Dear Mom, Love Richie
by Sandra McDonald

May 11, 1985
St. Mary's Orphanage, Seacouver, WA

His leg hurt. Propped up on a pillow and encased in a thick cast, the broken limb ached steadily. Ten-year-old Richie Ryan lowered his comic book and glared at it, to no avail. He shifted in the narrow bed, wrinkling his nose at the smell of floor wax and disinfectant drifting up from downstairs. His T-shirt and jeans clung to him in the summer heat despite the large fan spinning near the dormitory's doorway. No breeze blew through the open windows, but he could hear other orphanage kids playing games on the asphalt playground below. For the briefest of moments he considered grabbing his crutches and hobbling down the stairs to watch from the sidelines, but he felt too tired and annoyed to make the effort.

Not annoyed because he'd broken his leg. That part was kind of cool. The nurses at the hospital had given him lots of attention, and he'd gotten to watch three whole hours of TV in the waiting room. Back at the orphanage, his friends had all signed the cast with magic markers provided by Sister Anna. Richie couldn't mop the kitchen or sweep the classrooms, so he'd been assigned chores in the kitchen – stupid stuff like peeling potatoes, but sometimes Sister Pauline let him have an extra cookie or two if Sister Elizabeth wasn't around.

No, his bad mood stemmed from something entirely other than a broken leg. Better to just stick to Peter Parker and his alter ego than dwell on the real problem. Billy Doohan had loaned him a whole bunch of his "Amazing Spiderman" comics, most of them a few years old but in good condition. Richie liked reading comics a whole lot more than reading school books. The pictures made them interesting and easy to follow, and the girls often wore skimpy or tight clothes. He liked the villains - Cobra, Will-O-The-Wisp, Juggernaut - but especially the Hobgoblin, who had a glider and all sorts of grenades and bombs.

Richie tried to lose himself in a new story, but his leg itched fiercely under the cast and he found it difficult to concentrate. He found himself eyeing the orderly, tidy dormitory, even though he'd long ago memorized every detail. Twenty beds in all, each neatly made with white sheets and dark green spreads. Every boy had a wooden locker and a small chest for personal belongings, and every two boys shared a desk. The white linoleum floor gleamed from a fresh scrubbing, and large green radiators under the windows sat silently waiting for winter.

Aside from a clock, the only decoration on the beige walls was a huge crucifix. When Richie had first arrived at St. Mary's, he'd gone to bed each night convinced that the gory, nailed-to-the-cross Jesus Christ was staring directly at him. He'd been just a kid then. In the years since he'd learned that statues of Jesus did not stare at you, but God could see everything you did from heaven. God would surely see him if he dared to go after the candy Mike Paulson had stashed in his desk, or the cookies Sam Ender had swiped from dinner the previous night. Would God tell Sister Elizabeth? She'd make sure he was punished but good. Richie's stomach rumbled, even though lunch had only been an hour earlier. Surely God wouldn't want him to starve.

After several minutes of contemplation, he decided not to embark on a crime spree. Mike would punch him if he caught him stealing, and Sam would probably cry. Sam cried a lot. Richie never cried, not even when he'd fallen down the front staircase and landed with his right leg all twisted up. If someone saw you crying, they thought you were a sissy. He didn't have much in the world but his reputation, and that could be ripped away in an instant.

Spiderman. Hobgoblin. The fate of the world rested in Peter Parker's hands. Richie read three more pages before he felt a penetrating gaze through the flimsy paper and lowered the comic book.

"Hello, Richie," Sister Rose said from the foot of his bed. The short, plump nun with honey-colored hair taught mathematics, just about the only class Richie enjoyed. Multiplication was easy if you memorized all the tables. He also liked Sister Rose because she fell into the category of sisters who let him get away with stuff, unlike Sister Elizabeth. "How's your leg?"

"Hurts a lot," Richie said, just because he wanted her to feel bad for him. Judging from the concerned look on her face, his plan worked.

"Is it time for your pills?" she asked, looking at the clock. "I could go find Sister Christine . . . "

"I just had one at lunch." Richie didn't like the bitter-tasting white pills, but they made his leg hurt less. "It's okay, sister. There's nothing you can do."

"Well, I brought you a treat to cheer you up," she said, and slipped a large red apple out of her pocket. He would have preferred a brownie or potato chips, but he accepted the fruit anyway.

"Thanks," he said, and took a large bite.

"Would you like to come outside and help me in the garden?" she asked. "It's a beautiful day out, and so hot in here."

"Nah. I'm fine."

"It's not like you to stay inside all day," Sister Rose observed. "Don't you want to watch the others play?"

Richie patted the pile of comics at his side. "I'd rather just read these."

Especially now that she'd brought him food, even if it was just an apple. Richie wanted sympathy, not company. But Sister Rose pulled the chair from the desk and sat down primly, her knees pressed close together, her ugly black shoes flat on the floor. Nuns at St. Mary's all wore crosses and habits and the same blue frocks, unlike the long penguin outfits Richie remembered from a different orphanage when he was *really* little. He hoped she wasn't getting ready to give him a lecture or anything.

