CHAPTER ONE
Like a rock above water, the orphanage for children — the only of its kind in Caleb County — stood proudly on its last legs among a blanket of untouched snow. Snowflakes desperately clung onto its brick walls like spiders on a web, and in all the windows of bedrooms occupied by children stood little taper candles with orange-yellow flames flickering, puncturing the grayness that surrounded this old home.
On the second floor, a young boy prepared himself earlier than the others. With the gel left over from one of the children who had been there for years before being taken in by a welcoming enough family, he slicked his black hair, now shiny and aglow, all the way back and combed it neatly. The striations from the comb’s teeth showed plainly on his hair and displayed an air of elegance complementing, oddly enough, the soft youthfulness of his face.
He stepped off the stool next to the sink and turned off the bathroom light.
Nat King Cole sang about chestnuts on the first floor through the shared radio. The music floated to the second landing, through the hallway, passed a small Christmas tree, which was strung with popcorn, and made its way to his bedroom.
Being in between roommates, he was happy to have his bedroom all to himself, and he kept it, for the most part, plain with wooden furniture: a wooden desk — wobbly as a drunkard, wooden dressers that creaked when opened and closed (housing moth balls to boot) and a wooden floor protected, humbly, by a threadbare maroon rug as old as a weary grandfather. None of these fixtures were glossed or embellished by way of decorations and ornate designs. The nails in them have rusted and their overall spirit had fallen to the wayside. Specks of dust and cobwebs had taken over and despite there being a young inhabitant there year after year — usually two, but for now one — due to lack of cleaning, it looked abandoned, however not necessarily shabby. Above all, the room was cold.
He opened his closet, causing the heavy weight of stale air to emanate outward with the energy of a runaway train. Ironically, it smelled of the elderly. The boy knelt down, as if he were about to pray on his knees, but instead he commenced searching into the dark depth of this closet, his arms outstretched and his small hands feeling excitedly for the shoebox. For a moment, he only grasped that stale air, and his heart sank.
But when finally his fingers found the shoebox, he held it firm in a tight grasp. An electric tingle jolted through his little body. He gasped. A shot of memory flashed through his mind and soon his eyes grew teary.
In the shoebox lay not a pair of shoes but an adult sized tie.
He raised it to eye level. A whole history glossed before him, intimate and sacred. The tie was made of wool and was a deep purple tint, like that which comes off of a field of lavender under a moonless night sky. Scattered at random on its surface were tiny white dots, like stars.
While the tie seemed simple enough to the everyday eye, it dosed him with a certain sentimentality that blossomed both happiness and gloom in him. This feeling was all too personal as it was a sanctuary for him — a holy one, in fact.
He ran back to the bathroom, switched on the lights and stepped on the step stool. He tied the tie around his collar the best he could and looked at himself in the mirror, seeing nothing but a vast past that had hardly any time to settle down yet. With his sleeve, he wicked away the tears that had made their way to his face, and made a childish attempt to smile.
After all, Leopold was a child of eight years, going on nine. Poor little Leo, with his childhood, still in progress and yet already he was sporting permanent wear and tear – the kinds of scars from alley fights and the sights that only soldiers should be allowed to see.
But this was poor little Leo, who made a childish attempt to smile. And yet his reflection was able to reveal something poignant below the surface.
The grandfather’s clock on the main floor rang eleven o’clock in the evening and Sister Dolores called out for not just Leo but all the children to board the bus already.
CHAPTER TWO
Leopold was the last to dip his fingers in the Holy water when they reached the church for midnight mass, and still he felt no urgency to keep up with the rest, should a statue or a painting or a candle even, ignite some interest in his young mind.
But Cordelia always tried to keep her eyes on him. She was the same age as Leo, but still gliding through the musical notes that rang with childhood innocence and being burdened with the liberty that comes with such purity. Cordelia was at the orphanage longer than Leopold was. In fact, when Leopold first arrived, it was Cordelia who introduced him to the rest of the group who were younger than they. She had grabbed his hand as she walked him from room to room, saying hello to all the other children, which weren’t many; in total there were seven of them. She had sat next to him at the table during every meal, and had talked with him about what little past they had overcome that led them to be next to each other, by the fireside in the activity room that was also a living room. It was always the both of them, off together outside during recess, playing hide-and-seek, even in the snow.
