I worked with Candela every day after that. I played the violin until my fingers ached and my neck felt like it might never straighten again, but I could feel my songs taking shape, coming alive. I started new songs. I didn’t know if the people around me cared that I played only a few songs they might recognize, the rest coming from places inside me where the woods still grew and the breeze rustled the branches. I liked composing my own songs—they felt like something to hold on to in this chaotic place where noises were so piercing and sharp that they buried the undertones of nature.
I began to notice patterns—the same people came to the café where Candela and I sat, and even though I didn’t dare look these customers in the eye, I recognized them from their shoes. A pair of brown shoes tapped to the beat of my music, and every day those loafers resided under an outside table, the one closest to me, and they stayed there for a long time, even though the mornings were cold and few others chose to sit outside.
I continued to collect coins and Candela taught me how to count them. The big one with the head of the man and the sheaf of grain on the back was worth five dollars. The smaller, silver one with the pig on the front and the numeral one on the back was worth one dollar. Those were the ones you wanted, the ones that added up to something substantial. The smaller ones were good too but took many more to equal the others. After a week I had enough to pay for two weeks of rent with a bit left over for Celso. Candela said I needed to talk to Ofelia about my documentation. I knew what she meant—the crumpled piece of paper that had been passed from Celso’s hands to Ofelia’s. It wasn’t mine. I didn’t really want it. We stood outside Ofelia’s door—she lived in room 1—and I tried to stand up straight and look her in the eye, but I’d become used to staring at feet.
“She needs her birth certificate,” Candela said to Ofelia slowly, carefully.
“What she need that for?” Ofelia said. Some liquid sloshed out of the glass in her hand and landed at our feet.
“For a bank account,” Candela said.
I looked past Ofelia, through the doorway. I’d never seen a room like this. Tapestries covered the walls the way the canopy of leaves had covered parts of my forest home. Beautiful quilts, stitched beadwork, handmade artwork turned her oblong room into a haven, a place where anyone could have been comfortable. Blue rugs covered the floor like a field of cornflowers. Even the cover on her bed was handmade, patched together in squares of dark purple and green. Living in a room like this would keep life gorgeous all the time. Ofelia jabbed her fingers into my chest.
“Whatcha staring at?” she said. “I want my rent.”
I opened my hand and offered her fifty dollars in coins. She snatched the money, her fingers jamming into my palm.
“Been making some good money, huh?” she said. “Maybe your ugly face won’t have to work the night shift after all, though I wouldn’t count on it.”
I told myself not to take a step back, not to worry about the splash of liquid on top of my shoe, not to flinch when her breath made my eyes water.
“The birth certificate,” Candela said.
Ofelia retreated into her room, shuffled through some papers and returned with a single sheet of crumpled paper.
“Lydia Gane, daughter of Belen and Teresa Gane.” Ofelia looked up, her red eyes unfocused. “It should say rejected daughter of Belen and Teresa Gane. Here’s your reminder of the parents who abandoned you.” She flipped the paper at me. I tried to catch it, but it fluttered out of reach and drifted to the floor. I bent down and picked it up carefully, between my thumb and first finger. Ofelia stepped back into her room and slammed the door.
This piece of paper was proof of my existence and meant more to the bank where I hoped to deposit my money than did my physical presence. Ofelia was right—all this paper proved was that I had a name. It said nothing of my life, who cared about me or what I might become in the future. This paper claimed that I had parents, but only I knew it to be a lie.
I liked Candela and her gruff ways. She wasn’t hurtful, like Rosa, but told me things straight, honest, with no hidden messages and meanings. I felt comfortable with this, but she didn’t tell me everything—at least, not right away. There were times when she hinted at something, when she started to talk about who she was, why she was here, and then she’d stop. It took weeks of working together daily, making money and hanging out in the common room before I heard her story, and then I wondered why I’d wanted to know.
