PREFACE
PREFACE
I refuse to acknowledge time, famously so. I’ve made a lot of jokes and memes about it,but it’s a very real belief for me. I cried on my eighteenth birthday. I thought I was afailure because I didn’t have a record deal yet. That was my only goal. It was as if I washolding my breath until I could hold a physical thing, an album that had “Mariah Carey”
printed on it. Once I got my deal I exhaled, and my life began. From that day on, Icalculated my life through albums, creative experiences, professional accomplishments,and holidays. I live Christmas to Christmas, celebration to celebration, festive moment tofestive moment, not counting my birthdays or ages. (Much to the chagrin of certainpeople.)
Life has made me find my own way to be in this world. Why ruin the journey bywatching the clock and the ticking away of years? So much happened to me before anyoneeven knew my name, time seems like an inadequate way to measure or record it. Notliving based on time also became a way to hold on to myself, to keep close and keep alivethat inner child of mine. It’s why I gravitate toward enduring characters like Santa Claus,the Tooth Fairy, and Tinker Bell. They remind me we can be timeless.
It is a waste of time to be fixated on time. Often time can be bleak, dahling, so whychoose to live in it? Life is about the moments we create and remember. My memory is asacred place, one of the few things that belong entirely to me. This memoir is a collectionof the moments that matter, the moments that most accurately tell the story of who I am,according to me. It will move back and forth, up and down, moment to moment, adding upto the meaning of me now.
But then again, who’s counting?

PART I WAYWARD CHILD-AN INTENTION
PART I
WAYWARD CHILD
AN INTENTION
My intention was to keep her safe, but perhaps I have only succeeded in keeping herprisoner.
For many years, she’s been locked away inside of me—always alone, hidden in plainsight before masses of people. There’s significant evidence of her in my early work: oftenshe can be found looking out of windows, dwarfed by a giant frame, barefoot, staring at anempty rope swing swaying from a lone tree against a purple dusk sky. Or else she’s twostories up in a brownstone, watching the neighborhood children dancing on the sidewalkbelow. She’s shown up in a school auditorium in OshKosh overalls, holding a ball on thesidelines, waiting and wanting to be chosen. Sometimes she is caught in a rare moment ofjoy, on a roller coaster or flying by on skates with her hands in the air. Always she lingers,though, as a dull longing just behind my eyes. She’s been scared and alone for so long,and yet through all the darkness, she’s never lost her light. She has made herself knownthrough my songs—her yearning heard over the airwaves or seen on screens. Millions ofpeople know of her, but have never known her.
She is little Mariah, and much of this will be her story, as she saw it.
Some of my earliest memories are of violent moments. Because of that, I have alwayscarried a heavy blanket with which I cover up large pieces of my childhood. It has been aburden. But I can no longer stand the weight of that blanket and the silence of the little girlsmothering beneath it. I am a grown woman now, with a little girl and boy of my own. Ihave seen, I have been scared, I have been scarred, and I have survived. I have used mysongs and voice to inspire others and to emancipate my adult self. I offer this book, inlarge part, to finally emancipate that scared little girl inside of me. It is time to give her avoice, to let her tell her story exactly as she experienced it.
Though you cannot dispute someone’s lived experience, without a doubt, details inthis book will differ from the accounts of my family, friends, and plenty of folks whothink they know me. I’ve lived that conflict for far too long, and I’m weary of that too.
I’ve held my hand over the mouth of that little girl in an attempt to protect others. Even“those others” who never tried to protect me. Despite my efforts to “be above it all,” I stillgot dragged and sued and ripped off. In the end, I only hurt her more, and it almost killedme.
This book is a testimony to the resilience of silenced little girls and boys everywhere:
To insist that we believe them. To honor their experiences and tell their stories.
To set them free.
EXISTENCE
EXISTENCE
Early on, you face
The realization you don’t
Have a space
Where you fit in
And recognize you
Were born to exist
Standing alone
—“Outside”
There was a time in my early childhood when I didn’t believe I was worthy of being alive.
I was too young to contemplate ending my life but just old enough to know I hadn’t begunliving nor found where I belonged. Nowhere in my world did I see anyone who lookedlike me or reflected how I felt inside.
There was my mother, Patricia, with paler skin and straighter hair, and my father,Alfred Roy, with deeper skin and kinkier hair, and neither had faces with features just likemine. I saw them both as riddled with regret, hostages of a sequence of cruelcircumstances. My sister, Alison, and brother, Morgan, were both older and darker, andnot just in terms of the hues of their skin, though they were slightly browner. The two ofthem had a similar energy that seemed to block light. They had an approach to the worldthat made little room for whimsy and fantasy, which was my natural tendency. We sharedcommon blood, yet I felt like a stranger among them all, an intruder in my own family.
I was always so scared as a little girl, and music was my escape. My house was heavy,weighed down with yelling and chaos. When I sang, in a whispery tone, it calmed medown. I discovered a quiet, soft, light place inside my voice—a vibration in me thatbrought me sweet relief. My whisper-singing was my secret lullaby to myself.
But in singing I also found a connection to my mother, a Juilliard-trained opera singer.
As I listened to her doing vocal exercises at home, the repetition of the scales felt like amantra, soothing my frightened little mind. Her voice went up and down and up and upand up—and something inside me rose along with it. (I would also sing along with thebeautiful, angelic, soulful Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You” and follow her voice up intothe clouds.) I would sing little tunes around the house, to my mother’s delight. And shealways encouraged me. One day, while practicing an aria from the opera Rigoletto, shekept stumbling on this one part. I sang it back to her, in perfect Italian. I might have beenthree years old. She looked at me, stunned, and at that moment I knew she saw me. I wasmore than a little girl to her. I was Mariah. A musician.
My father taught me to whistle before I could talk. I had a raspy speaking voice eventhen, and I liked that I sounded different from most other kids my age. My singing voice,on the other hand, was smooth and strong. One day, when I was around eight years old, Iwas walking down the street with my friend Maureen, who had porcelainlike skin withwarm brown hair and a sweet face like Dorothy’s from The Wizard of Oz. She was one ofthe few little white girls in the neighborhood who was allowed to play with me. As wewalked, I began to sing something. She stopped suddenly, frozen in place on the sidewalk.
She listened for a moment in silence, standing very still. Finally, she turned to me andsaid, in a clear and steady voice, “When you sing it sounds like there are instruments withyou. There’s music all around your voice.” She said it like a proclamation, almost like aprayer.
They say God speaks through people, and I will always be grateful for my littlegirlfriend speaking into my heart that day. She saw something special in me and gave itwords, and I believed her. I believed my voice was made of instruments—piano, strings,and flutes. I believed my voice could be music. All I needed was someone to see and hearme.
I saw how my voice could make other people feel something good inside, somethingmagical and transformative. That meant not only was I not unworthy, valid as a person,but I was valuable. Here was something of value that I could bring to others—the feeling.
It was the feeling I would pursue for a lifetime. It gave me a reason to exist.
CLOSE MY EYES
CLOSE MY EYES
It took twelve cops to pull my brother and father apart. The big bodies of men, allentangled like a swirling hurricane, crashed loudly into the living room. Within an instant,familiar things were no longer in my sight—no windows, no floor, no furniture, and nolight. All I could see was a chaotic mass of body parts in motion: dark pants and strongarms bursting out of dark sleeves, enormous hands grabbing, fists punching, limbs tangledtogether and tearing away, heavy, polished black shoes scuffling and stomping. Therewere quick flashes of shiny things: buttons, badges, and guns. At least a dozen pistolhandles, stiff and sticking out of dull leather holsters, a few cradled in palms and thumbs,sat on wide black belts around broad hips. Chaos filled the air with the sounds of cursing,grunting, and howling. The entire house seemed to be shaking. And somewhere in the eyeof this storm were the two most important male figures in my life, destroying each other.
I always thought of my brother’s anger as weather — powerful, destructive, andunpredictable. I don’t know if it was a singular act or an ongoing illness that made him sovolatile, but it was all I had ever known.
I was a little girl with very few memories of a big brother who protected me. Moreoften, I felt I had to protect myself from him, and sometimes I would find myselfprotecting my mother from him too.
This particular fight with our father had escalated more quickly than most, however. Ashouting match became a tornado of fists in what seemed like a matter of seconds, bangingthrough the room, knocking things over, and leaving havoc in its wake. In that moment,the rage between my father and brother was so forceful that no one person could havestopped it. No one would have dared.
By the time I was a toddler, I had developed the instincts to sense when violence wascoming. As though I was smelling rain, I could tell when adult screaming had reached acertain pitch and velocity that meant I should take cover. When my brother was around, itwas not uncommon for holes to be punched in walls or for other objects to go flying. Inever really knew how or why the fights would begin, but I did know when tension wasturning into an argument and when an argument was destined to become a physical fight.
And I knew this particular one was going to be epic.
My Nana Reese was there, which was a bit odd because it was rare that she or anyonefrom my father’s family, who lived in Harlem, was at our house. We were in Melville, apredominately white, affluent-adjacent town in Suffolk County on Long Island, New York,though I would eventually move thirteen times growing up. Thirteen times to pack up andgo, to try to find another place—a better place, a safer place. Thirteen new starts, thirteennew streets with new houses full of people to judge you and wonder where or who yourfather is. Thirteen occasions to be labeled unworthy and discarded, to be placed on theoutside.
Pastor Nana Reese, the Good Reverend Roscoe Reese, and their African MethodistPentecostal Church were where my father came from. Roy was the only son of Addie,Nana Reese’s sister. My father never lived with his father, and there was always a potentdistance between them, a mystery that inevitably held a misery. These people, living in thevillage of Harlem, were his people. They had come up from Alabama and parts of NorthCarolina and other regions of the South, bringing with them traditions, traumas, and gifts—some of which were ancient, African, and mystical in origin.
Nana Reese and I found each other right before all hell really broke loose. The thunderof profanity, fists, and feet drowned out all other sounds, so I didn’t hear when the copsburst in.
I didn’t know if they had come to save us or kill us. It was Long Island in the 1970s,and two Black males were being violent—the appearance of the police almost never meantthat help had arrived. On the contrary, their presence often complicated and elevated theexisting terror and escalated violence. That hasn’t changed, but this was my first encounterwith the fact. I had no benefit of experience; I had no benefit of any kind. My cousinLaVinia, Nana Reese’s daughter, always said, “You kids had all the burdens of beingBlack but none of the benefits.” It took me a long time to understand the reality of herobservation.
This, of course, was not the first vicious fight between my father and brother—for aslong as I could remember, their relationship had been a war zone. But it was the first timethe troops had been called in. It was also the first time I witnessed the possibility that amember of my family could brutally die in front of my eyes. Or that I could die too. Iwasn’t yet four years old.
Before my mother and father found their marriage unbearable, they lived together inBrooklyn Heights. Though the neighborhood had seen a stream of bohemians arrive asearly as 1910, and the 1950s brought in a wave of urban activists—liberal folks withmoney who loathed the suburbs—in the 1970s it was still a pretty eclectic mix of mostlyworking- and middle-class families. It was pre-yuppie and ungentrified. If there was atolerant place for a young mixed-race family in that era, Brooklyn Heights was probablythe closest you could come to it.
Throughout my childhood, I would live in many obscure places, mostly on LongIsland, and feel very much like a castaway on this island-off-the-island of Manhattan. Bothmy parents worked very hard so we could live in neighborhoods where we could glimpsethat elusive “better life” and feel “safe.” Conventional wisdom, however, suggests that“better” and “safe” are synonymous with white.
We were not a conventional family. Was it better to live in a place where my whitemother would often walk alone through the front door first, ahead of my Black father withher mixed kids—for their safety? What does that do to the psyche of a man who issupposed to be the head of the household? How can such a man keep his family safe, andwhat does such an indignity signal to his Black son?
After the squad of policemen managed to separate my father and brother, though there wasstill a considerable amount of yelling, everyone was alive. The truly dangerous part of thestorm was over; the thunder had stopped. The next thing I knew I was cradled in NanaReese’s arms, crying and trembling. She had scooped me up like a sack of laundry and setme close beside her on what the kids used to call “the rocking couch,” a cheap, flimsystructure the color of dirt, rust, and olive, dotted with flecks of mustard. Sometimes I thinkit was that couch that planted the seed of my eventual preference for Chanel. We kidscalled it the “rocking couch” because it was missing a leg, and if you shifted your weightback and forth it would, well, rock. This was a noble attempt to find humor amid brokenthings, a talent I shared with my brother and sister. In the midst of the violence andtrauma, a great comfort came to me on that sad sofa.
Nana Reese held me tight until my little frame stopped shaking and my breathingbecame normal. From disorientation I returned to the room, I returned to my body. Sheturned my face up toward the light and made sure my eyes were focused and locked on tohers. She placed her delicate hand firmly on my thigh. Her touch immediately steadied anyaftershocks still pulsing through me. Her gaze was unusual—not that of a great-auntie, amother, or a doctor. It was instead as if she looked directly into the essence of me. In thatinstant we were not a frightened little girl and a consoling elder but two souls, ageless andequal.
She told me, “Don’t be scared of all the trouble you see. All your dreams and visionsare going to happen for you. Always remember that.”
As she spoke, a warm and loving current spread out from her hand to my leg, gentlycoursing through my body in waves and rising up and out the top of my head. Through thedevastation a path had been washed clear; I knew there was light. And somehow I knewthat light was mine and everlasting. Before that moment I hadn’t had any dreams I couldremember. I had very few memories either. I certainly had yet to hear a song in my heador have a vision.
From around when I was four years old, after my parents’ divorce, I didn’t see myNana Reese much. My mother and my father’s families remained locked in conflict, andsince I lived with my mother, I was largely cut off from Nana’s life of healing and holyrolling in Harlem. I did later learn that people called Nana Reese a “prophetess.” I alsolearned that she was not the only healer in my lineage. Beyond all that, I believe a deepfaith was awakened in me that day.
I understood on a soul level that no matter what happened to me, or around me,something lived inside me that I could always call on. I had something that would guideme through any storm.
And when the wind blows, and shadows grow closeDon’t be afraid, there’s nothing you can’t faceAnd should they tell you you’ll never pull throughDon’t hesitate, stand tall and say
I can make it through the rain
—“Through the Rain”
THERE CAN BE MIRACLES
THERE CAN BE MIRACLES
When I was six years old, my mother moved my brother and me into a tiny, nondescripthouse in Northport, Long Island. It sat sadly atop a stack of long, winding concrete steps.
The dull little structure had a few tiny rooms running along either side of a steep,creaky staircase, which led up to even smaller rooms. My mother was often working orout at night, so Morgan was left to babysit me. He had no skills to look after a little girl.
He would leave me alone and go run wild with his teenage friends. One night, while leftalone, I was watching a special on 20/20 about children being kidnapped — totallyinappropriate for a six-year-old. And it so happened that at that moment, some kids in theneighborhood decided to throw rocks at the window. Their voices broke through the darknight, chanting, “Mariah, we’re gonna get you!” I was terrified by the news, by the kids,by the night, by the house, by my absolute aloneness.
I wanted my brother to love me. I was impressed by his strong energy, but it alsoscared me. This little house couldn’t possibly bear the weight of all of our pain and fear—especially my brother’s. It was such a raw time. I was a scared little girl, my mother wasprofoundly heartbroken, and my brother—well, let’s just say he was more than simply anangry teen, especially in high school. He’d outgrown anger by middle school and hadgraduated to full-on rage. As a young teen, my brother was bursting with creative andathletic promise. But earlier in his life he had been bullied and beat up for having adisability and being a mixed-race kid. The visible difference he wore on his skin alwaysdistanced him from the white boys in Long Island and made him a target. Children can bemean, but when ordinary meanness is combined with racism, it takes on a peculiarbrutality, one very often sanctioned by (and learned from) adults. My brother most likelycaught some hell from the Black kids too. I’m sure his distance from their kind ofdetectable Blackness, the kind that gets you roughed up by the cops for nothing, stirred upa resentment in them that came out in the form of physical blows and name-calling.
My brother was broken early on, and the only tool he had to defend himself wasdestruction. He would fight everything, his demons and everybody else, especially ourfather. The relationship he had with our father was not one that helped him rebuild—instead, it ground him down even further into his inner outrage. A broken man cannot fixhis broken boy. My brother was shattered into pieces, scattered to the wind, and ourfather’s outdated tools of militaristic discipline were inadequate to help him collecthimself and prepare him for manhood. The misunderstanding and emotional distance withour father was my brother’s perpetual and crushing agony, and it resulted in his absoluterage.
For most of my childhood I was caught between my brother’s fury and my mother’ssad searching. Rage and despondence are both highly damaging, but, I think, one turnsinward and the other turns outward. When they collide, it can be catastrophic. By the timeI was in kindergarten, catastrophe was already routine to me. When we lived in Northport,mini explosions erupted between my mother and brother daily. I conditioned myself to bestill and wait for the outbursts to pass over. Most of the time I tuned out the words andreasons behind their fights—the “why” was big-people territory. To me, their argumentswere just a blur of intense voices at high volume, punctuated by ruthless cursing.
One particular night, however, I distinctly knew the source of the argument: mybrother wanted to use my mother’s car, and she wouldn’t let him. Certainly they’d hadhundreds of fights over the car, but for some reason this night felt different. I was payingattention. Typically, their fights would start off the way I imagined normal fights betweenmost teenagers and parents did, but this one wasn’t like that. It began at blow-up level andrapidly escalated into violent obscenities being hurled across the room. Hurtful words flewback and forth like bullets ricocheting off the walls, gaining strength with each new round.
There was no escaping the crossfire; the screaming shot room to room, up and down thestairs, and the entire house became a battlefield. There was no safe place. I felt the airtighten as my mother and brother came face-to-face, mere inches of electrified angerbetween them. I was terrified. My whole body stiffened. Eyes opened wide, I fixed on thespace between them and cried out, “Stop it! Stop it!” over and over again, through mytears. I was hoping maybe my cry could slip into that space and disarm them for amoment.
Suddenly there was a loud, sharp noise, like an actual gunshot. My brother had pushedmy mother with such force that her body slammed into the wall, making a loud crackingsound. I saw her frame go rigid; for a moment she appeared frozen against the wall,pinned up like a painting, her feet lifted several inches off the ground. Next thing I knewshe was totally limp, as if her bones had melted, folding onto the floor. It was a splitsecond. It was an eternity. My eyes were still fixed in place, only now I was looking at mymother collapsed in a crumpled pile on the floor. My brother stomped out and slammedthe door, shaking the house one last time, and sped off in her car.
I stood there for a moment in the eerie silence. I could hear myself breathing, but Icouldn’t tell if my mother still was. A chilling clarity came to me, just as a soft part of mychildhood left. Without taking my eyes from my motionless mother, I pulled myselftogether. Picking up the receiver of our one telephone, I felt it heavy and cold, pressedagainst my small ear. My little fingers pushed down the square buttons in a familiarsequence. It was the number of one of my mother’s friends, whose house she wouldsometimes visit to hang out. Since I was only six years old, hers was one of the fewnumbers I had memorized.
Clearing my voice so I could be heard over the telephone’s static hum, choking ontears, I did my best to calmly tell her, “My brother really hurt my mother, and I’m homealone. Please come help.” I don’t remember what she said. I hung up still feeling focused,my eyes still fixed on my mother’s body. I went into a sort of trance.
I don’t know how long I stood there, just that I snapped out of it at the sound of a loudbanging on the door. I scurried to open it for my mother’s friend, and several policemenrushed in. I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying, but I watched as they hurriedover to where my mother was lying. Next thing I knew, she was moving. The moment Irealized she was alive, the spell of shock broke, and a gush of fear and panic rushed overme—the dawning realization of what had actually happened, what had almost happened,and what unknown future was waiting. I tucked my small body into a ball, held on tomyself tightly, and quietly began to cry. I could hear the faint sound of my mother’s voiceas she stirred back to consciousness. Then I heard a crystal-clear voice, ringing out justabove my head. It was a man’s voice, a voice that I will never forget.
One of the cops, looking down at me but speaking to another cop beside him, said, “Ifthis kid makes it, it’ll be a miracle.” And that night, I became less of a kid and more of amiracle.
WHEN CHRISTMAS COMES
WHEN CHRISTMAS COMES
I don’t want a lot for Christmas
There is just one thing I need
I don’t care about the presents
Underneath the Christmas tree
—“All I Want for Christmas Is You”
My mother added a leaf to her tiny wooden table, making it almost family-sized for theday. With a few simple decorations, the table became the festive centerpiece, along with aCharlie Brown-ish tree, of an otherwise makeshift furnished living room in the run-downhouse where the two of us lived. Despite our circumstances, my mother wanted us to havea “wonderful life.”
The days leading up to Christmas were an event. My mother always kept an Adventcalendar. We would open a new flap each day. I’d read the portion of a story or a poemprinted there, and she would give me the chocolates hidden inside. The mulled wine shemade camouflaged the dankness of the house with a warm spicy aroma. I was well awarewe didn’t have much money, so while I never really anticipated getting any extravagantpresents or popular toys, I loved that we’d make an effort to get into the spirit and do whatwe could to create an ambiance of joy and jubilance. We’d clean up, we’d decorate, and ofcourse we would sing. Christmas carols sung in my mother’s operatic voice brought afeeling of spaciousness to our cramped daily existence.
Mother wasn’t much of a cook, but for Christmas dinner she tried—we both tried. Wetried to put all the trauma and drama that infected the rest of our lives on hold and justhave a peaceful Christmas meal. Too much to ask? I think not. I was a child craving achildhood, in a house filled with disappointment and pain.
Throughout the years, my sister and brother would rarely communicate all year, letalone come to visit where my mother and I were living. Christmas was one rare occasionwhen we would all be together under one rickety roof. The four of us would sit around thetable, eyes avoiding eyes, often unable to talk, clogged up by all the things none of us hadlanguage for. I was very young and had not yet accumulated enough of a past to be brokenby it. My siblings and my mother wouldn’t communicate for most of the year, so byChristmas dinner my brother and sister would come stuffed with hurt and anger, starvingfor attention. Eventually, inevitably, they would all explode in a torrent of verbal abuse. Iwould sit there in the center of the chaos, crying and wishing: wishing they would stopscreaming, wishing my mother could stop them from screaming and cursing. Wishing Icould be somewhere safe and merry—somewhere that felt like Christmas.
My sister and brother clearly couldn’t stand each other, but their deep resentmenttoward me was a constant, silent menace simmering right below the surface. I was thethird and youngest child, and our parents were divorced by the time I was three. I waswhat they considered a golden child: lighter hair, lighter skin, and a lighter spirit. I livedwith our mother, and they were exiled from each other and us. They existed in a differentkind of pain, absorbing whatever hostility under-loved, troubled, mixed kids do in anyneighborhood, Black or white. I believed they believed I was passing. There I was withmy blondish hair, living with our white mother, in what they considered a safe whiteneighborhood. Their resentment toward me was perhaps the one thing they had incommon; they seemed bound in that bitterness. I actually understood why they were angryand hateful toward me, but at the time, I couldn’t fathom why every year, they just had toruin Christmas.
But my wishing was more powerful than their pain. I wished with exuberance. I setabout creating my own little magical, merry world of Christmas. I focused on all thethings my mother struggled to create; all I needed was a shower of glitter and a full churchchoir to back me up. My imaginary Christmas was filled with Santa Claus, reindeer,snowmen, and all the bells and trimmings a little girl’s dreams could hold. And I lovedcontemplating a sweet baby Jesus, taking in the powerful joy the true spirit of the seasonbrings.
Not every Christmas was ruined by my family.
My mother was culturally open when I was young and had a diverse group of friends. Iremember I had a friend—let’s call her Ashley—whose mother was gay (Ashley had noclue). My mother was very matter of fact: “Ashley’s mom is gay, and she lives with herpartner.” No big deal. And it really wasn’t. Two of my favorite people were my guncles(gay uncles), Burt and Myron. They were wonderful, and so was their home. It wasn’t agrand spread, but theirs was a charming midsized brick house set back on a sweet piece ofwooded land. Wild raspberries grew in the backyard, and they had a golden Labradornamed Sparkle. When they traveled, my mother and I would house-sit for them. I reveledin the cleanliness and comfort.
Burt was a schoolteacher and photographer, and Myron was, as he put it, a “stay-at-home wife.” Myron was a vision. He wore a perfectly coiffed beard and his hair wasalways blown out in cascading layers, which he would finish off with a shimmeringfrosting spray. He was perpetually tanned and sashayed around the house in spectacularmulticolored silk caftans. Burt would bring me out in their yard to take photos of me (Ijust adored showing off in front of a camera), and he totally encouraged my exaggeratedposes. He fully supported and understood my propensity for extraness.
I distinctly remember one Christmas photo session we staged. I was dressed up in agreen dress with flowers, and, as a special Christmas miracle, I had decent-looking bangs.
I pretended to be placing an ornament on the tree as I coyly looked back over my shoulderand Burt snapped the picture: fashion-feature festive.
I enjoyed Burt and Myron’s lovely, cozy little home year-round, but especially atChristmastime. They put so much care and personality into preparing for the season. Thehouse would be perfectly clean, and there would be pretty decorations, precisely placed,and a fire roaring in the fireplace. The house smelled like a new oven with somethingroasting inside; they always had little savory morsels to nibble and served fancy drinkslike brandy Alexanders. I remember being stuck at their house one holiday during an icestorm, which I hoped would never end. Burt and Myron gave me my first taste of what ahomey Christmas really felt like. They provided an example of a homey lifestyle ingeneral.
My guncles supported the showgirl in me. Whenever I wanted to put on my own littleproduction (which was frequently), they would pay full attention to me. They never triedto tame my over-the-top imagination. It was from my little girl’s spirit and those earlyfantasies of family, and friendship, that I wrote “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” Thinkof how it begins: ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding?… the delicate chimes arereminiscent of those little wooden toy pianos, like the one Schroeder had on Peanuts.
I actually did bang out most of the song on a cheap little Casio keyboard. But it’s thefeeling I wanted the song to capture. There’s a sweetness, a clarity, and a purity to it. Itdidn’t stem from Christian inspiration, although I’ve certainly sung and written from thatsoulful and spiritual perspective. Instead, this song came from a childlike space; when Iwrote it, at twenty-two years old, I wasn’t that far away from being a child. I recorded anentire Christmas album, which was a risk. You just didn’t see Christmas videos on MTVback then. In fact, it was almost unheard of for anyone—let alone such a young singer, soearly in her career—to write and record an original Christmas song that was a legit smashhit.
Though I was accessing the private dream world of my childhood in the song, I wasn’tin the happiest place when I wrote it. My life had changed so quickly, yet I still felt lost,wandering the wild borderlands between childhood and adulthood. My relationship withTommy Mottola, who would eventually become my first husband (and so much more) wasalready getting weird, and we weren’t even married yet. But to his credit as the head of myrecord label, he encouraged me to make my first Christmas album, Merry Christmas.
I was feeling nostalgic too. I’ve always been a tragically sentimental person, andChristmastime embodies that sentimentality for me. I wanted to write a song that wouldmake me happy and make me feel like a loved, carefree young girl at Christmas. I alsowanted to deliver it like the greats I grew up idolizing—Nat King Cole and the JacksonFive—who had tremendous Christmas classics of their own. I wanted to sing it in a waythat would capture joy for everyone and crystallize it forever. Yes, I was going for vintageChristmas happiness. I also believe that somewhere inside I knew it was too late to givemy brother and sister peace, and my mother her wonderful life, but I could possibly givethe world a Christmas classic instead.
THE FATHER AND THE SUN
THE FATHER AND THE SUN
Thank you for embracing a flaxen-haired baby
Although I’m aware you had your doubts
I guess anybody’d have had doubts
—“Sunflowers for Alfred Roy”
My father always reminded me of a sunflower—tall, proud, and stoic, but also bright,strong, handsome, and self-possessed. He labored hard to reach up and out of the harshground in which he was rooted. He was determined to transcend the limitations faced byhis parents, their siblings, and their whole generation. He was the only child of his father,Robert, and mother, Addie. He was embarrassed by Addie’s third-grade education. Addiewas tough on her son, and so he grew to respect and rely on order and logic. By his ownstrength, he hauled himself out of the violent, oppressive environment that had driven oneof his uncles to kill another. My father craved discipline, culture, and freedom, so hejoined the military—a logical choice for a man who’d had no say over the time or skininto which he was born.
The military may have taken my father out of the Bronx, but it did not remove himfrom the perils of being a Black man in America. While he was enlisted, a white woman atthe base where he was stationed said she was raped and that a Black man did it. On noevidence other than his not being white, my father was accused of the crime and placed ina jail on the base. To add extra suffering, and to serve as a warning to other Black soldiers,the white officers in charge assigned a Black officer to supervise my father—a deliberatereminder that a US military uniform did not camouflage their race. Much like assigning aBlack overseer on a plantation, it was an effective technique of terror.
My father was mortified, but mostly he was scared. Like many Black men, he lived infear of arbitrary brutality, abduction, or death. Yet perhaps above all he feared exhibitingfear—because he knew for that transgression, death was the certain punishment. My fatherwas eventually released, without any apology, support, or counseling. The military’s onlyexplanation was that they had apprehended the actual culprit. With a government-issuedgun in hand, he walked straight out of that prison to the top of a hill. Consumed withtrauma and rage, he thought of pulling the trigger—and he was not contemplating suicide.
My father took surgical care with everything he did. His lifestyle had a truly austerequality: part military barracks, part Shaolin monastery. His kitchen was small andimpeccably kept. The contents of his pantry were precisely indexed by size and category.
There was no room for extravagance or waste of any kind in his home. There were nomultiples of anything: one TV, one radio. In his closet hung just the amount of shirtsneeded for a week, nothing more. He didn’t consider a bed properly made unless thecovers were tucked in so tightly that you could bounce a quarter off its surface.
My father’s approach to most things was efficient and militaristic. He considered theact of snacking frivolous. If I was hungry while waiting for dinner, he would give me oneRitz cracker. One. The allure of that bright- red box, with its iconic swirl of golden,sunflower-shaped crackers rising out of their wax sleeves, was intoxicating. He would pullout one tall column of crackers, undo the meticulously folded sleeve top, slip a singlecracker from the stack, and hand it to me delicately, as if it were a precious gem. Then hewould carefully refold the paper, slide the stack back into the box, and return it to its placeon the shelf, where it would stay.
I’d hold the buttery, salty, crunchy goodness up to my nose, close my eyes, andbreathe in one long, luxurious sniff. With precision, I would take one teeny-weeny bitealong the scalloped edge. I’d chew ever so slowly, letting the savory sensation linger onmy tongue. Turning the golden treasure ever so slightly, I would nibble off another littlepiece of the edge, relishing every grain of salt and crumb, making my one cracker last aslong as I could. (Ironically, the slogan on the box was “there’s only one Ritz”—and forme, there really was!)
By today’s standards my father would have been considered a hipster. After themilitary, he moved to Brooklyn Heights, drove a classic Porsche Speedster, and preparedauthentic Italian dishes in his kitchen. Oh, how I lived for my father’s cooking! He made amean sausage and peppers, and delicious parsley meatballs, but his linguine with whiteclam sauce was sublime. The scent of garlic in hot olive oil, boiling pasta, and the saltysea are what the best Sundays smell like to me. I loved Sundays. Those were the days Ispent with my father—and our meals together were what I looked forward to the most.
One Sunday, my father’s mother, Addie, was there—a rare occasion. I don’t think Iwas more than five years old. It began as a typical Sunday, my father spending the entireday meticulously preparing his signature dish. He shucked and cleaned every clam, slicedthe garlic, and chopped the aromatic flat Italian parsley. It was such a process—a ritual,rather. As per usual I hadn’t eaten all day, save maybe a Ritz cracker (and I probablyhadn’t had a full meal the day before; Saturday night at my mother’s house could be a bithaphazard). Between reading and coloring and tummy rumbles, I eyed the pantry. The airwas perfumed with the freshness of my father’s ingredients. I’d waited all week, waited allday; I just needed to hold out until dinnertime. Soon I would be reveling in my favoritedish.
I smelled the pasta softening in the boiling water and knew it wouldn’t be long. “It’sdinnertime!” my father finally sang. I jumped up and rushed to sit at the small Formicatable in the kitchen. Addie, with a fabulous red wig and a red printed caftan to match, wason a tangent, telling some story only the grown-ups would be interested in. I could barelyhold my head up, as I’d probably started to swoon and drool waiting for the deliciousnessthat was about to appear before me. I watched my father put the pasta on my plate, thenscoop up the heavenly sauce and artfully pour it around the linguine. I followed his everymove as he lowered the steaming white plate down in front of me. It was time! And then,just as I was picking up my fork, Addie—who had not paused in her story to take a breath—whipped out a green canister of grated Parmesan cheese and proceeded to shake itsunsavory, powdery contents all over my elegant fresh linguine.
Noooooooo!!!!!! I screamed in horror. But it was too late; my plate was covered withit. My father never put that cheese on white clam sauce! Where had it even come from?
Did she have it in her pocketbook?! Unable to control my shock and revulsion, I ran to thebathroom, slammed the door, and exploded into tears. “Roy, you better make her eat thatpasta. Make her eat that food!” I heard Addie telling my father in defiance. That was theonly time I remember my father’s perfect pasta being foiled, and I think it was the lasttime Addie joined us for Sunday supper.
My father taught me that words have meaning and thus, they have power. Once, on alovely summer Sunday afternoon, I heard the faint jingle of the ice cream truck comingdown the street outside my father’s house. Upon recognizing the mystical melody thatpromised so much pleasure, I let out an excited cry: “Aaaaa! The ice cream man!” Thesong was loud and clear now, so I knew the truck had stopped somewhere nearby. Thepattering of running feet and the happy squeals I heard confirmed it—the ice cream manwas right outside our door. My mind was racing. I gotta go! I thought to myself. He’sgoing to leave!
“Can I borrow fifty cents, please, please?!” I nearly shrieked at my father, dangerouslyclose to hyperventilating.
“Do you want to borrow fifty cents? Or would you like to have fifty cents?” he repliedin a cool, calm tone.
A mild panic was creeping in. “Uhhhh,” I stammered. I didn’t know what to say. All Iknew was that I had to get some money for the ice cream man. “I don’t know!”
I wasn’t thinking clearly. Again, my father spoke in a patient, level manner that onlyenhanced my frenzy.
“There’s a difference between borrowing and having. Are you asking me to give youfifty cents?”
I was in a state and unprepared to make distinctions at that moment, so I blurted out, “Ijust want to borrow fifty cents. I’ll give it back! Please!”
He reached in his pocket, pulled out two shiny silver quarters, and dropped them in myanxious little palm. Like the occasional Ritz cracker, they felt like precious jewels. I burstthrough the doors of the building, barely touching the steps, and ran to the truck like agazelle being chased by a lion.
I had gotten my ice cream, but my father made it clear I would have to repay themoney I had borrowed. At seven years old I wasn’t earning any money yet, so I asked mymother for the quarters. She couldn’t fathom why my father would barter with his littlegirl, and she gave them to me. They had always had opposing parenting styles. I kept mypromise and gave the money back to him the next Sunday. The ice cream man incidentwas a lesson not only in respecting the meaning of words but in integrity and moneymanagement. My father was a man who had saved the very first dollar he ever made.
Being a single father was a fairly new notion back then, so he wasn’t prepared to plangirlie playdates or fun, child-centered activities. For the most part, I was simply the childaccompaniment to his regular adult life—keeping busy and out of the way as he cooked,cleaned, and tinkered with his car while listening to football on the radio. And he adoredhis Porsche. It was his only true luxury. He bought two of them in his lifetime, one beforechildren and one after, both used. His Speedster was apparently always in need of somesort of repair, so he was always messing around in it.
The car was in a perpetual state of being “prepared” for full restoration. It was avague, matte noncolor, because it was covered in gray primer, not paint. I once asked himwhy the color of the car was so dull. He explained that it was primer, but that the originalcolor had been candy apple red. “Oh, so one day you’re going to make it candy applered?” I asked.
“They don’t make that color anymore,” he said flatly. I was confused. Why not justmake it another color, then? But if it couldn’t be the original color, he’d rather it not beany color at all.
He was incredibly patient with the Porsche, spending hours with it, believing deeply inits exotic beauty and high performance. It was very cool and chic—a soft-top convertiblewith two seats. He loved the freedom of putting the top down and the intimacy of onlyhaving room for one passenger. We would go on long drives without much chatting. If theradio was on, it was tuned to the news (“1010 Wins—you give us ten minutes, we’ll giveyou the world”). Every now and then we would sing one of those funny, folksy songs thatgo on and on, like “There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea.”
There’s a wart on the frog, on the bump, on the log,in the hole in the bottom of the sea
He also liked to sing “John Henry,” a folk song about a Black man who worked as a“steel-driving man.”
John Henry was a little baby, sitting on his Daddy’s kneeWhen he would sing “knee,” he’d hit an impossibly low note that would always make melaugh. I liked singing those songs because they would help the time and the miles go by.
Back then I thought just driving was such a bore. But now, oh, what wouldn’t I do to sitnext to him, one more time, in those leather seats, on the open road, with just the hum ofthe engine and the swishing of the wind as our accompaniment. My mother, the operasinger, taught me scales, but my father taught me songs that made me laugh.
Thank you for the mountains
The Lake of the Clouds
I'm picturing you and me there right now
As the crystal cascades showered down
—“Sunflowers for Alfred Roy”
Occasionally we would go to Lime Rock Park, a racetrack in Connecticut. It was aslightly more glamorous experience than a typical NASCAR venue. Paul Newman had ateam there, and world- class drivers like Mario Andretti were regulars. I found theracetrack pretty boring, but going to the races was a favorite activity for Alfred Roy, andhe made all of his kids join him. This was one rare thing we kids all could agree on: carsgoing around and around in a circle wasn’t high entertainment.
When we were on our drives or at the racetrack, I was often just around while he didregular adult things. While he listened to or watched football (which he loved, and which Ifound extremely boring) I would be close by, quietly reading or drawing—observing theways of an adult.
My father did have a few books just for me in his house. The one I remember mostdistinctly was about a little Black boy who was blind. The cover was white, with large red,orange, and yellow circles. It was full of colors and told the story of a boy who saw theworld through touching and feeling shapes, rather than through color.
When I think of that storybook, I think of Stevie Wonder. Reading it, I wondered ifthis was the reason why Stevie Wonder could create such vivid worlds and emotionsthrough his songs: he was seeing without eyes; he was seeing with his soul. StevieWonder is by far the songwriter I respect and love the most. He is beyond genius; Ibelieve he writes songs from a holy place. I think that having this book about the blindBlack boy was one way my father attempted to introduce the concepts of racism andperception to me, because we really didn’t talk about it. We didn’t talk about the shadesand the shapes of us.
Perception was also very important to my father. Once, while drawing alongside himon a quiet Sunday afternoon, I made what I thought was a very clever cartoon. It was apicture of our family with the caption, “They’re weird. But they’re okay.” But when Ishowed it to my father, he got really upset.
“Why would you say we’re weird?” he demanded. I was shaken by his stern tone, andI had no idea why the idea made him angry.
“I don’t know. I probably heard it somewhere,” I said. In my cartoon I had also added,“But they’re okay,” which I thought was optimistic. It was a little tongue-in-cheek.
With an absolute seriousness that chilled me, he said, “Don’t ever say that.”
I never intended to offend him, in fact, I’d wanted to delight him. I felt really bad thatday. But the heavy load he carried, his deep desire to be accepted as a full human being,was something I wouldn’t learn about until much later—something I am still trying tomake peace with.
At the time, I didn’t have the language to tell him that weird was how I felt. I didn’tknow how to say that was how I felt other people saw us—as weird. I thought everythingwas weird. My hair was weird; my clothes were weird; my siblings and their friends wereweird; my mother and all the shabby places we lived with her—they were all weird.
I thought the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship was a weird church. We had startedattending when the family was still together. The five of us would go to this old medieval-style stone castle with thick walls and a tall tower, filled with a congregation of whatlooked like every odd person on the Island. To my little-girl self it appeared like theChurch of Misfit Toys at a Renaissance fair. The pastor, who was formerly Jewish, hadchanged his name from Ralph to Lucky. “Reverend Lucky?” Okay. The teens would go upin the tower and do whatever weird things teens did. Even as a little girl, I knew this wasnot my scene. But my father, though the only Black person, felt like he was accepted thereamong the other outsiders, so he stayed at the fellowship forever.
I don’t think my father understood how different we were from everyone in theneighborhoods I lived in with my mother. It was weird to be living in a makeshiftapartment on top of a deli when everyone else lived in a house. We lived in a smallcommercial section of Northport where there was a strip of stores on the ground level of acluster of Victorian houses. They were small-town businesses: a bicycle shop, maybe ageneral store, and then the deli. A staircase alongside the deli’s entrance led up to a small,dim railroad-style apartment where I lived with my mother and Morgan.
I had a room at the end of the hall, no bigger than a typical walk-in closet. Theapartment was small, the floors were covered in pea-green carpeting, and the walls anddoors were thin; the sound of laughing and voices often kept me awake at night. I had veryfew things in that tiny room that brought me comfort. The most precious, perhaps, weregifts from my father—a little ceramic bunny and a sweet molasses-colored teddy bearnamed Cuddles, which I kept until it was destroyed many years later after a flood in aManhattan apartment that was on top of a bar and nightclub (apparently, there are levels toliving on top of establishments, and I have gone through all of them).
I remember when you used to tuck me in at nightwith the teddy bear you gave to me that I held so tight—“Bye Bye”
Even with Cuddles by my side, I frequently had nightmares, and it was in that dismalapartment where my troubles with sleep first began.
I don’t recall anyone else living around there, and there were certainly no other Blackpeople for miles. Morgan’s was the only Afro in sight. Once, after he got in trouble, mymother meekly admonished him to “stay in his room.” Shortly after, the owner of the delidownstairs called my mother to inform her that he was watching her son jump fromrooftop to rooftop above the other stores. Morgan had climbed out of the window onto theroof and was making a daring escape. He eventually went through a phase when he shavedhis head bald and would wear karate pants, with a snake casually draped around his neck.
He would walk through the town looking like a punk ninja, full of anger, hoping to find afight. Even without his hair he was impossible to miss.
My father might not have liked me calling the Careys weird, but weird things certainlyhappened to us. Every now and then, Alison would crash into the apartment like a meteor,and friends of hers and Morgan’s would hang out all night.
One night Alison booked me as the entertainment. Earlier that day she’d taught me thesong “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane. It was an odd selection for sure, but I figuredmaybe she liked it because the refrain of “Go ask Alice” sounded close to her name. WhenI was brought out to the living room to perform, all of the lights were out, and I wassurrounded by burning candles and a circle of teenagers (as well as my mother). WatchingAlison’s face for approval, I let out the first verse:
One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you smallAnd the ones that Mother gives you, don’t do anything at allGo ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall
A song about taking drugs and tripping is not typical (or appropriate) lyrical contentfor a little girl. But I sang it because my big sister taught it to me. I loved nothing morethan learning and singing songs, but this one was full of scary images (“the White Knightis talking backward /and the Red Queen’s off with her head”) and what seemed to me likecreepy nonsense (“the hookah-smoking caterpillar”—what?).
Of course, I wondered what this song was about and why I was singing it in the dark.
It was past midnight, and while all the other kids my age were nestled in their beds, I wasbelting out, “Feed your head!” for a candlelit gathering of wannabe- hippie teensconducting a pseudo-séance. Tell me that’s not weird.
“See you next Sunday!” That was our thing. My father and I gave that little promise toeach other with a wave each week as I left him to return to life with my mother. But as Igrew a little older, my seriousness as a singer-songwriter began to swiftly envelop mywhole world. I was in the profession by the time I was twelve. My father did not see it orsupport it, largely because he did not understand it.
