There was a tension in the air, and I had a pretty good idea what it was about. Any minute now, Celso would leap out from between the buildings and slice at us with his knife.
When we knocked on the door to Purgatory Palace, it took a long time for anyone to answer, and I wondered if my fears about Celso might be true. Jeremia stood with his back to the door, resting his foot on the log, which he’d carried on his shoulder from the university. We’d come in the early evening, and Ofelia was usually awake and on the prowl by this time of the day. Maybe we wouldn’t be able to get in without her catching us. I was about to give up, about to squeeze into the alleyway and knock on Candela’s window, when the door opened a crack and Candela peeked out at us.
“Shh,” she said, glancing behind her into the hallway.
Candela pulled the door open and we rushed down the hall to room 13, but we were not quick enough. Ofelia appeared at the top of the stairs, and she saw me pushing Eva through the doorway into the room.
“You,” she screamed and rushed down the last few steps. I closed the door behind Eva and stood in front of it. Jeremia was in, Eva was in, Ranita was quiet.
“You are a thief,” she said, her face inches from mine. Red blotches stood out from the skin on her face, deep raspberries of color. “How many people are in there? How many? And what are you paying?”
Red and gray wisps of hair flew around her face, scattered and crazed. I could see the pink of her scalp through the strands of hair. She pushed her face so close to mine that the thin red veins running up and down her nose became ribbons of color. She smelled of sickness. I protected Ranita with my arms, wrapping them around her as she snuggled against me in the cloth wrap.
Candela stood next to me, and when Ofelia balled her hands into fists, Candela bumped against me, sliding me out of the way.
“You are all robbing me. I let you live here, all of you, for almost nothing, for less than you would be charged anywhere else, and what do you do to me? You act like you care about me and then abandon me.”
She shrieked the last two words, and they screamed through the hallway like unleashed demons. I flattened my back against the door to room 13, wrapped my arms more tightly around Ranita and turned my face to the side.
Ofelia placed her hands in front of her face and cried in loud, shrieking gusts. Candela put her hand on Ofelia’s lower back and guided her to room 1. Candela followed her into the room, shutting the door behind both of them. For a while I heard ranting, then murmuring voices, then nothing. My heart calmed in proportion to the noise, and when Candela finally emerged, my eyes had grown droopy and my head had started to nod.
Candela’s face was puffy, her eyes red. She leaned beside me and then slumped to the floor. I slid down the door and sat beside her.
“How the hell am I supposed to fix everything around here?” She had a wet patch on her shoulder as though someone had left a stain of tears. “Ofelia’s son finally told her that he doesn’t want her staying with them. She’s been asking to live with them for years. She’s been sending him money since she first bought this place. Now he won’t take her in. She’s not even sure she’ll sell Purgatory Palace anymore. She has to find somewhere else to stay first.”
I rubbed small circles on Ranita’s back through the fabric of my coat. She stirred and gurgled. I thought about that—a family abandoning an adult, someone without a blemish, though I knew that Ofelia was one of those people with blemishes on the inside.
“What will she do?”
“What we all do when we’re abandoned by our families. Make new ones. Endure.”
Ranita began to squirm, and her muffled cries could be heard from between the buttons of my coat. I opened my coat and she peeked out, her face happy, curious. Candela held her hand out to Ranita, and Ranita grabbed her first finger. She tugged at it, squeezed it tightly.
“You’re the luckiest of us all, you know,” Candela said to me.
Ranita blew bubbles and gave soft squeals against my chest. I had my family, that was true, but I didn’t know for how long.
Candela started an IOU for Jeremia, Eva and Ranita’s stay. She said that when Jeremia sold his sculptures, he could pay the bill. I didn’t like to owe, but we couldn’t pay, and for some reason, I didn’t feel right about taking Dr. Ruiz up on her offer of a place to stay. I hardly knew her, and Jeremia would feel just as caged there as anywhere else.
Every day I had to be at Solomon’s office by four in the afternoon, when he would drive me downtown to the grand auditorium. On the outside, the building sat low and round like a fossilized hat, hunkering between rectangular buildings that jutted into the sky, but the inside of the auditorium was rich with reds and golds and was layered with ornate seats that leaned out over the stage. I stood to the right of the orchestra and played the song of Purgatory Palace again and again and again.
