The Songbird of Staten Island, they’d called her.
——————
Once again, ACAB.
I honestly don’t really have much else to say about this one, except I don’t have the most extensive knowledge of jazz and blues music so I may very well have just listed the most basic entry-level artists out there. Very sorry about that! I am not smart. I only know how to listen to one of the two songs I know by Tamaryn on repeat for days until it ends up in the top 5 on my Spotify Wrapped!!!
——————
Jasmine, The Singer
The Songbird of Staten Island, they’d called her.
Mrs Huntington replaces the dish on the draining rack beside the sink just as the doorbell rings. She slips off her washing-up gloves, hangs them up to dry, and goes to answer the door.
“Oh good heavens, you gave me such a fright!” she giggles, resting her hand over her chest. The girl outside apologises profusely, stumbling over her words, so Mrs Huntington takes pity on her and invites her in.
Jasmine Wells’s whole life had been shaped by music. She’d grown up with the greats: Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, just to name a few, and even from a young age she knew she wanted to be a singer. When her father passed away she inherited his extensive record collection, along with some of his debts, and Jasmine could have sold it all to pay them off but she wasn’t about to let go of the one thing she had left of him.
Jasmine Wells blinks, then Mrs Huntington blinks. Her unexpected visitor introduces herself as Rachel Martinez, otherwise known as Rosie Everett from over on Fairview Lane, but that part of her is dead now, along with her husband, who’s lying on a cold floor in an old mansion with a high heel lodged in his skull, piercing right through to his brain. Jasmine recognises her, even with those wavy blonde locks of hers chopped off and dyed with red Kool-Aid, and she wants to badly to tell her so, but Mrs Huntington just won’t fucking let her.
When the weather was right, Jasmine liked to go out onto the balcony of her apartment in the projects, singing melodies to the wind, some she’d written herself, but mostly the classics. Sometimes it felt like she was flying, soaring up above New York, gliding over Central Park, taking her across Rockefeller Plaza, all the way up the Empire State Building, just with the power of her voice. That was why they called her the Songbird of Staten Island.
It helped take her mind off of the leak in her kitchen ceiling.
Being a Black girl in a lower-income area of Staten Island, people – white people, mostly – regularly assumed she was turning tricks on the side. She wasn’t the type to judge the girls who were, but she knew damn well that wasn’t her, and her friends would vouch for her at any time. Not that the NYPD’s 120th Precinct ever gave a rat’s ass. With raised eyebrows and thumbs hooked through belt loops they’d ask Jasmine why she didn’t just sell her dad’s records to clear her debts – clearly the idea of sentimental value was lost on them. Or they just couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that Jasmine genuinely loved the music.
“Uh, hey, is there a computer in the house I can use real quick?” Rachel asks, looking around the hallway.
Mrs Huntington blinks again. “Why, yes, of course!” she chirps. “There’s one in my husband’s study. If I ever want to use it I have to ask for permission, and even then he’ll usually say no…” A sudden wave of sadness hits her, and she trails off, staring down at her shoes.
Jasmine kept a video diary. She would upload vocal covers of her favourite songs online, along with some of her own compositions, the vast majority of them recorded from her balcony. Her videos never got more than a couple hundred views, but she didn’t care. She was just happy to share her talent and appreciation for jazz, blues, soul, and classic R&B with whoever cared to stop by.
From the other side of the door to the study she hears the clicks of a mouse and the clacks of the keyboard, alternating between clacks and clicks and clicks and clacks, and a woman’s voice rings out through the walls of the house. Rachel opens the door with a soft smile, her expression caught somewhere between sorrow and sympathy, and beckons Mrs Huntington into the study.
Hold me close and hold me fast
The magic spell you cast
This is La vie en rose
“Oh my, what a beautiful voice!” Mrs Huntington gasps. “What’s she singing?”
Rachel turns to look back at her over her shoulder, the smile never leaving her face. “You’re singing La vie en rose,” she says. “It’s a video of you, Jasmine.”
A white guy stopped her in the park one day, said he’d heard her from her balcony and she had an outstanding voice, offered her a record deal with a lucrative major label. It sounded way too good to be true, but Jasmine figured she’d better give him the benefit of the doubt. He gave her his details, which she forwarded to her friends just in case, and followed him to his car.
He poured her a glass of champagne from a bottle on ice in the backseat. One sip and she felt light-headed, by the second her head had started to swim, and after the third she was out cold.
She doesn’t say a word, just steps closer to the computer screen, watches the girl who looks like her leaning on the railing of a balcony, a serene expression on her face as she sings to a clear blue April sky. Her skin almost glows golden in the late afternoon sun, eyes fluttering closed as she hits a high note, a smile tugging at the corners of her full lips.
When you kiss me, Heaven sighs
And though I close my eyes
I see La vie en rose
It doesn’t make sense. This… is her? But she doesn’t remember ever singing like this.
When she finally came to, she was in a dark basement, the white guy who offered her the record deal arguing with another white guy, tall and mean-looking with glasses and a full beard, clearly furious that he had picked her instead of a white girl. Still he introduced himself to her, ignoring her protests, and took it upon himself to shine a flashlight in her eyes.
“Your name is Martha Huntington. You are the faithful and devoted wife of John Huntington. You live on Norwood Road in Stepford, Connecticut. You cook and you clean, and you have never been happier.”
Her hands tremble as she scrolls down toward a wall of comments, all saying things like “We miss you, Jasmine!” and “I hope she’s alright” and “she hasn’t posted in years, I’m worried about her”… Jasmine?
When you press me to your heart
I’m in a world apart
A world where roses bloom
Jasmine’s legs give out beneath her and she tumbles backward onto the floor, the recorded sound of her own voice filling the small, stuffy room.
And when you speak, angels sing from above
Everyday words seem to turn into love songs
“Holy shit!” Rachel gasps, rushing to Jasmine’s side, slipping an arm beneath her shoulder to lift her upright. “Are you okay?”
Jasmine blinks. Mrs Huntington doesn’t come back.
That man fucking lied to her. He weaponised her dreams against her to lure her into a life of servitude and conformity, keeping her trapped inside her own head, unable to do anything but watch as her hands mopped and polished and swept and chopped and diced and garnished and basted, her lips spoke carefully constructed delusions of devotion and complacency, her legs opened for a white guy the same age her dad would have been this year, who couldn’t even get it up–
“Jasmine? You alright?”
She inhales a shaky breath.
“I need a minute,” she says as she stands up slowly.
Jasmine calmly opens the door of the study, steps out into the hallway, walks up the stairs and into the bedroom, opens the window, and leans out into the night.
She screams her fucking lungs out.
Give your heart and soul to me
And life will always be
La vie en rose
———
Jasmine Wells grips the steering wheel with both hands, her glance flickering from her reflection in the rearview mirror to the map sitting on the dashboard. Taking a deep breath to compose herself, she turns the key in the ignition and presses her foot down on the acceleration pedal, shifting from second gear to fourth as she drives away from her prison and in the general direction of the train station.
She snickers to herself, lets out a few giggles, then breaks out into a fit of laughter.
Try as they might, the Stepford Men’s Association could never kill the Songbird of Staten Island.
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