I woke up and glanced around the room, feeling lost and disoriented. The winter evening held no light, and only a small crack under the door allowed a yellow beam into the room. Eva snored slowly on the bed, Ranita breathed sweet baby breath into the room, and I couldn’t hear Jeremia’s breathing at all. A tickle, a feeling of unrest, told me I needed to be somewhere.
Standing quickly, I moved to the bathroom with Ranita still in my arms. I gathered three towels, shaped them into a nest, placed them on the floor near the bed where Jeremia and Eva would see her when they awoke, and tucked Ranita into the cozy nest. Then I shut myself in the bathroom and splashed water on my face.
The recital was soon. The reflection of my face in the mirror didn’t calm the twitching nerves in my stomach. I considered waking Jeremia, Eva and Ranita, taking them with me, but I knew that walking them into the huge auditorium would only terrify them. They didn’t cross between societies. They didn’t wear the veil. This was a moment I must face on my own. I considered not showing up, disappearing like the sound of a whisper, but I couldn’t do that to Solomon after all he’d done for me.
I dried my cheeks, brushed my hair, straightened my sweater and felt something crinkle beneath my hand. I removed the slip of paper from my pocket. I placed the card on the counter next to the sink and looked at it. It was a plain card, white with blue ink. Dr. Susan Ruiz’s name was small and unassuming, but the possibilities behind the card were as weighty as oak.
I opened the door a crack, collected my violin, strapped it to my back and tucked the broken pieces of Jeremia’s violin into my sweater pocket. I clipped a note on the mirror and was about to leave when I glanced again at my reflection. My finger moved up to my mouth, pushed at the slit and gaps in my lip, watching as my gums and teeth showed through the gap, revealing the inner workings of the body that were supposed to remain concealed. This was who I was and what I looked like and what I’d always been, but that could change with surgery. And it could change for Ranita.
I loosened the black veil from around my neck and, with it in hand, walked out the door of the dormitory.
The other musicians already stood backstage in crisp white shirts, elegant black dresses and polished shoes. The first to play—Ben, Tomas, Carla and Michelle—were already onstage. When Solomon saw me, he strode toward me and placed an arm around my shoulders.
“Thank God,” he said. “You came.”
I pushed my face into his tweed coat. He smelled of mint. Solomon held me away, leaned down so our faces were level and looked into my eyes.
“You will be magnificent.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I can’t do this.”
“Of course you can. If you can do this on a street corner with raw, stiff hands, you can do this here, where everyone came to hear you.”
“They didn’t come to hear me, they came to hear them.” I glanced at Tomas and Carla onstage.
“But you are the one worth listening to.”
I slipped the veil over my head. Solomon patted my shoulder, but he didn’t smile. His great cheeks sagged, became jowly and heavy.
As the other students played, I listened, the notes like butterflies flitting around the room. I heard the nervousness in Ben’s bow—the cello voice fluttering with his hands. I heard the tension in Tomas’s violin—the emotion flat. I heard the anxiety in Carla’s viola—the notes rushed, ahead of the beat. I breathed deeply and thought of Eva’s arm wrapped around my neck. I thought of how it felt to hold Ranita against my chest, and the way Jeremia’s body felt when his breathing rasped in him. There was beauty in my life, and that part mattered more than standing on this stage ever would.
When it was my turn, Solomon placed his arm around my shoulders. Together we walked out to the stage, and I felt for a moment as though I had a father. We walked past the grand piano and around the quartet of set-up chairs. We stood at the front of the stage, only a metal music stand in front of us. I watched my feet as Solomon moved the stand to one side. The shuffling, the soft whispers, the brushing of feet against the floor echoed sporadically through the space like cricket chirps in the night. Solomon spoke loudly.
“Whisper Gane is the newest member of our string section here at the university. She is also our youngest member. She says very little but allows the music she has composed to speak for her. Please welcome her with me.”
Solomon stepped away from me. I heard him walk across the stage toward the piano. He stopped there, in the crook of the grand piano, and crossed his arms over his chest.
I stared down at my feet, at my new black boots that clicked when I walked. I looked at the brown skirt from Randall and Burns that reminded me of a lost mother and trees in the forest. I listened to the sound of my breath.
I raised my head and looked out into the auditorium. The lights, brilliant orbs too white for sunlight, were blinding, but the gauzy black veil dampened the effect. I raised my violin to my shoulder, rested my chin against it, fitted my bow to the strings and closed my eyes.
No longer was I standing in front of hundreds of people who wondered why I wore a veil. I was in the woods, under the trees, by the creek and with my family, but the huts were no longer there, the smell of smoke burned through the air, the birds so silent the emptiness hurt. This was my song. The music carried me away once again, and I lived in my head even while I stood on the stage.
The song ended, my eyes opened, and I lowered the violin and bow, my arms trembling. Solomon’s arm settled around my shoulder, and my knees shook beneath that weight. Now was when I would faint. Now, when my song was done.