The violinists of the orchestra wouldn’t look at me. The woman in the first chair sighed loudly when I got ahead of the beat and snorted when I forgot that they were keeping pace with me, trying to match my uneven song. Playing with them was much more difficult than I had imagined it would be. I had to hold each note the same number of beats each time, as though I were a trained cricket. I couldn’t slow down or speed up to change my interpretation but had to consistently play the song at the same tempo, the timing perfect. It was like catching crayfish in the stream.
“God,” the second violin player said to the first, “I can’t believe they let people who look like that just walk around.”
I stood on the stage, set apart from the others in a way that was meant to honor and emphasize but instead separated me even more than usual, my misshapen features highlighted and further exposed.
“You lead us, Whisper,” Ruy Climaco said, “but it is not a stampede. Again.” I lifted the violin to my chin and began at the place in my song that spoke of creeping between pots in the town square, but it was difficult to begin there—the music was my story, and how can someone begin halfway through a story? So I paused, stopped and lost the beat. Ruy threw down his baton and raised his hands into the air as though offering up a prayer.
“This is a disaster. She cannot lead us when she forgets the song herself. Why did I think this would work?” He leaped off the stage and stomped down one of the aisles, his hair bouncing. I looked at the orchestra, wondering if they would leave as well, but they remained, some lowering their instruments to the stage.
We waited so long, I sat down as well, crossed my legs and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, Ruy Climaco was walking back down the aisle. He climbed onto the stage and picked up the conductor’s stick.
“Again.”
He stormed out almost every day, and we would take a break. Then he would rush back in with new instructions and make us do it all over again. In this way, the music took shape, and soon his theatrics mellowed, came less and less often, and every now and then he even smiled.
Sometimes the music sounded beautiful—complete, like the music of my life—but I was so exhausted by the end of each practice session that I returned to my room unable to complete the homework for my remedial classes and unable to do anything with my family but sit, hold Ranita and watch Jeremia as he whittled the wood. Sometimes they walked back to Purgatory Palace without me. I had never been so tired in my life, not even plodding behind a mule on my way to this city.
And I dreamed of the music all night, seeing the notes piled up in layers. Each day seemed to begin before the one before had ended, and I slept, woke, waited, practiced and then did it all over again. I was ready for the concert to end, for Ranita’s surgery to be done, for answers to come so I’d know where my family would be, how we would survive and how we would stay together. It felt as though we were waiting for something, but I didn’t know what that something was, and the more we waited, the more unsure I felt.
It was a Thursday, a week before my concert, when I woke up from a horrid dream feeling panicked and shaken, even though I couldn’t remember what the dream was about. I had practice that afternoon, a practice I couldn’t miss, but I dressed and ran the twenty blocks to Purgatory Palace, only stopping once to catch my breath. The sky was gray and cold, still enclosing the city in winter—fewer people were on the streets these days. Windows were shut, warmth was kept inside, and the women who walked the streets had gone to bed. Only the cars roared, adding their blue smoke to the gray of the sky and making me cough as I ran.
Jeremia, Eva and Ranita were eating breakfast in the common room, and they looked up, surprised, when I sat down next to them. I picked up Ranita, smelled her sweet smell and nodded at her smile. I turned Eva’s face to the side, back and forth, examining her for sickness, but nothing seemed out of place, and when I saw Jeremia’s raised eyebrow, I began to feel foolish.
“What’s wrong with you?” he said.
“I don’t know.” Trying to ignore the unrest I felt in my chest, the little raised prickles on my arm, the nervous energy that indicated a storm was coming, I glanced around the room and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Winston served the oatmeal, Candela and Oscar leaned close together, whispering and holding hands, Sonja glared, stuck out her tongue and wagged it at me. Nothing seemed wrong, but I felt that at any moment the sky would open up and swallow us whole.
