Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  Finn, as always, stood beside the door, the silent observer behind his video camera. Finn slept in a sleeping bag beside his tripod each night and hadn’t shaved in three days. Finn nodded at Carlos, his camera trained toward the swinging blinds.

  “What’s the temp?” Carlos said.

  Finn sneezed. “One-oh-two and climbing,” Finn said, pulling off his T-shirt. “Unreal.”

  Finn didn’t have to say that the air conditioner was on full blast, or that there was no mechanical explanation for the rise in the room’s temperature, which was ten degrees hotter than it had been outside all day. Carlos knew without asking.

  The staff at The Harbor hadn’t made many demands of them, but one rule was firm: The video camera must be out of Phoenix’s view. The rule was easy to comply with. The L-shaped suite was so spacious that Phoenix’s bed was not visible from the doorway; it was hidden past a large bamboo partition closer to the window, behind a thicket of potted palms.

  Malcolm and Gloria’s parents were gone, so the room was less crowded. Malcolm Smalls had flown to Atlanta yesterday to help his brother make funeral arrangements, since Phoenix’s collapse was only one of the tragedies facing the Smalls family this week. Phoenix’s father had always said he wanted to be buried in the cemetery of his grandmother’s little Georgia church, so they were following his wishes. After an explosion of family politics, the funeral had been set for Sunday. Carlos had already agreed to stay with Phoenix once her family flew south for the services. As much as Carlos wanted Phoenix to be herself again, he hoped he wouldn’t have to be the one to tell her she had missed her father’s funeral.

  Serena rocked in the rattan rocker at the foot of Phoenix’s bed, pushing from the balls of her feet. Serena’s sure, beautiful humming gave the room its spirit while she fanned herself with an Essence magazine. Sometimes Serena’s voice thinned to nothing. From some angles, Serena seemed to have aged twenty years, which made Carlos think she might be the most frightened of any of them, except for Phoenix’s mother. Humming must be one way Serena prayed, he thought.

  Heather and her psychic friend, Johnita, hadn’t moved from the small dining table, which was also out of Phoenix’s view—doctor’s orders. The psychics sat in a meditative silence, occasionally writing notes on their pads. The sound of their scribbling filled Carlos with dread.

  As soon as Johnita had met Phoenix, she had known three things, according to Heather: Phoenix’s music would be remembered. She was in love. Her father was going to die very soon. Heather said her mentor had sat up with her that night and told her what she’d gleaned, and they debated whether or not to say anything about her father. Would telling Phoenix prevent his death? Johnita Poston hadn’t thought so. Deep down, Phoenix already knows, she had said.

  Maybe the psychic is here to do penance, Carlos thought.

  “Any news?” Carlos said quietly. He’d been gone for three hours, and a lot might have happened since then. Room 315 was a lively place.

  “It’s hot as Hades,” Johnita said. Even in a black tank top, the psychic’s skin glimmered with sweat. Heather was in her Occidental College sweatshirt because the room had never been warmer than forty degrees yesterday, so now her face was pink and flushed. She must be miserable in the heat. Heather rarely glanced at him when she was here; maybe out of deference to Phoenix, or maybe because she was working.

  “I noticed that,” Carlos said.

  “You missed a neat trick about an hour ago,” Finn said. “The TV kept coming on and off. Very Poltergeist.”

  “It’s busy.” Johnita swatted a fly from her purple reading glasses. “A lot of chatter.”

  “Is that good or bad for Phoenix?”

  The psychic shook her head. “Just busy, sugar.” Which meant she didn’t know.

  Johnita and Heather called it chatter or traffic, mundane terms from everyday life, but they were at Phoenix’s dinner table transcribing the words of the dead. Carlos sidled beside Heather and tried to make out the words of her hurried scribble. Forgive me, one phrase said. I think it’s the gas this time, Mother, said another. Come jump with me, a third. Snippets of lives.

  But these were the wrong lives, so far. As Johnita had put it, Phoenix’s room was like an old-time telephone switching station, so as far as the psychics could tell, they were writing messages from industrialists, influenza victims, soldiers, slaves, schoolteachers and children from as far, it seemed, as Port-au-Prince, Haiti. But none of the messages seemed to be from Joplin, or had anything to do with Phoenix. Johnita and Heather had no idea how to rescue Phoenix, or what was wrong with her. Phoenix and Scott Joplin were in a place the psychics couldn’t see, right under their noses.

