Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  And the look in Scott’s eyes! Rapture. He might have looked this way when his mother pressed her rough palms over his eyes on the porch and said she had a surprise waiting for him in the house. A special surprise, she said, which had made Scott dream as big as licorice or a new pair of shoes. When you were poor, a new pair of shoes was Christmas Day. Their family had been poor as far back as anyone could remember.

  Head bent down, Scott had peeked beyond his mothers’ fingers and seen tracks across the packed-dirt floor. Even then, he couldn’t let himself imagine it. Mama had bought him a piano. A part of Scott Joplin would always be stuck in that day, because his mother had changed his life. The old Scotty had died, and a new one was born. His mother had resurrected him.

  She would be Scott’s mother today, she decided. She would change his life, at the end.

  “Yes. Yes, I w-want to play.” Scott’s desire to play baked from him.

  The sanitarium attendant, a not-unpleasant man named Garth Mobley, wanted to move Scott back to his room and hush all the racket near so many insane and dying. Why torment an old cripple with an instrument he can’t play?

  But she wouldn’t let him interfere. She was tired of Garth Mobley’s interruptions, well-intentioned or not, so she dashed to him on a dust mote and whispered just enough to preoccupy his mind with worries about his father’s worsening cough. She made Garth Mobley remember how much his father had given him, and Mobley was so overwhelmed by his love for the old man that he vowed to be a better son. For a precious moment or two, the attendant forgot about the man sitting at the piano and wandered away to mop up the pool of urine on the floor.

  She and Scott were alone, for a moment.

  She leaned over Scott, her gentle warmth draping his shoulder. She took one of his gnarled hands into hers, then the other, and raised them back to their berth on the piano keys. Scott knew, then. She felt the dribble of awareness come to him. He understood that the Rosenkranz had no heart of its own, only blind devotion. If he played this piano with her as one, she might not be able to untangle herself in time. The Rosenkranz would do its best to pull her down with him when Scott took his Leap.

  But she was not afraid to be bound to another’s soul at his Leap. Love in death was the truest form, and death was nothing new to her. She had been visiting Scott here so long, she had forgotten their other names, their other times. A gnawing sense of duty and propriety had kept her from entangling herself with Scott, but one must always question the concept of duty. Or propriety. Or order. What did those concepts have to do with her? Had they ever?

  She was here now. That was enough.

  “Freddie…wait,” Scott said.

  His unselfishness only made her more determined.

  “Shhhh,” she said. Her flesh form melted as her hands slipped inside of his, a feeling like wading into lukewarm water. No, not water—jelly. The feeling was not entirely pleasant, because it was not natural. She would not be able to stay long. She felt his body trying to expel her, instinct. His body choked her. “Play, Scott. Use my hands to play.”

  Scott was infatuated with his fingers, wiggling them before his face like an infant. “Dear heart…how…?”

  Phee, I know you’re there. Come back.

  “Play, Scott. Play.” She hurt, suddenly, and she hadn’t felt pain in a long time. She couldn’t tell if the pain was from being crowded inside Scott, or from somewhere else. Without skin, it was hard to judge where pain came from. The pain might have come when she heard the phantom’s voice calling for someone named Phee.

  Finally, Scott played. He played more crisply than she did, more slowly. He held his hands higher, more rigid in his adherence to form and technique. Even now, when he was engaged only with himself and his dying, he played with an audience in mind.

  And the music! Music was the only language the living and the dead shared in common. Scott played one note for every joy that had escaped him in life, and the sound of his joy became hers. His playing made her remember hearing “Maple Leaf Rag” for the first time, riding her bicycle past Mr. Garrison’s farm in Little Rock, and how it had made her skid to a stop to listen through his open parlor window. Those rags are the devil’s music, Papa tried to tell her, the first time she knew with certainty that her father didn’t always know the truth.

  Scott should have Lottie play this at his funeral. He should make Lottie promise.

  “That’s old. I’m tired of that one, Uncle,” the attendant said.