And now here, in this church during midnight mass, they were still playing a form of that. Leopold, as was his nature, found himself straying away from the group, hiding and losing himself in the secrets and mood of the church on this Christmas Eve. And Cordelia was simply searching for Leopold while still in sight of Sister Dolores.
For the time being before the start of mass, the church withheld its ceiling lights in observance of the special occasion. Candlelight lit the church dimly as a torch would an underground cave. It was packed with shades of dark colors, the coats of the many Christians who peopled the holy place, even filling its cavities, its nooks and crannies.
Sister Dolores herded the children into a pew, but after noticing one of them missing, she bent down over Cordelia, whom she has come to consider a keeper of Leopold, and asked “But where is Leopold, Cordelia?” Both Cordelia and Sister Dolores scanned the church, looking first in the vestibule, and then down through each of the pews. He was nowhere in sight and this caused a build-up of agitation in the head nun. “Leopold has been acting rather strangely as of late, Cordelia. Do not take after him.”
Cordelia heard the words, but rather than taking heed of them, as an obedient child would, she acquired a heightened sense of intrigue about Leopold that caused him to be placed on a pedestal. It wasn’t that Leopold was acting out for the simple sake of being rebellious. It certainly wasn’t the case that he had been silently possessed by someone or something that was causing him to retreat into himself, making it increasingly difficult to connect to others. Rather, a part of his personality, previously unknown to all of them at the orphanage was suddenly sprouting wings. This personality was tinged with bouts of secrecy. It was an extension of his past, unearthed as from a grave.
There have been countless times where Leopold was nowhere to be found. But Cordelia had always been able to keep up with him, knowing all his preferred whereabouts. She knew where he stole himself, sometimes in the dead of night, or in the middle of the day when everyone else was in the activity room, playing board games or going through the educational cards. She didn’t know what he was up to when he was gone, except for one time when the curious bug itched inside her, and she followed him down to the basement. He had been crying, his arms hugging his shins as he cradled himself. She immediately walked up from behind him, worried, and wrapped her arm around his shoulders. This scared him out of his mind, and when he was asked what he was crying about, he was adamant not to tell, yelling, “Go away!” Cordelia knew enough about privacy to let him be, and so she left him, alone in the basement with the dust surrounding him as he continued to cradle through it.
Cordelia felt embarrassed to have disrupted his alone time, as she had come to call it, but also deeply insulted that he would not let her into his vast world of secrets. She was upset at him for the rest of that day.
But when Leopold didn’t run off, he was always with Cordelia, and it was during those times together that Cordelia subtly became familiar with Leopold’s unfolding reclusive personality.
“Oh dear Lord, he’s up there by the altar. Cordelia retrieve him please.”
She ran up to the front. The mass had not started yet and so the altar was void of both priest and altar boys. With all the people crowding the church, Cordelia felt as if she were running through a wheat field, the tall stalks brushing against her.
Finally she reached him. “We’ve been looking for you! Sister Dolores doesn’t want you walking away anymore.” She grabbed his hand and began forcing her way among those still finding a seat. Leopold didn’t say anything but merely allowed himself to be dragged back to the group. When finally they reached them, Sister Dolores told him he was to be given five whips with the ruler when they return back home. Leopold apologized and sat down next to Cordelia.
“It’s one thing to run off around at the home, and another to run off in a place full of strangers,” said Sister Dolores. Cordelia gave a scolding look at Leopold, but after seeing him bend his head down, she patted him on the back.
The singing commenced by the choir in the corner of the church to the right of the altar. The beautiful harmonies of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” filled the church so that the scuffle of people finding seats could no longer be heard. Suddenly, the ceiling lights had finally turned on, and a sea of heads turned toward the priest at the entrance of the church. He started to walk down the center aisle with what seemed to be an elite legion of people behind him: the clergy men and women. Finally the priest reached the altar.
That was when Leopold made his move.
He quickly got out of his seat and started walking down one of the side aisles while Sister Dolores’s eyes were distracted up front.
“Hey! You’re not allowed to leave. You’ve already got five whips, do you want to get more? Sister Dolores will have you really punished!” But Leopold merely looked at her, shrugging his shoulders and looking toward the vestibule, which was crowded with those not fortunate enough to have grabbed a seat in time.
Cordelia gave one last tug in an effort to get him to stay.
But she let go, having faith in Leopold, and knowing, somehow, that there was something calling for him, and she must let him be. This time, she felt neither insulted nor embarrassed.