Music, as a career, was not logical to him. When I talked about writing poetry andsinging, he would shift the conversation to grades and homework. He didn’t see the focusand discipline I was cultivating as an artist. He didn’t see how I was learning the craft,sitting in on jam sessions with accomplished jazz musicians with my mother anddeveloping the skills of scatting and improvisation. He never saw how I spent hourswriting, enriching my ear, and studying popular music trends on the radio. Above all, wehad a fundamental difference in belief: I followed my heart, while he was guided by hisfear of not being accepted. From that awful and auspicious day when Nana Reese laid herhands on me and spoke into my heart, I truly believed anything I wanted was possible. Itwas real to me. Absolute. My father did not believe anything was possible. On thecontrary, he expected the world to vehemently deny his desires, not the least of which wasdignity.
Alfred Roy was a man who lived his entire life under threat of humiliation anddehumanization as a result of his identity. He placed all his hope in the notion that societalrespect would be awarded him through his discipline, diligence, and excellence ontraditional institutional tracks like academics, service to your country, and respectablework. His other two children had all the makings of great students. When they wereyounger, he demanded that they produce all As on their report cards, and mostly they did(yet he would still sometimes question why each A wasn’t accompanied by a plus). Theonly class I excelled in was creative writing, in which I was always in the advancedgroups. But I was tragic in mathematics and really couldn’t connect with most othersubjects or material.
The two potential academics took terrible turns in their teens, fulfilling a Blackfather’s greatest fears. The boy had been “institutionalized,” placed in the precarious“care” of the state, the first stop on a dangerous fast track to becoming a statistic. And thegirl, pregnant before her sixteenth birthday, had already arrived at one. And I, the baby,who wasn’t a wild one, rejected the traditional, “safe” route to a secure career and beganto pursue what he saw as an improbable, mysterious, and dangerous path. My father wasextremely strict with my siblings, and they would often complain or joke about his tightand eccentric ways to my mother. However, in an effort to shield me from their harshperspective, I often overheard her tell them, “Don’t say that in front of Mariah.”
There were moments when my father did disappoint me. After Alison was no longerliving with him, he went from being a divorced single father to a true bachelor. Therewere times he wouldn’t show up for our dates.
As a child, there were them times
I didn’t get it, but you kept me in line
I didn’t know why
You didn’t show up sometimes
On Sunday mornings
And I missed you
—“Bye Bye”
So, over time, our Sunday ritual became sporadic. My music was driving so much ofmy time and energy by that point. I worked on it every moment I could. I was determinedto rise above my conditions, rise above all the people who didn’t believe I was going tomake it, rise above the sad place my sister had fallen into, rise above my brother’s angrydysfunction. I was going to rise above it all—even if that included my father, the onestable family member I had. After paying for one summer at a performing arts camp, themost my father ever did for my career was to warn me about how uncertain andtreacherous the entertainment business could be.
Years later, I called my father and played “Vision of Love” from the recording studio,putting the phone receiver right up to the Yamaha speaker.
“Wow,” he said, “you sound like all three Pointer Sisters!” He wasn’t a big musicman, so this comparison was high praise coming from him. It meant he had noticed all ofthe layers of the background vocals, in addition to the strong lead. He was really listeningto my song. And I could tell he was happy with it and with me. After all those years, itwas truly validating.
Yet, even after all I had accomplished I wasn’t immune to the perfectionism he hadprojected onto his other children. After I had garnered two Grammys within my very firstyear in the industry, he remarked, “Maybe if you were a producer you could win more,like Quincy Jones.” That same year, the legendary Quincy Jones took home sevenGrammys for his epic project Back on the Block, which spanned the entire history ofBlack American Music and featured giants from Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis to LutherVandross.
I had done astonishingly well as a new artist (who had written her own hit songs), andhere my father was, comparing me to arguably one of the greatest musical giants theindustry has ever known, with decades of experience and endless accolades and honors tohis name! I was immediately thrust back to my childhood, as if my two Grammys weretwo A’s on my report card and he was asking me what had happened to the pluses. I thinkmy success in music scared him because he had no idea about, and seemingly no influenceon, how I’d arrived. He didn’t ask and I didn’t tell.
Gradually, “next Sunday” turned into a month of Sundays. I had to let go of ourSundays so I could manifest my own day in the sun.
COLORING OUTSIDE THE LINES
COLORING OUTSIDE THE LINES
It’s hard to explain
Inherently it’s just always been strange
Neither here nor there
Always somewhat out of place everywhere
Ambiguous without a sense of belonging to touch—“Outside”
My first encounters with racism were like a first kiss in reverse: each time, a piece ofpurity was ripped from my being. Left behind was a spreading stain, which seeped sodeeply inside of me that to this day, I’ve never been able to completely scrub it out. Notwith time, not with fame or wealth, not even with love. The earliest of these encountershappened when I was about four years old and in preschool. The activity for the day wasto draw a portrait of our families. Laid out on the table was a stack of heavy- stockconstruction paper the color of eggshells and small groups of crayons for us to pick from.
While I much preferred sing-along and story time to coloring, I was excited about theproject and determined to do my very best. I thought if I did a good job maybe the teacherwould decorate my drawing with a gold-foil star sticker.
I chose my supplies carefully, found a quiet corner, and got busy with the assignment.
At that point, our family of five had not yet fractured. For a short time, I had a father, amother, a sister, and a brother, and we were all living together in what felt to me likerelative peace. I wanted to create a family portrait I could be proud of. I wanted to draw allthe different unique things about everybody—their clothes, their heights and proportions,their facial features—all the little details that would make my portrait come to life. Fatherwas tall, and Mother had long dark hair. My brother was strong and my sister had herpretty ringlets. I wanted to capture all of it. The sound of crayons rubbing on thick papercreated a dull hum as the faint, comforting scent of Crayola wax wafted through the room.
Deeply engaged with perfecting my masterpiece, I was curled over with my headdown, nose nearly touching the paper, when I felt a tall shadow fall across my quietcorner. I knew instinctively that it was one of the young student teachers looming over me.
At four years old I had already begun to develop a keen watch-your-back instinct, so Iimmediately stopped moving my hand. Tension rose up and stiffened my little body. For areason I did not yet know, I sensed danger and felt suddenly protective. I held absolutelystill until she spoke.
“How ya doin’ there, Mariah? Let’s see.”
Relaxing a bit, I lifted the paper toward her and proudly presented my family picturein progress. Immediately, the student teacher burst into laughter. She was soon joined byanother young woman teacher, who also began to laugh. Then a third adult came over tojoin in the fun. The cheerful buzz of children working with crayons stopped. The wholeroom had turned to stare at what was happening in my little corner. A brew of self-consciousness and embarrassment boiled up from my feet to my face. The whole class waswatching. I managed to speak through the stifling heat in my throat.
“Why are you laughing?” I asked.
Through her giggles, one of them replied, “Oh, Mariah, you used the wrong crayon!
You didn’t mean to do that!” She was pointing at where I’d drawn my father.
As they kept laughing, I looked down at the picture of my family I had lovingly anddiligently been creating. I’d used the peach crayon for the skin of myself, my mother, mysister, and my brother. I’d used a brown crayon for my father. I knew I was more like thecolor of animal crackers and my brother and sister were more like Nutter Butters, whilemy father’s skin tone resembled graham crackers. But they didn’t have any cookie-coloredcrayons, so I’d had to improvise! They were acting like I’d used a green crayon orsomething. I was humiliated and confused. What had I done so wrong?
Still cackling hysterically, the teachers insisted, “You used the wrong crayon!” Everytime one of them made the declaration the whole gang laughed, laughed, and laughedsome more. A debilitating kind of disgrace was pressing down on me, yet I managed topull myself up slowly, eyes burning and brimming with hot tears.
As calmly as I could, I told the teachers, “No. I didn’t use the wrong crayon.”
Refusing to even give me the dignity of addressing me directly, one of them said to theother snidely, “She doesn’t even know she’s using the wrong crayon!” The laughter andtaunting seemed like it would never end. I stood glaring up at them, working very hard notto vomit from embarrassment. But despite my nausea, I did not break my glare.
Eventually the laughter started to subside, and one at a time they backed away fromthe picture and from me. I watched them across the room, huddled together andwhispering. They had only ever seen one member of my family of five: my mother, whodropped me off at school each day. She was the color of the peach crayon. They had noidea and no imagination to suspect that the light toast of my skin, my bigger-than-buttonnose, and the waves and ringlets in my hair were from my father—my handsome fatherwho was the color of warm maple syrup. His complexion was a crayon color they didn’thave; brown was as close to right as I could get. It was the teachers who had got it allwrong. But despite their cruel and unwarranted attack, they never apologized for thepublic humiliation, for their ignorance and immaturity, or for demoralizing a four-year-oldgirl during coloring time.
By the time I made it to first grade, my family of five had crumbled like cookies. Myparents divorced, but although they were living a short car ride away from each other,racially their neighborhoods on Long Island were worlds apart.
In first grade, I had a best friend named Becky. She was cute and sweet and looked justlike the Strawberry Shortcake cartoon to me. She had big blue eyes, smooth strawberry-blond hair that was naturally sun-kissed and hung perfectly straight down like heavydrapes, and reddish freckles sprinkled across her whipped cream-colored cheeks. In mymind, she looked like what little girls were supposed to look like. She looked like the littlegirls who were adored and protected; like the little girl my mother might’ve had with aman her mother would’ve approved of.
One Sunday, our mothers made arrangements for Becky and me to have a playdate atmy house. I was delighted because Becky and I really had fun together. When Sundayfinally arrived, my mother picked up Becky in whatever ragtag car she was driving at thetime, and we headed to my father’s house. We pulled up to the brick town house, andBecky and I hopped out of the car. I grabbed her hand and skipped excitedly up the steps.
Curiously, my mother hung back and watched—ordinarily she would have driven off. Justas our feet hit the top of the stoop, my six-feet-two-inches-tall, dashing father emergedthrough the door with a hearty grin. He looked like a movie star.
“Hiya, Mariah!” he called out, giving me my usual greeting. As he neared us, Beckysuddenly released my hand. Her body froze stiff and, like a bursting raincloud, sheexploded into tears. Confused, I looked to my father for help, but I could see that he wasfrozen too, and breathless, a mortified look twisting his strong features. In a state of shock,my mind scrambled as I tried to process the abrupt and painful turn of events. Becky inhysterics, my father in silent agony: how had we gotten here in a single instant?
I didn’t know what to do. I was stuck there, unmoving, for what felt like hours but waslikely merely moments. Finally, my mother came up behind us on the stairs, to Becky’srescue. Without even a glance in my direction, she gently placed her arm around thedistraught little girl and wordlessly guided her down the stairs and into the backseat of hercar. My mother sped off with the strawberry blonde, without ever making any attempt toclarify what had happened. There was no consolation, no mediation, no acknowledgmentof the devastation to me or my father. In the wake of Becky’s storm, my father and I stoodquietly together on the stoop and waited for the ache to pass. Nobody ever mentioned itafter that, but we never played together again, and the moment remained with me forever.
And, believe it or not, her name really was Becky.
No one ever outwardly questioned my ethnic background when I was alone with mymother. They didn’t dare ask about, or else could not detect, the differences in our huesand textures. Becky, and most likely her mother too, had probably just assumed my fatherwas also white, or maybe something exotic—but certainly not Black. That day on thestoop I learned, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I was not like the people I went toschool with or who lived in my neighborhood. My father was totally different from them,and they were afraid of him. But he was my people; I came from him. That day, I sawfirsthand how their fear hurt him. And his hurt deeply hurt me too. But what was perhapsmost painful, that afternoon, was that he saw that I saw their fear of him. He knew itwould impact me forever. He knew I could never return to the innocence all childrendeserve.
HODEL
HODEL
Singing was a form of escapism for me, and writing was a form of processing. There wasjoy in it, but it mainly was survival (and it still is). My voice was recognized as pure talentnot only by my mother but also by my teachers. A friend of my mother’s was my musicteacher, and she was exceptional. As a child I was in a few school plays, and I would singfor friends at random events. Singing onstage (or anywhere), imagining I was someoneelse, was when I felt most like myself. Walking around alone and coming up withmelodies while singing to myself was when I felt the most whole. To this day, I escape tomy private vocal booth to shut out all the demands of life and feel myself in my space,singing alone.
I was in the fifth grade when I first got the opportunity to attend an exclusiveperforming arts summer camp. This was a breakthrough! I could finally be around otheryoung aspiring artists and hone my craft, undistracted by the confusion and chaos at home.
I landed the role of Hodel, one of the five daughters in the camp’s production of Fiddleron the Roof. I lived to go to rehearsals. It was my favorite time and place. I was confident,quickly learning the songs and studying their meanings. The act of practicing camenaturally to me; I liked to do things over and over again. I loved the experience ofwitnessing my performance getting better with each try, finding new and better ways todeliver a song.
The drive to practice music was also something my mother recognized and encouragedin me early on. She rehearsed the Fiddler songs with me at home, playing along on herYamaha piano. Even as a little girl I was interested in exploring the details that made up agreat song. And I was fascinated by the storytelling in the musical. I even managed tomake a “camp friend” in the community of largely Jewish and mostly wealthy kids. Webonded through our love and seriousness of singing. We even kinda looked alike. She wasIsraeli with thick curly, almost kinky hair. So we both had tangled textures. We tried todress alike when we could, we had the same pink onesie. Because people saw us together,saw some physical similarities, I think they thought I was a blondish Jewish girl frommeans.
I loved Hodel because she fell in love with a revolutionary boy and went to the ends ofthe earth to follow her passion. My big number was in the second act, a song called “Farfrom the Home I Love.” It was a well-suited song for my breathy tone, and I remember Isang it in a purely emotional way. The song opened with these lovely, memorable lines:
How can I hope to make you understand
Why I do what I do?
Why I must travel to a distant land
Far from the home I love.
My father was coming up to the camp for the show’s opening night, and I was thrilled.
He was a practical man who wasn’t thrilled with my artistic passion, but he hadreluctantly paid half of my hefty tuition for camp that year. So while he was certainlycoming to support me, he was also checking in on his investment. I didn’t have theprivilege of trying all different kinds of hobbies, like the kids I went to school with—itwas this camp, or bust. So I knew I had to get all I could from it. There was no flittingfrom tennis lessons to guitar to dance class. Not that I would ever step foot in a danceclass, even if we could afford it. I was traumatized early on about dancing.
One time when Addie was at my father’s house, she looked at me, with my unrulyflaxen hair and peach-crayon-colored skin, and said, “Roy, that ain’t your baby.” Then, asif to prove her point, she addressed me: “Girl, lemme see you dance.” While I wassurrounded by music, there wasn’t much dancing in my childhood. My mother didn’tdance; I never saw my siblings dance. My father didn’t dance until later in the eighties,when he took hustle lessons.
In my mind, dancing became a measurement for Black acceptance, for belongingsomewhere and to someone—for belonging to my father. I didn’t dance for Addie thatday. I didn’t dance much at all after that. I just couldn’t recover from the fear of notdancing “right” for my father. I stood there terrified to move, fearing if I didn’t dance wellenough or if I moved the wrong way, it would somehow prove that my father wasn’t myfather.
That day at camp, as Hodel, I sang and smiled and pranced about the stage and sangsome more. I sang in a very distinct lullaby style. I was good, and everybody knew it. Icould hear the loud clapping as I took my bow; it was like another kind of grand music,giving me energy, giving me hope. As I raised my head I saw the widest smile on myfather’s face. His smile was like sunshine itself. He walked up to the edge of the stage, hisarms filled with a big bouquet of sunny daisies tied with a lavender ribbon. Beaming withpride, he handed me the flowers as if they were a prestigious award. At first we were bothtoo giddy to notice that people were staring at us—and not in a way that felt good, notbecause I had given the outstanding performance of the night. They were staring becausemy father was the only Black man in sight, and I belonged to him. That night, the teachers,the parents, and all the other campers learned that my father was a Black man, and I paidthe price for it. I got my thunderous applause and I got my flowers, but I never got anothermajor role in a play at that camp again.
Please be at peace father
I’m at peace with you
Bitterness isn’t worth clinging to
After all the anguish we’ve all been through—“Sunflowers for Alfred Roy”
LIGHT OF MY LIFE
LIGHT OF MY LIFE
Letting go ain’t easy
Oh, it’s just exceedingly hurtful
’Cause somebody you used to know
Is flinging your world around
And they watch, as you’re falling down, down, down,Falling down, baby
—“The Art of Letting Go”
“You’ve always been the light of my life.”
My mother told me this over and over when I was a child. I wanted to be her light. Iwanted to make her proud. I respected her as a singer and a working mother. I loved herdeeply, and, like most kids, I wanted her to be a safe place for me. Above all, I desperatelywanted to believe her.
But ours is a story of betrayal and beauty. Of love and abandonment. Of sacrifice andsurvival. I’ve emancipated myself from bondage several times, but there is a cloud ofsadness that I suspect will always hang over me, not simply because of my mother butbecause of our complicated journey together. It has caused me so much pain andconfusion. Time has shown me there is no benefit in trying to protect people who nevertried to protect me. Time and motherhood have finally given me the courage to honestlyface who my mother has been to me.
For me, this is the steepest cliff edge. If I can make it to the other side of this truth, Iknow there is relief of epic proportions awaiting me. Those people who have hurt me, overand over, whom I have escaped or walled off, are deeply significant in my story, but theyare not central to my existence.
Removing myself from toxic people I love has been excruciatingly painful, but once Ifound the courage (with prayer and professional help, of course), I simply let go and letGod. (I’ll add, though, that there’s a huge difference between simple and easy. It ain’teasy, baby.) Yet, there is no “artful” way of letting go of my mother, and our relationshipis anything but simple. Like many aspects of my life, my journey with my mother hasbeen full of contradictions and competing realities. It’s never been only black-and-white—it’s been a whole rainbow of emotions.
Our relationship is a prickly rope of pride, pain, shame, gratitude, jealousy,admiration, and disappointment. A complicated love tethers my heart to my mother’s.
When I became a mother to Roc and Roe, my heart grew two times over; as my capacityfor pure love expanded, the ability to tow heavy pain from my past diminished. Healthy,powerful love did that for me: it illuminated the dark spots and unearthed buried hurt. Thenew, clear light that emanates from my children’s love now rushes through every artery,every cell, every dark nook and cranny of my being.
Even after all this time, a part of me fantasizes that one of these days my mother willtransform into one of the caring mothers I saw on TV as a child, like Carol Brady or ClairHuxtable; that she will suddenly ask me, “Honey, how, was your day?” before she givesme a report on her dog or her bird, or asks me to pay for something or do something—thatshe will have genuine, sustained interest in me and what I’m doing or feeling. That oneday she will know me. That one day my mother will understand me.
To a certain extent, I know how my mother became who she is. Her mother certainlydidn’t understand her. And her father never had a chance to know her; he died while hermother was pregnant with her. She was one of three children raised by a widowed IrishCatholic woman. My mother was known as the “dark one” because her hair wasn’t blondand her eyes were a mix of brown and green, not pure blue like her brother’s and sister’s.
Blue eyes were a symbol of the purity of whiteness, and being of 100 percent “pure” Irishdescent was central to her mother’s entire identity.
My mother grew up in the 1940s and 1950s in Springfield, Illinois. It was the capitalcity at the center of a state at the center of the country. But Springfield was also a center ofinsidious institutional racism. In 1908, a white woman was allegedly raped by a Blackman (the same accusation leveled against my father and countless other innocent Blackmen), which ignited a three-day riot by white citizens in which two Black men werelynched and four white men were shot to death by Black businessmen protecting theirproperty. In the 1920s, when my mother’s mother was coming of age, the Ku Klux Klanhad a strong presence in the city and the city government, holding several key positionsand setting the moral compass for the community. Springfield was a city openly cloaked inhate.
One of the few stories my mother told of her childhood was of being in kindergartenand sharing her mat with a Black boy at naptime. For this, the nuns at her Catholic schoolpublicly shamed her. Obviously there was a rancid repertoire of slurs for Black people inmy mother’s youth, but she also told me of the odd slurs and degrading names they hadfor Italians, Jewish people, and all “others” when no one else was around. She made meprivy to the hierarchy of racism in their white community. Ironically, even among herbeloved Irish there was a social caste system that divided the “lace curtain Irish” from the“shanty Irish.” The lace curtain Irish were “pure,” well off, respectable, and “properlyplaced” in society (think of the Kennedys), while the shanty Irish were characterized asdirty, poor, and ignorant. There was a critical and pitiful need, in this system, to have ahost of others to look down on. To my mother’s mother, all “others” were below the Irish.
But Black? Black people were always at the absolute bottom of the order. Nothing wasbelow Black.
My mother not only ignored the moral code of her hometown, she rebelled against it,later becoming active in the civil rights movement. By the standards of her environmentand family, she was a liberal eccentric. She was interested in life outside of their tiny,tight, white world. She was intellectually curious and drawn to culture, especially toclassical music. She recalls that one day, while listening to a classical music station on theradio, she heard an aria. It was the most beautiful sound she’d ever heard, and she wasdetermined to chase it, inside herself and out in the world. She decided to start her quest inNew York City, which seemed a million miles away from her family and the small-minded place they inhabited.
Young Patricia had big dreams—many of which she realized. She was extremelygifted and driven. Winning a scholarship to the prestigious Juilliard School for music, shewould go on to sing with the New York City Opera, making her debut at Lincoln Center.
My mother built an exciting, artsy, bohemian life in New York City. She was in thedowntown scene and dated a diverse cast of men by whom her mother would have beenmortified. Her pure Irish Catholic mother wouldn’t approve of her dating anyone whowasn’t lily-white. (Of course, in turn, the white supremacists of Illinois weren’t crazyabout the Irish or Catholics—the WASPs [White Anglo-Saxon Protestants], as they werereferred to at that time, always needed a fresh supply of people to have beneath them.) AnItalian guy would have been a problem, a Jewish man, a tragedy. My grandmotherwould’ve come completely undone if she knew my mother had had a steamy affair with arich, older Lebanese man named Fran?ois, right before she fell in love with, and married, aman her mother could not even conceive of. My father. A beautiful, complicated Blackman. This, to my grandmother (and her community) was the worst thing her daughtercould do to her and to the family lineage. Talking to a Black man was considered a shame;befriending one, an outrage; carrying on with one, a major scandal, but marrying one?
That was an abomination.
It was the ultimate humiliation. My mother’s marriage to my father was beyondbetrayal to her mother; it was a high crime against her white heritage, punishable byexcommunication.
To her mother, who grew up in a time and place where the KKK openly held massrallies and were active in government, marrying a Black man carried a burden of shameshe could not fathom. Her mother was raised not to drink from the same fountain as Blackpeople, not to sit in the same seat as Black people or swim in the same pool. She wastaught, and believed, that Black people were dirty and that Blackness could rub off. Afterall, the United States is the birthplace of the “one-drop rule,” the racial classificationsystem that asserts that any person with an ancestor possessing even one drop of Blackblood is considered Black.
In my grandmother’s view, my mother loving my father made her a bottom-feeder,procreating with the lowest human group and making mulatto mongrels—me and mysiblings. Needless to say, my grandmother completely disowned her daughter. She told noone else in the family her daughter was married to a Black man (and pregnant with a son).
Save for a few sporadic, secret phone calls, my mother became almost entirelydisconnected from her mother. She wouldn’t go back to her hometown for many years tocome.
Even the most gifted, compassionate, progressive person cannot easily overcomebeing completely rejected by their mother. To have the love of a mother is too primal aneed. Whatever soft place my mother might have had to land was hardened like concreteby her own mother’s ignorant, fearful family and upbringing. Even her marriage to myfather and the births of three beautiful children couldn’t fully heal the deep wound ofmaternal rejection—nothing can. I also doubt loving a Black man and having mixedchildren is the cure-all for generations of belief steeped in white superiority, and mymother and her family were steeped down to the white of their bones.
I’ve often wondered why my mother defied her mother, family, and heritage bymarrying my father. What was her full motivation? Was it all in the name of unconditionallove? It was never “we belong together” between them. She never reminisced to me abouttheir romance, nor was there any physical evidence of it: no photos, no poems, no letters,no trace of a great love. (Well, there were three children.) Maybe my mother wanted tokeep her history and memories of my father private, though I can’t help but wonder if hermarriage wasn’t, in part, a rebellion against her mother. Did she do it for the attention, thedrama of it all? More than once over the decades, I’ve heard my mother order her coffee“Black, like my men.” She’s often done it in front of me and one of her young Blackgrandsons—awkward.
To be honest, I don’t know if my mother ever wanted to get married and have childrenso young. I could understand her wanting to create a safety net, a new family of her own,and to continue blazing trails, leaving her backward home and family behind. But what Icouldn’t understand was her abandoning her promising singing career to do so. From veryearly on I decided that I didn’t want the same fate; I couldn’t have a man or an unplannedpregnancy take me off my path. Witnessing my mother’s and my sister’s detours was a sadand stinging warning. Watching their dreams go up in flames burned a cautionary tale intomy mind.
In 1977, my mother recorded an album she titled To Start Again. But by that time,she’d already had a troubled interracial marriage, three kids, a divorce, and one child stillliving with her, me. Did she think a record company would suddenly discover her? This isone of many miscalculations that as a child I observed my mother make and placed in afile labeled “What Not to Do.”
Time rolled by after my parents’ divorce, and eventually my grandmother allowed mymother to visit her with her granddaughter—but only her youngest granddaughter. I was atwelve-year-old little girl and didn’t quite understand why she only invited me. Lookingback, I suspect it was because I was blond-ish and very fair for a mixed kid. I didn’t raisemuch suspicion to the culturally untrained eye. I was too young to know how my motherand her mother interacted with each other, and I never knew what happened between themat that point: Was there an apology from Pat’s mother for disowning her daughter andwithholding family from her? Did she reckon with her racism? Was there forgiveness? Idon’t know. What I do remember is that she was stiff and formal. She had stark white hairthat she wore neatly away from her face with one big wave in the front. On her stern faceshe wore black cat-eyed glasses. Her house was not warm, and there was no smell to theplace. I recall her coming into the quiet, sterile bedroom where I slept while I was there,after my mother had put me to bed. She sat on the side of the bed in the dark and, in awhisper, taught me the Lord’s Prayer.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Matthew 6:11-12
That’s all I remember of that visit to see my grandmother. In an unusual twist of fate,she died on my mother’s birthday, February 15. After that, oddly enough, my motherpretty much sainted her. As an adult, my mother was never a practicing Catholic, but formany years she went to light a candle for her mother on that date. Strange how death canmake people forgive those who trespassed against them and their children.
For most of my early childhood it was just my mother and me. We moved constantly.
After an exhaustive search, she found us a place by the water. She wanted to be in a morepeaceful setting where she could take long walks with the dog and go down the road to thebeach. The two of us moved into what she referred to as a “quaint cottage” but I laterlearned the entire neighborhood called it “the shack.” I found the neighbors’ description tobe more accurate.
It was a small, rickety structure covered in a wavy faux-brick siding that had buckledunder the elements. Inside, a layer of dank sadness seeped through the floorboards andwalls, which were covered with cheap “imitation of wood” paneling that was paired withfilthy flea-ridden carpeting. No matter the time of day, it was always dark inside. Prior tous moving in, the place had been abandoned and had become a hangout where teenagerswould smoke, drink, and mess around. It was set off of a rough, unpaved driveway ofrubble and stones and faced a big white Victorian house, which made it look likesomething the big house had belched out. It was marked, and so were we. My mother andI were the eccentric lady and her little girl who lived in “the shack.” How?… quaint.
The first chapter of Marilyn Monroe’s autobiography, My Story, is entitled “How IRescued a White Piano.” In it she writes about her mission to find her mother’s 1937 babygrand piano.
Gladys Monroe Baker, mother to Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson),was in and out of psychiatric institutions all of her life. It’s been documented that shesuffered from paranoid schizophrenia, an incurable disease that performs a violent dancewith the mind, releasing it to lucidity for brief moments, then, without warning, spinning itback into hellish delusion. As a result of her mother’s inability to maintain sanity, Marilynspent most of her childhood in orphanages, followed by a series of foster homes. Duringone of Gladys’s rare healthy periods, she and little Norma Jeane lived together for a fewmonths in a small white house near the Hollywood Bowl. The most prized possession intheir modest abode was a baby grand piano. When her mother’s illness reared its uglyhead again, dragging her back into darkness and into another institution, the fewfurnishings and the piano were sold off.
After Norma Jeane’s transformation into Marilyn Monroe The Movie Star, she spokevery little of her childhood, her mentally ill mother, or her unknown father. And thoughMarilyn had made herself into a radiant icon, I imagine there was a piece of her stillsearching for an uninterrupted childhood, longing for her mother to be whole. I see howthe piano must’ve become a symbol of a time when she and her mother were together inrelative peace and harmony. Pianos are elegant, mystical, and comforting—from themsimple tunes and majestic compositions can spring forth and fill a dismal living room, adank bar, a concert hall, or even a shack with joy and glory.
Marilyn went on a mission to find her mother’s piano. As the story goes, while still astruggling model and actress, she found and purchased the piano at an auction and kept itin storage until she was able to move it into a home of her own. It accompanied her to allher residences. One of its final homes was the lavish Manhattan apartment Marilyn sharedwith her third and last husband, renowned playwright Arthur Miller, where she custom-coated the instrument in a thick, shiny white lacquer to match the apartment’s glamorous,angelic décor—“a world of white,” as her half sister, Berniece Miracle, called it. “Myhappiest hours as a little girl were around that piano,” Marilyn said. I imagine when yourchildhood was fraught with insecurity and fear like Marilyn’s and like mine, the romanceof those lost happy hours is extremely valuable. I understood why she searched for,bought, stored, and cared for the piano — so much so that I rescued it at auction atChristie’s in 1999. It is a treasure and my most expensive piece of art. And now, MarilynMonroe’s white baby grand piano is the centerpiece, the pièce de résistance, of my ownglamorous Manhattan penthouse. Marilyn was my first vision of a superstar that I couldrelate to, on an almost spiritual level.
We did without a lot of things when I was young, but what my mother couldn’t livewithout was a piano. We always had a piano, and I had many happy and formative hoursaround it with my mother. My mother would go through songs and scales with me, and ofcourse I would hear her practicing her dramatic operatic scales. It was at the piano where Iwould sit and make up little tunes of my own.
My mother never had much money, but one of her greatest contributions to mydevelopment was exposing me to all kinds of people, especially musicians. She made afew dollars here and there by giving voice lessons at our house. Her practicing was aconstant, but what I treasured most were the jam sessions. Accomplished musicians wouldcome and hang out and play music at my mother’s bohemian spot “by the bay,” and Iwould jam with them. Live music was the best thing about living with my mother. I wassurrounded by the love of music, but even more importantly, by the love of musicianship—the love of the craft, the love of the process. When I was a little girl, my motherintroduced me to the world of sitting in with musicians: improvising, vibing, and singing.
I particularly remember her singing from a Carly Simon songbook, she would playfrom it all the time. If I asked her to play a song for me to sing, she’d happily oblige. Shenever pushed me to sing or practice, but she encouraged me. She knew early on I had heradvanced ear for music. When I was five she arranged for me to have piano lessons for ashort time. But rather than read the music, I would play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” by ear.
“Don’t use your ear, don’t use your ear!” my teacher would implore. But I didn’t knowhow not to use my ear. Because music was a gift of freedom in my world of scarcity, theone place I felt unrestrained, I resisted the repetition and discipline required to learn howto read music and play the piano. Hearing and mimicking came so easily to me. This isone of several times I wish my mother had pushed me and made me sit and stick with it.
My mother and her guitarist friend would also sing standards from the 1940s (ofcourse that’s the era I loved, not only for the glamour but because the melodies were sostrong). She particularly loved Billie Holiday and would often sing her songs. I rememberhearing my mother sing “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.” I learned it and we wouldsing it together, and I would instinctively scat, which I loved. It felt like my little-girlversion of catching the Holy Spirit.
I learned several jazz standards from my mom and her musician pals, and some ofthem took note of my ear and natural abilities. At about twelve years old I would sit withher and Clint, a piano player. He was a big brown teddy bear, and he could play his assoff. He would sit and work with me and treat me like a serious musician. When I would sitwith him and sing, we were just two musicians working together. He taught me jazzclassics, and one of the first songs I remember learning was “Lullaby of Birdland,” madefamous by the great Ella Fitzgerald. I will always have a profound respect for Ms.
Fitzgerald and all the jazz legends who laid such a fertile musical foundation formusicians of all genres. It was not an easy song at any age, but for me at twelve, it wasbeyond advanced. With its intricate melody, full of vocal shifts and changes, it wascomposed for one of the most nimble jazz vocalists of all time. Learning and listening tolive jazz helped train my ear and shape my creative wiring. I was learning how to feelwhen to modulate and when to scat. Being introduced to jazz standards and a jazzdiscipline gave me my appreciation for sophisticated modulations in a song and how toemploy them to communicate emotion. (Stevie Wonder is the absolute master of this.)For me, songs are always about emotion. My mother may not have taken me tochurch, but jamming with jazz musicians was close to a spiritual experience. There’s acreative energy that flows through the room. You learn to sit and listen to what the othermusicians are doing, and you get inspired by a guitar riff or what the pianist is playing.
When you are in a zone, it is a miraculous madness. For me, it was always an exquisiteescape, which I desperately needed and always sought.
By the time I was eleven or twelve my mother was taking me to a supper club on LongIsland to sit in with her and other musicians. There was a dining room on the ground floorwhere they would serve dinner, and upstairs was live jazz. I was in the sixth grade, up inthere at all hours of the night, any day of the week, sitting in with grown-ass musicians.
I’m not sure if my mother just wanted to be able to hang out at night and sing and not bestuck in the shack—I mean “cottage”—with a kid, or if she was consciously developingme as an artist, or if maybe she wanted to present to her friends her little protégée? I doremember her encouraging me while I sang. I felt more welcomed (and natural) with jazzmusicians at night in the club than with my classmates during the day—those kids whoasked incessantly, “What are you?” those kids who judged me by the way I looked andhad no idea what my life was really like. I always knew that the world of suburban LongIsland wasn’t for me. I was a fish out of water, and though I survived it, I knew that no onethere really cared about me, and I certainly knew I wasn’t staying.
And my mother wasn’t just any old mom supporting me—she was a Juilliard-trainedmusician. Music was something we genuinely connected on, and without pushing orbecoming one of those overbearing stage mothers or “momagers,” she instilled in me thepower of believing in myself. Whenever I mused about what I’d do “if I make it,” shewould cut me short and say, “Don’t say ‘if I make it,’ say ‘when I make it.’ Believe youcan do it, and you will do it.”
The fact that I believed I could become a successful artist is one of my greateststrengths. Around the same time, my mother entered me in a talent competition in the cityand I sang one of my favorite songs: “Out Here On My Own” by Irene Cara.
I felt “Out Here On My Own” described my entire life, and I loved singing that way—singing to reveal a piece of my soul. And I won doing it. At that age, I lived for the movieFame, and Irene Cara was everything to me. I related to her multicultural look (PuertoRican and Cuban), her multitextured hair, and, most importantly, her ambition andaccomplishments. She won an Oscar for Best Original Song for “Flashdance?… What aFeeling” (which she cowrote), from Flashdance, making her the first Black woman to winin a category other than acting. (She won a Grammy, a Golden Globe, and an AmericanMusic Award for the song too.) But “Out Here On My Own” was such a pure song thattouched my heart, and I couldn’t believe I won a trophy for singing a song I loved. It wasthe first time I’d received validation as an artist. What a feeling.
It wasn’t just music my mother exposed me to. She had friends who treated me likefamily, which helped offset all the shabby places we lived and the disheveled way I oftenlooked.
My mother had a friend named “Sunshine,” who was short and quite a large woman,with a warm and generous heart. She wore her hair in two long ponytails, like Carole andPaula from The Magic Garden (a popular local kids’ TV show I loved, which was hostedby two young, hippie-esque women with a pink squirrel sidekick, who sang folksy songsand told stories, in the seventies and early eighties). Sunshine had big, older sons and nodaughters, so she took an interest in me, especially in my disorderly and neglectedappearance. She would often bring me cute, girlie clothes that she made herself. On mysixth birthday, she outfitted me in a white embroidered shirt paired with a blue skirt, whitetights, and Mary Jane shoes. She even got my hair to lie down in pigtails (maybe being aJewish woman and having textured hair gave her some insight). My birthday crown satnicely right on top. She even bought me a birthday cake decorated like a lamb! A lamb! Itis one of the few times I remember feeling beautiful as a child. Sunshine lovingly madesure I looked put together and cute. She was never anything but caring and sweet to me.
Years later, when I was going into junior high, she came by with some clothes for me thatI felt were too childish. I rejected them rudely, in the cruel fashion of an angsty preteen.
To this day, I regret how mean I was to such a considerate caretaker—one of the few inmy whole life.
I tried my hardest to accept all my mother’s unfortunate choices in men. I even tried toimpress them. (Some of the names have been changed to protect the dickheads.) Tales of acertain man in my mother’s life right before my father loomed large in our household. Weknew his name, Fran?ois, we knew he was Lebanese, and we knew he was rich. Despiteher great talents, my mother, like many women of her era, subscribed to the belief that aman was her most reliable source of security. The time between the relationships she hadwith Fran?ois and with my father was not long; it was even sometimes suggested there hadbeen some overlap, which led to the suspicion that perhaps Morgan was not my father’schild. Drama.
After the divorce from my father, my mother and Fran?ois reconnected, and sheplanned an epic reunion with “the rich man who got away.” My mother got Morgan andme excited about the fantasy that a wealthy, exotic man would come and sweep us up outof our run-down digs, and we would be set for life—all we had to do was impress him. Icould do that, I thought. Maybe my mother and I could sing a song at the piano? The nightof their big date arrived, and while my mother and Fran?ois were out, I pulled together thebest little outfit I could to greet him. I was nervous, because my mother wanted to berescued bad, and I wanted to be in a nice, safe place too. The stakes were high.
I was home alone when my mother and Fran?ois returned (I was home alone a lot as achild). Determined to do my part to make this relationship work for my mother, I ran tothe door. Fran?ois came in ahead of her. He was a tall, imposing older man in a dark suitwith sharp, mysterious features. “Hello!” I began cheerily, perhaps throwing in a curtsyfor dramatic effect. “Shut up!” he barked. “Where is my son!?”
The force of his words crushed every bit of enthusiasm out of me. He was scary. I wasonly a kid, and this big stranger had stormed into my house, dismissed me, and screamedat me. I ran crying to my mother’s bedroom. She tried to calm me down, but I wasinconsolable. I’m not sure if Fran?ois ever saw Morgan (who had our father’s Blackfeatures running all up and through him). But needless to say, no rich, heroic man saved usthat day; no man “saved” us any day.
I did not like or trust most of my mother’s men. She had one older Black boyfriend,Leroy, who tried to “protect” us from Morgan during one of his more violent episodes bysaying, “I got my piece,” and flashing a pistol. Imagine that: your mother’s boyfriendcarrying a gun and threatening to use it on her teenage son, your brother. Sadly, it didmake me feel safer; Morgan had become a scary presence to me by then.
However, my mother’s men were not all bad. Nothing and no one is ever all bad.
There was a sweet man in my mother’s life named Henry. He was my favorite. He wasabout ten years younger than my mother and a horticulturalist. He drove an old red pickuptruck, outfitted for the field; his many gardening tools, tree cuttings, mulch, and othersupplies would stick out from the back. He knew his trade. He was very well educated andgrew extraordinary plants that towered over me (mainly some species that were illegal atthe time). He also grew an impressive Afro that seemed to float around his head. Mymother and I lived in a few different places with Henry, but for a while the three of uswere in a small house on a grand estate, where he was the gardener. The place gave meplantation vibes, and we lived in the modern equivalent of the servants’ quarters. But still,Henry’s house was nicer than most of the houses we’d lived in and gave me a briefmoment of stability.
I was in the third grade when we lived there, and Henry built me a swing on a big, oldtree that was near what looked to me like a mini-mountain made of garbage. One day hebrought home two rescue kittens, one for me and one for him. I liked his better; he wasorange, with a very special spirit. Ultimately he became mine. He grew to be big andsquishy, and his name was Morris, like the icon. I’d sit and swing with him on my lap. Wetruly loved each other. I confided in him when I had a really hard day at school, which wasoften. I never fit in with the kids, who were all white and most of whom lived in theestates in that neighborhood. I was the child of the girlfriend of the hired help, and they letme know it. I brought my troubles to Morris. Even if I had had any friends I wouldn’thave wanted them to see I lived near a trash dump. Once, when I was really upset afterhaving a pretty big argument with my mother, I ran out of the house, grabbed my cat, andheaded for my place. While swinging over the hill o’ garbage with Morris in my lap, thesmell of rotting food wafting over my face, I promised myself no matter what, I wouldnever forget what it felt like to be a child—a moment I re-created years later in the“Vision of Love” video. (Sans the garbage. I wanted to be sentimental, not bleak.)I really liked Henry; he was an Aries just like me. We would dance, and he would pickme up and twirl me around. He provided me with glimpses of what the life of a carefreelittle girl could be. Henry was kind, and he paid for my second year of performing artssummer camp. I remember his mother, who used to work for Estée Lauder and was anexceptional cook. One day she laid out a divine soul food spread, ending with a Germanchocolate cake, which I had never had before. It was a delicious, warm, gooey, homemadepile of happiness. But with all that love also came darkness. Henry was a Black Vietnamveteran and was severely damaged by the consequences of both of those identities. Isuspect he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and, even as a kid, I wasaware of his occasional psychedelic drug usage. I believe the fallout from his experiencesof war and racism was the root cause of why he and my mother broke up.
One day near the end of my third-grade school year I got home and my mother was upin arms. She announced, “We can’t stay here anymore. We have to leave now.”
She already had our things packed and in her car. Henry was sitting in a chair in themiddle of the kitchen. The lights were off, and I could see the strong silhouette of hisAfro. He was holding a long double-barreled shotgun in one of his hands. Staring down atthe white linoleum floor, he said very calmly, “You’re not leaving me. I’m not gonna letyou guys leave.” He never raised his head or voice and seemed to be in a kind oftrancelike state.
“I’m not going to let you guys go,” he said. “I’m going to chop you up and put you inthe refrigerator and make you guys stay here.” Well, after he said that, I rushed to get intothe car. My mother started the engine.
“Morris!” I screamed. “I have to get Morris; he’s still in there!” Panicked, I jumpedout of the car. I was determined to get my cat. That cat represented too much for me; hewas unconditional love to me.
“Be careful,” my mother said, as she let me reenter a house occupied by an armed manwho had just threatened to chop us up. (Henry never did anything to hurt me and perhapsshe believed he wouldn’t now, but still.) I had to pass the kitchen, with Henry and theshotgun, to search the other rooms for Morris. When I finally found him, I scooped him upin my arms, ran out of the house, and jumped in the car. As we sped off, my heart wasgoing a mile a minute. “Hallelujah, I got Morris!” I triumphantly exclaimed.
I never knew what happened between her and Henry, and I never saw him after thatday. I heard that many years later, while he was riding down the road in his same vintagered pickup, “‘Vision of Love,’ by Mariah Carey,” came bursting through his old radio. Iwas told that he rolled down the window and yelled out into the fresh air, “She made it!
She made it!” I really hope Henry made it too.
My mother did occasionally try to give us moments. She would save up a little moneyso we could do things like go to dinner in New York City. And it was on these excursionsthat I developed a taste for “the finer things.” I have a distinct memory of one night whenwe were riding back from the city. I was looking out the back window at the New YorkCity skyline, and I said to myself, This is where I’m going to live when I grow up. I wantto have this view.
I always knew we lived in shitty places among other people’s nice houses in thesuburbs. I never dreamed I’d get married and live in a big white Victorian house, or even acozy little home like my guncles. But I did envision something grand. I rememberwatching Mommie Dearest and seeing Joan Crawford’s pristine manor. That’s what Iwant, I thought.
I even believed I could surpass its splendor. Even then, I saw myself living in amansion or more, because I knew I would realize my dreams. And when I saw the NewYork skyline, looking like a giant silver crystal encrusted with multicolored jewels, Ienvisioned I would live somewhere where I could see that. And I do. I see it clearly; I seethe entire city from the rooftop of my downtown Manhattan penthouse. As a result of a lotof hard labor, I went from swinging over garbage to singing in a mansion in the sky.