Solomon whispered against my head, spoke into my ear. “Beautiful. Perfect.”
But he was all I heard. No longer did I hear shuffling. No longer did I hear echoing coughs. We stood alone.
And then I heard people shifting their weight, and a sound echoed about the room, bouncing off the walls. Applause. It was scattered and sparse but allowed me to relax my shoulders and control my dizziness. There were not nearly as many people as I had imagined—only a smattering of students, some adults who I assumed were parents, relatives and friends of the other students, and a few professors, sitting in clumps throughout the auditorium.
Solomon held me tightly, my shoulder wedged into his chest, and we stood still until the clapping slowed and the people sat. Then we walked off the stage together, and when I stood with the other musicians, I almost felt like one of them. They smiled slightly, inclining their heads. There was an excitement in the air, a giddiness, and I fluttered on the periphery. I hung there for just a minute, and then I remembered what waited for me back at the dorm. I slipped my violin into its case, squeezed Solomon’s hand and walked out the side door.
Before going home, I stopped at the little shop on campus and bought bread, cheese, milk, apples, carrots and cloth diapers. Beside the diapers were plastic pants, little pull-up pants that went over the diaper. I’d never seen these before. I bought two and laughed when they crinkled in my hand like dried leaves.
At the dorm, I gathered a bucket of ice from the machine in the hallway, dumped it into the bathroom sink and cooled the milk and cheese there. I threw my veil on the floor by the door. I snuggled Ranita against my chest, positioned the towels under my head and lay on the floor. They couldn’t stay here in this dorm room, even though I wanted them to. Jeremia, with his need for space, would twitch into the corner, become furtive as an animal. Ranita needed care—how would I take her with me to my classes, to my lessons with Solomon? And Eva. Eva was six now. She could do many things on her own but needed education, someone to teach her now that Nathanael was no longer an option.
I wasn’t sure what to do, but tonight I had played my song in front of many people and I had survived.
Just as my breathing and heartbeat began to slow, a knock on the door startled me awake. My first thought was that Celso had found us and would jab his sharp knife into Jeremia’s throat and sell the rest of us. But I reasoned with myself that it couldn’t be him—not now, not in this place. He’d look for us at Purgatory Palace. It must be Tomas, I thought, or Carla or Max. I couldn’t decide if I should open the door and stop the pounding, so it wouldn’t wake Jeremia, Eva and Ranita, or if I should ignore it and hope whoever it was went away.
“Whisper, it’s me, Solomon. I’ve got to talk to you.”
I tiptoed to the door, Ranita still snoring softly against my chest. I shifted the bolt and opened the door just a crack. Solomon stood in the muted light of the hallway. His face was split in a wide grin, a grin that stretched his mustache toward his ears.
“Come, come,” he said, gesturing to me.
I opened the door wider and stepped out into the hall. Solomon stretched his hands toward me but then pulled them back when he saw Ranita.
“You have a visitor. Who is this?”
“Ranita,” I said.
“I didn’t know you had family. Your sister, then? She looks just like you. Do you have a parent here as well? They will all want to hear my news.”
Solomon stepped to the door, ready to meet any other members of my family who might be present, but I blocked his way. What would he do if he saw Jeremia and Eva sleeping in my dorm room?
“She’s not really my sister.”
“No? That’s hard to believe. Look at her almond-shaped eyes, her widow’s peak, her pointed nose. If you’re not sisters, then you must be related in some other way. She’s simply lovely, just like you.”
That’s when the room swirled around me, the light in the hall seemed to grow sharper and my ears rang. Why had I not seen it before? I remembered Belen’s snarl, my brothers’ shared gasps, the woman by the creek hinting that another had been born with deformities. I had a sister—a real flesh-and-blood relation whom I was responsible for. I clutched her closer to me and breathed her in. Solomon placed his heavy hand on my shoulder.
“Your life is becoming quite full. You must hear my fabulous news. Guess who was at the concert.”
I shrugged and kissed the top of my sister’s head.
“Ruy Climaco of the City Philharmonic, and guess who he wants to play with the symphony. Whisper Gane. You, my dear. He requested that you play the song from the recital and the orchestra will accompany you. Isn’t that simply marvelous?”
Solomon jumped back and did a dance step in the middle of the hallway. His large stomach stretched and bounced against the fabric of his tweed coat. And that was when Ranita woke up. She opened her eyes, widened her mouth into a yawn and then gazed at me. My sister. She could listen to me play with an entire orchestra. I would do this. I would do this for her.
“Monday we practice with the orchestra. Your sister is welcome to join us. I will let the Resident Assistant know that you have visitors staying with you for a time.”
“Do you think I can do it?” I asked.
“You?” he said. He wrapped his arms around both Ranita and me, squeezed us against his ample stomach and rubbed his chin on the top of Ranita’s head. “You can do anything.”