Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  “Right now, it’s about legacy and surviving the marketplace, Reenie,” Sarge said. He stood and walked behind Phoenix’s chair, wrapping both arms around her neck so he wouldn’t muss her makeup or her hair. Phoenix felt self-conscious, since she never saw Sarge hug her sister this way. “You’re beautiful, you’ve worked hard, and this is your moment. Rising is your Rhythm Nation, Phee. Two million people will see you tonight. After this, the charts are gonna be yours to take. Enjoy yourself out there. Own that stage.” He kissed the top of her earlobe, and the rough stubble on his cheek brushed against her, tickling.

  Gazing at their faces framed together in the mirror, Phoenix remembered seeing her parents’ portrait on the wall in her dream, when she’d been preparing to leave home. An unnameable sadness welled in her. “Thanks for getting me here, Daddy. I love you.”

  “Love you, too. I’m gonna go check my messages.”

  That was Sarge’s all-purpose escape from any room, and Phoenix wasn’t surprised. Sarge always found ways to avoid being near Serena too long, even if he couldn’t admit it. Serena was the only person with that power over him, because Sarge never backed away from anyone else. Sarge had told Phoenix he and Serena had been very close before he went to prison—she was fourteen when he was sentenced—and Serena had told Phoenix that she refused to visit him in prison, so she didn’t see Sarge again until she was twenty-two. When Sarge and Serena were together, their missing eight years yawned between them, unspoken, even when they smiled.

  Phoenix couldn’t understand how Serena didn’t hate her for getting everything from Sarge she hadn’t. Her half brothers were happy to pretend Phoenix didn’t exist, although Serena had told her that when she was famous, she’d see enough of Malcolm and Junior to last a lifetime. But Phoenix didn’t miss her brothers today. All the people she cared about most were here, except for Mom, but Mom was everywhere in spirit.

  He was here, too. But no one knew it except her.

  Phoenix could see him. He was in the upper corner of the makeup mirror, where the lights converged to create a blazing, glowing ball too bright to stare into. That was him. Phoenix was tempted to point him out, but it had taken a lot of concentration to learn how to see him, and she’d learned after frustrating moments with Gloria that not everybody could. (“What? So the light burned out. Big deal, Phee.”) He was everywhere. A piece of paper had floated to her feet as she passed the receptionist’s desk when she arrived for the taping, and that had been him again, invisible. Maybe he had always been following her, and she had just learned how to notice.

  Serena hummed a few bars of “Party Patrol” under her breath, and Phoenix smiled.

  “Sing it with me, Serena,” Phoenix said. She’d been asking Serena for three days, but this was her last chance. “You’d tear it up out there on TV.”

  When she heard the word sing, Serena’s head shook violently back and forth. Phoenix remembered when she’d felt that nervous about performing, when Sarge used to coax her onto the stage the way he’d coaxed her through physical therapy after she almost died. But Phoenix didn’t feel nervous today, of all days.

  “You’re such a chickenshit, Serena,” Gloria said. “You’re the best singer in this room.”

  The makeup artist looked taken aback, but Phoenix only smiled. “She is,” Phoenix told the woman. “You should hear her.”

  “How would I look, almost a fifty-year-old woman out there tryin’ to be an R&B singer? And fat as hell, too? Please. Ya’ll are trippin’.”

  “Who’s fat? You ain’t fat. Big is beautiful,” the makeup artist said. She was bigger than Serena, but not as tall. Serena had height from Sarge’s side of the family, so she was five-ten and solid, hiding her weight evenly across her frame. She looked good, except that Phoenix could remember how she had looked before her marriage to Trey’s father broke up. To Phoenix, Serena’s fifty extra pounds looked like a coat of sadness.

  “Hey, listen here, ya’ll,” Serena said, “I don’t know if big is beautiful, but Mickey D’s fries and Dunkin’ Donuts are damn masterpieces. They’re straight-up works of art. O-kayyy?”

  As they laughed, Phoenix saw that her ghost in the mirror was flickering instead of blazing. Was he laughing, too? Phoenix would like to think so, but it didn’t seem likely. She hadn’t seen him in the form of a man since the night she slept in Carlos’s bed, but she imagined he was sighing near her even when she couldn’t hear him. Otherwise, why would he still be here?