So yes, my mother exposing me to beauty and culture gave me encouragement andlifelong lessons that contributed both to my art and to what is good in me. But my motheralso created persistent turmoil, which caused trauma and deep sadness. It has taken me alifetime to find the courage to confront the stark duality of my mother, the beauty and thebeast that coexist in one person—and to discover there’s beauty in all of us, but who lovedyou and how they loved you will determine how long it takes to realize it.
Looking back now, I can see that in my early years, there was significant neglect. Forone, there were the people my mother let be around me, particularly my violent brother,my troubled sister, and their sketchy cohorts. And I often looked a mess, though I believethat was likely a result of my mother being oblivious (in the name of being bohemian)rather than malicious. However, I noticed a shift in our relationship when I was aboutfourteen years old. One night, as we were riding together in the “Dodge dent,” as shecalled it, “Somebody’s Watching Me,” by Rockwell, came on the radio. It was a hugeinternational hit on Motown Records at the time, and I loved it, largely because MichaelJackson sang the hook. We were driving and bopping along with the song when mymother broke out into Michael’s signature part of the chorus. “I always feel like /Somebody’s watching me.”
She sang it in an elaborate, operatic style, and I turned my face to the window to hidemy giggle. I mean, it’s a very eighties R & B record, with the hook sung in MichaelJackson’s impeccably smooth signature style, so to hear it delivered like Beverly Sills (apopular Brooklyn-born operatic soprano from the 1950s to the 1970s) was pretty hilariousto my teenage singer’s ears.
Oh, but Mother was not amused. She whipped the volume knob down and glared atme, her brownish-green eyes narrowing and hardening to stone.
“What’s so funny?” she spat. Her seriousness quickly swallowed up the silliness of themoment. I stuttered, “Um, well?… that’s just not how it goes.” She stared at me until everybit of lightness faded. Almost growling, she said, “You should only hope that one day youbecome half the singer I am.” My heart dropped.
Still, to this day, what she said haunts and hurts me. I don’t know if she meant to cutme down to size or it was just her bruised ego talking; all I know is that those words thatshot out of her mouth pierced my chest and were buried in my heart.
These words were there in my heart in 1999 when I was acknowledged and respectedfor my voice and my compositions by two of the greatest opera talents of all time. I wasinvited to join Luciano Pavarotti in “Pavarotti & Friends,” a prestigious annual fundraisingconcert for children in war-torn countries, hosted by the great tenor, the maestro, in hishometown of Modena, Italy. (The concert was directed for TV by Spike Lee, ya dig?) It’san ancient town known for producing fancy sports cars like Ferraris and Lamborghinis aswell as balsamic vinegar—and I’m sure whatever indulgences the maestro desired wereimported. I brought my mother and my wonderful little nephew Mike with me. I wasproud and happy to be able to treat her to a glamorous trip and to introduce her to one ofher idols. In a strapless pale-pink silk taffeta sheath gown, my mother watched me share agrand outdoor stage in front of fifty thousand people with one of the greatest and mostfamous opera singers of all time. Not only did we sing together, he sang my song:
Pavarotti sang an Italian version of “Hero” with me, for the whole world to see. For mymother to see.
Then, in May 2005, I met the phenomenal soprano Leontyne Price (the first Blackwoman to become a prima donna at the Metropolitan Opera and the most awardedclassical singer) when she was being honored at Oprah’s illustrious Legends Ball, whichcelebrated twenty-five African American women in art, entertainment, and civil rights.
The historic weekend began on Friday with a private luncheon at her Montecito home,where the “legends” were greeted by the “young’uns,” including Alicia Keys, AngelaBassett, Halle Berry, Mary J. Blige, Naomi Campbell, Missy Elliott, Tyra Banks, Iman,Janet Jackson, Phylicia Rashad, Debbie Allen, myself, and many more.
And throughout the extraordinary weekend, we young’uns paid homage to the legendsfor their great contributions. My mother would often boast, “Oh yes, Leontyne and I hadthe same vocal coach,” and here I was hanging out with her (at Oprah Winfrey’s house noless)! Madame Price remembered my mother, and she also validated my talent.
On the day after Christmas that year, on the most elegant, thick, eggshell-coloredstationery I received a letter from her:
“In the difficult, demanding business of performing arts, you are the crown jewel ofsuccess. To achieve your level of success as a multi-dimensional artist is an outstandingmeasure of your artistic talent.” It went on to say,It was a pleasure to visit with you during the Legends Weekend and to tell you inperson how much I admire you and your artistry. Your creativity and performancesare superb. You present your compositions with a depth of feeling that is rarely, ifever, seen or heard. It is a joy to watch you turn all of the obstacles you faced intostepping-stones to success. Your devotion to your art and career are praiseworthy.
This brings you a standing ovation and a resounding Brava! Brava! Brava!
*Dead*
I guess to my mother, I may not have been half the singer she was, but I was the wholesinger and artist I was.
This was my first glimpse into how misguided words from a mother can really affect achild. What a simple difference a laugh along from her would have made. Whatever hadconnected us before, a fragile mother-daughter bond, was shattered in that moment. Therewas a distinct shift: she made me feel like the competition, like a threat. In place of ourprevious bond grew a different tie, a rope tethering us through shared biology and socialobligation. In no way did my mother crush my dreams of being successful that day; myfaith had grown too strong by then.
Having people you love be jealous of you professionally comes with the territory ofsuccess, but when the person is your mother and the jealousy is revealed at such a tenderage, it’s particularly painful. I was going through some heavy shit then, and for her toexpose her insecurity to me in that way, at that time, was damaging. I’d already had somany years of insecurity around my physical safety. Though a subtle, brief moment, thiswas the first big blow in a long line of times when people close to me would try to put medown, put me in my place, underestimate me, or take advantage of me. But she, above all,was the most devastating, because she was the most essential. She was my mother.
DANDELION TEA
DANDELION TEA
A flower taught me how to pray
But as I grew, that flower changed
She started flailing in the wind
Like golden petals scattering
—“Petals”
She called herself Dandelion—the hearty, bright-yellow wildflower with small tooth-shaped petals that gives the early signal that spring is near. After its flowering is finished,the petals dry and the head becomes a ball of lacy dust feathers carrying seeds. The legendgoes that if you close your eyes, make a wish, and blow the feathery pieces into the air,your wish will scatter into the world and come true. The English sometimes call them Irishdaisies. And the tea made from the root and leaves is widely believed to have healingbenefits. But these wildflowers can also be a menace, poisoning precious flowers andgrowing grass—weeds to be uprooted and discarded.
When I was a little girl, my older sister seemed to live on the wind. She was alwayssomewhere far away. Childhood memories of her exist in my mind as flashes of lightningand thunder. She was exciting but unpredictable — her torrential gusts always carriedinevitable destruction with them.
The distances between my mother, my father, their first daughter, and myself are farreaching. Unlike her, growing up, I never spent any significant time as part of a wholeinterracial family. Most of my experiences were with one parent at a time—me with mymother, or me with my father. I have no recollection of them as a happily married couple.
It is bizarre to me that they were even married, not just because of race, but how differentthey were as people. But before I was born, the Carey family consisted of a Black father, awhite mother, and a mixed boy and girl. The four of them would walk down the street, andpeople would know. This rebel Carey quartet experienced the spectacular ignorance andwrath of a society woefully unprepared to receive or accept them; Loving v. Virginia, theSupreme Court decision that struck down the law banning interracial marriage in theUnited States, wouldn’t happen until three years after my mother and father’s marriage.
As a result of the hostility from their community and country, Morgan and Alison wereinstructed by our parents to refer to them as “Mother” and “Father,” in the hope, Iimagine, that the formality might elevate their status to respectable. My parents seemed tothink that if neighbors or other onlookers heard their girl and boy say, “Good morning,Mother” or “Hello, Father,” they wouldn’t perceive them as disgusting.
Morgan and Alison were beautiful children and were very close when they wereyoung. Alison had skin like creamy butterscotch pudding, with a head of thick, deep, darkcurls and eyes to match. She was extremely intelligent and curious and she loved to learn.
I was told she brought home good grades, got into good schools, and loved music too. Butshe lived firsthand the discomfort and animosity directed at her and her offbeat Black andwhite family. She saw their neighbors throw raw meat studded with broken glass to theirdogs, and their family car blown up. She saw things inside the family too, things a childshould never see and I will never know. I do know that what she experienced damagedand derailed her girlhood.
She was fully aware when the family unit unraveled and our parents turned on eachother; she absorbed the full pain of a family coming undone. She also saw anotherdaughter come into the clan, breaking the symmetry and changing her status as the onlygirl and youngest. I was the new little one. When my mother and father could no longerlive together without emotionally torturing each other, they tore themselves apart tosurvive separately. The three of us children would be plagued by pain, resentment, andjealousy for a lifetime.
Alison and Morgan both believed I had it easier than they did. Our father was verystrict with them. He was not harsh with me because three or four years old was the oldest Ihad been when we were all together. During one of their countless fights, I vaguelyremember my mother yelling at him something like, “This one is mine! You will not beatthis one.” I was her little one. She often said she “didn’t have the strength” to challengemy father’s aggression when my siblings were growing up.
I only have one memory of all of us having dinner together. It was a sort of“restorative dinner”—my parents trying one more time to see if we could pull it togetherand be a family. We were all sitting around the table, and I started singing.
My father said, “Children should be seen and not heard.”
The entertainer in me took that as a cue, so I got up from the dining table, walked thefew feet to the living room area (which was in plain view and well within earshot), stoodon top of the coffee table, and continued to sing at the top of my lungs. Alison and Morgandropped their heads, ducking before the wrath of our father that they were certain wouldinevitably ricochet around the room. But my mother gave him a look, and he didn’t sayanything. My sister and brother were flabbergasted. I was not hit, yelled at, punished, oreven stopped. They would have never, ever dared defy our father. No wonder they hatedme.
Needless to say, the dinner didn’t save us. Divorce was inevitable. My mother andfather made the final decision to break up before all was broken. I remember I was takento our neighbors’ house, and they gave me popcorn while my family was next doordiscussing the dismantling of the Careys. After several violent encounters involving thepolice, by court order my father and brother could not live together. At one point Morganhad been taken to Sagamore Children’s Psychiatric Center, a care facility for seriouslyemotionally troubled children and families in crisis. Morgan was a crisis. I also heard apsychiatrist had concluded that a significant contributing factor in Morgan’s behavioralproblems was Alison, who had a talent for instigating and manipulating Morgan to hisbreaking points. Alison is very clever. So Morgan had to live with my mother, and she hadmade it clear to my father that he would not have me. That left Alison scattered.
I’ve heard Alison express that she felt like my mother tossed her away, that she clearlyloved Morgan and me more than her. I’ve also heard my mother say Alison chose to livewith our father because she felt bad and didn’t want him to be alone. There is likely sometruth in both of their perspectives. I was too young to really understand.
I don’t really know what life was like for my sister living with our father, just the twoof them, broken and angry. It must’ve been dangerously claustrophobic — a constantclashing of feelings of abandonment and resentment toward my mother under their roof.
They had no real space to resolve, no chance to heal. Order and obedience was how myfather tried to make sense out of the chaos of society and the rubble his family structurehad become.
The child now in his sole care was a bitter, broken teenage girl, and he had no tools todeal with her dysfunction and hurt. Eventually my father and Alison did form a bond,united in their disdain for my mother. I believe they also bonded over the inevitablevisibility of their Blackness.
Predictably, Alison turned to boys and sex in an attempt to fill the family-sized hole ofrejection in her heart. At fifteen she met a handsome Black nineteen-year-old military“man,” and Alison got pregnant. Our mother wanted her to have an abortion. Our fathertold her she could have the baby if she got married. The young man was stationed in thePhilippines, and with our father’s permission Alison followed him, and they got marriedthere. Before she left, I recall sitting on the bed with her in her room at our father’s house.
What I remember of her room was that on her wall was a shelf of books and a shelf offancy dolls—the ones with big, poofy lace quincea?era-type dresses. I would look up atthose dolls, far out of my reach—there for show, not for playing.
I was staring at them when she pointed to her belly and said, “There’s a baby in there.”
A baby where? In her stomach? I was too young and didn’t understand at all what shemeant. I didn’t understand much about Alison then.
I’ll never forget her bizarre combined baby and bridal shower at my mother’s house.
They put a little girl on the cake—a doll, not one that looked like a grown woman but alittle baby doll with dark brown hair like my sister’s. The whole thing was so confusing tome. I was a little girl, wondering, Is this a baby-is-coming party or a girl-is-going party? Icouldn’t tell if it was a festive or tragic occasion. My mother was pacing and pissed off.
My teenage sister had a swollen belly, and she kept pointing at it and saying to me,“There’s a baby in here; look, there’s a baby in here.” And there was this weird cake witha little doll on it. How was a little girl supposed to understand all of this?
And so, for a long time afterward, I always thought, “Okay, so I guess at fifteen iswhen people have kids and get married.”
It twisted my reality. But it also focused me. I made the promise to myself that was notgoing to be me. My sense of self-worth, or rather, my sense of self-preservation was bornat that bon voyage/bridal/baby shower. I vowed I was not going to be promiscuous ever.
This promise to live a different life led me to become a very prudish person. I knew then—suddenly finding myself an auntie before I was eight years old—that Alison’s path wasnot going to be my life. Once the last slice of baby-bridal cake was gone, my sister wasgone too, for several years.
I will never understand what happened to her in the Philippines. But I do know whenshe left my father’s house, the remainder of her fragile childhood was left behind.
After a few years in the Philippines, Alison returned to Long Island. I was abouttwelve years old, and she was twenty. Whatever had happened to her over there, or onLong Island, or in a back room somewhere, had taken its toll on her. That super-smart,beautiful girl with the dark curls who was my big sister had hardened into a strange kindof absence. Something, or many things, must have happened to her to lead her to barterher body for money and drugs, as she went on to do for years. Back then, there was somuch I didn’t know, but there also was so much I should have never found out, certainlynot so young. The years between us might as well have been centuries.
When Alison came back, she would drift from place to place and man to man,occasionally crashing with us at my mother’s house between the many randomrelationships with men she collected and discarded. There was one older man—I guessedhe was about sixty. He had half a head of hair, all of which was gray. He was polite to mymother and would sometimes fill our refrigerator with food, so I guess she trusted him?
One evening at the shack, Alison and my mother got into one of their innumerable epicarguments, and for some unknown reason Alison took me with her to this oldergentleman’s house. There’s little of his house, or that night, that I remember because whenwe arrived, Alison sat me down on a light-brown couch and handed me a little chalky ice-blue pill with a crease carved down the middle and a glass of water.
“Here, take this,” she said.
I took it. Within minutes (I think) I was in a heavy, scary darkness, pushed down into aplace beneath sleep, and I couldn’t pull myself out. I don’t know how long I was knockedout. I felt like I’d been absorbed into the couch (the only reason I remember the color). Itwas harrowing.
At twelve, I probably weighed eighty pounds soaking wet, and Alison gave me awhole Valium. I don’t know why my sister drugged me. I don’t know why my mother letme go with her and this man. Perhaps they both wanted me out of their hair for theevening, but my life was in jeopardy in her hands. This may have been the first time thatyear she could have seriously hurt me, but it certainly wasn’t the last.
Even though by her twenties Alison had already gotten married, given birth, gottendivorced, traveled thousands of miles away, and done dreadful things, she could still bezany and spontaneous. The worst had not yet happened between us, so I was genuinelyhappy for the wild stray visits she made to my mother’s house. On her good days she wasa bright burst of energy in our often-bleak little dwelling. She seemed mature and had ahollow kind of glamour. She took a new interest in me as a preteen now rather than a littlegirl. She paid attention to the obviously neglected outside of me, swooping in andcorrecting my disastrous attempts to make myself pretty, which to a twelve- year- oldmeans everything. After I accidentally made my hair all kinds of shades of ugly orange,she took me to get a toner for my hair and made it one color. She took me to a place thatmade my eyebrows beautiful. She took me shopping for my first bra. She and I wouldmake earnest attempts at being normal. We were trying to be sisters—or so I thought.
Even though I was young, I knew my sister was doing things that were not good. Imean, she had a beeper, and only drug dealers, rappers, and doctors had beepers backthen. She wore a nice manicure — bright- pink nail polish, sometimes decorated withrhinestones. Once, as she was dropping me off in front of my mother’s house, she dipped asharp pink nail tip into some white crystal powder and held it up to my face, saying, “Justtry it, just try a little bit; who cares?”
I knew it was cocaine, and it scared me to death. Thank God, I didn’t take the sniff. Iplayed it off and calmly replied, “No thanks! Bye; see you later.” I shudder to think whatcould’ve happened if I’d walked into her trap and then that house. I don’t know whatwould’ve happened if I’d snorted cocaine right before seeing my mother, or ever in mylife.
It was all such a setup. Alison began bringing me around her friends, and I startedlooking forward to our secret outings—though for all the initial glamour and excitement, itwas a very scary time in my life. Even though it was a long time ago, I still havenightmares about it. Alison did not choose how her life began, and I know she wentthrough trauma too. It seemed as though she’d turned completely away from the light.
One day, she explained that it was time for me to meet her fabulous boyfriend, John,and the other girls she hung around, who she’d been telling stories to me about. John wastall, with green eyes, a large, fluffy Afro, and a strong charisma. Christine, a seventeen-year-old runaway white girl, an older woman named Denise—“older” meaning she wasmaybe twenty- eight — and my sister, then in her early twenties, all lived in a housetogether with John. I looked up to Christine; she had a worldly air about her, yet she alsoseemed like a little girl. Her pale skin was sprinkled with tan freckles, and she hadmedium-blond hair that fell softly to her shoulders, which were long and thin like the restof her body. She could’ve been in a teen movie, but instead she was there, in that house.
She was damaged.
John’s house was nicer, brighter, and cleaner than where I lived. They had a brand-new couch. There was a television, and I could watch whatever shows I wanted. They hadall the snacks I could want. They had Juicy Juice. We couldn’t afford any of that at home.
A couple of times my sister came to where I lived and filled the refrigerator with the stuff Iliked. This was part of the confusion I felt about our relationship. It sometimes felt andlooked like she cared, but her motives were always unclear. Was she being a nice bigsister, or was she creating an appetite in me for what I knew I could have all the time atJohn’s house? It was manipulation masquerading as love.
My sister told me not to tell anyone I was going to the house where she lived withJohn, especially not my brother. She told me that my brother didn’t like him because Johnhad beat him at backgammon. Being so young and na?ve at the time, I believed theiranimosity was about a board game, not a prostitution and drug operation. So there was noone who knew, no one to protect me. Dysfunctional families are ideal prey for abusers, theexposed little ones vulnerable to being picked off. Now, of course, it’s clear to me that thefun house was a whorehouse. I think my sister was kind of like the hustler, the talentscout. But at the time, I had no idea; after all, I was only a twelve-year-old girl. Winningme over was so easy—literally like giving a kid candy, but instead of candy it was a hairrinse, a bra, and a Juicy Juice box.
John, my sister, and I would drive to the city together. I remember one time we weregoing somewhere, and the radio was playing a song he loved. He loudly screamed out thelyrics, while my sister and I giggled at his strangled singing. They let me smoke cigarettesin the backseat of the car. I felt cool and free.
We would go to IHOP to get pancakes. They took me to Adventureland and I playedPac- Man. In those moments, I almost felt like someone’s precious little sister. I washaving all these fun adventures and thinking to myself, I finally know what it feels like tohave a big sister who’s in my life for good. And I like this easy breezy guy, John. This waswhat I’d been missing. I was starting to feel something resembling stability, a sense that Ihad something that looked like a normal family and was moving toward somewhere Ibelonged.
But confusing and curious things quickly started happening.
The closer I got to my sister, the more clearly I could see her broken parts. She hadsecretly gotten me my own phone line, which only she called me on. She would havethese desperate bouts of drug-induced hysteria and call me late at night, in the middle ofan episode. I’d talk her down off the ledge, then try to go back to sleep, get up early in themorning, and complete the seventh grade. No one at school knew that frequently, just afew hours earlier, I had subdued my suicidal big sister. Killing herself became a commonthreat that she shared with me in the wee hours before I went to the school bus stop.
Then the calls stopped for a while. Finally, one day, Alison phoned and said she andJohn were coming to pick me up. I was excited to think of the three of us together again,riding, laughing, smoking, singing, and playing. But John showed up alone.
We began driving, but there was no radio blasting, no talking. It wasn’t fun at all, and Ifelt that something wasn’t right.
Finally I asked, “Where is my sister? When are we going to pick her up?”
John kept his eyes forward and assured me, “Oh, she’ll be here later.” I was sitting inthe front seat, and I could clearly see the handgun resting against his thigh.
John, his gun, and I made two stops: a card game and a drive-in movie. There’s a look,a feel, and a smell to rooms where grown men play in the dark. It was dank and cluttered.
The air was dense with cheap booze, stale menthol cigarette smoke, and unspokenperversions. There were no pretty things. It was hard for me to see and hard to breathe.
I don’t know exactly how many men there were; I don’t know how many guns, howmuch money, or how many vile thoughts were at the table—but I do know it was all men,and me. I sat in a corner on the sticky floor where I could see the door and held ontomyself. I stayed still and kept my eyes down as the grown-man jokes, grown-man cussin’,grown-man hungers, grown-man fears, and grown-man fantasies flew above my head.
Every now and then I’d catch a glimpse of one of them leering at me or hear a lewdreference to me in their conversation.
I don’t remember how I got from the card-room floor back into the front seat of hiscar. What I do remember is feeling dirty from the sticky floor and the men’s filthy words. Iknew my sister was not coming to clean me up this time. A panic bubbled up in my throat.
Where am I going? Why am I alone with my sister’s boyfriend? Why did he take mearound those disgusting men? Why can’t we just go to IHOP? Where is my sister? Whereis she? I began to pray.
Our next stop was the drive-in, where almost immediately John put his arm aroundme. My body went stiff. My eyes were fixed on his gun. John pushed in closer and forceda hard kiss on me. I was nauseous and scared; I felt immobilized. From the corner of myeye I noticed an elderly white man pull up and park next to us, peering directly into John’scar.
The look on the man’s face was a mix of revulsion and recognition. He clearly saw anadult man—John, with his round Afro—and a little girl, small with blond coils of hair. Hesaw the powder-blue car and John’s light-brown skin. He saw the details, and even if hedidn’t detect my distress, he could see this was no place a little girl would ever want to be.
John pulled out of the drive-in slowly and drove me home in silence.
I committed that man’s face to memory. He is still there, fresh and frozen in thatterrible time. I believe he was a prayer in person.
After a couple of days back in my room, the phone began ringing again, but this time Iwouldn’t pick it up. I resumed pretending I had a regular seventh-grade life. I wanted to bea child again. Sometimes all the kids in my neighborhood would play chase (tag) at night.
Most of them lived in nice houses with two parents, and sisters who didn’t burden themwith thoughts of suicide and set them up with pimps. I longed to blend in to a typicalsummer night in an everyday Long Island neighborhood, to play and clown around withother regular kids. I just wanted to outrun my drama through a game of chase.
We often played in an area not far from the beach that had a kind of roundabout. Wewould hang out at that spot and sometimes build a fire, make funny voices, and sing. Onenight we were deep in a group game of chase, kids scattered about running and weaving,when I saw a car coming down the road. I immediately recognized it as John’s car. It wascreeping along, ever so slowly, as if the driver was looking for something or someone.
Panicking, I instinctively ducked behind a house, pretending to hide from whoever was“it.” There was no way I could tell my friends that I was “it” to a pimp with a gun.
John eventually drove away. Though I had narrowly escaped him again, the fear ofmen followed me for a very long time. When I got home I unplugged the phone from thewall and disconnected from trusting my big sister forever.
I had nobody to tell what had happened. I couldn’t tell my mother. I didn’t have anyreal, close friends. I had never really fit in. Even if I did, how could I have explained it to akid from a regular household who ate dinner at six o’clock, went to bed at nine thirty, andgot in trouble when they didn’t brush their teeth? They’d never be able to understand. Bigsisters are supposed to protect you—not pimp you out. So I didn’t tell or trust anybody.
But as a girl, you still want your big sister, and dandelions are still flowers when they firstbloom.
One visit from my sister, among all the visits and memories, marked me the deepest.
We tried to have tea. Tea was a thing in my mother’s house, but it was anything butproper. There was no cheery, whistling kettle; we boiled the water in a small beat-upsaucepan on an old stove in the tiny, flavorless, dingy, grime-colored kitchen. Matchingcups and saucers were certainly nowhere to be found; we had mismatched cups and mugs,the kind found in the box marked “Free” at yard sales on Long Island. English breakfastwas the staple tea flavor; we each had a cup with a steeping tea bag. I had a thick ceramicbrown drip-glazed mug that was chipped at the lip. I was holding the steaming, fragrantblack tea with both hands when the phone rang.
“Oh hello, Al,” we heard our mother answer. It was our father.
We were both a little shocked. My father rarely called my mother’s house, and if hedid, it was almost always to scold us about something. Alison and I exchanged a quickglance—who had done what now? Suddenly my mother looked in my direction, and Icould tell they were discussing me. I vigorously shook my head “no” and mimed refusal.
Alison and I were just about to have tea, maybe even a rare light moment, and I knew I’dhave to get serious when it came to talking with our father. And who knew what Alisonmight have done that I’d have to hear about.
But Mother didn’t cover for us. “Yes, she’s here; hold on,” she said, holding the phoneout and shaking it at me. Whatever “normal sister moment” Alison and I were trying tocreate was totally blown. I straightened my face, got up begrudgingly, and took the phone.
Then I shook it and stretched the cord over to Alison, gesturing for her to take it.
“Nooooo, you take it,” she said back. A silly back-and-forth commenced between usfor a few moments—a game of who would take the burden of talking to Father. It wasalmost fun.
Finally I put the receiver to my ear. “Hi, Father. I’m fine,” I said, repressing the urgeto let out a little giggle. As I went through the mechanical niceties of the conversation, mysister began gesturing wildly, shaking her head and slicing her hand across her throat,signaling for me not to let on that she was there. As I tried my best to carry on theconversation with our father, I made silly faces back at her, doing all I could not to breakinto laughter. My sister could be pretty theatrical, and in that moment I found her extrahilarious. I thought we were playing a game. Eventually I figured it was her turn to try andtalk seriously to our father while I tried to make her laugh, so I said, “Guess what—Alisonis here! Want to talk to her?” Laughingly, I motioned at her to take the phone.
But she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking down at her mug of still-steaming teain her hand, and when she lifted her face, her eyes were rabid, without a trace of theirformer playfulness. Before I realized what was happening, she yelled “No!” and, in aflash, threw the boiling-hot tea on me.
The next thing I remember I was stripped down to my waist, and a doctor wasremoving the remaining bits of my white-and-turquoise diagonal-striped top, which wasembedded into the flesh of my shoulder, with large tweezers. The doctor had had to sliceoff my shirt with an instrument, as some of the fibers had begun to fuse with my skin. (Ifucking loved that top—one of the very few cute pieces I had, and now it was out ofrotation, stuck to my back.)
My back was splattered with third-degree burns. I couldn’t recognize it as mine, as itturned different shades of maroon from the violent scalding I received at the hands of mysister. The horrific physical sensation had been so intense that I blacked out. Afterward,my back was numb and couldn’t be touched without causing me excruciating pain. It tookyears before I could accept a simple pat on the back, as most of my skin had to completelyrenew and repair itself.
The deepest injury, though, was from the emotional trauma. Feelings are not like skin;there are no fresh new cells coming to replace ruined ones. Those scars go unseen,unacknowledged, and unhealed. The truly irreversible damage to me came from the burnof my big sister, not the tea. Her arson was deliberate—she burned my back and my trust.
Any faint hope I’d held up to that point of having a big sister became scorched earth.
I know my sister was deeply wounded. She is the most brilliant and broken person Ihave ever known. I may never understand what hurt her so badly that it made her hurt somany others in return, but to me, she was her own most permanently damaged victim.
From my perspective she chose to take up permanent residence in “Victimland.” Thepromise of her life was squandered in a tragic series of cheap bargains rather than beingredeemed through the difficult, lifelong work of recovery and rebuilding oneself.
Alison has burned me in many ways and more times than I can count. Over and over Ihave tried to be her fire department, financing treatments and paying for stays in premiumrehabs. But even with substantial resources, there is no way to rescue someone whodoesn’t realize they’re burning. The scars I carry from my sister are not just a reminder,they are lessons. They have taught me that perhaps our worlds are far too different to everoverlap, hers made of fire and mine of the light.
I always hoped and wished Alison would get better, so we could get better. Iunderstand she was severely emotionally injured and had to take her enduring pain out onsomeone. She chose me. Through the years, both my sister and brother have put me on thechopping block, sold lies to any gossip rag or trashy website that would buy or listen.
They have attacked me for decades. But when I was twelve years old, my sister druggedme with Valium, offered me a pinky nail full of cocaine, inflicted me with third-degreeburns, and tried to sell me out to a pimp. Something in me was arrested by all that trauma.
That is why I often say, “I’m eternally twelve.” I am still struggling through that time.
And I miss you, dandelion
And even love you
And I wish there was a way
For me to trust you
But it hurts me every time
I try to touch you
—“Petals”
DETANGLED AND SWEPT AWAY
DETANGLED AND SWEPT AWAY
In the photograph, bright rays of sun shine down on me like a spotlight, and the hot dogI’m holding has a big, happy bite taken out of it. My hair is a range of gold highlights, rawsienna, wheat blond, and sweet lemon, lit by the sun. Soft, thick waves of it are blowing inlayers away from my face as a few ringlets sweep up off my shoulders. There is atenderness in my gaze, cut slightly with seriousness at the edges of my eyes.
This photo is one of my favorites from my childhood. In it, I look like a typical firstgrader on summer break. I look like I belong to somebody who knows how to look afterme. I appear well cared for. But I wasn’t.
My childhood was rife with neglect. There were many things about me that my motherdidn’t understand how to nurture or maintain—but the most obvious, most symbolic, andmost visible was my hair.
My hair was rooted to no one. No one did my hair. No one knew how. We didn’t haveconditioner (or “cream rinse,” as it was called back in the day) at my mother’s house.
There were no pomades, wide-toothed combs, or hard-bristled brushes. There was noSunday ritual of getting my hair washed and braided; certainly, there was no greasing ofthe scalp. There was no order made in my hair. I never felt the tidiness or security ofhaving my hair done.
As a result, my hair was often a matted, tangled mess. And no one around me couldfully understand the particular humiliation of being a nonwhite little girl with unkempthair. I didn’t have the language for it, but I carried the burden of how it felt. My neglectedhair was a siren, signaling that I was different from all the little white girls—and fromlittle Black girls too. My wild, mixed, and mangled curls made me feel inferior, unworthyof receiving proper attention.
There was no going to the salon, dahling. I don’t recall my mother ever going to asalon. She fully subscribed to that bohemian, no-fuss beauty philosophy of the 1950s and’60s. For her, a full beat face was eyeliner—a little cat wing, if she was being extra fancy—a swish of mascara, a touch of blush, a lip, and voilà! Flawless face. Her hair wasfabulous, either up or down. Even if she had believed in seeking professional groomingservices, for her or me, we could never afford it. And besides, there were no salons in thatpart of Long Island that could comprehend the contradictions of my tendrils, the sheercomplexities of the needs of my hair. At that time there weren’t mixed- textureprofessionals anywhere, really, nor were there any specialized products. I was livingtangled in between an Afro Sheen and a Breck Girl world.
The two constant representations of female beauty I saw on a daily basis were mymother and TV commercials. I admired and deeply desired the dark, smooth perfection ofmy mother’s long, luxurious hair. The contrast between how my mother’s hair lookedwhen she woke up in the morning and how mine did was profound. She would shake herhead, and thick, straight hair would tumble down like a yard of heavy silk crepe, drapinginto an elegant pool across her shoulders. I, on the other hand, had smashed-down, fuzzy,sweaty clumps, exploding in a cacophony of knots, waves, and curls all over my head.
And then there was the hair I saw on TV, the magnificent, sunshine- filled, slow-motion-blowing-in-the-wind-while-running-barefoot-through-fields-of-flowers hair. I wasenchanted by those commercials, especially the ones for Clairol Herbal Essence shampoo.
It was as if Eve herself was in the Garden of Eden, bottling the thick, emerald-green nectarmade of earthly delights of herbs and wildflowers. I was convinced this shampoo wouldgive me the heavenly hair, blown by gusts of angels’ wings, that I saw in the commercial.
I wanted that shampoo so bad. I wanted that angelic, blowing hair so bad. (Because ofthose commercials, Olivia Newton-John, and the Boss, Diana Ross, I still am obsessedwith blowing hair, as evidenced by the wind machines employed in almost every photoshoot of me ever.)
Young and culturally isolated, I had no idea how to manage my hair, nor the shame itbrought me. I often wonder if my mother ever saw the carelessness that my hair madevisible. Was she too preoccupied with her own burdens to notice? Could she not feel thedryness, and the lumps and bumps, of the gnarly tangles in my head? Why couldn’t shejust sit me down and brush my hair for two hours, the way Marcia Brady did on The BradyBunch? Maybe in her bohemian, sixties-loving ideology she thought I looked free, like anadorable flower child. Maybe she didn’t know I felt dirty.
Having one Black and one white parent is complicated, but when you are a little girlwith a white mother, largely cut off from other Black women and girls, it can beexcruciatingly lonely. And, of course, I had no biracial role models or references. Iunderstand why my mother didn’t understand how to manage my hair. When I was a baby,it was, well, baby hair, mostly uniform, soft curls. As I got older it got more complex, withdiverse textures arising out of seemingly nowhere. She didn’t know what was happening.
She was confused and randomly started cutting tragic bangs in my hair (believing bangswould behave in biracial hair is brave).
It was a disaster, and I felt powerless. At seven years old, I really thought maybe if shewould just wash my hair with Herbal Essence, a hair fairy would come at night, and Iwould wake up and poof! I would have perfect hair like my mom or the girls in thecommercials.
It took me five hundred hours of beauty school training to know even Marcia Brady’shair wouldn’t blow with abandon with just shampoo. It takes professionals, products, andproduction, dahling—conditioners galore, diffusers, precision cuts, special combs, clip-ins, cameras, and, of course, wind machines. It requires a lot of effort to achieve effortlesshair.
What I really needed was any Black woman, or anyone with some kind of culture,cream, and a comb! But even that wasn’t that simple.
One time my father’s half sisters staged an intervention of sorts, determined to “dosomething about that chile’s hair.” It was going to be an event. I was in the second gradewhen my father took me to my grandfather and Nana Ruby’s house in Queens.
Humor was a tool I used to cope, disarm, and defend myself. I also used it to expressmy point of view when I had no control. It was a tool I began to sharpen quite early and,to this day, utilize frequently. In the backseat of the car on the long drive to visit myfather’s family, I overheard Alison, seated up front, grumbling to him about how I wasabsorbing my mother’s quirks and eccentricities (particularly those associated with whiteprivilege). I think she thought I was out in the world “passing” with our white mother (asthough a child could make that distinction).
And then, as if I weren’t there, she went on a tirade. I continued to stare silently out ofthe window at the dilapidated neighborhoods we had been driving through to get toJamaica, Queens, from Long Island. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer. Achieving an (Ithink) impressive impersonation of my mother, especially for a six-year-old, I groanedsarcastically in her characteristically slow, low, opera diva tone: “I see we’re taking thescenic route!” At which Alison snapped her head toward my father with an exasperated“See?” expression on her face. He stiffened, gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, andkept his eyes forward. For effect, I didn’t break my bored stare out the window. No onewas entertained by my little impersonation. I tried.
Sweet Nana Ruby was my father’s father’s second wife, with whom he had a wholelotta kids, half aunties and uncles to me, who subsequently produced a gang of cousins,some of whom were around my age. My father and his father, Bob Carey, had acomplicated relationship. Bob’s mother was from Venezuela, and it is believed his fatherwas Black—mixed with some undocumented lightening factor, as he too was on the fairerside of what was then called the “Negro spectrum.”
Until I was about six years old, my father hadn’t spoken to his father in years. He wasan only child and had a different mother than my grandfather’s other children, and aswarm and as welcoming as Nana Ruby and her house were—and from what I could see,she showered my father with love—still, she was not his mother, and perhaps he felt like abit of an outsider with them. I think he made the effort to mend things with his father forthe sake of his own children as well as himself. He must have realized how isolated I was,living with just my mother in an all-white community that was becoming increasinglyhostile to me. I needed to know some family.
And I am forever grateful for it, because that house was a warm place bustling withfamily life. I loved it there. The whole neighborhood loved my grandpa. He was a regular,fun-loving guy with a hearty laugh, who wore crew socks with his slide sandals. He had alittle urban vineyard in his backyard in Queens. He grew sour grapes from which he madesweet homemade wine that he stored in the basement. Nana Ruby and my aunties alwayshad something cooking in the tiny kitchen—chicken, greens—but the standout staple dishwas rice and beans. I could eat whole plates of it. There was the clamoring of comfortingnoises: pots clanging, soul music in the background, the hum of the TV, conversations,giggles, doors opening and closing, feet running up and down the stairs. It was alighthearted space. There were people just hanging out together, connected to one another.
Being there was the closest feeling I had to having a big family, a normal family, a realfamily.
My favorite cousins would come from the Bronx and boy, did we play! We were acreative and mischievous bunch. Sometimes we would hang out the second-story windowand drop water-balloon bombs on folks passing underneath. Then we’d duck down out ofsight and shake in muffled hysterics. And of course, I loved anything that involvedperformance. My favorite was reenacting “Mrs. Wiggins” sketches from The CarolBurnett Show. Unsurprisingly, I insisted on playing the lead role. I had her signature walkdown pat. I stuffed my little booty with a pillow, sticking it way out, acting like I had on atight pencil skirt. I pranced about on my tippy-toes (maybe this is why I still walk on mytoes), taking tiny steps. I’d smack imaginary gum and pretend to file my nails, and speakin the ditsy, nasally voice I had down to perfection. I specialized in character voices veryearly.
“Oh, Mrs. Uh-Whiggins!” one of my cousins would say in a silly, skewed Swedishaccent. I’d snap into character and we’d launch into a full-on improvisation. What I lovedmost was all the rambunctious laughing with my cousins. I loved the sound of my laughteras a small part in the chorus of other kids who were kinda like me.
Inside the house with my cousins I may have felt a part of something, but outside withkids in the neighborhood was a different story. It’s always a different story with me. Eventhough my cousins didn’t live on this mostly Black and Hispanic block in Queens, theywere known because our grandpa was “that guy” in the neighborhood. When we wereoutside playing, they’d introduce me to the other kids as their cousin, and some kid wouldinvariably say, “She’s not your cousin. She’s white.”
“Yes, she is our cousin!” they would snap right back. Who my mother was, who myfather was, to whom I belonged, was always in question. But hanging out with my cousinswasn’t as heavy. I was part of a group. I was part of them, and they defended me. Yes, sheis. It was that simple. And it was so important. My Black cousins were the only cousins Iknew when I was a little girl. Because my mother’s side of the family, the white side, haddisowned her, I had no way of having a real relationship with any of them as a child.
My cousins were well put together because their mothers were very well put together.
One auntie in particular was younger, juicy, and just gorgeous. She looked ready to twirldown the Soul Train line on TV. Her makeup was consistently impeccable, lips glossed uplike glass. She wore funky-chic ensembles, and her hair was always in some superb slick,snatched-back style, so she could feature face. She was giving you trendy, sexy, andcoordinated at all times, almost as fab as Thelma on Good Times (but a little bit thicker).
This foxy auntie sold makeup at the department store counter—now that was fabulous tome. Once, she gave my favorite girl cousin and me a faux facial evaluation. As she wasexamining our little faces, she told Cee Cee, “Your lips are good.” Then she turned to mewith a puzzled look and paused. I was wondering, and worrying, What’s wrong with myface? Me?
“Mariah, your lips aren’t full enough,” she said with a sigh.
I didn’t know what they weren’t full enough for, but I fully accepted her analysis asfact. A few years later, I was about twelve years old and hanging out with a whitegirlfriend at a department store on Long Island, where they were offering free makeupdemos at one of the counters. My friend, by local standards, was a beauty: big blue eyes, athin nose, and very thin lips. I, no doubt, had on some haphazard ensemble, and whoknows what the hair was doing that day. Clearly looking our age, we sat down to have ourfaces done. Maybe the saleslady thought we had money to buy some makeup, or she wasbored, or she simply took pity on us. Whatever the case, she began the process.
As my auntie had done, she studied the contours and angles of both of our faces andreported to me, “Your lips are too full on top.” Wait, I thought. I knew I had a thin upperlip—but not as thin as my white friend, whose lip size was the “standard” at the time. Iwanted to say, “Actually, I really want my lips to be bigger”—which I did, ever since theday of my auntie’s evaluation—but I held my tongue. Thus I was given two polar oppositeprofessional opinions about my lips as a girl; they were too full for a white beautystandard and not full enough for a Black one. Who was I to believe? It was like mycomplexes had complexes. And there was no one to tell me, “Mariah, you are good.”
Period.
And now here we are in a world where white and Black women are filling up theirbutts and lips like water balloons. I guess I should’ve had my lips injected ages ago, butit’s too late. The whole world knows what my real lips look like, so why bother? Whywould I do that now, when I can just accentuate them with lip liner, dahling?
But I digress. That day at Grandpa and Nana Ruby’s house when I was seven, the timehad come for my cousins’ main event. My aunties had decided it was time to put metogether. Some of them were gathered upstairs in Nana Ruby’s bedroom, and theysummoned me up. My cousins and I went upstairs toward the master bedroom, which wasjust right of the bathroom. I spent many moments exploring that little bathroom, fascinatedwith all the greasings and slatherings it contained. There were endless creams and lotionsfor the skin, and dressings and pomades for the hair. Imagine: skin lotion and hair grease!
In this bathroom every cabinet and free space was filled with mysterious potions andproducts.
I rarely went into the master bedroom, but it, too, was small, cramped, and comforting.
It was humid and smelled like a hot candy store. A large bed, covered with a shiny, quiltedwhite-and-maroon paisley bedspread, with ruffles at the hem, took up most of the room.
There was a full-length mirror attached to the back of the door and a low dresser draweron which my aunties had everything laid out. There was a hot plate cranking. Upon itssizzling surface was some foreign object that resembled a garden tool, with a dark woodenhandle like a hammer, with teeth. Though the metal part was blackened, traces of itsoriginal gold color could be seen underneath. This mysterious hammer- fork thing satmenacingly on the plate’s surface, getting hotter and hotter. As I crossed the threshold intothe bedroom, I felt as though I had entered an alternate universe, a secret chamber—one ofBlack-girl beauty.
My aunts motioned for me to sit on the side of the bed. I didn’t know what kind ofritual was ahead, but I sure was excited. As I settled in on the edge of the bed, feetdangling off the side, I could feel many hands exploring the wild garden of knots, curls,and straight bits that made up my head of hair. My heart was racing. I felt like a long-lostprincess sitting in her chambers, hoping this could be it—the moment of coronation, whenmy hair would finally get done and I would be transformed, presented to the world withnewfound power and grace.
Finally, I thought, maybe my hair would fit in. Maybe it would fall into sleek andshiny ringlets, and I would look like my cute Black girl cousins and friends who gatheredin Queens. Or maybe it would lie down flat and bone straight like the hair of the littlewhite girls I grew up among on Long Island. Either way, I was just thrilled that my hairwould at last be cared for by someone who knew what to do.
The action started at the back of my head, with some pulling and separating, and alittle sharpness from knots coming undone. The next thing I felt was something I’ll neverforget. First, there was a heavy tugging and burning sensation near my neck, followedimmediately by an alarming searing and sizzling sound and an unfamiliar and vicioussmell, like a dirty stuffed animal set on fire. Along with significant smoke, a faint panicbegan to waft through the room. I couldn’t make out much of what was being said, but Icertainly heard, “Oh shit!” and “Stop, stop!” several times. And then it did stop. Abruptly.
The excitement, the ritual, and the fixing all stopped. I stayed motionless and quiet, asmall patch of hair at the nape of my neck still smoldering.