CHAPTER THREE
Off to the side in the vestibule was an entranceway that led to two flights of stairs leading to the basement. Unlike in the orphanage, the stairs here were made of marble, yet roughened by the numerous steps that have climbed them over the years. Leopold was happy to not have garnered the attention of church-goers standing in the vestibule as he freely made his way toward the stairs. With each step, the path toward the basement grew darker, as if he were descending into a hidden realm or foreign land. In his mind he had become a member of an expedition, his curiosity being the captain.
Yet Leopold had always known that the stairs led to the basement, for when he was much younger and was of an age where religious schooling was given to him, he and his uncle had frequented these very steps (albeit during the day and when the lights were on) for it was in the basement that the religion class was held for students ages four to seven. Every Saturday morning for those three years, his uncle who was his legal guardian would bring him to the religion class, sitting in with him for its duration.
His uncle — Uncle Joe— was a simple man, reserved by nature, and for all of Leopold’s young life, he was all the family little Leo ever had. He wasn’t a tall man, or a man who stood out from the crowd. His face was a rounded-off square, like a marshmallow and he sported a beard, grizzly but tamed. His hair was kept short at the sides and long enough at the top that his it draped over his forehead like a bedskirt. With straight eyebrows that outlined the top of his eyes, his face was, for the most part, serious if not pensive. By default, he was a docile and peaceful man.
For all of his short life, Leopold had only had his uncle for family and this was all due to the fact that his mother had died giving birth to him on the Christmas of ‘48. There was a strong blizzard that day with monstrous winds and wrathful, violent snow. The blizzard seemed to be out on a bent against something unseen. So aggressive it was that a week after it had ended, the snow had yet to melt away. It was as if the snow storm aimed at being remembered, if only infamously. Rock hard mountains of snow made walls where there had never been any.
And it was also at the end of that week, among new glaciers of ill-intent and blinding whiteness everywhere, that Leopold’s father had committed suicide by hanging in their shed. Uncle Joe had found him there the next day.
Prior to Leopold’s birth his uncle had not the kindest relationship with Leopold’s father. To begin with, Leopold’s mother, Marybeth, was actually Uncle Joe’s fraternal twin sister. They had a loving, close relationship, having grown up together, happily sharing birthdays, schooling and the like. Uncle Joe’s ill-temperament began when Marybeth started seeing George, who eventually became Leopold’s father.
In order to understand where Uncle Joe’s hate for George stemmed from, one would need to understand the kind of relationship George had with Marybeth. The beginning, like most relationships, was coated with young love, the kind that makes the heart race with a passion and where everyday spent together was a day that should never end. Though they had started to live together, they had not gotten married, as they were still too young, independent though they were, and knew they did not have the finances yet. But this didn’t matter, because eventually, over time, George seemed to grow tired of that joyride and soon enough, his behavior changed for the worse. Instead of his steady flow of playful compliments and banter, he began spewing out complaints about every little thing, like Marybeth’s habits, which he had never complained about before.
Once, when Marybeth had folded their laundry, George engaged in a long tirade against the way in which she had folded one of his checkered button-downs. After what seemed like hours his yelling at the top of his lungs, he ended with a final note: “A woman should know how to fold clothes, god damn it!”
For her part Marybeth, who was coming to her last straw with him by now, talked back. “You’re nothing but an ungrateful bastard!” At that, George had slapped her in the face, which caused her to be quiet for at least a week.
The only time she mentioned it was to her twin brother who upon seeing the red mark on her face from the slap, grew angrier at George with each passing day. He desperately urged her to break up with him and she agreed that that was the right thing to do. She had decided to do so the following day after her talk with him.
But like the blizzard that would soon follow, George seemed to know Marybeth’s intent on breaking up with him and he was not happy. So vengeful and outraged was he that the following day, he had taken her out to the shed under the guise of complaining about yet another trifle matter. Once there, he had his way of her, thinking that she wouldn’t leave him if they shared a baby together.
For the following nine months, surprisingly Marybeth grew to love the baby. Motherly instincts took over her and she surprisingly grew to love the baby with all her heart. Even her relationship with George seemed to lighten, though Uncle Joe kept a watchful eye over her, never truly trusting what he could do at any given moment. Of course Uncle Joe still urged her to break up with him, but with the realness of the baby — the protrusion of her belly — she felt perhaps she and George could make it. Reluctantly, Uncle Joe let her and George be.
