I Remember

Little Leo AKA Leito

My uncle Leonel was the coolest uncle we had. He hung around us and was the only trustworthy son that my grandma had. Boris didn't live there. He was a good kid too. As far as running errands and being the one they could trust with paying the bills he was it. They used to send my aunt Mila to pay bills until they got cut off behind Mila going on a shopping spree. Grandma kept a locker in her room where she stored food items and things she didn't wanted stolen. Since she had two addicts roaming around she couldn't leave any valuables around. They would steal your dreams if they could. It was a nightmare they stole from me too. I had to carry, toothpaste, deodorant etc in my book bag to school. It was serious. They sold grandma's pots, pans, shoes, ice etc, anything. People in my community bought anything, dope dealers traded anything. It was a mess. Leonel as far as we all were concerned, was the sober minded one. Stuff started disappearing and either Johnny or Rica would be accused of stealing it. The one with the keys and access was Leonel. Turns out since he played basketball for the community team and was really good, he got to hang with big people and bigger groups of men. Those folk were all smoking weed and snorting cocaine, so he got involved with cocaine and his game started to show it and he too started to sell the house stuff. We never knew how long he had been doing this and blaming the others for it. We just knew that he did it. Johnny and Rica would tell grandma but she wouldn't believe it until the streets told on him. It was so sad. Grandma was devastated and disappointed. She prayed that he would've seen the others and not want to go that route. After all he was the one with grandma and Leo searching for Johnny when he would go into a deep hole and get high for months at a time and go into the deepest jungles and be almost dead nearly OD. Someone would come and tell Leo that Johnny was somewhere passed out, with bruises and swollen feet from walking with no shoes. He would sell his shoes for crack. So there goes Leonel and Leo and Naty and sometimes Boris and hunt for him in the rain or hot sun looking for him.
Naty would cry and beg Leo to go find him. Leo worried too he was a macho man, he wouldn't dare show weakness deep down he cared. Leo was an orphan he never knew how to father anybody all he knew is how to survive. It didn't come natural to him. He gave us what was given to him. He loved differently. He was messed up, broken irreparably.
Whenever they would find Johnny or Rica they would be sick with pneumonia, bronchitis, flea infected, feet infected, long bearded. They would look like homeless people. Leo would kick them out and they would disappear. Then HE would have to go find them. It was either remorse or love. Im leaning towards love.
Leonel fell into addiction and it broke everyone's heart, we expected so much more from him. He kept us. He would comb my wild hair when no one else would want to. I have aunts but no one cared. Leonel cared, he cooked for us, took us to school, picked us up, he helped us with homework. He was a great drawer he would draw all of our projects. He was skilled. He had a beautiful handwriting, he wrote notes for us and he would come to all of our parent teacher meetings. He was grandma's right-hand man. He never had a choice and never complained he just did it. He spent so much time with us. Some said he was gay because he was domestic. He didn't have a choice, he had a big heart. We minded him. We loved him so much. He broke our hearts when he turned to drugs. Grandma said he was born with cerebral meningitis. He overcame it, but it came back later on. Leonel was sickly too, I guess due to that. His liver and kidneys always bothered him. But he was a respected basketball player. Three points shooter champion he was skilled. He was addicted to Pepsi Cola. There wasn't a day that he didn't drink three of them or more. I remember that the local grocery store owner loved him like a son. He would go home and trust him with his store. He would pay him and take him along to pick up orders and to supervise deliveries the store was located across the street from our house. There was two of them. This grocery store was attached to his two story house. It was the only house with an extra floor in our neighborhood and unlike the others it sat by itself in a corner. The grocery store had a couple of annexes. A bakery, and a laundromat. This man was rich. His name was Diogenes. Him and his family were very nice down to earth people. He employed people who worked in his store for 20 years or more. It made money. He fell sick and sold it all to the Chinese people. The Chinese people came to Panama and bought every grocery store in the city. They invaded Panama. You wouldn't see a Panamanian working at no grocery stores, they kept on bringing their folk and buying more stores. Needless to say, Leonel lost his gig. Diogenes was like a father to Leonel. He took him every where with him. Leonel tried to work in the other grocery store but they called him lazy and got rid of him. There was another older lady that loved him to dead. We called her Señora Pepa. Her real name was Felipa. She lived across from Diogenes grocery store. He would go help her with her groceries and run errands with her. She baked cakes for him and fed him. She would keep him busy. She gave him a little money, but fed him mostly. The truth is he was a growing teenager and needed to eat accordingly. We all went to someone's house to eat. It was our fact. He was liked by so many. He ran errands for the elders they trusted him with their lives.
He did the unthinkable, he never worked or had money after that, so when he couldn't afford cocaine, he sold his body. He wasn't gay, he was a broke undercover addict. He knew they didn't trust him anymore with nothing, Leo no longer protected him. He was another disappointment. I know it broke his heart too, he knew he was wrong. Peer pressure is a strong evil entity. This broke Leo's heart tremendously. 
He abandoned the drugs eventually, he knew it wasn't him, but he had lost territory and some respect. It took him a while to come back to normal, we knew he had it in him. No one asked him to, we just knew he quit. We could tell. The homosexuality reputation killed his image as a respected basketball player. LEONEL was my very best brother/uncle. He was so handsome. After I left he got a government job and worked there for years until he took sick. He helped grandma, took her to her doctor's appointments, to shop, to eat just the two of them. He was helping with the bills, and would make sure grandma was ok. This was grandma's heart and companion. Leo had left and shacked up with some young lady for about 6 years, so Mila her kids and Leonel lived there with Naty. Leo would come every now and then raise hell, fight the people in there, cursed them out then leave every one mad, including grandma.
Leonel died May 2014 and a part of me died with him. A brain infection linked to viral meningitis killed him. I think he was HIV POSITIVE. He wasn't tested for that he died too suddenly. It killed us all. Boris cried and cried, this is my grandma's strongest meanest son. He kept asking God why not take him instead. He respected and loved him. He had cleaned his act up and lived a good life and went back to playing basketball. He never married nor did he had any kids. We were his kids. R I P my sweet uncle. Hope to see you again some day.