by Robert Swetz
“Among other things,” she replied with a chuckle. “Are you hungry?”
“Very!” he replied. “But I’m not interested in going to church.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You can just get something to eat if you want.”
He shook his head. “I don’t have any money.”
“Neither do any of them. We don’t ask for anything from them.”
“You don’t?”
“No. Of course not. They’re hungry. We feed them. You said you’re hungry too. Do you need something to eat?”
“It would be nice,” he said. “And I am hungry.”
“Then come in and join us,” she suggested.
He considered it and decided it was probably safe enough. “Sure.” At least he would know what went on in there.
“Do you live on the streets?” the nun asked as she followed him through the door.
“Not like they do,” he told her. “My Mom and I have an apartment. It isn’t much, but we live there.”
“Good!” the nun replied. “What’s your name?”
He stopped and looked at her. “Do you have to know my name?”
“No.”
“Then I’m not telling you. I’ll leave if I have to.”
“You don’t have to. You don’t have to do anything.” She pointed at the back of the line where the people were getting food. “Have something to eat.”
As he was standing at the back of the line, a man in a black shirt with a white collar around his neck started speaking. He heard the man say something about thanking God and blessing the food. Nothing the man said meant anything to him, but as the line continued to move, the smell of the food started making his stomach growl. He saw the people bringing trays full of food to the tables where they sat down and ate. The trays seemed to hold a lot more food than he usually ate in a day. The nun had called this a soup kitchen, but the one thing he didn’t see on any of the trays, was soup. Weird!
When it was his turn, he grabbed a tray and waited while some guy dished out some meat, mashed potatoes, and some kind of vegetable mix. He put the plate on his tray and carried it over to the end of one of the tables where he sat. As he ate, he looked around at everyone else. The nun had asked if he was homeless, but he wasn’t. He was guessing though that all the people in the room were homeless. He wasn’t like them. Was it right for him to take the food since he wasn’t homeless?
The nun stopped by his table and looked down at him. “How is it?” she asked.
“Good,” he replied. “Really good…but…”
“But what?”
He put his fork down. “Are all these people homeless?”
“Most of them,” she replied.
“But I’m not. It shouldn’t be right that I can eat here when they need it more.”
The nun smiled. “Who told you that?”
“My Mom, I guess. She tells me lots of things.”
“She sounds like a very good and wise woman.”
“She is!” he replied.
“Does she take you to church?”
“No. I don’t remember ever being in a church…until now. Is this what they all look like?”
“This?” she laughed. “No. This is just the dining area. Would you like to see what the inside of the church really looks like?”
He considered that for a moment, then shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
“Finish eating, then I’ll give you a quick look.”
When he was done eating, he did like the other people around him were doing, he carried his tray and put his things into the plastic tubs on one of the counters by the wall. He looked around but he didn’t see the nun, so he headed for the door and walked out. Lunch had been good. His stomach was full for once.
Just outside the door, he found the nun talking to each person that left.
“I thought you wanted to see the inside of the church?” she said.
“Yeah, but you’re busy,” he replied.
“Stick around a few minutes, until everyone is finished. Then I’ll take you in.”
Since he had nothing better to do, he stood off to the side and waited. It wasn’t long before everyone was gone.
“Come along,” the nun said as she headed back inside.
He followed her. She led him through the room where he ate, though a door and down a hallway. They made a number of turns before she opened another door and led him into the side of a room that was bigger and more ornate than any place he had ever seen. He took a few steps inside and craned his neck all around looking at things.
“Wow!” he said. “It’s fancy.”
“It’s beautiful,” she replied.
“How come you’ve got all these statues?”
“Those statues mean a lot to the people who worship here. They’re representations of some of the most important people who ever lived.”
His eyes spent a few minutes studying the statues he could see from where he was standing, especially one that seemed very out of place to him. He turned his eyes away from it and looked all around again, but there was simply too much for him to take all of it in. He turned back to the door. “I think I’ve seen enough,” he told her.
She led the way back toward the kitchen. As they walked, he remembered something he had heard once at school. “If I tell you something,” he said, “does that mean you can’t tell anyone else. Ever?”
She stopped. “I think you’re confusing me with a priest and confession.”
“What?”
“Where you confess your sins to the priest. Then those sins only exist between you and God, and you can be absolved of those sins.”
“Absolved? What’s that?”
“Forgiven. Do you have some things you need to be forgiven for?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I was just wondering, that’s all.”
“Why?”
“Because…I found something,” he told her.
“What did you find?”
“I can’t tell you unless you can’t tell anyone else.”
“Hmm,” she mused. “Would you like to discuss it with a priest?”
“Why? I don’t think I need to be forgiven for finding it.”
“Perhaps not, but sometimes talking to someone else can help you in ways you never imagined.”
