Whisper (32 page)

Twenty-One

I stopped wearing the veil. I remembered the night in jail with Lizzy, swearing to myself that I would never end up as she had, but I didn't know where that strength had come from. It was not strength that allowed me to get rid of the veil; it was the knowledge that those three students had already told everyone what my face looked like, and if I didn't reveal my true face, soon the rumors would have me looking so hideous that I would lose any credibility I might have had. So I showed my face, but I was not proud to do so.

When and where to wear the veil had been chosen for me this far—Belen made me wear it, Celso made me wear it, playing my violin in the streets forced me to take it off, this school required that I wear it again, the students chose to remove it. When would the decision be mine to make? The only place where I could be who I was without hiding was Purgatory Palace, but even there I felt like an outsider. I had a scholarship; I went to the university. What did the other residents have? If the building sold, they wouldn't even be able to call themselves residents.

At my first music lesson in January, Solomon watched me closely. I sat in the metal chair and picked at the violin strings with the first finger of my left hand.

“Why did you remove the veil?” he asked.

I didn't think he wanted to hear the answer.

“Well, no matter. Now I can see your beautiful eyes.” He placed his fingertips together, his elbows on the arms of his chair, and tapped his first fingers against his lip. “Dr. Ruiz would like to see you again. Have you given that any thought?” The card from Dr. Ruiz was in my pocket always, a constant reminder that a decision should be made. How could I not think about this? How can the lone wolf not always think about protecting itself?

“She told me that you probably suffer from a great many earaches.”

“I'm used to them,” I said. “And I haven't had one since I've been at the university.” I didn't tell him that I would gladly accept them back again if it meant returning to my home in the woods.

“The surgery would alleviate eating difficulties.”

“True.” Nothing he mentioned was a new thought. But you don't just change the most defining physical characteristic about yourself without repercussions. Oscar's new legs didn't change who he was. He was still a reject, and his friends understood that—he could take those legs off whenever he wanted and fit in with others who were less than whole. If I had surgery, it couldn't be undone. If my deformities disappeared, Whisper would be gone—Whisper of the forest, the creek, the camp in the woods. I didn't know if I could be Whisper of the greater world.

Solomon clapped his hands together.

“For now we play. Let's hear your recital piece.”

I sat up in the chair, lifted the violin to my shoulder, lowered my chin, closed my eyes and played the song of Whisper when she had known who she was and where she belonged.

The auditorium where our final performance would be held was large enough to hold a thousand people—enough for most of the school population to attend, along with their families. More people in one place than I had ever seen. I walked through the side door, found myself on the stage and held my breath. It was bigger than the meadow with the deer and so dim from lack of sunshine that I shivered. The second level also contained seats and boxes, where people could sit, hold binoculars to their eyes and watch the performers on the stage through special lenses that would magnify defects. I felt like a mouse standing on that stage and wanted to crawl back to my dorm room, curl under the covers and clutch the broken violin in my hands.

We would perform that night. Before the performance, we tested the sound in this large, open space. I wondered how anyone would hear me with so much air to dissolve my song, but Solomon said that the music would wing its way to the far corners of the room and fill hearts with beauty.

Perhaps hearts, but certainly not eyes.

The other students were giddy with nervousness. They tried to appear solemn and serious while they tuned their instruments, but they laughed shrilly and then glanced about, listening to their laughter bounce around the room. Tonight much of the school—and more of the world than I cared to acknowledge—would fill this space and watch me. My only hope was that I would be so tiny on the stage, so minuscule in the great open space and oppressive air, they wouldn't even be able to see my distorted features, that I would be as insignificant as the whirr of a hummingbird's wings.

We played bits of our pieces, listened to the acoustics, tuned our instruments and then played again for the people who operated the sound booth. They adjusted this and that and then asked us to play our songs again. My violin felt weak and small. I had always felt its power before, but here in this great space, its power was a thin trickle of smoke dispersed through the air.

Tomas and Carla, along with Max, Sara and Rita, huddled around Solomon after the rehearsal. They gestured with their hands and glanced in my direction. I knelt in the corner of the stage, put my violin into the case, strapped the case to my back and stood. Solomon walked to me, his heavy footsteps echoing through the room. He pulled at his chin with his left hand.

“Whisper,” he said.

A tingling started in my nose. I would not cry here, in front of these students who wanted me to be embarrassed and humiliated. Why did they hate me so? I didn't understand what I had done. I tried to summon the strength I had felt in the jail, the desire to change my life, to be different from Lizzy, to shape for myself a different fate and to choose when I would wear the veil and when I would remove it.

“I'll wear the veil,” I whispered.

Solomon placed a finger under my chin and lifted my face so that I looked up into his.

“The choice is yours,” he said. “The beauty of your music surpasses any of theirs.”

Me or them. Them or me. Always separated and alone. I would play my song. I would lose myself in my own music, but the audience would not see me. They would see a veil, a mystery, a disguise. In some ways I felt relief, but I was embarrassed to admit this even to myself.

