Estrella y mi Oso

Mr. Estrella is a walking paradox. He is a short Spanish-speaking mexican teenager who dresses like a gangster and talks like a retired English professor with a thick accent. He's everybody dude's friend, every girl's "husband". I don't know where he came from, or where he's going, but he sticks out wherever he is, and not just because he wears a fluorescent orange coat.
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He really has four names, but Estrella is the one I picked.
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Mr. Estrella has been to see me in my office 32 times since September--mostly just to talk. Every conversation ends like this:
"Pues. No se, Anita. Adios"
(And then, he punches my stuffed bear in the face)
"Estrella! Mi oso! Me PresciOso!"
"It's ugly oso."
And so it goes. I am pleased with a pun in my sencond language, and he is pleased with his insult to a bear I was given that was found in a dumpster.
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Mr. Estrella got a job painting, which I could tell before he told me. He was covered in it. When he got paid, he bought me three bags of gummy bears. He had never had them before. I gave him some.
"Anita! They are so delicious! I love them! I love them with all of my heart, Anita!"
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I looked in every drawer until I found calling card that would work for calls outside of the country. Mr. Estrella has not talked to his mother in a year. There is five minutes left on the calling card, but she never answers. Today, Estrella cried.
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Estrella came into my office last week with a string of spanish exclamations that came a little too fast. All I could catch was "Your teacher! Sooo nice! She is going to call!" And then he went to work. An hour later, I answered the phone:
"Anna? Hi! It's Rachel! Your 3rd grade teacher! I met your friend Juan, and I want to give him a Bible in Spanish. Can I drop it off to you?"
She did, and Estrella carries it with him everywhere he goes now. He said he "looks at it every night".
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Mr. Estrella looks like Paulie, the native-american/phillipino-looking-19-going-on-11-kid-with-a-dutch-last-name. They both have drinking problems, but Estrella pointed out one very important difference:
"Him, man's body, boy's mind. Me, mind and body both match."
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Estrella says after he gets paid next, he will move. He says he has no family here, and that his 7 different supposed wives don't count. "Nobody is sad when I am sad" he says. He thinks he will go to New York.
He told me that he was not going to say goodbye.
I asked him why.
He answered in Spanish, and the best translation I could come up with was:
"For the sake of the bear."