For three days I slept. I lay in room 13 and kept my face to the wall, staring at it so hard I saw all the way back to the forest. Candela sat with me sometimes, rubbing my back, brushing my hair away from my face. Eva lay on top of me, pushed her soft cheek against mine and told me how much she loved me. David stayed with us, sharing room 13 with our surrogate family. He didn’t seem disturbed by the people in Purgatory Palace—he had found his way to the common room and had been teaching Winston how to bake bread. Ranita had become Jeremia’s responsibility once again. People whispered when they were around me as if my way of speaking had become contagious.
I heard what they said, I understood the situation, but I was so tired. I didn’t know how to get rid of the ache in my limbs, the weight that pushed on my shoulders, shoving me into the ground. I wanted to become part of the earth, melt into the soil and feel the roots of trees holding me together. There I could feel whole again and remember the song that had once been my voice.
Jeremia told me that his father, Jun, would recover. Ofelia had called a doctor. The doctor came but couldn’t save Jun’s eye. He would wear a patch to protect the world from his disfigurement.
Celso was fine. He had a bruise across his neck, but bruises—at least the ones you can see—heal. The residents of Purgatory Palace had cleaned up the spilled alcohol, the tossed furniture, the broken doors. The building was salvageable because the men hadn’t set fire to it. Oscar, it seemed, had not been killed but had a concussion. He whispered to me that a concussion a day kept insanity away.
David decided to join us. Celso had demanded that he come with him to the city. He’d wanted to show David how the rejects lived, selling their bodies or begging on street corners. Celso had believed that David would turn away from me then, but instead David found kindred spirits at Purgatory Palace. He cooked with Winston, played cards with Oscar and slept so hard his snores filled the room.
Ofelia was moving into her own apartment, away from us freaks, but had decided not to sell the building. She had placed Oscar and Candela in charge as long as they paid her monthly rent. Candela and Oscar were so excited, had so many plans to turn Purgatory Palace into a haven, that they argued about it constantly. They couldn’t agree on anything, not even the new name. Heavenly Haven. The Final Stop. The Last Resort. Home.
“We’ll have a restaurant upstairs and Winston will make all the food. We’ll divide the common room into an area of shops and we’ll sell all kinds of artistic things—we’ll sell Jeremia’s sculptures, my artwork, your music, David’s bread. We’ll tell the night workers that they have to go somewhere else. We’ll make so much money with our art that we’ll never have to beg again!”
I listened, but I didn’t turn my face away from the wall. Moving my head was too much work. Who would come to a restaurant run by rejects, and who would eat food cooked by a boy with two faces? And where did I fit into all this? Would I live here again or keep going to school? If I stopped going to school, my lessons would stop, my work with the orchestra would cease, I would lose the wholeness of the music that I’d grown to love.
Solomon came to visit. He had visited Ofelia before but had never seen the rest of the building or all of the inhabitants. He was subdued, speaking to me softly, finally understanding just a bit of my life. Solomon probably thought the orchestra would spur me into action, convince me to rise from this bed and feel well again, but I was just too tired to get up. I felt like my song was gone and I’d been left with nothing to say.
Jeremia sat in the corner of the room and whittled. His sculptures were different here in Purgatory Palace. In our camp, the forms had spoken of water, twisting branches, beams of sunlight. Here they resembled flames, shards of glass, the points of knives. Dr. Ruiz bought the first sculpture from him, paying him enough money for a month’s stay at Purgatory Palace. He saw that he could make his living in the city, whether he liked it or not.
When Dr. Ruiz came to buy the sculpture, she clapped her hands and laughed out loud. She refused to whisper.
“There is so much work to be done here. And you have such a wonderful family. But where did all these people come from? Why are they all gathered here?” She sat in my room and listened to the stories of Purgatory Palace.
Winston, the boy with two faces, had been born in a village south of the city. When he was born, the people of his village thought he was a marvel, that he was blessed and could predict the future. But in the years after he was born, the village’s water supply completely dried up, the wells became stagnant, the crops failed. Their belief in the miracle of the boy with two faces changed, and they blamed him for the destruction of their village. They left him on the doorstep of Purgatory Palace.
