Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  When Scott Joplin died on a spring morning, he was in bed, not at his piano.

  The start of the Great War buried the news of Scott’s passing, even in the few circles where his passing would have been news. At his funeral, Lottie remembered her promise to her dying husband, but how would it have looked to have a song as gay as “Maple Leaf Rag” played on a burial day? Lottie would regret her decision the rest of her life, but on the day Scott was put to rest in his pauper’s burial plot, no one so much as hummed her husband’s most beloved song.

  Lord knew she’d done right by the man in every other way.

  Lottie Joplin hadn’t been able to understand her husband’s last words to her, so she had comforted herself by imagining tenderness in Scotty’s weak murmurings. She had known his heart had private spaces the minute he told her he was a widower, but she liked to think his dying words might have been Lottie Joplin, you’re the only woman I ever truly loved.

  Or something gentle like that. Just not angry, for once. Not afraid.

  Lottie was no child of God, truth be known—being in the sin trade, she’d had to let go of Jesus to make ends meet—but she prayed her dear husband’s last words were happy. Scott never got what he deserved, not a single day of his life. Lord, give him peace at last, she had thought, imagining calm surrender in the mangled whisper Scott had breathed into her face.

  Scott’s last words to Lottie weren’t peaceful, calm or loving, and they would have surprised her if she had understood him—because his last words were an admonition.

  Find the kerosene, Lottie. Burn that piano to Hell.

  II.

  1991

  Phoenix Smalls was ten years old the day she nearly died.

  Years later, distant relatives and forgotten schoolteachers would claim they’d always seen a special spark in Phoenix, That Certain Something proclaiming she was going to make a deep groove in this world somehow. For the most part, these were lies. Until she nearly died, Phoenix Smalls had never done a single remarkable thing.

  Phoenix got good grades, but her schooling hadn’t caught afire. She’d always liked to sing, but she had what her chorus teacher called a Fourth-Place voice, never likely to place in the top three. Phoenix studied violin, but with only enough diligence to keep her lessons from sounding like catfights. She’d been playing the piano her grandparents bought her since she was six, and she’d made it a good way through the Robert Whitford course, but her recitals weren’t inspired or impressive.

  Phoenix’s father thought she could do better. He turned practicing the piano into a military exercise, with a timer. First twenty minutes, scale drills. Second twenty minutes, practice a required classical piece from her study book. Only in the third twenty minutes did she have free time to play what she liked from the sheet music in her E-Z Hits of the ’80s book (that had Madonna and Whitney Houston songs in it). Under her father’s arrangement, Phoenix hated practicing the piano more than she hated anything else in life. Phoenix had called her father Sarge by the time she was eight, and the nickname stuck. Sarge could take the fun out of anything.

  Phoenix felt cursed to have been born into a family where both parents loved music: Her mother was a former ballet dancer who played piano and still owned the Silver Slipper, the jazz club Phoenix’s grandfather had opened on Miami Beach in the 1950s. Phoenix’s father occasionally played the piano one-handed, humming to himself, or he played his trumpet to old jazz records in the garage, in sporadic bursts and peals both on-key and off. He also managed musicians and bands, which kept him on the road more than Phoenix or her mother liked.

  Whenever Sarge returned from the road—sometimes after days, sometimes after weeks—he had new stories when he thought Phoenix was asleep and couldn’t hear him and Mom sitting up half the night at the kitchen table. You’d think they didn’t have mamas and daddies. You should have seen the mess they left in the hotel. He was so strung out, he fell asleep at the microphone. Phoenix loved Sarge’s road stories. When she heard her parents going toward the kitchen, she climbed out of bed to hide just out of their sight, next to the china cabinet beyond the kitchen doorway. The stories were a window into a world without rules, perfect entertainment. You don’t snort it, fool, was one of the punch lines that made Mom scream from laughing so hard. (Phoenix’s cousin Gloria told her later that joke had something to do with drugs, inside knowledge Phoenix thought Gloria had no business knowing at eleven—but that was Gloria.)