My aunties were apologetic. “Sorry, baby, the hot comb is too strong for your hair,”
my aunties explained. Sorry, baby, and that was the end of it. There would be no rites ofpassage into Black- girl hair society that day. I didn’t emerge transformed into apresentable little girl for Harlem, Queens, or Long Island. I was still a wayward littlemisfit who wore a disobedient crown on her head—only now with a patch of rough,burned, uneven (and noticeably shorter) hair in the back. I was far from done.
On rare occasions, my mother, brother, and I would take a drive to Jones Beach as afamily. (Proximity to the beach was one of the few perks of being stranded on LongIsland.) One summer morning, the three of us kids, along with one of my brother’sbuddies, piled into my mother’s clunker on wheels and hit the road to the beach. It was aclear, bright day; you could see the ocean in the sky. It was a perfect day for the beach.
My mother, sporting a light- blue cotton summer caftan with thin green stripes, wasdriving. All the windows were rolled down, giving the car a faux convertible feeling; mymother’s bell sleeves flapped slightly in the breeze. She had on her signature bigsunglasses, and her hair was customarily carefree. My brother sat next to her, shirtless, hisbig, fluffy Afro bouncing gently.
I sat in the backseat next to my brother’s friend, quietly looking out the open window,letting the warm, salty air wash over my face. I was trying to be nonchalant, not to let on Ihad an enormous crush on this teen-star-looking boy. His silky hair was strawberry blond,with perfect natural highlights, laid out in delicate, feathered layers and parted down themiddle. Every dreamy strand rested in its perfect place. The car was quiet as we allenjoyed a rare moment of contentment.
Gradually, though, I became aware that my hair had started to move. But it was notfrom the wind. Instead, it was from what felt like fingers. There were fingers searchingthrough the wild, tangled bush that was my hair. I didn’t dare move or speak. But the boy,he was gently plucking at my hair! Surgically, he worked on the smaller, tighter, mattedbits at the ends with the big black plastic comb he kept permanently ensconced in his backpocket. He was using the very same comb that he ran through his field of perfect goldenstrands on my disheveled head! He pulled the comb from scalp to end in small sections. Aseach portion was released from the weight of its former twisted entrapment, it would floata little bit.
Over the course of the ride, without a single word exchanged between us, he removedall the knots and confusion from my hair. By the time we arrived at the beach, my hairwas no longer a burden. It was liberated. I dashed straight to the water—oh, how I love theocean, a gift from my mother—and as I ran I could feel my hair, buoyant and blowing inthe wind for the first time. Hallelujah! My hair was actually blowing like in thecommercials!
I dived into the first wave I could and rode it back to shore. When I stood up andtouched my hair, it was not the haphazard mix of textures I was accustomed to. Instead Itouched orderly, coily, elongated curls! For the first time, my hair felt pretty. I felt pretty. Ifelt soft and light, as if the shame I’d been carrying had been plucked out of me andwashed away.
As I stood in the waist-deep water, reveling in the newfound confidence brought bymy liberated curls, a sudden wall of ocean appeared, crashing down, pounding against myback. My feet were swept up off the sandy floor and over my head. My tiny body wastossed like a rag doll in the strong waves that had suddenly kicked up. I had no sense ofequilibrium or orientation, but I knew I was being pulled down, tumbling in surging, darkwater mixed with frothy white foam and grit that was beating against my body like boxinggloves made of sandpaper. Even if I could tell which way was up and how to get there, Iknew I was not strong enough to overcome the powerful currents, so I relaxed my bodyand went with it. I surrendered.
By what I believe to be God’s grace, the ocean decided to give me back to the earth. Ilay motionless on the grainy, wet sand, winded and salty. When I realized I was alive, Istood up to look for my mother. I spied her and my brother lying on an olive blanket in thedistance, shades on, nonchalantly sunbathing. Oblivious. I released a mighty wail, whichdevolved into hysterical crying, finally catching my mother’s attention. Yet another closeencounter with death.
To calm my shattered seven-year-old nerves, someone took me up to the boardwalk, tothe hot dog stand. I was a wreck—but my hair wasn’t. It was still in wavy ringlets. I hadachieved perfect beach hair. That day I almost died, but my hair was done.
A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND
A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND
From the moment I saw her, I felt both awe and identification. I idolized her. She was likea living doll, but neither baby nor Barbie; though she was a real, elegant, grown- upwoman, she appeared pure and flawless, as if made of delicate lacquered porcelain. I’dnever seen anyone like her—such a radiant, glamorous, vulnerable, yet powerful being.
She was supernatural. I stood there staring, fascinated and frozen before the bright screenwhere she lived.
One evening I had been walking aimlessly down the hall in one of the many houses welived in. As I passed my mother’s dark little bedroom, I casually wandered in. I can’tremember whether I saw or heard her first, but I know something carried me into thatroom. The bedroom was lit only by the washed-out colors of the old TV facing the bed,where my mother was lying in silhouette, watching a special about the life and death ofMarilyn Monroe.
I softly pushed open the bedroom door, walking in on the iconic scene fromGentlemen Prefer Blondes in which Marilyn sings “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”
She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen.
Her energy was like a fairy’s, but she looked like a goddess, swathed in a luxuriouselectric-pink silk gown and matching opera gloves, with diamonds of every size drippingfrom her ears and wrapped around her neck and wrists. The only bits of skin exposed wereher face, her shoulders, and her arms down to the elbow, yet I remember her flesh seemingso rich and creamy, glistening like homemade ice cream. Her hair was just a few shadeslighter, dazzling like finely spun gold. She was voluptuously shaped, with round, curvyhips, a small, cinched waist, proud, purposeful breasts, and arms that stretched wide andhugged close. She was poised, like a dancer, yet her feet didn’t seem to move. Insteadscores of people danced around her: fawning and fanning, kneeling and bowing down toher, conveying her above their heads like Cleopatra. Maybe she was a queen, I thought.
The shining queen of movie stars.
I’d never heard the name Marilyn Monroe before that moment. But I was quicklyhooked. Not your typical third-grade fare, perhaps, but my childhood was anything buttypical. My mother very lovingly supported my fascination with Marilyn. While most girlsmy age adorned their walls with pictures of Holly Hobbie—the frontier rag doll withfreckles and blond yarn braids in a strawberry-print bonnet—I had a poster of MarilynMonroe dressed as a sensuous showgirl, complete with a black beaded bustier, fishnets,and black patent-leather pumps. I gazed up at Marilyn before I went to sleep and first thingwhen I woke up.
Later my mother bought me Marilyn: A Biography, by Norman Mailer. Though I wasway too young for the material, like Marilyn herself I read voraciously. I pored over thelarge, glossy photos of her, studying all her different moods and looks. She was a shape-shifter — in some photos she was impossibly beautiful and glamorous, in others sheseemed shattered and about to disappear. Her hair shifted shapes, too: pin curls, pigtails,sweeping updos, bobs with deep-diving waves. I even detected unruly curls and familiarfuzz underneath the perfect, almost white- blond wave of her hair. There was alsosomething in her physicality, something about her body type, that didn’t read as typicallyCaucasian to me. Not only was she curvy, she had a very particular sensuality, borderingon soulful.
I read a lot about Marilyn, conspiracy theories about her death and about herupbringing. The more I read, the more I connected with her and understood why I wasdrawn to her. She had a very difficult childhood, moving from one foster home to another.
That was close to my story: being uprooted and unprotected, feeling like an outsider. Iintimately understood her struggles with poverty and family. Ultimately, what I lovedabout Marilyn was her ability to come from nothing—to belong to no one—and evolveinto a huge icon. I latched onto that. I believed in that.
I’ve heard Marilyn might’ve even been my mother’s inspiration for my name. The firstfour letters are the same: M-A-R-I. However, my father claimed that my name comesfrom the Black Maria/Mariah, the infamous police van used to haul people off to prison inthe UK. The story also goes that I was named after a hit 1950s show tune, “They Call theWind Maria,” from Paint Your Wagon, a Broadway show about the California Gold Rush.
(Both references use the soft pronunciation, with the second syllable having a rye sound.)Perhaps it’s a combination of all three: a 1950s starlet, a show tune, and a paddy wagon.
Whatever the origin, when I was younger I didn’t like my name. No one else had it,and when you’re a kid that’s not cool. I always wished I had a regular name like Jenniferor Heather. There were no cute stickers, key chains, or mini license plates with my nameon them. But the worst part was hardly anyone could pronounce it. I always dreadedseeing a substitute teacher, knowing roll call would be a Maria/Maya calamity. I wouldn’tmeet another Mariah until I was about eighteen years old; she was a cool Black girl andwe commiserated good-humoredly on the mispronunciations of our childhood. I had noway to imagine that only a few years after that, many people would be naming theirchildren Mariah, after me.
Of all the supposed inspirations for my name, the Marilyn Monroe connectionresonates the most with me — self- created and controlled, confident and vulnerable,womanly and childlike, glamorous and humble, adored and alone. Marilyn is a source ofinspiration for me, and Lawd have I needed that.
When I was in the eighth grade, there was a pack of pretty, mostly Irish girls whom Idesperately wanted to befriend. At that time, in that town, most of these girls wereconsidered the pinnacle of physical perfection: milky skin, silky hair, and blue eyes. Theyused to have a chant: “Blue eyes rule!” These were not nice girls.
And I felt wholly inferior around them. Compared to them (and in the eighth grade,comparison is the only method of measurement) my skin was muddy, my hair waslawless. They called me Fozzie Bear (from the Muppets) because of my unruly hair, andtry as I might, I could never flatten it all out to look like theirs, and my eyes weredistinctly and undeniably unblue. (I liked my dark eyes, but I never stood up for myselfduring their weird chant.) Clearly I stood out from their group, but they let me hang withthem. Maybe it was because I was the class clown, always quick to crack a joke or snap onsomebody and make the whole group laugh. Even if I was only there as entertainment, Iwas happy to put on a show.
The girl in that clique who was my closest friend (and I use that word liberally) wasalso the prettiest. I guess now they’d call her a “frenemy.” I would tell her I was interestedin a boy at school, and, knowing full well I never acted on any of my crushes, she and herbig blue eyes would go after him and almost always score. I believe she did this just topush me down, to let me know she had all the power. But what she didn’t know was that Ididn’t ever pursue boys because I wanted to avoid the inevitable humiliation once theylearned that half of me was Black and all of me was poor. She also didn’t know that Ididn’t want to get wrapped up in some stupid boy and derail my dreams or, worse, getpregnant like my sister. She didn’t know me at all. None of them did.
Some of the girls’ parents did know my mother, however. They had a modicum ofrespect for her because she was also Irish and a professional opera singer—and opera wasclassy. Adult drama works differently than that among teens, but they often intersect.
Word got out that the Irish father of the prettiest girl was physically abusing her mother.
My mother, who can get really righteous when she wants to, took it upon herself to writehim a letter. In that letter I’m pretty sure she disclosed that she had been married to aBlack man and that he was the father of her children (of course, I wouldn’t learn of theletter until much later).
As I said, these were not nice girls, but eventually I was invited to go with some ofthem, including the prettiest one, to Southampton for a sleepover. One of them had a richaunt, Barbara, with a fancy house near the beach. Fancy- schmancy Southampton? Asleepover with the popular girls? Of course I wanted to go. We piled into one of their bigcars and took the two-hour-long drive along the lovely Atlantic edge of Long Island to thesmall village where the wealthy “summer.” (Summer was a season for me, not a verb.)The house was big, airy, and orderly. It even had an all- white room no one wasallowed to enter. I was awestruck when we arrived, so busy comparing and craving that Ihadn’t noticed that the girls had gathered into a cluster by a door.
They called over to me: “Come on, Mariah. Let’s go back here.”
Without question, I followed. They led me to what I thought would be a playroom or aden (I knew wealthy people had dens). It was a smaller room in the rear of the house, aguest room perhaps. One of them shut the door with a click, and suddenly the mood grewheavy, fast. I thought maybe they’d snuck in some alcohol or something. But there was noexcitement, no naughty, girly energy. Instead, all the girls were glaring at me. Suddenly,into the heavy silence, the sister of the prettiest girl spit out her ugly secret for all to hear:
“You’re a nigger!”
My head began to spin when I realized she was referring to me. Pointing at me. It wasmy secret, my shame. I was frozen.
The others quickly joined in. “You’re a nigger!” they all shrieked. All together, inunison, they chanted, “You’re a nigger!” over and over. I thought it would never end.
The venom and hate with which these girls spewed this new iteration of their usualchant was so strong, it quite literally lifted me out of my body. I had no idea how to handlewhat was going on. It was all of them against me. They had planned it. They fooled meinto thinking they actually liked me. They lured me hours away from home. They isolatedme. They trapped me. Then they betrayed me. I exploded into hysterical tears. I wasdisoriented and terrified, and I thought that maybe, if I held on and just kept crying, surelya grown-up would come and stop the assault. But no one came.
Eventually, I heard another voice whimpering among the mob.
“Why are you doing this?” the small, brave voice asked. It was the older blond one.
The ugly sister of the prettiest shot back, “Because she is a nigger.”
I don’t remember anything else about that day. I don’t remember the ride home. Idon’t remember telling my mother when I got back. How do you tell your all- whitemother that your all-white “friends” just dragged you into their big all-white house in all-white Southampton, past an untouchable all-white room, just to corner you and call youthe dirtiest thing in their all-white world? Nigger.
I was also scared my mother might make a massive public scene and make navigatinglife at school even more difficult for me. I had no language or coping skills for any of it. Itwas certainly not the first time I had been degraded by my schoolmates. I’d been singledout on the school bus and spit on. I’d gotten into physical fights. Often, I would clap back;my tongue was sharp, and I could be a real wiseass. Sometimes I even started fights. Butfor this I had no defense. I was not only outnumbered and isolated, I was bitterly betrayed.
This was not your garden-variety schoolyard mean-girl scuffle. It was a devious andviolent premeditated assault by girls I called my friends. I never spoke of it. I stuffed itinside. I had to find a way to survive those girls, that town, my family, and my pain.
She smiles through a thousand tears
And harbors adolescent fears
She dreams of all
That she can never be
She wades in insecurity
And hides herself inside of me
Don’t say she takes it all for granted
I’m well aware of all I have
Don’t think that I am disenchanted
Please understand
It seems as though I’ve always been
Somebody outside looking in
Well here I am for all of them to bleed
But they can’t take my heart from me
And they can’t bring me to my knees
They’ll never know the real me
—“Looking In”
“Mariah only has three shirts and she puts them in rotation!”
The cruel words crashed into the buzzing bustle of the in-between-class traffic of myseventh-grade hallway like a stink bomb. All the pattering of feet, clanging of lockers,chirping of small talk, and little giggles morphed into one giant laughing monster made ofkids, sitting in the middle of the hallway pointing at me. My stomach collapsed and myface burst into flames. I thought I might vomit right there on the tile floor.
Middle school is a contact sport, and I was pretty skillful with my own sharp tongue.
A lot of kids have to suffer having mean or “funny” names given to them by their peersbecause of how they look or some embarrassing event, but being teased for being poor feltlike a different kind of cruel.
I was severely injured, but I did not let it show. I didn’t get sick in front of everybody.
I didn’t give anyone the satisfaction of seeing me weakened. I showed no emotion andwaited patiently for the monster to melt away, as the traffic had to resume and kids had toget to their classes. I understood after that there would be no recovering and no trying tobelong. I would survive on the outside with three shirts and no friends in hopes that Iwould inevitably move again.
In our middle-class community, I was extremely self-conscious of living with a shabbywardrobe in a small dilapidated house; however, by the time I entered high school, I haddeveloped some new survival skills. At that age I didn’t have any control over where Ilived, but I could do something about what I wore. One of the few advantages of movingso many times was that I got a fresh crop of kids to try to fit in with. One go-round Imanaged to scrounge together a few girlfriends and convince them we should have afashion swapping system where we’d exchange our trendiest pieces with one another andcoordinate them differently. This gave the illusion that I had a more expansive and up-to-date wardrobe than I could ever afford.
The coolest thing I owned was an oversized red wool and black leather varsity jacketwith AVIREX in big letters emblazoned across the back. It was a big deal for me to have aname-brand item, so I made sure I had a signature piece that was adaptable to a variety oflooks. I did my best to look the part of a typical cute suburban teen, to fit in with all theother Long Island girls.
By the time I was in the tenth grade I was “going out” with the biggest and scariest dudein town. He was six foot five and had biceps that were thicker than both of my thighs. Hewas in his early twenties, he had a car, and nobody messed with him. And that’s the mainreason why I was with him. He was a protector, a force field. The previous boy I had goneout with was volatile; we even got into a physical altercation in front of a group of girlswho stood around and watched. After we broke up he proceeded to stalk and harass me—areal charmer. Mr. Six Foot Five caught him verbally attacking me and proceeded to lifthim up off the ground and toss him over five parked cars—pow! He actually was prettycool beyond his brute strength. But high school can be treacherous, especially for anoutsider like me, so having the toughest guy in town as my guy was good for that moment.
There was a crew of girls who were into a sixties tie-dyed Grateful Dead vibe that Inever understood. It was the late eighties, and the street trends were so fresh, I reallydidn’t get what they were doing. Why were they harkening back to such a random retrolook? Also, they were aggressive and hard, not hippies, Dead Heads, or peace lovers at all.
Being the smart aleck I was, I named them the “Peace People.” Word got out that I wasmaking fun of them, and they were pissed. Rumblings started circulating that I was goingto get my ass kicked. But Mr. Six Foot Five was famous; everyone was afraid of him, sogetting at me wasn’t that simple.
One morning after completing my routine of going to the Bagel Station to get a bagelwith bacon and cheese and coffee, I was walking on the path to “the patio” to finish mycoffee and smoke a Newport before homeroom. The patio was a large brick square outsidethe cafeteria of the school where kids would hang out, smoke, and posture. Severalhundred yards before I reached it, suddenly a semicircle of about a dozen white girlsclosed in around me, and they were all hyped up to fight.
They were screaming at the same time, and the hardest girl of them all broke out fromthe pack and advanced toward me. I was freaked out but tried not to show how scared Iwas. The bagel in my stomach had turned into rocket fuel and was going off in my belly,and my head was spinning trying to devise something to say to defuse or derail thesituation, because surely I was not going to fight. I may have had a tough exterior and awiseass mouth, but I never wanted to actually fight anyone. I used my wits to survive (plusI was the fastest runner in the school, except for one boy). The crowd had gotten closeenough that the heat of their mob mentality was singeing the hairs on my arms. I had tosay something, so I opened my mouth and just started yelling—I have no idea what. WhatI will never forget is seeing their bravado instantly wither into meekness while they slowlyedged backward and quickly dispersed. For a quick instant I thought I had really told themoff, but then I felt a powerful energy behind me. I turned around, and looking like a fly-girl teen version of a Black Panther protest, there was a big beautiful wall of every style,size, and shade of every Black girl I knew in school. “Oh, we got your back,” one of themsaid, and that was it.
There was no debate over “how Black” I was, or whether I “looked white”—thosebadass girls just let me know that when it got down to it, they were going to hold medown.
Years later, after the release of “Vision of Love,” I was all over the radio and on TV. Mymother was still living on Long Island, and I asked her if we could drive by the housewhere the prettiest girl and her sisters lived. I stopped the car, got out, and just looked atthe modest structure, a symbol of what I had survived. My mother, wrapped in a fur coatI’d given her, got out too. The father of the family (the one who beat the mother) came tothe door and, in his dense, twangy Long Island accent, shouted, “Aw, look, Pat’s goneHollywood!” The rest of the family filed out of the house. The prettiest one was stunned.
She couldn’t believe it had happened.
The mutt-mulatto bitch who lived in the shabby shack down the street had become astar.
The brother called out, “You’re a loser!”
That family, that house, that town, that time, that day—suddenly it all looked likenothing to me. It was nothing in nowhere, and I had made it out.
As I turned to get back in the car, I heard the blond girl crying after me, “Mariah, I’mso happy for you; I’m so happy for you!” And she became the prettiest sister of them all.
Yes I’ve been bruised
Grew up confused
Been destitute
I’ve seen life from many sides
Been stigmatized
Been black and white
Felt inferior inside
Until my saving grace shined on me
Until my saving grace set me free
Giving me peace
—“My Saving Grace”
PART II SING. SING.-A PRELUDE TO SING SING
PART II
SING. SING.
A PRELUDE TO SING SING
Nearing the edge
Oblivious I almost
Fell right over
A part of me
Will never be quite able
To feel stable
—“Close My Eyes”
Even now it’s hard to explain, to put into words how I existed in my relationship withTommy Mottola. It’s not that there are no words, it’s just that they still get stuck movingup from my gut, or they disappear into the thickness of my anxiety. Tommy’s energy wasintense, more than overbearing; for me, it was an entire atmosphere. Even before he wouldenter the room I could sense the air change and my breath grow short. He rolled over melike a fog. His presence felt dense and oppressive. He was like humidity—inescapable.
Never when I was with him did I feel I could breathe easy and fully as myself. Hispower was pervasive, and with it came an unspeakable unease. In the beginning of ourtime together I was walking on eggshells. Then it became a bed of nails, and then aminefield. I never knew when or what would make him blow, and the anxiety wasrelentless. In the eight years we were together I can’t recall ten minutes with him when Ifelt I could be comfortable—when I could simply be at all. I felt his grip was steadilychoking me off from my essence. I was disappearing in installments.
It felt like he was cutting off my circulation, keeping me from friends and what little“family” I had. I couldn’t talk to anyone that wasn’t under Tommy’s control. I couldn’t goout or do anything with anybody. I couldn’t move freely in my own house.
Many nights I would lie on my side of our massive bed, under which I would keep mypurse filled with essentials just in case I had to make a quick escape—my “to go” bag. Ihad to wait for him to fall asleep. Keeping my eyes locked on him, I would gradually inchmy way to the edge of the bed and surgically roll my hips and swing my legs to the floor.
Never breaking my gaze, I’d tiptoe backward toward the door, which seemed a full cityblock away. Ever so carefully, I’d back out of the door. It was such a victory when I madeit out of the room! I’d softly creep down the grand dark-wood staircase like a burglarstealing a little peace of mind, then make my way to somewhere in the manor. Often I justwanted to go to the kitchen for a snack, or to sit at the table and write down some lyrics.
But every time, right as I would start to settle into the calm of the quiet dark and begin tofind my breath—Beep! Beep! The intercom would go off.
I’d jump up, and the words “Whatcha doin’?” would crackle through the speaker, andI’d gasp and once again lose my own air. Every move I made, everywhere I went, I wasmonitored—minute by minute, day after day, year after year.
It was as if I was being crushed right out of myself. Everything he felt he didn’t createor control was being strangled away. I created the fun and free girl in my videos so that Icould watch a version of myself be alive, live vicariously through her — the girl Ipretended to be, the girl I wished was me. I would view my videos as evidence that Iexisted.
I was living my dream but couldn’t leave my house. Lonely and trapped, I was heldcaptive in that relationship. Captivity and control come in many forms, but the goal isalways the same—to break down the captive’s will, to kill any notion of self-worth anderase the person’s memory of their own soul. I’m still not sure of the toll it has taken onme, how much of me was permanently destroyed or arrested—perhaps, among otherthings, my ability to completely trust people or to fully rest. But thankfully I smuggledmyself out bit by bit, through the lyrics of my songs.
I left the worst unsaid
Let it all dissipate
And I tried to forget
As I closed my eyes
I sang some of what I couldn’t say. Though I do try, I cannot forget. Sometimes, withoutwarning, I am haunted by a nightmare or flashes of suffocating. Sometimes I still feel theheaviness. Sometimes I have no air.
ALONE IN LOVE
ALONE IN LOVE
When I was in seventh grade, I had my first professional recording session. I didbackground vocals on a few original songs, including a cover of the classic R & B ballad“Feel the Fire,” originally written and recorded by Peabo Bryson. The session took placein a dinky little home studio, but it was a real job, and I got paid real money. It was alsowhen I began to discover how to create nuances and textures in vocal arrangements andhow to use my voice to build layers, like a painter. This was when my romance with thestudio began. This was a major moment that began my journey, my drive to succeed.
One session gig led to the next. I was a little big fish in a puddle. The Long Islandmusic scene was pretty small, and word of mouth was the method of marketing yourself.
By the time I was fourteen or fifteen, I was writing songs and recording backgroundvocals and jingles for local businesses. I was doing background vocals regularly for theseyoung Wayne’s World type of guys. They were into wild, loud guitar riffs and stuff, whileI was listening to (rather, I was obsessed with) contemporary urban radio, which wasmostly R & B, hip-hop, and dance music. I lived for the radio. Though our tastes wereclearly very different, I liked the work nonetheless. I was making demos for songs andcommercials, and learning how to adapt my voice to the task, whatever it was. The studiowas my natural habitat. Like being in the ocean, when I was there, I felt weightless, and allmy outside concerns fell away. I focused only on the music, and even if I didn’t like theirsongs, I respected the work it took to make them. One day, while we were working on oneof their mishmashes of a song, I told them I was a songwriter too. I figured if we couldwork on their corny stuff, why couldn’t we work on my stuff?
Technically, I had been writing since before I was a teenager. I wrote poems andsketches of songs in my diary. Every once in a while I would be alone in the house, or mymother would be asleep, and I would have a moment of lightness in the small, dim livingroom, sitting on the wooden piano stool at my mother’s surprisingly well-kept brownupright Yamaha piano. I would prop my diary on the music shelf, feet dangling. I’d hum abit of a melody, search for the keys that were the closest to my voice. Then, very quietly—nearly whispering—I’d sing a few words with the melody.
I trusted the music I was hearing in my head. I believed it was akin to the popularsongs I heard on the radio. My songs didn’t mimic the style or sound of what I heard;rather, I would always search for the right sound, the one that felt like me. And I believedmy sound would fit in with, or even break through, what was on the radio. I reallybelieved that. I knew what I was hearing was advanced for my age, but luckily I wasworking with two guys who were very collaborative and open to working with such ayoung and female artist. So it was there in their mother’s house, in a sad little slapped-together studio, that I wrote and produced one of my favorite demos, “To Begin” (I stilllove it, but sadly it’s among one of the many lost tapes of little Mariah). I was confident Ihad a solid song.
They were like, “Why are we listening to this little kid?” Honestly, I just don’t thinkthey understood the culture, genres, and tones I was working with. They really were weirdlittle garage-band hippieish-type guys. Indeed, I was a little kid, but I also knew where thepulse of the culture was—and that they were not anywhere near it. The discipline ofworking with them was good for me. But by the time I was fifteen, I had outgrown them.
One of my first regular gigs was with these two sketchy guys who made demos. Theyliked my sound because I had that young-girl quality that was popular at the time, largelybecause of Madonna’s success. But I was actually a young girl, and my vocals could getinto that high pitch range naturally. I could emulate the popular Madonna studiotechnique, but with my voice alone.
I auditioned by singing one of the songs they wrote, and they hired me on the spot. Sothe sketchy guys began paying me to sing demos. This was the official start of myprofessional career—and of a never-ending succession of sketchy characters that camewith it. I had entered the treacherous territory of the “music industry.” Though my journeywas just beginning, I would soon be initiated into the complicated dynamics that femaleartists have to endure. As I now know, most don’t make it through.
There were weird vibes from the start because I couldn’t really tell if these guys werepervy or not, but I believed nothing crazy would happen because they both had wives whowere around all the time. Na?vely, I thought these women might take on big-sister typeroles with me. They were all full-blown adults, and I was still just about a child, butunfortunately, my age and talent caused friction. Even though I was a scrawny littleteenager (I mean, my body was pretty much a straight line at that age), one of the wiveswas threatened by me. She was always close by, prancing around in short shorts, givingme evil energy. I didn’t understand what was going on. I was too young to get it, and also,I was there to work. Maybe my own short shorts were inappropriate around these oldermen. I didn’t know. I was just a kid getting her first whiff of independence, and besides, afew pairs of cheap shorts and tops were all I owned. I was in a battle of the short shorts,and I didn’t even know it.
I continued recording demos of songs for the guys, making a little money. But again,just as with the garage-band dudes, we were putting down their songs, though I believedmy songs were stronger. And again, I asked if they were open to me writing some songs.
Initially, they refused. It was totally frustrating: here I was singing weird, corny songsagain. Didn’t these people even listen to the radio? I wondered. Didn’t they know whatwas popular? I studied the music on the radio closely, constantly analyzing what was inheavy rotation. I knew the songs they were writing weren’t good. Despite not liking thematerial, I sang it because it was my job, and I really needed the money. But now that I’dhad a taste of making demos, I knew I needed to get my own songs down, and quickly.
Later I was able to make a deal with one of the guys who owned a studio: I would singdemos for him if he would let me work on my own. I brought in one of the songs I hadbegun at my mother’s piano at the shack, called “Alone in Love.” I sat in a room aloneand began to make my very first demos. My own.
Swept me away
But now I’m lost in the dark
Set me on fire
But now I’m left with a spark
Alone, you got beyond the haze and
I’m lost inside the maze
I guess I’m all alone in love
—“Alone in Love”
I figured out the setup. I experimented with the songs. I did dance tracks, straight down theline, all different sounds. I learned how to produce under pressure. I was in the studio,doing it. “Alone in Love” was one of the first tracks on my demo. A version of the songeventually made it onto my first album and remains one of my favorites.
You haunt me in my dreams
I’m calling out your name
I watch you fade away
Your love is not the same
I’ve figured out your style
To quickly drift apart
You held me for a while
Planned it from the start
All alone in love
I was in eleventh grade.
I distinctly remember one night—bleeding into morning. The pink of dawn was seepingthrough the edges of the deep-purple night sky, and I didn’t know where the hell I was,again. Somewhere on the Taconic Parkway, or maybe the Cross Bronx Expressway?
Clutching the hard-plastic steering wheel of my mother’s rickety old Cutlass Supreme, Itried to stay focused on the road and not stress over the needle of the gas gauge that stayedtwitching on E.
Every day was a struggle, with me trying to find my way home after work just to graba few hours of sleep before I had to get to school. I’d recently graduated out of the LongIsland music scene. My brother (who was also trying to make a name for himself in themusic industry, as a manager or producer—I’m not sure what) had introduced me to a newcrop of session musicians and studio engineers in the city—New York City. I begancommuting to The City to do sessions at night and then would turn right back around andhead to The Island to get to school the next morning. So began my first double life (kindof).
Very few of my peers at school knew what I was doing. They didn’t know I wasdriving alone on highways, getting lost at midnight, collapsing on my bed, then draggingmyself to school. They didn’t know why I was late every day. I didn’t talk about itbecause I knew it would sound crazy—and most people didn’t have the ability to reallybelieve as hard as I did. Besides, the kids I knew didn’t need to believe. They were gettingnew cars, Camaros and Mustangs, for their sixteenth birthdays. They had their pathsmapped out and were well financed for generations to come. Most were certain they weregoing to go to college. They had a guaranteed life already planned out for them.
I remember that once, one of the most popular jocks in the school asked me what I wasdoing after graduation. I usually didn’t tell any of the kids around about my dreams, but inthis case I did. I told him I was going to be a singer and songwriter. His response was,“Yeah, right; you’ll be working at HoJo’s in five years.” (HoJo’s was short for HowardJohnson’s, the chain of hotels and restaurants that was still widely popular then.) Thedegradation was totally intended.
As it turns out, in less than three years, in a simple black dress, with a head full ofcurls and a stomach full of, yes, butterflies, I walked through a packed stadium among thedeafening buzz of tens of thousands of voices. A loud, clear voice cut through thecacophony: “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Columbia recording artist MariahCarey for the singing of ‘America the Beautiful.’” The piano track was recorded byRichard T. I held the little mic and sang that big song with everything I had. I hit a reallyhigh note on “sea to shining sea,” and the stadium erupted.
When I finished, the announcer said, “The Palace now has a queen, and the goosebumps will continue.” It was Game 1 of the NBA finals, between Detroit and Portland. Iknew that the jock who condemned me to HoJo’s (no shade on anyone in service work,because I’ve been there), and everyone who had looked down on me, and millions ofAmericans were watching. None of the players, none of the fans knew who I was when Iwalked in, but they would remember me when I walked out. A victory.
Another very early high visibility big breakthrough moment: “Vision of Love” wasnumber one on the R & B charts before it was in the top spot on the pop charts, and so mynational television debut was on The Arsenio Hall Show. Arsenio was more than a host; hehad more than a late night show; it was a cultural event, a true Black experience—or,rather, it was a mainstream entertainment show seen through a Black lens. Everyonewatched it and talked about it everywhere. I will always be grateful and proud that it wason Arsenio’s stage that most of America got to see my face, know my name, and hear mysong for the first time.
In my teens, living in a constant state of exhaustion and exhilaration became my newnormal. But with every mile driven and each dawn met, I was more and more determined.
My ambition grew to the level of devotion. And the hard-earned blessings were beginningto come down. My brother did manage to connect me with a reputable producer and writernamed Gavin Christopher. Gavin had written big hits for Rufus (the band for which ChakaKhan sang lead) and produced songs for Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa. Weinstantly clicked and began working together to produce one of my first professionaldemos. I also met his girlfriend, Clarissa, another singer, and we got along well. I likedthem both, and I could feel the stirrings of a new life in the city appearing before me.
Making valuable connections in New York City was certainly crucial to my career, butgetting out of my mother’s house was no longer just a desire, it was a necessity. When Iwas younger I had no control over our constant moves and my mother’s consistently poorchoices in men. In my last year of high school she began dating a guy I despised. He waspetty and manipulative. On Thanksgiving we all went out to dinner, and he actuallyinsisted that I and my nephew Shawn (who was in middle school), Alison’s first son, payfor our portions of dinner. He divided up the receipt evenly among the people present anddemanded we pay our share. So after I gave him the few pitiful, crumpled-up dollars I hadin my pockets, which was just about all the money I had, Shawn and I left and went to themovies to see Back to the Future II. No thanks to him.
When my mother decided to marry him, I knew it was my cue to move out. I guess shethought she had struck it rich marrying this guy because he had a boat in the WestSeventy-Ninth Street Boat Basin. But that was where he lived before he crashed into theshack, and trust me, his boat was more tugboat than yacht.
Eventually she ended that abominable marriage. The divorce took multiple years andmany lawyer fees, which of course I paid for after the success of my first record. Then thejerk even ended up suing me for the rights to some fictitious Mariah Carey doll (if I had adollar for every deadbeat who sued me, I’d be?… well, it’s been a lot). But I was the polaropposite of rich when I moved out of my mother’s house. I was broke and seventeen yearsold. It was the late 1980s, and I was living completely on my own in New York City.
Fate is a bizarre thing. When I was about seven, we were living in that cramped apartmenton top of the deli, and I used to love to hear the sounds of the radio coming up into ourwindows. I remember swaying, posing, and singing with Odyssey: “Oh, oh, oh, you’re anative New Yorker / You should know the score by now.” I didn’t know what “knowing thescore” was, but I wanted that fabulous New York feeling even back then. It took ten moreyears, but I had finally arrived.
To me, the city had a raw grit and an impossible chicness. It was in perpetual motion:
masses of people walking fast, no one looking the same but all moving in sync. The citywas crazy messenger bikes whizzing around and countless long yellow cabs zigzaggingthrough the streets like a swarm of rough bumblebees. Something was happeningeverywhere you looked—huge billboards, flashing neon signs, wild graffiti emblazonedacross all kinds of surfaces, covering subway cars, water towers, and vans. It was like onebig, funky moving art gallery. The main avenues were grand, crowded catwalks filled witheclectic fashion models, business moguls, street hustlers, and workers of every ilk, allstrutting and with no one studyin’ each other. Everyone had somewhere to go andsomething to do. It was a mad and fabulous planet of concrete and crystals populated withmisfits, magicians, dreamers, and dealers—I landed right in the middle of it. Hello baby, Iwas made for this.
MAKE IT HAPPEN
MAKE IT HAPPEN
After moving out of my mother’s house I crashed at Morgan’s empty apartment on top ofCharlie Mom Chinese Cuisine in Greenwich Village, while he was in Italy pursuing amodeling career (and Lord knows what else). I fed his two cats, Ninja and Thompkins,and tried my best to feed myself. The first decision of every day was whether I was goingto get a bagel from H&H or buy a subway token.
I was surviving on a dollar a day, and something had to give—it was either breakfastor transportation. H&H bagels were sublime: soft, warm, and plump to perfection, aclassic NYC morning staple that would keep my stomach occupied until three o’clock(H&H stood for Helmer and Hector, the two Puerto Rican owners, who arguably made thebest kosher bagels in the world). But then again, getting around is pretty important, andthe New York City subway was the rowdiest but most direct route to anywhere in town.
The token was slightly bigger than a dime, a dirty gold disc with “NYC” stamped in themiddle and a distinctive slim Y cutout. This was the people’s coin, and it could get youanywhere, at any time. But if I could walk to where I needed to go, breakfast would win.
I found a job right away. I didn’t have a choice. So I did what every other brokedreamer does when they get to New York City. I grabbed the free newspaper of real NewYorkers, the Village Voice, and checked out the job ads. I took what I could get—andwhat I got was work at a sports bar on Seventy-Seventh and Broadway, cleverly namedSports on Broadway.
I began as a waitress, but as management soon discovered, I was still a teen andcouldn’t legally serve drinks, so I was moved to the cash register. Boy, was that a disaster.
I was a hard worker, but I had spent most of my working time in a recording studio, andworking a register isn’t like recording background vocals. I wasn’t picking it up fast. Andthis was a neighborhood joint with regulars and no-nonsense waitresses, like “Kiss MyGrits” Flo in Alice but New York tough. Those broads hated me for messing up theirmoney!
Eventually, I got moved to the coat check. Simple. But while I was hustling, I was alsogetting hustled: I wasn’t allowed to keep my tips, which is pretty much the entire allure ofbeing a coat-check girl. I got a dollar for every coat. I knew it wasn’t fair, but I also knewit was temporary. When summertime came around, the coat check was converted into amerchandise booth, and I became the “Sports on Broadway” T-shirt girl. The booth wasright at the front door, so the first thing the men would see was me with a welcomingsmile, in a white T-shirt with the word “Sports” printed across my boobs. I was gratefulfor the simplicity of it all: the uniform was the bar’s T-shirt and jeans, and since I only hadone pair of jeans, it was one less thing for me to struggle to buy.
Not more than three short years ago
I was abandoned and alone
Without a penny to my name
So very young and so afraid
No proper shoes upon my feet
Sometimes I couldn’t even eat
I often cried myself to sleep
But still I had to keep on going
—“Make It Happen”
I also only had one pair of shoes, and they were a size and a half too small. They hadbeen my mother’s—pitiful flat black leather lace-up ankle boots. They were basic andutilitarian, and I made them work. At some point, the top of the shoe separated from therubber sole, creating a flap that would slap the unforgiving city pavement as I poundedtoward my destiny. The swelling of my feet from standing all day in too-small shoessurely contributed to their demise. Snowy days were the worst; ice would slide into theflap, melt, and seep through my thin socks, and the clammy sensation of wet, cheap leathertraveled up my spine. And that year New York had a big, newsworthy snowstorm! But I’dpull myself together, as cute as I could manage, and flash a smile, pleasantly doing my joband just hoping no one would look down at my feet. I had years of training for livingthrough humiliation, but now, I wasn’t in school; I was living in The City. I believed inmy heart that one day I would make it and have some of the most fancy and well-fittingshoes imaginable.
I had my mighty faith, but I was also blessed with so many signs and acts of kindnessfrom folks along the way. Like Charles, the cook at Sports, who would fry me up a greasycheeseburger and sneak it to me with a glass of Sambuca. It wasn’t glamorous, but I had ameal, an outfit, and a few dollars. Every day that I made it through, I knew I was closer tomy dream. I would drop down on my knees each night and thank God for another daywhen I didn’t give up or get taken down.
I know life can be so tough
And you feel like giving up
But you must be strong
Baby just hold on
You’ll never find the answers if you throw your life awayI used to feel the way you do
Still I had to keep on going.
—“Make It Happen”
The job at the sports bar was a means, but the studio was the end. Everything went intomy demo. One day while I was eating downstairs in the Chinese restaurant, gratefullysavoring the cheap morsels of the day’s only meal, I noticed a familiar face. It wasClarissa, the now ex-girlfriend of my brother’s producer friend Gavin Christopher. Wehugged like old friends. I told her that I had officially relocated to the city. When I gaveher the rundown on my chaotic living arrangements, like an angel, she invited me to comelive with her.
Though she identified as a “struggling artist,” fortunately for me, Clarissa wasn’t reallystruggling that hard. She lived with a gay couple in a huge classic Upper West Sidebrownstone on Eighty-Fifth Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. Isuspected that she was one of those kids who had a trust fund waiting for her once she gotover her starving-artist phase. My music was my life. Music was the only plan, ever.
While it was certainly an upgrade from my previous crowded crash pad, living withClarissa still had its challenges. She had a room (with a whole door, which closed) wherethere was a loft-style bed set up with recording equipment underneath it. Her room was offto the side of the larger parlor room. My situation was a ragtag loftlike structure builtabove the kitchen in the communal area that we shared with the couple. To get to mysleeping cranny I had to climb up onto the kitchen counter and hoist myself up into theteeny nook. It was barely more than a crawl space and had just enough room for a twinmattress, outfitted with a single pillow and a blanket (a “house” warming gift from mymother). The space was so shallow and the ceiling was so close that I couldn’t fully kneelon the bed without bumping my head (so there, I prayed on my back). It was “decorated”
with the only remnants from my life in Long Island: my journals and diaries, my MarilynMonroe poster, and a handful of books on Marilyn. I still looked up to her.
Connecting with Clarissa proved to be quite the blessing. She helped me find work andcovered for me when I couldn’t make my share of the five hundred dollars a month rent—a fortune to me then. Occasionally she’d take me out to eat. We even did somesongwriting in her mini studio. She had a few connections in the music scene from hertime with Gavin and would sometimes introduce me to other musicians who also lived onthe Upper West Side. On these special occasions, she’d even loan me a little black dress towear (not dissimilar to what I’m wearing on my first album cover). I certainly didn’t haveanything of my own that was appropriate for mingling.
Like everything during that time, nothing lasted long. Eventually the addition of somecrazy roommates meant that Clarissa and I fled for our lives (I really can’t get into thedetails of that) and had to move on and out. We joined my friend Josefin (whom I had metwhen she was in an open relationship with my brother). She was living with a few othergirls from Sweden. So it was five random girls living in a random apartment on top of aclub called Rascals, on East Fourteenth Street. I was downgraded to a mattress on thefloor, but I was now living “downtown,” in the heart of the New York art scene of the late1980s. It was thrilling, if precarious, and my eyes were always focused upward. I was ableto gain a bit of stability and a lot more faith. I knew more than ever that it was going tohappen for me.
I once was lost
But now I’m found
I got my feet on solid ground
Thank you, Lord
If you believe within your soul
Just hold on tight
And don’t let go
You can make it! Make it happen
—“Make It Happen”
After a few months, the other girls from Sweden moved out, and it was Josefin and I.
She helped me get odd jobs, but I was also beginning to pick up more background vocalwork. For this work, I’d settled on my young singer ensemble: a little black knit tankdress, black tights, and fat, slouchy socks over a pair of white Reebok Freestyle sneakers(my mother’s hand- me- down black shoes having finally been reduced to shreds).
Previously, Clarissa had encouraged me to ask my mother to buy me new shoes. Mymother then asked Morgan, who, she reported to me, said, “She has to learn to do thingsby herself.” I was a teen living on my own in the city, but whatever. Eventually,reluctantly, Morgan did buy me a pair of white Reeboks (why not black, I wondered,which goes with everything—but I was grateful to have shoes that fit and were withoutinvoluntary air-conditioning). I wore this outfit to nearly every session; it was like myuniform.
Gavin and I were working on a song together. While we were recording, he introducedme to a producer in the city, Ben Margulies, who was hired as a drummer on the sessionfor our song called “Just Can’t Hold It Back.” Ben had his own studio, and I had begunworking with him occasionally during my singer-student Long Island commuter days. Hisstudio was in Chelsea, on Nineteenth Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. Locatedin the back of his father’s cabinet making factory, it was about the size of a pantry. Itcould’ve been a chicken coop for all I cared—and it honestly wasn’t far from that. Whatmattered was that it was almost a full recording studio, the place where I belonged. Forme, the studio is part sanctuary, part playground, and part laboratory. I loved being there,writing, riffing, singing, dreaming, and taking risks. I’ve slept many a night on many astudio floor, beginning with this humble yet magical place.