  The attendant had escaped her notice because of the music, but the sound of his voice so jarred her concentration that Scott’s hands nearly cast her out. Scott raced on to Treemonisha, and her effort to follow him that far was heroic. She was slipping away from him.

  She was weak, she remembered. This was the price for appearing to him in a woman’s form, manipulating the lights and shadows to create the effect before his eyes. She had to leave him now. In a blink of his eyes, his Leap would be done.

  “I’ll be back soon, Scott,” she said.

  And she was. Soon arrived immediately.

  She felt the passage of time, but not in minutes and hours and days. She felt her absence dragging behind her, and it unsettled her. Two weeks or more of Scott’s time may have passed, and she had never been freed. She was still tethered to Scott and his waiting.

  She should not be here. She had another place to go.

  This time, when she saw Scott, he was lying in his bed in the hospital room he shared with a man continuously reliving the Battle of Gettysburg, the journey he’d made as a young man to the true gates of Hell. Today, the second bed was empty. Scott was mostly unconscious, muttering occasionally, but otherwise still.

  Scott had not made his Leap. His dying was horrible in its endlessness.

  Lottie sat at Scott’s side, primly dressed, reading her Harper’s. She was already wearing her gloves, because the doctors had phoned to tell her Scott wouldn’t make it to morning, but the doctors had been wrong again. Scott had a stallion’s spirit.

  But Lottie knew this was the day. She and Lottie both knew.

  The duet on the Rosenkranz had tired her too much to show herself to Scott in a flesh form—and that wouldn’t be polite, not with Lottie here in her place as the grieving wife—but she brushed herself across Scott’s hand so he would feel her. Touching was its own language. The visit was easier now than it had been at the piano. Scott was so much closer to where he was going, she reached him with barely a thought.

  Because he was so close to his Leaping, Scott’s spirit spoke to her while his eyes and lips remained closed. They were more alike than different, now.

  I’m sorry, Freddie. The piano won’t let you go. You’ll have to burn it.

  A bold idea, but it was impossible, of course. She could no more burn up his Rosenkranz than she could make the roof of his dying place fly away, or make Lottie walk across the ceiling. Hands with skin were needed to burn a piano.

  But that wasn’t all of it. As long as Scott’s soul was restless, the Rosenkranz was his. The Rosenkranz would remember Scott’s sorrows long after his flesh was gone. She had made the decision to play the piano with him, to tangle their souls. She had known the risks.

  “It might let me go if you weren’t afraid,” she said.

  I’m sorry. I don’t know how to stop being afraid, Freddie.

  “I’ve told you about the laughter? And the light?”

  They’ve forgotten me already, and I’m not even gone.

  No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t force him to dwell on the next place, only the last. That was sad, but she tried to indulge him.

  “Didn’t I tell you about Broadway and the Pulitzer? The biographers?”

  Why couldn’t I have seen more? Why did I have so little?

  “This was your ride, Scott. Everybody’s is different.”

  But Freddie…does it matter? Will we matter?

  The source of Scott’s desperation became so obvious to her that she was angry with herself for taki
ng so long to think of it. How could she call herself a gardener and not remember?

  “I can let you hear,” she said, elated.

  She knew exactly how to do it. Someone else, not Scott, had given her the same elixir when it was the only language that could reach her. She remembered a rolling voice, a shining scalp. She remembered the loving and healing. Part of her remembered Sarge very well.

  Where in the world would she begin? How should she season her stew?

  She didn’t use Scott’s ears, because his ears were failing him. She gave Scott her ears, her future memories, searching in lightning speed. The soul could hear so much better anyway. Especially music. The soul heard music best.

  She gave him Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. She gave him B. B. King, Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye. She gave him Mahalia Jackson and Shirley Caesar, Miriam Makeba and Jelly Roll Morton, Sly & the Family Stone, Gil Scott-Heron and Louis Armstrong. She gave him Dizzy Gillespie and James Brown. She let him hear Paul Robeson singing “Ol’ Man River,” and Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit.” She let him hear “Respect” sung the way only Aretha could. She gave him Earth Wind & Fire and Arturo Sandoval, Al Green and Eric Clapton, Ray Charles, George Gershwin and Ella Fitzgerald.