  What do you want? What do you want me to do? The questions came to her again and again. She never forgot him long, even when she tried.

  The door opened, and a passing woman stuck her head in. “Big man’s comin’,” she said, a warning, and walked on. Was Ronn coming to see her, or was he still in hiding?

  The makeup artist stubbed out her cigarette and leaned close to Phoenix’s ear, her voice low. Her breath smelled like tobacco and mint gum. “He don’t come back here unless he thinks the guest is fine,” she told Phoenix, and Phoenix knew then she wasn’t talking about Ronn. “Remember, he’s got two babies and a girlfriend.”

  “Uh-oh. Cockblock,” Gloria whispered, and she and the stylist snickered.

  When Alex Compton walked into the green room, the space suddenly seemed smaller because his presence was so large. He had a smooth face and a cleft in his chin, more like an actor than a comedian, and his snappy silver-gray suit was camera-ready. Phoenix felt currents shooting between Trey, Gloria and Serena when he appeared. There was something hypnotic about spying a familiar face on a stranger, Phoenix thought. She felt mesmerized herself.

  Compton knocked on the open door even though he was already inside, just to make sure everyone saw him. “So, this is where the party’s at! Just thought I’d pop in and holla, ladies. We’re amped to have you with us, Phoenix. I’m Alex.” He gave her a smile that looked dazzling in the mirror’s reflection, nearly as bright as her ghost’s light.

  “Mr. Compton, can I have your autograph?” Trey said, bounding to him. Sarge had already asked G-Ronn and D’Real to sign Trey’s book. “You are so funny, man.”

  “Thanks, little homey. Gotta laugh to keep from crying,” Compton said. As he signed, his eyes never left Phoenix’s in the mirror.

  A bottle of crimson nail polish on the makeup table fell to the floor, unnoticed by everyone except Phoenix. The bottle rolled until it lay directly beneath her feet, tinkling against the metal base of her chair. To her, the sound was deafening, snapping her from her bedazzlement.

  “Phoenix, if there’s anything you need, say the word,” Compton said. “I’ll—”

  “I need a piano,” Phoenix said, spinning her chair to face him. It took her several seconds to wonder why she suddenly felt resolved about it, but she wanted a piano. Badly.

  Compton froze in place, one arm akimbo, the other outstretched as if he’d planned to shake her hand. He glanced behind him at the empty doorway, then back at her. “Oh. Okay. I’ll have to figure out…how to do that. We’re right at showtime.” Panic crept into his face.

  “Can I have it center stage, please? Any piano is fine,” Phoenix said.

  Gloria made a face at Phoenix. Piano? Gloria mouthed.

  “Someone will talk to Patti. Patti will take care of it right now,” the makeup artist told Compton in an assuring, parental voice, and Compton’s muscles relaxed, the smile back.

  “OK. It’s all good, then,” he said, happy to go while the problem was solved.

  “Shit. I gotta tell Patti,” the makeup artist muttered, leaving on his tail.

  All she’d done was ask for a piano, but she’d huffed and puffed and blown them all away.

  “Man, did you see that?” Trey laughed. “Aunt Phee snaps her fingers, and they jump!”

  Gloria stood in front of Phoenix, arms crossed against her chest. “Excuse me, diva girl, but why do you need a piano for a prerecorded track? Sarge won’t want you changing the set.”

  It was one more thing Phoenix couldn’t explain. She wasn’t
sure she knew.

  Carlos was sitting in the front row. Phoenix saw him right away, a spotlight’s ray singling him out of the gray faces in the audience hidden behind the glare. She smiled and gave him a Whassup, Carlos incline, just like Lauryn Hill at the Stephen Talkhouse Bar, and Carlos blew her a kiss. Phoenix talked to Carlos on the phone every day, but she hadn’t seen him since the day Milton came and went, so she was glad he had accepted her invitation. Phoenix felt unusually happy; maybe the happiest she’d ever been. She hadn’t expected to find the happiest moment of her life on the stage of Live at Night in Studio B in Burbank, but here it was.

  Phoenix looked for Sarge next, shielding her eyes from the lights.