It was late afternoon, and we had about an hour before we needed to make way for the night shift. We sat in Candela’s room, which was more comfortable than mine even though the room was the same, a small rectangle with one high window. It contained the same kind of mattress—a flat foam cushion that rested on the floor—and it had the same door placement—right in the middle of the wall. Her drawings adorned the walls. I loved looking at them. I saw Oscar in many of the pictures, and I found myself in two. Ofelia was in a lot of them, but the pictures made her look less drunk, more humane. The pictures flattered all the subjects.
Oscar was with us for a while in Candela’s room and we played rummy, a game I had played with Jeremia and Nathanael. Homesickness burned my nose.
“Oscar, are you cheating?” Candela asked as he laid down a set of three aces.
“I don’t cheat,” he said.
“Right.”
I smiled. Jeremia used to stack the deck—put the aces every third card and deal himself an unbeatable hand—but we had all known he was doing it. He would bite the knuckle of his first finger and stop talking. His right knee would bob up and down, up and down, controlled by invisible strings.
Oscar was quiet now. I heard him flipping the cards in his hand. I could almost touch the lines of tension that stretched between the two of them.
“Why do you hate me?” Oscar said to Candela in a whisper.
The anger was gone. This was the real Oscar, without the bravado and the dimples, without the dejection and begging. I wanted to look at him, but I didn’t.
“You know why,” she whispered.
“We can’t be together, Candela,” he said. “You know that. Two freaks is one too many. Both of us need someone normal.”
“What the hell is normal? If half the people in this city are normal, then I’m glad to be a freak. They’re more deformed than we will ever be. At least our problems are right out where people can see them instead of hidden away.”
I held my breath. She was talking about Belen, Celso, Ofelia, Jeremia’s father. Everyone had deformities, not just those of us who wore them openly. Oscar shuffled the cards in his hands.
“You broke my heart, Oscar, breaking up with me.” I could hear a squeak in Candela’s voice, a waver that was close to tears. “That’s why I hurt you back.”
Candela and Oscar sat on opposite ends of the mattress. I sat on the floor, the third point in the triangle. When I looked up, they didn’t notice. I eased my breath out slowly.
I saw something I hadn’t noticed before as I observed the two of them. Candela was sure of herself, solid and talented. Oscar was unsure, angry, resentful and yet full of charisma. If they were together, Candela would keep Oscar grounded, keep him in the realm of the good, while he could show the world her talent, using his charm. I’d never seen people complement each other like that. Had my mother and father looked like this when they were together? I’d always wondered what my mother had seen in my father, why she’d stood by him when he’d abandoned me and why she chose him over me. There must be something redeemable in Belen if my mother had loved him.
Oscar, too, could be biting and cruel, but when he loved and cared about someone, he did so with such defiance and bravery you couldn’t help but like him. And yet, I didn’t trust him. Probably never would. His dimples and grins hid an insecurity that could easily become backstabbing.
“You know why we can’t be together. I will not be exploited all my life, living in this place, begging. I will be someone.”
“You are someone, Oscar. You don’t need someone without blemishes to make you whole.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not going to make me whole either. Two halves do not make a whole when it comes to people.” Oscar slid off the bed and out the door.
“Yes, they do,” Candela screamed after him. “Two halves always make a whole. Even with people.”
I felt like my hair was standing on end. I got up.
“Oh no you don’t,” she said to me.
I sat back down on the floor and collected the cards. I shuffled them and waited, the tendons in my hands straining as I held the cards too tightly.
Candela took shuddering breaths and then unballed her fists. She squeezed the pillow to her chest and rested her chin on it. Her nose was red, glistening, and her hands shook. She wiped her eyes with the pillowcase, wiped under her nose.
“I’ve known love. Oscar hasn’t. I should try to understand his side, but sometimes it’s so hard. Why does he want to be with someone normal so badly? He’ll never grow legs.” She pushed the pillow against her eyes. She spoke to me through the pillow, her words distant and muffled.