The connected sisters—conjoined twins, Dr. Ruiz called them—were from Gloriosa. Their parents worked on the farm and already had three children before the farm came, before pigs became the main source of income, and then they had the twins. They didn’t need more kids—kids who had to do everything together, who couldn’t be separated, so they brought them here.
Dr. Ruiz brought bandages with her, skin-colored bits of tape, and she applied them to Ranita’s lip.
“See?” she said. “This is what she’ll look like after the surgery.”
I turned my face away from the wall and opened my eyes. I looked at Ranita, who appeared blurred, misshapen. I lifted my head from the bed and stared at her face. She had no blemish. The tape covered the irregular openings and turned her perfect. This is why I was here—to make a better life for my little sister.
The room swirled around me, brightened, and I felt something in my chest—a small bud that was growing, blooming, spreading to my limbs. Jeremia stopped whittling, the conjoined twins stopped speaking, Eva stopped hopping on one foot, and Dr. Ruiz’s cheeks puffed into a smile when I got off the bed. My legs felt shaky and my arms weak as I stood. I brushed off my clothes, opened the case of my violin and fit the instrument to my shoulder, under my chin, and it all came back, everything I had said through my songs. I played the song of Purgatory Palace. It was my first practice in three days—I closed my eyes and felt the music. I pulled the veil from around my neck and draped it over my head. Candela, Dr. Ruiz, David, Jeremia, Eva and Ranita all watched as I pulled my coat on and put the violin back into its case.
“I need to talk to Solomon,” I said and walked out the door.
Solomon was in his office at the school. He sat behind a desk littered with newspapers, disposable coffee cups, wrappers. His usually smooth chin was stubbled with growth, and his peppermint scent was muddled by coffee, bad breath and body odor. When I entered his office, he held his hands out to me and spoke in a shaky voice.
“Whisper, can we ever make it work?” His voice was as hoarse as mine. “Have I lost you and the beauty of your song?”
I understood now why I walked between two worlds and why this had become my place. I was the bridge—I was the translator between those who come into this world whole and those who don’t. Ranita would join me as a member of both worlds.
“I’m ready to play.”
He rubbed his eyes with both hands, stood and walked around the desk, lumbering in heavy strides. He looked at me through eyes so bloodshot I wondered if perhaps he too should lie down on his bed and not move for three days.
“Are you sure?”
I wasn’t sure. How could I be? I was about to tell my story to a roomful of people in a huge auditorium, and who knew if my message would come through? But this was the way I spoke and this was my story and these were my friends who needed my help and this was my little sister whose cleft palate would be fixed and whose earaches would disappear.
“I’m sure.”
The auditorium was vacant, hollow and dark. We were early. As Solomon and I parked in our usual spot, a car pulled into the space next to ours, and out of it stepped Dr. Ruiz, Jeremia with Ranita and Eva, David, Candela and Oscar.
I couldn’t stop the sudden tears. I sniffled, rubbing my nose on the sleeve of my sweater, and tried to smile, but my mouth wobbled and my lower lip drooped. Candela put her arm around my waist on one side and Eva did the same on the other. Jeremia stood in front of me, his eyes dark, his mouth straight. He reached out and touched my cheek with the tip of his finger. Then he pulled me away from Eva and Candela, slipped his arm around my waist and held me against his chest. I pressed my cheek against his neck and listened to his breathing.
Dr. Ruiz walked beside Solomon and we all made our way to the dark stairs that led from the parking garage to the auditorium. We walked down the aisle, Eva gasping and pointing as we went, touching the ornate gold decorations on the sides of the seats. I’d never been here when the orchestra was absent and most of the lights were turned off. The building felt very hollow, emptied out, and I clutched Eva’s hand, glad to have her warmth beside me. Solomon and I sat on the stage and waited.
Ruy Climaco rushed in, flipping his hair from his shoulders and leading his body with his chin. His eyes and mouth were narrow slits in his face and his arms pumped back and forth, the baton gripped like a sword in his right hand.
“Well, miss,” he said before he was halfway down the aisle. “Think you’re a bit high and mighty, don’t you? Think you can come and go as you like—well, young lady, I’m here to tell you that playing with the City Philharmonic is an honor, and you, child, should understand that. You don’t miss practices for the Philharmonic even on your deathbed—and you, you especially, should be grateful for the opportunity…”
As he talked, a baby gurgled behind him, and then someone coughed. Ranita shrieked, cooed, blew bubbles. Ruy Climaco slowed his speech and turned around. When he saw the group of people seated in the front row, his hand moved to his face, fluttered and covered his mouth.
