Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  “What’s up, Buttercup?” Mom said, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. Her dark hair was limp and straight, except when it got wet, when it turned nearly as wiry and curly as Phoenix’s. Phoenix enjoyed posing in the mirror with her mother when their hair looked alike.

  “I want to ask you something.”

  “Can it wait?” Mom said, keeping her eye toward Sarge and the singer.

  “Peanut, come here,” Sarge said, beckoning. He was winding a black cord around his thick arm, from his palm to his elbow.

  The singer left the stage and stood watching them from a few yards away, her arms folded across her chest. She was so mad, her face looked bright pink. Hibiscus pink.

  Sarge lowered his face to Phoenix’s. His neck was almost as thick as his face, and he had a broad nose that flared when he was mad, or when he laughed. Phoenix couldn’t see herself in her father’s face either, although everybody told her she looked just like him in the eyes. She wished she had browner skin and could shave her head like Sarge, or else she wished her hair would lie down flat like Mom’s and Gloria’s. She had a little of each of her parents, but not enough of either.

  “Did you hear Queen Isabella?” Sarge said softly. “I had to give her The Ray.”

  Sarge had told her Benny Goodman used to give his musicians The Ray with his eyes when he didn’t like what he heard on the bandstand. Sarge did it with his eyes and his voice. Don’t be fooled by that Sunday school teacher suit and glasses in the picture, Sarge had told her—you did not mess with Benny Goodman. Nobody messed with Sarge, either.

  “She had it coming,” Phoenix said.

  “Be that as it may,” Sarge said, “your mama’s giving me looks. So I want you to go on over there and do that little-girl thang. You know how you do. Give her a smile, bat your eyes, and say these words exactly like this: ‘You’re so pretty. You look better than your picture.’”

  Phoenix rolled her eyes. “That’s a lie.”

  Phoenix heard Javier chuckle from behind the drum set. Sarge lowered his voice. “It’s not a lie. It’s an exaggeration. Besides, beauty is subjective.”

  “What does subjective mean?”

  “It means she looks pretty if I tell you she looks pretty. It’s a matter of opinion. Go on.”

  “Really, it’s shameful,” Mom said, walking past them toward the grand piano at the back of the stage. “If you teach her deception, it’ll come back to you.”

  “One song getting airplay on public radio, and she struts in here acting like she’s somebody. I’ll send her ass packing right back to wherever she’s from.” Sarge barely kept his voice down when he said that. His eyes looked restless, like he might give the singer The Ray again because his memories were making him mad. “Musicians come do their job. In and out. But singers? Always the same shit.”

  Phoenix reminded herself, yet again, that she would never, ever be a singer.

  The singer pulled out her cell phone to call someone, glaring at Sarge from her safe distance against the wall. She was about to walk out, and that would be the end of the show. Phoenix could feel it. It had happened before.

  “I’ll do it, but I’ll have my fingers crossed behind my back,” Phoenix said. “OK, Mom? That means it’s not a lie.”

  “Oh, so that makes it all better. What a relief,” Mom said sarcastically. She dismissed them with a wave of her hand and disappeared behind the backstage curtain. Phoenix heard Mom promising herself she would sell the Silver Slipper, and she meant it this time, no matter what her father had said about family legacy.

  Suddenly, Phoenix remembered the piano. “Can I have that old piano, Daddy?” When she wanted something, she’d learned it was better to call him Daddy, not Sarge.

  “Which old piano?”

  “Upstairs. In the storeroom.”

  “We’ll see. I’ll take a look at it,” Sarge said, winking. From Sarge, We’ll see was only a short hop to yes. When Mom said We’ll see, it almost always meant no, another of the differences between her parents. “Now go on and work your magic, Peanut, before I get in trouble. If we lose this one, your mom’s gonna be just about through with me.”

  After beckoning for Gloria to come with her (“What, Phee? Javier was finally noticing me!”), Phoenix sidled up beside the woman. The singer was punching the buttons on her cell phone as if she wanted to break them. She put the phone to her ear, and her flurry of Spanish began. Phoenix had heard some of the words at school: Puta. Maricón. Comemíerda. Angry words. Go-to-the-principal’s-office or meet-me-after-school words.

