with the last one and I wasn’t fond of using it because as a fly half it made it harder for me to hear and communicate but after a few knocks to my head that lead to a generous number of staples, I still wore them time and time again.
“You going with us to Rock N Brew?” Ian asked. My teammates liked to hang out after practice and as much as I’d love to, I had somewhere else to be.
“Can’t,” I said as I closed my locker and stretched my neck towards the ceiling.
“Dude, it’s only the second week. Don’t tell me you’re stressing about papers and shit already,” Ian rebuffed. He liked to tease me about my grades.
Jose, who was tapping away on his phone like a madman, added, “I don’t know why you can’t be normal like us, amigo. Anything above a C is miraculous.”
“Speak for yourself, taquito.” Constantine who was now standing guard by the door, to the confusion and head shakes of our teammates who were leaving the locker room, panned out. “I have straight B’s and sometimes I have A’s depending on how the professor is.”
Jose rolled his dark eyes and loudly muttered, “You’re majoring in Humanities with Emphasis on the Lebanese Culture. Even my mamita would get an A in your class.”
“Is your mama Lebanese?” Constantine retorted. The giant oaf was still halfway blocking people exiting.
“No.” Jose looked up from his phone. “You know she’s Brazilian.”
“Like Gisele Bundchen? Or Alessandra Ambrosio?” Constantine’s eyes glazed over. As a hooker, he was big but very mobile on the field. He was great at hooking the ball back to win us possession. Off the field, he was SDU’s biggest hooker. Ask any girl on campus if they’ve heard of the Lebanese/French giant and they’d say, Oooohh Constantine, with dreamy looks on their faces.
Jose deflected Constantine’s questioning. “Don’t even think about it, baba.”
Ian shook his dark blonde head and said, “Sometimes I wonder why we’re friends with these tools.”
I nodded, “Yeah.”
Ian was now a few inches by the entrance when he turned to Constantine, “What the hell? Why are you acting like a bouncer for our locker room?”
To which Constantine replied with, “I’m just practicing.”
“For what?” I queried, Constantine was full of air, literally and figuratively, he spouted the weirdest shit sometimes.
“I got a job as a bouncer.” He replied, his dark head looking around, and in the quietest voice he could muster, “At a local karaoke bar.”
Jose’s eyes lit up, “Really?”
Why would Jose’s eyes twinkle like that?
“Don’t even think about it,” Constantine said as if reading Jose’s mind.
What was going on?
Ian was just as confused as me, “Am I missing something here?”
Then Jose responded, with what could have been his singing voice, if that’s what you call grating cheese on a sandpaper sounded like, then yeah, “I looveee, wheee,” putting his pointer finger up, “singing…and karaoke.”
Constantine’s shoulders slumped. “Tamale, you better not be showing up at Wrigley’s on Fridays or I’ll be escorting you back out.”
Jose stood straighter and puffed his chest out. He had the best hands on our team. We called him Gummy at times because the ball got stuck to his hands like gum and he was able to field the high balls and always caught the ball cleanly to ensure we’d have possession. His voice on the other hand was another story.
“You know if you stopped teasing me with your favorite foods I would have thought about not going to your new job every Friday. However, all you do is torment me with them, so now I know where I’ll be taking my dates,” Jose said before stepping out of the room.
If Constantine was the playboy of the Humanities division, Jose was his equivalent in the History department. His mother was a Brazilian singer and his father was a soccer star. Women who liked the tall, dark look always went with Jose.
And while two of my teammates where basking in the glory of the college women, for a small second, I almost envied their carefree ability and freedom to do just that.
Growing up in the spotlight hadn’t been easy, but it was my life.
My mother’s way of life. My sister’s prison. My father’s downfall.
And even if New York was thousands of miles away, it didn’t mean that I was immune to the shackles attached to it.
As we walked down the Athletics Hall, Cons and Jose walking behind us, still arguing, Ian asked again, “Why can’t you go with us?”
“I have a frat meeting,” I answered, feeling the burden of responsibility leaving me. “We’re planning something big and Rikko called it last minute.”
He nodded and said, “Do you ever let loose?”
I knew what he meant. In all the years we’d been teammates, he’d seen me drink but never more than two bottles of beer. He’d seen lots of women give me their phone numbers, but I’d never brought a girl to a game. He’d seen me angry and frustrated, but never have I thrown stuff around.
So yeah, I knew what he was asking.
“Yeah I have,” I answered, adjusting the weight of my bag on my shoulders.
“When?”
“There.” We were now outside of the building but I could still spot the greenery west of us so I stopped midstride, gestured with my head, and said, “Out there in the field. I let loose. Every single time.”
“This is our last year so we have to celebrate it.” Rikko’s blue eyes hovered around the room. He was sitting on one of the large cushions, the 65-inch screen TV behind him. Chi Epsilon Tau’s living room was our official conference room.
It was close to six o’ clock in the evening and everyone looked like they were ready to fall flat on the sofa, face down.
Such was the club filled with athletes and over-achievers.
It was also one of the reasons why I joined this frat in my freshman year. I’d heard good things about it and they kept their noses clean and that’s what mattered to me.
