Devil Went Down to Harlem

Simone Black

Breakfast at the house went something like this…with Alex, who I’m pretty sure died over 50 years ago, playing the piano in the living room and telling stories like he was playing a live set at the jazz bar that used to be across the street before he overdosed on heroin.

“’Jazz back then was the music of sin’ my mother told me, ‘You didn’t find good Christian girls at the juke joint baring their legs and gyrating their hips to the sound of the sultry music,’” he said while strumming softly.

And my roommate Paige is doing yoga in the kitchen, downwards facing dog, ass in the air, looking at me upside down with her brown curly hair tied in a lazy bun. She never says good morning. Just looks at me like she’s not sure if I’m there or not.

Alex continued playing the piano and commentating, his fingers gliding smoothly across the piano keys. I don’t know what he’s talking about. Probably bemoaning his long-lost boyfriend or something or the other as usual.

Jazz sounded like what love making felt like, so you can imagine, the first time I snuck out to Harlem, didn’t have my parent’s permission.

My head was still spinning from the party we had last night. The muted light, scarves over lampshades, while a girl wearing a flapper’s dress, hair cut in bobs and curled over her ears sung, her voice as velvety as butter.

“And that was when I met the devil,” Alex said.

You see Alex had the problem of being gay in the 1940’s. Something he never got over, even now that he’s dead. I live in an old brownstone in New Brunswick in the shitty part of town. It was close enough to the campus of ye olde college so that I was actually able to convince some young people to move in with me. They normally don’t last long, with all the ghosts coming in and out. Paige has lasted a full year. She, however comes with her own set of problems that I’ve chosen to ignore due to the steady rent I get paid.

It was on a day like today that I had to say goodbye to Jerry. He came down the stairs, always wearing that same Aviator’s jacket, this time carrying a box.

“Did you get drafted?” Alex said with a grin, poking his head out from his piano, knowing very well Jerry had already been to war and back.

“I’m leaving,” he told me, looking me in the eyes, each word hitting me like a punch in the face, “Time to move on.”

But of course, I saw this coming. He’d been trying to move on since the day he moved in. And it was me who was holding him back.

“The war was terrible,” Jerry had told me at the party. Alex was there with his band, playing the cello, the flapper girl sung softly, words caressing my inner ear. And every guy in the room looked like they were either about to cry or have erections. And I wasn’t sure how many of them were alive or not.

“Storming the beach at Normandy, all those bodies flailing left and right, blood spattering out of their sides like fireworks. I never left that beach you know, I never left,” Jerry finished. Jerry survived the war of course, but not a member of his crew did. He came back home to an empty life. Wasn’t back any more than a week before he hung himself.

I stopped spinning beneath his arm to look into his eyes, “Why are you leaving us Jerry? Why?”

He smiled his kind boy smile that made me cherish those nights I’d spent curled into his arms. He’d been more or less a gift since he came into my life. Curing my lonely nights with his long talks of his life while he sat in my window sill.

“To be honest it’s Paige. All that yoga in the kitchen. I don’t want to see anyone’s ass in my face while I’m eating my cocoa puffs,” he said. Of course, it was a cop out. Our relationship had become more or less strange and complicated. And maybe moving on was easier. There was two ways to exorcise a ghost, one that involved pig’s blood and the other was helping them figure out what was keeping them behind, help them to move on. And then there was my method, form a relationship with them until it becomes just downright awkward and force them to move on just to get away from me.

“It’s been a pleasure, dollface,” he said or something along those lines before he winked out of existence.

And maybe I’m a ghost

Wow wow wow

Maybe I’m a ghost

“Picture it, New Orleans, the jazz era, and the lascivious moans of Nina Simone. And him, that beautiful man. It was just us, swaying hips, and the la-de-da-das of the cat eyed brown skinned goddess of the stage,” Alex said. He loved jazz more than he loved anything. I couldn’t bear to tell him that nobody listened to it anymore.

That moaning voice I maaade

That moaning voice I maaaaade

Now Paige was twisted into a pretzel, crotch out, and holds herself up by just her hands, all the while staring at me with this dead pan expression.

I go to the fridge to see if I had anymore cereal. I found a half-eaten box of cocoa puffs, the name Jerry clearly labeled in sharpie marker. The top of the fridge is covered in dust and rust stains.

“Oh, Jerry left his cocoa puffs,” I said.

“Who’s Jerry?” Paige asked.

“The guy we had the party for last night?”

She stood on her head over the cheap linoleum floors and stared at me like I was crazy. Paige doesn’t see the ghosts but sometimes I forget that she can’t and that they’re ghosts. It’s not like you can easily tell the difference between ghosts and the living. They look the same, they feel the same, they fuck the same. When was the last time I had a real boyfriend?

“Is that why you were spinning around in the living room last night? I thought you were drunk,” she said.

“Isn’t there somewhere else you can do that yoga?” I asked. I mean, after all this was a 5 bedroom house and currently, 3 of them were empty. Well, 2, Alex “lives” in one of them and he refuses to give it up.