  After a deep breath, Phoenix stood in front of the singer and stared up at her with admiring eyes. Following Sarge’s advice, she blinked a time or two, trying to bat her lashes, but she thought she probably looked more like she had dust in her eyes.

  The singer sighed, and her breath smelled like the strong Cuban coffee Mom drank from little plastic cups the size of thimbles, like motor oil with sugar. The singer put her hand over the phone’s receiver. “What do you want?” she said to Phoenix.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but you are so beautiful,” Phoenix said.

  The singer’s face froze, waiting.

  “You’re much prettier than in your picture. And you sing great, too,” Phoenix went on. She remembered she’d forgotten to cross her fingers behind her back, so she did it after the fact.

  An amazing transformation took place: The lines near the singer’s mouth vanished as her lips became a smile, her eyes were suddenly girlish, and her face glowed like a newly lighted candle. In that instant, Phoenix realized she wasn’t lying, because the woman’s face on the poster outside was posed and fake, but Valentina’s face had become lovely and soft and honest. She was older than the woman in the poster, but that did not make her less pretty; in fact, her beauty seemed more lasting, more precious, because most of it sat in her gentle brown eyes.

  “Thank you, gracias,” the singer said. She blinked, and Phoenix could tell she was close to tears. Phoenix had never seen such a powerful reaction to her words. “You are a very sweet girl to say that. Not everyone thinks so. Some say I am a foolish old woman.”

  “They’re just stupid,” Phoenix said. “I hope I can be as pretty as you one day.”

  “For real. Can we have your autograph?” Gloria said, holding out a napkin. Gloria could be a royal pain when she wanted to, but Phoenix could count on her cousin to back her up every time. While Valentina signed the napkin, Phoenix glanced around to look at her father on the stage. He was grinning as wide as Louis Armstrong.

  Phoenix would tell Sarge she hadn’t even lied. She was proud of that.

  “You two are best friends?” the woman said, when she’d finished signing her name in a swirl of cursive, illegible but still beautiful.

  “Cousins,” Phoenix said.

  Valentina didn’t blink or frown. Most people couldn’t understand how brown skin and white skin, or black cornrows and blond hair, could be in the same family. That was tiresome.

  “Ah, cousins! But friends, too?” the woman said.

  Phoenix looked at Gloria, who smiled at her. They both nodded. Everybody at school knew they were best friends. Anybody who messed with Phoenix was messing with Gloria, and messing with Gloria was a bad idea. Gloria wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody. In that way, Gloria was more like Sarge than Phoenix was.

  Valentina put one hand on top of Phoenix’s head and the other on Gloria’s. “Always stay friends, not only cousins,” she said. “Siempre. ¿Comprende? Always.”

  Then Valentina went back to the stage, with a regal walk like a queen. She walked straight up to Javier and gave him a tight hug, her true apology. She purred at him in Spanish.

  “Bitch,” Gloria muttered. “Her hand is almost touching his butt!”

  “Stop looking at that old man like that. You’re so gross, Gloria.”

  “I’m an early bloomer.”

  “You’re a Freakazoid.”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  “I can�
�t help it if you’re my cousin.”

  “I can’t help it if you’re too much of a baby to know a cute guy when you see one. I got my period already, remember? I’m a woman.” Double-gross, Phoenix thought. She wouldn’t care if she didn’t get her period until she was as old as Valentina. She had seen Gloria wash out her bloody underwear in her sink at home, and stained underwear was nothing to brag about.

  After hugging Javier, Valentina went to Sarge next, although she did not hug him. Sarge was not the kind of man people tried to touch without an invitation. She kept her distance, but she was smiling. And The Ray was gone from Sarge’s eyes.

  The show would go on. Sarge owed her now. She would get her piano.

  Phoenix wanted to see her piano again, to make sure she hadn’t only imagined it. She beckoned to Gloria, and they made their way back past the Gallery of Greats to the bright red EXIT sign over the rear doorway that forked right for the bathrooms and the emergency exit, left for the stairs to the second floor. The sticky floor smelled like old beer.