  Over time, though, Phoenix began to resent the performers her father worked for. It was bad enough Sarge was gone as often as he was home, but he was gone babysitting a pack of spoiled druggies who didn’t deserve him. By the time Phoenix was ten, show business seemed like one of the fancy chocolate candies her grandmother served from boxes every Thanksgiving: tempting on the outside, but likely to be licorice or cherry on the inside. Downright unappetizing, when you got to the taste of it.

  Phoenix’s own dream was to be famous with dignity, chiefly by finding her way into the Guinness Book of World Records. Every day brought new inspiration: holding her breath (she made it up to fifty seconds), longest moonwalk (she practiced moonwalking across the kitchen floor every day after school) and longest kiss (even with Saran Wrap separating their lips, kissing Gloria was mostly gross—mostly—so she didn’t have anyone to practice with). It was only a matter of time before she discovered her hidden talent, whatever it was, so it was best to get started early. She would break or create any record, as long is it didn’t involve performances of any kind, or a stage.

  Or, of course, a piano.

  The Silver Slipper didn’t help reduce her aversion to show business. When Aunt Liv couldn’t babysit or the weekend shows went late, Phoenix was a fixture on the club’s cot in the office upstairs, sleeping through the throbbing bass drums and whining trumpets from the stage beneath her. The Slipper wasn’t a big or popular club, so the acts who came through usually weren’t happy to be there. Some were frustrated because they wanted to be farther along, and most because they had already been farther along and were on their way back. Each night, Phoenix witnessed their neat trick of suddenly remembering to smile before they took the stage, where their restlessness and resentment were in her plain view.

  Her last shard of innocence was lost the night she heard her favorite singer say that if she had to do that fucking song from the radio again, she would lose her fucking mind, she swore to fucking G—d, which Phoenix was sure meant (1) her favorite singer wasn’t going to sing the song Phoenix had wanted to hear so badly that she’d begged her parents to stay up late on a school night, and (2) her favorite singer had blasphemed and was going straight to Hell.

  At ten, Phoenix would have been very disappointed to learn that show business, and music, were in her future. Downright horrified, really.

  Then came the piano. And the accident.

  The old piano had sat inside 565 Alton Road since the two-story brick building first opened its doors in 1927 as an all-girls’ school, before the building fell from grace as a flophouse, then found salvation as a jazz club. The piano had been collecting dust against the wall in the upstairs storage room as long as anyone knew: from when Phoenix’s grandfather, Bud Rosen, sold his club to his daughter right before he was indicted for tax fraud in 1982; from when the Silver Slipper regularly drew Sinatra and Jackie Gleason to its linen-draped tables; and from the reigns of two or three owners before that who had their own stories to tell. The piano had a story, too. Anyone who gazed at its sullen, aged cabinet for more than a few seconds knew that, even if they didn’t know anything about the story except that it wasn’t a happy one.

  Phoenix found the old piano in the storage room during a bored fit of exploration one summer day, when she discovered that the storage room wasn’t locked as it usually was. The room was little more than a closet, crowded with old sound equipment, boxes stamped with Dewars labels, and stacks of ratty chairs with broad backs that looked like patio castoffs. The piano sat in the middle of the floor, facing
nothing in particular, misplaced even within disorder.

  The piano was so ugly it was surly. The upright piano’s blond rosewood finish had rotted away, and its cabinet resembled old, cracked leather, riven with uneven checkers, like a dusty lizard’s skin. The ivory keys were so brown they looked coffee-stained, and the ones with missing key tops looked worse, stripped to the bone. The golden Rosenkranz label would have brightened it, but the lettering had been swallowed by rot. The piano’s twin candelabra, tarnished black, stood with defiant stateliness above the keys although no candles had burned to light this piano in lifetimes.

  Phoenix loved the piano on sight.

  Maybe it was the Sarge’s timer and the piano lessons. Maybe it was her boredom at being forced to sing along while her mother played “My Way,” “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and “Ebb Tide” on the living room piano after dinner on Friday nights, when Phoenix was sure there was something good on cable. Whatever it was, Phoenix liked the look of that rotted old piano. She liked its rot best of all.

  As she did with all treasures, Phoenix wanted to share her discovery with her cousin Gloria, who was also her best friend. Gloria was from the white side of the family. She lived two blocks from Phoenix in the palm- and pine-lined suburbs of southwest Dade County, a Jewish girl with curly blond hair and faint freckles on her nose.

