Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  No, sorry, this isn’t Marcus Smalls. My name is Gloria Katz, and I’m Phoenix’s personal assistant, so I’m taking her manager’s calls this week…Yes, Phoenix is available for interviews, if you’ll let me check my book…. Who are you with again?”

  Phoenix heard her cousin’s voice through the cracked bedroom doorway, so professional that she fooled her again for a split-second, making Phoenix wonder when she’d hired an assistant, or how she could afford it. Sarge had kept most of his phone work away from Phoenix’s hearing, so she hadn’t realized how intrusive his telephone was, like a child in constant need of feeding. Phoenix would have preferred to shut the thing off after Sarge relinquished his phone to Gloria in the limousine—saying he’d had enough, that he’d put up with as much as he could stand—but Gloria, true to her spirit as a lifesaver, insisted on answering its constant ringing.

  Career CPR, Phoenix thought. Good luck with that, cuz.

  Phoenix couldn’t keep her own attention anymore, so she didn’t blame Sarge for quitting. Creative differences, that was all. Sarge was stubbornly trying to live in the present, and suddenly Phoenix was more fascinated by the past. Sarge was playing family man today, sightseeing with Serena and Trey, and Phoenix couldn’t be mad at that. That’s what he should have been doing all along.

  Phoenix raised her head from the pile of books in her lap long enough to gaze at the gathering of strangers in her living room; not one, not two, but six psychics watching the videotaped image of her playing her keyboard the night she had sleepwalked. The music on the tape preserved another era while they craned to see her on the tiny black-and-white video monitor Finn had left, since she and Nia didn’t own a television set. All of them sipped peppermint tea from styrofoam cups someone had brought, nibbling from a plate of homemade brownies, as if Phoenix were hosting the monthly meeting of the City of Angels Psychics Club.

  Heather and Finn were here, and so were a white-haired Mexican man with tortoiseshell glasses who cleared his throat a lot; the guy with the flowing mane of dark hair and a moustache who reminded her of a famous magician she’d liked as a child, but whose name escaped her now; a woman in her late twenties with crew-cut red hair and bright freckles across every inch of her visible skin; and a middle-aged black woman they all deferred to, Johnita Somebody, who had written a best-selling book about being a psychic and flown in from Seattle because she was Heather’s mentor. What do you call a meeting of psychics? A gaggle, like geese? A murder, like crows? A passel of psychics, Phoenix decided. That sounded right.

  The passel had been here since early morning, walking through her apartment the way she’d walked through the Joplin House, trying to catch his vibes in the walls.

  Phoenix was doing a good job of ignoring the psychics, just as she’d mostly been ignoring Gloria. Phoenix had reading to do. The five books about Scott Joplin Carlos had brought her after yesterday’s television performance were plenty to keep her occupied, and she sat on a corner of her futon marking passages with a neon green Hi-Liter dangling from her mouth. Words and phrases jumped out at her: Syphilis. Teacher. Sedalia. Treemonisha.

  But she always came back to Freddie, the stern photograph of the appealing, pale-skinned woman Scott Joplin had pictured on the cover sheet of his original publication of “Bethena” in 1905, the photograph that might be the only remains of Joplin’s second wife.

  The wife, incidentally, who had died while they were married.

  Carlos had neglected to mention Freddie’s death when he first told Phoenix whose name she had heard in her ear, but Phoenix understood why he’d hesitated. That night by the pool, she had already been freaked out, peeing on herself, so she wouldn’t have been ready for that knowledge then. But things had changed. She was ready to understand, or at least to try. Phoenix felt as if she were preparing for an arranged marriage, trying to learn everything about her betrothed the way she’d studied Ronn, hoping to glimpse the breathing man hidden in the pages of facts and dates.

  Freddie had almost been erased from history, Phoenix had learned. Historians had known about Belle and a third woman Scott Joplin married late in life, but apparently none of the people who’d known Joplin best mentioned Freddie in later interviews, not even the widow who had survived him. It was as if Freddie had never existed.

