Free Spirit Wars by Mon D Rea Page A

unguarded moments.
    Immanoel the Thumb-sucker would start crying and the bedside lamps
would flick on from one double-decker to the next. The wailing child would be
followed by one more and then two, like a coach passenger’s worst nightmare,
all children denying the reality of having been abandoned and wishing with all
earnestness for their parents to come back.
    Back in the dark hallway, one of the dried-up nuns would hold
Linus the Bed-Wetter and whisper soothing words in his ear, but the feel of a
custodian would always be in her touch. Most of the gentle Sisters didn’t have
an inkling of what was tearing the little boy up from the inside, not that I
expected anything from people who hadn’t experienced abandonment firsthand. A
couple of times I had done the job myself that none of them could – that is, be
the real person telling the kid that he wasn’t the one to blame nor did he
deserve to be left. Wherever his parents were, they weren’t happy to be rid of
their burden either.
    Someone had to tell the kid that no one would ever leave him again
or send him someplace else. And therein lay the contradiction. I could at least
promise with enough sincerity in my eyes that I wasn’t going to send anyone
anywhere.
    Especially because I was the oldest of them, the biggest big
brother to all the unwanted, and no “forever family” would have me. I was
Nataniel the Non Person.
    ****
    I was also
known as the Spirit Sherlock, the Spirit Detective. It was with a hint of
derision that the supervising nuns and social workers called me this behind my
back to help identify me among the transients of that high-turnover orphanage;
they probably called the other kids other names as well.
    But
among the orphans, the epithet left the lips with reverence and it was almost
always spoken in a whisper. I was treated as a hero. Stories of my feats were
passed around, exaggerated and embellished, between floor-scrubbing duties and
mealtime, prayer service and, at the most tempting hour of all, right before
bed.
    Not
a day passed that an orphan didn’t request a reading from me. Surreptitiously
in the yard or under the table during supper, an item would be passed into my
hand – a hat, a cellphone, a lighter, an earring or some such trinket – so that
I might divine whatever information I could out of these lifeless objects.
    It
had all started out as a joke. Two older boys thought it was funny to shove an
old, patched-up sock under my nose. They told me, “Knock yourself out, freak.”
    I
only remembered snatches of what I said but the words freaked them out so bad
they became my most loyal supporters-slash-managers. This was what roughly came
out of my mouth:
    “I
see two people, one elderly and the other middle-aged. The middle-aged man puts
this sock and the other on his father’s feet every evening and whenever it’s
cold outside; but that was before. Recently the middle-aged man’s too busy and
he has passed the gesture on to another person. To a maid, because his wife
couldn’t care less. The old man doesn’t like this new arrangement.”
    W henever
the young me did a reading, my facial expression and voice would become far
more serious than they could ever be at my age.
    “The
old man, he speaks in a loud but feeble voice. He has feelings he wants to say
but he can’t find the words for. He has too much pride and he doesn’t want to
appear weak in anyone’s eyes; that is, except in front of his son, the
middle-aged man. The old man complains of many things: headaches, coughing, noise;
but the things he complains about are mostly made up. When he forgets or loses
things, wets himself or calls for the doctor, all he really wants is to see his
son.”
    The
bigger of the two bullies knew as much about the sock. He had stolen it from
the drawer of the old man whom he would read books to.
    Even
the Sisters knew I could sense things and they sometimes turned to my talents
when those were the only recourse. But the official