Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  Activity flurried around them as the stomping bass of the background music came blaring back on and theater techs prepared the stage for the next act, either the Bing Boyz or Kamikaze. Backstage became a beehive intruding on their private party, and Phoenix’s huddle drifted back to the white rear wall to make room, everyone in a babble of excitement. With Ronn still hugging her from behind, faces came toward Phoenix in a rush of exclamations and grins.

  “Off the chain,” Manny said.

  “Sky’s the limit now, lil’ mama. Keep God close,” Kai said, kissing her cheek.

  “You got a vision, Phee,” said D’Real. She hadn’t even known her producer was here.

  While Phoenix smiled and accepted their praises, her eyes roamed the darkened backstage space, beyond the giant amps, old card tables and stacked metal chairs. Where was Carlos? Why wasn’t he here? Just when Phoenix felt something in her chest about to prick and deflate, she saw Carlos nudging his way past Kai to get closer to her, his hand reaching for hers.

  Phoenix grabbed his warm palm and held tight. No one was going to keep Carlos away.

  “Ronn, this is Carlos. I couldn’t have made it today without him,” Phoenix said, finding her breath. The hands hugging her waist fell away as Ronn leaned over to shake Carlos’s hand.

  “Hey, man. Ronn Jenkins.” Ronn’s smile had changed, plastic.

  “Carlos Harris,” Carlos said. “Congratulations on your success, man.”

  “Naw, congrats to you. Take good care of our girl,” Ronn said, and stepped away so Carlos could take his place beside her. Changing of the guard, Phoenix thought.

  “If he doesn’t, you’ll see him on the evening news,” Sarge said, and people laughed because they thought Sarge was joking.

  “Ooh, I gotta go get my camera out of the dressing room,” Serena said, flustered, part of the new cacophony. Kai told Phoenix he’d be looking for her at the after-party. D’Real asked her when she would be ready to go back into the studio. If not for Carlos’s hand in hers, squeezing periodically, Phoenix would have felt as lost backstage as she had when she had dreamed she was in Scott’s cornfield.

  “You done fucked up NOW, huh nigga? Ain’t you?”

  Phoenix heard the voice, and didn’t. It was a lone, faraway voice in a symphony of voices, and she took faint notice of it only because its gruffness didn’t match the others. It was the only voice that wasn’t celebrating.

  Phoenix didn’t have long to wonder about the voice, because an explosion made her deaf.

  Her ears ringing, Phoenix turned around, a primal instinct telling her where to look, and she saw a small-boned man in a black ski mask charging toward them from behind the amps where Carlos had been standing before the set, throwing fire at them. His hand was sparking.

  Once. Twice. Three times.

  The man was shooting at them from fifteen yards away, closer with every measured stride.

  Phoenix was pinned to the wall as Kai fell against her in a wild embrace. He fell too hard, and it hurt, buckling her knees. When Phoenix blinked, she realized the three-hundred pound man had gone limp. Another blink, and she knew what was wrong with him: Kai’s been shot.

  Sarge shouted something Phoenix didn’t hear, pushing against Kai with so much effort that the veins across his temples bulged like snakes, and the pressure lifted. Phoenix felt such a violent yank on her arm from the opposite direction that she thought it must be severed. Her feet left the floor, and she flew until her jaw crashed against the edge of a tabletop. Then, she was on concrete, her shoulder landing hard on the floor. Pain bolted through Phoenix’s body, not knowing where to rest.

  “You like Magnums, motherfucker?” a voice said.

  Be still—cuidado, said another, one she barely heard through the noise. Carlos?

  In her strange bubble of deafness beneath the table, Phoenix saw Serena running in one direction—oh thank you God Reenie’s safe—and Ronn diving behind boxes in another. Purple choir gowns scattered everywhere, a tangle of panicked retreat. My poor kids, Phoenix thought, sorrowful. She couldn’t move to try to see the man in the mask beyond the table. Her limbs were locked in place. Why couldn’t she move?

  “Phoenix?”

  Phoenix’s ears stopped ringing long enough for her to hear her father’s voice.

  “Daddy!” she called back.

  She heard a gunshot clearly this time, a godless, colossal roar.