  When Phoenix had called Van Milton yesterday to tell him about her television appearance and the first lyrics to A Guest of Honor, their conversation turned to Freddie after his excited speculations about Joplin’s link to Phoenix. The curator mentioned that Freddie might not have been unearthed at all if not for his friend Edward A. Berlin, the Joplin biographer who had discovered her existence in the late 1980s. Phoenix recognized Berlin’s name: He’d written one of the books in her stack, King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era. Phoenix convinced Milton to give her Berlin’s number, so she and Carlos had called him at his home in New York last night, late for the East Coast. The gracious musicologist had been too polite to offer any opinion on the scores Milton had sent him—Yes, this isn’t the first time A Guest of Honor has mysteriously shown up on my doorstep, he’d said dryly—but Edward Berlin had been happy to talk to her about Scott Joplin and Freddie.

  Such an unhappy, sad, depressed man, and he wrote this joyful music, Berlin had sighed, as if Joplin was a friend. Berlin told her about how he and his research assistants had combed historical cemeteries without any luck while he was researching Joplin’s biography, hoping to find a second wife he suspected existed. He’d pieced the second marriage together from vague references in interviews with people like the granddaughter of a man named Solomon Dixon, where Joplin had boarded for a time in Sedalia. Berlin had finally found Freddie’s death notice in several old Sedalia newspapers—the Conservator, Democrat, Sentinel and Capitol—rescuing her memory from oblivion.

  Freddie had been a kid when she died, twenty years old, and she had been married to Scott Joplin only ten weeks, not even three months. They’d hardly known each other when they got married, and their marriage had lasted the blink of an eye. But Berlin said Scott Joplin had obviously based the young lead character in his beautiful opera, Treemonisha, on Freddie: strong-willed, educated, a leader. His perfect woman. And he’s still mourning her now, Phoenix had thought while she listened. Either that, or he thinks he’s found her again.

  “Freeze it right there,” Johnita said suddenly, and Finn paused the tape. Johnita was wearing a loose, African-inspired dress and large hoop earrings dangling near her shoulders. Her dark hair was short enough for West Point, dotted with silver strands like paint specks. “There. Do you see that streak of light in the upper-left-hand corner? He’s behind her.”

  The passel scooted forward to look more closely at the monitor, and a round of ahhhhhhs made its way from person to person, along with breathless smiles. The Mexican man began scribbling notes. Phoenix glanced up, too, but she couldn’t see anything on the screen worth noticing. It was hard to get excited about a blip on a videotape when she’d seen him sitting on her bed, and he’d sung the words to A Guest of Honor through her mouth just yesterday.

  But her ghost wasn’t going to come while they were here.

  Her ghost had hidden himself the first time Heather was here, and she understood why after listening to the Houston Grand Opera recording of his opera, Treemonisha. The evil villains in Treemonisha were conjurers. A band of old conjurers kidnapped the heroine and conspired to keep the freed slaves ignorant and superstitious, trying to sell them bags of luck and rabbits’ feet while Treemonisha preached education. Conjurers must have really pissed Scott Joplin off, Phoenix thought. Her ghost wouldn’t visit while the passel was here.

  She knew him, at last. A little, anyway.

  “Phoenix?” Johnita’s voice said gently. Phoenix looked up again. She hadn’t realized the video had stopped playing, and now the passel’s eyes were on her. “Heather mentioned something about an accident with a piano when you were a child. Where’s that piano now?” She folded her hands, bright eyes waitin
g.

  Phoenix felt possessive, suddenly. Van Milton had asked about that piano, too. “I don’t know. My parents sold it to a collector a few months after the accident.”

  “That piano could be very significant, the root of your connection to Joplin.”

  “Yet, it hurt her,” the Mexican man said.

  “But that was an accident. Joplin came through to make sure I knew that,” Heather said, and the other psychics nodded, gazing at Heather like a sage. “He’s her spirit guide.”

  “Oh yeah, totally,” said Freckle-Girl.

  “But that piano…” Johnita pursed her lips, sighing. Phoenix thought she could see plans for her next book in the woman’s eyes. “It’s a loss. It must have had significance to him.”

  Instinctively, Phoenix looked around for Carlos, before she remembered he’d gone out to get her groceries. She was tired of the passel now. She didn’t like the way they talked about her like a science project, and she was ready for them to go away and leave her to her reading. Scott Joplin was the only one who could teach her what she needed to know.