He shook his head. “Talking to someone else can get me killed. I shouldn’t have even come in here. I shouldn’t be talking to you. I just wondered what was going on with all the people I saw.”
The nun stopped walking and looked at him. “It’s never wrong to talk to a priest or a nun. Never,” she told him.
He shook his head. “No. I know better.”
She stared at him for a moment. “Tell you what, why don’t I introduce you to one of our priests. Then you can decide for yourself if you want to talk to him or not.”
“Why bother?” he asked.
She smiled and started walking again, but slower. “Because it sounds like you’ve got something on your mind. Something that’s troubling you.”
He shook his head. “He can’t help. Nobody can.”
“God can.”
“I don’t know God, and he doesn’t know me. And God doesn’t help anyone where we live. It’s just the opposite.”
“I have no doubt it can seem that way,” she replied. She opened the door and led him back into the eating area. She pointed at one of the tables. Have a seat. I’ll see who I can find.
“Why?” he asked.
She smiled at him. “Why not?”
He finally shrugged and sat down. Talking to people was a bad thing! How many times had his mother told him not to talk to anyone? Keep his head down. Stay unnoticed. So why was he doing it? Maybe because…he was curious. That’s as close as he could come.
The nun came back through the door to the back of the kitchen with the man who had dished the food out onto his plate. As they walked, the man untied his apron and pulled it off, revealing his black shirt with an uncomfortable looki
ng white collar around his neck.
“Sister Agnes says you need to talk to someone,” the man said as they walked up to the table.
He suddenly thought better of the idea. “Maybe not,” he replied as he started to get up.
“This is Father Joseph,” the nun said. “Just take a minute and talk. He doesn’t bite. I promise.”
“It’s not him I’m worried about,” he replied.
Father Joseph sat down across from him. He sat back down too.
“I’ll leave you two,” Sister Agnes said softly as she walked off.
“What can I do for you?” Father Joseph asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? There must be something.”
“Nothing you can do. Nothing anybody can do.”
“About what?”
“About getting rid of the Scorpions.”
“The Scorpions? Are you talking about one of the gangs about half a mile from here?”
“Half a mile? I don’t know. But yeah.”
“What’s the problem?”
“They make life hell. For everyone!”
“I have no doubt,” Father Joseph replied. “Tell me, are you one of them? Are you a member of the gang?”
“No. Not at all. And I like it that way.”
“That’s good.”
“Not according to every other kid who lives in the neighborhood."
“I see,” Father Joseph said, then he just sat there waiting and looking at him.
Feeling awkward at the silence, he finally said, “Two days ago, my mother was attacked by them.” He noticed the sudden concern on the priest’s face.
“Was she hurt?” Father Joseph asked.
“Yeah, but not too bad. They took her purse and all our money though. And she had just gotten paid that day. It’s all gone.”
“All your money? I see,” Father Joseph said. “At least she’s okay. Not hurt too badly.”
“That’s kind of what she said,” he told him. “I found her purse for her though. And her license and buss pass too, but not anything else.”
“You did? It sounds like you were lucky.”
“Yeah. But now…”
“Now what?”
But this was something he couldn’t tell anyone, unless there was no chance that they could tell anyone else. “I asked the lady…I mean the nun.”
“Sister Agnes.”
“Yeah. I asked her, if I told her something if she couldn’t tell anyone else, and she said I was thinking about a priest instead. And then she said something about forgiveness and some other things I don’t remember.”
“Do you have some things you’d like to confess to me so God can forgive you? If you do, I can’t tell any of those things to anyone else.”
“No! It’s nothing I have to be forgiven for. It’s something I found.”
“What?”
He stopped. “Something I can’t tell anyone about until I figure out what to do with it.”
“Is it something that should go to the police?”
He looked at the priest and shook his head. “The only thing the police are interested in where we live is if someone gets murdered. And I don’t think they care much about that either.”
“So you don’t think the police will help?”
“They never have before. People get attacked and ripped off by the Scorpions all the time, and they never even drive through the area.”
Father Joseph had a feeling they probably didn’t. But he had no doubt that there was something else now that was really troubling this kid, and evidently, it had to do with something he found. “What’s your name?” he asked.
He was suddenly fed up. “Why does everybody always have to ask me my name? What if I don’t want anyone to know it?”
“Then don’t tell me. It’s fine,” Father Joseph replied. “It’s just a lot nicer, not to mention easier, if we knew who each other is?”
“Well, I don’t want anyone to know me,” he replied.
“I see,” the priest said again. “Do you want to tell me a little more about what you found? Or would you like me to make some suggestions about other people you might talk to? Social workers maybe?”
“Forget it!” he said as he stood up. “No way! I shouldn’t be here in the first place.” He headed for the door.
“Come back and see us tomorrow!” the priest called after him.
He stopped. “No thanks!”
“At least you’d get something to eat.”