But when the time came for Leopold to be born, against the backdrop of the violent blizzard of ’48, Marybeth had died during childbirth. For that one week after her death, the grudge her twin brother felt for George, that which was somewhat dormant for the past nine months, came back with a vengeance and only grew tremendously. He had it in him that George was to blame for her death. It was against George that the grudge pulsed inside Uncle Joe’s veins like electricity zipping through wire. In fact, the day he had found George hanging in the shed was the day he had made up his mind to kill him.
For Uncle Joe, the days leading up to George’s suicide were filled with white anger to the point where he was numb to all other emotions. He was like a bull dictated by rage and fury on its attack on the red cape. When he reached their house, he methodically looked for George, his knife, which he planned on using to stab him to death, was held tightly in his hand. His white knuckles matched the white teeth he gritted.
But when he found George hanging in the shed, still as a statue with frost build-up covering his limp and wilted body, he reasoned that perhaps George was trying to make things right, things that were birthed out of selfish reasons. Who truly knows what was going on in George’s mind, but all Uncle Joe was given was George’s hanging body and a body of assumptions that can be made about George’s possible guilty conscience.
That was good enough for Uncle Joe who, instead of using the knife to stab George, now used it to cut him down.
A sudden faint cry slipped out from one of the windows of the house, carried by a crisp and wintery wind, like a floating snowflake. It crossed the backyard whose ground slept under a heavy blanket of snow.
The faint cry reached Uncle Joe and made him gasp, freezing him with his eyes wide and surprised.
— Little newborn Leo, tucked away in a crib, was crying out.
Uncle Joe hadn’t known for how long Leopold was asleep in his room, for he didn’t know how long George had been hanging — if it was just a few hours, one day, or the whole week. How long had Leopold been orphaned?
Like the turn of a page, Uncle Joe abruptly sobered up, George’s hanging body and that faint cry having shaken him to his core and knocked some sense into him.
He realized that little Leo was the one gift left behind by his twin sister, and from that day onward he had promised himself that he would protect and love him.
CHAPTER FOUR
For the first few years of his life with Leopold, Uncle Joe tried his best to live up to the expectations he set forth upon himself, expectations dealing with the rearing of a child not his own. He wanted to make sure only happiness touched the infant-turned toddler and knew never to tell him about the fates that befell his parents.
Uncle Joe did a lot of growing up just as Leopold himself did under his uncle’s care. Leo’s uncle had sold his parents’ house and used some of the money to care for little Leo for the first few years. Leopold had brought such warmth into his uncle’s life, which was otherwise void of true happiness. He was never one to be comfortable courting women as he was simple enough to let his shyness wash over him. But Leo re-introduced laughter into his world and he surprisingly found himself smiling each day that he bonded with the child.
Leo, in turn was a baby filled with giggles and energy and something that he would maintain for years to come — curiosity. He was always running around the house and backyard, and when he went on walks with his uncle, he was always ahead, darting about and touching everything in nature, letting the spirit of inquiry lead the way. He loved, most especially, when his uncle would place him on his shoulders so that he could reach the highest leaves he could.
When Leo reached the age of four, Uncle Joe used the remainder of the money as capital to run a small grocery store. Leopold was always there, exploring the shelves and the different foods, counting the jars of jam and canned vegetables and soups.
It was also around this time that Uncle Joe and Leopold started making their way to the basement of the church for Leo’s religion class every Saturday morning. His uncle felt it was about time that the boy be opened to the idea of a higher being and the teachings of Christianity, as that was the faith he and his sister grew up in. He felt it was something his sister would like him to do. But for Uncle Joe, these religion classes served a more selfish reason: extra time for him to bond with his favorite and only nephew.
The two had reached a golden age during this time but this era was tragically curtailed during his seventh birthday, which was the same as Christmas day. That evening was spent with both uncle and nephew enjoying each others’ company, listening to Christmas songs sung by the likes of Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Bobby Helms, and Perry Como and the Fontane Sisters, and many more of their contemporaries. There they sat Uncle Joe and Leopold, by the fireplace, their eyes glowing with cheer as they reminisced about the year they had spent together — how Leo helped his uncle choose which foods to order for their newly opened grocery store, or how they sat together in the basement of the church among other children and their parents during the religion classes.