Ben and I worked incessantly over the course of a year or so. Occasionally his partnerChris would be there, helping with the programming. I was coming up with a lot of ideas,and we were recording, but I still felt the guys weren’t going fast enough. I was hitting anew stride. I was coming up with all these lyrics and melodies and was frustrated becauseit seemed to me like it should be going faster. Maybe because I was only seventeen andextremely impatient, but I felt I was differently invested, like I was on a differenttrajectory than they were. Music was my whole life—so much of my belief system, mysurvival, was entwined in my songs. There was an urgency in my air, in the moment, andin me. This was my time, and I could feel it. I felt like I was running fast toward somethingor someone soon, and I was not about to let anyone or anything slow me down.
Ben and I were both excited by the songs we were working on but ultimately oursensibilities and ambitions were incompatible. I think he thought we were going to form aduo, like the Eurythmics, with him as co-lead, the Dave Stewart to my Annie Lennox. Iwas like, “Um, good luck with that; can we just focus on putting down my songs, please?”
We were able to create a full demo that I thought really showcased my songwritingand vocal styles. My most vivid memory of being in that studio is of me sitting by myselfon the floor in the corner writing lyrics and melodies, or staring out the window dreamingof the day I would break through. Look, Ben was very committed and I spent a lot of timeworking with him, and we got a lot done. But I had a vision, even back then, that mycareer had the capacity to go way beyond what he or most people around me were evencapable of imagining.
Ben suggested we have some “security” in place, by way of a formal agreement, so hephotocopied a contract out of the book All You Need to Know About the Music Business(co-written by Don Passman, who would, ironically enough, several years later becomemy lawyer). With no parent, legal counsel, manager, or even a good friend, I signed it. Iwas maybe eighteen years old. Obviously I didn’t know much about contracts and dealsthen, but what I did know was that there was value in my lyrics and the songs. (Iremembered seeing a documentary on the Beatles when I was growing up and beingshocked that they didn’t have complete ownership of the songs, they’d written — theBeatles!) So I knew not to give away all my publishing. Some of the lyrics to songs like“Alone in Love” I had begun writing in early high school.
We started setting up meetings with record companies and things began to move fast.
We got an initial offer from a major publishing company for a song called “All in YourMind” to be placed in a movie. I remember they offered me five thousand dollars for thepublishing.
Come closer
You seem so far away
There’s something I know you need to say
I feel your emotions
When I look in your eyes
Your silence
Whispering misunderstandings
There’s so much you need to realize
You’ll feel my emotions
If you look in my eyes
Hey darlin’
I know you think my love is slipping away
But, baby, it’s all in your mind
—“All in Your Mind”
I refused, even though back then five thousand dollars seemed like a million (whichwas how much I got for my first real publishing administration deal). Thank God I had acautionary Beatles tale fresh in my mind. I didn’t sell because I believed my songs camefrom somewhere special inside of me, and that selling them would be selling a piece ofme.
The music business is designed to confuse and control the artist. Later, seasoned musicexecutives told me that Ben’s deal was truly a golden ticket. I was trying to be loyal tosomeone who believed in me at a crucial time, but in my na?veté, I didn’t realize theenormity of what I had signed away. I was informed, and what I remember, was that hegot 50 percent of the publishing on all songs we worked on together for my first album.
Okay fine. But additionally, he received 50 percent of my artist’s royalties for the firstalbum, 40 percent for the second album, 30 percent for the third, and so on. It went on thatway from 1990 until about 1999. Even though Ben didn’t write one word or note with meafter the first album. Out of loyalty to him and the hard work we put in together in thatlittle studio, I never looked back and tried to reset or recoup.
So yeah, a photocopy: that’s the unceremonious origin of my first “official deal.” Whata welcome to the music business! Which I was so eager to get into, but I soon came tobelieve that my first signature was on a pretty shady piece of paper—and one that wouldbe hard to get out of. But it certainly wouldn’t be the last. A whole forest full of shade wasyet to come.
One must pick one’s battles wisely, and I wasn’t about to come for someone who I hadalready left behind. I was on my way. I’ll be eternally grateful, and I wish him well.
At least we made The Demo.
That demo stayed in my Walkman, which stayed on my hip, and the music stayed inmy ears. Aside from the radio, the songs we laid down were all I listened to. And theoffers from the major publishing houses gave me confidence that things were going tohappen. I just had to keep the faith and keep working. I didn’t stop. I kept going to moresessions, doing more connecting, and getting more background vocal work. I began doingvocals for the musician and producer T. M. Stevens, who’d written with Narada MichaelWalden and played bass with James Brown, Cyndi Lauper, Joe Cocker, and other majorartists. It was through him that I had the good fortune to meet the amazing Cindy Mizelleat a session.
Since that first background gig at twelve years old, I’d gained a respect for the specificskill and talent it takes to be a good background vocalist. I would listen specifically tobackground on the radio. I’d study the liner notes on albums and CD jackets to learn whowas doing the background vocals (especially on dance records, as I believe backgroundsare what make those songs). I became familiar with all those exceptional singers, likeAudrey Wheeler and Lisa Fischer?… and Cindy. To me, she was one of the absolutegreatest. Cindy Mizelle was the background singer. She sang with the most giftedvocalists of all time — Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston, Luther Vandross, and theRolling Stones. She was a real singer’s singer. Cindy was that girl to me. I looked up toher so much.
I remember in the beginning of the session, we were at the microphone, doing a partthat I was having a difficult time getting right. Cindy’s such a perfectionist (as I am now),but she had patience with me. When you first learn how to do background vocals—different tones and styles—it’s not easy. Producers liked my tone, but I had to learn howto really get in the pocket, to get it exactly how they wanted it. Precision takes practice.
Cindy had a new gig practically every day; she was a master. When I first started singingalongside her, I had to work hard to keep up. Now, background vocals are one of myfavorite elements in building a song. I love the textures and layers and how lush they canmake a song; backgrounds get into your bones.
Once, while Cindy and I were recording and standing very close to each other at themicrophone, she could hear my stomach rumbling. She looked down and saw the sadshoes I was wearing, scanned my crumpled outfit, and then looked up at me with pity andrecognition. I was too excited to be self-conscious—at that point in life, my ambition wasstronger than my shame. Who cared if I arrived a little hungry and a little shabby? I wasfinally singing for a living, right next to a consummate professional.
Cindy gave me her number that night and told me if I ever needed anything, I couldcall her. I didn’t know what to do with that. She’d sung with huge acts all around theworld—what business did I have calling her? What would I say? I didn’t call, and the nexttime I saw her she called me out on it. It wasn’t easy for me to ask for help. I didn’t wantto bother or burden her, I explained. Cindy looked me in the eye and said, “Mariah, youneed to call me.”
Suddenly it struck me. Oh, I get it. I was supposed to call her. I hadn’t understoodright away that this was part of the process: the initiation, the mentoring, the nurturing, theentry into a society of sister- singers. These rituals were all new to me. And I wasunfamiliar with being welcomed into a family of artists—into a family of any kind.
Once I had broken into the inner circle of elite background vocalists, recommendationsstarted to come in. Background vocalists are hired by word of mouth—one singer willrecommend another, and good singers like to work together. If the squad is strong, thesession is strong, and if the sessions are strong, the money is good and steady. I was nowin the tight and talented community of working musicians in New York City. Though Iwas invariably the youngest in the crowd, I also often hung out with some of them outsideof work hours, mostly on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. I wasn’t into drinking or hookingup at all; the hang, to me, was about networking—emphasis on work. It paid off.
I got an offer to do a demo session for a group called Maggie’s Dream. When I got tothe gig I was told I would be singing for a male vocalist. In walked this sexy, serene,toasted-almond-colored artsy young man—he just looked like the definition of an artist.
His thick, dark hair was just in the beginning phases of dreadlocks. He had a perfect fiveo’clock shadow, with a thick stripe of goatee down the center of his chin. He was dressedrock star casual: heavy black leather vintage motorcycle jacket, black jeans, black T-shirt.
He had a thin ring in his nose and smelled how I imagined ancient Egyptian oils wouldsmell. His face was kind and fine, with a boyish smile. He went by the name of RomeoBlue. His friends called him Lenny. And about a year later, the world would know him asLenny Kravitz.
Maggie’s Dream had a drummer named Tony, who was also the drummer for the bandof a singer named Brenda K. Starr. Brenda had a big R & B pop hit out called “I StillBelieve,” which the record company was looking to rework. There was an opening forbackground singers, and Tony got me a slot at the audition. I was excited because Brendahad a big song on the radio—and you know how much I loved the radio. At the audition,we were asked to sing Brenda’s song right in front of the table where she sat. I gave it myall.
I sang for my life. I did all kinds of runs and belted out the last note. When I wasfinished, I stood perfectly still, returning back to Earth, heart on fire. Brenda gave me along, flat stare, then suddenly broke into a mischievous little giggle. In her clipped, nasallyaccent, she said, “You trying to steal my job?” I didn’t move. But her giggle turned intohearty laughter. I didn’t realize you weren’t supposed to outsing the singer who could hireyou!
“Mariah is my new best friend,” she said, breaking my trance. Wait. She knew myname! I couldn’t believe someone who had a major song on the radio now knew my name.
Immediately after the audition, Brenda had to fly somewhere to perform, but as soon asshe returned, I was hired. She kept saying, “I told everybody about this girl Mariah!”
Brenda was a spicy mix, in the true meaning of the word. She grew up in the projectson Ninetieth and Amsterdam Avenue, and the culture of the projects grew in her. She toldme her mother was Puerto Rican and Hawaiian and her father, Harvey Kaplan, was Jewishand in a band called the Spiral Starecase. They had a hit song: “More Today ThanYesterday.” Brenda was a bit older and more street savvy than I was and had an effortlessand silly sense of humor. It was easy to become friends.
My life as a professional singer was moving swiftly, but at the same time, I was still ateenager. One time I was hanging out with the guys from Maggie’s Dream, and one ofthem started teasing me because I was a virgin. (Apparently, Clarissa had told them Iwas.) Everybody was laughing, but I didn’t get why it was funny. I was a kid. I wasalways the youngest and clearly the most idealistic, so I had to suffer through some of themore crass amusements of adult musicians.
I may have been young and na?ve, but Brenda knew my songs were good, and wisebeyond their years. When I let her listen to my demo, she said, “Oooh, Mariah, I wanna dothis on my next album.” She currently had a song that was still in active rotation on theradio, and every time we were together and I heard it play, it was mind blowing. I couldn’tbelieve I was working with her and she was my friend, not to mention that she had givenme my biggest gig to date.
Yet I said, “I know I don’t have anything big going on yet, but I’m sorry, I have tokeep these songs. These songs are the ones I wrote for me.”
I may have been insecure about my money, my clothes, my family, and a whole hostof other things, but I knew my songs were valuable. I was really excited to finally be in thecompany of young and some struggling current musicians and artists, but the truth wasthat I had always believed this would happen to me. Brenda never pushed me to use mysongs after that.
Singing background with Brenda while she toured with her big song was big fun.
Once, we went to Los Angeles to appear at a popular radio station’s concert. It was thefirst time I’d ever been to LA and one of the few times I’d ever set foot on a plane. Now, Iwas boarding a plane as a professional singer, going to do a big outdoor radio-sponsoredconcert in LA! To me, being on the radio was being famous. For the show, Brenda was setto sing “I Still Believe,” with me as one of the background vocalists. Will Smith was theretoo, to perform “Parents Just Don’t Understand.”
Jeffrey Osborne (from the group L.T.D.) was also there; he did “You Should Be Mine(The Woo Woo Song)” as part of his set. I was in the audience, watching. Jeffrey, theveteran among us, began singing the chorus to his song with his seasoned, smooth voice:
“And you woo-woo-woo,” he started off. The crowd joined in. After a few rounds heoffered his microphone out into the audience.
“Pass it to her! Pass it to her!” Brenda chirped, wagging her finger at me like a happypuppy’s tail.
I took the mic and gave that “woo-woo” a special Mariah remix, with all kinds ofvocal flourishes, and in the end I took the last “woo” way up into my high register, and thewhole crowd broke out in wild claps. That was the day Will Smith and I became friends.
Will and I were both really young, and looked it. Above my signature blown-outbangs, I had gathered the top portion of my unruly, crinkly hair into a yellow scrunchie,hair fanning out of it like a furry fountain, and let water and nature do their own thing withthe back half of my ’do. I was wearing a little bubble-gum-pink tank dress I had borrowedfrom Josefin. Will was tall and lanky, dressed as if he expected a pickup game of hoopscould break out at any moment. He was incredibly friendly and funny, as was hischarismatic friend, Charlie Mack. Immediately I could tell that he was not only supertalented but really bright and laser-focused. I loved “Parents Just Don’t Understand” andwas very impressed with what he had accomplished.
Will and I would sometimes hang out at Rascals, below the apartment I shared withJosefin. He was an uncomplicated friend. Both of us were absolutely ambitious and stillmaintained a childlike wonder and curiosity about the world. Our relationship was alwaysplatonic and never got weird.
After he heard me sing, Will believed in my talent. He took me with him to Def JamRecordings, the hottest new hip-hop label at the time, where he was signed. As we walkeddown the street on our way to Def Jam, we saw this tall, thin white man approaching us.
He stood out because he was kind of dancing and bopping, with headphones on that wereblasting music so loud you could hear it: “It takes two to make a thing go right!”
I later found out it was Lyor Cohen, who managed Run-DMC and LL Cool J andsigned Eric B. & Rakim and DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince. It was a curious scene tome: this sinewy grown man, dressed kinda cool, singing aloud, “I wanna rock right now!”
I was thinking, How does he even know this song?
The Def Jam offices had a very “downtown” vibe. This was the label of many hot malehip-hop artists, so obviously there were a million girls going in and out. Most peopleprobably just assumed that I was a groupie, strolling in on the arm of the Fresh Prince.
Will had never heard my demo; he’d only heard me sing at the concert, but that wasenough for him, I guess. Upstairs we found ourselves with a junior executive who wantedme to sing. Once again, I may have looked a little shabby and young, but I was discerningenough to understand: I wasn’t going to sing for this random guy. I was grateful for Will’sconfidence, but I had my sights on a major label with a legacy of artists more in alignmentwith my singer- songwriter ambitions — somewhere huge, like Warner or ColumbiaRecords. That’s where I knew I belonged, and that’s where I believed I was going to be.
My faith and focus were strong, but there was also evidence of my hard work, like apossible deal moving at Atlantic Records. During this time the majors were reaping thebenefits of their teen stars—the Tiffanys and Debbie Gibsons of the world. As the storygoes, Doug Morris, the head of Atlantic, responded to my demo by saying, “We alreadyhave our teen girl,” referring to Gibson.
Clearly, he didn’t really get it. For that matter, most labels didn’t really get me. Theyreally didn’t know where I fit. They didn’t understand my sound; the demo had songs thatdidn’t fit neatly into an existing genre. Though really young, I was definitely not teen pop.
There was a bit of soul, R & B, and gospel infused into my music, and I had a hip-hopsensibility. My demo was more diverse than the music industry at the time.
Then, of course, there was always the blondish biracial elephant in the room.
Executives at Motown supposedly reacted to my demo by saying, “Oh, no, we don’t wantto deal with a Teena Marie situation again”— meaning they didn’t want to force thegeneral public to grapple with wondering if I was Black or white or what. They didn’tknow how to market me. Most record executives just didn’t know how they would workmy record. They weren’t sure it could “cross over.” But for the record, Teena Marie nevercared about crossing over. And I didn’t want to cross over either.
I wanted to transcend.
CHERCHEZ LA FEMME
CHERCHEZ LA FEMME
One night Brenda announced, “I’m going to take you to this party, and you’re going tomeet a big record executive, Jerry Greenberg, and it’s going to be great.”
Sure, why not? I thought. I was feeling enough professional confidence to let her dragme to an industry party. I was doing sessions and had a deal brewing at Warners for one ofmy songs to be used in a movie. I wasn’t too invested in this party being the party. Whileshe had a generous heart, Brenda could also be pretty zany, so I sometimes took a lot ofwhat she said with a grain of salt.
We were going to get dressed at her house in Jersey, since she had all the clothes,makeup, and accessories from being on tour and having some money. She was supposedto pick me up from my apartment. I waited in my cramped vestibule, slumped on the tilefloor, for over an hour (mind you, there was no texting back then). Finally, she appeared,revved up, full of energy, and ready to party. Her excitement was infectious.
We started our going-out ritual in her large bathroom. Brenda had all the mousse, hairspray, combs, and curlers you could imagine. With her mixed Puerto Rican and Jewishheritage, I could certainly work with what she had. I attempted to create one long, uniformcoil all around my head by twisting sections of hair around the rod of a curling wand. Ifinished it off with a straight bang. I borrowed a little black dress from her (what else!). Ihad brought a pair of my own opaque black tights, but I couldn’t fit into her shoes; theywere too small. So I layered my black Vans sneakers with ribbed slouchy socks. I toppedoff the ensemble with my one statement piece—that Avirex jacket from high school.
I really tried with my look, and it was all right. Brenda told me the party was tocelebrate a new record label, but since, by this time, I was interested in the big labels withthe big boys and big artists, I didn’t have high expectations about who would be inattendance. The new label was the collaboration of three well-known industry guys whohad come together to form their own label, WTG Records. “WTG” stood for Walter,Tommy, and Gerald. It sounded like a tire business to me; I didn’t really know whoanybody was yet. But Brenda knew Jerry (Gerald Greenberg), who she told me was a bigshot in the industry (in 1974, at thirty-two, he became the youngest-ever president ofAtlantic Records). When she explained this, the party started to get a bit more interesting.
I now understood why Brenda wanted me to bring my demo with me (not that I everwent anywhere without it)—she’d brought me there to meet a guy from Atlantic Records.
When we got to the party, I was surrounded by “industry people,” though I still had noclue what that meant. As I walked around, I took in the scene. Some handlers weretraipsing a female artist around, like a show horse. She was very blond, very pretty, verywhite, and very dolled up and coiffed, with a flurry of label folks forming a tight, buzzingcloud around her. There were large blown-up pictures of her all over the room. I guessedwe were supposed to ooh and ahh in her presence. But I wasn’t interested in her. I was justthinking, Who is she, why should I be excited? To me she was just someone they weretoting around. Frankly, I was unimpressed by the whole scene.
Brenda and I sat down at a table. We were trying to have a good time in the room fullof suits, but all I could think was that I could be at the studio working on songs orsomething. That was where I always wanted to be. We got up to go to the bathroom,making our way through the crowd to get to the staircase that led to where the restroomswere.
As we bounced up the stairs, I saw him.
He wasn’t anyone I would have normally noticed: not particularly tall or short, notstylish or tacky. I’m pretty sure he had on a suit. He would’ve been totally forgettable if itweren’t for his eyes. Our eyes locked, and an energy instantly rushed between us, like amild electric shock. He had a piercing stare.
He looked into me, not at me. I was a little shook—not in a bad way, but not in a loveat first sight way, either. I kept going up the stairs, this time at a slower pace, as I adjustedto what had just happened. When I closed the bathroom door, the odd sensation was stillpulsing through me. What had happened? I didn’t know who he was, but I recognized himsomehow. I knew it wasn’t from TV or anything like that. It wasn’t his face; it wassomething else. I recognized his energy, and I think he recognized mine.
Brenda was all excited. “Did you see how Tommy Mottola looked at you? I did!” shesaid, her eyes wide.
“Who’s Tommy Mottola?” I asked.
“Girl.” She looked at me quizzically, a sense of seriousness about her. “‘Who’sTommy Mottola?’!” She began to sing a familiar refrain: “Tommy Mottola lives on theroad?… You don’t know who that is; you don’t know that song?” I shook my head. Shesang a little bit more: “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh cherchez, cherchez—”
It hit me. “Oh! Yeah, I know that song!” I joined in: “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, cherchez,cherchez.” It was “Cherchez la Femme / Se Si Bon,” by Dr. Buzzard’s Original SavannahBand.
I let her know that I used to like that song when I was a little girl.
Brenda said, “That is the Tommy from that song. He’s one of the biggest record guys,ever.” Brenda and I headed over to the spot where they were all standing.
I was standing by wondering, if he was such a big shot, what did he want with me?
The party was filled with prettier girls, with professional makeup and far better footwear.
Tommy said to Brenda, “Who’s your friend?”—the most intense three words I’d everheard.
Brenda directed her answer to Jerry. “She’s eighteen years old; her name is Mariah.
You gotta listen to this!” Just as she went to hand Jerry my demo tape, Tommy’s handswiftly cut her off mid-extension. He snatched the tape, got up, left the table, and left theparty. It was bizarre and bewildering. I was like, What kinda shit is that?
That was an important demo. It had some of my best songs—“All in Your Mind,”
“Someday,” and “Alone in Love.” Had this Tommy guy just taken all that work (andmoney!)? I wasn’t sitting there thinking, Yay, I just gave my demo to a big-time recordexecutive. I was focused more on the fact that I was out one more copy of my demo. Iknow this Tommy guy’s never going to listen to it, I thought.
The popular story goes that Tommy left the party to get in his limo, where he couldimmediately listen to the demo. I didn’t know what was the reason he left the party soabruptly. But after he did, I was ready to leave too. So I did.
Eventually Tommy came back looking for me, apparently not believing what he hadjust heard had come from that same girl on the stairs, the innocent-looking kid in Vans andslouchy socks. All those dressed-up girls in high heels were working so hard to get theattention of W, T, or G—and T came back looking for me.
Tommy was already the president of Sony Music, so getting my phone number wasnothing. He called me and left a message on my answering machine.
Josefin and I made performance art out of goofing around and doing silly voices onthat answering machine. I’d come in from the studio at five in the morning, and we’dmake these crazy messages. In the one Tommy heard, I was mimicking her Swedishaccent: “If this is the super, we need some help here! We have flies in our cats’ tails.
There’s no hot water”—followed by hysterical laughter. It was funny to us, but it was alsothe truth. The conditions in our apartment were pretty gross. We had sticky flypaperhanging from the ceiling and on the walls, which our cats would brush up against. Wereally didn’t have hot water either; it was a mess. But we were young, giddy girls, and wemade a joke out of our circumstances.
The first time Tommy called, he hung up. But he didn’t give up. He called back andthis time left a curt and serious- sounding message: “Tommy Mottola. CBS. SonyRecords.” He left a number. “Call me back.”
I couldn’t believe it. I immediately called Brenda, who confirmed that indeed,Tommy’s office had called her manager, and he wanted to sign me. This was the first ofwhat would be a strange and fantastical series of Cinderella stories in my life. But I wasnot swept off my feet, and trust and believe me, Tommy Mottola was no Prince Charming.
PRINCESS. PRISONER.
PRINCESS. PRISONER.
Once, I was a prisoner
Lost inside myself
With the world surrounding me
—“I Am Free”
Once upon a time, I lived in a very big house named Storybook Manor. And in it were bigdiamonds and big closets full of the most spectacular gowns and bejeweled slippers. Butalso within its walls was an inescapable emptiness, bigger than everything else inside, thatalmost swallowed me whole. This was no place for Cinderella.
If there were a fairy tale that could come close to describing my life, it would be “TheThree Little Pigs.” My childhood was a series of fragile, unstable houses, one after theother, where inevitably the Big Bad Wolf, my troubled brother, would huff and puff andblow it all down. I never felt safe. I never was safe. His rage was unpredictable; I neverknew when it would come, or who or what it would devour. What I did know was that Iwas truly on my own, out there in the wild woods of the world. I knew that if I was evergoing to find a safe place, I would have to make it myself.
I remember the very first time I ever felt I was in something like a safe place. I wasliving on my own in New York City, in a one-room studio apartment on the tenth floorwith a spectacular view. The building was called Chelsea Court. I loved the name of thatbuilding: it had such a regal ring to it. I could see the Empire State Building from myapartment window. My little apartment—the first that was all mine.
I had just gotten my very first artist advance. It was five thousand dollars, which is anumber I’ll never forget. Five thousand dollars was more money than I’d ever seen atonce, let alone had to call my own and spend as I wished. As soon as I got that advance, Igot my own apartment. I could finally pay my own rent! No more living in nooks andcrannies, no more sleeping on floors or sharing cramped bathrooms with four or five othergirls.
The first thing I did was buy my own new little couch with four stable legs. SometimesI would just stroke the fabric on the arm of my new little couch as if it were a baby. It wasthat major for me. I upgraded from a mattress on the floor to my own bed. I had a littlekitchen. I had the two cats, Thompkins and Ninja. I had a little peace. I was having amoment, and I felt like I could toss my raspberry beret in the air and do a twirl in the streetwith my laundry bag—because I had survived. I survived the danger. I survived thehunger. I survived the uncertainty and instability, and now here I was, every day comingcloser and closer to my destiny. I was independent in New York City, in my ownapartment filled with my own furniture, working on my own album, filled with all of myown songs. I could have my own friends over. It was my first taste of autonomy, and itwas divine. But it would not last long.
In the beginning, Tommy protected me. Even though I was breathing a bit easier, withsome early breaks and a clear path to success, the traumas and insecurities of mychildhood—and pressure from my brother and other people trying to take advantage of me—were still right at my back, haunting my every move. I never stopped looking over myshoulder. Tommy shielded me from all the people who thought I owed them something orwho wanted to use me. That meant Tommy also protected me from my own family.
I was nineteen years old and had already lived a lifetime of chaos, surviving only bymy own scrappy determination. Then this powerful man suddenly came along, parting theseas to make room for my dream. He truly believed in me.
With all due respect, Tommy Mottola was just the bitter pill I needed to swallow at apivotal period in my life. And there is a lot of respect due to him. He was a visionarymusic executive who fearlessly and ferociously dragged his visions into reality. Hebelieved in me, ruthlessly.
“You’re the most talented person I’ve ever met,” he would say to me. “You can be asbig as Michael Jackson.”
I heard music in the way he said that name: Michael. Jackson. Here was a man whohad played a large role in advancing the careers of some of the biggest names in theindustry, and he saw me sharing the same rare air as the most influential artist andentertainer in modern history. Respect.
And it wasn’t a sales pitch or a cheap come-on. It was real. We didn’t play when itcame to the work. My career as an artist was the most important thing to me—it was theonly thing. It validated my very existence, and Tommy understood the power of mycommitment. I was serious and ambitious. He knew my vocals were unique and strong,but he was most impressed with how I created songs: the structure of my melodies, themusic. I became his new star just as he was beginning a huge position at a new label, so hehad the influence to clear the runway for my ascension into the sky. He was willing tomove heaven and earth to make me successful. I recognized and respected that power.
Despite having been around some of the biggest names in the music industry, Tommy toldme I was the most talented person he had ever met. He was for real, and I really believedhim.
Soon after we met, Tommy started making romantic overtures. At first, they were a bitawkward and adolescent, like sending me expensive Gund teddy bears. Yet his persistentgestures and constant attention also gave me a sense of safety. Tommy had a brazenconfidence I had never seen up close. He impressed me, and I saw him as a trulyempowered person, which I found very attractive. Underneath the shine, however, I hadsome inkling that there was a darker energy that came with him—a price to pay for hisprotection. But at nineteen, I was willing to pay it. For me, Tommy was a potentcombination of father figure, Svengali, business partner, confidant, and companion. Therewas never really a strong sexual or physical attraction there, but at the time, I neededsafety and stability — a sense of home — more than I needed a boyfriend. Tommyunderstood that, and he provided. I gave him my work and my trust. I gave him myconviction and the combination to my moral code.
The relationship was intense and all-encompassing—after all, we already workedtogether, which was how we spent most of our time. When we weren’t working, we weredining at high-end steakhouses or infamous Italian restaurants or attending industry eventstogether. I was spending less and less time at my Chelsea apartment and began spendingmost nights with him.
Soon, I felt pressure from Tommy to give up my place, and against my better instincts,I gave in. Little did I know, that relinquishment would mark the beginning of a slow andsteady march into captivity. Little did I know, giving in to Tommy’s demands wouldgradually swallow my privacy and begin to erase my identity.
On weekends, we drove up to Tommy’s farmhouse in Hillsdale, New York, which Ieventually “affectionately” came to call “Hillsjail.” On the night I got my first publishingadvance, for a million dollars (a million dollars buys a lot of H&H bagels!) Tommy droveus up the Taconic Parkway and pulled up before a gorgeous piece of land. He stopped thecar and told me to get out. I looked at the sprawling expanse, shivering in the autumnbreeze—it really was stunning.
“Let’s build a house here!” Tommy proclaimed. I knew what this translated to: this iswhere we are building our house. I had no idea the scope of what I was getting myselfinto.
Now, this was no Hillsjail. It was impressive and majestic: fifty acres of fertile greenland adjacent to a nature preserve in Bedford, New York. It was sandwiched betweenproperties belonging to Ralph Lauren and a very prominent billionaire, an area guaranteedto be secure. But, as I would soon discover, the concept of security was about to turn onme.
I hadn’t ever wanted to leave the city, but that’s what we were doing. Outside of therecording studio, I wondered, when would I ever be back in my beloved Manhattan?
Certainly, building a new house would be a monumental undertaking, but it did have astrong appeal to me, creatively and emotionally.
After a childhood of being uprooted and plopped into all kinds of precarious livingarrangements, I finally had the chance to build my own, from the foundation. I got excited.
I got into it.
I insisted on being fully involved in all aspects of the design, and I also insisted onpaying half of all the costs. I wanted it to be my house. I had fresh memories of witnessingmy mother go through the humiliation of a boyfriend shouting, “Get out of my house!” Itold myself that no man would ever do that to me. Ever.
Much of what I learned from my mother and older sister was what I wasn’t going to dowhen I grew up. I had very little guidance in what to do as a woman, though I’d beenforced into adult situations when I was still quite young. Tommy was twenty-one yearsolder than me; he could have been my father. He was also the head of my label. There wasno wise woman around me to point out that the power dynamic in our relationship wasnowhere near fifty-fifty, so maybe I should think twice about going in fifty-fifty with himon an expensive piece of property. To top it all off, we were not yet married.
But I was young, and I was all the way in with Tommy. I was proud of making myown money (though I had no real concept of money). I’d recently received an enormousroyalty check from sales of my debut album, so I thought I was set for life. Building adream house with Tommy did not seem like a risk. I was selling millions of records bythen. But I didn’t know that our dream mansion would come with an unfathomable thirty-million-dollar price tag. And as it turned out, my time in that house with Tommy wouldend up costing me so much more than money.
I did love the process of building that grand manor in Bedford. It opened up a newarea of passion in me. I was finally able to give life to my childhood obsession with oldHollywood movies. Ironically, I was especially influenced by How to Marry a Millionaire,starring Betty Grable, Lauren Bacall, and Marilyn Monroe (of course). The images ofpalatial arched windows and glamorous, glossy floors were seared into my little- girlimagination. I made sure every room in our house was pristine and spacious, filled with airand sparkling with light. We worked closely with the designers and architects; we wentover every detail together. I taught myself a lot about the styles of moldings and tiles. Ibecame an expert in sconces—sconces, dahling! I also learned a lot about materials andwould often visit various rock quarries. Though by no stretch do I like a rustic look, I dohave a preference for tumbled marble on my kitchen floors. I was very particular andconfident about what I liked.
Na?ve as I was at the time, I decided I was going to build a great house. I had comefrom far too little to complain, “Oh, poor me; I have to build a mansion!” I was into it.
After all, I sincerely thought I would be with Tommy forever and that the home we wouldmake together would be just as timeless, everlasting, and spectacular as the music we werecreating—behind which, of course, I was also the creative force.
And spectacular it was. We even had a ballroom. I was in my early twenties, with myown ballroom! I built a grand closet inspired by Coco Chanel’s closet in her 31 rueCambon flat in Paris, full of opulent mirrors and a spiral staircase that led to its own shoesection. I had acquired so many shoes through all my photo and video shoots that I had tobuild entire walls of shelving for them. It was staggering to think that just a few shortyears before, I had been walking in my mother’s too-small, beat-up shoes, snow pouringin through cracks in the soles. I kept those dismal ankle boots for a while, with theintention to bronze them like baby booties, so I would never forget where I came from (asif that were even an option). In such a short time, I had gone from raggedy hand-me-downs to my own manor, complete with walls custom- built for an entire footwearcollection. My faith and my fans blessed me with unimaginable riches. I was immenselygrateful. But, despite that huge accomplishment, I had yet to learn that in reality, I’d justprovided the design inspiration, and put up half the money, to build my own prison.
The magnificent compound I built in Bedford was just over ten miles from the village ofOssining, another quaint, wooded Westchester town, home to the most famous maximum-security prison in New York State, and possibly in the country: Sing Sing. A complex ofgrim stone and brick on 130 acres, landscaped with grand elm trees, Sing Sing sitsformidably on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. The roller coaster-like arches of theTappan Zee Bridge can be seen from the watchtower. In autumn, the views arebreathtaking; the trees burn fiery orange, gold, and red.
Sing Sing confines about two thousand human beings. The popular terms for beinglocked up—being “upstate” or “up the River” or in “the Big House”—were coined at SingSing.
No matter how prime the real estate, how grandiose the structure, if it’s designed tomonitor movement and contain the human spirit, it will serve only to diminish anddemoralize those held inside. None of the irony of my proximity to the infamous prison,nor that of its peculiar name, was lost on me: jokingly, I referred to the Bedford estate asSing Sing. It was fully staffed with armed guards, security cameras were installed in mostrooms, and Tommy was in control.
While I was building Sing Sing, I thought it would be a healthy idea to have my motherand my nephews, Mike and Shawn, live closer to me. I loved the process of designing andcreating a gorgeous home. While I had little freedom at Sing Sing, Tommy did support mebuying a house nearby for my mother. It became a big thing for us to talk about, and heeventually understood how important it was to me to try and create something stable formy family. I later found out he secretly had security follow me around whenever I went tolook at houses or run errands, but I was grateful for the small window of ignorance.
That child in me, deep down, still dreamed of a family that wasn’t fractured. I hadbegun to make my career dreams come true, and I thought maybe I could make us afamily home—a home base, where everyone was always welcome—and I’d make mymother the head of it. I got excited about the idea of buying a home my mother wouldlove, and I could finally afford to do it in style. Finding the perfect house for her was mynew project. Just like I wanted every bit of my house to reflect me, I was determined toput that attention to detail into the house for my mother. I wanted her to love where shewas going to live.
We recruited friends of Tommy’s in real estate to help me find a place nearby. Theyshowed me several lovely homes, but I was holding out for the right thing, for her. Mytaste leaned more Old Hollywood, and hers was more “Old Woodstock.”
After an extensive search within a twenty-minute radius of our estate, we finally rolledup on a deeply wooded property with a house set far back from the road. It wasn’tmeticulously manicured, which was typical of that section of upper Westchester; rather,the landscaping was intentionally organic. The six green acres were filled with splendidold oak trees. And the house blended into the nature around it beautifully. The interior wasboth spacious and cozy, with warm wood tones and soothing light streaming throughgracious windows. Once inside, you couldn’t hear or see the outside world.
I had found the only hippie-opera-singer-dream-cabin-in-the-woods in Westchester! Itwas perfection, and I knew exactly what to do to bring it to life. I took it on like I was aninterior designer on one of those makeover shows. I picked out and paid for every piece ofbrand-new furniture, all the knickknacks and accouterments. I chose every detail, fromlight fixtures to paint colors, all in “Pat’s palette.” I hung wooden flower boxes outside andfilled them with romantic wildflowers. I got photo prints made of her Irish familymembers and Irish crests, had them mounted and framed, and hung them ascending thewall along the staircase. And I managed to keep it secret from her.
The biggest challenge was getting her piano in without her knowing. I knew it wasimportant that it was her old blond-wood Yamaha upright that would be in the livingroom, not a shiny new model. Her piano held memories in its keys; it was a symbolbecause it was a significant, stable object she provided during my turbulent childhood. Imade up some story that I was going to get it tuned or something before it went intostorage; I even had her sign fake moving documents so it could be taken away withoutsuspicion. Her old piano would be the pièce de résistance in her cabin in the Westchesterwoods.
One of the details that sold me on the property was a wooden sign that had the words“Cabin in the Woods” carved into it. The sellers didn’t want to part with it, but I foughttooth and nail because I just knew my mother would love it. I got so much joy frommaking plans, keeping the secret, and working to make everything just so. Growing up, Ihad always wanted a family house where I wouldn’t be embarrassed to bring my friends.
Creating a place where my mother could live comfortably and the whole family couldgather was so special—healing, even. It was like preparing a spectacular Christmas for mymother and family.
I was giddy with excitement when it was time to present the house I had created to mymother. I was proud of the work that I had done. To me, this house was also testimony tomy ability to hold on to childhood desires, proof that the trauma and danger I had facedhadn’t destroyed my hope. My mother thought she was coming up to Sing Sing for one ofour semiregular dinners. When I picked her up, I told her I had to swing by Tommy’sfriend Carole’s house, which was nearby. When the wrought-iron gates I had installedswung open like welcoming arms from the stone pillars and we entered the property, I feltmy mother go still, then heard her take a deep breath. Trees will do that: make you stopand breathe. She moved out of the car as if the fresh air was making her slow down.
She looked up at the house in all its beauty. I watched her take in the grace of theflower boxes. And as Carole opened the front door, the aroma of rich coffee and hotcinnamon buns drifted past us. (I had orchestrated it to be brewing and baking when wearrived, as I wanted those details to set the mood.) My mother stood in the doorway andsoftly said, “Oh, Carole, your house is beautiful.” Playing right along, Carole offered toshow her around, and I followed behind. When we got to the staircase my mother pausedat the photos, but I could tell it didn’t quite register. So I broke her trance. “Mom, look atwho’s in the pictures.” She was struck with utter confusion as she noticed her family onCarole’s wall. Faintly, she replied, “I?… don’t understand.”
“This is all for you. This is where you live now,” I said. She was speechless. And Iwas the proudest I’d ever been.
Mike, who I completely treasure, was still quite little then. He went tearing through thehouse and out to the backyard, running along the plush grass, squealing with delight. Hewas full of such pure joy (and is still such a source of joy to me). He was free. A little boyplaying in the afternoon breeze with no filth, just free. We had come full circle fromswinging over trash heaps or being thrown out like garbage—or so I thought.
Along with the ballroom and couture shoe closets of Sing Sing, I built a fantastic state-of-the-art recording studio. Adjacent to the studio was a huge Roman-style swimming pool ofwhite marble inside of a grand parlor. In these two places I found solace and solitude.
They were a temporary reprieve and a chance to feel weightless—in the recording studioand in the water. But the studio, the pool, and I were all still confined, enclosed within thebounds of Sing Sing’s fortress.
Under ordinary circumstances, the chance to have my own studio—custom-made tomy exact specifications and at my disposal at any time—would have been liberating. Inthe early days of my career, I was at the mercy of other people to get studio time, gratefulto be in grim little spaces, singing songs I didn’t like, bartering, doing whatever it took toget my songs recorded. And now, I had my own fully equipped, gorgeous recordingstudio. I imagined I could have my own sessions when I wanted to and call in the artists Iwanted to work with, like Prince did. Sing Sing wasn’t Paisley Park, but it was fabulous,and it was mine. Well, half mine. There was a studio with sophisticated recordingequipment, but there was also very sophisticated security equipment outfitted throughoutthe house—listening devices, motion-detecting cameras—recording my every move.
A FAMILY
A FAMILY
So when you feel like hope is gone
Look inside you and be strong
And you’ll finally see the truth
That a hero lies in you
—“Hero”
It was the middle of July 1993, and I was headed to Schenectady, New York, to record aThanksgiving special for NBC. It was the first event to kick off promotion for my soon-to-be- released third studio album, Music Box. The first single, “Dreamlover,” would bedropping in a week, and the full album would be released on the last day of August.
Schenectady, a typical industrial city in eastern New York, was largely made up ofEastern European immigrants and Black folks who had come from the South to work inthe town’s cotton mill. It’s a straight shot north along the Hudson River from Hillsjail.
The concert was to be taped in Proctors Theatre, a former vaudeville house completewith a red carpet, gold leaf galore, Corinthian columns, chandeliers, and Louis XVcouches in the balcony promenade—the whole nine yards. Even though it was a beautiful,classic theater, it was not the setting I would have chosen, to be sure; nor would mosttwenty-year-olds in the early 1990s. But I made few decisions about my whereabouts then.
Outside of the recording studio, every aspect of my life was decided by a committee inthose days, with Tommy acting as chairman of the board. (Oddly enough, I was neverinvited to the meetings.)
As we pulled up to the center of town, the streets seemed to be increasingly empty,and I began to notice a lot of police officers. Several streets were blocked off near thetheater, patrolled by clusters of men in dark uniforms, outfitted with shiny shoes and blackguns. The limo slowed to a crawl as I stared out the window, the eerily quiet streets rollingby. A familiar anxiety was rising inside, which I fought mightily to contain. I had tomentally prepare to present new songs in front of new people, a performance that wouldbe televised to millions on a major network. I knew I couldn’t let my anxiety develop intofear. With the exception of the cops—who had called all these cops? I had my ownsecurity with me; in fact, I always had security with me—the street behind the theater,where the backstage door was located, was desolate.
Before I was quickly whisked into my gilded dressing room, I caught a glimpse ofcrowds of people behind barricades. Though I now had a moment to settle in, I still feltanxious. Eventually I asked why the streets were blocked off and full of police. What inthe world was happening in downtown Schenectady on this hot midsummer day?
“Miss Carey,” they told me, “it’s for you. It’s because you were coming to do theshow.”
Apparently, masses of young fans were crowding the streets, hoping to catch a glimpseof me. At first, I couldn’t fully digest this response. What did they mean? The barricades,the squads of police, the emptied streets were because of me? My first album, MariahCarey, had come out three years prior hitting and holding the number-one spot on theBillboard 200 chart for 11 consecutive weeks, remaining on the list for 113 weeks in total,with four singles going number one back-to-back. I had won Grammys for Best NewArtist and the best female pop vocal performance, and received nominations for both Songof the Year and Record of the Year for “Vision of Love,” which I performed on TheArsenio Hall Show, Good Morning America, The Tonight Show, and The Oprah WinfreyShow. The album would go on to sell nine million copies in the United States alone andwas still selling all over the world (it would go on to sell more than fifteen million copies).
My second album, Emotions, had been released just the year before. I particularly adoredworking with David Cole (one half of the fab C + C Music Factory). He was a church kidwho loved dance music (as evidenced on “Make It Happen”). As a producer, he pushedme as a singer, because he was one too. I released an EP with live versions of songs frommy first two albums for the wildly popular show MTV Unplugged. It included a remake ofthe classic Jackson Five hit “I’ll Be There,” featuring my background singer and friendTrey Lorenz. The song quickly shot to number one after the show, making it my fifthnumber-one single and the second time “I’ll Be There” held the coveted spot. I performed“Emotions” at the MTV Video Music Awards and the Soul Train Music Awards. Andhere I was again, about to hit another stage, and somehow I had no clue that I was famous.
For four solid years of my life, I was writing, singing, producing, and doing photoshoots, video shoots, press junkets, and promotional tours. All the awards and accolades Ireceived were handed out in highly coordinated industry settings. It just seemed to be partof the work. If I had any “free” time I was sequestered in an old farmhouse up in theHudson Valley. Tommy orchestrated all of it. I was in my early twenties.
Because I was never alone, I had no comprehension of the impact my music and Iwere making on the outside world. I never had time to think or reflect. I now believe thatthis was completely by design. Did Tommy know I would be easier to control if I werekept ignorant of the full scope of my power?
