Father Leo had a huge bald head, and a smile that went from ear to ear when he was in a good mood. When he was in a bad mood, he shook his fist at whoever happened to stand in his way, assuring them they were all headed for Hell if they didn’t take their religion seriously. He could be seen at night walking up and down the sidewalk in front of the church, reciting litanies to honor saints and supplicating for the souls of his disobedient parishioners. It was rumored he had a crucifix in his room with a Jesus hanging on it with real glass eyes that shone in the dark and kept Father Leo company as he lay on his bed weeping over the sins of the world.
When Luz approached Father Leo about taking Big Boy under his wing, he told her he would hear his confession, then asked her to pay the two-dollar fee so he could join the St. Anthony’s Boys Club. Most of the club members were altar boys, and were also part of Father Leo’s baseball team. Big Boy wasn’t athletic, so he told the priest he’d rather just be an altar boy and not play ball, and the priest told him that confession was the first requirement for becoming an altar boy, as boys with ruined souls were unacceptable.
In the dark box that represented the confessional, Father Leo prepared to hear Big Boy’s confession one Saturday afternoon, with two skinny girls and their grandmother waiting in line outside the thick curtain that covered the doorway of the chamber. Big Boy’s legs felt like two iron rods glued to the vinyl-covered kneeler with its seam ripped open on one end.
The screened panel opened with a sound that made Big Boy jump, and in the dim light he saw Father Leo’s profile leaning up against the wire mesh.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” His mouth went dry as he fumbled for the rest of the words. “Ah … this is Big Boy.”
“Don’t tell me who you are!” said Father Leo impatiently. “You’re a sinner, that’s the only important thing, God doesn’t care about anything else.” On the other side of the thick curtain, Big Boy heard one of the skinny girls laugh, and he wondered if they were standing close enough to hear what the priest had said. “Now tell me the truth, did you shoplift at Woolworth’s? As you know,
Thou shalt not steal
is one of the Ten Commandments.”
“No, Father, I didn’t steal, but I wanted to … sometimes.”
“Well, wanting to is just as bad as doing it. You have to live clean from your heart. The Devil wants your heart, don’t you understand?” Then there was a pause, and Father Leo moved closer to the wire mesh screen. “Never mind about Woolworth’s,” he whispered. “What about that girl who disappeared last year, what do you know about her? She was one of your friends, wasn’t she?”
“Who? Nanda?”
“Yes, Nanda. I know how you boys looked at her … and now she’s gone.”
Big Boy’s face got bright red in the dark confessional. He felt hot, and shuffled on the kneeler. He knew who Nanda was, all the boys did. She wasn’t afraid to let the boys touch her breasts, two huge mounds that grew on her chest, on summer nights at Harmon Park. Usually one of the older boys would end up taking Nanda around the backside of the bathroom stalls, behind bushes that grew next to the concrete wall, and spend time touching her in the dark and doing things that all the other boys wanted to do. Even Simon the Freak had put his hands on Nanda, and he was a kid who didn’t even get a hug from his own mother. The boys didn’t have to worry about Nanda’s father and mother coming by to get her, as her parents were the neighborhood drug dealers. Both were junkies and most nights they were busy entertaining some thugs who drove a black Oldsmobile with a Nevada license plate.
“Were you one of the boys who touched Nanda?”
“No. But I gave her a gift once … a little cross.”
“The one you stole from Woolworth’s?” “No! It was my sister’s, but she didn’t want it anymore.”
“Well, you still stole it if it belonged to your sister. And why did you give it to Nanda? What did you want? Did you think nasty things about her?”
Big Boy felt his hands sweating, and his heart thumping against his T-shirt. “Yes, I guess I did. But I gave her the gift because she was my friend.”
“All the boys were her friends!” said Father Leo. “Don’t get smart. Now say ten Our Fathers, and ten Hail Marys as penance. And don’t let me hear that you’ve been stealing again, or thinking nasty thoughts about girls.” He mumbled an absolution, and raised his hand in the dim light, blessing Big Boy. Then, with one quick motion, he shut the screened panel.
