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The bells of that great church would chime every Sunday, welcoming the young like him, who were instructed early in the morning to be neat and proper, their ears about to droop with the warnings about clean shirts, brushed hair and polished shoes. Mrs. Cole would not hesitate to use her ruler to warn and reprimand those who dared disgrace the house of the Lord.
Tom was perfect, as always: not a single hair out of place. That didn't stop him from being harassed by the matron's serious, wary eyes. He wanted to pluck them out.
Tom, still standing correctly in the line of children, couldn't stop his mind from drifting back to even more tender times of his early childhood. The pang of shame assaulted him ruthlessly as he reminisced about the little body he had been, wrapped in flimsy blankets that could barely bring him any sense of warmth, head on his knees, hands tightly clasped together and eyes closed with a force that seemed manic, whispering his own name: common, bland and handed down, 𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘥, like everything else he seemed to possess.
Prayers poured from his tender, broken lips, asking fervently, he prayed as if in a desert, a lonely prophet with no burning bush in sight. For a father who, as of today, Tom had accepted would not come, failing to meet the spiritual responsibilities he owed him.
His mother could pay for it in hell, if there was one, for the Bible spoke of Mary, the pure mother of Jesus, but his mother had left him in a gray hospice to be raised by strangers. He had looked her up once in the records: Merope, a withered-sounding name. The tale said she died giving birth to him, as if that made her a saint, as if that excused her failure. Tom had heard that mothers would do anything for their children, she apparently didn't love him enough to live, but that was okay, he didn't need a weak mother.
The world called the Virgin blessed, but his own mother was more like Lot’s wife, a fleeting, fragile thing, turned to salt before she could look forward. On the other hand, Tom was unaware of his father's condition. Perhaps, someday, Tom would have to go and personally charge him. Like a wrathful archangel cast down from the firmament, Tom would come bearing judgment.
After lonely afternoons of waiting at the window and on the porch of the ramshackle orphanage, weighed down by the stares and snide remarks of other even more miserable orphans, Tom became disillusioned with the image of the flesh father he had been promised. It had been like water for a thirsty child who believed he deserved blood over the hypothetical connections to the adults who came through the orphanage doors, classifying him as mere cattle. Tom hated them all.
There had been only a few couples, with faces that pretended to be happy and calm, all liars. No one who wasn't desperate would seek adoption in this shabby orphanage in those miserable times. Besides, he had always been meant to be worth much better things. That included his parents. Maybe there simply weren't any perfect enough for him. Maybe that's why he was on his own.
Tom grew out of God, too. The chants were growing more and more unbearably meaningless, and Tom would rather be damned than go back to begging before the “all-seeing” spiritual Father.
Even when his own abilities manifested - his young mind barely able to comprehend the nature of the power he had - when mere reality seemed to bend to his pleas, such a terrifyingly fantastical thing, Tom refused to attribute it to God. It was not a gift; it was the pure energy of his inner self materializing. If there was a God, He certainly hadn't shown him any kind of biblical favor or mercy.
No dove descending, no voice in the wilderness, only silence.
What kind of father leaves him in a damp room, with hard mattresses that reeked of dried urine? What kind of father can bear to see him wearing other people's donated clothing, threadbare and thin that lacked warmth, eating austere and repetitive rations that tasted like cardboard, huddling with the endless list of hopeless children that always seemed to increase? What kind of heavenly father is he who cannot afford to even look in the direction of the poor and the orphaned?
The Psalms spoke of divine refuge — but no rock had sheltered him. No rod or staff had comforted him. No manna fell for the forgotten.
No. If there was a God, it was a cruel and heartless one, a sadistic deity who had no interest in the suffering of the innocent, who could ignore the cries of the children and the deprived. Disease and the poor conditions of his environment always reminded him of that. God certainly showed no sign of knowing the divine love and mercy they spoke of in church, not when he had sent his own son to die.
Tom could only wait to see what was in store for the undivine infants in the hole that was Wools, those born not of promise, but of neglect.
Even after entering through the large, imposing doors, even after singing and chanting, Tom was forced to kneel each time, like a penitent, a sinner, receiving nothing in exchange. It was said that Jesus had died for him, to save him, but Tom did not feel saved, leaning against the cold wood on his red, bruised knees, bearing the gaze of the common people who stared at him with pity.
Tom looked at him, silent in the stained-glass window every Sunday: the suffering figure of Jesus, with open arms, bleeding heart and gaze begging forgiveness for the very men who crucified him.
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing,” they claimed he said.
But they indeed had known. Tom certainly knew. Men always know.
They had killed a man who healed lepers, who talked to despicable women, who touched those whom everyone avoided. He offered his meat to wolves and called them brothers.
A man who, in Tom´s opinion, was pathetically good. And that did not save him. Jesus walked among the marginalized, people like Tom, as if that was enough to change the world, but the world devoured him anyway. Kindness did nothing to protect him. Compassion availed him nothing. Even when he returned. He bore the crown of thorns like a fool king, and the spear that pierced him was not mercy, but mockery.
And he still asked for their forgiveness?
Tom could not conceive of it. He would never forgive those who had hurt him, ignored him, rejected him. There would be no prayers in his mouth for those who pushed him away.
His mother, who had abandoned him; his father, who refused to make an act of presence; Mrs. Cole, who seemed convinced that Tom was a demonic entity; the pathetic orphans who thought they were so damn wise for ostracizing him; and God Himself, who - if He existed - had left him alone in that building with cold walls and dull voices.
Jesus was a warning, not an example. A figure of a carpenter hung on wood, like the cruelest of ironies, immobile, unable to change his destiny in spite of all his love. The world spat on him, as it does on all those who do not stand up for themselves.
If even the Son of God was not protected, if even he did not find refuge in his goodness, what hope was left for someone like him, born without identity, without parents, without a face in history?
Forgiveness was the language of the defeated. Jesus died pleading for others. Tom would live by pleading for silence and, someday, to speak with a voice so big that the whole world could not ignore it.
When Tom met Harry, he could finally comprehend how Jesus must have looked in the eyes of other mortals—he moved through the world like a prayer Tom had long forgotten how to say, a bright figure in the filth, carrying a light meant to redeem what should have rotted.
And still, all Tom wanted was to see that light flicker; to drag his holiness into his mouth, to taste it. If he was to bleed, then let it be into Tom's hands. Would the blood of Christ kill him... or save him?