  Halfway up the stairs, Phoenix’s heart went cold in her chest.

  The piano was no longer in the storage room. It was at the top of the stairs.

  The piano was sideways, but there was no mistaking the weathered wood she had just run her hand across a few minutes before. The lighter wood planks underneath the piano showed because it dangled nearly halfway over the landing.

  “Hey!” Gloria called up. “Who’s messing with the piano? It’s gonna fall!”

  No one answered from behind the piano.

  “Somebody thinks they’re real funny!” Gloria said.

  Who could have moved it? Mom and Sarge were downstairs, and so was Javier. She’d seen some musicians earlier, but they said they were going to Lincoln Road Mall for a late lunch. She hadn’t seen the janitor today, and the servers and bartenders wouldn’t come until later. The Bell boys, the janitor’s sons, might have moved the piano, but why would they be here if their father wasn’t? Besides, usually they only came upstairs to sneak cigarettes in the storeroom. The Bell boys were thirteen and fourteen, truly repulsive creatures. They made Phoenix dread the fall, when she would have to go to school with seventh and eighth graders. If the Bell boys were any indication, middle school must be like Hell.

  The Bells from Hell had moved the piano, because jerks must be jerks.

  Gloria had the same idea. “We know it’s just you guys, and we’re not scared,” Gloria called. Gloria was a little scared—Phoenix could tell by a slight waver in her voice—but Phoenix was impressed at how well Gloria pretended she wasn’t.

  “We better tell Sarge,” Phoenix said.

  “We don’t need Sarge. Let’s push it back. Or else it might fall.”

  “What if it’s not them?” Phoenix whispered. “You said there’s a haunted piano here.”

  “It’s them. They heard us talking, and they’re being dickwads.”

  Before Phoenix could open her mouth again, Gloria was already bounding up the stairs. Phoenix’s heart tripped with alarm, and she felt dizzy as fear flushed her body. This felt all wrong. This felt B-A-D, and not like in Michael Jackson’s version.

  Gloria squeezed herself past the piano. There was just enough room for her to get by. Nothing would stand between Gloria and an adventure. “I’ll pull from behind, and you push from the stairs. OK, Phee? On three.”

  Phoenix didn’t move. Her hand held the banister tight. Mom said Gloria was too much like her mother; act first, think later.

  “Are you coming or not?”

  “I’m gonna go get Sarge.”

  “Go on, then. He’ll think we moved it and get pissed off at us.”

  No he wouldn’t, Phoenix thought. Sarge knew she wasn’t a liar, even if Gloria’s parents didn’t have the same confidence in Gloria. Gloria hadn’t earned her parents’ trust, Mom said. But Gloria was probably right: It was stupid to be afraid of the piano, thinking it had moved by itself and had made up its mind to fall. The Bell boys had done it, even if she hadn’t seen them. Phoenix couldn’t guess why they would do it, but it was almost impossible to guess why boys did anything. She and Gloria could move it back themselves. That would show those boys that girls weren’t as weak as they thought. Stupid jerks.

  “OK, I’m coming,” Phoenix said. She climbed up the last eight steps and leaned against the piano with both palms.

  “Wait, I said! On three,” Gloria said.

  “OK.”

  “One…two…”

  There was never a three.

  The piano scooted forward and teetered. “Hey!” Phoenix said. The piano’s sudden weight against her hands scared her, so she drew back and stepped down a step. Above her, the piano rocked, tipping.

  The piano was going to fall.

  Gloria, above her, sounded frantic. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

  The loud rumbling came next as the piano launched down the stairs. Pale splintered wood flew from underneath the piano as it crashed on the hard steps, charging from one to the next, chunk-chunk-chunk. It sounded like a locomotive, Phoenix thought.

  Then, she stopped thinking and turned to run.

  Gloria yelled out to her from above, but her cousin’s words were too hurried and slurred to understand. Phoenix had never heard Gloria sound so scared.