We walked back to the university early because I wanted them with me, even though I couldn’t explain why. They settled into my dorm room, Jeremia whittling on the log we’d kept in the dorm room, bits of wood flipping through the air like sparks, Eva taking a long hot shower—her favorite thing to do—and Ranita rolling across the floor, gurgling and shrieking. I couldn’t shake my unease but paced the room, determined not to leave even when the time came for practice, but Solomon showed up at the door and convinced me to go downtown.
I practiced with the orchestra, but all through the rehearsal my stomach twisted inside me, and every shadow on the stage felt like a waiting threat. My chest ached as though I’d swallowed something too large, and my hands trembled. I didn’t understand. We had two months before Ranita’s surgery, I had a week before the concert, my family was healthy and well. What was wrong with me?
It was when we walked back to Purgatory Palace that evening that my premonition became reality. As we arrived at the building, a crowd of people was standing outside, listening to the crashes and shrieks that came from inside. I knew that what we’d dreaded for weeks had finally come to be. A mule stood tethered to a shriveled stump of a tree. The mule stretched his head to the ground as he ignored the people around him and searched for bits of grass.
I waited for a minute with the others on the street, Ranita strapped to my chest, Eva holding Jeremia’s hand, but I knew this was about me and that I would have to face whatever tornado whirled through Purgatory Palace. I looked at the people around me and saw Winston, Sonja, Maria and Selene, but I didn’t see Candela, Oscar or Ofelia.
I pushed my way through the crowd in front of the door and ran up the two steps to enter the building, Jeremia just a step behind me. We passed Ofelia’s room, where the door, torn off its hinges, lay like a broken arm in front of the doorway. Her room was in disarray—tapestries tattered and ripped, lamps scattered in shards on the floor, her bed off its frame, overturned. Bottles of alcohol were scattered everywhere, the glass glittering like a trail of icicles.
The doors to the other rooms had been completely removed and were leaning across the hallway. Whenever we glanced into the rooms, we saw destruction—dismantled beds, broken dressers, tossed clothing. In Candela’s room, her beautiful caricatures lay in fragments, our torn and damaged faces peering up at us.
The common room, so huge and wide, so able to house all of us when it needed to, felt closed-in, even though there were only five people in the room.
Celso walked to each table and threw it over. Jeremia’s father, Jun, followed behind, pouring Ofelia’s alcohol over the wood, splattering it against the walls and floor. Ofelia followed them, pulling at Jun’s arm, which he yanked away. Candela followed Ofelia. A body lay in the corner of the room, the legs twisted at such odd angles that I knew they must be broken, that he must be dead, but it was Oscar, his legs come loose from his body. Beside Oscar crouched my brother David, gasping and wheezing, his hands grasping his shirt front.
“You’ve ruined my life,” screamed Ofelia. “You destroy everyone’s life.”
“Whose fault is that?” yelled Celso. “You should have paid me when I was owed.”
“I told you, I don’t have the money and that tramp was hauled off to jail. Like I’m responsible for that.”
Celso turned abruptly and grabbed Ofelia by the neck. He squeezed, and she clutched at his hands.
“I’m sick of your whining, you old bat. Look what you’ve done to yourself. I can’t stand the sight of you.”
She clutched at his hand, gasping, her eyes bulging and scared.
“You think I’m afraid of you just because you live in the city and work in this big building? That’s nothing to me. I hate this stinking place.”
Candela began to beat against his side with her fists.
“Let her go,” she said. “You’re killing her. Let her go.”
Beside Celso, Jun watched and laughed.
And then Celso saw us. We were grouped together in the doorway, Jeremia beside me, Ranita strapped to me and Eva holding on to my coat with one hand. When he saw us, the room became so still I could feel Ranita’s breath against my chest. Celso let go of Ofelia’s neck and with a great grunt, lifted another table and threw it to the side. Jun poured alcohol over the wood.
“You’re too late,” Celso shouted at me. “You should have given me the money when I came weeks ago. Because of you, the old man burned.”
It was true. I’d killed Nathanael. It felt as if the floor was shifting beneath my feet. Jeremia squeezed my arm.
“No, Nathanael burned because of you, Celso,” said Jeremia. “It’s not our fault you’re a murderer.”
