Whisper (29 page)

I concentrated on Solomon, willing everything else to fade away.

“Christmas vacation is in three weeks, and our recital is three weeks after that. When we return from the holidays, we have one week. Stay with the regimen! Now, I want Tomas, Ben, Sara and Rita on stage, front and center. Let's show Whisper what we're all about.”

Solomon climbed the far steps to the stage and tapped his foot while four musicians followed, carrying their instruments. They jostled each other, joked, smiled and stood in a rough circle. Solomon placed his feet shoulder-width apart and whispered a beat under his breath while waving his hand in a four-stroke pattern. The musicians readied their instruments, tapped toes to the beat and, when Solomon raised his hands, lifted their bows.

The music moved through me like water—first slow and alluring, gaining speed over the rapids, then sounding like the animals on the shore, the fish in the water, the birds in the air. The low strumming beat spoke of rocks, sand, planted trees. I felt so homesick that a shaky breath whistled from me and puffed the veil.

I wanted it to go on forever.

The musicians drew their bows across the strings one last time and I woke from my dream. If only I could wrap that music up, squeeze it inside me and carry it around, filling that hole of loneliness that wouldn't go away. Why had I only heard the beauty of this music now, sixteen years into my life, when I could have been consuming it all along?

I clasped my hands around the violin case in my lap while Solomon brought all the other students up onstage and had them play. He was showing me something—I understood that—and I could sense that some of these musicians were better than others. When the music stopped, I watched the students whisper and ignore me. The girl beside me spoke only to the person on her other side, as though my veil was a solid barrier between us. The boy in front of me turned around with a big smile that felt false. He looked at the black plastic case that lay in my lap. “What make of violin do you have?” he asked.

Are violins made differently? Maybe I had the wrong version. I shrugged.

“I've got a Doreli,” he said, holding up his violin. It was beautiful, with cherry streaks through darker wood and a sheen that reflected the light from the stage.

I opened my case and looked at my violin. In comparison to his, it looked battered and worn. The girl beside me glanced into my case and then laughed. The boy looked as well, then gave me a big grin.

“Not a Stradivarius, then, is it? Someone make that for you?”

The two girls to my right laughed outright, then put their hands to their mouths. I closed the case and looked away. I wished I could ignore them—not care about their whispers, their stares, their appraising glances—but every mutter felt like it was about me and every laugh was at my expense.

My night in the jail came back to me, the night when I had vowed that I would never end up like Lizzy, that I would be proud even when others made me feel like the dirt pushed through an earthworm, but that moment of strength was hard to recapture in this place. I didn't fit in here—I would never belong.

Every day I spent two hours with Solomon and three hours in the tutoring center. The tutor was kind, gentle and patient. When I didn't understand how to take the tests or write an essay, she showed me how. I would be placed in remedial classes soon, she said, to prepare me for university-level instruction. Remedial, remedy, in need of a cure, like I was the disease.

In my private music lessons, Solomon repositioned my fingers on the violin. He showed me sheets with music on them, sheets that I was supposed to read but didn't understand.

“You will learn how to read the music. Don't get so frustrated,” he'd say when I threw the sheets of music on the floor and put my face in my hands.

“I'm too far behind. I'll never catch up. I feel so stupid.”

“You are not behind, and I will not listen to nonsense. With your talent and natural skill, you sound like a seasoned musician who has played for half a century. Now, let's try again.”

He'd pick up the book and I'd look at the notes, trying to make them fit with the sound. Solomon gave me a small round machine, a
CD
player, that I slid plastic circles into. The music that emerged from the machine was clear and perfect compared to what had come out of the radio back at the camp, and even though I was still lonely, with no one to talk to besides Solomon, the music from the machine filled the empty space. After listening to the songs on my
CD
player, I would play them on the violin. Aside from my tutoring, I spent most of my days in practice room 303, and there I recreated the sounds as best I could.

The cafeteria hummed with noise and movement, the students like a pack of coyotes, cackling, jostling, gorging themselves and shrieking across the room to their friends. The very first day I went to the cafeteria, I stood at the back of a line that extended out the door of the squat stone building. I waited in the cold, my hands deep in my pockets and my veil draped over my face. Rita and Max, two students from the music program, stood a few people in front of me. They whispered to the other students in their group, and all faces turned to look at me. No one waved or invited me to join the group and no one said hello, even though they were obviously staring. It felt like being chained to a doghouse in a lonely village. After that first day in the line, I waited until the cafeteria was almost closed and then I darted in, sneaking and scavenging, grabbing whatever leftovers were available, and ran out again.

I curled up on my bed, out of the wind and cold, listening to the music of heaven. Gradually, my hands lost their coating of red, rough skin. I hadn't had an earache since my first night at the university, when I'd bought oil at the store on campus. Even though I was physically comfortable and could spend all of my time listening to and playing music, it wasn't enough. I cried more than I'd ever cried before. And a fear that never went away lived in my chest.