  Phoenix was scared, too, but she heard herself laughing as the rumbling sound grew louder behind her. The little piano that could, she thought nonsensically, just like the children’s storybook about the Little Engine she’d read when she was little. Maybe there was a World Record for racing a runaway piano! Her feet tripped down the steps two and three at time, flying. The picture of herself running away from a piano seemed funnier all the time.

  The stairwell twisted, surprising her with nowhere to run. When the piano’s bulk nudged the small of her back, Phoenix’s laugh became a scream.

  Marcus Smalls had thought his life was over when he went to Raiford Maximum Security Penitentiary in Raiford, Florida. He’d been locked up in March of 1971, the same year Louis Armstrong died, so it was a sad year all around—five to ten for illegal weapons after a Florida Trooper found his two high-powered .223 rifles in his trunk while he was making an overnight run from Atlanta to St. Pete, giving a broke friend a ride. No good deed goes unpunished. Sarge hadn’t even remembered his rifles were still in the car, truth be told, but no judge liked to see guns in the hands of a black man with a good recollection of history, even a black man who hadn’t been forced to defend himself yet. When the judge asked him why he had the guns, Marcus told him to turn on the evening news. Fuck Vietnam. What fool couldn’t see the war at home?

  Marcus served eight years, just long enough to miss all three of his children’s adolescent years, the ones that might just have mattered most, from what he could see. Locking a man away from his children should qualify as cruel and unusual punishment, Marcus believed, but the judge hadn’t seen it that way. No pussy was bad enough, but not as bad as watching from a distance while Serena, Marcus Jr. and Malcolm grew up wrongheaded without him. Marcus had laid down his life and future at Raiford as surely as if he’d died.

  He’d gone to jail for love, he always said. Love for his history. Love for his people. Love for the Panthers. Love had taken Marcus Smalls to Hell and back.

  At Raiford, he had seen four men stabbed to death, and would have stabbed one himself if that racist asshole hadn’t seen something in his eyes and decided he’d rather back down and live another day. Marcus also wouldn’t have minded snapping the neck of a CO who routinely confiscated his books because he must have hated to see another black man reading, and that self-restraint still amazed him. Marcus had been so lonely for a woman, he’d gleaned the first whisper of understanding how lifers could see a fine-featured young man as a substitute, which was more understanding than he’d considered himself capable of in one lifetime and much more than he’d wanted to know. Marcus had never seen so much despair in one place.

  At Raiford, Marcus had reali
zed that the revolution not only wouldn’t be televised, it wouldn’t be noticed at all. He and his cause had vanished. A petition with two hundred signatures had circulated on his behalf soon after his sentencing, but he never heard of another effort to free him. Worse, he’d realized that the very people he’d gone to prison hoping to motivate and liberate were sitting home laughing at Archie Bunker, Jimmie Walker and “The Jeffersons,” never expending a brain cell worrying about how they were going to build a black nation and reclaim what they had lost in the blood price their forebears paid. That had hurt almost as much as being locked away from his kids.

  All in all, Marcus had thought Raiford was the worst thing that could happen to a man.

  But he’d been wrong. The worst thing that could happen to a man, he learned, was seeing his little girl hurt. Seeing Phoenix hurt.

  His second-chance life wasn’t supposed to bring new tragedies. He’d seen to it.

  He’d cut his ties to the old warhorses he used to run with, those that were still out there running. After the first year, those niggers hadn’t sent Swarita and his children a dime while he was locked up—and his family had been homeless for a time—So fuck those niggers anyway, he told himself, even though he knew they were busy catching much hell themselves.

  God helped him most of all. Marcus felt God’s arms around him in a way he never had before, an embrace that drained anger from his heart. It was a daily struggle, but one he’d been carrying on like breathing. He’d pulled some old contacts to get work managing bands on the road, making a reputation for himself he was proud of. You could ask anyone from Earth Wind & Fire to Gladys Knight, and people knew Marcus Smalls got the job done. He’d made enough money to help Serena open a beauty shop in Atlanta, he’d set aside a little something for Marcus Jr. for when he got out of the pen for dealing shit on the streets, and he’d gotten Malcolm off that same shit by sending him to rehab and helping him get that job deejaying in Savannah. His older kids weren’t the Brady Bunch, but they were doing all right.