“You know how you grew up? In the woods with friends and people who cared? That’s how I grew up. I had a family who loved me. They thought I was so cute, so tiny and adorable. My older sister carried me with her wherever she went and treated me like a doll.” Candela pulled her face away from the pillow and rested her chin on top of it. She wiped under her nose with the sleeve of her shirt. “Oscar was left here when he was three days old. The owners of the place, the people before Ofelia, gave him a name and wrote up some papers. He doesn’t even know what his parents originally named him.”
I’d been abandoned at that age. Why hadn’t Belen brought me here, to start a life of begging before I could even walk?
“But I do know what it’s like to have family turn on you,” Candela continued.
When I glanced up, she was looking at me. I nodded.
“When I turned twelve, I started to grow breasts, like most girls do at that age, but my sister didn’t think I was quite so cute when I no longer looked like a miniature child. That’s when she became nervous around me and started listening to what other people said about me—I was malformed, a dwarf, and because there was no other dwarfism in my family, I must have done something terrible to deserve this punishment.
“One night, her boyfriend came to our house. He and my sister were going to the dance in town and she was upstairs getting ready. I thought he was so gorgeous, with his black eyes and black hair. I offered him refreshments while he waited for her and we sat together on the couch, drinking lemonade. I think he was fascinated by me. I didn’t look like the other girls, and this was disturbing and intriguing to lots of boys. He stared at my body and then he reached out to touch my breasts.”
Candela’s hands clutched the pillow in her arms. They wrung and twisted the white corners into knots, wrinkled knobs with pointed tips, like albino teardrops.
“I’d never been touched like that before. I’d always been treated like a child, like a doll, but he noticed that I was actually growing up.”
She looked at me then, the anger gone.
“I kissed him, Whisper,” she said. “I leaned right in and kissed him on the mouth. He pulled me against him, and I could feel his warmth through my clothes. My sister came down the stairs and saw us. She never forgave me. She told everyone at school that I was a slut, that I stole boyfriends, that I couldn’t get enough sex and would do it with anyone.”
Candela smoothed her thick bangs out of her eyes. She threw the pillow behind her and crossed her legs.
“That’s when the guys at school started following me around, calling me names, treating me like a freak. My sister never defended me. She wanted me gone. So I left. And here I am. Eighteen and in love with Oscar. I’m such a moron.”
“No,” I said.
Her hands reached for mine and squeezed hard until my knuckles cracked beneath the pressure.
“You’re not like Rosa,” she said to me. “You’re not like anyone I know. You are the only person I’ve ever met who makes me feel good about myself, and I don’t even know how you do it.”
We sat together in silence for a while, but it felt okay. I could hear the building groan around us. I could hear the mice. I could hear the other Purgatory Palace residents stirring and gathering and heading to the common room. I could hear the honking of car horns and the yelling of people on the street.
“I want to see Rosa,” I whispered to Candela.
She let go of my hand, sat up straight and looked past me. “Okay.”
A week later, after giving Ofelia the hundred dollars I owed Celso so she could pay him when he arrived, I exited the building with my violin strapped to my back. I turned the corner and stepped into a doorway, the wooden door behind me solid and sure, with bars stretching across the front to ward off possible thieves. After I’d stood still long enough to feel the chill seeping through my torn sweater and into my bones, and when the blurring effects of night had settled around me, I saw two women arrive together. They were laughing, their eyes lined with black, their lips abnormally red, their eyebrows narrowed into thin arches and their coats alive with the fur of dead animals.
Neither of these women was Rosa. I didn’t want to meet Rosa inside Purgatory Palace, in one of the rooms where a man might knock on the door and money would change hands. I wanted to meet her here, in the street, in an untainted place, in front of a door that seemed impenetrable.
A bit later, Rosa arrived by herself. I waited in the shadows until I knew for sure that it was her. Her cheeks were no longer puffy and full, her hair had been cropped into short spikes, and her eyes—lined with black—didn’t look anywhere but down. It was the raised red birthmark that ran from her forehead down her right cheek to the edge of her jaw that convinced me. She didn’t see me even when I stepped out from the doorway. She had almost passed me when I spoke.
“Hello, Rosa,” I said.