  There he was. Sarge was standing offstage beside the camera monitor, next to a woman with a clipboard. Phoenix couldn’t make out the subtle details of his face, although the tilt of his head and the rise of his chest told her he was proud of her. Phoenix assumed that the woman standing next to Sarge was Patti, the producer who had found her a piano. The piano wasn’t center stage as she’d requested, but it was on hand and ready, a satin black Steinway she wouldn’t mind owning if she had room for a piano.

  Phoenix glanced behind her at Danielle and Monisha, the backup singers, who stood in matching black spandex with smiles pasted, waiting for the cameras to come on. She wished Arturo were here instead. They were decent singers—and they were model-thin—but Phoenix knew Serena would have chewed them up if she had been brave enough to show herself.

  An APPLAUSE sign lit up, and a disembodied man’s voice barked: “And five…four…three…two…” The audience came to life, clapping and hooting while red lights popped on atop the video cameras to widen the view by a couple million people.

  Alex Compton stood on his mark, before a mammoth screen showing Phoenix’s publicity shot from her promo packet—sultry eyes gazing from beyond a mask of mascara, a hip thrust seductively to one side—the photo she thought made her look like her twin sister, the pretty and daring one. “Her joint Rising is about to drop, and her first single, ‘Party Patrol,’ is blowing up. Everybody’s talkin’ about it, and I’ve got her first. From Three Strikes Records and executive producers G-Ronn and D’Real…Pheeeeeeee-niiiiixxxxx…”

  The audience applauded as if they loved her already and had worshipped her for years. The air was as thick as the wind before a storm. Phoenix’s ears popped.

  Egyptian strings blared around Phoenix, her orchestra of one playing on the speakers from the song’s intro. Then came the rhythmic burr of the Egyptian tabla, and the funkilicious Marshall Jones bass line D’Real copped from that old Ohio Players cut, “Skin Tight.” The song exploded to life, compelling motion. Behind her, Phoenix’s dancers swayed and bobbed. Phoenix had rehearsed so long, her hips rolled right, then left, without direction from her.

  So, THIS is what this feels like, Phoenix thought. It was a perfect memory.

  Then, as suddenly as it had come, the moment’s significance passed. Phoenix took a deep breath, listening in silence as her cue to sing sailed by on the recording. The girls behind her waited a confused millisecond, but they hit their cues, singing backup to her silence. The music pounded on without Phoenix, with only her faint vocal underneath the music track to help her remember where she was supposed to be. I think I’m losin’ control…out on this Party Patrol…

  Sing, sing, SING, the aware part of her shrieked, but Phoenix felt so detached from herself, she might be sitting next to Carlos in the audience, watching as this fool stood frozen on the stage. Finally, tired of watching herself, Phoenix raised her arms until they were above her head, and she waved with long, slow swoops. The black sleeves of her costume fanned around her, as if she thought she could fly.

  The music stopped abruptly. Uncomfortable confusion jittered through the audience, but the APPLAUSE sign came on and everyone forgave her, calling out encouragement. Maybe they thought she was afraid, and they were right. But not for the reasons they thought.

  Phoenix brought her microphone to her lips as she stared out at the abyss behind the lights. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry for the change in the program, but bear with me,” she said, and her voice was sure of itself. Didn’t she owe her audience the truth?

  “I’ve been in communication with the ghost of Scott Joplin, a black composer who died in 1917, and I’m going to play an excerpt from an opera that hasn’t been heard in a hundred years. You’re about to witnesses a piece of history sent to us from whatever’s on the other side of the curtain. If you still want to hear ‘Party Patrol,’ tune in to your radio. Peace.”

  Did I just say that? It was hard to remember, even as she sat at the piano bench. The audience was so silent, she wondered if they’d left while her back was turned. The cameras were still on, red lights staring. In the corner of her eye, Phoenix saw the producer waving her clipboard at someone across the stage. Sarge was nowhere in sight.

  Thinking of Sarge startled her. What the hell am I doing? But she didn’t wonder long.

  Phoenix’s eyes closed, and she played. Key of F. Jaunty bass notes and a trilling high F to start, then a folksy introduction in a flowery ragtime style. As she played, words came to Phoenix’s mind that slipped easily across the melody, a perfect fit. At first she thought she was improvising to match the piece, but then she realized she was remembering, somehow.

