Chapter 1 - THE BENCH BENEATH COLORED GLASS
I was four years old when my mother led me into Saint Thomas Aquinas Church and placed me on a wooden pew beneath the stained-glass windows.
I remember my gray coat.
The brass buttons.
My white socks sliding down inside my shoes.
The smell of candle wax.
And my mother’s hands carefully straightening my collar.
She was unusually gentle that afternoon.
That is one of the things I remember most.
Not anger.
Not panic.
Gentleness.
She knelt until our faces were level.
“Stay here, Nora.”
I stared at her.
“Why?”
“God will watch over you.”
My father stood several feet away.
He would not look at me.
My older brother, Leo, was beside him.
Eight years old.
He looked confused.
“Are we coming back?”
I asked.
My mother smiled.
The same soft smile she used when putting me to bed.
“Don’t worry.”
Then she stood.
My father took her hand.
Leo followed.
They walked toward the enormous wooden doors.
I waited for someone to laugh.
For my mother to turn around and say this was some strange game.
Instead, she looked back once.
Smiled again.
Then walked outside.
The doors closed.
I remained on the pew.
My feet did not reach the floor.
I did not cry immediately because I did not yet understand that I had been abandoned.
Children expect adults to return.
That confidence is one of the first things abandonment destroys.
I waited.
Five minutes.
Ten.
Maybe thirty.
Time has never remained clear in that memory.
Eventually a nun named Sister Agnes noticed me.
“Sweetheart, where is your family?”
“They’re coming back.”
She sat beside me.
“Where did they go?”
“I don’t know.”
A priest joined us.
Then another woman.
Eventually police.
Then a social worker.
No note had been left.
No emergency number.
No explanation.
Only me.
I knew my first name.
My parents’ first names.
My brother’s name.
A few fragments of an address I could not explain well enough for adults to immediately locate.
By evening, I had stopped saying:
“They’re coming back.”
By the following morning, other people had stopped pretending they believed it.
My parents had disappeared.
And for a long time afterward, I believed they had taken my brother because there was something about him worth keeping and something about me worth leaving behind.
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I was wrong about the second part.
It took another woman many years to teach me that.
