My Soul to Take (7 page)

“We’ve set up a green room for you,” Wright explained, walking beside Phoenix. “Anything you need is in there. I did my research—you don’t like chocolate. But we have some fresh tropical fruit and seafood, and pizza for Marcus. If you have any questions …”

“Who are they?” she said. “How did they get invited to the concert?”

“They’re … everyone,” Wright said, scanning the crowd. “Schoolteachers, journalists, bloggers, students, retirees, a couple politicians. The only thing they have in common is …” Wright lowered his voice. “They’re sick. Even if they don’t know it. Or don’t want to.”

Phoenix went mute as goose bumps traveled across her skin. She gazed at Wright, waiting for more of an explanation, but he only smiled pleasantly. A stocky black man with exotic features whispered in his ear, and Wright suddenly gave Phoenix a Japanese-style bow and then stopped midway, as if catching himself.

“Sorry, I’m needed in the guest house,” Wright said. “Can’t wait to see the show.”

A second black man joined Wright, and the three of them made their way to rear double doors of sturdy oak that opened into the night. Phoenix gazed after them through the rear picture window, unable to wrest her eyes free.

Something about the men captivated her. So striking! Their movements were fluid yet deliberate, like dancers’. Their faces? One of the men, like Wright, had looked like a boy—but he’d carried himself like an elder, a royal. The two men with Wright had seemed barely to notice her, much less recognize her.

Both men were adorned in loose-fitting tunics and pants that glowed bright white.

They might have been the most beautiful men Phoenix had ever seen.

A spotlight shone on the black Steinway baby grand piano waiting for her, lid raised in greeting. An electric hum quivered Phoenix’s bones as she walked across the large property, flanked by her family and a team of purposeful strangers. Although the audience had already gathered in front of the stage beyond the colossal lighted swimming pool, Phoenix was blanketed by the expectant hush.

The grounds were at least five acres, free of lighting except for the stage: a silent temple. At this elevation, the air smelled clear as a mountaintop.

Phoenix noticed the guest house beyond the stage, on a knoll to the left of it, wrapped in trees. The smaller guest house had its
own thin columns, and there were four men clad in white clustered outside its entrance. Between them, enfolded in their group, was a girl—or maybe a small-boned woman—who had long hair and features hidden by the night.

The guest house was at least twenty yards from her, maybe closer to thirty, and there was no light on the porch where the group stood, but as Phoenix stared at the girl, her view became clear and sharp: the girl’s hair hung in dreadlock ropes long past her shoulders, and she was lithe and tall. She looked like a bride dressed in white. Like the other men, the girl was brown-skinned.
A model?
Phoenix wondered, although some part of her knew better.

Was Clarion run by Africans? News to her.

As if her own eyes suddenly had the power of binoculars, Phoenix saw the girl incline her head ever so slightly, the barest tilt of her forehead; a greeting meant for her. Phoenix nodded in return—
bowed
her head, really—to acknowledge the woman-child’s greeting.

For that instant, she and the girl alone shared five acres of emptied space. Time crawled.

When Phoenix blinked, the group at the cottage was again a distant huddle in the dark. It was a too-familiar feeling of dislocation, like brushing against her ghost all those years ago.
What the …?

“You okay?” Carlos’s voice said, his assuring hand on her shoulder.

Suddenly, Wright appeared beside her; or maybe she had only noticed him again. The strange telescopic vision had vanished, and her periphery filled with the crowd she had forgotten.

“That’s the boss-lady,” Wright said, winking. “You’ll meet her after the show.”

The boss-lady? Phoenix squinted to try to see the girl again, but couldn’t make out her features in the haze of distance. In Phoenix’s memory, she’d looked barely eighteen.

The crowd parted silently, carving Phoenix’s path.

Showtime.

When Phoenix sat, the piano bench was comfortable old slippers, a beach hammock in Carlos’s beloved isle of Culebra, the embrace of her parents’ arms, and a summertime ice-cream sandwich; every
sensation of safety and contentment Phoenix had ever known. She sat still for a moment just to savor it, awed and grateful.

Wright
had
done his research, choosing the same piano that sat in their music room at home, sadly neglected. She touched the shiny keys. Her fingers improvised a chord that filled the night with promise.