I had not paid Celso. Another month had passed, and I was sure he'd come for his payment. He would take it out on me, find me and force me to the brothel, or he would punish my family. I didn't want to think of Jeremia, but sometimes I lay in bed at night, pulled my coat around me and remembered the way his hands made my skin tingle.

On Christmas morning I walked the five blocks from the dormitory to Solomon's house. He lived in a neighborhood with trees—gigantic trees with wide, empty arms and thick, sturdy trunks. I wanted to see them in the summer, fresh with green leaves and arching branches that would shade the street and offer an umbrella of color. Now it was so cold outside, my breath froze in misty clouds when it puffed from my nose. As I walked along the sidewalk here, where the houses were three stories tall with huge windows and supporting columns, I saw a family emerge from a car and rush to a house, where the door was thrown open wide and the people inside the house hugged and kissed the visitors. A yellow warmth glowed from the house. The windows of Solomon's house were the same, bright and yellow like framed campfire lights. When I knocked on the door to his house, a tall thin woman with wide round glasses opened the door. She wore a white apron speckled with little blue flowers.

“You must be Whisper,” she said and stepped aside. “I'm Katherine, Solomon's housekeeper. Shall I take your sack?”

I shook my head, hugging the brown paper bag to my chest. This was my gift, and I wouldn't relinquish my hold until it was given. My violin thumped against my back. Shoes were lined up by the door, and I added my new boots to the row. I hung my green forest coat in the hall closet. The veil covered my face, a constant disguise.

Katherine led me down a hallway, past a dining room with a long wide table set with plates, glasses, silverware and candles, a carefully placed arrangement that would soon be cluttered with family—Solomon's son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren were coming for the holidays. Solomon had invited me to Christmas dinner three times, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't sit at a table full of beautiful strangers and try to eat. How would I keep the veil on my face while slipping food into my mouth, how would I keep the children from staring, how would I feel comfortable, as though it were truly Christmas?

We went to the kitchen, where Solomon was sitting on a stool at the counter, drinking a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper. He looked relaxed here, the large, chunky chairs sturdy enough to support his large frame.

“My virtuoso,” Solomon said. “I'm honored.”

He pushed a chair back from the counter with one of his feet, but I didn't sit. I placed my bag on the countertop. Katherine was quiet, tense in the neck, stirring the contents of a big pot.

“What do you have in the bag?” he asked.

I edged it toward him. Solomon stood, peered into my bag and then looked at me, his eyebrows up. Katherine touched the spoon from the pot to her lips.

“Could I…” I whispered and glanced at Katherine, “use your oven? I would like to bake some bread…”

“I think we can figure out the timing. Katherine is a culinary genius.”

She opened the oven door and slid the turkey to the side, proving that there would be room for my bread pans.

I felt like a toad in Solomon's kitchen, short and stumpy in earth-toned clothes that didn't match the peach and purple tiles of the countertops and walls. I was here for only one reason—to make the bread and give it as my gift to those I fit with best. I remembered my mother's recipe word for word, even the lines about the yogurt culture needing to cook for a day, but when I had purchased the recipe items at the store, I had come across something my mother had not known about—yeast, a miracle ingredient that could be added to the bread immediately, making it rise perfectly.

While the dough rose, I played chess with Solomon. I was reminded of Jeremia, who had never been a good chess player. He would furtively make his move and then bite his first knuckle. While playing the game with Solomon, my nose began to drip, my eyes filled up with tears, and my head ached. Would I ever see them again, hold Ranita, play hide-and-seek with Eva, soothe Jeremia's energy or watch the stars with Nathanael? Their absence hurt more every day, a spreading infection like gangrene. Would Celso punish them for my absence?

“Christmas,” Solomon said. “I always miss Anna most at Christmas.”

I looked up, surprised, although I shouldn't have been. He had children, grandchildren, a housekeeper, but no wife. Maybe that was why he'd invited me to dinner—Solomon knew the loneliness of holidays.

“How long has she been gone?” I asked.

“Six years and three months,” he said and looked down at the chess board. After contemplating for a minute, he took my knight with his bishop.

“Do you miss her less or more after six years?”

He looked at me, his eyebrows furrowed. “I don't miss her more or less or the same. I miss her differently each year. This year I miss that I can't talk to her about you. She would know better than I do how to support your inclusion.”

I looked down at the chessboard and moved my rook out of his knight's reach. Maybe I didn't want to be included.

“My uncle may come for me,” I said. “I didn't pay him in December.”

“What will he do?” Solomon asked.

“Hurt me. Hurt my friends.”

“We'll pay him now. How much does he want from you?”

I shook my head and looked at my feet. “It's too late.”

“We'll alert campus security. They'll keep an eye out for him.”

I nodded, but that wouldn't help. How could campus security hold back the wind?

The dough rose perfectly. Between chess games I punched it down, shaped it into loaves and let it rise once more. Katherine seemed to understand that I didn't talk much, so she said very little, showing me where to find the materials I needed for the bread but not demanding that I explain who I was and why I knew how to do this. She was comfortable to be around, quiet and careful like me, not wanting to intrude but also not leaving me alone.