The music of an empty house

In 2002, I bought a house.

It was an old house, built in 1865. It was red brick, three-stories, and had lots of windows. Unadorned when I first saw it, the light was flooding in.

It was a handsome home and as welcoming as any I’d paraded past in Harlem. In my dreams, if the poet Langston Hughes resided in Pittsburgh, he’d have lived in this house, too.

When I bought the house, I heard a whisper. It echoed through every sun-splashed empty room. “This is your home, but it does not belong to you.”

It must have been the voice of God, or least the voice of my Great-Aunt Gertie, whispering down from the great cloud of witnesses. I think she was warning me aboutwhat — and who — was to come.

I listened because owning the home would not have been possible without my great-aunt.

For my reality of homeownership to live, my greataunt had to die.

It was a $5,000 gift from her estate, bequeathed to me when she died from breast cancer that made me the king of this castle, which sits on a busy artery on the central North Side.

I honored this voice. So, I told myself, my home would be open to the weary, the lost, the dreamer. In the 16 years I’ve lived in the home, each of those visitors have resided there.

First, the doors flung open for Mitchell. My 13-year-old nephew wanted to attend arts school. He transitioned to Pittsburgh to enroll at the superb CAPA high, where he would dance and sing and act and have a joyous passage into young adulthood.

My mom came, too. She brought along boxes and boxes of shoes and stuffed them in a room where I had planned to display all of my Africana masks, photos and ornaments on bright yellow walls. She also brought glorious storytelling. Each night at dinner, this “kitchen poet” would unpack another delectable memory. She dropped her delicious spices on our pork chops and in the morsels of family history she revealed.

My nephew Sinclair came, too. He was 21 and running, hoping to escape his past. He arrived one late summer on the Megabus. For a while, he outpaced his demons — working and starting college. But then, he met a girl. He moved in with her. It ended disastrously. He left town, not even saying goodbye. It was late summer, a year later, he was on the Megabus, heading back South.

My niece Boostis came next. She came hoping to find her future. She dreamed of a life in fashion and arts. She loved poetry, wrote beautiful lyrics and spoke softly. She loved bright patterns, lots of makeup and shopping in secondhand stores. She hated school. She met a boy. He quit his job and moved back to Erie. She went back home to the South.

My nephew Francis came a few years later. He was studious and kind. A young girl broke his heart, but he managed to stay focused on his master’s program at Pitt.

When I think of home, I always think of Harlem, the grand vibrant New York City neighborhood once called the capital of black America. That is my spirit home. My first visit there was when I was 6. My greatgrandmother took me to visit family. The train rattled out of Richmond and arrived in a world unlike any I can remember. The wide streets and stately brownstones impressed me. But something about the verve and the energy of the community melted into my soul.

And, then I met a man: Langston Hughes. I was in middle school and introduced to the poet/writer. He, too, sang of Harlem. He would forever be my muse. My life’s river never quite flowed to Harlem. But when I saw the brownstone on bustling North Avenue, I knew I could have a piece of my dream. With every car horn, police siren, the sweet chatter of my neighbors walking down the street, I hear the music of Harlem.

It still resonates it my home. Every time I turn my key, I enter and I dance.

I’ll be dancing alone for a while.

Francis left about a year ago. He finished his program at GSPIA (he loved it) and he’s gone to find his place in the world. Mom is gone, too. She’s back in her village. She’s returned to her hometown of Richmond, Va., to the broader network of siblings, children and friends that she left there.

I miss her. But she needs the village. She needs the tender care my sisters can provide her, and she needs to walk the spaces and places and see faces that aren’t the faces of strangers. She needs to walk once again in a garden that is familiar.

And I’m ready to come home to nothing but the whispers. At least for a while.