Finally, Uncle Joe handed Leo his present. It was wrapped inside a shoebox. “Here, Leo, your Christmas present.”
Leopold took it in his hand. He burned with intrigue as he stared at the box, measuring its weight and laying out the possibilities of what may be lying inside.
It was a woolen tie, as deep purple as a lavender field under a moonless night sky.
“Leo, your mother loved that tie on me and each Christmas wished that I wear it. Your mother was a wonderful woman. You would have loved her,” said Uncle Joe.
Leo took it out of the shoe box and let his eyes take it in. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but still, for Leo, it meant the world. He cried and ran to his uncle, hugging him in a strong embrace. In between his tears he thanked him.
As he wiped his cheeks, still engaged in the embrace, he saw that beyond his uncle’s shoulders the tree had caught fire somehow from the flames in the fireplace. “Uncle look!” he cried out, with his finger pointed directly at the Christmas tree. His uncle let go of him and turned around in time to watch the tree engulf in flames. The both were surprised to find the fire spread so quickly. Their eyes reflected the raging orange blaze that now spread to the wall behind the tree and then inevitably filled the room.
Uncle Joe yelled for Leo to run out of the house ahead of him. Leo did as he was told, still clutching the shoe box to his chest, tie safely inside it.
When he reached the front door and stepped out, he turned to look behind him, expecting his uncle to be at his tail, but instead he was met with a loud crash —
— and that’s when he saw it… the burning Christmas tree had fallen on his uncle.
Uncle Joe quickly became consumed by the flames. Leo watched as Uncle Joe desperately contorted, his limbs flailing, unsuccessfully searching for a way to end the scorch of fire that was peeling away his skin. In Leopold’s eyes, his uncle’s jolting body became a silhouette behind the flames so that he turned into a dark figure. The fire now seemed to come from within, rather than to attack from without. But even in this image, Leopold convinced himself that he could still see his uncle’s eyes, dull-colored but there, exposing a surge of anguish and feelings of lost hopes on top of an immensity of pain that far exceeded the physical pain of heat. He saw in his uncle’s eyes, the pain of grief, for just as Leo had now to face the fact that he was losing his uncle with each passing second (and the seconds were speeding by) his one and only family — his uncle amidst the flames — had now to deal with the fact that he was losing a miracle life with his nephew.
Leopold heard his uncle’s voice grow frantic as he shrieked for him to run out of the house and to not look back.
The whole house quickly erupted with fire soon after. The fire roared fiercely into the Christmas night with embers whisking off and disappearing into the darkness of the sky, and then into the whiteness of the snow that imprisoned the ground. The aggressive orange blaze and menacing sweltering heat crossed Leo’s face as he stood outside his house, clouds forming out of his mouth while he clutched the shoebox. The conflagration reflected off his eyes, as he watched in disbelief the horror that came too suddenly. Yet all he could think of was his last embrace with Uncle Joe.
That was the last Leopold saw of his uncle — a dark figure that had just made it to the front door, but was no longer moving, sloped to the ground. Behind him, the house was bursting with the booming wildness of a hot blaze.
CHAPTER FIVE
When Leopold reached the bottom steps of the church, he found the place to be uncomfortably cold and dark. And silent. He didn’t know where the light switches were; one of the only sources of light illuminating the space was the residual light spilling from the top of the stairs. It fell into a soft cone shape on the floor at the base of the steps and did not reach the further reaches of the basement. The other source of light was the moonlight that floated in through the windows that lined the basement ceiling.
Leopold stepped forth into the basement like a canoe setting out into sea from the shoreline, and then drifting. He walked slowly, steadily, with eyes keen on finding any source of movement, but found none. Still, he was surprised to find his mouth dry and his heart racing. Then finally his eyes landed on a large, tall object that was rather imposing, however draped in a dirty, graying cloth that in its first days, one could tell used to be pure white. This object was off to the side of the basement and Leopold had to squint to make the object shift out from the darker shades of the walls. The moonlight that came in through the window above it slanted downward into the room so that it formed a ladder of soft, faint blue-gray light. The statue sat beneath it, hiding in the dark.
It wasn’t fear that encased Leopold. Or perhaps it was, but what truly overwhelmed him was this compulsion to walk toward it. He was compelled.
His little footsteps echoed in the draft that chilled the room, and he heard its small sound layered with the sound of his own breathing and the drumming of his heart.