  Phoenix met her father’s eyes in time to see a patch of his shaved scalp above his left eyebrow snatched away like a divot of grass after a golfer’s chip shot. As his blood sprayed, Sarge knelt to see after her with such care, she knew the gruesome injury must be an optical illusion. It couldn’t be as bad as it looked, because it looked like gaping death.

  “You OK, Reenie?” Sarge said with an urgent gaze, unblinking, still tall on his knees. Blood ran down his face in twin streams, one across the bridge of his nose and one between his left ear and eye, but he didn’t seem to mind, just as Phoenix didn’t mind being called Reenie.

  I’m dreaming this right now I’m dreaming this right now I’m dreaming this right now

  Phoenix smelled Carlos’s cologne woven inside the terrible scent of blood—the scent she had smelled in her dream today—and the cologne, at last, told her why she couldn’t move: Carlos was cradling her on the floor, wrapped around her in a vise. The man in the mask was gone, buried beneath a heap of shouting men, and Phoenix saw his smoking gun spin on the floor.

  She would tell Sarge she was fine. She would tell him Carlos had saved her just like Sarge had saved Mom during the 1980 riot. But when Phoenix tried to tell him, she only felt a shock of pain from her injured jaw. Phoenix nodded yes, she was all right, so Sarge would know.

  Sarge smiled a sickly smile—or what looked like one—but the smile left when his eyes emptied. Two full seconds passed before he toppled facedown to the floor, a foot from where Kai lay propped against the blood-spotted wall. Only then did Phoenix hear the screams and pleas with Jesus from the frantic people around her, sounds indistinguishable from her howling heart.

  For the rest of her life, Phoenix would wish she hadn’t nodded yes. She should have told Sarge she wasn’t the least bit all right, that she needed him forever. Why hadn’t she known what to say that night, the night she saw Sarge shot at the Osiris?

  Needing to see her safe was the only thing that had kept her father alive.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Harlem

  1916

  Singing.

  The undulating voice sounded like Lottie’s, although Scott wondered if his ears were trustworthy. He thought he heard singing most nights now, although Lottie said it wasn’t her, and neither of Lottie’s girls would confess to it either. If he was doomed to hear imaginary noises, Scott thought, he could do worse than singing.

  Scott’s knees were sore and unsteady against the kitchen’s wood floor, and he knew he couldn’t expect his body to kneel much longer at the cool blue steel door of the stove. Glancing behind him to make sure no one would see, Scott grabbed another handful of papers from the fat stack under his armpit and shoved them beneath the grill. He had collected his scores for days now—from the Steinway’s piano rack, from his drawers, from boxes, from forgotten notebooks. Some pieces were complete, start to finish, and some were ideas that had never found a home, but they were all going home now. Scott buried the ink-splotched pages in ash so Lottie wouldn’t see them when she lit the coals for dinner. Better to return you to God than see you made bastards, your composer’s name forgotten.

  Scott heard Lottie’s singing again, and the gentle voice of a piano as someone accompanied her on the Steinway grand, as perfect as any concert hall, just the way they wanted it. The singer had to be Lottie; he wouldn’t tolerate such tone-deafness from an imaginary voice. But Lottie’s sour notes suited “Memphis Blues,” because Lottie sang blues tunes like she owned them. When Lottie got to the part about the sinner on revival day, Scott wondered if she had written those lyrics he
rself.

  The singing made Scott sigh. He still had fifty pages under his arm, but Lottie only had to round the corner from the parlor, and she’d be standing in the kitchen doorway. She would throw her iron skillets at him if she saw what he was doing. Lottie had a temper, too, it turned out.

  But this matter didn’t concern Lottie. This was between Scott and God. Well, God or the Devil. Scott had warned both that he would send any new music back, but someone still sent more, even now that the handwriting was illegible even to Scott. And for what? To further torment him? Scott decided he would take his time disposing of the next piece, because his Symphony No. 1 deserved a reverent cremation. He must mourn the pure scope of its undelivered promise; not only its singular virtues, but those of the pieces that would have followed, a dozen or more. Symphony No. 1 would have elevated his name to Dvoák’s. But not by a Negro, no. Someone else would have claimed it as his, because surely no Negro is capable of composing such art.

  “Ashes to ashes, amen,” Scott muttered, closing the stove door. He wanted to light the flames himself, but Lottie hid the matchbox from him. He would find it, by and by.

