Whisper (30 page)

The four loaves were soft and golden when I took them from the oven. Solomon stood at the counter, picked up a loaf of bread, closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.

“Why is the smell of bread so pleasurable?” he asked.

I picked up another loaf of bread and smelled until my lungs were full of the rich, nutty aroma. “It means warmth, comfort and home.”

He nodded without opening his eyes and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Home.”

I left one loaf with Solomon and wrapped the others in towels as gifts, but as I was preparing to leave, again refusing Solomon's request that I stay for dinner, a chime rang through the house. Solomon glanced at Katherine, moved down the hallway and then returned, almost tiptoeing, with a woman behind him.

She was short and plump, with a soft, lined face. When she saw me, she beamed and stood with her chubby hands wrapped around the handle of her handbag, rocking back and forth on her feet. Even her hair was plump, framing her face in soft white curls. The woman looked like she had been shaped out of a lump of dough and then left to rise.

“Meet Dr. Ruiz, Whisper,” Solomon said. He placed a hand on my shoulder, directed me to the high counter and eased me into a chair.

Dr. Ruiz sat in the chair beside me and placed her handbag in her lap. She looked at my veil, and that, at least, I liked, because she didn't glance about the room, looking everywhere but at my face. She met me eye to eye, but she sat too close, the powdery sheen on her face like a dusting of snow. Solomon slipped out of the room as though I wouldn't notice.

“Very nice to meet you, Whisper. I am Dr. Ruiz.” She spoke with a slight lisp, a sibilant hushing sound that reminded me of snakes sticking out their tongues. “Solomon has told me about your musical skills and a bit about your unconventional life, but really I am here to see your face, to see if perhaps surgery could be of help to you. May I see your face?”

Surgery. What did I need surgery for?

She pointed to her upper lip. A white line, thin as the vein on a leaf, ran from below her nose to her lip. “I was born with a cleft palate, or an opening at the roof of my mouth, just like you.”

I almost laughed. As if her face had ever looked like mine. Her lips were solid, well defined, unsplit, while mine were gaping and unsmooth.

“Do you know what a cleft palate is?”

“No,” I said.

She opened her mouth and pointed to the roof with her first finger.

“A cleft palate is when the two shelves at the top of your mouth don't grow together before birth but stay open. It can cause all sorts of problems, like earaches, food and drink up the nose, rattling breath. I would have had all those problems too, but my family had money, and I had three surgeries before I was one year old. And now I've performed operations on many patients with cleft palates, all of which have been successful.”

I watched her talk. Her mouth was perfect. Was it possible that she had looked like me at one time? That seemed absurd, dishonest.

“In your case, if you do have a cleft palate, there is a drawback. You are no longer a baby. Most of the surgeries I have performed were done on children under the age of two. In your circumstance, the surgery might be a bit trickier. But until I can really take a look at your face, I won't know for sure.” Dr. Ruiz smiled and all the puffiness in her face pushed up. Her cheeks became big and round, her eyes were almost lost in her cheeks, and even her ears moved back.

“I've had this all my life,” I said. “I've learned to adapt.”

“Of course you have,” she said, “but that doesn't mean we shouldn't consider how your life could improve were the surgery to be done.”

How my life would improve. Could the surgery bring my family to me? Could it make my mother live again? Would it change the fact that I'd been ostracized most of my life? Would I be accepted?

“I don't have any money.” I slid off the stool and held my paper bag with the wrapped loaves of bread in it against my chest.

Dr. Ruiz hopped down from her stool and stood in front of me.

“My health clinic would pay for the surgery,” she said. “There would be no cost to you.”

“No.”

Dr. Ruiz's smile narrowed and then she suddenly grinned, as though I'd told a joke she hadn't understood at first. “Why don't I give you my card, dear, and you can think about it?”

I made no move to take the card she placed on the countertop. The silence between us became huge, big as the wind through the trees.

“Goodbye, Whisper. I can see that I have made you uncomfortable. That was not my intent.” As she brushed past me, I smelled a red flowering camellia.