  Carlos ventured a glance over Johnita’s shoulder, too, and saw a single word: Rosenkranz. A dead German hoping to be remembered?

  “A little air, please,” the psychic said, and Carlos knew his cue to leave her alone.

  And he had put off seeing Phoenix long enough.

  When Carlos had gotten the message that his editor back in L.A. needed extra help, he had been happy to go work in Phoenix’s hotel room midtown, as far away as he dared to go. Back at Le Bon Maison, it had taken some work to get over the misery of Phoenix’s open drawer in the bedroom, a pair of her black panties crumpled on the bathroom counter and her Janet Jackson jacket hanging where she’d left it on the desk chair. But he’d done it.

  After that, the hotel room was an amazing release, the way he’d felt after Hurricane Andrew when he left the crushed South Dade neighborhood where his father lived to flee back to his air-conditioning on Miami Beach, a quick drive worlds away. In Phoenix’s hotel room, Carlos had been truly alone for the first time since the shooting, and when the sound of gunfire on a rerun of Law & Order reduced him to sobs, he realized he had his own emotional issues to deal with. He’d slogged his way through the edit, then he wanted to do nothing but go to bed and sleep for three days to make up for the ones he’d lost. No argument could have sent him back to The Harbor to be with Phoenix’s tragedy-ridden family, except one: They need you.

  Carlos rubbed Serena’s shoulder as he passed her on the way to Phoenix’s bed, and Phoenix’s sister, still humming, squeezed his hand hard.

  Three fly strips were hanging in the room—two near the window, one next to Phoenix’s bed. All of them swung gently in invisible breezes, like the swaying blinds. An upscale facility like The Harbor wasn’t accustomed to having a fly problem, but they had one in Phoenix’s room. The brown fly strips were dotted with black flies, more all the time. Before he’d left, Carlos had counted sixty flies on the strip hanging above Phoenix’s night table, at her bedside. Now he was sure there were more flies caught on the tacky paper, angrily buzzing their wings before they exhausted themselves and died.

  Flies followed Phoenix from room to room, too.

  Leah Rosen-Smalls sat in the reclining leather chair beside the bed, her head facing Phoenix. Her eyes were half-lidded, but watchful. She must be exhausted. Over the past three days, Leah Rosen-Smalls had become one of Carlos’s favorite people. She had to be in the greatest agony of her life, or close to it, but no detail got past her in that chair.

  Carlos rested his hands on Phoenix’s mother’s shoulders, his chin on top of her head. “You need dinner, Mom?” he said. He didn’t know why he had started calling her Mom, but she didn’t mind. If she had figured out Carlos’s history with Phoenix, his past offenses were irrelevant. Everyone said Ronn had dived for cover while Carlos saved Phoenix’s life.

  “Serena brought sandwiches from that place the concierge suggested, but I’m not hungry.” A crumbling tissue was always clenched inside her fist, and she rubbed it against her nose while she watched the nurse, Lydia, administer eyedrops to her daughter.

  When Carlos saw Phoenix, his chest tightened as always. She looked like a corpse. Phoenix lay propped with the same wide-eyed gaze, staring at nothing and everything. Her jaw was black with the bruise he had given her when he pulled her beneath the table, but the
bruise was easier to face than her eyes. As far as Carlos knew, Phoenix hadn’t blinked her eyes in three days.

  Lydia was leaning over her with a dropper to hydrate Phoenix’s eyes, her routine. Lydia wasn’t bothered by the flies, the temperature variations or the spirit traffic in Phoenix’s room, but she was nervous around Leah Rosen-Smalls. She worked with a nervous laugh, constantly glancing toward the judgment chair behind her. Tranquilo, Carlos had murmured to the nurse on her way out once, and Lydia had smiled like he was flirting.

  “How’s Phee?” Carlos asked Lydia.

  “No change. She’s still trying to talk, so I guess that’s good.”

  Yes, but to whom?

  “Lydia, would you be sure to dry her face where it’s getting wet, please?” Leah said. She might be powerless to rescue her daughter from wherever she was, but she would not abide any form of carelessness in her sight.