Her head jerked up, and she looked at me in such a way that I wanted to step back into the shadows and hide. It wasn’t hate in her eyes, but something very close to it. And then the look disappeared and Rosa’s regular surliness asserted itself, twisting the edges of her eyes down and the corners of her mouth up.
“Well, look who’s here.” She put one hand on her hip, but the other hand stayed where it was, against her stomach, which bulged beneath her coat. “You’re a little young to be here already, aren’t you? What are you now, sixteen?”
I shifted from foot to foot and held my hand against my chest where Jeremia’s miniature violin rested.
“How’d you end up here? And don’t tell me you still aren’t talking. If you’re going to live in the city with all the other hard-luck cases, you had better make some noise.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. She looked at me like she used to—like I was pathetic and small, unwise and unhardened. She used to make me feel so useless, and now I felt that same sensation again. I was that little girl afraid of the dark, sniffling in the night, afraid to make any sound.
And then I heard a squeak, a kitten peep that tittered from Rosa’s coat. I looked at the front of her white puffy coat and saw something squirm. Rosa removed her hand from her hip and placed it under the bulge. She jostled the bump up and down, up and down, but when the peeps continued, she unzipped the top of her coat and a tiny head emerged. The eyes met mine and the peeps stopped.
The baby was beautiful. Her lips weren’t deformed, her mouth and nose weren’t divided by a slit, a birthmark didn’t cover half her face in an angry welt. She looked at me with bright eyes that seemed to understand everything at once.
“She’s beautiful.” My hand reached toward her, to a perfect little Ranita. If she had flaws, they were hidden from view.
Rosa’s mouth relaxed, and her hands reached up to adjust the knitted cap on the baby’s head. “She is beautiful,” she said.
A tiny hand emerged from the coat and stretched out to me, the hand healthy with rolls and dimples. The chubby fingers grasped my thumb and held on with a grip that felt real, as if something substantial and good did exist in this world. Then Rosa took a step back and the tiny hand was pulled away.
“What are you doing here? You’re not meant to ever leave that camp. They’ll eat you alive here—you’ll never survive. Go back to the camp, go live in the woods, hide with the others. Stay good, stay pure.” Her voice was so low and biting, it chafed like the brittle snow that cuts in the winter.
“Who is the father?” I asked.
She turned away from me, her feet already pointed in the opposite direction, her black-lined eyes watching the trodden sidewalk.
“Just wait. You’ll do the same thing I did. They’ll start following you, telling you how beautiful your body is, how sexy you look, and you’ll believe them even when you know it isn’t true. Then you’ll go with them and feel loved like other people are loved. And once you feel that love, there’s no turning back. It’ll happen to you too.”
She walked away, taking the perfect child with her. My right hand was raised. It was level with my shoulder, stretched to Rosa. I lowered my hand and watched her turn the corner where she would enter Purgatory Palace and continue to squelch the defiance that had once kept her eyes level with anyone’s.
The nights were thick now, colder and heavy. The painted women began to pace on the sidewalks, their pointed heels like woodpecker beats against the hard ground. I couldn’t follow Rosa into the building—I didn’t want to see her standing in the doorway of a room, waiting for her customers, earning a living while her baby squeaked and gurgled in the corner.
Instead I trudged west, through the square where Oscar begged, over a bridge where the stream from our village swelled into a black river that smelled of chemicals and latrines, to the blocks of big stores that sold everything from clothes to pots to fishing poles. I had never been here before. These stores occupied entire blocks and stretched above me three or four stories, their shadows silent, solid and sharp, unlike the shadows of trees, which rustle, shift and sway. The windows shone yellow and warm, an Open sign flashing in one. My hands were numb with the cold. After watching people push their way into the store or emerge with bags dangling from their hands, I held my shoulders straight and walked into the first store, standing just inside the entryway, watching the people who swarmed like flies around counters and racks of clothing. I adjusted the veil over my head.