“Good God.”
The people in the front row smiled, except for Jeremia, and Oscar waved a leg at Ruy. Ruy turned around abruptly, his jaw clenched.
“Let’s begin, then, shall we?” Solomon said.
We practiced for two hours. I tried to remember all the advice given to me by Ruy Climaco and by Solomon. Ruy hummed the accompaniment, I kept the beat steady, I counted in my head and played the song of Purgatory Palace.
I was only a small part of the performance, and my piece came in the middle. For the first half of the evening I sat in the front row with my family. Jeremia and I took turns holding Ranita, bouncing her on our laps, feeding her bits of a roll. She gurgled along with the music, but the sound she made was lost in the song of the orchestra. For a time, she seemed to listen, but mostly she slept.
At intermission, Solomon stood up and motioned for me to follow. When I rose from my seat, Jeremia pulled on the sleeve of my sweater. He held his hand out to me, the back of the hand up, the fingers curved around something in his fist. I opened my hand beneath his. His fingers touched my palm, and when they did, energy burst into me, tingled through me, and I was awake as I hadn’t been for a long time. Something dropped into my hand. It was my carved violin, complete and whole once again. Jeremia said nothing, but for the first time since he had returned to me, he smiled. I leaned down and pressed my lips against his. He kissed me back, strong, sure, unembarrassed.
I stood beside Solomon at the back of the stage, and he said to me, “You, Whisper, are the strongest person I know.”
I had just curled into myself for three days. I had been sad, lonely, lost and abandoned. I slipped the string around my neck and felt the weight of Jeremia’s violin against my chest.
Pulling my shoulders back, pulling my stomach in, I stood straight and finished tuning my instrument. My veil had slipped to the side, and I adjusted it over my face. It was time.
The orchestra members took their seats, tuned their instruments, readied themselves. Ruy Climaco climbed the steps to the stage, turned and bowed to the audience. The audience clapped—a few yelled. I allowed myself a slow, careful smile.
“We are honored to have a guest violinist today. Whisper Gane, a sixteen-year-old virtuoso, will be playing a piece that she composed herself. Please give a warm welcome to Whisper Gane.”
Ruy’s arm swept toward me and his face turned in my direction. He beamed as though he had never been angry. I took a deep breath and tucked my bow under my arm. With my left hand I reached out to Solomon and squeezed his arm.
“Your song is a miracle, Whisper, and your story needs to be heard.”
“Thanks for being the first to listen,” I said. I walked onto the stage, I bowed to the audience and smiled when the front row of listeners screamed, yelled and whistled.
“Break a leg, Whisper,” yelled Oscar, his voice booming through the auditorium, one of his legs held up over his head. Some audience members laughed, others gasped.
Looking out into the audience, the lights from the ceiling blinding me to anything but those in the first few rows, I listened to my heart—the slow, steady beat of calm. I fitted my violin to my shoulder, rested my chin on it and, at Ruy’s signal, began to play.
My hands didn’t flutter, my heart didn’t race, my knees didn’t become slick with sweat. I was transported to Purgatory Palace, to a place where love existed at the edges of torment and loneliness. My song found wings and flew through the auditorium. I kept the beat, I listened to the orchestra, and we played in harmony.
As I drew my bow over the strings of the violin for the final notes, I opened my eyes and saw that in the first row, all my family and friends were on their feet, clapping, screaming and yelling my name. Their enthusiasm leaked from the front row to the back, and soon the entire audience had risen to its feet, clapping, whistling, cheering for me, a reject, a lost member of this world.
When the clapping died down, I continued to stand in the same spot. Silence filled the room after people had shuffled down into their seats. Ruy held his hand out toward me and instructed me to take a bow. Instead, I tucked my violin under my arm, reached up with my left hand and felt the veil whisper against my face as I lifted it from my head.
Gasps rose up like moths from the depths of the audience. Ruy stood in front of the orchestra, his face frozen, his hand stiffly held in front of him.
I stepped foward and looked over the audience. Tonight, almost every seat was full. My friends and family in the front row screamed once again and yelled my name. It was then, as Whisper Gane without the veil, that I took my bow.