  She added a few Sarge hadn’t thought about, because she had her own tastes: She spiced her elixir with Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Nina Simone and Lauryn Hill. She let him hear Tito Puente, Mario Bauzá and Celia Cruz. She gave him Hossam Ramzy, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Carlos Santana and the Black-Eyed Peas. She gave him Bob Marley, Baaba Maal, Wynton Marsalis, Led Zeppelin and the Mississippi Mass Choir. Because he loved opera, she gave him Roland Hayes, Marian Anderson, Leontyne Price and Kathleen Battle. For fun, she threw in Run-DMC, Alicia Keys, OutKast and Robert Randolph & the Family Band.

  It grieved her to neglect so many others, but there wasn’t time for everyone. The rest could wait. He would know all of it soon enough.

  Last, she let him hear Phoenix. That music came from a different place in her memory, because most of it had yet to be written. But she heard it, and so did he.

  Scott Joplin’s face didn’t change, but she felt his soul’s glow.

  “You matter, Scott,” she said, a whisper.

  Five days from now, the United States would enter the Great War, and James Reese Europe’s Harlem Hellfighters would spread their orchestrated ragtime marching style like apple seeds, showcasing Negro music to the world. Jim Europe would survive the bullets and gas of the war front, but Herbert Wright would stab him to death with his penknife a few years later, in a dressing room back home. Such things happened sometimes; buds were cut down before they fully bloomed. But a bright, scrappy fifteen-year-old boy in New Orleans who loved Scott’s rags even if he would never meet him was already gaining a reputation with a cornet he’d learned to play after he was sent to a home for wayward boys for shooting a pistol in the air to celebrate the New Year.

  Scott knew things about the boy’s future the boy could not, so when Scott heard that trumpet about to be loosed on the world, Louis Armstrong clarified everything. The living world wouldn’t hear the song for more than a decade, but to Scott, Armstrong’s feisty horn on “West End Blues” was Gideon’s clarion call.

  Suddenly, Scott could make out laughter down the way, where he couldn’t see past all the light. He was close, and he was ready. At last. Hallelujah.

  She was ready, too. She could Leap with him to his light and sacrifice some of her own. Didn’t people in love do that every day?

  Do you feel me where you are, Phee? I love you. Come back to me.

  Somewhere, she still had skin. Somewhere, her lips were afire. And her neck. Someone was calling her. A voice was calling her name. Music was calling her.

  Do you feel this, Phee? Or this?

  “Find the kerosene, Lottie,” Scott said, as best he could. “Burn that piano to Hell.”

  With one last gasp of sweet oxygen, Scott Joplin made his Leap.

  All of the terrain Carlos’s fingers and lips grazed on Phoenix’s body grew warm, her blood surging to her skin’s surface to meet him. He watched color return, creamy brown chasing the trail of his fingers across the pale snow of her neck, her collarbone, her chest. Digging her out. He hadn’t realized how pale she was until he began repainting her with his hands.

  “I’m here, Phee. I hear,” he said, propping her upright. He unzipped her gown and let it fall across her shoulders while she dangled in his arms. Her eyes were no longer open, her eyelids resting in a different kind of sleep. Her eyes had thawed, too.

  Phoenix tasted freshly bathed, new. Carlos suckled her neck, then her shoulder, and her skin flared beneath him. With one eye on the Rosenkranz, Carlos laid his palm on her cool breast as her gown slipped to her waist. Her nipple nudged against his palm, swollen. Warm again.

  Carlos didn’t like the piano watching as he touched her, nor the camera, but he would not risk her life because of discomfort. He lay Phoenix to rest, his mouth sliding over her breast as his head fell against her. He moistened her with his tongue, then he sucked as if he were nursing, gathering as much of her skin into his mouth as he could. Her breast nearly vanished inside of him. He warmed her other breast with his hand, gently kneading, his thumb pondering the solid ridge at its peak.

  “Do you feel this, Phoenix?” he whispered in her ear.