Sure, we had parties overflowing with alcohol and women, but we had frat brothers that ensured that nothing crossed over the legalities. I’d heard enough of hazing, injuries and deaths inside fraternities that I knew it wasn’t something I’d miss if I didn’t become a part of it.
But Tau was different.
Our Chapter President was a guy who was loud and boisterous, but had never taken a woman without her consent.
Deans all across the country used our name to elaborate about the good behaviors that college athletes belonging in fraternities had.
Scott, Rikko’s best friend and our treasurer, said, “How much damage are we talking?”
Rikko stood up and grabbed a piece of paper from his back pocket and said, “I was calculating it earlier while you were throwing like a little kid and estimated it to be about eighty-two hundred.”
Scott, SDU’s esteemed quarterback, raised his brows, “We’re going to spend that much on strippers?”
The other five guys in the room laughed and high fived each other.
“Ha. Strippers. I wish.” Rikko joked, “I don’t think Dean Freidan would sponsor our events anymore if he got wind that we’re hiring girls from Lulu.”
Lulu was a high-priced gentlemen’s club close to campus. It wasn’t really that close, but you’d drive through it to get to the North side of SDU. The glimmering electronic lights “Only the best for men like you” was made to be seductive, but to me, it was pretty hilarious.
I sure as hell wouldn’t find the best inside that strip club. Cons and Ian had talked about it and they said the girls were “eh” meaning “not even close to the best.”
“What do you think, brother?” Rikko’s eyes were on me. We’d completed pledging at the same time and we’d always had a good friendship going on. He did his thing and I did mine, but when it came to the fraternity, he always sought my advice.
“What’s the goal of the party?” I asked. “I know we have it for a various number of reasons, but for us to be spending this money, I need to know what you’re really aiming for.”
Takei, SDU’s wide receiver and Heisman contender, said, “Can we not say it’s for the women? I just wanna get laid.”
I shook my head and chuckled along with everyone else.
We all knew that he had a constant stream of women going in and out of his bedroom. When you lived with the guys, you knew who was getting laid and who wasn’t. Takei was definitely in the laid category.
Scott rebutted, “Herpes can grow on mattresses, you know. I swear I saw the virus crawling up your sheets the other night.”
Takei, who chose to let his Japanese ancestry show up whenever he was cussing, gave Scott a small bow with his head and said, “Arigato baka.” He’d said it enough times for everyone to know he was giving his QB a ‘thank you, stupid.’
“Back to Bishop’s question – “ Rikko boomed, trying to get us to focus. “I figured we’d have alcohol and hire a great DJ and call it a Welcome Party to our recruits and Beginning of the End of the Year for us oldies.”
Eighty-two hundred wasn’t going to put a dent in our frat budget. We were one of the well-funded ones. Rikko’s parents had donated hundreds of thousands to Tau and so did most of our parents. We all knew he wasn’t asking for much, but it was the principle of asking which was why we were all here.
“Okay…” I nodded. When it came to making decisions, two of the high-ranking officers needed to agree in order for a vote or a request to pass.
I almost always agreed with him, except for a few times when he requested absurd things. Things like an inflatable pool on the rooftop or painting the walls red and green for Halloween, just to be different from the usual orange and black colors.
“Plus, I want to show my sister that we’re not all that bad.” Rikko smiled as he said it. He’d talked about his sister so many times to me. He’d shown me a few pictures of her which were taken a decade ago because I doubted she wore her hair in pigtails anymore. But like me, I knew that he loved her. Which was another reason why he was cool with me.
“Kara already thinks you’re awful,” Scott said with a familiarity. Sometimes I forgot that they grew up together.
Imagine the joy in the recruiters’ faces when two of high school football’s best players signed up with SDU.
Also, think of who might have been fired at Alabama or Oklahoma State’s recruiting teams when two of the top-ranking D1 teams failed to sign them?
Scott was a private guy, like me, while Rikko let it all out.
Rikko often said that they signed with SDU because it sucked and they wanted to make it better. Scott would only shrug at that and didn’t add to Rikko’s explanation.
“So…now that’s settled,” Takei interrupted, and looked around. Nodding his head at Trev, Silas, Quan, and Larry, all Tau officers, he faced Rikko and mouthed off, “Is your sister hot?”
I chuckled and shook my head to the side, sure that Takei was going to get it from Rikko who could be quite intimidating when angry.
“She’s off limits.” It wasn’t Rikko who answered.
The lined threat came from the quarterback to my right, Scott repeated, “She’s not on the table. Ever.”
I saw the nervousness in Takei’s eyes, and as he slowly recovered, he said, “Got it, bro.”
“Good,” was Scott’s reply as we stood up to scramble and go about our evening.
I’d never heard Scott speak like that to anyone.
As private as Scott was, he was also mild-mannered and didn’t have an air of antagonism about him. Sure he was one of NFL’s top prospects, but he’d always managed to keep his head down, so for him to say something about Rikko’s sister that even Rikko didn’t have to say anything –
Whoever Kara was, she was obviously important to Scott.