The next day, Big Boy walked by Nanda’s apartment and noticed the black Oldsmobile with the Nevada license plate parked outside on the street. He peaked inside the car and saw a girl’s jacket in the backseat. Through the tinted windows he couldn’t tell if it was Nanda’s. He thought of the girl, of her soft, fleshy breasts, and felt guilty for lying to Father Leo. He had touched Nanda, and had never forgotten how beautiful her skin had felt under his hand. He had kissed her too, because she had told him he could. He had looked into Nanda’s dark eyes, stared deep into the luminous pupils, shiny as if she had just shed tears, and he had seen her sadness. Instinctively, he had looked up at the sky, as it seemed to him that a part of Nanda had suddenly taken flight. She had stood in front of him that Sunday night when he was still in seventh grade and she was already in eighth. Just stood there, watching his hand on her breast, as if she was a mannequin, and he could have done anything he had wanted to do. Big Boy had gently smoothed back her hair and hooked the chain with the tiny silver crucifix around her neck. She had smiled at him then, and it was the first time Big Boy had seen the dimples on her cheeks.
Big Boy dismissed the memory of the silver chain from his mind … the one he had stolen at Woolworth’s. Another lie he had told Father Leo. The clerk had been right, he had indeed lifted things from Woolworth’s, including the silver chain he had given to Nanda. She had been happy wearing it, and Big Boy didn’t regret taking it.
Nanda wasn’t in school the next day, and nobody gave it a second thought. She had been absent many times, and Monday was one of her favorite days to stay home. There was talk that she wouldn’t be able to graduate, and would have to repeat the eighth grade. Big Boy hoped she’d fail, so she could be in his class, then he’d get closer to her, maybe be the one who took her behind the bathroom wall at Harmon Park.
Nanda’s parents were unconcerned by her disappearance, saying she had the habit of running away to her sister’s in Los Angeles and hiding out. She’d be back soon, they said. The truant officer from school stopped by, but could get nothing more from them. They weren’t worried, they said, she’d come back, this was normal for her. But the girl didn’t come back. She had simply disappeared and people in the projects talked about it every day for months. The girls were glad she was gone, now they had more control over their boyfriends, and their mothers were glad to be rid of her, now their daughters wouldn’t be plagued by Nanda’s loose ways.
“She’s probably pregnant,” Atalia told Big Boy one time when she visited with him at juvie. “She’s probably somewhere having a baby, and she’ll be back after she has it.”
“She never told me she’d be leaving,” Big Boy replied.
Atalia frowned at him. “I didn’t know you were that close to her. Why should she tell you?”
“We were kind of friends,” Big Boy said, squirming in his chair. Across the room he saw one of the boys who had touched Nanda one night, pulling down her underwear and making her cry. He looked away, remembering how she had run away, with the boy holding up her underwear like a flag and laughing.
Nanda didn’t come back to school, and Big Boy missed her. She had slipped her hand through his after he had linked the chain with the cross around her neck, and leaned into him. “You’re my best friend,” she had whispered. Big Boy remembered her voice, distant somehow, and still sensed the pressure of her hand in his, the palm warm, delicate to his touch. He’d thought of Nanda every night he spent at juvie, and now that Father Leo had asked him about her, he had started thinking about her all over again.
Being one of Father Leo’s altar boys meant there would be many rules to follow. Big Boy had to be sure there were enough hosts for the masses he served, and that the wine was ready in the chalice when the priest walked into the sacristy. The door to the priest’s closet containing his vestments was to be unlocked, the candles on the altar had to be lit, and the Bible Father Leo read from placed on the altar and opened to the reading of the day.
Big Boy felt as if Father Leo could look right through him. He sometimes saw the priest kneeling down in front of a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus before mass, his face in his hands. He seemed like he was praying, maybe listening to the voice of Jesus in his head. Big Boy felt as if the priest was watching him around the girls who came up to receive Communion during mass. He had ordered him not to think nasty thoughts, and since that time, that was all Big Boy thought about. He remembered Quincy, a black kid from juvie, who had told him all there was to know about girls, and that real men did it to them, and didn’t ask any questions. Big Boy wasn’t sure what “did it to them” meant, but he was hoping to find out, maybe from Ernestina, one of Nanda’s friends.
Big Boy had gotten into the habit of watching Ernestina at school every chance he got, noticing how her sweater plunged into a V, showing the smooth skin of her neck, and lower still, to the outline of her breasts, almost identical to Nanda’s. He got his courage up one day at lunch and talked to her at the drinking fountain, towering over her, even though she was a year older than him.
“Have you seen Nanda around?”
“Nah, she’s gone. Her mom won’t say where. I think she went to California.” Ernestina took a drink from the fountain and the water dribbled from her lips to her chin and onto her chest. It took all of Big Boy’s strength not to reach over and brush the drops of water from her chin and kiss her. She watched him, suddenly tossing her head and laughing out loud at something somebody said to her, then she walked past Big Boy like he wasn’t even there.