  Phoenix’s mouth didn’t respond, but her nipples spoke for her. He turned her on her stomach, massaging her graceful tracts of skin, feeling the spots across her ribs where her bones were extruding more than they should, her pliant thighs, the dense mound of her buttocks. Every part of Phoenix that Carlos could see, he touched and tasted. He took his time.

  He didn’t think about his own arousal until his jeans pinched, painful. His arousal felt urgent in a way it never had. She needed him, and he needed her.

  “Phoenix?” he said.

  Phoenix moaned, from far away. She still wasn’t back. Not quite.

  Easing his hand between her thighs, Carlos tested Phoenix gently with his index finger, only halfway inside her, and found her damp and ready. She also felt too cool, because he had missed a spot. Knowing she was waiting for him, Carlos felt his crotch tighten into a knot.

  “God help me, Phoenix, tell me what to do,” he said. “Tell me.” He was unsnapping his fly, relishing the relief of easing pressure his zipper gave as it fell, tooth by tooth. Freeing him.

  “Tell me what to do,” Carlos said, but there was no sound from her. Phoenix’s sleeping face made him doubt. He saw a naked girl unconscious in his arms, forbidden again.

  But Carlos’s body commanded him, even if Phoenix could not.

  Carlos knew, body and soul.

  He was making love to her. She felt his heat inside of her; exploring, sowing.

  Each time she forgot him, the tide of sensation rolled back over her, rocking her. Each time he touched somewhere new, she remembered. When his heat draped her from her head to her thighs, reminding her of how precious her skin was, she almost remembered his name and gasped it aloud. She almost opened her eyes again; to see, this time, not just to stare. Almost.

  The wall was the only thing keeping her from him. The wall appeared with the sound of her own voice, from forever ago: Was it okay?

  She didn’t want any knowledge beyond those three words, so she retreated.

  Until she felt him inside her again, tilling and plowing. He wouldn’t let her run away. Now, his fingertips were kneading her scalp, pulling her closer still. Closer.

  He stretched her to her capacities, forced her body to meld itself to him, hugging tight. He flooded her, drained her and flooded her again. Her nipples and clitoris dueled for her attention beneath his touch, then they joined forces to take her deeper into her skin, a maelstrom.

  Was it okay?

  She had not Leaped with Scott. She was expanding, floating nowhere near the laughter and light of his transformation. What was her name this time? Why was she so afraid?

  “I love you, Phee. Can you
hear me?”

  Carlos. She knew his name, then, unalterably. She missed him. She nudged the wall to see how much it would yield without crushing her.

  You like Magnums, motherfucker? The words jolted her, made her try to flee again.

  But this time, Phoenix’s body would not allow her to escape for even a blink. She soared, her body piloting her, afire in too many places to count.

  The truth came when she heard her own voice in a whispered roar.

  Daddy’s gone.

  The truth kicked her senseless, and there was no respite now. No solace.

  Daddy’s gone.

  While Carlos’s weight bucked and quivered on top of her, the truth made Phoenix’s eyes fly open while she wailed to raise the dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Something was pinching Phoenix’s lungs, forcing her to gasp for air, and every breath was a sob. It was the worst feeling she had ever known.

  “It’s all right, Phee. It’s all right, hon. I’m here. I’m here, linda. I’m here.”

  Carlos’s nakedness was hot on top of her. Seeing Carlos erased her confusion and pain for an instant, and she was so grateful that she hugged his neck hard enough to nearly fling them to the floor. His striking crown of dreadlets rested across her chest as he held her.

  He pulled his flesh out of hers, very slowly, and she smelled a potent blend of cologne, perspiration and their bodies’ shared juices. Despite everything else, her stomach flipped. Just as she had promised him, she remembered every glancing touch. Phoenix kissed Carlos’s hair, clinging to it. She kissed his neck. Her skin sang with his memory, soothed. Her skin’s pleasure dulled her grief enough so she could catch her breath.

  “How long?” she whispered.

  “Five days. We’ve been worried.” Carlos looked older, with lines by his eyes. He looked more like Scott now, the way she remembered him.

  “He’s dead?” A sob nearly overcame her last word, because she knew.