I waited where I was, rigid in front of my chair until I heard whispering in the hallway and then the front door opening and closing. My shoulders were tight, my teeth clamped together, but almost of its own accord, my hand reached out, snatched Dr. Ruiz's card off the counter and slipped it into my sweater pocket. When I looked back at the granite, at the deep purple counter where the card had been, it was surprisingly bare. When Solomon came into the kitchen and placed his hand on my shoulder, I dipped, and his hand slipped off.

“Won't you at least listen to her?” Solomon said.

“I would listen if I thought it were true.”

“It is true,” Solomon said. “A cleft palate can be fixed.”

“Not for people like me.”

Katherine and Solomon watched as I walked down the hallway, pulled on my coat, put on my shoes and opened the door. I didn't wave as I left the house. They stood in the doorway, their mouths tense and their eyebrows lowered. I wanted to walk away, but I turned and made myself speak.

“Thank you for the use of your oven,” I said. “I will think about Dr. Ruiz.”

My feet moved me through space, my coat wrapped around me, warm and comforting. Surgery. Corrective surgery for my face. I could look like everyone else. Had Nathanael known? Had Belen known? Had my mother known? The card in my pocket crinkled and rubbed. According to Dr. Ruiz's story, if my parents had given me surgery when I was a baby, I could have had a barely discernible scar like the doctor's. All of us could have been normal. All of us—Ranita, Lizzy and Whisper.

Twenty

Few people passed me on the sidewalk, and even though the houses grew on top of each other, the windows to these houses were closed, making the stillness of this city as unnatural as the green calm before a thunderstorm. I removed my hood, adjusted the veil over my face and stood in front of the jail door, counting to thirty before I dared to enter the building. The woman who had asked me the questions was not behind the first desk. Two officers leaned in chairs at the back of the room, their hands behind their heads, their heels on the desk tops.

“Merry rotten Christmas,” the older one said, his face red like a cardinal wing. The air in the room smelled like fermented mangoes. The older officer was lean, thin and wiry, with eyes set close together. I unwrapped a loaf of bread. The officer closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.

“That is what it smells like in heaven.” His arms dropped from behind his head to his lap, and he slid his feet off the desk. He stood and swayed. “Who's it for?”

“Lizzy,” I whispered.

“She your mom?” His eyes narrowed and he examined me intently.

“No. She's a friend.”

I felt a little knot form in my stomach. She could have lived a normal life with Nathanael if she had been given the operation. The other police officer moved to stand behind the one at the desk. The two of them watched me, their faces difficult to read, their eyes glassy and unfocused.

“You missed Lizzy by about forty minutes,” one of the officers said. His face was kinder, less hardened, still chubby in the cheeks.

“Where did she go?” I asked.

The younger officer shrugged.

“Heaven,” he said. “Hell. Wherever people like that go when they die.”

I felt a fluttering in my head, a beating of my heart somewhere in my ears.
People like that
.

“It was the weirdest thing. I'd brought their lunch down—I gave her the food. She was standing, looking right at me, her eyes as clear and focused as I've ever seen them. I had to stop and look at her for a minute—she was kind of creepy, you know? With those eyes, messed-up face. She raised her arms to the side and then one of the lights, the one right behind me, popped. Shot out red, yellow and orange sparks. Made me jump out of my skin. I went upstairs to get another lightbulb, and when I came down again, she was gone. Dead. Lying on the floor of her cell, her mouth pulled into a snarl.” The young man's hand reached up to his own face and touched his lips. “She was a witch, you know, making that lightbulb pop like that. She had powers, that woman.”

My hands were damp against the paper bag. I hadn't known Lizzy well, I hadn't known what her life had been like, but I did know that she could have lived a life outside a jail cell.

“Merry Christmas,” I said.

I left the loaf of bread on the desk in front of the men and walked out the door.

Maybe departing this world could be considered a gift in some cases.