Once he reached the object, the only thing left for him to do, he determined, was to pull down the cloth that covered it. When he did that, he found that he was looking at a statue of a man whose outline he was clearly able to make out due to the sheer white color of it.
The statue had the same features as his Uncle Joe and even looked like him, all the way down to his uncle’s serious face, beard and bedskirt bangs. Leopold’s first thought was that it wasn’t a statue of his uncle. “No, it can’t be,” he muttered to himself. And yet, he gave the statue a second glance, and then a third. At first he had assumed the statue were some saint he couldn’t remember from the days of his religion class, but when he re-evaluated the statue’s face, he couldn’t deny how identical it looked to the countenance of his uncle.
He then reasoned out that it could not be a saint because this statue looked to be wearing clothes that he couldn’t imagine saints to be wearing. He didn’t think they would sport plaid shirts tucked into jeans and leather belts. No, saints, he had come to think, wore robes.
This produced goosebumps all around his little body that he knew didn’t come from the draft that filled the room. He continued to look at the statue without blinking an eye, wondering of whom this statue might be, still unable to believe it to be his uncle.
Leopold decided he would leave the statue alone and return to his group upstairs. He picked up the white cloth and threw it with all his childhood might over the statue so that it covered it. Leopold turned around and began making his way to the cone of light at the bottom of the steps.
Suddenly, he heard the sound of the white sheet fall to the ground, the weight of it thudding on the linoleum floor with a subtle, but definite finality. The sound stopped him in his tracks and with a little ounce of fear overruled by intrigue, he turned on his toes.
Beneath the shaft of silvery moonlight in the darkness against the wall, stood the unshakable image of his uncle — not in stone, but in flesh.
For a moment, Leopold himself turned like a statue, stock-still and not believing the functioning of his own eyes. Without thinking, he simply stared at his uncle who looked back at him with a twinkle in his eyes.
Uncle Joe had miraculously come back.
It was as if Uncle Joe had been lost and was now found, or was it actually the other way around? Was Leopold lost in this world after the death of his uncle, and now found, in the present moment, with his uncle?
A surge of tears swelled up in the little boy as he realized what a momentous occasion this was. It was one that was impossible and yet here it was, unfolding before him. He didn’t want to question it any longer; he just couldn’t.
Leopold ran to his uncle with legs that could hardly keep up with his heart and once close enough, he leaped into his uncle’s arms. It was in the assured grasp of his uncle that wet-faced Leo confirmed the reality of this moment, even as he was carried off the floor in a warm well-overdue embrace and could feel his feet dangling, no longer grounded on the linoleum.
“Unc…Uncle… J-Joe,” was all he was able to say in between sobs. There was no use in trying to control the crying, so Leo let out a loud cry that squeaked with a high pitch and reminded both him and his uncle that he was still just a child, no matter the heartache he had already overcome in his small life.
“I understand,” said Uncle Joe. “I’ve missed you too, but I’m here now. For now.” His twinkling eyes produced a few tears of their own. They fell on Leo’s head as he continued to carry and embrace him. He kissed his nephew on the cheeks and forehead and Leo could not deny the realness of this love.
Finally he let his nephew down so that he, Leo, could stand on his own while he himself knelt down so as to be eye-level with the boy. It was then that Leo, cleared of his tears, was able to truly look at his uncle.
Uncle Joe’s charred remains in Leopold’s memory were exchanged for a living body, full of color, scents and textures that weren’t cold as a statue. His uncle’s plaid shirt was real fabric, the belt, real leather. His beard was not a simplified carving in stone fashion but was a manifested organic thing made of intricate strands of real hair. The toxic heat of his uncle’s burning body was now exchanged for the comforts of his warmth when they had embraced. The eyes that had looked manically desperate however dull in color now had a sparkle to them that insisted on the realism of magic for this was a supernatural moment for both of them, especially Leopold. The boy was suspended in the space between belief and disbelief but he resigned himself to accept that that space was safe nonetheless, important and unshakable.
“Uncle Joe, I want to go back and live with you.” Leo wrapped his arms around his uncle’s neck, wanting to be picked up again, retreating, essentially, to the days when he was a baby and always carried.
Uncle Joe kissed him on the forehead and pushed him back, subtly refusing to carry him. “It doesn’t work like that Leo. I’m sorry.”