  Scott groaned, reaching to the tabletop to try to pull himself back up to the kitchen chair. This trusted chair was one of his favorite resting spots, with sturdy wooden armrests to keep him propped upright. Scott could no longer sit at a piano bench comfortably, so he cherished the kitchen chair, the parlor settee and his bed. He was like poor Freddie now, shuttling between the few meager spaces he could master, the bed his last resort.

  Lottie would send him away soon. She’d only mentioned it once, almost in passing—One day I won’t be able to look after you on my own, Scotty—but Lottie revealed her thoughts only once they were set. Lottie said he should go to Chicago to be with his sister, but if he didn’t hurry, Lottie might change her mind and send him to a hospital instead. Every day, Scott saw Lottie studying him, looking for his weaknesses.

  Could he withstand a Chicago winter? Would he survive another winter anywhere?

  “What you doin’ hidin’ back here?” Sam said from the doorway.

  Scott was so startled, he nearly dropped his pages. “Minding my business,” Scott said. Sam was one of the few people fluent in his mumble.

  Sam grabbed half a slice of sweet potato pie from the counter and shoveled it into his mouth in a swoop, talking all the while. “Lottie sent me to fetch you, so come on.” After slapping his hands clean, Sam grabbed Scott beneath his armpits, lifting without a grunt.

  Instinct made Scott pull away, mortified. He clung to one armrest so he could reclaim his seat. No one except Lottie helped him walk. “What if I don’t want to be fetched?”

  “Lottie said to pay your mouth no mind, so hush up and let’s go. If you don’t like it in the parlor, you can come on back in here and hide.” A swing, and Scott was on his feet. He leaned across Sam’s shoulder, and they began to walk. “That new music you got, Scotty?”

  Scott pinned the pages beneath his armpit more tightly. “Treemonisha,” he lied. As much as he wished he had the heart to destroy his opera, Scott could not. Too much of Freddie lived within its pages. How would she find him without it?

  That lie only gained Scott a lecture. “What you still carryin’ that around for? It ain’t natural, Scotty. Louis always said you’d get fixed on something and wouldn’t let it alone.”

  “Louis should have been worrying about his own damn problems,” Scott mumbled.

  “I didn’t hear all of what you just said, but I’d speak kind of the dead if I was you.”

  By leaning most of his weight on Sam, Scott was able to imitate the motion of walking even with limbs that had no interest in obliging him. One foot in front of another. Sam could support more of his weight than Lottie, so Scott didn’t have to stoop so badly. Scott walked into his parlor as a man, not a ward. Lottie was watching, and he smiled at her. You see, baby? I’m fine after all. No need to consider me a bother.

  The parlor was crowded. Parties appeared on their own in Lottie’s parlor, with a quick rap at the door, a call to the window, or a jangle of the telephone in the hall. Then, music and laughter followed without fail, often until after he was in bed. Lottie’s boardinghouse was a gay home for dying.

  A young tickler boarding with Lottie from New Orleans named Walter Powell was sitting in Scott’s place at the Steinway, but he moved his hands to his lap when Scott entered the room. Scott saw arched eyebrows, bright eyes and thin smiles that told him all five of them had been talking about him and didn’t want him to know it.

  Lottie stood beside the Steinway in a bright blue dress Scott had never seen before. Unhappiness made Lottie visit shop windows, gazing at dresses she couldn’t afford. Her dress of ruffles and taffeta might have cost twelve dollars or more, but how could he object? He hadn’t earned any money since the piano rolls, except the royalties that dribbled in from “Maple Leaf.” What would I have done without my loyal child? Their apartment on 138th Street in Harlem was only a block from a row of ornate brownstones that were architectural prizes well out of reach despite their proximity. Lottie planned to buy their entire building, which would be its own triumph, and some days the notion of wealth sitting so close by didn’t bother Scott at all.

  “Scotty, what were you doing in the kitchen?” Lottie said.

  “He was sittin’ right at the table, Lottie,” Sam said. Sam often answered for him.

  Lottie reached for Scott’s music, but he pivoted away from her so quickly that he nearly lost his balance against Sam. While Sam lowered him onto the settee, Scott moved his scores from one underarm to the other, hunched like a crab.