"What do you have?" she asked. "Anything good?"

Not a lecture, then. Just an adult pretending to be interested in what he was doing. His ploy for sympathy had worked too well. Richie handed her one of the comic books and asked, "Do you know who Spiderman is?"

"Of course I do," Sister Rose said. "But I like Superman better."

Richie shook his head. "Superman's too dumb. He doesn't even cover up his face. Anybody with a brain could figure out who Clark Kent is. But Peter Parker hides everything, so you can't tell."

Sister Rose leafed through the pages. "Who's Tarantula?"

"Oh, he's really cool – he's got these gloves with razor blades in them that pop out and then back in again, and there's drugs on them, and they make his victims go to sleep."

"I see." Sister Rose didn't look impressed. She continued to scan the drawings. "You know, Richie, it's natural to feel a little bit unhappy this weekend."

Richie took a larger bite of his apple. "I'm not unhappy," he said, deliberately speaking with his mouth full.

She didn't reprimand him, though. Sister Elizabeth would have for sure told him not to do that. Sister Rose said, instead, "I know that you know what tomorrow is."

He pretended to be dumb. "Everybody knows, sister. It's Sunday."

"Mother's Day," she said.

"Mother's Day doesn't mean anything to me," he said automatically, before he could stop himself. "I don't have a mother, remember?"

"We all have a mother," Sister Rose reminded him.

"I don't mean the Virgin Mary," he said patiently. You had to be careful when talking to nuns, because they tended to drag God or Jesus or Mary into everything.

"Of course there's Mary," Sister Rose said, touching the gold cross that hung around her neck, "but I meant your real mother, Richie. Just because she lives in heaven now doesn't mean you can't think about her."

"I don't even remember her," Richie said crossly. "You can't think about someone you don't remember. It doesn't matter, anyway."

He picked up issue #237, Spiderman versus Stiltman, and pretended to be engrossed. He had just lied to a nun – not for the first time, of course, but he felt guilty anyway. Richie did remember his mother, or at least the woman he thought was his mother. She'd had red hair and sometimes she wore big curlers in it. Every night she'd tucked him into bed under a blanket with racecars on it. During the day, when watching television and smoking cigarettes, she had let him climb into her lap so he could watch, too. She had always smelled like the soap from the commercials, the one with Irish people standing in the shower.

"Sometimes it helps to write letters to the people who've gone to heaven," Sister Rose said.

"You can't write letters to dead people."

"Of course you can."

Richie gave her a suspicious look. "Who's going to deliver them?"

"God."

He tried a different tact. "I don't have anything good to write."

"You could write about breaking your leg. Or about how well you're doing in math class. You could tell her you miss her and love her, and that you wish she was here."

"If she's in heaven, she knows all that," Richie pointed out.

Sister Rose nodded. "Yes, but sometimes it helps to write it down, too."

Richie thought the whole idea was stupid. Dear Mom, broke my leg, love Richie. Besides, even if he did remember her, he didn't love her. She'd died and left him all alone in the world. Before St. Mary's he'd been with at least two foster families, and he had dim memories of other orphanages, other homes. He had no idea who his dad was, if he was dead, if he'd run out on her. Sometimes, when they went on field trips to museums, Richie would press his nose to the bus window and scrutinize the men passing by outside. Somewhere in the world, someone might look like him.

"Let's write a letter together," Sister Rose proposed. She opened his and Billy's desk and found a pencil and pad of paper. "How should I start?"

Richie looked longingly at his crutches. He imagined fleeing on them, with the nun in hot pursuit. He bet he could reach the doors before she caught up with him. He rubbed his forehead and tried to look pitiful.

"I have a headache," he said.

"I'll write the letter for you." Sister Rose paused for a moment, the pencil hovering over the clean white page. She began to write in long, flowing letters. "'Dear Mrs. Ryan, I am writing to you about your son Richie. He's one of my favorite students here at St. Mary's. He knows his multiplication tables quite well and likes to help the other boys with their homework.'"

Richie didn't tell her that he traded off on the math homework, like when he did Billy's division problems and Billy answered his Social Studies questions.

The nun went on with, ""What I like most about Richie is that he's honest and hard-working. He always tries his best and he cheers up the other boys when they're sad. I wish you could see how tall he's getting. Since Christmas he's grown an entire inch."

Richie made a face. Even with what Sister Anna called his 'growth spurt,' he was still shorter than the other boys his age. Short but tough, he told himself.

"'Mother's Day is a difficult holiday for him, because he misses you so much,'" Sister Rose continued. "'He knows that sometimes mothers and fathers die, but it's hard not to get mad at you for going away."

"I'm not mad at her," Richie said quickly. "People can't help it when they die, right?"

"True," Sister Rose agreed. "People can't help it when they die. But it's normal to be angry at them for going away."

Richie squinted at her, trying to figure out the trap. The nuns sometimes liked to make traps with words, to twist things around until you agreed with stuff you didn't really want to agree with at all.