Carlos, watching with Marcus at the edge of the stage, mouthed
I love you
.

Phoenix noticed the microphone tilted near her mouth, and she adjusted it the way a guitarist tunes her strings. Wright had offered her a headset mic, but she liked old-school mics that reminded her of the jazz club her parents had run on Miami Beach when she was a kid.

“Do you feel it?” Phoenix said into the mic, gentle breath amplified into wind-song.

The crowd murmured, a church congregation.

“I don’t have words for how happy I am to be here tonight,” Phoenix said. “I was almost silly enough not to come. Now I’m just sorry I couldn’t bring my old band—love you, La’Keitha, Jabari, Andres, Devon, and T.”
Love you, Scott. Love you, Sarge and Mom
. Her ghosts. The power of her parents’ yawning absence thinned her voice. “They’re all here in spirit. Hope it’s all right with you guys if it’s just me in the flesh.”

Carlos began clapping, and the crowd followed in a thunderous wave that stopped as quickly as it had begun, sinking into expectant silence again.

“I think ya’ll might know this song,” she said. “I’ve played it a few million times.”

Good-natured laughter from the crowd.

“But this time, it’s in my heart again,” Phoenix went on. “Hope it’s still in yours.”

Phoenix’s fingers relished the familiar, lilting intro to the song that had brought her out of her ghost’s shadow. She could remember the exact moment she’d composed it, eating jerk chicken, tired of hearing the gunshots that had taken Sarge—suddenly wondering what it would sound like if Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, and Nina Simone came by her place to jam.

That day, Phoenix had been born.

Once upon a time, at a long-ago Grammys concert, she and Bono had sung her signature song as a duet, and Prince had surprised them on the stage with his purple guitar’s heartrending squeal. Now, alone with her piano, there were none of the subtle
son
and hip-hop undertones, electric guitar flourishes, or funky, stomach-rumbling bass lines. But it was the same song made simple, so sweet on her fingertips and tongue that it was hard to sing without tears.

Phoenix played “Wanna Fly” for the first time—again.

Can you put memories in a jar?

Turn them into marbles

Instead of stones?

Are broken wings just like a scar?

Heal yourself
,

Heal the world
.

Love yourself
,

Love the world
.

Wanna fly

Wanna fly

My soul gets cold from standing still
.

If I can’t test my wings, I’ll die
.

Don’t wanna die for a while
.

I think I’ll fly for a while
.

While Phoenix’s tear-roughened voice floated to the treetops, the audience sang with her, clinging to one another’s arms.

Phoenix was flying. She couldn’t feel the piano bench beneath her or the pedal at her feet. She tasted salt, but she couldn’t feel the tears on her face. The substance of her was gone, just like the days when her ghost had taken her on his journeys. Phoenix’s fingers
stilled, and she and the crowd sang the a cappella chorus powerfully enough to shake the earth.

Heal yourself
,

Heal the world
.

Don’t wanna die for a while
.

I think I’ll fly for a while
.

People were hugging. Carlos was closest to her, with moon-eyed Marcus beside him, so Phoenix hopped from the stage and melted into her family. Around her, people sobbed and prayed, thanking Jesus and Jehovah and Olodumare and Allah and Jah, some of them sinking to their knees. She saw the woman she’d met in the wheelchair on her feet, the chair forgotten, spinning in a circle while her flowered dress flew above her thighs.

“Thank you,” Phoenix whispered, joining their new chorus.

Carlos’s body shook with sobs, and she held him to steady him while he steadied her.

“Mommy, what’s happening?” Marcus whispered.

If Phoenix had known which words to use, she would have told Marcus that a door had opened above them and below them, exposing the core of everything. The music might have led them all to the door, but Phoenix knew the door wasn’t hers any more than the music was, and she certainly hadn’t opened it: she wouldn’t have known how.

No one had to tell her to look back to the cottage on the knoll beyond the stage. Her eyes knew exactly where to go. All of her
felt
the source of the power that had swept over them.

The men she had seen earlier were gone.

Only the girl dressed in white remained, arms outstretched between the columns, upturned eyes seeing straight through the sky.