  Lottie’s eyes sparked with anger and hurt. She wagged a finger at him. “Unh-hnh. I’ll go see right now. If I find something in my stove shouldn’t be there, it’s gonna be me and you.” Lottie swept past him toward the kitchen, and he almost confessed in case it might spare him some of her anger. It broke his heart to make her angry. He only couldn’t get his mouth to work. Lottie’s outburst had silenced the room, the singing mood gone.

  Joseph Lamb, the sole white visitor, pulled the parlor window down in a whimper, since the room was getting cold in the fall chill. It was good to see Lamb. The composer kept to himself and hadn’t been by to visit since he came to show off his girlfriend a while back. Lottie’s new girl, Sadie, sat smoking a cigarette, leaning over the coffee table to look at the pictures in Harper’s magazine with such little regard for the position of her cleavage that Joe was red in the face. A drummer named Herbert Wright, an out-of-towner Sam had met at a gig, sat across from Scott in the parlor chair, rattling a pair of dice together in his hand, like bones.

  “Lottie really don’t want you messing with her stove, huh Joplin? My girl in Boston don’t like my cooking neither, but I see Lottie means business,” Wright said. He pocketed the dice, pulled out his penknife, and sliced away a neat section of the apple in his other hand.

  Everyone except Scott laughed louder than the joke deserved, the sound the room needed. “What happened to the music?” Scott said.

  “Scotty’s right. Where’d the music go?” Sam said, his translator.

  “Somebody play somethin’ we can dance to,” Sadie said.

  Scott didn’t trust Sadie, who wore a bright red wig and constantly watched her face in the mirror, chronicling time’s insults with pursed, painted lips. Sadie liked to stand over the Steinway reading his pages of music, when he was careless enough to leave them in plain sight. Lottie thought Sadie was only curious, but Scott knew a Tin Pan Alley spy when he saw one.

  “Where are those piano rolls you recorded?” Joe said. “Scott recorded ‘Maple Leaf’ for Uni-Record. And didn’t you do some other songs for another company? I forget the name.”

  Scott suddenly felt like the guest of honor at an early wake.

  “You know better, Joe. Rolls don’t sound good, the way they make those changes,” Scott said. He would have ranted longer if it weren’t so much effort to speak. The music was bar
ely recognizable. Scott could blame his hands, of course, but it was more than that. Mostly he’d done it because he imagined how happy Freddie would be that he’d recorded a piano roll. Her pleas with him to record his music still followed him in his dreams.

  Walter Powell tapped the piano keys. “Lemme play ya’ll the blues rag I just wrote.”

  “Man, first you wanted to call everything a rag. Now, everything’s blues,” Sam said.

  “You want to sell it, you better call it blues.”

  “That nigger Handy’s makin’ some money, ain’t he?” Wright said. “‘Memphis Blues’ sounds like the same old cakewalk to me. Don’t it? He don’t even know blues, an’ he’s got everybody thinkin’ he did it first. Shit, that nigger ain’t dumb.”

  “He got it right in ‘St. Louis Blues,’ though. That’s blues,” Sam said.

  “You should write a blues number, Mr. Joplin,” Walter Powell said. “We’ll make you the Blues King next.” When the young man had first realized he had moved in with Scott Joplin, he’d been so shocked that he was mute for days. Now, Walter talked to Scott like he owned his own publishing company, like John Stark reborn.

  “I wrote a little blues,” Scott said. He had peppered “Magnetic Rag” with enough blues harmonics to make Lottie squeal the first time he played it for her. “Magnetic Rag” was already two years old, and it would be his last publication. He was certain of it.

  Lottie’s voice killed the party just as it was waking.

  “Yeah, I see you been writing a lot of music,” Lottie said, dabbing the ash-covered pages from the cookstove with a white kitchen towel. Lottie’s eyes were accusing, but more weary than angry. “What’s this, Scotty? ‘Scott Joplin’s Blues Rag’? ‘Lenox Avenue Rag’?”

  “They’re mine,” Scott said, his teeth clenched. He wasn’t mumbling now. “Not yours.”

  Lottie blinked fast, the woman’s trick of sudden tears. “These belong to the man who wrote them, not to this one who’s half out his mind. When you get your good mind back, I’ll give you Scott Joplin’s music. You got no right.”