Whisper (22 page)

“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.