Preamble One, Part Five: The Leaving and Never Coming Back
Time passed and Sergio grew. Physically he had outgrown most of the other boys in the orphanage but this did not stop their taunts. He suffered the verbal abuse that occasionally turned to physical beatings. It did not bother him. He recalled the days of his childhood when tears ran from his eyes and he tasted them. They were salty. As years went by he found that tears forgot to fall from his eyes. Now he only tasted the saline of his own blood, which was mixed with a metallic flavor. When blood fell from his nose he licked his lips and tasted it. The sensation was not pleasant or unpleasant; rather it gave him physical strength.
He had grown accustomed to routine trimmings of his hair by the nuns and he began to refuse them. In his early teens Sergio grew much taller than the nuns and he found that they could no longer control him. They made him kneel before God and they smashed his knuckles with their flimsy sticks. He bled but was not moved. He would not pray for forgiveness and he took his punishment. When the nuns tried to cut his hair he turned away and refused their scissors. This forced them to strip his back and flay it but Sergio would not accept their haircutting attempts. He recalled his burned village and the older boys there who let their hair grow long, obscuring their eyes and their intentions, and he was determined to let his grow as such. He would not allow the nuns to see what his eyes revealed.
At a young age Sergio found his sense of irony as the nuns and the other boys in the orphanage treated him with a contempt that he did not deserve and that they all shared. He was constantly reminded that he had no family, was without a past, and worthy of no future. This made Sergio laugh as he saw who delivered this mockery. Celibate nuns and orphans. He hated them and restrained his urge to hurt them.
Years passed like this. Sergio suffered them graciously until he was called upon by God to change his life. It was in the chapel when he felt it, when he knew that he would leave. As one of the nuns smashed his knuckles with a switch as they had for years, Sergio stood. The nun screamed at him that The Lord commands him to sit and take his place. But Sergio did not sit down, no, he looked down at the nun and saw fear in the sister’s eyes. He wondered briefly why he had not seen it before and what would become of him. Then he turned and walked out of the classroom, out of the chapel, and out of the orphanage walls.