  “I will, Mrs. Smalls,” Lydia said. The girl had epic patience.

  “Did she eat dinner?” Carlos said.

  This time, Phoenix’s mother answered. “Not a bite,” she said, sighing. Phoenix had always been willing to chew and swallow her food as long as someone fed her, even if she wasn’t responsive. When she was admitted, Phoenix’s doctor told them that if Phoenix stopped eating longer than forty-eight hours, they would transfer her to a hospital with an intensive care unit. “And she would have loved it. Her chef fixed a wonderful jerk chicken soup, or bisque. When I was in the hospital having Phoenix, all I got was dry sandwiches and soupy mashed potatoes.”

  She was trying to make a joke. Good woman. “Bling bling,” Carlos said, smiling. But not eating was a serious matter. Please start eating again tomorrow, Phee. Stay with us.

  Lydia pocketed her eye-dropper. She glanced at the dangling fly strip for an instant, then quickly away. In this heat, the strip had a faint smell that promised to turn putrid in time. “Mañana,” Lydia said, ready to leave. “Her color looks better, Mrs. Smalls.”

  “I think so, too,” Leah said, although Phoenix’s face looked waxen to Carlos.

  As Lydia was leaving, Carlos heard Johnita call out to her. “Let Dr. Romanowski know I can’t do that reading tonight. I can’t pull away right now.”

  “Oh, my God,” Lydia said, as if she might cry. “We’re all looking forward—”

  “Eight o’clock tomorrow, first thing,” Johnita said. She held up a finger. “One hour.”

  Johnita Poston was the true celebrity in Phoenix’s room.

  The psychic’s book was apparently a perennial best seller, which helped, but prophecy was her calling card. After she performed a single private reading for Phoenix’s psychiatrist, Dr. Young, no one on The Harbor’s staff objected to the unorthodox practices and virtually unlimited visiting hours in Room 315. The staff respected Johnita Poston’s wishes. No wonder Phoenix called her the Queen Psychic.

  Lydia nodded eagerly. “Yes, we’ll be there. There’s ten of us. Is that OK?”

  “That’s a lot, so no more. And don’t look so nervous: Your father will come through his bypass surgery fine, if that’s what you wanted to ask me.”

  Apparently, it was. Lydia’s face bloomed into a smile. “Gracias, señora. Yemayá talks to you. You are blessed from God.” She picked up Johnita’s left hand and pressed it between her palms, as if to kiss it.

  “I’m only a messenger,” Johnita said, something she said often. Politely, she pulled her hand away. She wasn’t interested in worship.

  Carlos could understand the impulse to revere the Queen Psychic. Heather had exposed him to some strange circles, so he had met a lot of people who seemed to know the future, the past, and the thoughts of the dead. Not all of them had the discipline or desire for books and television shows, but they knew what they knew. Of all of them, Carlos had never seen a psychic as good as Johnita Poston, who could pluck knowledge out of the air. The unseen spoke to Johnita in crisp, clean sentences.

  “Does Phoenix look better to you, too?” Phoenix’s mother asked him, after Lydia was gone. She wanted a second opinion.

  Carlos stared at Phoenix’s open eyes, the color of pale rosewood. He missed her so much that his stomach hurt. Seeing her eyes now, he remembered what it had felt like to roll off her at the Osiris and see those eyes, and the blood and saliva dribbling from her mouth. For a terrible, unchangeable moment, he had been certain she was shot, too.

  “I don’t know, Mom,” Carlos said, the best he could do without lying.

  Phoenix’s head dipped slightly, giving the illusion that she had angled herself to look at him, steering her all-seeing eyes. Phoenix’s mouth trembled, working up and down. Carlos smiled, stroking her forehead. “Yes, it’s me, Phee.” Why don’t you sit up and chat with me for a while? Why don’t you tell me where you’ve been? Why don’t you come back home?

  “She’s glad to see you,” Leah said, sounding happy.

  “Yes, she’s definitely still in there,” Carlos said, and he kissed Phoenix’s nose. “I know you love me, Phee. I love you, too.”