  Phoenix leaned to her mike stand and sang the first act of her ghost’s lost opera:

  Hear me speak, my brethren here,

  And my comely sisters too.

  We’ve toiled so hard for many a year,

  And our future many rue.

  Our old way of life will never be

  Since ’Mancipation’s set us free.

  To cuss and curse your brother’s fate

  Is not the way to seal our bond,

  If we are to improve our state

  For tomorrow and beyond.

  Our old way of life will never be

  Since Mr. Lincoln’s set us free.

  I am a man with many plans

  To lift us from starvation

  I will build a school, so all our clans

  Can leave this lowly station.

  Our old way of life will never be

  Since ’Mancipation’s set us free.

  She sang as she never had, until perspiration sprang to her forehead, and her throat felt raw, until her mouth was parched. Phoenix’s hands capered across the piano keys with eerie precision, drawn to the chords and elegant melody flourishes, always at perfect harmony with her soaring voice. She sang with ease, and not a single note wavered.

  Phoenix sang for six minutes solid, nearly twice her allotted time, before Sarge walked to the piano and rested his palms across her shoulders, which was how she knew it was time to stop.

  Phoenix heard three sets of enthusiastic, clapping hands. But the APPLAUSE sign was nowhere to be found.

  Here, cuz, drink this,” Gloria said. The liquid in the styrofoam cup was tepid, some kind of tea. Phoenix couldn’t taste it. She wanted to spit it out.

  “I’m not thirsty.” Phoenix’s voice was a whisper. She’d shorn her throat, or it felt like she had. Every piercing note on the stage had left tatters. Her heart was a drill in her chest, as it had been since Sarge led her offstage and she understood what she had done. No, it wasn’t what she had done—it was what her ghost had done to her. He had taken her sleepwalking again, only this time she’d been awake.

  “Drink it anyway. And take some deep breaths. Inhale for five seconds, exhale for five.” It was easy to forget that Gloria was trained as a lifesaver, until Phoenix needed her.

  Tremors came in violent waves, from her toes to her scalp. She huddled on a corner of the leather love seat in the green room, her limbs drawn up tightly around her. Her teeth chattered, but she didn’t feel cold this time, only weak. None of her muscles remembered how to support her. Her fingers were trembling so badly, she had to sit on them to keep them still.

  “Th-that wasn’t me out t
here,” Phoenix said.

  Serena sat at her feet, rubbing Phoenix’s knee. “It’s all right, girl. God was just workin’ through you. That was the Spirit in you. It’s all right.” Serena bowed her head and whispered Yes, Lord. We heard you, Lord, squeezing her knee so hard it hurt. Phoenix craved the way Serena’s faith was so uncomplicated, without competing versions of God in her head. Phoenix wanted to call for God today, and she wasn’t sure how.

  “I want to see Carlos.”

  “You know Sarge won’t let him back here,” Gloria said.

  “Gloria…I need to see him.” She wished she could raise her voice above a whisper. Carlos had always understood, so maybe he would understand now, too. She needed to hear him say she had nothing to worry about, that her ghost would not hurt her. Carlos was always so confident about that, but she didn’t know. This was different. This was scary.

  Gloria sighed. “I’ll see what I can do about Carlos, but drink this first. And breathe.”

  “I fucked up,” Phoenix whispered to Gloria after another sip. “Huh?”

  Gloria smiled a sour smile and nodded. She pulled Phoenix’s head close, kissing her forehead. “Yeah, you fucked up, cuz. We all do it. Life goes on.”

  “That was the Holy Spirit in you, Phee,” Serena said, gazing up at her with bright eyes. “Did you hear yourself? That wasn’t you alone. That was the Spirit, girl.”

  Phoenix hadn’t told Serena and Trey about her ghost. Gloria already knew, so that was different, but Serena had been so excited about getting her ready for Live at Night, there were long hours when Phoenix had forgotten her ghost altogether, and she hadn’t minded the respite. Otherwise, if she wasn’t careful, she was watching for him all the time. Waiting for him, just as she was now. He wasn’t in the mirror anymore. Was that her ghost in the microwave door popping itself open no matter how many times Trey pushed it shut again, as if they were playing a game? Was he in the starbursts of static floating across the muted television screen? He might be the sheen on the fresh-mopped black floor. Sometimes, most times, it was hard to tell.