I walked through the cold streets, the colorless lanes, and passed only four people even though I looked around every corner. I did see one man lying on the ground, cardboard under him, cardboard over him. I didn't know if he was still alive. Everyone else must have been gathered around warm fires, singing songs, stuffing themselves full of goose. Even the ladies with the high heels, bare skin and made-up faces were gone, taking the day off to celebrate in whatever way suited them best. Nathanael, Jeremia, Ranita and Eva would be stringing necklaces of holly berries for the tree and gathering pecans for the rice dressing. I could have been at Solomon's, feeling warmth and kindness, if not inclusion.

When I knocked on the door of Purgatory Palace, it was flung open by a tall man with a lopsided nose and a very black, swollen eye. I held my breath for a minute, wondering if Celso had taken over the entire building while I was gone, but the man laughed when he saw me. I had prepared myself for Ofelia, for her sneer, her condescension, her rancid breath, but her door was closed.

“Well, if it isn't Whisper,” he said. “Merry Christmas!”

“Oscar…?”

I remembered the veil and slipped it off my head and into the sack. Here, I was not different. Here, I could uncover my face. Oscar wore tan shorts over thin metal legs ending on split wooden ovals that clumped in a stuttering beat against the floor.

He steadied himself with his hands and lurched from side to side as he led me down the hall. Residents of Purgatory Palace stood in the hallway, each with a paint roller in hand and a bucket of paint by their feet. Oscar weaved unsteadily past them, waving his arms in big swings, but he was so giddy with laughter that those in the hallway giggled too.

“I'm almost six feet tall,” he said. “Whoa.”

His legs leaned to the right while his body moved in the opposite direction, but Oscar didn't fall. Instead, he placed both hands on the left wall and pushed himself back toward the legs. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.

Candela stood by the doorway to her room and watched Oscar lurch down the hallway toward her. She held a paint roller in one hand, a big splotch of white paint smeared across her black bangs.

“Of course, he fails to mention that he got a little help from a friend.” When Oscar reached Candela, he bent down from the waist, picked her up and held her against his chest. The roller waved wildly as Candela shrieked, and a line of white was smeared across the unpainted door. When Oscar put her down, Candela smiled shyly and touched the arm of my coat.

“Glad you came,” she said. We both looked down at the freshly scrubbed floor. The weight of unresolved issues hung like fog between us.

“We're getting married,” she said. “He decided that we are meant for each other, even if we're both rejected.” I looked at her, daring just a glance. Her eyes didn't narrow, her mouth didn't pull down at the corners, she didn't sigh or roll her eyes. This was a Candela I could trust and love.

“Congratulations,” I said, but I felt such sadness, such overwhelming loneliness, that I coughed, choking on the word. She spoke slowly and carefully so that no one else in the hallway would overhear.

“That man who came to get you. Do you live with him?” Her words were abrupt.

“He's teaching me music,” I said. “At the school. I live in the dorms.”

I took off my coat, folded it carefully and slid it behind the door Candela had accidently smeared. I picked up a paintbrush from her tray and eased it over the chipped door, erasing the streaks and flaws. I didn't know if she would believe me, but I wanted Candela back. I painted back and forth. She spoke after a long pause.

“Do you like it?”

“Yes,” I said, “and no.” When I tried to swallow, I made a sound like the panting of a dying wolf. “I hate it there, but I want to learn music.”

Candela dropped her paintbrush and wrapped her arms around me. I held her against me, tightly, like I would have Eva. I leaned down, placing my cheek against the top of her head.

“Sometimes we have to do what we hate to get what we want,” Candela said.

“Yeah,” I said and then smeared paint in my hair from the brush when I wiped the tears away.

Surgery wouldn't change Candela. Surgery wouldn't help Oscar. If I had surgery, would they still want me around? With my free hand, I removed a loaf of bread from the sack and handed it to her. She held it against her nose and breathed in.

“You're staying, you know. Aren't you on holidays from school or something? Christmas is big around here—it's not like we have to be anywhere else. And it just so happens that you could stay for a few days in room thirteen.”

If she hadn't invited me, I would have gone back outside and curled up on the street beside the man in the cardboard box.