I’m told that in the Music Box era, as a gift to me, my then makeup artist Billy B andhairstylist Syd Curry made a thoughtful scrapbook for me, in which they gathered littlenotes of love and appreciation from other artists or celebrities they worked with or saw intheir travels. Joey Lawrence (remember Joey from Blossom?), who was such a heartthrobat the time, apparently left a significantly sweet message. Well, Tommy saw the lovefestof a book, ripped it up, and burned it in the fireplace before I was able to see it—a childishact of cruelty, especially to Billy and Syd, who went through all that effort to prove to mehow big I was even among the stars.
With no parental or familial management or protection, I was easy to manipulate, butthe dynamic of my relationship with Tommy was complex. In many ways, Tommyprotected me from my dysfunctional family, but he went to the extreme: he controlled andpatrolled me. Yet his control also meant that in these early years, all my focus, all myenergy, and all my passion went into writing, producing, and singing my songs. Tommyand his stranglehold on my movements seemed a fair price to pay for getting to do thework I had always dreamed of. He had my life, but I had my music. It wasn’t until thatmoment in Schenectady that I began to realize the degree of my popularity. I had fans!
And soon they would become another source of my strength.
In the dressing room, where I sat in a chair having my hair first straightened, thencurled and sprayed, the magnitude of what I had just learned began to sink in. The policewere not around because of some violent or dangerous incident—they were there to makea clear way for me. My family may not have provided me safety, my relationship may nothave given me security, but realizing that there was a multitude of people showing up andpouring out love for me gave me a new kind of confidence. Because Tommy neverallowed me to experience the glamorous privileges granted to the young, rich, andpopular, the fame I discovered was solely defined through my relationship to my fans andtheir relationship to my music. I decided that day that I was prepared to be devoted tothem forever.
The Thanksgiving special was titled Here Is Mariah Carey, and I was going to debutthree new songs from Music Box: “Dreamlover,” “Anytime You Need a Friend,” and“Hero,” along with some of my known hits—“Emotions,” “Make It Happen,” and ofcourse, “Vision of Love.” I had always written songs from an honest place, using my ownlived experiences and dreams as a source. I also pushed my vocals to their extreme. I wasalso going to debut “Hero.” It’s always a risk to debut songs at a live show that peoplehave not had the opportunity to connect with through radio repetition. Even though I wrote“Hero,” it wasn’t originally intended for me to perform.
I was asked to write something for the movie Hero, starring Dustin Hoffman and GeenaDavis. Tommy had agreed I would submit a song for the film, to be sung by GloriaEstefan, who was on Epic Records (Sony, Tommy’s label, was the parent company). Iknew that Luther Vandross was also writing a song for the soundtrack, so I would be ingreat company. I hunkered down in Right Track, or the Hit Factory—one of the majorstudios where I had spent a major fortune. I was there that day with Walter Afanasieff.
The plot of the film was explained to everyone in the studio in five minutes: a pilotgoes around and rescues people. That’s about all I absorbed. Shortly after, I got up to go tothe bathroom, one of the few activities I did unaccompanied by someone on Tommy’spayroll. I lingered in the stall to luxuriate in my fleeting moment of peace. Savoring mytime, I slowly walked down the hall to return to the studio. As I walked, a melody andsome words came clearly into my mind. As soon as I got back into the room, I sat rightdown at the piano and said to Walter, “This is how it goes.” I hummed the tune and someof the lyrics. As Walter worked to find the basic chords, I began to sing, “and then a herocomes along.” I guided him through what I had heard so vividly in my head.
“Hero” was created for a mainstream movie, to be sung by a singer with a verydifferent style and range than my own. Honestly, though I felt the message and the melodywere fairly generic, I also thought it fit the bill. We recorded a rough demo, which I founda bit schmaltzy.
But Tommy heard the potential for a classic. He insisted not only that we keep thesong but that it was going on my new album. I was like, Okay. I’m glad he likes it. Ifinessed the song and made changes to the lyrics to make it more personal. For that, I wentto the well of my memories and dipped into that moment when Nana Reese had told me tohold on to my dreams. I did my best to reclaim it, but it was a gift no matter who it wasfor.
By the time of the Schenectady show, “Hero” had lost its simplicity and gained somedepth. The initial trepidation I felt about singing it live for the first time in front of anaudience was melting away as I thought about all the people who had lined the streets andpacked the theater to see me that night. I decided that this song did not actually belong toGloria Estefan, a movie, Tommy, or me. “Hero” belonged to my fans, and I was going todeliver it to them with all I had.
The Thanksgiving special included inner- city kids from a local communityorganization. I saw the kids backstage, brimming with both promise and fear, and in them,I saw me. I would sing this song for them too. The concert opened with my latest hit,“Emotions”—upbeat and embellished with lots of my signature super-high notes. As I wassinging “Emotions,” and through the several stops and retakes required (singing live forTV recording is tedious work), I was able to really look at the people in the crowd. Thiswas Schenectady, and these were real folks—not paid seat fillers or trendily dressed extrasbut authentic, mostly young people with that unmistakable hunger and adoration in theireyes. I saw them for who they were, and they were me. I closed my eyes and said a prayer.
As the first few chords of the piano intro played, I started to hum from my heart. When Iopened my mouth, “Hero” was released into the world.
Some of us need to be rescued, but everyone wants to be seen. I sang “Hero” directlyto the faces I could see from the stage. I saw tears well up in their eyes and hope rise up intheir spirits. Whatever cynicism I had about that song was gone after that night. ButTommy, too, had noticed the size of its impact.
Later that year, on December 10, 1993, when I performed “Hero” at Madison SquareGarden, I announced that all stateside sales proceeds would be donated to the families ofvictims of the Long Island Railroad shooting, which had happened three days prior. On atrain—a route I’d ridden before—a man pulled out a 9-mm pistol and opened fire, killingsix people and wounding nineteen. Three brave men, Kevin Blum, Mark McEntee, andMichael O’Connor, subdued him, thus preventing more slaughter. They were heroes, andso I dedicated “Hero” to them that night. Just ten days after the September 11 attacks, Isang the song as part of the America: A Tribute to Heroes telethon. And on January 20,2009, I had the unthinkable, unparalleled honor of singing it at the Inaugural Ball of thefirst African American president of the United States of America. To this day, “Hero” isone of my most performed songs. Music Box would go on to reach diamond status in theUnited States and is one of the highest-selling albums of all time.
And here’s a side note with a side eye: A couple of people have come for “Hero,” andfor me, with both royalties and plagiarism claims. Three times I have been to court, andthree times the cases have been thrown out. The first time, the poor fool going after mehad to pay a fine. Initially I felt victimized, knowing how purely the song came to me, butafter a while I almost began to expect lies and lawsuits to come with my success—fromstrangers and my own family and friends. And they won’t stop.
The taping that night in Schenectady took several hours. A television show has so manytechnical needs—multiple cameras, close-ups, far and cutaway shots, costume changes,hair and makeup touch- ups, extras, audience reactions — it’s a production. When wefinally wrapped, I said all my thank-yous to the kids, the choir, the orchestra, and the crew.
Then, just as I had come in, I was whisked out the backstage door, which seemed to leadnot to the street but straight into the limo.
I plopped into the backseat, buzzing from a contradictory cocktail of exhaustion andexhilaration. As we pulled out into the street, I noticed that where there was onceemptiness and a scattering of barricades, there were now crowds of people swelling overthe flimsy metal partitions, screaming my name and “We love you!” I noticed the copstoo, standing there, unfazed, in the pulsing midst of the energy and excitement. It was onething to be informed, but quite another to see with my own eyes, hear with my own ears,and feel in my soul the reaction from real people to me and my music. What I felt thatnight in Schenectady was not idol worship, it was love. It was the kind of love that comesfrom honest connection and recognition. I was mesmerized as I looked out the window,watching all these people shower me with such love. Not just fans. A family.
As the crowd faded from sight and we neared the outskirts of town, approaching thehighway, my high began to wear off. And by the time the wheels touched the tar of theTaconic Parkway, the mood in the car had returned to its routine gloom. Most Thursdayevenings Tommy and I would ride up the southern stretch of this highway, leavingglamorous Manhattan behind to spend the weekend in Hillsdale. As the lights and high-rises shrank in the rearview mirror and the magnetic pull of the city dimmed, a part of mylife force grew faint as well.
When the car radio, which stayed locked on Hot 97 (their then slogan: “blazing hip-hop and R & B”), would begin to break up, muffled by static, I knew my life as a Grammyaward-winning singer-songwriter twenty-something was over. Every weekend, Tommywould turn off the radio that was my lifeline and take a moment of silence before poppingin one of his beloved Frank Sinatra CDs. What a tragic metaphor, listening to Tommyhum “My Way” as he drove us back to my captivity.
I was conditioned to either talk shop or go silent on our bleak commute. Mostly,though, I just stared out the window at the grand Hudson River, preparing for my firstmajor role: contented wife-to-be. This was the only acting job Tommy ever encouraged.
Taking acting classes or accepting roles in movies or on TV was strictly forbidden.
On the ride back from Schenectady, I don’t recall Tommy and me discussing what hadjust happened. Perhaps he knew that I saw the purity and power of the fans—that I’ddiscovered how their love couldn’t be controlled. It is fans who create a phenomenon, notrecord-company executives. Tommy was smart. He knew. But I don’t know if he realizedthat after that moment, I finally did too.
We arrived at the farmhouse, and all I wanted to do was take a bath. Being a performeris a production. You build up and put on, you strategize, manipulate, accommodate, andshape-shift. It requires rituals (sometimes in the form of bad habits) to return yourself backto yourself. My ritual was to wash the performer off. The addition of a large tub facing anexpansive picture window was one of the few contributions I got to make to Hillsjail. Thebathroom was my refuge, since putting a camera or intercom in there would’ve been a bitmuch, even for Tommy. The cool marble tile sent a soothing sensation through my barefeet, which had been hoisted up in heels all night. I lazily peeled off my ensemble,thankful that the sound of the water running was the only one I heard. I lowered theoverhead lights and ceremoniously lit a few white candles. The water was welcoming, andI surrendered. As if being baptized, I submerged my head and lingered in the warm, darkquiet. I gently rose up, tilted my head back, and propped my arms along the edge of themassive basin, eyelids still shut, savoring every moment of this calm solitude. Slowly Iopened my eyes to a radiant full moon, glowing against a clear, blue-black sky. Softly Ibegan to sing: “Da, da, da, da, da…”
Images of the scene I had just left—adoring fans screaming and crying—flashedthrough my mind, blending with painful recollections of my brother screaming and mymother crying, of myself as a lonely little girl in a neglected dress. I was floating in a tubthat was larger than the size of my entire living area just five years before, in a roombigger than all of the living rooms in all of the thirteen places I lived with my mothergrowing up. The enormity, complexity, and instability of the road I had traveled to get intothis bath hit me. It was the first time I felt safe enough to go back and peek in on Mariah,the little one, and recognize what she had survived. And suddenly, the first verse andchorus of “Close My Eyes” came to me:
I was a wayward child
With the weight of the world
That I held deep inside.
Life was a winding road
And I learned many things
Little ones shouldn’t know
But I closed my eyes
Steadied my feet on the ground
Raised my head to the sky
And the times rolled by
Still I feel like a child
As I look at the moon
Maybe I grew up
A little too soon.
It would take me years to finish this song—years of anguish and survival.
MY BIG FAT SONY WEDDING (AND LITTLESKINNY HONEYMOON)
MY BIG FAT SONY WEDDING (AND LITTLESKINNY HONEYMOON)

To announce our engagement, Tommy and I took my mother to a swanky dinner inmidtown Manhattan. As we walked outside after the meal, the city was all dressed up inits evening wear of bright lights and flashing billboards, and I showed her the engagementring, a Cartier tricolor gold band with an immaculate, modest- sized diamond. It wasunderstated, but it was also Cartier. My mother looked at the delicate, dazzling ring on myslender (and very young) finger and quietly said, “You deserve it.”
That was it. She got into the limo I had waiting for her and rode away. I never reallyknew what she meant by that. But that was all that was left between us. There was nowomanly advice or girlish giggles—which, honestly, I didn’t expect, but I did think theoccasion called for more than a one-liner.
Many reasonable people have questioned why I married Tommy. But none of themquestioned the decision more than I did. I knew I would lose more power as a person, andI was already completely suffocating emotionally in the relationship. We were equallyyoked to each other through the music and the business. However, the personal powerdynamic between us was never equal. He convinced me that everything would be better ifwe were married, that things would be different. But what I really hoped was that hewould be different—that if I gave him this thing he so adamantly wanted, this marriagethat I believed he thought would legitimize him, or quell chatter about him having anaffair with an artist on the label, it would change him. I was never completely sure why hewanted to get married so badly. I prayed that in doing so he would calm down and loosenhis vise grip on my life. I hoped maybe he would trust his “wife” and let her breathe.
I was in my early twenties, just a few years removed from the shack, and the conceptof a life that included both personal and professional fulfillment was unfathomable to me.
I truly believed that I was not worthy of both happiness and success. I was accustomed tomaking all my life choices based on survival.
Back then, I didn’t choose what glamorous outfit to wear each morning; I chose whatsurvival mechanism I needed to arm myself with that day. More than my personalhappiness, I needed my career as an artist to survive. Happiness was secondary. Happinesswas a fleeting bonus. I married Tommy because I thought it was the only way for me tosurvive in that relationship. I saw the power he could put behind my music, and he saw thepower my music could give him. Our holy matrimony was built on creativity andvulnerability. I respected Tommy as a partner. If only he had known how to give me therespect I was due as a human being.
At the first real wedding I ever attended I was the bride. I never dreamed of gettingmarried when I was young. I hadn’t really wanted to. In high school, girls fantasized aboutbig, poofy dresses and Long Island weddings while I visualized a dream of becoming asuccessful musician and actress. That’s all I cared about, so it was pretty ironic that Iended up having one of the decade’s most lavish New York weddings in one of thedecade’s most dramatic, voluminous gowns.
Apart from the ambition, Tommy and I were completely different, and the Black partof myself caused him confusion. From the moment Tommy signed me, he tried to washthe “urban” (translation: Black) off of me. And it was no different when it came to themusic. The songs on my very first demo, which would become my first smash album,were much more soulful, raw, and modern in their original state. Just as he did with myappearance, Tommy smoothed out the songs for Sony, trying to make them more general,more “universal,” more ambiguous. I always felt like he wanted to convert me into whathe understood—a “mainstream” (meaning white) artist. For instance, he never wanted meto wear my hair straight. I think to him it didn’t look naturally straight, it lookedstraightened. He thought it made me look too “urban” (translation: Black) or R & B, likeFaith Evans. Instead, he insisted that I always wear my loose and bouncy curls, which Ithink he thought made me look almost like an Italian girl (though, ironically, my curls area direct result of my Black DNA, assisted by a good small-barrel curling wand to integratethe frizz).
My curls had certainly crisscrossed with Italian culture before I met Tommy. (I didlive in more than a dozen places on Long Island.) In the eleventh grade I attended a beautytech school. I was there mostly to kill time before I became a star (my only career goal). Itwas more creative, entertaining, and practical than regular high school. I’d alwaysstruggled with pulling a cohesive look together—there weren’t any of the tools or potionsat home for me to play with, and I certainly didn’t have a consistent crew of girls to gothrough the passage from girl to teen with. There was a real allure to gaining more refinedbeauty skills. Also, I was a huge fan of the musical film Grease growing up; I thought Icould have my own Pink Ladies moment. And I kinda did.
My beauty school class was made up of mostly Italian girls. There were mean girls,there were shy girls, there were regular girls, and then there were the girls. They were aclique of about three or four fabulous ones, who comparatively, of all the girls I’d everseen on Long Island, were the most glamorous—or rather, they seemed to be having themost fun with it. But they were so serious about their look.
Subtlety, to these girls, was a waste of time and flavor. They were terminally tanned.
Their heavily highlighted hair was coiffed within an inch of its life, every ringlet, puff, andbang sprayed into obedience. Their makeup was bright, flashy, and perfectly applied. Theywore their fingernails long and did. Some even had nail art: a line of tiny gold studs, ortheir initials in crystals on a perfect, thick, bright white “French”—major.
We all had to wear a uniform of a drab maroon button-up smock with white pants andhideous, chunky white nurse shoes. But these girls would not have their flamboyancehidden. They wore their smocks open, revealing the leggings and boys’ ribbed white tanktops with fancy, lacy bras they featured underneath. And, of course, there was the jewelry:
thick and thin gold link chains in flat, herringbone, and rope styles with Italian horns,crosses, and initial pendants dangling from them layered on their necks, hoops in theirears, and delicate gold and diamond rings on every finger.
They were so adult to me. They were obviously already having sex—obviously notonly because they carried their bodies in a particular way but because they let everybodyknow it. They talked easily and openly about sex (which was secretly shocking to me).
They called themselves “Guidettes,” and I had no idea what that meant, but I thought itwas cool they had a name, like a singing group or something.
They would roll up to the beauty school in flashy cars, bumping WBLS, the urbandance radio station—ooh, if they only knew we called it the “Black Liberation Station”—loud. And of course I knew every song, and I would sing them—like Jocelyn Brown’s“Somebody Else’s Guy” (I quite enjoyed laying into the big, slow vocals at the beginning)or “Ain’t Nothin’ Goin On But the Rent” by Gwen Guthrie. The girls loved it, and myteacher hated it, because I was always singing, blowing out notes rather than doingblowouts.
It was my singing and constant popping of jokes that won these flashy teen princessesover, because I was from another school, and I hadn’t formed my own confident look—Iwas not quite cool clique material. We did manage to do each other’s hair. Surprisingly,no one ever questioned me about my mixed texture, the thickness (or thinness) of my lips,or any of my features. I learned a lot from those girls. They helped me bring more volumeand energy to my hair and more gloss to my lips.
We had more in common than one would imagine. There’s always been anunderground relationship between hip-hop and the mob in pop culture. We especiallyloved the style and swag of movies like The Godfather and Scarface. Later, I re-createdthe hot tub scene with Jay-Z for the “Heartbreaker” video. That video will always be oneof my favorites. I enjoyed paying homage to Elvira, Michelle Pfeiffer’s character, thetortured and trapped wife, who had a spectacular home and sexy designer clothes (I couldrelate).
Though I did try, it turned out that I was bound to be a beauty school dropout. Most ofthe girls in my class were really focused and had talent for the field. They were destined todo hair. Thankfully, I had another sweet destiny waiting for me, because I certainly wouldnever be crowned queen of finger waves.
I could have never imagined just a few years after my five hundred hours with theGuidettes, I’d be at the altar with one of the most powerful men in the music industry—anItalian, no less. I hadn’t been looking for anyone romantically. I certainly wasn’t lookingfor a husband. And I most definitely wasn’t looking to marry Tommy, but it happenedanyway. And what a happening it was. Once I said yes to the marriage, I thought, Hey, wemight as well make it an event—an EXTRAVAGANZA! As with any project or productionI’m involved with, I wanted to bring as much optimism and festiveness to it as possible.
Tommy was also enthusiastic about the potential pomp and circumstance we could create.
He focused on curating the most influential and impressive audience—I mean, guest list—he could.
Clearly, there was no family or mother of the bride running the show here. Lord knowsthis task was way beyond anything my mother could ever comprehend. Besides, thiswedding was designed to be an entertainment-industry spectacle; even a capable mother orsister couldn’t manage the production we were going to put on. The wife of one ofTommy’s colleagues, who was a socially well-connected middle-aged woman, was giventhe role of production coordinator. She helped me with all the major details, such as thedress.
That dress was an event unto itself. My coordinator was friends with one of the mostprominent female fashion designers of the era, whose specialty was bridal. It seemed like Ispent as much time in her showroom for fittings as I did in the studio for an entire album.
There were at least ten fittings—crazy for a girl who, not so long before, had only hadthree shirts in rotation.
Of course, I was inspired by Princess Diana. Who wasn’t? She was an inspiring figure!
I loved that wedding, and really it was my only reference point for how a wedding shouldlook. I didn’t grow up looking at bridal magazines, and besides, the royals know how tothrow a good wedding—obviously. In the end, nearly every princess element or symbolimaginable could be found in that dress. The crème silk fabric was so fine, it seemed toglow. The sweetheart neckline swooped gracefully off the shoulder before blooming intoexaggerated poof sleeves. The structured bodice was intricately encrusted with crystalsand beads exploding into an enormous ball gown skirt, kept afloat by layers upon layers ofcrinolines. But the most notable feature was the ultra-dramatic twenty-seven-foot train,which required its own team of handlers. Affixed to a diamond tiara was an equally longveil. Syd Curry twirled my curls to tumble down like Rapunzel’s, and Billy B did my face,serving up both glamorous ingenue and Belle of the Ball. I had come a long way fromCinderella of the Shack. The bouquet was unforgettable: a cascade of roses and orchids,studded with various all-white blossoms romantically tangled with vines of ivy. A smalltroupe of little girls threw white petals at my feet.
Tommy did not disappoint on his assignment either—the casting was impressive. Theguest list included heavy hitters from Barbra Streisand to Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joeland Christie Brinkley—even Ozzy Osbourne and Dick Clark! To top it all off, his bestman was Robert De Niro! Though my bridesmaids included my longtime and trustedfriends Josefin and Clarissa, they brought me no comfort. No one could. I was deathlyafraid.
I hardly remember the ceremony at the majestic Saint Thomas Church (we needed avenue that could accommodate the drama of the dress, after all).
I remember our song was “You and I (We Can Conquer the World)” by StevieWonder, because I chose it, of course. I recall my face shaking involuntarily at the altar.
But the moment those church doors opened up onto Fifth Avenue, I heard the roar ofscreams and saw the hordes of fans flooding every inch of sidewalk as far as the eye couldsee, camera flashes popping like fireworks. I walked down the stairs and smiled at them.
For me, my wedding wasn’t for all those rich and famous people I barely knew. It wasn’tfor my distant, dysfunctional family (though I do fondly remember my grandfather, bythen in the grips of dementia, lovingly yelling my name like he was on the block:
“Mariah! Mariah!”) To me, the wedding spectacle was mostly for the fans, and we gavethem the fabulous moment they deserved.
There was a star-studded reception at the Metropolitan Club (I liked the venue becauseit had “MC” monogrammed everywhere, but we didn’t mention that to TM) that I barelyremember. I was exhausted. It had taken so much energy just to plan the thing and then getthrough it.
The night before I’d had a girls- only sleepover at the Mark Hotel. I was clearlyconflicted. My friends knew I didn’t even really believe in the institution of marriage, andyet here I was about to put on this major show with a man who was already showingdangerous signs, professionally and personally. He would become my next of kin; thestifling hot mess of a relationship that I was already in with him would only become morefoul and imbalanced.
“You don’t have to do this,” they all said. But I truly believed I had to. I saw no wayout. I didn’t know what else to do. I’d learned how to endure disappointment and carry on,to make the best of things and keep working. I certainly knew how to live with fear. Ididn’t know life without fear.
Tommy and I pulled off the wedding. The next day we flew to Hawaii. I can’t, in goodconscience, refer to what we did as a “honeymoon.” It was not sweet. It was not dreamy.
At. All. We were staying at someone’s house, which was already pretty lackluster. I didn’treally care that much, since my relationship with Tommy was never about romance, butstill, it was technically my “honey moon-ish”?…Thankfully, the house was on the beach, and being near the ocean is always a comfortto me. The next day I had gone to the bathroom to change into a swimsuit when I heardTommy ranting on speakerphone. I could tell he was arguing. Great.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. He was on the phone with his very high- poweredpublicist, who was going ballistic, screaming and cursing because he didn’t want ourwedding photos on the cover of People, as we’d planned. The publicist was tellingTommy that it wasn’t appropriate for his executive image. His image? I mean, why gothrough all of that grandiosity for some little corner picture, as the publicist was urging? Ishared this opinion with him and Tommy. The publicist exploded.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” he yelled at me.
Tommy didn’t come to my defense. So here I was, twentyish, on my honeymoon-ishwith a fiftyish- year- old man screaming and cursing at me over the phone while myfortyish husband sat there, not doing a damned thing about it. And to top it all off, I wasright! Of course our wedding should have been a big cover story. It was planned that way—this was show business!
While the two angry men yelled at each other and me like children, I broke out cryingand broke out of that house. I just started running aimlessly down the beach, tearsstreaming down my face. We hadn’t even digested the wedding cake, and here we wereagain, back to bickering, back to raging, back to me being dismissed and outpowered.
Nothing had changed or calmed down. I just ran, not knowing where I was going.
Eventually I came upon a hotel with a beachside bar. Perfect, I thought, I could use adrink.
But when I sat down I realized that I had left empty-handed. I didn’t have a phone or apurse, no cash, no card, no ID. I couldn’t even get myself a sympathy drink to cry into.
With my hair bunched up in a topknot, wearing nothing but a bikini and a sarong, I lookedlike a thousand lonely young women on the beach, not like a famous pop star who hadsold millions of records worldwide. I most certainly didn’t look like a honeymooningbride. If anyone did recognize me, they left me alone—and no one could imagine howalone I felt.
I asked to use the phone and made a collect call to my manager (remember when youhad to memorize important phone numbers?). I asked him to give the bartender a creditcard number so I could at least get a drink. I ordered some sweet and sorry frozen daiquiri.
I sipped on it and listened to the waves crashing on the shore as the reality of the situationbegan to sink in.
Eventually I made my way back down the beach and to the house. But I knew the drill.
Once again Tommy and I would sit in silence, after all was said and done. The little bit ofhope I’d had that getting married would change him washed away like footprints in thesand. That was the day I began to hold my breath and resist the undertow of Tommy.
THANKSGIVING IS CANCELLED!
THANKSGIVING IS CANCELLED!
And I missed a lot of life, but I’ll recoverThough I know you really like to see me sufferStill I wish that you and I’d forgive each other’Cause I miss you, Valentine, and really loved you—“Petals”
I called him T. D. Valentine. That was his stage name back in the day when he fanciedhimself a musician. He loved music, that much is true, and he found a way to have alifelong affair with it. As I’ve said, our mutual love of music, ambition, and power wascompletely intertwined with our personal relationship. Music was the relationship, but tryas we might, that couldn’t make it a marriage. I sincerely believed in my heart I would bewith Tommy forever. But my sanity and soul would not surrender to my heart, and themarriage swiftly began to harm me on an emotional and spiritual level.
There was a popular mythology that I was some sophisticated gold digger who baggeda big-time hit maker who was now bankrolling my princess lifestyle—that I was justsitting pretty on a throne in my thirty-million-dollar mansion. The wedding certainly gavethat illusion, and that’s all it was, an illusion. If there was any perception of a fairy-talemarriage or life, it was absolutely smoke and mirrors. The ironclad safety that Tommyprovided from my family turned into an ironclad dungeon.
The control and imbalance of power in our relationship accelerated. My manager wasa childhood friend of his. His preferred security was the tough guy he idolized from hisschool days (even though I towered over him when in heels). Everyone whose job it wasto look after me had deep connections to him. I was very young and inexperienced whenTommy met me; he knew so much more about a lot of things, especially the musicbusiness. But I knew some things he didn’t know too, particularly when it came to trendsand popular culture, which I suspect made him feel threatened. He seemed threatened byanything he couldn’t control.
Even the idea of me doing something he couldn’t control would send him into anirrational tailspin. One prime, ridiculous example: once, there was a copy ofEntertainment Weekly on our kitchen table in Sing Sing. In it was a short piece wherein awriter mused about the idea of a modern remake of All About Eve starring Diana Ross asMargo Channing and me as Eve Harrington—genius! Of course, I adored the originalmovie, not only for the glamour and the iconic performances but also because MarilynMonroe had a small but delicious part as Miss Casswell, a gorgeous, ambitious actress.
Tommy read the article and got pissed—at me! Somehow he found a way to blame mefor someone else’s fantasy of casting me in a movie (which didn’t even have a love scene,for God’s sake!). As if he were an overbearing father or warden, his anger would permeatethe house and rattle my whole being. I got in trouble (yes, “trouble,” because I felt soinfantilized by him) for the mere suggestion, made by someone else, of me doingsomething beyond his control.
The gap between our tastes and instincts in music and pop culture was more divisivethan the gap between our ages. In the late eighties and through the midnineties, UptownRecords, led by the late and legendary Andre Harrell, was the label for R & B, hip-hop,and the hybrid that would become known as New Jack Swing. Uptown had Heavy D &the Boyz, Guy (featuring Teddy Riley), Jodeci, Mary J. Blige, and Father MC. FatherMC’s album was one of my favorites. Mary J. Blige was doing background vocals andhooks for him and he would also feature Jodeci-love. I would listen to them all the time.
Tommy would watch me listening. He knew to pay attention to what I was interested inbecause he knew my ear and instincts were sharp. But I knew he couldn’t feel it. Hecouldn’t fully grasp its cutting edge. He never really believed in the enduring culturalpower of hip-hop because he couldn’t fully understand it. He thought it was a passing fador trend.
One night, Tommy and I were out with a group of friends and major music executives,in a beautifully lit dining room in an Italian restaurant that served unforgettable warmfocaccia and was frequented by music industry illuminati. We were all seated around a bigtable. My friend Josefin was in from Sweden, and she and her new husband were amongthe guests, so it wasn’t completely a work dinner, but at this point my work, social, andpersonal lives were pretty much one and the same. Even our home had been largelydesigned for conducting business and impressing partners (though my contemporaries’
main concern was where they could chill and smoke a spliff—of all the lavish roomsavailable, no surprise, we preferred the studio). We would sometimes host big, festivedinners there, some of which were both fun and fabulous, but they never felt like family.
Nothing feels like family when you are under surveillance, which I always was.
The midnineties were an exciting era in music, and I was part of a pioneeringgeneration of innovative young artists, songwriters, producers, and executives. We wereintent on making a new kind of sound, based in R & B and rap but unrestricted by oldformats and formulas. We were playing with new technologies and irreverently blendingfluid melodies with gritty hip-hop aesthetics and energy. The music we were making wasraw and smooth at the same time, and we were the only ones who knew how to make itwork. It was our sound, a reflection of our time and our sensibilities.
My former manager was also with us at the restaurant. The conversation drifted toPuffy aka Sean aka P. Diddy, who had recently left Uptown Records, where he’d startedas an intern, eventually becoming head of A&R. Now he already had his own record label,Bad Boy, and his star artist, the Notorious B.I.G., was all over the radio and beginning tospread all over a generation. The then head of Epic Records turned to me and asked, “Sowhat do you think of this guy, Puffy? What do you think is going on with him? Do youlike his music?”
He directed the question to me because I was the youngest person at the table. I alsoloved and understood hip-hop, and I was the only artist there. Besides, I’d recently workedwith Puff as a producer. The table got quiet as I leaned in and gave my honest assessment:
that Puff and Bad Boy were definitely where modern music was headed.
Not too long before, at our kitchen table, Tommy had shared his own opinion with meand my nephew Shawn: “Puffy will be shining my shoes in two years.” I was stunned.
Wait. What did he say? It was one of the very few times I stood up to Tommy, telling himthat what he had said was blatantly racist. I was pissed. Shawn had never seen me talkback to him; he was shocked that I showed my anger and became genuinely concerned formy safety. So many people were then.
But that night at the restaurant, what could have been a robust discussion betweenindustry leader and artist about global culture and the future of American pop musicbecame an epic Tommy tantrum instead. As I was finishing my answer, I saw his eyesflash with familiar rage. He jumped up from the table and began pacing, huffing andpuffing around the restaurant. He was so livid he couldn’t contain himself. The entire tablesat in silence as we looked at one another, not knowing what the actual fuck was wrongwith him (this time) or what we should do. The whole restaurant witnessed Tommy tryingto walk himself back down off a ledge only he could see. Finally, he stormed back. Stillvibrating with rage, he slammed his fist on the table and announced, “I just wanteverybody to know that THANKSGIVING IS CANCELLED!” Um, okay.
We were planning to have a festive Thanksgiving dinner party at Sing Sing, butbecause I had dared to give my honest, autonomous opinion, in public, to someone headmired (who had asked me what I thought), he was going to shut down the fun. As if itwere my ten-year-old birthday party. Even then, it was laughable, the hubris with whichhe declared a national holiday cancelled. Like, who was going to call Frank Perdue? ByGod, who was going to recall all the Butterballs?! I’d been asked a direct question. Whatwas I supposed to do, sit there like a dummy and not answer the man? It was all justridiculous.
What wasn’t funny was knowing how I would be punished for my transgression on thehourlong ride home. Something came over me that night, and I decided I wasn’t going totake the hit for something that wasn’t my fault, again. This night, I would not be lockedup in Tommy’s Range Rover torture chamber and sent back to prison in Bedford. Idecided I was not going to leave with him under any circumstances. I realized I was takinga huge, frightening risk, but because we were in a public place, with a table full ofwitnesses, I took a gamble, thinking he wouldn’t make a bigger scene and I might be safe.
He sat at the table stewing and staring at me. I perched nervously in my chair, my legliterally quivering under the white linen tablecloth, but still full of conviction. Somehow, Istared back. Not this night. There was no fucking way I was taking that car ride with himin that state. It was a tense standoff, and everyone at the table was freaked out. They werescared for me; they were scared for themselves. Everybody was always scared of Tommy!
But I held my position, and finally Tommy walked out alone. Even though he and I bothknew there would still be people following me and reporting back to him, this stand was amonumental move on my part. Out of respect for our privacy, the chef and proprietoragreed to let me discreetly exit through the kitchen. Josefin and I went out to a little club(which was an enormous step for me) to shake it off and have a few cocktails, then wewent to a hotel to get a decent night’s sleep. It was my first sip of freedom—and howthirsty I was for more.
’Cause it’s my night
No stress, no fights
I’m leaving it all behind?…
No tears, no time to cry
Just makin’ the most of life
—It’s Like That
The night Tommy “cancelled” Thanksgiving was the first time I stood up for myselfand resisted his orders. He never allowed me to have a voice of my own; exhibiting theslightest bit of agency or independent thought seemed to threaten and emasculate him. Ihad no control over his control. I was the voice of the label, making all kinds of profits andshares for him, and yet I couldn’t have a voice at the dinner table. But I wouldn’t allowmyself to be cancelled.
FANTASY
FANTASY
While Tommy would never relinquish control over my life, at a certain point he did beginto make concessions when it came to the production of the music. He always respected meas a songwriter; he was a music man and knew good lyrics and melody structure.
However, not only was I outgrowing some of the producers he had attached to me, so wasthe music industry. I always resisted their push to make me fit in a neat mainstream “adultcontemporary” category. Adult contemporary was what he knew, it was what his guysknew, and I really knew it too. I could write big pop hits like “Hero.” I could writeBroadway-style tunes. Whatever the occasion required, I could make it happen. But Iwanted to make more of my own music with a more modern sound. They kept trying tosmooth me out while I just wanted to get a little more rough. I wanted to add dynamicsand broaden my reach. And, of course, there was a racial and cultural dimension that camewith integrating hip- hop — it was a Black art form. Unlike jazz (which Tommyappreciated) or gospel, hip-hop was radical, raw, and in your face. It was not designed tomake middle-aged white men feel cool. Hip-hop didn’t really need his kind of “hit maker”
anymore, and I think it threatened him by endangering his power. And yet he couldn’tdeny the evidence. My instincts were making hits. So he stopped fighting me so much onthe samples, artists, and producers I wanted to work with.
I knew hip- hop added exciting, young energy to almost any other sound if donecorrectly. I knew Puff would be the perfect producing partner for the “Fantasy Remix” Iwas dreaming about. I was so happy with what producer Dave “Jam” Hall and I had donewith the single. For the sample, I chose “Genius of Love” by the Tom Tom Club. It was aperfect fun, swinging party song, but I knew it could go to even more interesting places.
We kept the Tom Tom Club sample for the remix, even emphasizing and bringing it outfurther. Puff was pretty enthusiastic about my idea of featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard from theWu-Tang Clan—that was the real genius of love.
The suits at the “corporate morgue” weren’t crazy about O.D.B. They actually thoughthe was certifiably crazy and that I was about to throw my entire fan base into shock.
Tommy generally considered rap background noise, and had no idea that O.D.B. wasabout to bring the noise to “Fantasy.” They didn’t understand how diverse my fans were,nor did they understand the global impact of the Wu-Tang Clan (I mean “Up from the 36Chambers!”—come on!). Wu-Tang was a movement, a once-in-a-generation type ofgroup, and O.D.B. was such an extra-special member. I truly believed he would bringsomething incredible to the remix. Puff got the vision and ran with it. There were also acouple of cool A&R folks who helped me smuggle in one of the greatest rap features of alltime.
Of course, the session for O.D.B. was late in the evening, and after I was swooped upby Tommy and brought back to Sing Sing for the night. I had taken a bath, which hadbecome for me a kind of reverse baptismal ritual by which I transitioned from youngglobal recording artist back to caged Westchester wife. I slipped into a white silknightgown, tiptoed across the white wool carpeting of the master bedroom, and climbedinto our opulent bed, outfitted with 1,000 thread count white Egyptian sheets and whatseemed like a hundred white down pillows.
Tommy was already in bed in his white cotton pajamas. His side of the bed seemed amillion miles away. The sterility had become routine. Suddenly the phone rang. Ianswered and started to squeal with excitement. Someone from the studio called to reportO.D.B. had completed his session. “Wait, wait,” I said, “let me put you on speaker.” Ipressed speakerphone for Tommy to hear:
Yo, New York in the house
Is Brooklyn in the house?
Uptown in the house
Shaolin, are you in the house?
Boogie Down, are you in the house?
Sacramento in the house
Atlanta, Georgia, are you in the house?
West Coast, are you in the house?
Japan, are you in the house?
Everybody, are you in the house?
Baby, baby come on
Baby come on, baby come on!
Wheeeeeeeeeee! I couldn’t contain myself. I may have even started jumping up anddown on the bed! Then I heard the next lines: “Me and Mariah go back like babies withpacifiers! Old Dirt Dog no liar. Keeping fantasy hot like fire!”
That was IT! Ol’ Dirty Bastard spit crazy brilliance and scorched our pristine whitebedroom with the grime and righteous fun I’d been craving! It kept going, and all hiscrazy ad-libs sent me into euphoric giggles. I reveled in it. I was just screaming andlaughing and whooping. But then I looked over at Tommy. His head was cocked to theside with a look of confusion he couldn’t contain.
“The fuck is that?” he blurted. “I can do that. Get the fuck outta here with that.” Thereit was. That was what he had to say about one of the most unique, amazing things I hadever heard! I think he was in shock, or maybe he did think he could do it and that all of uswere nuts. It was as if the Starship Enterprise had beamed me into another galaxy, far, faraway from Tommy. Music was our only true bond, and now we were light-years apart.
Now, I was crazy about “Fantasy Remix.” It was one of the first of my songs that Iplayed over and over before it was out on the radio. I’d play it on the ride back to Bedford(I’m sure Tommy loved that). It felt like all the fun I had missed out on in my childhood. Itmade me feel happy. O.D.B.’s energy was something everyone could relate to—he wasyour loving, fun-ass uncle who gets drunk at all the festivities, at Christmas dinner, thecookout, Thanksgiving. O.D.B. and Puff just really helped me create something enduringthat all kinds of people connected to. That remix gave us lines and feelings we would useforever. He even brought back Donny and Marie Osmond with “I’m a little bit country,I’m a little bit rock ’n’ roll!” Like what made him bust out and sing that? Genius. Andnow when I’m singing it onstage and we have his vocals, it sounds like he’s saying “I’m alittle bit Roc and Roe”—that always gets me.
Making the “Fantasy” video was really important to me too. I wanted it to feel fun andcarefree. In my opinion (which was so rarely considered) almost all of my videos weren’tright. Tommy never allowed me to work with the directors I wanted, the hot ones at thetime, like Herb Ritts, or the cool fashion stylists, who would bring an edge to my look;these were creative people he couldn’t completely control. His package for me was somainstream, but this one, there was no homogenizing this one. Necessity is the mother ofinvention, right? So, since I couldn’t have a director I wanted to work with, I decided todirect the video myself. It was a simple concept: young, fun, and free. It was shot onlocation at Westchester’s Playland Park in Rye, New York. Everyone can relate to the joyand abandon of an amusement park, the feeling of throwing your hands up in the air on theroller coaster. That’s the pure fun I wanted to capture. Simple elements, like roller-bladingcute kids, bright colors, cutoff shorts, and a clown. There was a night dance sequence witha crew of fresh B-boys and that was pretty much it. That was the pop version. For theremix video, I wanted O.D.B. to do for the video what he had done on the song: bring azany, grimy element to it.
The day of O.D.B.’s shoot was overcast, and we had one simple setup for him on theboardwalk. I went into his dressing room for our first face-to-face meeting bearing a gift—a silver flask engraved with his initials. We talked over the concept—which, again, waspretty simple, because I didn’t want anything to overshadow his performance (as if it werepossible for anything to upstage O.D.B.). I told him about the idea of tying the clown upon the pole and really featuring his grills. He was down with all the action, but he hadsome kind of problem with his wardrobe and wanted a wig.
“I want a wig,” he kept saying, “like one of them mothafuckas from the sixties. LikeAl Green. I’m like this generation’s Al Green.”
“Oooooh, I don’t know about Al Gweeeeen, but you definitely are somethingincredible,” I respectfully responded. He was already in his full-blown drunk uncle mode.
I had to send the stylist out to the mall with him so he could get exactly what he wasenvisioning. Mind you, we were in Westchester (it was my video, but I was still inTommy’s territory).
When they returned, after an hour or two, the stylist was a wreck. Apparently, O.D.B.
was singing and shouting and “woahhhhhhhing” and drankin’ all through the mall! But hislook was perfect, the elongated and baggy proportions were just right for his dancing andweird, wonderful movements. He used his sleeves and his hood as props. It was spot on.
And the scene where he’s bare-chested in the straight mushroom wig, with the pointyshades—he was giving a little more Ike Turner than Al Green, but whatever it was, it wasunforgettable! His performance was all him, and it was perfect. I know O.D.B. had somereal trouble on his soul, but he brought nothing but joy to the remix, to the video, and tomy world.
R.I.P. O.D.B.
“Fantasy” was a big record. It was the first single to debut at number one on the BillboardHot 100 in history by a female artist and the second artist to ever do it (the first wasMichael Jackson with “You’re Not Alone”). It held the top spot for eight consecutiveweeks and remained on the charts for a total of twenty-three weeks. It was my ninthnumber-one single. Even the critics liked “Fantasy” and the remix (some really liked it)—the entire Daydream album did amazingly well: certified diamond. As an album it hadsome really special enduring singles, like “Always Be My Baby” and, of course, “OneSweet Day,” whose lyrics and music I cowrote with Boyz II Men, inspired by the passingof my incredible friend and collaborator David Cole and their tour manager, both of whomdied too soon. “One Sweet Day” was the longest running number-one single in Americanhistory for twenty-three years.
I was set to perform “Fantasy” and do some other bits at the twenty-third annualAmerican Music Awards, where I was nominated in several categories. It was a big nightfor me, but winning the best female pop artist and best female R & B artist awards was notthe most memorable moment for me.
When I wasn’t onstage or waiting in the wings I sat in the front row next to Tommy.
We were both outfitted in couture tension (the cover shoot of Daydream by photographerSteven Meisel, who was arguably the most prominent in the fashion industry at the time,set the look of the chic black- is- the- new- black style for the tone of the album’spromotion). Ironically, my outfit for this performance was giving you pseudo “MilitantMariah” vibes, with black leather pants, a black leather trench coat, and a black turtleneck(I’m sure Tommy liked it because the only skin exposed was my face). Maybe it was apremonition of what was ahead.
Because I had more than just the “Fantasy” performance to do that night, I had a trailerbehind the Shrine Auditorium for wardrobe changes and such. I was returning to the trailerto get into another ensemble. Security was everywhere, so I didn’t need to be followed forthe short walk to where all the artists’ trailers were parked behind the theater.
As I stepped out in a complete rush to get back to the stage, I noticed a white Rolls-Royce quietly, slowly approaching. Just as my toes touched the asphalt, the gleamingelegant vehicle came to a gentle stop right in front of my door. It was as if time itself hadslowed to a stop. The tinted passenger window glided down.
He was alone, leaning back in the driver’s seat, so that the arm that gripped the leathersteering wheel was nearly straight. He propped his head back just enough that hisluxurious eyelashes didn’t cast a shadow and obscure his alert and amazing dark eyes thatlooked into mine.