I didn’t belong here. The city welcomed rejects only on gray street corners. This shiny store belonged to those with money to spend and bellies already full. I stepped back, away from the warmth and unfriendly stares, but stopped when I saw the coat. It was dark green like the forest, thick like the canopy of my home and soft like the feathery arms of the willow. Big wooden clasps the color of cedar held the front of the coat closed, and it had a wide hood that would protect my ears from the winter winds. I touched the dark green material with my fingertips. It would warm me while I stayed on the streets during the day and would remind me of my forest home.
The tag dangled beneath a sleeve—$110.00. More than the price of two weeks’ stay at Purgatory Palace or a month of pay for Celso. I touched the sleeve of the coat again and then lifted it to my face, the smell of newness surprising and strange.
While I stretched the fabric across my cheek, a firm hand dug into my shoulder and yanked me back. Almost losing my footing, I flung my arms out, trying to catch myself, and jabbed my fingers into the cheek of a store clerk. The veil slid off my head and drifted to the ground. He screamed. When I recovered my balance and opened my mouth to apologize, he held his hand to his face and shrieked again.
“She attacked me,” he said, pointing at me, then stumbling away, gasping in great gulps as he ran.
I glanced from side to side. The people who had ignored me before, who had watched their feet when I stood near them, now stared at me openly, their mouths straight, their eyes narrow. I picked up the veil and backed to the door. I should have left when I’d had the chance, when I’d recognized the exclusion of this place. Before I could make an exit, the man who had grabbed my shoulder came back down the aisle, followed by a short round man wearing spectacles. I turned and ran.
My heart pounded so hard, I thought it might escape through my mouth; the violin on my back banged against me, matching the rhythm of my heart. I turned corners as I rushed past others on the street—right, left, right again, then left, over the bridge, beyond the river. I didn’t look behind me, I didn’t slow down, I couldn’t stop. The veil was still in my hand, and I knew that anyone who saw me would recognize me now and again later.
When my chest began to burn from the cold air and my sides were heaving, I slowed down. I knew where I was. I was in the park where I’d heard the four musicians playing under the willow tree. It was the smell of this place that pulled me back time and again. I looked around, but no one chased me, no one grabbed my shoulder, no one screamed for me to stop. My breath came so fast that I bent over, gasping, and placed my hands on my knees.
The park was dark and empty except for a couple strolling hand in hand. They wore warm coats, gloves and scarves. I shivered in my black sweater with the holes at the elbows. I crept under the willow tree, hiding and panting until my breathing slowed and the panic subsided. Then I sat with my back to the tree and closed my eyes. With my eyes closed and my breath calming, the sounds outside my body became discernible. No pounding feet had followed me into the park, and the honking sounds of the city were quiet here, muted. Up close, I could hear the trickling of the creek, the pip of a bat and the rustle of leaves as the dry branches of the willow rubbed against each other.
Under all this other noise, I heard music. It came from the base of the tree in waves and patterns. The melody floated around me, brushing against my arms and cheeks, but when I opened my eyes, I saw nothing. I closed my eyes again and listened. The song of this jostling city welled up inside me; the sound of my panic stirred beneath the ground. I pulled the violin from around my shoulders, opened the case, fit the instrument under my chin, breathed deeply—my panic finally abating— and began to play. I created a song that sang of my panic, my race through the city and my calming here by the stream.
Until deep into the night, I sat by the tree and felt the music of stars, strays and isolation. The violin fit against my shoulder and became the coat I didn’t have, the warmth I didn’t feel.
By the time I got back to Purgatory Palace, my hands hurt. I curled my fingers into my armpits and tried to warm some of the ache out of my fingertips. As I approached the house, I stopped and slid into the shadow of a building across the street.
Two men in green uniforms stood outside Purgatory Palace, illuminated by the light from the door. Ofelia, glass in hand, talked to them. She pointed down the street, shook her head and kept the bars of the door between her and the men. A tightness filled my chest, a squeezing that had nothing to do with my arms wrapped around my body. The face of the store clerk—mouth open in fear—appeared in my mind.