“Rosa still pays me. You know that? She’s been paying me every month since she came here. She’s such a hardworking little whore.”
I was going to be sick. All my wanderings boiled down to this one moment when I had to face the truth. My mentor sister slept with men for money, I had killed Nathanael, and I didn’t know how to care for my family. I felt the tears, the sting of guilt, but Jeremia shook my arm hard, and I felt the fury in his grip. Fleet and agile as a deer, Jeremia leapt over the toppled tables and maneuvered his way around the destruction as though none of it existed. I had seen him like this before—climbing the trees, rising above limb and leaf as though they were irrelevant obstacles, as though missing an arm meant nothing. I wanted to look away, not observe the anger that would be unleashed, but at the same time his beauty was most magnificent when he moved with such timing and grace.
Celso crouched, ready, the knife at his side, but Jeremia came with such force, Celso was up against the wall of the common room with Jeremia’s forearm against his neck before he had time to slice. Jeremia’s father dropped the bottle in his hand and rushed at Jeremia, his hand outstretched. Jeremia’s foot landed in his stomach, and with a grunt Jun crashed against the wall.
Before I could think about what I was doing, before I remembered that I had a baby strapped to my chest and a child following behind, I leaped over the tables, stepped over the chairs, jumped over broken bowls—I was back in the forest once again, my footing sure.
With my shoulder down and my arms protecting Ranita, I threw myself at this man who had risen seething with anger, ready to rid himself of a forsaken son who was less than perfect. His hand was aimed at Jeremia, about to thrust a knife into Jeremia’s side, when I threw my shoulder into him, right under his arm. The hand with the knife rose into the air, piercing his own face.
I stumbled over a bench at my feet and tried to regain my footing, landing heavily on my side. I remembered the baby at that moment and tore open my coat. Ranita looked at me and then shrieked. I jostled her up and down and moved my hands over her body. She seemed whole—I felt nothing sticky, no blood, no limbs twisted into awkward positions. Jeremia still had Celso pinned to the wall. Celso pushed at Jeremia’s face, trying to dislodge Jeremia’s arm, but his pushes were weakening, his face a dark red and his eyes bloodshot, bursting. Celso’s knife lay at Jeremia’s feet.
I pulled myself off the floor and stepped around an overturned table, wondering who was shrieking so loudly. I put my hand on Jeremia’s arm. He didn’t feel me, didn’t see me. When I looked at his face, I saw his mouth twisted, his eyes blackened, the tendons in his neck taut, but he was not screaming. I touched his cheek. He jerked and then saw me.
“Enough,” I said.
His eyes refocused on Celso, who was now feebly pulling at his arm with both hands. Jeremia stepped back and Celso fell to the floor, gasping and clutching his neck.
“Did you know?” Jeremia’s voice was hoarse, low, as though scraped over rocks. “Did you and Belen know that surgery could correct a cleft palate?”
Celso’s face slowly lost its purple color and became blotchy. His eyes no longer swelled from his face, and his cheeks sank back into their place. He gave a dry cough of a laugh.
“Of course,” he whispered and then put his finger to his lips. “But what good was she to us if she couldn’t make money on the street corners? That’s what all the rejects from the forest have done when the time was right.”
“Except for me,” Jeremia said.
“You’re a boy. We didn’t know what to do with you.”
“Where’s Belen?”
“Pah. Jun is twice the man Belen will ever be.”
And then we looked at Jeremia’s father. The knife, still clutched in Jun’s hand, was embedded in his right eye. His screams pulsed with each breath. I held my hands over my ears. Ranita cried against my chest, Jun screamed on the ground, Ofelia moaned and twisted her hands in her hair, David lay on the ground next to Oscar, and Eva curled herself into a tight ball by the door to the common room. I sank slowly to the floor.
I rocked back and forth, my hands over my ears. I had done this to Jeremia’s father—I had shoved the knife up and into his eye. These men had come to do harm, to cause violence, and even though I had been defending my family, I was no better than them. I’d sunk to their level. The goodness I’d once had, the innocence I’d brought with me, was gone. I no longer knew who I was, where I belonged and what my song should be.