"I'm not mad," was all he said, and turned back to Spiderman.

"I was mad at my mother when she died," Sister Rose said.

"When did she die?"

"A few years ago."

"So you were already grown up."

"It hurts just as much when you're grown up, Richie. Maybe even more."

"What did she die of?"

"Diabetes," Sister Rose said. "That's a disease people get. They have to be careful of what they eat, and sometimes they have to give themselves medicine with needles. But my mother ate all sorts of bad food, and sometimes she forgot to give herself the medicine. That's how she died."

"Are you still mad at her?"

"No. I forgave her. People make mistakes."

"I'm not mad at my mother," Richie said, pitching the apple core into a small trash can and returning to his comics. He had completely lost track of the story, so he stared instead at a drawing of Spiderman clinging to the side of a building. His leg itched terribly, and his eyes had started to burn for no good reason.

"I'll take that part out," Sister Rose said, and true to her word she erased the last sentence on the paper. "Is there anything else I should write?"

"I don't care. It's your letter."

Sister Rose wrote a few more lines in silence. Richie watched her out of the corner of his eye. Curiosity got the better of him and he asked, "What else did you say?"

"I wrote, 'Richie is a very special boy. I'm sorry you couldn't be here to take care of him. I'm sure that one day soon he will go home with a nice set of parents. Until then, it's our pleasure to know him and love him.'"

Richie looked at her round, honest face. Did she really love him? It had never occurred to him that the nuns loved any of the orphans. Caring for kids was their "job." God made them do it.

"I signed it, 'Sincerely, Sister Rosemary Dorcy.' Are you sure you don't want to add something to the bottom before I mail it?"

Richie didn't believe that she could mail a letter to heaven. She had to be pretending, just like adults invented stories about the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. But Sister Elizabeth always said that God and the church were full of mysteries. What if the letter did go to his mother, and he hadn't written anything to her?

Sister Rose folded the paper. "All right. I'll just send this."

Richie snatched it out of her fingers. "No! I want to write something."

Sister Rose handed him the pencil.

He found it difficult to position himself with his leg propped up in the air, but after a little twisting he managed to prop the paper on his good knee. Richie chewed the end of the pencil, wondering what to write. He didn't want to admit that sometimes, at night, he woke up with his heart hurting. He didn't want to tell her that he felt cheated when he saw kids with parents and families. He didn't want to tell her that he dreaded Mother's Day even more than he did vocabulary tests, or spinach at dinner, or Sister Elizabeth's lectures.

So instead of writing anything that would make her feel bad in heaven, he wrote:

Dear Mom,

Miss you a lot.

Love, Richie.

Richie refolded the paper before giving it back. "You can't read it," he told Sister Rose.

"I won't," she promised, and crossed herself. "I swear to God."

Coming from a nun, that was pretty impressive. Sister Rose stood up and said, "I'm going to leave you alone now with your comics. Maybe tomorrow, though, you could come down and help me with my garden. I'm probably going to feel a little sad because of Mother's Day, and you could cheer me up."

Richie didn't know if that was possible. Him, cheer someone else up? But she'd been really nice to him, and she was sending that letter, so he supposed he could make the effort.

"Okay. I can try." Richie picked up a comic book and said, "Sister Rose?"

The nun stopped at the end of his bed. "Yes, Richie?"

"Spiderman is an orphan. Peter Parker's mom and dad died when he was little, and then his Uncle Ben got shot."

Sister Rose tilted her head thoughtfully. "Superman is an orphan too, isn't he? His real parents were killed on Krypton. And the Kents died, too."

"Don't forget Batman," Richie added. "Bruce Wayne was an orphan. Dick Grayson, too. Do you think they all feel sad on Mother's Day, too?"

"I'm sure of it, Richie."

"Well, that's okay, then," Richie said. If really strong and important guys like that could feel sad, then it was probably okay if he did, too.

Sister Rose returned to his bedside and planted a kiss on Richie's forehead. She smelled like flowers and coffee, and her gold cross dangled against his cheek. "Maybe, one day, you'll grow up to be a superhero, too."

A superhero. He could do that. Richie watched Sister Rose leave, then bunched the pillow under his head and started listing the special powers he would have when he grew up. He'd be tall, for starters. Really strong. Invincible, definitely. He'd have his own mansion in the mountains, with a swimming pool and bowling alley and super crime-fighting computer. He'd have pizza and hot fudge sundaes for breakfast every morning. Because he'd be a millionaire, too, he'd give lots of money to the local orphanage, and make sure all the kids there had all the toys they wanted.

Richie Ryan, superhero. He really liked the sound of that.

Richie daydreamed for several more minutes, then maneuvered himself out of bed and on to his crutches. He might as well go down and watch Billy and Jimmy and the others play. They might need a referee. On his way down he'd stop and see Sister Pauline in the kitchen. If he looked really unhappy, maybe she'd let him have some chocolate cake leftover from lunch.

The End

Author's Notes: Special thanks to Angela Gabriel and Cindy Hudson, whose comments made this a better story. Thanks, sibs!