The police officers returned to their car, which sent two piercing beams of light into the street, like glowing wolf eyes. Three women with black-lined eyes, short skirts and pointed shoes swayed past the officers.
“Hey, baby,” said one of the women. “You looking for me?”
“Not tonight,” one replied.
I waited in the dark of the doorway until the police car had merged with the other vehicles in the street, creating a living, changing flow of noise and smog. I crossed the street in spurts, stopping and starting with the sporadic traffic around me. I squeezed into the small space between our building and the one next to it, ignoring the women on the sidewalk as they ignored me. I hadn’t noticed how high the windows in our rooms were, but now that I was between the buildings, I saw that I wouldn’t be able to reach Candela’s window without a stool. Debris littered the ground—newspapers, plastic bags, an old sink. I kicked over a washtub and stood on its upturned bottom. With my fingertips, I reached through the bars to the glass of Candela’s window and tapped.
My nerves were strung as tightly as the strings of my violin, and I watched the narrow passage between the buildings, waiting for the officers to return, capture me and lock me away in a world even stranger than this one. I tried to calm myself, convince my sweating palms that they hadn’t been here for me—they’d come for someone else—but the fear made my limbs tremble and convinced me otherwise. I’d probably lose my room, lose the one friend I had, lose the warmth of Purgatory Palace. Strange how awful places seem not so awful when a more terrible alternative presents itself. My camp in the woods had been a haven, Belen’s house had been bearable, Purgatory Palace was almost tolerable now that I had a friend and a means to make money. Being tossed out into the street felt incomprehensible.
“Whisper.” Candela stood in the narrow corridor between the buildings.
“I’m here.” I slid between the walls back to the opening.
“Come now, fast. Ofelia’s in her room.”
Candela turned and ran to the front door. Oscar sat in the entryway, keeping the door open and watching for Ofelia. When I got to the door, Candela took my hand and pulled me into her room. Oscar followed and softly closed the door behind us. Candela rubbed my hands and arms. I was shaking.
“What did you do?”
My knees began to tremble, and I lowered myself to Candela’s mattress. “I went into a store on the other side of the river,” I said. “Randall and something. I looked at a coat. A clerk grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me back, and when I tried to catch myself, I scratched his face. They chased me out of the store and I ran.”
Candela shook her head. Oscar raised one eyebrow.
“Randall and Burns. Why, of all stores, did you choose that one to go into?” Oscar started to smile. “’Course, when I get my legs, I’m going in there. I’m going to chew gum and tuck wads of it into the pockets of all their expensive coats. I’m going to try on their fancy suits after not bathing for half a year. I’m going to cross that line between them and us, and I’m going to spread rot when I do.”
“We’ll hide you,” Candela said. “You think stuff like this hasn’t happened before? A year ago, I had to hide Oscar for two weeks after he got into a fight with a cop.”
Candela looked at Oscar. Oscar looked at the ground.
“You can’t go back to your room. Ofelia will give you up to the police and throw your stuff out into the street.” Candela pointed to the mattress on the other side of her room. “You can stay there.”
“Why did you go into a store, anyway?” Oscar asked.
My hands were red and raw. I wondered how much longer I could play the violin in the streets. If it kept getting colder, I wouldn’t be able to hold on to the bow, I wouldn’t be able to squeeze out the songs, I wouldn’t be able to pay Celso and protect my family.
“I need a coat,” I whispered.
“Well, that’s not where you get one. I’ll take you to the thrift store sometime this week. The coats there might not be the prettiest, but they look fine—they’re good enough for us beggars.”
I was safe, but my mother’s gifts were in room 13. I had the violin—the most important gift—but I wanted the scarf that smelled of bread, I wanted the rag doll and the silver spoon. I touched the top of my leg, rubbed my mother’s slip against my skin and felt its comforting warmth. I wanted to keep what little I had.
Candela told me I’d get my things back later, when Ofelia wasn’t around. But how was I to hide from the police? Anywhere I went, I would be recognized, and if the police were like me, they remembered everything.