“Hey, Mariah,” he said softly, my name pouring out of his lips like smoke. Then thatspectacular smile burst through everything. In an instant, the window went back up, andTupac rolled away.
Had it not been for a production assistant or someone calling me back to the stage,back to earth, I may have stayed there stunned for hours. I did my bit onstage and returnedto my stiff seat next to Tommy. My heart fluttered nervously, but he didn’t know. No oneknew. I’d just had Tupac Shakur’s eyez all on me.
Though I was recording Daydream, parts of my life were still quite a nightmare. I waswriting and singing upbeat songs like “Always Be My Baby,” and sweeping ballads like“One Sweet Day.” I was totally inspired by the creative risk we took in collaborating withO.D.B. on the “Fantasy” remix. I was exploring my musical range, but I was also filledwith rage. It’s always been a challenge for me to acknowledge and express anger. Mypersonal life was suffocating during Daydream, and I was in desperate need of a release.
Music and humor have been my two great releases—they have been how I survived allthe anguish in my life. So while I had a full band and studio time at the Hit Factory forthat album, I created an alter-ego artist and her Ziggy Stardust-like spoof band. Mycharacter was a dark-haired brooding Goth girl (a version of her, Bianca, showed up a fewyears later in the “Heartbreaker” video) who wrote and sang ridiculous tortured songs. Atthe end of each session I would go off to a corner and, without over-thinking it, quicklyscribble down some lyrics. In five minutes I’d have a song:
I am!
vinegar and water
I am!
Someone’s ugly daughter
I am wading in the water
And I ammm!
Like an open blister
I am!
Jack The Ripper’s Sister
I am!
Just a lonely drifter
I’d bring my little alt-rock song to the band and hum a silly guitar riff. They would pick itup and we would record it immediately. It was irreverent, raw, and urgent, and the bandgot into it. I actually started to love some of the songs. I would fully commit to mycharacter. I was playing with the style of the breezy-grunge, punk-light white femalesingers who were popular at the time. You know the ones who seemed to be so carefreewith their feelings and their image. They could be angry, angsty, and messy, with oldshoes, wrinkled slips, and unruly eyebrows, while every move I made was so calculatedand manicured. I wanted to break free, let loose, and express my misery—but I alsowanted to laugh.
I totally looked forward to doing my alter-ego band sessions after Daydream eachnight. Tommy was off in Italy a lot at the time, so I had a little space and air to do thisbizarre, fun thing that was just for me. The band loved it, and we ended up with analbum’s worth of songs, which we mixed and everything. My jokey “anger release”
project ended up being a weirdly good satirical, underground, alternative rock thing. WhenTommy and some of the other label folks heard it, they couldn’t believe we had done allthat while recording Daydream. I even got the art department at the label to design a coverI had conceptualized. I wrote the title with pink lipstick over a Polaroid picture Tommyhad taken of a giant dead cockroach in Italy. I told them to add a smashed-up eye shadowmakeup palette. They laid it out, and it was perfectly grungy and cheeky. I got a lot ofpersonal satisfaction out of making that “alternative” album. I made the sarcastic hardcorehead-banging record no one was ever going to allow me to make. My assistant and I usedto blast it in the car riding up the back streets of Westchester, singing at the top of ourlungs, giving me a brief moment to be outwardly angry, irreverent, and free.
There was a song on the album called “Crave” (that I eventually renamed“Demented”). Tommy knew I had a talent for recognizing talent, so he created a boutiquerecord label for me that I named Crave, inspired by the song.
The first act on the Crave label was a hip-hop group called the Negro League (theyhave cameos in “The Roof” video). They named themselves after famed Black baseballplayers like Satchel Paige and Cool Papa Bell, who’d had to form their own leaguebecause of segregation. They were young, fun, and all of them were fine. I just lovedrolling into a party with them—they would chant “NEGROES! NEGROES!” Nothingambiguous about that, dahling.
Later, when it became clear to Tommy that the marriage was not going to make it,Crave quickly became defunct, and the alt album conveniently disappeared. There wasone small, sweet residual benefit from Crave and the Negro League. I cast one of myfriends from the group as my shirtless, motorcycle- riding, lip- licking love interest inJermaine’s “Sweetheart” video. I called him “Flask” (which was close to his name)because he was so nervous on the flight over to Bilbao, Spain, that he drank and gotsmashed. But his hangover played well on film, emphasizing his already dreamy eyes. Hewas my sweetheart for a very short time right after a very tough breakup, which I’ll get tosoon enough. He was fun, fine, and just the thing to lick my wounds.
ONE SUMMER NIGHT, WE RAN AWAY FOR A WHILE?…
ONE SUMMER NIGHT, WE RAN AWAY FOR A WHILE?…

In the wake of the success of the “Fantasy” remix featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard I now hadsome ammunition that made it slightly easier for me to work with people outside ofTommy’s jurisdiction. I was starting to reach out to what I thought were the rightcollaborators, with whom I could achieve the sound I’d been hearing for a while, whichincluded infusing hip-hop and working with a diversity of rappers. However, the old guardof A&R and music executives at the major labels didn’t know how to control or containhip-hop and looked at me sideways for my suggestions.
Rap was making a lot of money really fast, so the smart execs raced to try to get apiece of it. And Tommy was no exception. He was smart. Though he’d always had a moretraditional pop/ adult contemporary style in mind for me, he couldn’t deny that theindustry and the audience were shifting. It was well established that Tommy didn’tparticularly like rap or rappers, but he was a shrewd businessman, and despite his initialresistance, he understood that I had my finger on the cultural pulse. I was determined formy next single to sound more like the music I was hearing in my head all day, the musicI’d been dreaming of. So began my work on Butterfly.
I had gotten to a place where I was trusted to choose people I was inspired by, not thepredicable players. One of the most talented was a suave and scrappy producer out ofAtlanta with a brilliant ear and instinct, Jermaine Dupri. Like me, Jermaine got in thegame early. He was fiercely ambitious and super talented; by the time he was nineteenyears old he’d discovered, developed, written, and produced multiplatinum hits for KrisKross and secured a joint-venture deal for a record label, SoSo Def Recordings, with Sonyand Columbia.
I was really inspired by the work he did on “Just Kickin’ It” with the fresh girl groupalso out of Atlanta—Xscape. It was intentionally “underproduced”; his track choices weresonically raw—just what I was looking for. Once I heard that song, I knew we shouldwork together. Jermaine—aka JD, aka Jermash (as I call him)—and I instantly creativelyclicked. As producers, we both had a fierce discipline in the studio, but we could alsoapproach the music with abandon, unafraid to try new things. We could focus and flowtogether. It was a rare relationship, and we knew it.
Our first collaboration was “Always Be My Baby,” on Daydream. It was the first songwe wrote together, but it was as if we’d done it a million times before. We sat in the studioand approached it like a blank canvas—sonically organic. With the gifted Manuel Seal onkeyboards, we created this cool, yet endearing, classic song.
In order to make the label happy, I had to deliver several versions of a single,including one that was up- tempo and simple, scrubbed of all ad- libs and “urbaninflections.” In order to make myself happy and make sure a song I liked could work forthe club kids (who have always given me life), I set aside time to make remixes,sometimes several on one song. I often did complete rewrites and all-new vocal tracksrather than recycling from the original—especially when I worked with David Morales.
We would completely re-envision a song. We often worked late at night, when I couldsteal a moment for myself. David would come to the studio, and I’d tell him he could dowhatever he wanted with the song. I’d have a couple splashes of wine, and we would justgo wherever the spirit took us—which were almost always high-energy dance tracks withbig, brand-new vocals. It was one way I found liberation while locked up in Sing Sing.
I had a remix idea for “Always Be My Baby” and asked JD to bring Xscape and a big,exciting young female rapper out of Chicago named Da Brat who had a hit record,“Funkdafied,” that JD had produced, to my studio. Knowing how smoothly JD and Iworked together, I calculated that we could bang out a remix and shoot a cool docu-stylevideo all in the same session. It was an efficient move. It was a very big feat to secure a hitrecord; you had to be strategic in your creative choices. We chose “Tell Me If You StillCare” by the S.O.S. Band as the sample, thinking that it would be palatable for a crossoveraudience, and then having Da Brat rap on it would make it appealing for a hip- hopaudience.
JD was down. I knew how I wanted the remix to sound, with Supremes- stylebackgrounds. I had to redo all the vocals ’cause it was in a different key. But becauseJermaine was so adept in the studio and so in tune with all of our styles, I knew he couldbring it all together. The session was set—So So Def was coming to Sing Sing.
As you approach the grounds of Sing Sing, a security station sits to the right, obscured bytrees. Inside were multiple screens connected to all the cameras throughout the house andon the property. JD made his way up the long driveway toward the enormous house thatrose like a castle from a thick, fluffy blanket of glistening snow. He wasn’t prepared forsuch grandeur. I didn’t realize the rare air I was orbiting in until I caught that moment ofrecognition on JD’s face when he stepped out of the car. The scale and opulence of themansion suggested not simply “music star” but the next stratosphere. Sing Sing wassupersized. It was the physical representation of the combined power and influence of meand Tommy, a music-industry power couple. And in that moment, we were the music-industry power couple. When he got to the massive front door, Jermaine looked likeRichard Pryor in The Wiz. Honestly, the whole lot of us looked like a group of childrenplaying in a fairy-tale kingdom. But in actuality it was more like visiting day “upstate.”
The joy was temporary.
It was refreshing and a much-welcomed reprieve to have a group of fresh artists at myhouse to create something we would love and respect. These were my peers, steeped inhip-hop music and culture—and we were down to make a hit. Though we were all veryyoung, collectively we were worth hundreds of millions of dollars in record sales. Butonce you walked through the gates of Sing Sing, that didn’t mean much. We were now allunder surveillance. JD, Xscape, and Da Brat took note of the excessive presence ofbodyguards and security, but it wasn’t immediately clear to them exactly who or what theywere guarding.
Jermaine was so focused and serious, he went straight to the studio to get acclimatedand organized. He sat at the console, in full command, like the captain of a spaceship.
While he worked on the beat, the girls from Xscape and I vibed and talked through themechanics of the background vocals. It was probably the first time I ever had five womenclose to my age at my house. Xscape was Kandi Burruss, Tameka “Tiny” Cottle, andTamika and LaTocha Scott. With their elaborate Atlanta hairstyles, glossy lips, andoversized sportswear, they were super fly and fully captured the glamorous-yet-chill lookof women in hip-hop during those years. Their sound and style was exactly the right vibefor the remix and video. I wanted us all to look easy and real, not manipulated by“development executives.”
From the studio you could see the massive French windows, which led to the indoorpool area with its museumlike high ceilings. On clear days the reflection of clouds wouldfloat on the water’s surface from the outdoor pool, which was beyond the walls. From theoutdoor pool you could see the pond, and from there, on a clear night, you could catch thetwinkling lights of Manhattan way in the distance. We hung out in the marble room withthe pool, playing cards, drinking, cracking jokes—almost like actual girlfriends.
And then there was Da Brat. Her energy was irresistible; I adored her, instantly. I wasvery reserved around new people back then. I had become shy, and it took me a long timeto trust (it still does), but Brat broke right through the wall of my fearful past, on day one.
We had kindred, childlike spirits, only Brat fearlessly flaunted her little-girl soul, while Iwas desperately hiding mine. A lot of effort, strategy, and money went into creating myclassic-storybook-princess fa?ade, but Brat, with all her irreverent adolescent spirit, armedin a big puffy coat and little braids and barrettes, burst right through my bubble. By thispoint, my life was so controlled by Tommy and his cronies, I could barely see it anymore.
But Brat, with her spontaneity, brashness, and cool-assness, spotted my inner little girlright away and shook her awake.
Brat was from the West Side of Chicago and was clearly mesmerized by the extranessof Sing Sing. There was absolutely no posturing from her; she walked right in the doorlike, “Dayyyyumm!” I took her on a tour of the house. She never tried to contain herwonder as we ran from room to room. But we were not alone—security was always rightthere behind us, like a shadow. When we moved, they moved. For the past four years I hadbeen constantly working on such an intense level. I had so many decisions to make, somany people counting on me and looking to me for answers and a payday. If I had any“free” time, I spent it with Tommy or people his age, people on his payroll. I hadn’t hadany real fun in such a long time, and Da Brat was a one-woman party.
I just wanted to have fun, but I knew we were being watched and listened to. Therewere cameras and recording devices throughout the house. I wasn’t sure where they wereall planted—but I knew of at least one place they weren’t.
Our next stop on the tour was the master bedroom. Brat was so funny; she squealedwhen she saw the giant television screen rise, as if by a magic trick, from a case at the footof our elaborate bed. Brat was no girlie girl—she was wearing oversized jeans, a poloshirt, and Timberland boots—but I made a big deal out of showing her my Coco Chanel-inspired closet and insisted she see my massive fancy shoe collection. I knew if I could gether in the shoe room, security wouldn’t see us; I’d designed it and was pretty sure therewere no cameras or listening devices among my Manolos. I chatted loudly about stilettoesas I slowly closed the door.
We sat on the floor of my shoe closet and kicked it for a bit. We were both Aries, bothsuper silly, and both believed in an awesome God. I was having so much fun with Brat,but I knew we couldn’t stay hidden for too long; surely security would get suspicious andexpose my one safe room in the house.
I never knew who was listening, so I whispered to Brat, “Want to go get some frenchfries?” In any other reality, this would have been a mundane suggestion, but in mine, itwas about to be a full-scale caper.
As we emerged from the closet, I put my finger to my mouth and pointed at the wall,giving her the signal to be quiet and follow my lead. I chirped on about showing heraround the rest of the property, then announced that I wanted to quickly show her the cars.
We skipped along to the garage. Inside there was a fleet of cars. Several of them weremine, most of which I never drove, in part because I was always being driven. I pointed atthe black Mercedes convertible and told Brat to get in quickly. I always kept the keysinside the car, so in a matter of seconds I had the engine going. I threw it into gear, and wewhipped around the cul-de-sac, then sped down the driveway and out onto the open road.
Suddenly, there I was: flying down the street in my sports car, with my new, coolhomegirl, laughing deep and loud in the bright wintery afternoon sun. It was exhilarating.
Brat and I had broken out da Big House!
While we were out playing Black Thelma and Louise, Escape from Alcatraz was notplaying so well back at Storybook Manor. I understood that security was necessary, butwhy was it necessary for them all to be white, with blue eyes and black guns? They weregoing berserk. Before we got the mile or so down the road to the Burger King, Brat’sphone began to ring. I could hear JD yelling on the other end: “Yo, Brat, get the fuck backhere; they going crazy!”
Brat laughed into the phone and replied, “I ain’t driving; Mariah is!” But JD wasclearly upset.
“This ain’t fucking funny,” he said. “Tommy is bugging out; he got everybody runningaround looking for y’all; they got guns out and shit!”
Brat shot back, “Damn, we just going to get french fries, JD! If Mariah wants frenchfries, we getting fucking french fries!” She abruptly slammed her phone shut, and weproceeded to Burger King.
For the twenty or so minutes, while Brat and I sat in the car eating those fries andcracking jokes, I reveled in the simple excitement of being young. I’ll never forget it.
Jermaine must have called every five minutes, begging us to come back. He went frombeing angry and annoyed to being nervous to being afraid. Brat was quickly realizing howserious our momentary escape had been. With every ring, she looked at me withincreasing concern and sadness. We were really only a mile away, and people werepanicking.
She said something like, “This ain’t right. This is your shit, Mariah. Jermaine, Xscape—we all here because of you. You done sold millions of records, girl. You live in a damnpalace. You have everything, but if you can’t be free to go to fucking Burger King whenyou want, you ain’t got nothing. You need to get out of there.” This time she wasn’tlaughing. If Da Brat, a nineteen-year-old female rapper from the West Side, is afraid foryou, you know the situation has got to be dire, dahling.
When we pulled up to the property, there were more than ten security personnelstanding outside, preparing two large black SUVs to go on a search. They stopped mebefore I could get up the driveway to the garage, as if I was a fugitive crossing the border.
I was promptly whisked back into the house and back into the studio—back into mytower, my jail.
JD was visibly shaken. My spontaneous, mischievous little scheme had had realconsequences for him. I hadn’t brought my phone, so security had no way of contactingme. There would be hell to pay from Tommy for such sloppy surveillance. WhileJermaine was in the studio, concentrating on laying down the beat for the track, securityhad busted in and interrogated him, with their guns out in broad daylight. I assume theyfigured that since Jermaine was the producer, Brat was his artist, so he was in charge, hewas responsible. They yelled at him: “Where is she? Tell us where she is!” Of course, hehad no idea where we were. He was working. He was at my studio. This was the first timehe’d been at my house. He was only twenty-three years old.
After Tommy was assured of my safe return, the situation settled down. Brat rolled afat blunt, but God knows she couldn’t smoke it around me, so she just held on to itthroughout the shoot, like a security blanket, and began to work on her rap for the remix.
Her nerves were a bit of a wreck now too. In addition to everything else, she probably feltguilty we had caused such drama while recording her first big rap feature with me. Butwhen the mic was hot and the camera was rolling, Da Brat killed it. Her delivery washappy and hard, playing with clever references and sophisticated rhythms inside the spaceof the song:
Who rocks your Music Box
And breaks down your structure
You fantasize as you visualize me as your DreamloverFuck with your Emotions Unplugged in your Daydream—“Always Be My Baby (Remix)”
We got it done: a remix, a video, and a prison break all in one day. You would never knowfrom the video I directed that we were surrounded by armed security. I was a master atediting out the pressure.
SIDE EFFECTS
SIDE EFFECTS
I was a girl, you were “the man”
I was too young to understand
I was na?ve
I just believed
Everything that you told me
Said you were strong, protecting me
Then I found out that you were weak
Keeping me there under your thumb
’Cause you were scared that I’d become muchMore than you could handle
Shining like a chandelier
That decorated every room
Inside the private hell we built
And I dealt with it
Like a kid I wished I could fly away
But instead I kept my tears inside
Because I knew if I started I’d keep crying for the rest of my life with youI finally built up the strength to walk away, don’t regret it but I still live with the side effects—“Side Effects”
When Tommy suggested we go to couples therapy, I was surprised. Unsurprisingly, hetold me it would have to be with his therapist, who he had been seeing for years.
Nevertheless, this was a monumental step for both of us. Our careers, and consequentlyour marriage, were constantly in the public spotlight. But no one had ever been allowedinto the dark interior of our relationship. I’d never had anyone to confide in about how Iwas living—or not living. I had carried the burden of believing that because I was able towrite, sing, and produce my songs, become famous, and gain access to unimaginablewealth, I didn’t deserve personal happiness too. I truly believed everything good in my lifewould cost me, and that Tommy’s control was the price for my success.
Honestly I was really only trying to gain five minutes of peace—the opportunity to beable to walk down the stairs into my own kitchen to grab a bite to eat without the hiss ofthe intercom and his menacing “What ya doin’?” buzzing out of it. Also, I didn’t trustanyone—by then I was estranged from my immediate family, and everyone around mewas connected to Tommy and scared of him. I knew that anything I said would get back tohim, and I would suffer his constant rage.
I had started to develop hives-like breakouts. I went to see the dermatologist, whoassured me that my otherwise unblemished skin was having a reaction to severe stress. Itwas suggested I make some dietary changes and add a few new cleansing routines to helpsoothe the symptoms. When I told Tommy the doctor’s diagnosis (it was not goodbusiness for your top-selling artist to be hived out), he barked back, “Stress?! Fuck yougot to be stressed about?” Lawd, let me count the ways.
Therapy was a lifesaver. Our therapist was a kind, older Jewish woman with shortamber hair and alert eyes. She had a cozy office in her classic Westchester home. I likedher more than I thought I would, as I assumed she would be on “Tommy’s team,” but shewas refreshingly impartial and a real pro. And he respected her. (Which was a majorthing.) At that point in my life, I didn’t have many relationships with stable, professionaladults whose livelihoods weren’t connected to my record sales. There were very fewplaces where I wasn’t overcome with anxiety: first, there had been the recording studio,and now there was the therapist’s office.
Though even in my “safe” spaces, Tommy’s presence would infect the atmosphere. Iwould be in the recording studio writing and vibing with producers or other artists, and hewould often crash in at 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. to pick me up, as if I was his nine-to-five “officegirl” and not a recording artist who had her own creative process, which you couldn’tplace on a timer. (Not to mention, who collaborated with various rappers and hip-hopproducers, many of whom—like me—don’t recognize time, especially daytime.) As soonas he walked in, tension would eclipse the lightness of creating; all laughing would cease,and we’d all shrink a little to make room for the pressure that accompanied him. Andwhile I can’t say I felt completely safe or equal in the therapist’s office (or anywhere), itwas the closest thing we had to a neutral space where Tommy and I could attempt tocommunicate.
It was a profound breakthrough for me that she listened to both of us objectively. Andshe believed me. She had been treating him for years, like Tony Soprano and JenniferMelfi, except she was more mother figure than sexy scholar. She might have been the onlyperson who had some kind of insight into his psyche and could completely conceive of therepressive and paranoid conditions he imposed on me in our marriage and home life. Shewas the first to recognize and name the abuse I was living under. I already knew the havocit was wreaking on my spirit, but she identified the damage it was doing to meemotionally.
After some of our sessions she would ask Tommy to go sit and wait for me in the car,so that she and I could decompress and speak honestly. Once, during our alone time, Iasked her, pleading really, “Why can’t he just let me go to the spa or to the movies, or doanything? I did nothing wrong!”
She took a pause and said, in her dry, matter-of-fact New York accent, “Sweetie, it’snot normal. Why are you acting as if you’re dealing with a normal situation? It’s notnormal!”
But I had no frame of reference for normal. Our marriage had been a demolition sitelong before we made it to therapy.
After our eight-year relationship my life had become like a psychological thriller. It hadgotten to the point where Tommy’s very presence to me was a hostile occupation.
Tiptoeing around and protecting myself was my daily existence. I never thought I wouldbe strong enough to leave Tommy. I thought I would just continue to deal with it. I prayedthat he would realize how he was stifling me, and that he would do the work and thingswould change. Some days I really did just want to be like Peter Pan and fly the fuck away.
Mostly I tried to just take whatever shit he was giving, no matter how outrageous, and justhope he would become more lenient. Being married to him really was the equivalent ofhaving a strict father who ruled with fear and controlled everything you did. I kept hopinghe would just ease up and give me space to just be, so that we would have a chance. It wasour only chance.
I wrote in Butterfly what I had so hoped Tommy would be able to see, and say, to me:
Blindly I imagined
I could keep you under glass
Now I understand to hold you
I must open up my hands
And watch you rise
Spread your wings and prepare to fly
For you have become a butterfly
Oh fly abandonedly into the sun
If you should return to me
We truly were meant to be
So spread your wings and fly
Butterfly
Right away Tommy’s therapist advocated for me to have more independence. Shesupported the idea that I had to create some boundaries for myself and encouraged me togo places on my own. It seemed like a miracle — I’d never had an ally before. Sherecommended we do things in stages, something like probation. But unlike probation, thepurpose was not for me to get reacclimated to society, but to moderate Tommy’s behavior,since he was so extreme. He had control over me as an artist. He had control over mypersonal life. He had control over everyone in my professional life. And even though Iwas the biggest artist on the label, he was still the most powerful person in my life, andseemingly everyone’s life. Everyone was scared to death of Tommy—the executives, themanagement, legal, other artists—everyone.
After ferocious negotiation with the therapist, we agreed the first step towardindependence was that I would finally attend acting classes. For years I had wanted actingtraining. Songs are like monologues, so I knew I had good raw material and certainly arange of emotions and life experiences to draw from. But I hungered to learn some craft,to explore, develop, and discipline another passion brewing inside me. As with singing,from an early age I was obsessed with films and often memorized lines as an escape.
Acting was both a dream and something I felt I needed to do. Tommy “agreed” I wouldhave private acting lessons—unsurprisingly, again, with a coach he knew and approved.
Like the therapist, this acting coach was very qualified and worked with incredible, world-class actors.
The acting coach was an ample woman who seemed to thoroughly enjoy hervoluminous breasts and the fleshiness of her body. She moved with abandon. She swishedaround in layers of Stevie Nicks-esque flowy garments and made grand gestures with herarms, even during casual conversation. She was part earth-mother hippie, part privilegedprincess, part aspiring guru, and I liked her.
She taught out of her bohemian-luxe Upper West Side apartment. Like her, the spacewas eclectic and welcoming. It was filled with the scent of Nag Champa, which impressedme the most because it was immediately soothing, and back then, I was not easily soothed.
In our first session, she had me lie on a mat on the floor and close my eyes to do somebasic deep breathing and relaxation exercises. Sitting in her chair on high, she instructedme to breathe deeply and try to relax. “Relaaaaaaaax.” (Easier said than done, lady.)“Close your eyes. Breathe. Breathe.” I was struggling but listening and trying tofollow her instruction. “Relax, Mariah. Relax your muscles; breathe and relax your body.”
It was then I realized my shoulders were shoved up to my earlobes. Even lying on thefloor I was in a tense fight-or-flight stance—mostly fight; I’d been protecting myself for sovery long.
“Breathe. Breathe. Check in with yourself,” she said calmly. Check in with myself? Ididn’t know what that meant.
Sensing my resistance, she said, “Go to a place where you feel safe.”
Nothing.
“Do you have a place where you feel safe, Mariah? Go there. It can be from yourchildhood.”
Nothing.
“Imagine you’re little, you’re six. Go there.”
I was in the deli house. Not safe.
“Maybe you’re a little older. Go there.”
I was back in the shack. Not safe.
She kept pushing, thinking certainly there had to be a place. “It could be sometimemore recent. Just go to a safe place.”
I was feeling nothing in nowhere. I could only feel the hard floor flat against my backas I searched around in my own emptiness. I was looking for a space in my mind andwaiting for a comforting vision to arrive. There was nothing. I was blank. I opened myeyes and stared at the ceiling. Suddenly I felt cold and alone. It dawned on me that therewas nowhere, inside or out, where I felt safe.
Then the coach asked, “How are you doing, Mariah?” A wave of sadness rushedthrough me and poured out in a deluge of tears. My entire being was heaving, sobbing; Iwas unsure if I would ever be able to stop.
Eventually the storm of tears subsided. I don’t think I had cried openly the entire timeI had been in the relationship with Tommy. Crying with him would’ve taken too muchcleanup, and the emotional cost was too expensive. He’d surely punish me if I cried. Hewas the one who cried during some of our more explosive fights. And I would end upconsoling him, completely abandoning my needs, my pain. It was ruthlessly manipulative.
Don’t tell me you’re sorry you hurt me
How many times can I give in?
How many battles can you win?
Oh, don’t beg for mercy tonight.
Tonight, ’cause I can’t take anymore
—“Everything Fades Away”
However, the crying exercise was a release, albeit a tiny one. I’d been holding somuch for so long. I began to breathe, a little.
My acting coach hovered over me, and I could smell essential oils, patchouli perhaps,seeping from her pores. She placed her hands on my shoulders and began to gently pushthem down toward my ribcage.
“Let go of the fighting stance and just breathe,” she whispered. I hadn’t realized howhigh and tight I was gripping my body. My breakdown was encouraging to her; I had freedsome of my suppressed feelings. Now she told me she wanted me to “feel free in thebody.” I was a bit wobbly when I stood to watch her demonstrate the exercise. She closedher eyes and began rolling her shoulders from side to side, letting her head fall back andaround with them. Then her hips joined in an aimless sway. She lifted her arms up andbegan flailing them like those weird inflatable tube men at the car wash. “Free in thebody!” she chanted. “Come on, get free in the body, Mariah.” I was watching her do hererratic, ecstatic dancing and just couldn’t make the leap. Just as I couldn’t dance forAddie, to prove I was Black, I knew I was too Black to do interpretive dance with her,even if it was a private session.
What I remember most clearly was the acting coach telling me I had difficultyaccessing my anger. I thought back to something the therapist had once told me: oftensadness is anger turned inward. Of course I kept it all inside—how else would I havesurvived? I realized I couldn’t express anger because I was never allowed to. Who was Iever safe to be angry with? Not my brother, certainly not my sister, not Tommy, not mymother, not anyone. There was no safe person and no safe place in my life. There neverhad been.
That woman-child failing inside
Was on the verge of fading
Thankfully I woke up in time
—“Close My Eyes”
The crush of Tommy was relentless. After countless painful and dramatic fights, andafter I began some genuine soul searching, Tommy and I began to broach the notion oftemporary separation in therapy. It took a lot of personal work and getting in touch withmyself to even touch the concept. I was so scarred on so many levels. The emotionalstruggles with Tommy had been nonstop, and I couldn’t yet even begin to know the effectsof the trauma, but getting to where we could discuss a reprieve from the pain was major.
He had pulled a lot of strings to tie me up. I really didn’t know how I would be able toescape him while he was still alive. He could be incredibly vindictive. And his networkwas so far-reaching. I had a very real feeling my entire safety was at risk. With a littlesupport and a few new tools, I was able to clearly see that living with him was killing me.
I needed to create a place for me to breathe.
I was certain I needed to escape Tommy’s fury and access my own, and this would takesome help and strategy. Because we were in therapy, I didn’t have to be the one to “bringit up.” It was the therapist who told Tommy he would lose me forever if he didn’t try togive me a little space. So it was discussed as a temporary Band-Aid to “treat it like aseparation.” She was trying to convince him to let me go hang out with other people, forGod’s sake—for my sake.
After so much prodding and much ado, Tommy agreed to try the therapist’s advice andmade a deal to take certain steps to see if we could find a way to continue to live together.
I remember the therapist saying, in her motherly way, “Mariah has to start going places byherself, Tommy. It’s not fair. You’re stifling her.” I was at a breaking point, andsomething had to give. I wasn’t even asking for much, just a little time with friends. I wasdrained of my spirit, and at this rate, the relationship was threatening to take the remainingbits of my very soul.
My acting teacher’s building was connected by a private passageway to the buildingnext door. It was possible to access the neighboring building by going through the frontentrance of her building. It was like something out of the opening of the 1960s comedyshow Get Smart: you had to go through a nondescript side door and walk down a concretecorridor and through an enclosed back alley, but it was possible to go from building tobuilding without ever going outside.
So I secretly rented a small apartment in the building next to hers. I was able to workwith the building’s management to arrange to have things brought in for me under a fakename. I had it set up very simply, with a convertible couch so I could sleep—by myself. Iwould tell Tommy that I was tired from acting class and staying overnight with myteacher, then slip over to my own little place and exit in the morning from my teacher’sbuilding. It was sneaky, but I was at the end of my fucking rope! There was alwayssomeone watching my every move. This was basic survival.
Later on, my survival cave became my personal office and private studio. I had asimple wall of mirrors installed, and it was there I did the best bodywork in my careerwith the incomparable Debbie Allen. Ms. Allen had gotten in touch with me and said shewanted to work with me because she really connected with my music. What a Godsend!
She was masterful. She analyzed how I moved or didn’t move. She taught me stretchesand other tools to help liberate and ground me. She worked with me on choreography forperformances. She created moves that worked for me. She had dancers surround me,literally giving me support. And that was what I had needed for so long—someone to bepatient with me as I discovered my own body.
I had been totally disconnected from my body for so long. I only knew how to letmyself be completely taken over by a song. I had no clue I fluttered my hands the way Idid until I saw one of my early performances on TV! It took the fabulous Kiki Shepard todiscover I didn’t really know how to walk in heels. She pulled me aside and had me walkup and down the stairs on the side of the stage at the Apollo until I got it right. Pow.
Guardian angels do exist—Debbie Allen was surely one of mine.
The therapist put together a plan for me to go out socially without Tommy for the firsttime. This was major. It was going to be new to me too: I had gone straight from acomplicated and careless childhood into the treacherous music industry and a toxic,tumultuous marriage. And I was barely in my midtwenties. But I was finally starting toaccess a different kind of courage—one that was there to protect my life, not just mysongs.
Tommy had been adamant about me not acting because he feared I would be onglamorous sets with attractive actors or directors or whatever. The fact that he conceded tome having an acting coach (who he thought was loyal to him) was mildly promising. Hedidn’t have the same pull in Hollywood as he did in the music business. Me taking actingclasses in the city perhaps wasn’t so threatening to him, because New York was his townand he had eyes everywhere. But me being out with my peers, people my age, for fun?
That was deeply threatening to him. What was scariest of all was the notion of me beingseen without him and, God forbid, photographed without him. He couldn’t bear to thinkpeople would see Cinderella out at the ball without her prince and savior.
Controlling public perception was vital to Tommy, and before social media andsmartphones, it was fairly achievable. So the deal was, we would go to a big eventtogether, be seen, have it documented, and then afterward we’d split up, and I would beable to hang out with my friends. Tommy was likely less afraid of losing me to cheating(which never crossed my mind) and more afraid that he would lose his influence over me,which was far more valuable to him than my fidelity. Though he was opposed, he knew hehad made a deal, and in his world, a deal is a deal. So we negotiated my first solo flight asa social butterfly.
Our relationship was very much like a teen- and- parent arrangement whereindependence is earned in increments. I was close in age to a teen, but it was Tommy,clearly my senior, who needed to be taught to be an adult about the matter. It was all sotwisted, but we were trying to give normal our best attempt, sweetie.
THE MAN FROM KALAMAZOO
THE MAN FROM KALAMAZOO
Operation Mariah’s Solo Test Flight Night had a strict itinerary: First, Tommy and Iwould attend the Fresh Air Fund gala together, which we’d done in previous years (actingnormal). Afterward, I would have dinner with a group of friends (actually normal). Beingout with Tommy had become such a strained performance, I was riddled with a horriblecocktail of anxiety and boredom.
Fortunately, that night, I knew that some of my peers, like Wanya Morris from Boyz IIMen, were also going to be at the gala, so I wouldn’t have to wear such a heavy mask allnight. I held on to the fact that on the other side of the photo ops, thousand-dollar plates,and platitudes was not the usual silent, suffocating ride back to Westchester together butthe possibility of fun. I could get through this one. I slid into a chic red floor-length RalphLauren matte jersey slip dress and hit the red carpet, propped on Tommy’s arm.
All the photos from that night showed us looking in different directions, my body stiffand an awkward smile plastered on my face. There was nothing to smile about. Quitehonestly, I was afraid to smile in most photographs, as I’d been told as a little girl that mynose was too wide and smiling made it spread more. That shot of insecurity was followedby a chaser from Sony’s artist development executive, a rotund and imposing lady whotold me when we first met, before my first record: “This is your flattering side. You shouldonly ever be photographed on this side of your face.” (It was the side without the beautymark. Who are these people? Who. Are. They?)
I was too young and didn’t have the confidence to challenge her opinion, so I obeyed. Iinternalized so many of the damaging and cruel critiques older people had given me as achild and young woman; some have burrowed so deep down in my psyche that I willnever be able to root them out entirely. To this day I unconsciously turn to the “flatteringside” if there is a camera around; it’s a thing.
The gala was your typical celebrity-studded chicken-dinner charity event. I sat upstraight, sucked in my stomach, and held my breath until it was over. Tommy and I fakedit all night without incident. We both had quite a bit of practice in faking it. Then it wasover: I had given Tommy his public moment, and now I was free to go! This was a bigfriggin’ deal! I was never allowed to go anywhere social without him. I couldn’t believeit! I was free to laugh and have fun, like a human being, without being shushed andsilenced and sequestered. I felt kind of like Cinderella in reverse; it was the fancy ball thatwas the chore.
In the 1990s, Giorgio Armani was the pinnacle of a luxury fashion house. Armani was thego-to designer of all the A-listers. Tommy, of course, wore Armani and he was alwaystrying to class it up. And I occasionally wore Armani too. There were several cool andconnected people who worked for the designer and hung out with their cool clients. Afterthe gala, our plan was to go to a dinner party at a restaurant that some of the Armaniinsiders had arranged. My assistant and I went, and Wanya met us there. It was a fabdowntown scene.
The lighting in the place was low, and twenty of us were seated in the back against agigantic wall of windows, around a large dining table crowded with beautiful bottles ofwine and candles. The air was electric with playful chatter and laughter. And there wasgreat music playing in the background, with Wanya occasionally breaking out into riffs. Itwas an ordinary night to everyone else there, but it was a revelation to me, being outsocially with my peers and listening to the music of my time.
Though I was still being watched, I felt lighter than I had in a long time. I felt youngand unchained. It was not uncommon for a dinner party of this kind to have guests comeand go in waves, so when Derek Jeter and his friend came in and sat down across from meat the table, they didn’t command any of my attention. I found them both ambiguous.
After I briefly glanced up at them I thought, Who are these guys? my attention went rightback to the more interesting dinner guests.
I was never drawn to the jock type, not even in high school, where athletes were at thetop of the food chain. Derek and his friend were no exception to my rule. His Armani suitdidn’t cover up the Kalamazoo in him. He didn’t have the New York slick vibe that I hadbecome so accustomed to. I’m not being shady, but he had on pointy shoes. Artists can bevery tribal, and compared to the hip-hop and R & B stars, models, fashionistas, and coolkids in every hue at the table, the two of them presented as rather pedestrian.
The restaurant was moody, but our table was buzzing, and at some point theconversation moved to “inconspicuous Blackness”—passing, but with more nuance. I wasriveted. We discussed who we thought was secretly Black or else could have some Blackrunning through them, how they might or might not identify and how they were oftenmisidentified. I had never had an open conversation about biracial or multiracialaesthetics, ever. My parents didn’t have the language for it, and Tommy never wanted totalk about my biracial identity; if he wasn’t ashamed of it, he certainly didn’t want topromote it. I couldn’t believe it: it was my first night out without him, and suddenly I wasin a dialogue about race and identity with young, smart, and creative people!
Eventually the debate turned to me. One of the guys from Armani said he couldn’t tellif I was part Black (no parts of him were Black, by the way). Wanya wasn’t having it. Hisvoice got up in his high register: “Naw, man, come on! We all know; how could you notknow?” I was laughing, but I was also deeply interested.
As if on cue, another person from the Armani team chimed in, “Derek, your mother’sIrish and your dad’s Black, right? Like, so what do you think about all this?”
All of a sudden, it was like the moment in The Wizard of Oz when the screen wentfrom black-and-white to Technicolor. I was in a new moment, a new room; it was a newnight and perhaps a new world. When I heard “Irish mother and Black father,” my headsnapped up involuntarily and turned toward Derek. Our eyes locked. A deeply suppressedsadness I had buried inside since the first painful blow from someone saying I was notwhite enough or Black enough, which translated into “not good enough,” both rose andbegan to dissolve, and a longing to connect took its place.
It was as if suddenly I could see him. Derek was definitely no longer pedestrian; hewas closer to a Prince Charming. This first moment of connection was so profound. I hadcreated an endless number of romantic moments in my songs, and I had been incrediblysad for so long. Finally, it was if I was actually living a dream. I saw his eyes—enormoustwinkling jade pearls floating in a golden-brown pool. It was as if there was no one else inthe restaurant or the universe. We began talking across the table; the banter waslightweight, sparkly, and deeply flirtatious. I couldn’t recall the last time, if there had everbeen one, that I’d felt butterflies talking to a man.
The rest of the evening we talked, soft and easy. Eventually I realized how awareeveryone was of our attraction, but I didn’t care. This was my night out, and I was feelingthe sweetness of freedom, the rush and allure of it all. I knew I was being watched, but tohell with that. Derek was young, mixed, ambitious, and doing his dream job, just like me!
In the midst of all the people, lights, and music, it felt like we were the only ones in theworld. Even though it was just a flicker, it was still fire.
Brazen as it was, I allowed Derek to walk me to the car, where a driver — akaTommy’s agent, of course—was waiting. Being with him in that moment felt like living.
I’ll never forget walking next to him that night, looking up at him, with his height and theway his athletic body moved. I felt diminutive next to him. It was such a differentexperience. This two-minute stroll on the pavement was more exhilarating to me thanwalking a thousand staged red carpets. It was a real moment. I was loose on the streets ofNew York, the sultry late-night breeze blowing my hair and pressing the delicate jersey ofmy dress against my body. I actually felt good. Unencumbered.
SHOOK ONES
SHOOK ONES
Standing alone
Eager to just
Believe it’s good enough to be what
You really are
But in your heart
Uncertainty forever lies
And you’ll always be
Somewhere on the
Outside
—“Outside”
Knowing there were eyes on us, my assistant discreetly exchanged information withDerek’s friend. I’d been in such a dark and lonely place for so long in my relationship. Ifinally had some hope, because I had found someone like me who existed in this world. Asa child I used to pray I would meet someone who would understand me for what I was andnot feel superior to me.
Our encounter also had a genuine air of innocence. It reinforced the many pure ways Iwrote about romance in my songs. It was like the movies I idolized. But though it felt thatway to me, it turns out Derek hadn’t just walked into a room and into my life. Mymanager knew Derek really wanted to meet me; he had begged me once to sign a photofor “this kid who’s crazy about you” so he could get World Series tickets—an incident Itotally forgot about. That night he and I met, he told me “Anytime You Need a Friend”
was his favorite song and that he listened to it before every game.
Anytime you need a friend
I will be here
You’ll never be alone again
So don’t you fear
Even if you’re miles away
I’m by your side
So don’t you ever be lonely
Love will make it alright
If you just believe in me
I will love you endlessly
Take my hand
Take me into your heart
I’ll be there forever baby
I won’t let go
I’ll never let go
Among all of my songs that one was especially significant, because I was desperatelyalone, removed from friends and full of fear. My belief in God kept me alive—I wrote thatsong thinking about what I thought God would say to us in times of fear.
When the shadows are closing in
And your spirit diminishing
Just remember
You’re not alone
And love will be there
To guide you home
—“Anytime You Need a Friend”
It was uplifting, rooted in spirituality and a message of faith, and that, too, made mefeel safer and connected to Derek. It also let me know he was actually a fan—and the fanswere the only people I really trusted.
We started a clandestine communication, texting each other cute, short messageswhenever we could and planning times to talk. Needless to say, I was terrified to talk tohim if Tommy was anywhere near. But I would steal moments. If we were at the studio orat dinner, I would pretend to need to use the bathroom. I enrolled my assistant. We’d stagean errand and leave in her car, and I would talk to him. Sometimes we would go to herhouse, and I’d sit in her modest little living room and talk to him in a whisper—I was thatafraid of Tommy. Every call was brief. I was riddled with fear, but it was thrilling. Whilethe energy was definitely exciting and romantic, our actual conversations were on the lightand banal side. I didn’t care; it was something. Planning and communicating with Derekfelt like someone had smuggled a file into my jail cell. Each time we connected, it was asif I had worn down a bit more of the bars that held me captive.
Every little move we made built toward a bigger idea: freedom. I had becomecompletely accustomed to nonstop work, looking over my shoulder, and warding offdespair; it was life affirming, as a young woman, to feel giddy and girlie. Through all thedarkness, I discovered I still had some whimsy reserved for me and my own heart. I evenbegan watching baseball in the studio when he was playing. To add to the perfect fantasyof it all, Derek played the same position the great Joe DiMaggio (Marilyn Monroe’s iconicsecond husband) played on the Yankees, connecting him to my Marilyn fascination. Iliterally met the person I had imagined. I was living in my own love song.
The weeks of covert communication built up to arranging an encounter. I was stillpainfully aware that I was married, and I didn’t plan to break any of my vows. The planwas, I would meet him at a low-key pizza spot near his apartment, and we’d sneak out andgo to his place. I was freaked out about taking the risk, but I had to see him; I had to knowI was alive. I recall the care with which I chose my ensemble. I wanted something sexy ofcourse, but certainly classy, youthful yet chic. I put together a warm chocolate moment: asoft and creamy chestnut-colored quilted Chanel leather miniskirt paired with a russetfine-knit bandeau top and layered with a matching cardigan. There were brown ribbedWolford tights underneath, leading into a sleek round-toed mocha Prada boot. I lovedthose boots. I was serving textures in cocoa flavors. It was November, so I was giving an“autumn in New York” moment. To top it off, I wore a brown baseball cap over thevolume of my curls, the brim pulled down low to hide my face.