  “This is an ugly effing piano,” Gloria announced when she saw it.

  That stung. Gloria’s words often stung. Nothing gentle came out of her.

  “Well, you’re wearing an ugly effing shirt. Hammer’s getting played out,” Phoenix said, answering her cousin’s truth with an outright lie. Phoenix envied the long-sleeved M. C. Hammer concert jersey Gloria wore to school at least twice a week and usually on weekends. Aunt Liv had spent fifty dollars on that shirt. Mom would never spend fifty dollars on a concert shirt, even if it was a concert for Jesus and his Second Coming Tour.

  “You’re just effing jealous,” Gloria said. Effing was Gloria’s favorite new word.

  “I am not fucking jealous,” Phoenix said, feeling bold.

  “Ooh, I’m telling your dad, Phee.”

  “Go ahead. I don’t care. He knows you cuss way worse than me.”

  “It’s only cussing if you say it. I said eff-ing. You are in trouble.”

  Durn. She would have to beg. “Don’t tell, Gloria.” She used her no-playing voice.

  Gloria shrugged, dramatically rolling her eyes away. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. “Does this thing even work?” Gloria said, turning her attention back to the piano. “It looks whack. Straight-up, girl. For real, though.”

  Much to Phoenix’s irritation, her friends often remarked that her white cousin Gloria sounded more black than she did. Gloria could front all she wanted, but she didn’t have a real, deep-laughing black daddy like Sarge. Phoenix had cornrows and caramel-colored skin that stayed tan all year, and Gloria turned as red as a box of Cap’n Crunch if she was in the sun for five minutes. Gloria was just confused—but then again, so was Mom, since Christmas was Mom’s favorite time of year, and Mom’s own sister wouldn’t even let Gloria have a Christmas tree.

  Phoenix pressed the piano’s middle-C key, and it was silent except for a muffled clicking sound. The D played, but it was soft and off-key. Phoenix’s piano teacher, Mrs. Abramowicz, would hate that sound. Ugly and broken. Maybe Gloria was right. Maybe it was an old broke-down piece of nothing after all. “I guess it’s not anything special,” Phoenix said.

  “Naw, it’s all right, though. It’s not that whack,” Gloria said, arms linked behind her back like an archaeologist. “It’s got attitude.”

  The piano did have attitude. If she had this piano instead of the respectable one Grandpa Bud and Grandma Oprah had bought her (no, not that Oprah; it was a Hebrew name before it became a brand name, Grandma Oprah always said), she might not mind Sarge’s practice sessions so much. This piano would make a racket. It would mangle Für Elise and put Beethoven to shame. Sarge would beg her to stop practicing.

  “Maybe I can take it home,” Phoenix said.

  Gloria looked at her like she was crazy. “Why?”

  Because it’s sad, Phoenix wanted to say, but she didn’t, because Gloria would laugh.

  And besides, that wasn’t quite right, Phoenix thought as she let her hand glide across the piano’s rough cabinet, halfway expecting to pick up a splinter. The piano was mad. That was closer to the truth. Maybe it wouldn’t be mad anymore if she gave it a home. She wanted to take care of the piano more than she’d wanted to take care of her guinea pig, Grayboy, before he died last year. She loved the piano already, somehow. She had to have it for herself.

  “Maybe this is the freaky piano my mom told me about,” Gloria said.

  “What piano?”

  “My mom told me there was this piano here she thought was haunted. She saw it move by itself, or some shit like that.” At first Phoenix thought her cousin was teasing her, but the half grin across Gloria’s face was more thoughtful than mischievous, and she wasn’t that good an actress.

  “I don’t believe you,” Phoenix said.

  “I don’t care if you do or not. I know what she told me. She said she was scared of it, and she’s still scared of pianos. And it made her feet itch.”

  “That last part was stupid. You should lie better,” Phoenix said. “My mom’s not scared of no durn piano. If there was a haunted piano, both of them should be scared.”

  Gloria shrugged. “Eff off. I know what my mom said.”

  “You eff off.” Suddenly, Phoenix was tired of arguing. Maybe Gloria wasn’t lying, and the piano really was haunted. There could be a Guinness World Record for the spookiest piano! She would have to research this. Some of the records were very unusual.