But Leopold was desperate and unaccepting of his uncle’s rejoinder. “No, no, please Uncle Joe, remember—” He searched for the right words — for convincing words. “All those times we used to work at the store and go to the religion class and walk in the park. We can do it again, now.”
“I’m so sorry, Leo, we can’t, we just can’t. It doesn’t work like th—”
“No, don’t say that! Don’t say that it doesn’t work like that!” He yelled and despite himself he pushed his uncle away, anger rising up in him, possessing him. “Because then it’s going to come true that we can’t!” He pushed his uncle again, his little hands and his little strength landing on his uncle’s chest. But Uncle Joe did not budge. He merely grabbed Leopold’s hands, placing them in his own until the both of them fell into another embrace and Leo let out another wave of hot sobs. Uncle Joe let him let it out and waited, patiently.
“Cordelia,” said Uncle Joe, finally. “You’ve made a friend with Cordelia.”
“How do you know her?”
“Leo, I may not always be there with you, but I will always look out for you.” Leopold considered this, silently to himself. “You are safe in the orphanage and Cordelia is a good friend to you. Be kind to her too.”
“But I want to stay with you, Uncle Joe. I don’t want Cordelia; I want you.”
At that, Leo wanted to be carried again, and again his uncle refused. “Leo, you are still growing up in this world and no one should be alone in it—”
“That’s why I want you to come back. You’re already here, just stay, Uncle Joe, please. Don’t you want to stay?”
“I want to. I really do, but it’s not as simple as that. Leo—” Uncle Joe cupped Leo’s head in his palms. “It’s not as simple as that. Please, understand.”
Leopold looked his uncle in the eyes, his face suddenly stoic — unforgettably stoic. Leo disengaged himself from his uncle’s palms, upset, wounded, and angered. He stepped away from the shaft of moonlight beaming through the window, which this whole time had placed them in a makeshift spotlight, and retreated into the darkness of the basement. “You don’t want me anymore,” said Leopold, from a distance.
Uncle Joe, stood up, the moonlight outlining his body so that he became a silhouette in it. He watched as Leo walked further away into the darkness. “Please Leo. When you get older, you’ll understand. Trust me. Stay with Cordelia; she is a good friend.” Leopold, still deeply upset, started making his way toward the stairs. “Leo!” Called out his uncle, as if in a last-ditch effort to make things right. On his part, Leopold couldn’t keep up his newfound wall. He looked over his shoulder back at his uncle to see what he had to say. “I love you, will always love you, and will always watch out for you.”
His uncle’s words, simple and authentic, changed the boy’s mind like a switch. Suddenly he wanted to run back to his uncle and hug him one last time. He turned toward him when a voice called out from the top of the stairs. It was in the form of a childlike whisper.
“Leo, Leo are you down there!?” Leopold walked back to the stairs and looked up. It was Cordelia. “Who were you talking to?” She asked.
Leo looked back at where his uncle had been, under the moonlit window. It was too late; Uncle Joe had turned back into a statue, but not of himself; rather, he had turned into the statue of a saint, robes and all. St. Anthony of Padua, in fact. Leo turned back to Cordelia. “No one.”
“Well, then come back up now, the mass is almost over and Sister Dolores has sent me to find you. You’re in real trouble now!”
“Ok, I’ll be right up, hold on!” Yelled Leo, in a similar childlike whisper. He darted away from the steps toward the statue that had been his uncle, half-expecting him to re-appear.
But he couldn’t find him.
Instead, he noticed two other statues on the other wall that he hadn’t seen before. He quickly grew curious, wondering if they were also real people, or statues, or if one of them were his uncle. How did this supernatural thing operate? Leopold hadn’t the faintest idea but all he knew was that he didn’t get to say a proper goodbye to his uncle.
As if understanding what Leo were thinking, Uncle Joe’s voice floated into ears, seemingly pulled straight from the air.
“Those two over there are your parents. But you don’t have to unveil them just now. In due time, when you’re ready you can. Leo, we are here and will be here, every Christmas night if you want to talk. I must go now and you must go with Cordelia. I love, Leo, from the moment I laid eyes on you.”
Leo glanced back at the other two statues, each draped in a white cloth. Then he looked up at the statue that had been his uncle, the moonlight softly landing on its back. “I love you, Uncle Joe.”
Leopold dashed for the stairs, where Cordelia was waiting for him, at the top.