When I walked down the dorm hallway and heard shuffling beneath the stairs, my shoulders tensed, and I strained to hear even more. A small whimper worked its way out of my mouth. Either it was Celso or the other students had come to torment me—today, the day of the recital. I couldn't endure the tormenting today.

I heard rustling, whispering. I hurried the last few feet, running past the darkness beneath the stairs, inserted the key, turned it in the lock, opened the door and slammed it shut behind me. The bolt clicked beneath my hand and I stepped back, watching the door as though it might open on its own, even a lock not enough to protect me from tormentors. I heard no sound but my own panting.

I inhaled through my mouth and felt my breath begin to calm. Then I heard a knock on the door. Maybe if I made no sound, whoever was out there would leave, would think I was asleep, would think I had slipped out the window, leapt into the sky and been blown away by the wind.

The knock came again—a timid knock, a gentle knock, a knock that was low, halfway up the door, and not pounding or demanding. I stepped to the door, peeked through the tiny peephole and saw nothing. Whoever was knocking on the door must be short, must be below my eye level, must be Candela. The possibility that it might be someone I wanted to see felt startling and stilled my twisting hands.

I unlocked the bolt, feeling how slick with sweat my hands had become, and pulled the door open.

For a minute I stared at the figure in the hallway, trying to understand what I was seeing. Then I kneeled, wrapped my arms around her and squeezed so tightly I thought maybe she could become part of me.

“Eva.”

“We found you,” she said. Her round warm cheek pushed against mine.

I heard more shuffling beneath the stairs, looked into the darkness and saw a shape emerge, a larger shape with a missing arm. I stood, lifting Eva into my arms even though she was getting big.

He had changed. He was lanky and thin, his frame inches taller than I remembered it, even though I had only been gone for three months. His face was different too—longer, less babyish, more angular, with a few prickles sprouting from his chin in sparse patches. His eyes were wary, darting, like those of a trapped animal, and he held Ranita tightly against his chest, wrapped in a piece of cloth. The deep, dark circles under his eyes were also new.

We looked hard at each other. Jeremia stepped from foot to foot, tiptoeing, tense, ready to run back to his shelter or wherever he had come from.

“I missed you,” I said.

“We've needed you,” he replied. He touched my cheek with the tip of his finger and then jerked away when the front door to Clarence Hall clicked open. A group of students, talking and laughing, entered the building. Jeremia shifted his weight to the left, to the right. I pushed the door to my dorm room open and hoped that he would rush inside rather than out into the shadows, an elusive deer that I would again lose. He looked at the people in the hallway and then slipped into the dorm room. I stepped in after him, still holding Eva against me, and shut the door behind us, cocooning us together once again.

I had not felt arms around my neck or the warmth of a body against mine for a very long time. I sat on my bed and held Eva against me, breathing in the dusky, tree-sap smell of her hair. She held me tightly, sniffled against my green coat, smeared the tears around her face with the back of her hand, the webbing between her fingers catching bits of water and reflecting it in the light. I loved everything about her—the webs of skin between her fingers, the unlaced shoes that needed to be stretched wide to comfortably encase her feet and even the little crusty sleepers in the corners of her eyes.

“You get to live in this enormous house?” Eva asked, her eyes wide as she looked around the room.

“I borrow this room,” I said, “while I am a student here.”

“But everything is so clean and new. The bed is so soft.” She bounced up and down on the bed. “And look at this.” She opened the drawers of the desk, shut them and opened them again.

Ranita muttered against Jeremia's chest. He jostled her up and down, up and down, and then pulled her from the strip of cloth. He held her high from the wrappings with his one arm, letting the cloth fall from her, and then he turned her around. She gazed out, her eyes large and black, and then suddenly she smiled. The smile stretched from ear to ear and was such a surprise, such a startling flash of light across her face, that I laughed. Jeremia jerked his head, looking at me with furrowed brows. His eyes lost their intensity, and for a minute I thought he might actually sit down, but instead he leaned against the desk, his body bowed, as supple as a new sapling. I didn't know where he planned to go, but he certainly didn't want to stay.

Eva's face was smeared with grime, the kind of dirt that takes time to accumulate. Shadows like half-moons lay under her eyes, her mouth trembled and twisted, and I could see her cheekbones where I should have seen rounded cheeks. I set her down on the bed and went to the cupboard for food—bread, crackers, small bottles of water. I gave the bread to Jeremia, the crackers to Eva and a bottle of water to each.

Before feeding himself, Jeremia pulled off a soft piece of bread and placed it in Ranita's mouth. Her eyes became intense, dark, her mouth pulled tight, and she sucked on the ball of bread. Her hands came out and grabbed at Jeremia's fingers, and he gave her another soft piece. She was barely four months old. I'd missed almost three of those months. Eva shoved crackers into her mouth without chewing them.

“Slow,” I said. She crammed another cracker into her mouth and then smiled, bits of cracker falling from between her lips. I shook my head.

“We thought you were dead,” Jeremia said. He leaned against the desk, eating great bites of the bread. “Celso said you didn't pay him.”