  They kept their voices hushed because sometimes fragments of words came from Phoenix’s mouth. Most of the sounds she made were gurgles and grunts, but sometimes there was more. They wrote everything she said down on the notepad beneath the fly strip on the night table. In three days, she had said twelve words: Daddy. No. Awake. Reenie. Mommy. Hold. Here—or hear. See—or sea. Carlos. And Scott three times, maybe more. He wondered whose name she was calling during the times her lips moved without any sound.

  Phoenix’s lips shuddered, then fell still.

  “I’m right here, linda,” Carlos said. “I’m ready to hear anything you want to say.”

  This time, there was no motion, no sound from her. Nothing but a heartbreaking stare.

  “She started moving her fingers once,” Leah told him. “Like she was playing a piano.”

  “When did that happen?” Johnita called. Her ears picked up the words of the living, too.

  “Two or three this morning. I think she was sleeping. She did it with both hands. It wasn’t ten seconds, but I saw it. I happened to be awake.” Not that she sleeps, Carlos thought.

  “That’s important, Leah. Write that down, if you haven’t,” the psychic said.

  “I didn’t even think of it, until now.” Leah sat up, energized by the thought of doing something. She grabbed her notepad.

  “Significant movements. Changes in her eyes. Auras. Write all of that down.” The psychic sounded like a commanding officer in wartime.

  Carlos leaned closer to Phoenix, gazing at her unblinking pupils. Sometimes, when he stared long enough, Carlos felt as if he could fall into her. “You sure you don’t want to tell me something, Phee?” he whispered. “We’re getting worried about you.”

  Phoenix’s throat rumbled softly. Her lips fell open again, bobbing once.

  “I promise to listen very carefully,” Carlos said. “I promise to try to understand.”

  Phoenix blew a puff of air against his earlobe. A puhhhhhhh sound.

  He lay his hand on her blanket, the spot where he knew her stomach was. He pressed with weight, a silent encouragement. Yes, Phee, please go on.

  Suddenly, a gurgle popped out as a word. “Piano,” Phoenix said, more than a breath.

  “Oh my God. I heard that,” Leah said, writing faster. “Thank you, sweet God. She said piano. Is that what you heard, Carlos?”

  “I heard it.”

  “Finn?” Heather said.

  “Got it over here,” he heard Finn say from the doorway. “Pi-a-no.”

  That was the clearest-sounding word yet. Leah came to her feet, joining Carlos over Phoenix’s bed. “That’s it, Buttercup. Don’t push too hard. You can rest now. Talk to us again when you’ve rested.” She grasped Carlos’s hand. “Two hours. She said her last word only two hours ago. This is the fastest she’s spoken again.”

  “What did she say two hours ago?” Carlos said. No one had mentioned that.

  Leah blinked. “Scott,” she said. �
��Four or five times now. She’s with him. I know it.”

  “Maybe a piano will help us contact her,” the psychic said. Johnita claimed she was mostly guessing when it came to Phoenix, but that hadn’t sounded like a guess.

  “Marcus said when Phoenix was in the hospital, he used to play music for her when he visited. That’s why we play the CDs,” Leah said. Phoenix heard CDs several hours a day, but so far none had the impact they’d hoped for. Not even Joplin.

  “She was in a coma, no?” Carlos said. “Maybe this is like that. Maybe they’re related.”

  Serena stopped humming. “Marcus told me how Phoenix played that piano after her accident. He would know…” She’d spoken of him in present-tense, until she remembered.

  “I was there, too,” Leah said, filling Serena’s silence. “I saw it. She played in her sleep.”

  “Maybe she could do that again,” the psychic said. “I told Phoenix at her reading that it was very important to find the piano from the accident.” Her tone sounded almost scolding.

  “Yes, she asked me about it,” Phoenix’s mother said. “Two days before.” No one said what had happened within Phoenix’s earshot. They never said shooting, or murder, or dead.

  “We need to find it and bring it to her,” Carlos said. He felt hopeful, suddenly.

  “It was so long ago!” Leah said, raising her hand to her forehead. “I can’t remember the name of the collector we sold it to. Do I have to go all the way home to dig it out?”

  The pause was only two seconds at most. “Burnside?” the Queen Psychic said.

  Leah gasped. “Yes. From Cutler Ridge. How in the world could you know that?”

  “It wasn’t me, it was you. You knew. I just helped you wipe off a little dust.”