He thought about that for a moment. “Maybe. But probably not!”
He went out, back to the streets. This time he went directly home. He should have never stopped to talk to them. Never said so much about anything. How many times had his mother warned him not to talk to anyone? Don’t be noticed. Be invisible. Be nobody. He had messed up – again. But images of that fancy church lived on in his head. Most of it had been beautiful inside, but some of it been disturbing. He thought the outside of the church had looked frightening, but there were a few things he had noticed on the inside that frightened him even more.
But they fed the homeless. As far as he could see, that was a good thing. How could a place with such frightening things in it, do something so good? It was a puzzle.
When his mother came home that evening, her usual questions barely registered.
“How was your day?”
“Okay.”
As his mother set about making a small dinner for them, she noticed that the amount of bread in the loaf hadn’t gone down. “Brian,” she said. “Didn’t you eat lunch today?”
He wasn’t sure if he should tell her or not, but he decided he wanted her to know what he had done. He needed to know if it was a bad thing or not. “Yeah, I ate, but not here.”
“Not here? How? You didn’t have any money, did you?”
“No Mom.” He sighed, trying to figure out where to start. “I went for another walk today, like I usually do. But I saw this group of people standing outside of one of the churches. So I went over just to see what was going on. Some nun asked me if I wanted something to eat, but I told her I didn’t have any money. She said I didn’t need any money and she called the place a soup kitchen. So, since it was free, I went in and ate. Was that bad?” he asked, seeing the concern on her face.
“Did you talk to anyone in there?”
“The nun tried to talk to me like she did everyone else, but what the heck do you say to a nun?” He was rewarded to see his mother smile.
“You just be polite,” she told him. “If you talk to them, be careful. Don’t say anything at all about us.”
He picked up on something he hadn’t heard her say before. She had often told him not to talk to anyone about anything. This time she had used the words, about us. “She asked my name,” he said, “but I didn’t tell her. She said she didn’t need to know it anyway.”
“Good,” his mother replied.
“So, if I need to, is it okay if I go back?” he asked. “The food was pretty good.”
She considered that, then nodded. “Only if you’re really hungry,” she told him.
“Good,” he replied. “No problem. Mom, explain something to me.”
“What?”
“Why would they call it a soup kitchen if they didn’t have any soup?”
That night, as he laid in bed, two words kept going through his mind. The two words his mother had never used that way before. About us. Did that mean he could talk to people about other things, as long as he didn’t tell them anything about himself or his mother? That’s what it sounded like.
About us. Did he dare try and talk to someone about the box and what he should do with it? Would it make any difference? Why couldn’t he just forget about the box? That’s what he needed to do. That’s what he should do. That would be the best thing he could do. Forgetting about the box is what he finally decided he would do. It was just a box full of other people’s stuff. Things that he had no use for at all. He would just forget about it and go back t
o things being as usual. That was the best. That was the safest.
With that decision made, he closed his eyes and went to sleep. The dreams came again about a life that wasn’t his. And in the middle of those dreams, was the box.
Chapter 4
Forget about it. All day he kept telling himself that. Forget about it. But it was easier said than done. Still, what was the box to him? Nothing. He just figured it meant something to the Scorpions since they had kept all those things in the box instead of throwing them out. Maybe taking the box was a small way to get back at them for what they had done to his mother, let alone everyone else.
Come back again tomorrow. He remembered the priest saying that. But he had no need to go back…unless he could get something to eat, and he had to admit, the food hadn’t been bad at all. Not to mention, there had been more on his plate than he usually got to eat. Maybe, he’d go back for that. But the box? He had already forgotten about it.
All day long, he walked closer to home. Besides, he had gotten more to eat yesterday than he usually did. He could wait a while, if not forever. He had done without the soup kitchen before, and besides, he didn’t even remember the box.
Since it had been a few days, that night, he went back into the attic to check on the Scorpions. As he did, he tried to act surprised when he came across something in the attic. Where did that box come from? What was it? He ignored it and continued on into the Scorpion’s building and went down the ladder to his favorite watching spot.
He watched the Scorpions gathered below him. Did they know that box was missing yet? He should have checked about it sooner. But nobody seemed to be upset over anything, except just before he went back to his room, when Frank got mad because the booze had run out again. Nothing happening. Just the way he liked it.
He did, but he purposely didn’t, notice the box as he went back to his room. Why should he? The box didn’t exist.
Why did he always dream about somebody else’s life?
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The next day, he gave up. He had tried not thinking about the box, but he just couldn’t. Maybe if he put it back where he found it, he could finally forget about it. But he still thought that taking it had been some way of striking back against the Scorpions. So what should he do? Not knowing, he turned his footsteps in the direction of that same church again. Father what’s-his-name and Sister who’s-it. He told himself he was hungry. If he told them that, he wouldn’t be lying at all.