“It’s Ray’s fiddle,” Rochelle said. “Maybe he should get a finder’s fee? You want a finder’s fee, sugar?”
Ray put them all back on mute. “Wait, wait, everybody. I don’t think you understand. I hope I’ll be making some pretty good money from my concerts, but I’m not selling my violin.”
He turned off the mute.
“Your violin?” Ray’s mom said, as if he had invented a new language.
“Yeah, I’m not selling my violin.”
“That was Mama’s violin. It belongs to the family.”
“Actually it doesn’t. Grandma Nora gave it to me four years ago.”
“Boy, ain’t nobody got time for this craziness,” his mother said.
“Once I get on my feet, though, and start making money, I’m planning on sending what I can to you all, to divide among you,” Ray said.
“I say we sell the fiddle right now and split the money evenly. We can even divide by six, so you can have your own share,” Thurston said. “That’s a minimum of 1.6 million dollars each.”
“That’s right,” Ray’s mom said.
“No,” Ray said. “I know this came out of nowhere, but the best thing for me to do is—”
“The best thing for you to do is bring that violin back to Mama’s house so we can figure out how to sell it. We finally have a chance to get rich and you are about to fuck it up for all of us?”
“Larry, stop,” Aunt Rochelle said.
“You know it’s true,” Uncle Larry told her. “That boy thinks he’s all that because he’s going to that white school.”
Ray took a deep breath. It didn’t help. “I’ll tell you who I think I am. You never thought twice about that fiddle.”
“What did you say, boy?”
“You heard exactly what I said. My violin is not for sale.”
“Well lookee here. Somebody finally grew a pair. Why are you doing this? How can you be so selfish?” Uncle Larry asked.
“Is this how I raised you, to only think about yourself?” his mother wanted to know.
Ray couldn’t help rolling his eyes. “I’m not thinking about myself. I’m thinking about Grandma and what she wanted. And she wanted me to play PopPop’s fiddle.”
“You know what, fuck this,” Uncle Thurston said. “I’m calling a lawyer. I don’t know who you think you are.”
“You know what, I tried,” Ray told them. “I’m not selling my violin. Good luck with your lawyer. Oh, and thanks for your support.”
He ended the call, stared up at his poster of Optimus Prime. “That went much better than I thought it would. Don’t you think?”
* * *
—
The next morning, the front page of the Charlotte Herald ran the headline “Markham U Student Discovers Strad Violin,” and below it: “Estimated at $10 Million.”
At 12:01 a.m.—long before papers reached local front doorsteps, mailboxes, and stores—the electronic edition of the Charlotte Herald was posted online.
By 12:23 a.m., Ray’s phone was buzzing with numbers he didn’t recognize. He received messages, emails, and texts from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, BBC News, the Today show, People magazine, and dozens of other media outlets.
Janice had thought only the Charlotte Herald would care. She was wrong: the world woke up to the story of a young Black violin prodigy who played on his grandmother’s $10 million Stradivarius.
The circus had begun.
Chapter 14
Debut
11 Months Ago
On the night of Ray’s debut performance as a soloist, everything that could go wrong for his performance did, indeed, go wrong.
As he opened the doors to the Belk Theater at the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, a blast of warm air poured out. The June day was already muggy; now, at just after noon, the city streets were thick with exhaust and humidity. He’d expected a cool air-conditioned wave to embrace him, and instead it seemed hotter inside than outside. Janice, for whom he’d held the polished aluminum door, looked back at him and grimaced. “I think the AC is broken.”
They crossed the foyer as three workmen carrying a stepladder, big aluminum ducts, and other mechanical parts zoomed from the main auditorium to a side door.
Across the lobby, the Belk Theater’s doors had been propped open. Distant banging on pipes and the echo of the Bruch Concerto rattled around them, ricocheting off metal and glass. In the auditorium, the stage glowed—the enormous organ pipes at the back gleamed against the cream walls. When they reached the stage, Ray looked back. Rows of seats, tier upon tier of balconies, flung out in front of him. The theater could hold a couple thousand people, easily. He took a breath to steady himself, tightened his grip on the violin case. His hand was already sweaty.