  “Sugar?” Johnita said, and for the first time, Phoenix heard a pinch of the South in the woman’s accent. Sarge had told her his mother used to call him sugar, and Phoenix liked the word’s cozy warmth. She’d never had the chance to meet Sarge’s mother, who had been long dead when she was born. “You look like a rabbit caught in a trap. Hon, we’re not here to hurt you or exploit you. I know it’s unnerving to have a room full of psychics. I’m grateful you’ve invited us here into your sacred space. If I’m pushing too hard, just say so. My feelings don’t get hurt that easy. Heather is a gifted lady, she told me there was something special here, and she was right. But this is your journey. Now…I know you’ve had some fear through this…”

  Phoenix nodded. “I’m starting to get past that.”

  “Well, that’s excellent, sugar. Sometimes it takes people years to get over their fear of the dead. Right?” She turned to the passel, and they agreed.

  “My twin sister died when we were three,” Freckle-Girl said matter-of-factly, “and I still wig out when I turn around and see her behind me.”

  “I drive a mile out of my way every night to avoid the cemetery,” said the man with long hair. “I’m not proud of that, but it’s true.”

  “And this is all happening to you in a matter of days,” Johnita told Phoenix. “You didn’t believe in ghosts, and now you’re working to embrace one in your life. You thought all psychics were frauds, and now you know some of us are the real thing.”

  That was true. Heather had been all the proof Phoenix needed.

  “So I’m sorry if you thought I was trying to claim your experiences, that I want to book myself on Oprah with Scott Joplin’s haunted piano. That’s not the case, I promise you.” At that, Johnita smiled. “All right, I have to tell you something: There’s a presence in this room, and I’m being scolded. She’s reminding me there’s more than one Oprah. Does that ring a bell?”

  Phoenix blinked, and her nostrils stung. “My mom’s mother was named Oprah. She died when I was fifteen. She bought me my first piano.” Phoenix didn’t tell Johnita that she thought about Grandma Oprah a little every time she played a keyboard, and that her death was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Those things were private. Phoenix wasn’t sure if she was glad to hear her grandmother’s name or annoyed at the psychic’s casual intrusion in her loss.

  Johnita nodded as if she’d quizzed her, and Phoenix had passed. “This room is full of people who love you. I know you haven’t asked me for a reading, but you should think about it, sugar. I’m booked nine months in advance, and there are people willing to pay crazy money for what I’m offering you for free.”

  “I don’t know. My last reading was a downer.” Phoenix avoided looking at Heather.

  “I promise not to tell you anything I think might upset you.”

  Which means there’s something bad, and she knows it, Phoenix thought. “OK,” she said, although she wasn’t sure it was.

  “Would you rather do this privately?”

  Phoenix shook her head. “Nah. I’m good.”

  The Queen Psychic didn’t hold her hand or hesitate. “A name starting with J is coming through, or maybe Jay is the name. He’s a friend.”

  When Phoenix blinked, a tear shook loose. “Yeah. My friend Jay, from high school.”

  “Jay wants you to know he’s fine, and he’s proud of you. He says he misses writing songs with you.” Phoenix suddenly remembered her notebook from fifth period Spanish in high school, which she and Jay had passed back and forth as they wrote lyrics; most of them bad, but some of them very good. When she’d had her band—when she’d been actually collaborating instead of only giving in—Phoenix used to ask herself, How would Jay write this? and the words would come. Johnita went on: “I can’t linger with anyone too long, because there’s a lot of crowding. Sorry about that. Now I’m feeling a very powerful spirit, a matriarch. Not Oprah this time, but another grandmother, an L name.”

  “Lulu,” Phoenix said. Lulu Mae Watson, whom she’d never met. “My father’s mother.”

  Something brushed Phoenix’s arm, and she jumped. Her heart tried to leap out of her mouth until she realized it was only Gloria, who had left the bedroom and sidled beside her, sitting on top of the futon’s armrest. Gloria’s hair smelled damp and sweet from Nia’s apricot shampoo.

  “Your Gramma Lulu loves you very much, and she wants you to know she’s always been here. She was a professional singer as a young girl. Did you know that?” Johnita said.

  Phoenix shook her head. Sarge had never told her that.

  “She says you sing fine, but your gift is something else. The two grandmothers are in agreement on that. They see you writing, composing. Maybe that’s part of what Joplin sees in you, too. You’ve been frozen, something like stage-fright, and you need to get over it. But they want you to go to school first. The school message is very strong, for both of you girls.”