Washington State

2010

Six Years Earlier

J
ohnny Jamal Wright had never met the scientist who greeted his father in the packed dirt courtyard, near the huge fountain carved to look like a lion and lioness. All he knew about the scientist was that he was a friend of his father’s who had left Tallahassee. He was as tall as a tree, almost seven feet. Johnny couldn’t tell his race from his tanned skin.

“Sorry about the blindfolds,” the scientist said. “We have these nuisance protocols….”

Johnny blinked into the sunlight, his eyes adjusting since he’d pulled off his blindfold. Trees stood in every direction, mostly evergreens. The limo that had met them at Sea-Tac Airport had been hella cool—the first hour of the ride, anyway—but at the end of a spy mission worthy of James Bond, the limo had dumped him and his father in the middle of the woods.
Not
cool.

His father, surveying the land around them, was beaming. “Look at this, Doc,” Dad kept saying, as if trees were his passion. “You’ve really built it up.”

Built what up? They were in front of a large wood-frame two-story house that looked like an antique. Two more cabin-style houses were set farther back in the woods, connected by footpaths. A longer wooden building might have been a church, or a schoolhouse. Some of the boards were uneven. A white domed roof caught his eye inside the treetops.

No basketball court. No baseball diamond. Nobody came here to play.

The scientist stood over Johnny, tall enough to block the sun. He needed to shave. Dad’s hand landed hard on Johnny’s shoulder, a reminder to smile politely instead of staring.

“Johnny, Doc Shepard is a microbiologist known the world over. I can’t wait for you to hear about the incredible work he’s doing. He won a major prize called the Lasker Award.”

“Pleasure to meet you, sir,” Johnny said, although he wasn’t sure yet.

The scientist winked at Johnny. “We’ll spare you the ancient history. Johnny, I wish my son was here, but he’s at summer camp. He’s a couple of years older than you….”

Dad asked about the scientist’s son in a low, serious voice, and Johnny realized that the kid had been sick once, and the scientist had healed him. Maybe that was why he had left Tallahassee and moved into the woods. Maybe the cure was a secret.

But fugitives also hid in the woods. Mom would scream bloody murder if she heard about the blindfolds, after what her family had been through in Jordan.

“Doc, I swear, you haven’t aged a
day
,” Dad said, his voice full of wonder that gave Johnny the creeps. His father’s eyes were twinkling merrily, like a department store Santa Claus. Those were Dad’s eyes from church, when he talked to God.

Johnny wanted to tell his father he was ready to go home. Only his shyness in front of the scientist kept him quiet.

“I’ve aged fifty years on the inside,” the scientist told Dad, laughing. The scientist steered Dad to the wooden steps to the main house’s front porch. The house looked big and airy, the kind where there would be nothing to do, and anything he touched would break. A house that old probably didn’t have a working TV.

Johnny started to follow them up the porch steps, but the scientist paused.

“Know what, Johnny?” the scientist said. “Why don’t you stay outside for a bit?”

Dad shot him an apologetic look, knowing Johnny preferred AC
to outdoors any day. Johnny had just turned fourteen, well beyond his tree-climbing stage.

“I can sit and read in there,” Johnny said, remembering his backpack stash.

The scientist smiled pleasantly. “Nah. Look around. Explore. Just stay away from the ax and the woodpile.” He pointed vaguely, but Johnny didn’t turn to see the woodpile. The trees looked like a maze: a short walk in any direction could get him lost. How could the scientist say he couldn’t get in trouble?

“Doc Shepard and I have some catching up to do,” Dad said, winking:
Get it?

“The girls will keep you company out here,” the scientist said.

Johnny hoped he hadn’t been elected babysitter to a litter of brats who lived in the forest. Before Johnny could protest, the scientist clapped his hands together, excited as he climbed the porch steps with Dad. “Garrick,” the scientist said, “I wake up every day and want to pinch myself…. You can’t imagine how exciting this work is … the miraculous strides …”

To Johnny, the scientist sounded like the guy in the baggy suit who had sold Dad and Mom their Chrysler. The scientist’s voice faded in the foyer. “… You can see how it’s changed since you were here. There are families now—with children. They just built a school …”