“This room has the greatest feng shui,” she said.

She finished her stretches and tossed a pamphlet onto the table in front of me.

“And can you find a new roommate already? I set up an interview with a guy this afternoon,” she said.

“What’s this?” I asked before she turned to run up the stairs.

“What does it look like?” she asked. It looked like an invitation to her dance recital. And it’s odd because I have been under the quite strong impression that she didn’t like me.

“Holy Moley,” Alex said, appearing across the table to take it, “Is this real life? Are you two…actually becoming…sociable companions?”

“Doubt it,” I said.

“We’re definitely going to this,” he said. I made a face.

“Do you have something better to do?” he asked. And he knew the answer to that, so I didn’t bother to reply.

I got a text from Patreaus.

Patreaus: I see you finally moved Jerry on. Good job but you’re still behind your quota by 9. If you don’t do your job, you don’t get paid. Humble reminder.

I clicked off my phone with a smack of my teeth. Fucking Patreaus was a slave driver. 10 bodies per week was he kidding? I remember when it used to be three.

Paranormal Control Society keeps track of all of us undesirables. I’ve had to wear a tracker on my right ankle nearly all my life. I pretend it’s a fit bit when people ask me about it. And I’m expected to use my “gifts” if you would call them for the greater good, to catch other dangerous demons. Did I mention that I was part demon? It was all my grandmother’s fault.

It was the 1920’s in Harlem. Right when white people started flooding the jazz clubs like it was fashionable. It was the time of Billie Holiday and Langston Hughes’s The Negro Speaks of Rivers. Them handsome blue-eyed white boys never looked in the direction of the girls like my mother, especially not with all the doe eyed blonde haired white girls with the red lipstick and cigarette holders. But everything black was cool then. And a lot of white boys were looking for the “experience” of being with a black girl. He wasn’t the first peachy creamed young man who came a hollerin. But they all just wanted to get you alone and she wasn’t about that. She went to church every Sunday she said. My mother was half. And I’m a quarter now.

I’ll never have children because of this. Our family line will be cursed from all times to be haunted by the demon, otherwise known as my grandfather, who I like to call Daddy-o but his name is Bartimeaus. He pops by every now and then to harass me, always wearing that same goddamn plaid beret. Sometimes he plays the saxophone and I hear the lilting sounds in my sleep. Every time I hear the hum of a sax I know he’s around. And the thought both terrifies and excites me.

This is why. That lovely old house I live in, his gift to me. Only thing is, I have to pay rent, the price of 10 souls a month. And with Patreus’s 10 a week it’s hard to keep up with. I practically have to walk through graveyards at night just to keep up. And Paige thinks we actually pay monetary rent but truthfully, she just pays me and I use her money to fund my lifestyle. To be honest, another extra 500 wouldn’t hurt. It’s just so hard to keep a roommate nowadays.

But him giving me this house and then forcing me to do his bidding kind of turned him into this twisted sugar daddy. Sure, he bought me whatever I wanted but I still got fucked by him kind of deal. And I can’t escape him. Trust me I’ve tried all of the tricks, burning sage, lighting candles, salt baths, the whole shebang. Blood curses are impossible to end. You can’t choose your family they say. And for me it’s been real fucking unfortunate.

By day, I go to classes. I’m a professional student. I have a Bachelor’s already in English and now I’m just taking random classes. Poetry is one of them. And Mr. Kevin, the way he sits with the top buttons of his shirt down and point his bare bird chest in my direction and I can see the wily grey hairs. Is he coming onto me? I wonder. I really need a live boyfriend. But what’s the point anyway? Not like we could marry and live happily ever after with the curse and all.

But you know, I’d take an in between dude.

You know, one of those guys you’re with just for now until you find something better.

Sometimes I walk down the street and it’s the 1920’s and men walk down in hats and nicely prim suits and women wear flowy skirts. And I see my mother, hair perfectly curled, that mauve, heart shaped face and almond eyes, rushing to catch the buses that looked like huge Volkswagen bugs.

She wasn’t around much you know, you wouldn’t be either if you could transcend between two worlds like she could being half demon and all. When you’re half anything you get a choice, one or the other. Either you’re human or you’re just fucking evil. Guess what she chose? Too evil even for Daddy-o, he had to get rid of her. You know what’s worse than hell? Just not existing at all, disappearing right out of the fucking face of the earth or whatever this is. I’m still not even sure how he did it. Doesn’t make sense from what I understand about the universe. There were souls, and either they were in a body or they were not. And if you were a soul without a body, either you went to heaven, hell, or you just hung around among the living. Never heard of someone just poof – gone. But it is what it is. That’s Daddy-o for you. Kills my mother, then looks after me. Not sure what to make of him, never could. All I know is when I let my guard down and start to trust him, he always disappoints me. Gotta keep the guy at arm’s length that’s all I know.

Next Chapter: What Happened Last Summer