  “Come on. Let’s ask Mom and Sarge if I can have it,” Phoenix said.

  Downstairs, walking along the rear wall of the lounge behind the sea of empty red-draped tables, they passed what Sarge called the Gallery of Greats, a row of poster-sized framed photographs of the jazz artists Phoenix’s father played in the garage. It was a parade in black and white, grinning faces in old-fashioned hats and clothes. Phoenix knew their names from their faces and labels, a game she’d devised when she was eight, and she named each in a whisper as she passed: Scott Joplin. Jelly Roll Morton. Louis Armstrong. Duke Ellington. Count Basie. Billie Holiday. Coleman Hawkins. Benny Goodman. Ella Fitzgerald. Lionel Hampton. Artie Shaw. Mary Lou Williams. Charlie Parker. John Coltrane. Miles Davis. Thelonious Monk.

  Phoenix could tell their personalities from their faces. Miles Davis, Billie Holiday and Scott Joplin were frowners, looking like somebody owed them money or had gotten on their last nerves. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Count Basie were ready to get on with the show, with enough smiles to make up for the rest. Especially Louis Armstrong. Louis Armstrong could smile for days. Whenever Phoenix heard the phrase grinning from ear to ear, she thought of Louis Armstrong in that photograph, with his forehead, horn and teeth gleaming. It was hard to imagine what one man could have to be so happy about.

  Phoenix found Mom and Sarge on the stage walking from microphone to microphone, doing a sound check with Javier. Sarge’s booming voice filled up the room: checkcheckcheckonetwo. A woman Phoenix didn’t know stood by watching them. The woman had bleached-blond hair and wore a pantsuit that looked tight, bulging around her body’s every lump, and Phoenix wondered how she could breathe. Her pale hair sprayed behind her as though she were standing in the middle of a private storm.

  She must be tonight’s singer, Valentina somebody. Latin jazz. Phoenix had seen her poster outside the front door, but the woman in the poster was younger and thinner. The woman in the poster was also smiling, and Valentina was not.

  “What are you looking at?” the woman snapped at Javier, who was bending over behind her to plug a cord into an amp. “Put your eyes back where they belong, you useless starfucker.”

  She said it so loudly that Javier’s face went red.

  “Bi
tch,” Gloria muttered under her breath, since she had a crush on Javier even though he was an old man, nearly thirty. Phoenix couldn’t help giggling. She liked the sound of starfucker; the front half was glittery and the back half vulgar, the way the perfect cussword should be.

  Sarge’s head swiveled to look back at the singer. Beneath his mud-cloth African skullcap, his eyes burned bright. “We don’t talk to staff like that here,” Sarge said. Her father’s voice was its own growling storm.

  The singer shot him a look as if she was ready to unload some more inventive words, but Sarge’s eyes, or maybe his voice, made her keep her lips pinned shut.

  “Apologize to him for that language,” Sarge said.

  The woman’s lips peeled back against her teeth as if she wanted to bite Sarge. To Phoenix, she looked like that vampire lady in Def by Temptation, the sexy horror movie she and her cousin had watched on cable at Gloria’s house after her parents went to bed. But the woman said, very softly, “Lo siento, lo siento, let’s just get finished already. Dios mio.”

  Something she said must have been I’m sorry in Spanish, because Sarge’s eyes left her and he went back to yanking cords. Phoenix saw Mom give him a frown. Mom had told Sarge that if he ever talked to her the way he talked to the artists, she would kick him to the curb. But Sarge saved that tone for grown people who thought they were children and didn’t know how to act. He didn’t even talk to Phoenix like that, except when he told her to bring him his belt.

  Phoenix climbed onstage to give her mother a shameless hug. She only hugged Mom before she was about to beg her for something. Mom’s bosom smelled like perspiration and Ombre Rose, her favorite perfume. She was wearing her loose purple batik pants and matching top with the mirrored, sparkly collar, like an Indian princess. Mom only wore clothes that draped over her body, hiding it. Mom was never through with her stories of the starvation and broken bodies from her days with a ballet company in Boston, but as long as Phoenix had known her, her mother had weighed more than two hundred pounds.