  The truth in the psychic’s words felt as real as everyone in the room.

  “Yeah, that sounds like Grandma Oprah,” Gloria muttered. She tapped Phoenix’s shoulder with her red appointment book, trying to get her attention, but Phoenix waved her off.

  “You’re going to…go through some changes,” Johnita said, and the halting way she spoke told Phoenix she was choosing her words very carefully. “But greatness is waiting on the other side. I see a gold-colored piano wrapped in a ribbon of light, and to me that symbolizes greatness. Innovation. Like that guitar player…what’s his name?”

  Phoenix shrugged. “Hendrix?” she said, a wild guess. Wishful thinking.

  Johnita’s face softened into a smile. “Yes,” she said. “Jimi Hendrix. Something unique.”

  Phoenix’s heart, frightened before, sped with exhilaration. If not for Johnita’s knowledge of Jay and her dead grandmothers, Phoenix would have thought she was telling her what any musician would want to hear. Greatness was a powerful word.

  “But you have to be strong,” Johnita went on. “And you have to make the right choices.”

  There’s always a catch, Phoenix thought. “Like what? What kind of choices?”

  Johnita shook her head. “We don’t see everything, sugar. I wish we did.”

  “Is the ghost going to help me?”

  “It’s possible,” Johnita said. “But if he’s here now, he’s not coming forward to say.”

  But Phoenix didn’t need a psychic’s confirmation. It was so obvious, she wondered why she hadn’t realized it before. That’s why he came to me. His music is going to help me.

  “Like they say, it’s all who you know,” Gloria said, so offhandedly that Phoenix knew the psychic hadn’t convinced her cousin. “Hey, this Joplin guy’s helping you already, if it’s OK for me to interrupt here. Phee, I don’t think Three Strikes is pissed at you anymore. I just heard from their publicity guy. What’s his name again? Mikey?”

  “Manny,” Phoenix told
her.

  Gloria grinned, leaning close to her face. “Rolling Stone wants to interview you. Oh yeah, and so does MTV News. That opera stunt you pulled is paying off, cuz. Ka-ching.”

  Phoenix’s mind went white. She didn’t have time to find her thoughts again before the front door crashed open, and Trey ran in, his sneakers skidding against her tile floor. Trey was in trendy shades and a white Universal Studios T-shirt hanging to his knees. “Quick! Where’s your radio, Aunt Phee?” he said. To him, there was no one else in the room.

  Phoenix hardly heard his question, hoping Sarge would walk in behind him. Instead, Serena followed alone with an armload of shopping bags, closing the door. A grin filled Serena’s face, as if she’d already heard Gloria’s news.

  “What?” Phoenix said.

  Trey spied the boom box on her plywood stereo shelf and fumbled to turn it on. Static roared from the speakers, and the radio sputtered and popped as her nephew spun the dial. Then, a voice she almost recognized came on in full FM sharpness: “I think I’m losin’ control…”

  “Oh, shit!” Gloria said, just as Sarge’s cell phone rang yet again.

  “They said it’s the debut on their request line!” Serena said, scooting her way past the knees and legs of the passel to join Phoenix on the futon. Serena’s full weight landed on top of Phoenix, and she wrapped her arms around her so tightly, Phoenix felt her breath sucked back into her lungs. But she hardly noticed. How could she?

  For the first time, Phoenix heard herself on the radio singing a song that bore her name.

  Silence enveloped Phoenix when she plunged her head beneath the water of her complex’s heated swimming pool, except for the sound of her escaping breath rising to the surface in a flurry of bubbles. The silence was fascinating, erasing everything in sweet peace. Maybe this is what death is like, she thought. That was what the psychics had said, that death was nothing to fear. The light from the solar lamps above her looked far away, refracting across the warm water.

  When her burning lungs needed air, Phoenix’s head broke the surface, and she gently paddled to tread water. She was no great swimmer, but she loved the pool, especially at night, when it was almost always empty. She ventured only midway across the pool when she swam, until she couldn’t tap the floor with the tips of her toes. Phoenix could swim from one end to the other as long as she kept her head above water, but she preferred to stay where it was shallow enough to stand if she wanted to, floating more than swimming.