“I’m so proud of you,” Big Boy’s mother said to him one Sunday morning at breakfast. “My own son, serving mass! Maybe someday you’ll be a priest … Yes, I want you to think about it.” She picked up Big Boy’s three-year-old sister in her arms. “Lizzie can get married and have kids someday, but I want you to be a priest, a saint, like Father Leo. If it weren’t for him, I don’t know where we’d be. He brought me a food box the other day and had the sodality help me pay the rent. I tell you he’s a saint! Now he’s watching over you. Franco called him the other day to see how you were doing, and Father gave him a good report.”
“Why did my PO call Father?” Big Boy asked.
“I told him Father Leo was as good as your own dad, and better because he’s really taking an interest in you, so he put him down as your mentor. I tell you, God’s blessing us!”
Big Boy trudged to St. Anthony’s that morning to serve 10 a.m. mass, and thought of Father Leo looking through him, reading his thoughts, and now he was talking to Franco.
Walking home after mass, Big Boy decided to go by Nanda’s apartment. He walked past the bakery and El Toro Restaurant to cross Central Avenue and get to Nanda’s, all the while watching out for any of the boys who normally hung around that section of the projects. Maybe one of them would want to challenge him for coming into their territory, then he’d need a good excuse, or he’d have to fight to get out. He saw no one. It was a spring day, the weather warm. He saw kids playing a baseball game at Harmon Park in the distance, and caught sight of the park’s swings, the old rusty merry-go-round, and the bathrooms, the faded walls marked up by gang signs, and he longed for Nanda. He longed to see her one more time, look into her sad eyes, watch her take flight, then catch her in his arms again and fill her with kisses, slowly caressing each breast.
Big Boy noticed the black Oldsmobile parked in front of Nanda’s apartment and peered into the car’s window, this time not spotting the girl’s jacket. He saw boxes in the backseat, luggage and papers strewn around.
“Hey!” yelled a man coming out of Nanda’s apartment. “What do you think you’re doing? Get away from there!” The guy was tall, over six feet, wearing a jacket in spite of the warm day. He had sunglasses on, and wore a beret cocked at an angle.
“I’m not doing anything,” Big Boy answered, “I was just wondering … if you’ve seen Nanda.”
“And who would be wanting to know?” asked the guy, walking leisurely up to Big Boy, lighting a cigarette.
“A friend.”
“She ain’t got no friends … cousins maybe, but friends?”
Big Boy felt his stomach cramp as the guy leaned next to the car, puffing on his cigarette. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth as he rolled up his sleeves to show off his tats, blue webs that climbed up his arms.
Big Boy wanted to walk away, disappear like Nanda had, but now that he was so close to this man who had just walked out of her apartment, he was determined to get some information from him.
“Are you from Las Vegas?”
“Yeah, and who wants to know?”
“Big Boy.”
“You ain’t that big. Nobody’s big, we’re all the same size. Ain’t nobody can outrun a bullet.” Then he laughed as he saw Big Boy’s face turn pale. “Want a cigarette?”
“Nah, that’s okay.”
“Ah, yeah, Nanda. Now, there’s a girl, if you know what I mean. Now, she’s big in all the right places.” He laughed again, gruffly. “Right, Big Boy? Is that what you want? Some action?” The guy sneered, then reached into his pocket to take out his car keys. “I gotta go,” he said. “Ain’t got no time to be talking to big boys who are full of shit. Is Franco your PO?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Been on the streets all my life. Tell that son of a bitch he owes me. He owes Chano, and I ain’t forgot.” Then he climbed into the Olds, and Big Boy stood watching the car creep down the street, thinking how Nanda would have looked sitting next to Chano, smoking a cigarette.
Months went by, the whole summer, and other girls joined the boys at Harmon Park—Ernestina and Yvette and a few others who were loud and bossy and played hard to get, but let themselves be caught in the end. Atalia visited Big Boy and told him to stay away from Harmon unless he wanted to get involved with narcos and floozies who did it with everybody. No matter what she told him, Harmon Park drew Big Boy like a magnet, leering at him with memories of Nanda, soft, fleshy breasts, rich warm places inside her he’d like to get to. Sometimes tears crawled down Big Boy’s face late at night as he thought of Nanda disappearing like a puff of smoke, and everybody moving on with their lives, as if it didn’t matter at all. Maybe she was living in Las Vegas—dancing at a casino. But she was too young for that … or maybe she was dead. When Big Boy said the word
dead
in his mind, he flinched, as if he had been hit in the face.
Dead
, her body lying out some-where in the desert. Big Boy closed his eyes tight to block out the thought.