I was scared (ooh, was I scared). The stakes were incredibly high. I’d never triedanything this dangerous before, and I had seen firsthand how Tommy could destroypeople. He certainly tried to destroy me. As I remember it, the procedure for the covertoperation was: My assistant and I would tell my driver (aka Tommy’s spy, on my payroll)we wanted to grab dinner at the pizza parlor. We’d walk in together, and when Derekcame in, we’d give my driver the slip. Derek lived nearby, somewhere we could be privateand just chill. My assistant would act as a decoy, and Derek and I would duck outtogether.
I was nervous on several levels. In addition to being terrified of Tommy’s wrath, I wasalso feeling na?ve. Even though I’d been all over the world, I had nearly nonexistentexperience in dating. The thought of the simple pleasure of just being close to Derek wasliberating.
My assistant and I sat on stools at the counter, staring at the large storefront window,adrenaline pulsing through us both. In walked Derek—in a basic sweat suit and baseballcap, of course. My heart was pounding. We were finally in the same room together, butthe most treacherous move was ahead: we had to escape the pizza parlor without the spyseeing us. I believe my assistant went out to the car pretending to retrieve something.
When she went up to the driver’s window, Derek and I pulled down our hat brims andducked out the door and around the corner into a small backstreet. Tucked under his arm, Iwas consumed with relief and excitement. We slipped through a couple more windingbackstreets to his apartment building.
I was anxious beyond belief, and a shyness I desperately tried to hide washed over meas soon as the door to his place closed behind us. Had I ever been alone with a single manin his apartment—or anyplace—before? I wasn’t sure. This was all new. Would the spydiscover me missing and foil our covert op? The butterflies in my stomach were in acomplete frenzy.
I took off my cap, shook out my curls, took a breath, and tried to calm and orientmyself by focusing on my surroundings. I don’t recall many details. It wasn’t aparticularly impressive place, just practical and neat. I stood in the living room a bitawkwardly, very smitten and still scared. Derek said there was a roof deck on the buildingand asked if I wanted to go up there. I agreed.
He disappeared from the living room and returned with a frosty bottle of Mo?t. “I’vebeen saving this, because I thought one day you might come over here.” I smiled and said,“Yeah, we’re gonna need that.” (And so it really was a bottle of “Moe-ay” that got mefeeling liberated.) We went up to his roof, laughed, talked softly, took sips of coldchampagne straight to the head, and reveled in our bodies embracing.
The fall moon was bright, and a warm, heavy mist covered the night. For this briefmoment, I was in rapture, alone on top of the city with a man who seemed to have steppedout of my dreams. We whispered a few things, giggled some more, and then drifted intothe romance of the moment. We leaned in, an inch at a time, and melted into a warm,slow, intoxicating kiss. I felt an invisible veil of sadness begin to slip off of me and meltinto a puddle at our feet.
And in that instant, the sky gave way, and it began to pour. We held on to our kiss; ourarms didn’t relax their embrace, and our bodies remained fixed. The rain came sosuddenly, but we had already disappeared into the dreamy encounter we had anticipated,planned, and risked so much for. I was so caught up, not once did I think about my leatherChanel skirt or Prada boots in the elements. And thank goodness my hair was naturallycurly, because had it been straightened, I might’ve broken and run to save the blowout!
What broke the trance was not the rain but fear again. How long had we been gone?
Did Tommy already know? I had to go! I two-wayed my assistant that we were on the wayback. Derek dashed me back through the wet streets and left me right before the pizzaparlor, where my assistant was waiting with wild eyes. She ran out when she saw me, andwe jumped into the limo. We plopped into the backseat breathless, covering our mouths tomuffle the laughter. Surely the driver noticed I was soaking wet, but I didn’t care! I didn’tcare that he was without a doubt going to report my disobedience. I had stolen away toclaim a moment that was all mine and that was real. I left just a little bit of sadness on thatrooftop, and I was not turning back to reclaim it.
Once the driver dropped my assistant off, I was alone in the long leather backseat ofthe limo for the tedious ride back up to Sing Sing. My mind was racing and my heart waspounding. Did that really happen? Did I really do that? Tommy is going to go insane! Iturned on the radio to help calm me down. Out came blasting a grimy, dangerous, sexy-assbeat, then the hook:
Scared to death, scared to look, they shook
’Cause ain’t no such things as halfway crooksI was certainly shook when we pulled up to the tall, imposing black wrought-iron gatesthat led to my mansion. It appeared menacing in the dark rain—and in light of what I hadjust done. Tommy was supposed to be out of town, but once I got on those grounds I neverknew what to expect.
I slowly entered my gorgeous penitentiary; all was quiet, and not quite as scary. Amercy. He wasn’t there, so at least I didn’t have to concoct a story about why I wasdripping wet. Exhausted, I sat on the grand staircase, removed my boots, and tiptoed up tomy bathroom. I didn’t bother to turn on the lights. I wanted to stay in the quiet of theexpanse of the cool, soft-pink marble that surrounded me. I wanted to luxuriate in thepoetry of the dull reflections of the opulent crystal chandelier bouncing against the dark. Ipulled off my drenched knit top, which had become like liquid skin, and stepped out of mydamp leather skirt. I sat on the edge of the massive tub to peel off my resistant, thin wooltights. I took a quick warm shower, letting the water wash off some of my anxiety.
Wrapped up in a plush white terry robe, I walked up to the mirror and looked at myself. Istared into my own eyes. They were a little brighter. I caught a glimpse of the Mariah Iremembered from before all the terror peeking through. I saw a bit of exuberance, a bit ofhope, a bit of courage. I saw the glow of the promise of freedom.
After such a dangerous, sexy, and grimy night the big all-white bedroom with the bigall-white bed was more foreign than ever. I pulled the fluffy white goose-down comforterup to my neck and closed my eyes. Immediately I wanted to go back to the roof and relivethe splendor I had just escaped. Involuntarily, my head started a gentle bob on the pillowand a beat began to faintly roll in. The song I had heard in the car, “Shook Ones, Part II,”
by Mobb Deep, started to play loudly in my head, and I began to whisper:
Every time I feel the need
I envision you caressing me
And go back in time
To relive the splendor of you and I
On the rooftop that rainy night
I drifted off to sleep.
The next day I called Poke and Tone from Trackmasters. We got the sample and gotbusy. “The Roof (Back in Time)” was my first complete docu-song.
It wasn’t raining yet
But it was definitely a little misty
On that warm November night
And my heart was pounding
My inner voice resounding
Begging me to turn away
But I just had to see your face to feel aliveAnd then you casually walked in the room
And I was twisted in the web of my desire for youMy apprehension blew away
I only wanted you to taste my sadness
As you kissed me in the dark. Every time?…
And so we finished the Mo?t and
I started feeling liberated
And I surrendered as you took me in your armsI was so caught up in the moment
I couldn’t bear to let you go yet
So I threw caution to the wind
And started listening to my longing heart
And then you softly pressed your lips to mineAnd feelings surfaced I’d suppressed
For such a long long time
And for a while I forgot the sorrow and the painAnd melted with you as we stood there in the rain—“The Roof”
It’s exactly what happened.
THE LAST SHOW AT SING SING
THE LAST SHOW AT SING SING
With the downpour on the roof, a dormant seed of self had been watered, and a bit of thehumidity of Tommy lifted. I gained just enough confidence to appear defiant. Look, I—both of us—knew we were at the end of the road long before I left. I began leaving inincrements, and in response, Tommy started making desperate last-minute attempts to getme to stay. He bought me a gorgeous but pointless Carnival red convertible Jaguar with acrème leather interior and matching drop top. It sat in the driveway of our thirty-million-dollar mansion—one more expensive thing to add to the lavish scrap heap that was ourmarriage.
One evening I was working with two men I had a significant creative and professionalrelationship with, whose duty it was to have moblike loyalty to Tommy. These three men,to whose wealth and prominence I had contributed considerably, and I were sitting in thekitchen, about to have a meal break. Even though we were all “friends” sitting around thetable, facing a large, rustic fireplace with the now sadly ironic phrase “Storybook Manor”
etched in the limestone mantel (I named it that, desperately believing I could wish and willmy nightmare into a fairy tale), the atmosphere was anything but warm. It was cold, quiet,and pungent with pain and conflict, evidence to all that a dynamic in me had shifted. Ithink it embarrassed Tommy that he had lost control and lost his “woman” in front of his“boys.” Embarrassment enraged him.
He began an awkward and creepy little rant about the beautiful car he had just givenme, and our fabulous estate (which I designed and half financed), and how in spite of all ofit, I wanted to leave him. I was sitting still, looking down at the table, when Tommywalked over and picked up the butter knife from the place setting in front of me. Hepressed the flat side of it against my right cheek.
Every muscle in my face clenched. My entire body locked in place; my lungsstiffened. Tommy held the knife there. His boys watched and didn’t say a word. Afterwhat seemed like forever, he slowly dragged the thin, cool strip of metal down my burningface. I was searing with rage from the excruciating humiliation of his terrifying, cowardlyperformance in my kitchen, in front of my “colleagues.”
That was his last show with me as the captive audience at Sing Sing.
So many I considered closest to me
Turned on a dime and sold me out dutifully
Although that knife was chipping away at me
They turned their eyes away and went home to sleep—“Petals”
I was locked way in the bathroom, which now felt like a mausoleum, sitting on theedge of the cold tub trying to muster up the courage to leave, completely. Then the wordssoftly came fluttering into my head: “Don’t be afraid to fly. Spread your wings. Open upthe door.” I hummed the melody, which would become “Fly Away (Butterfly Reprise).”
And I descended the grand stairway for the last time. I truly believed I was going to die inthat house I built in Bedford and haunt it forever. I could just see what they’d make of it: amorbid yet festive tourist attraction, “The Famous Ghost of Mariah Mansion,” like atasteful Graceland, where you could hear me hitting high notes in the halls at night.
When I finally walked away from Sing Sing, with little more than my wardrobe andpersonal photos, the only thing I really wanted from the house was the beautiful hand-carved mantelpiece. A masterful Eastern European craftsman had carved it exquisitely tomy very specific design directions. As I was leaving the house, I ran my fingers along itssmooth and intricate curves for a final farewell. Only then did I notice there was a butterflyin the center of the heart that was in the center of the structure. I did not request it but itsopen wings were the sign I so desperately needed when I let that door close behind me.
Natural disasters eventually tore down all the walls that held so much of my misery. Afew years after I left Sing Sing, it burned down to the ground. And Hillsjail wascompletely destroyed by a tornado. I was in my Manhattan penthouse when I received acall from a woman who was the former owner of my former house. She had removed themantel but put it into storage, because she found it so personal and thought I might want it.
I retrieved it and had it painted a fresh white lacquer, just as Marilyn did with her mother’spiano. That mantel is now in my most personal room in my house, along with my familyphotographs and other precious things of mine. And I didn’t let my spirit die.
JUST LIKE HONEY
JUST LIKE HONEY
The rendezvous with Derek was just the push I needed to cross over into the PromisedLand. I had proof that I could have something beautiful on the other side of the hell thatwas my marriage. Tommy’s dark reign over me was now crumbling. Derek was outside ofTommy’s world; Tommy couldn’t destroy him, and I felt the possibility of my owndestruction coming to an end.
“The Roof,” as a song and a video, painted a deeply passionate and very accuratepicture of my experiences. It was major for me, not for any salacious reason but becauseany intimacy with another human being was not something I had experienced before, ever.
It was an amazing feeling, and I was obsessed with replaying the encounter andfantasizing what it could lead to.
I romanticized so much about that night that I believed it was part of my destiny. Ithought I had met my soul mate. I was driven. My whole being ached to see Derek—or,more accurately, to experience how I felt when I was near him.
In creating the video concept for “The Roof (Back in Time),” I wanted to capture thefeeling of the night—the crazy anticipation and the strong sensual undertones. I wanted itto be a little raw and sexy. We played on the “back in time” theme with a stylish old-school eighties hip- hop vibe, which was not a common era to reprise in 1998. Thewardrobe stylist had to scour thrift stores and costume shops to get Adidas tracksuits,Kangol hats, and Sergio Valente jeans; and Serge Normant the hairstylist worked overtimeto achieve my Farrah Fawcett layered, feathered moment. We featured Mobb Deep,members of the rap group the Negro League, and legit break-dancers. I knew it was a verycool video, good for both the “urban” and “mainstream” markets.
But anytime I made a move forward for myself, there would always be backlash. The“show” that was my marriage might have been over, but the aftershow—the “meet andgreet,” the dismantling of the stage—took a lot of delicate planning. There was quite a bitof upheaval. My life was thoroughly intertwined with Tommy’s; I needed time, andcounsel on a clean (as possible) exit strategy. I moved into a hotel on the Upper East Sideand continued therapy.
I was still absorbed in the memory of the roof and wasn’t willing to fall back into themud of despair. A new part of me was alive, and I was intent on feeding it. I heard fromone of the Armani people that Derek was going to be in Puerto Rico. At our next therapysession, I announced to Tommy that I needed to go on a trip. I made the case that it wastime for him to honor the scope of our new agreement: he was supposed to let me go, andwe could see other people. I’d been out alone socially, I’d been in recording sessionswithout him picking me up, I’d been taking acting classes and spending the night at myteacher’s house (right), and now it was time to go somewhere, just for me. (Okay, maybe Ifelt a teeny bit bad about that last part—but ya gotta do what ya gotta do to survive.) Imade it sound super reasonable: perhaps me and my assistant, or maybe another girlfriend,would go away for the weekend, to somewhere where I could swim in the ocean and chillin the sun and write (keeping in mind I’d never done anything like that while at Sing Sing,never)—somewhere beautiful and close, like Puerto Rico. My assistant was totally into it.
She was still young herself, and this was a legitimate secret romance. We were all caughtup.
We stayed at the El Conquistador Resort, a lovely collection of villas in a gorgeous,classic, old-style Spanish-Caribbean hotel on a lush private island. It was tucked intogreen hills and right on an exclusive beach. We decided to go to the popular dance clubEgipto, which was in Old San Juan, nearly an hour away. It was designed like an Egyptiantemple, and as if in a scene in Antony and Cleopatra, in walked Derek. We had notorchestrated this meeting, but I just knew. I so believed in my heart he would be there atthe club that I had had my assistant book a villa at another resort, El San Juan Hotel, thatwas nearby. We stayed at the club briefly, and I informed him I had secured a littlehideaway.
So there we were again, sneaking around to avoid my security. We went out the backdoor of the club and walked through a maze of small pathways through the palm trees andblooming bushes to the resort and my villa, accompanied by sultry night air. We got backto my room, and that familiar dance of the butterflies began. Being alone with someone Ihad a genuine attraction to was all so new to me. And again, I threw caution to theCaribbean breeze and surrendered into his arms and the moment. We lay for the night inone embrace, engaging in one, single, long kiss. It was the sexiest moment—without sex.
I knew my security saw me and saw Derek leave my room in the morning, but I finallyfelt something stronger than fear of Tommy’s revenge. Now that I had it, I couldn’timagine life without this feeling. Desire became my reason for living, my all. Sleep didn’tcome on the plane ride back to New York, but a song did. I started writing.
I am thinking of you
In my sleepless solitude tonight
If it’s wrong to love you
Then my heart just won’t let me be right
’Cause I’ve drowned in you
And I won’t pull through
Without you by my side
—“My All”
Going to Puerto Rico was a paradigm shift. After that trip, I strategized and carried outanother coup on behalf of my heart: I put everything I was feeling at that time into a song.
It was a gigantic risk, because I knew Tommy assumed I was having a sexual affair (eventhough, technically, I wasn’t yet). It was also a revelation. There was an excitement andpurpose awake in me that fueled me to a new level in my creativity. I was hearingdifferent melodies, and I had new, real experiences to draw from. So I did somethingdangerous and beautiful for me—and everyone was scared for me.
I’d give my all to have
Just one more night with you
I’d risk my life to feel
Your body next to mine
’Cause I can’t go on
Living in the memory of our song
I’d give my all for your love tonight
There would be hell to pay, I knew. I truly believed I was actually risking my life, butI felt life wasn’t worth living if I couldn’t have what I’d had that night. “My All” was therealest, boldest, most passionate love song I’d ever written. I brought to it the Spanishundertones, the warm breeze, the ecstasy of desire, and the agony of separation that Iremembered so clearly.
Baby can you feel me?
Imagining I’m looking in your eyes
I can see you clearly
Vividly emblazoned in my mind
And yet you’re so far, like a distant star
I’m wishing on tonight
I’d give my all to have
Just one more night with you
—“My All”
This song was about life and death, and I didn’t want it to get lost in any over-the-topschmaltz. I needed it to be strong and simple. I wanted the vocals to be the centerpiece, thefocal point in the mix, with a stripped-down track behind them. It was all about theemotion, the soul, and I sang it as if my life depended on it.
I first played the song for Tommy and Don Ienner, the then chairman of the ColumbiaRecords Group, in the Range Rover, on our way to a restaurant in upstate New York. Donknew it was a hit. Tommy knew it could never be about him. A new place inside of me asan artist that had previously been sealed off was now fully exposed. And “My All” was ahit, a platinum hit. Later, Jermaine (Dupri), The-Dream, and Floyd “Money” Mayweather,three solid dudes, told me “My All” is their favorite song of mine. As creators, they knowlove is life, and there’s nothing more real than that.
I had already begun working on Butterfly before my encounters with Derek, but theyinspired some of the growing maturity and complexity in my songwriting and structures.
The narratives and the melodies were coming from a fresher place. I was hearing things ina more layered, raw, and sophisticated way. I was feeling freer and less apprehensive tospread my creative wings. I advocated for the sound I wanted. I reached out to newproducers who could bring that smooth, sexy edge to it. I started working on “Breakdown”
with Stevie J, one of Bad Boy Records’ “Hitmen,” and Puffy. I brought Stevie, Puffy, andQ-Tip—one of the coolest and most creative guys out there—together for what wouldbecome the album’s lead single, “Honey.” I’d begun the lyrics and basic melody in PuertoRico. Q-Tip made this amazing sample of “Body Rock,” by the Treacherous Three. I toldthem I also wanted to include the 1984 hit “Hey! D.J.,” by the World’s Famous SupremeTeam: “Hey! D.J. just play that song / Keep me dancing (Dancing) all night long.” Littledid they know it was a secret shout-out to Derek Jeter. “Honey” was a song about jonesin’
for that DJ feeling.
Oh, I can’t be elusive with you honey
’Cause it’s blatant that I’m feeling you
And it’s too hard for me to leave abruptly
’Cause you’re the only thing I wanna do
And it’s just like honey
—“Honey”
When I played “Honey” for Tommy, he quipped, “Well, I’m glad you were soinspired.” The bitterness! I was like, “What? Now you’re mad? Why didn’t you get madabout ‘Fantasy’ or ‘Dreamlover’?” It’s blatantly obvious I wasn’t talking about Tommy inthat song! I wasn’t talking about him, or any actual person, in practically any romanticsong. Before I met Derek, they were mostly imaginary characters. I’m sure Tommy couldsense that the songs written for Butterfly were no longer about far-off, fictional lovers—these songs, though certainly poetically embellished, were full of specific details andsensual realness.
Tommy and the label were also resistant to what my new sound represented. Again Iheard the refrain “too urban,” which of course was code for “too Black”—and yeah, Iwasn’t ever going back.
“Honey” was the first time I felt I had full creative license in making a video. We weremaking a mini- comedy- action thriller, and it was possible thanks to an insane two-million-dollar budget. The video allowed me to really explore my kitschy humor, withFrank Sivero as the gangster character with the crazy hair. I also included Johnny Brennanfrom the Jerky Boys—“Honey pie, sweetie pie, cutie pants.” I lived for the Jerky Boys;they were so silly. Come on, I wasn’t trying to ridicule Tommy—I was just playing withcinematic stereotypes, juxtaposing Johnny’s character with Eddie Griffin’s. My Spanishline—“Lo siento, pero no te entiendo”—was delivered with a wink.
What I did in the “Honey” video is what I had always wanted to do. I got to explorecreative and fashion influences without label restrictions. My look was inspired by UrsulaAndress in the 1970s 007 movies. I wanted to look glamorous, dangerous, and badass, likea Bond girl. And I finally had the freedom to access the right creative team to achieve thelooks. Emerging out of the swimming pool in the beige bombshell bikini? That was me. Iwas also finally able to work with a young, hot Black director, Paul Hunter, who got allmy jokes and James Bond references, but who also made sure the video had acontemporary and stylish look. The whole crew and vibe was just young, fiery, and fun.
The experience was such a contrast to all the videos I made while sequestered in upstateNew York, where everything had to be done within a twenty-mile radius of Sing Sing. Thewhole message in the “Honey” video was that I was breaking free—although no oneunderstood the insanity, toxicity, and abuse I was living inside. They had no clue.
While we filmed the video, in Puerto Rico, I could often see my manager in thedistance on the shore, hard shoes off, khaki pants rolled up at the ankle, pacing along thebeach with his phone glued to his ear—talking to Tommy incessantly. Even though wewere technically separated at that point, I was still the top Sony artist. Plus, knowing myevery move was a hard habit for Tommy to break. My manager was reporting but notgiving him the blow-by-blow. It would’ve made Tommy nuts to know I was having such agood time.
As much as I loved “Honey,” my only major disappointment was that Biggie (theNotorious B.I.G.) never made it onto the remix. Puffy and I had talked about bringing to“Honey” a similar blend of my raspy, silky vocal texture with the kind of grit and flowODB brought to the remix of “Fantasy.” I had never met Biggie, but there was a runningstory that I had beef with him because of his song “Dreams of Fucking an RnB Bitch”:
Jasmine Guy was fly
Mariah Carey’s kinda scary
Wait a minute, what about my honey Mary?
I was kinda scary? What does that mean? Fuck him. If he only knew some of the scaryshit I’d actually been through. Puffy called him one day while we were working in thestudio and put me on the phone. In true Biggie form—half pimp, half preacher—he said,“Naw, ma, you know, no disrespect,” assuring me the song was all in fun. So things werecool between us. On the call, we talked about the music and flow, and even clowned alittle bit. It was a chill and creative conversation. He was confident about what he wantedto bring to “Honey,” and I had no doubt he would come in the studio and crush it; that’swhat Biggie did. Tragically, he didn’t live long enough to make our studio date. The“Honey (Bad Boy Remix)” featuring Mase and the Lox was a smash, but there’s a part ofme that still misses Biggie on that song, and certainly in this world.
Producing the songs for Butterfly was what got me through that period in my life. Iwas writing about everything that was actually going on. It was the beginning of anotherlevel in my healing process. After the failure of the fake separation, after Puerto Rico,after the sexy-ass songs started pouring out, after all the pain we triggered in each other,after all the crazy normalcy we pretended to have and the stifling grip of his control hadfinally loosened, Tommy knew there was nothing left of the marriage.
I got a new lawyer, someone outside of Tommy’s circle of power. I had her draw upthe papers. Tommy signed, and I boarded a jet to the Dominican Republic, where mutual-consent divorces for foreigners are processed with the quickness. I flew into SantoDomingo, saw a judge, got my freedom papers, hopped back on the jet, and went straightto Tampa, where Derek was at spring training! I finally felt like a butterfly.
Don’t be afraid to fly?… spread your wings
Open up the door?… so much more inside
On that flight, I wasn’t afraid. I was incredibly vulnerable and raw. I’d closed andopened a door. I knew I had so much life, and work, ahead—and at the time I thought thatlife would include being happily-ever-after with Derek J. My romantic life up until thenhad been so grim, why not believe in a fairy tale? I couldn’t wait to fall into his arms withdivorce papers in hand. Finally!
Neither of us had wanted to cheapen our romance by cheating on my marriage. I knowplenty of women would’ve had sex on that roof in the rain, or in the villa on the beach. Itwould’ve been justified—they were such seductive situations, and my miserable marriagewas in ruins at best—but it wouldn’t have been right. I wanted to wait until it was right.
I’d waited all my life to really desire a man. It was worth waiting for it to be how I wantedit to be.
I’d had so many threatening experiences with men, and I had no real concept ofchoosing and being chosen on my own terms. I’d never been hungry for sex—not on mywedding night, not ever. I saved all my passion for my music. This time, Tommy wasright; I was inspired. It was so sensual—everything was so new and sweet, down to thesmooth texture of his honey-dipped skin. It was how it was supposed to feel. The monthsof anticipation had built an intensity I could not have manufactured. It was so heady, sointoxicating, and I was so vulnerable. I was in touch with a fire I didn’t know I had inside.
Derek confessed to me then that he was “in on” our divine dinner meeting. He hadapparently told several folks he wanted to meet me, including his contacts at Armani. Herevealed that he and a friend had had posters up on the wall in their bedrooms: his friend’swas of Alyssa Milano, and his was, you guessed it, of me. Apparently, plenty of peoplewere aware he was a fan, long before we ever met.
“I had this plan,” he told me. “I was going to come to New York. I was going to get onthe Yankees. I was going to meet you, and I was going to steal you away from TonySony”—his name for Tommy—“and then we were going to get married.” My grin was amile wide. “Okay. I like that plan.” Only, he didn’t steal me from Tommy—I liberatedmyself.
There was nothing salacious about my relationship with Derek. Even on the night ofour consummation, when I slept over at his house in Tampa, his sister was there, sobasically it was an eighth- grade event. I remember waking up the next day,enthusiastically thinking, I’m going to make breakfast for him! just like in the movies. Itiptoed down to the kitchen with passion-tousled hair, wearing his oversized Yankeesjersey.
I looked in the refrigerator to find three lonely eggs and not much else. His sister foundme searching, and we laughed at my foiled rom-com plans. She was kind, and I related toher instantly. I didn’t know many mixed-race young women. She was beautiful, with anopen heart and an honest laugh.
His entire family moved me. All my life I had blamed the dysfunction in my family onrace, but meeting the Jeters dispelled this myth. My family’s brokenness was deeper thanBlack and white. This family was close in composition to mine but so different in actuality—they were close and loving. They interacted with each other as if they really knew, andcared for, one other. They were solid people, with a clear moral code. They held eachother up. And they were lovely to me, all of them. This was a powerful example: a Blackfather and a white mother existing as partners and parents. A sister and a brother who wereproud of each other, not enemies. Here was proof that a family that looked like mine couldbe unbroken. Perhaps that notion, that there could be a mixed family that was perfectlymatched, was the most lasting thing Derek gave me in our brief relationship. The image ofthe Jeter family gave me hope.
But Tampa was only a weekend wonderland, and I had to return to New York andButterfly. I had to prepare for the tour, which would be my most extensive to date. Acouple of my girlfriends who were excited to celebrate my emancipation from mymarriage to Tommy came to meet me, and we all flew back to NYC on a jet. It wasdifficult to leave what seemed like a dream, but I was also anxious to get back to work.
Derek gave me a little gold ankle bracelet and a giant stuffed puppy dog as going-awaypresents. Cute. I only had whatever short- skirt outfit I had worn to the DominicanRepublic, so he gave me one of his sweat suits to wear on the plane.
We arrived at the private airport where the jet and my girls were waiting. Derekopened the car door for me, and I stepped out into the Florida sun, cheeks flushed, lipsplump, hair still holding on to the morning’s frolicking. My large, dark Chanel sunglassesrested low on my nose, and my frame was drowned in his oversized sweatpants, whichwere rolled up at the cuff and down at the waistband, revealing my ankles and my navel. Ihad the sleeves of the jacket pushed up too, its wide bottom swinging in the wind, flappingaround the cropped top I wore underneath. Balancing precariously in my six-inch mules, Istruggled to manage the huge stuffed animal on one arm and my Louis Vuitton hobo bagon the other.
As I approached my girls, I could hear them shouting “Oooooooh, hel- lo!” Theyclaimed I was strutting down the tarmac like a cowboy in pointe shoes. We sippedchampagne and toasted to acquiring freedom papers and finally getting a shot of goodvitamin D. We giggled the entire flight back.
Derek was only the second person I had slept with ever (coincidentally, his numberwas 2 on the Yankees). Just like his position on the team, our relationship was a short stopin my life. It was a very critical transition for me, and maybe a dream come true, or maybean accomplishment, for him. I don’t know. Very soon it became clear we weren’t meantfor the long run. For one, there’s a great gulf between athletes and artists, and honestly it’shard for two stars from any industry to make it work.
My time with Derek was a sweet and short dream, yet its impact lingered. I thoughtabout it from time to time for years after. Once, I was feeling intensely melancholy whilerecalling our short love affair to a friend. In my best Joan Crawford voice, I lamented,“The mother loved me! The sister loved me! The father loved me! It could have beenperfect!” There was so much energy surging through my body that the champagne glass Iwas holding completely shattered. I took that intensity and put it in “Crybaby.”
Late at night like a little child
Wanderin’ round alone in my new friend’s homeOn my tippy toes, so that he won’t know
I still cry baby over you and me
I don’t get no sleep
I’m up all week
Can’t stop thinking of you and me
And everything we used to be
It could have been so perfect
See, I cry. I cry. I cry.
Oh I gotta get me some sleep
—“Crybaby”
Let’s be honest, as an artist, I am the Queen of taking one morsel and making manymeals from it. I milked and mined my limited time with DJ for much more than it wasworth. My sixth studio album, Butterfly, was released into the world and has since soldmore than ten million copies.
Though our relationship was just a moment in my time line, Derek served a very highpurpose in my life. He was the catalyst I needed to get out from under Tommy’s cripplingcontrol and get in touch with my sensuality. And the intimacy of our shared racialexperience was major—to connect with a healthy family who looked like mine was veryinspiring. He was in the right place at the right time, and he was there for the rightpurpose.
DJ was a love in my life, not of my life. It was the idea of him, rather than the realityof him, that was so magnetic. In the end, I’ll chalk up our ending to the fact that wecouldn’t live up to each other’s fantasies. One can never compete with the fantasy. Youjust can’t. It’s like Marilyn used to say: “They go to bed with Marilyn Monroe, and theywake up with Norma Jeane.”
The hard way is the way I have learned the most. There is no “Dreamlover” coming torescue me and no Prince Charming or Joe DiMaggio to sweep me off my feet. I got sweptaway by a shortstop, but only God Almighty is my All.
A VISIT TO THE PRESIDENT
A VISIT TO THE PRESIDENT
I had to go get what I wanted, and I wanted freedom. I needed not just freedom from mymarriage to Tommy, but freedom from Sony, as they were inextricably linked.
The executives at Sony used to call me “the Franchise” (crazy, right?), so when I wasready to get off the label, they made it difficult for me. We went back and forth with thelawyers about what obligations I would be expected to fulfill. We agreed to an unnamedstudio album (which would eventually become Rainbow).
They wanted a greatest- hits album too. I was resistant to this because it felt sopremature, as if they were trying to sew me up with the nineties.
No matter who I was talking to at the label, Tommy was still in control. There was noone above him at Sony Music—everything had to go through him. When I began to haveconversations about getting off the label, I was blocked at every turn. Tommy had avendetta against me, and he used his power to hold me hostage. When things still weren’tmoving along, I felt I had no more options, so I decided it was time to pay a visit to NorioOhga, the president and chairman of Sony Corporation. I had never done anything likethis. Tommy was the biggest boss I’d ever faced until then. Going above his head seemedlike a wild, dangerous idea and was certainly a last resort. But I had no choice: this wasmy freedom, my career, my life.
I knew I was the most successful artist in Japan that Sony had at the time, so I figured Icould at least get a sit-down. My executive assistant made the travel arrangements for thetwo of us—nobody else, not even my lawyer.
I called ahead and said, “I’m going to be in Japan. I’d like to come see Mr. Ohga.”
Meanwhile, the people at Sony were probably busy working on the next big globaltechnology or whatever. At the time, I wasn’t thinking that what they made from themusic business was small potatoes compared to everything else. All I was thinking wasthat there had to be someone above Tommy. There had to be some way out, and I waswilling to do anything. So, I decided to pack my bags, fly to the other side of the world,and talk face-to-face with the man who was really running things.
Mr. Ohga’s assistant was a woman who was very kind to me and helped methroughout the trip. We remained friendly for years after. Mr. Ohga spoke English, butthere was always an interpreter present. I had been to Japan several times and wassomewhat familiar with their cultural norms, particularly with regard to showing respectand never losing face. What was more difficult to navigate were the cultural expectationsaround gender. Mr. Ohga was very old school, and I’m sure being confronted by a youngwoman was startling to him, even if that young woman was the best-selling artist on hislabel. And honestly, I don’t even think he knew that I was mixed race, so he didn’t know ayoung Black woman was coming to his headquarters, petitioning for her freedom. It was aballsy move, but I had the numbers to back me up. Back then it wasn’t about streamingnumbers. Sales were physical objects, things that people had to go out and buy — ahundred million albums, DVDs, CDs, VHS tapes! They bought products and posters.
After all, I was “the Franchise.” To this day I still don’t know how much money I madefor Sony. I’ve been told it’s billions.
Like the man himself, Mr. Ohga’s office was serious and elegant, dimly lit with alarge, traditional black lacquered table as its centerpiece. Mr. Ohga was formal and laserfocused. I wasn’t quite prepared for the extent of his formality, honestly. I hadn’tconsulted with a prep team or advisers. So there was no preparation, but I did have a clearpurpose. My intention for the meeting was for us to decide on an exit strategy. We wouldneed to figure out the terms of a deal, and I wanted to make sure there would be marketingsupport from Sony for the work I would deliver. Despite how badly I wanted to get off ofSony, I knew my fans deserved the highest-quality music I could make, and I would givethem nothing less. I wanted Sony to know that I would work hard and promote tirelessly. Iwanted to be seen and heard; I wanted them to know that I was here, I was payingattention, I was serious, and I was willing to speak up for myself.
I had to be sure that if I fulfilled my end of the bargain with these new albums, theywouldn’t cheat me by failing to support them. If I was going to put my heart and soul intothis work, I needed to have their word that they would throw everything they had behind itas they used to do. It was a brief meeting that would have long-lasting impact.
Tommy himself had once gone straight to the Japanese executives to oust WalterYetnikoff, a former mentor turned rival. These powerful men were not only well versed inthese kinds of cutthroat business dealings, they were encouraged to stand up forthemselves. Though I wasn’t a male artist and I had no parental support or lawyer in theroom, I was stronger now, and I wasn’t going to let myself be played ever again.
I may have had big boss energy, but I was also deeply saddened by the whole process.
I wanted to stay on at Sony, but I didn’t know how to move forward in the midst of mymarriage to its CEO coming to an end. Deep down I was hoping they’d just fire him so Icould stay. It wasn’t the first time he had caused problems—there was a lawsuit withGeorge Michael, and Michael Jackson eventually launched a campaign againstexploitation of Black artists, explicitly aimed at Tommy, with Reverend Al Sharpton at theNational Action Network’s Harlem headquarters.
Mr. Ohga may not have agreed to fire Tommy the very next day, but when I went toJapan, people took notice. They were now listening. My music had made an impact in thatculture, in that country, and in that company. Going to Japan was a stretch for me, but itchanged my life. I took a stand, by myself and for myself. I had made it happen, and soonI would be free.
Though I expected to have more time and a more in-depth meeting, ultimately I wasgrateful Mr. Ohga respected me enough to take that meeting and make a deal with me; it’swhy years later I was able to return to the company with Caution, which interestinglyenough is my most critically acclaimed album. When I got back home to deal with thepowers that be in America, we arrived at a final deal that included four albums to bedelivered over the next five years: #1’s, Rainbow, Greatest Hits, and The Remixes. #1’s,which I had conceptualized and proposed to Columbia, would be the first to come out, in1998.
I was reluctant to rerelease old music, so in addition to the thirteen number-one hits I’dhad by then, I added four brand-new tracks to the album. Brian McKnight and I recorded atotally new duet version of “Whenever You Call,” from Butterfly. I also did a duet withJermaine, a cover of Rainy Davis’s “Sweetheart.” I did a cover of “I Still Believe.” Last,but certainly not least, #1’s included my duet with Whitney Houston from The Prince ofEgypt, “When You Believe.”
The recording of that song was interesting. Jeffrey Katzenberg, from DreamWorks,brought me the song and asked if I would consider recording it for the soundtrack for ananimated film. The soundtrack was heavily laden with R & B and gospel influences andfeatured K-Ci & JoJo and Boyz II Men. After I saw the movie, I knew it was somethingspecial that I wanted to be a part of (it went on to gross $218 million worldwide, making itthe most successful non-Disney animated feature of the time). But most of all I wasexcited by the prospect of working with Whitney!
It was a major pop-culture moment that Whitney and I were collaborating, but I waspersonally so happy we did because we ended up having a wonderful time together.
Everybody wanted to pit us against each other in some “battle of the divas”—a tired butpervasive pathology in music and Hollywood that makes women compete for sales likeemotional UFC fighters. This narrative just supports the stereotype of all women beingpetty and not in control of our feelings, yet totally controllable by the boys in the industry.
Obviously, Whitney was formidable. Who wasn’t inspired by her career, who she wasas an artist and as an anointed vocalist?! But we were very different. I loved (and stilllove) layering the background vocals, writing, producing, and doing behind-the-scenesstuff like that. She was kind of born into it, like a royal singing princess. To us, it neverfelt like a competition. We complemented each other. We both had our hearts anchored inthe Lord, and that was real, even though so much of what was happening around us wassurreal. After the initial iciness (built up by outside forces) wore off, we developed a realfondness for each other. She had a marvelous sense of humor. She started using my wordsand calling me “lamb”—it was just pure fun.
Bobby Brown was around, and I don’t know what else was going on, but that wasn’tmy business. I just know we had fun and laughed a lot. Doing the video was great fun too;we had many incredible moments together. Every day we spent together was special, andI’ll always cherish the memory of that time and of all that she left behind. “When YouBelieve” stands as a testimony to the power of faith and, to me, sisterhood here on earth asit is in heaven.
Rainbow was released the following year and was a very different endeavor than #1’s,which was a compilation album. It was much more involved. For obvious reasons, therewas a huge push to get it done, so I wrote and recorded Rainbow in three months. I wasdesperate to work without distraction. My longtime friend Randy Jackson suggested Icheck out a very cool and secluded recording studio in Capri (which I love more than anyplace on Earth). In this paradise tucked in ancient limestone mountains towering out of theGulf of Naples, I had a lovely little studio apartment that was flooded with sunlight andprivacy every morning. I’d sit in a room in the studio filled with candles and creativity andhunker down for hours, just writing and laying down tracks. I wrote by myself andoccasionally with the incomparable Terry Lewis, whom I love as a writer, while theJimmy Jam added his brilliant musicianship. (Together they are responsible for forty-oneUS top-ten hits.) Without them, the album would not have come together so smoothly.
The three of us worked together all the way through “Can’t Take That Away (Mariah’sTheme),” which I brought to Diane Warren, who plucked it out on the piano as I sang thelyrics and melody to the first verse. We wrote the second verse together. That song wasactually about the professional and personal situation I was going through:
They can say anything they want to say
Try to bring me down, but I will not allow
Anyone to succeed hanging clouds over me
And they can try hard to make me feel
That I don’t matter at all
But I refuse to falter in what I believe
Or lose faith in my dreams
’Cause there’s
There’s a light in me
That shines brightly
They can try
But they can’t take that away from me
—“Can’t Take That Away (Mariah’s Theme)”
Since I was a child, I had often had to turn to the “light in me / That shines brightly”
just to get through, just to survive. So that was a song about many things, but when I wroteit, I was thinking about all that was going on at the time, about Tommy and the manyyears I had spent under his control. That was my theme—“They can try / But they can’ttake that away from me / From me, no, no, no.”
The video (which I produced and paid for), while not the slickest in terms of tricks andproduction values, was a real change. We shot it in Japan. At the time, it was uncommonto incorporate real fans and user-generated content into videos. It was important for me tocenter my fans and express how they felt about the songs I was writing about my life forthem. We collected a bunch of materials: footage of everyday people, real people who hadovercome the odds to accomplish extraordinary things. The video also included superstarchampions like Venus and Serena Williams, but mainly people in my life who I careddeeply about, like my nephew Shawn, who, despite being the child of a troubled teenagemother, went on to graduate from Harvard Law, and Da Brat’s grandmother. It showedtriumphant moments, emotional moments—and it was real and raw. I wanted to utilize thetheme of my core belief that all things are possible. I wanted the video to be a tribute to allthe fans who helped me get through everything.
The song didn’t do anything on the charts because the label barely promoted it—andthis marked the beginning of their sabotage campaign. But it mattered for the fans. Itmattered for the people who needed to hear it. And it matters for me. To this day, I stilllisten to it every once in a while. I still need it.
Another important song on Rainbow was “Petals.” It was, and still is, a painful piece forme. It’s about my life, my family, my growth. It was both a thank-you and a farewell tothe toxic influences in my life.
I’ve often wondered if there’s ever been a perfect familyI’ve always longed for undividedness and sought stability—“Petals”
In a way, “Petals” told part of my life story through snapshots of the formativerelationships that touched and changed me. With that song, I wanted to offer forgivenessand to imagine another possible life in the future—one with less hurt and more healing. SoI wrote the song to release some of the pain. But there are still times when the hurt chokesme and I cannot sing the song.
Rainbow had two number ones—“Heartbreaker” (my fourteenth, featuring Jay-Z) and“Thank God I Found You” (my fifteenth, collaborating with Joe and 98 Degrees, and withNas on the remix). It was important to me to pull together the artists I felt were definingthe time, and Usher, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, Da Brat, Missy Elliott, Mystikal, and Master Pwere also part of the album.
After working at Jimmy and Terry’s Minneapolis studio, I returned to New York to do“Heartbreaker” with DJ Clue. Jay-Z jumped on that track, and it became the hit we allknow and love. We did the “Heartbreaker” remix between New York and Los Angeles. DJClue brought in all kinds of cool artists, like Joe and Nas on “Thank God I Found You(Make It Last Remix).” Rainbow closed out the twentieth century and, for me, was thebridge to freedom. But as they say, freedom ain’t free.
Recording the album was a whirlwind, but it was fulfilling as well. By then I had a realsense of my rhythm and specific preferences for how I would craft a song. I would oftencreate different parts of a song in different places. I really love the process of writing in acollaborative way, but doing my vocals is a more intimate process for me. While writing Ilike to do a scratch (first draft) vocal, sometimes without lyrics or with partial lyrics, andthen take that basic track, complete the lyrics, finish the vocals, perfect it, and layer inbackground vocals. I like to do the lead when no one else is there, just me and myengineer. If I could do my own engineering, I would record like Prince and be completelyalone. I prefer not having to consider other people’s opinions in the development ofvocals. I like a calm space where I can get to work and focus; I need to be able to hear mythoughts and see the vision in my head. I need to be able to play with the song, tweak it,and I definitely need a chance to sing it through a couple of times. Where does it feelnatural to go up? Where doesn’t it? Making records is kind of a spiritual science comparedto a live vocal performance. I’m at my best when I can take my time and really live with arecord.
We put out the Greatest Hits album for Columbia in 2001. It was a double album,which included the commercially successful hits and some personal and fan favorites like“Underneath the Stars” and my duet with the truly legendary Luther Vandross, a remakeof “Endless Love.” My last album for Columbia, which would mark the end of myobligation to Sony, was The Remixes. By the time it came out, in 2003, Tommy hadstepped down from Columbia/Sony, so I had more creative input into the album and wasmore invested.
The concept of the compilation was unique: It was a double album like Greatest Hits,only the first disc was all the club mixes, and the second was all the hip-hop collaborationsand remixes, from “Honey” to “Loverboy (Remix)” to “Breakdown,” featuring BoneThugs-N-Harmony. It even included the So So Def remix of “All I Want for Christmas”
with Lil’ Bow Wow (he was still lil’ then) and my hit song with Busta Rhymes andFlipmode Squad, “I Know What You Want.”
But before these final two albums, I sealed the new deal on my freedom. After meetingwith all the major record labels, I settled on the more eclectic Virgin Records, which wasvery artist friendly (they had Lenny Kravitz and Janet Jackson). I believed if I had enoughmoney and marketing support, we would have success. With a fresh, historic record deal, Iwas about to embark on the project that changed my life—Glitter.
PART III ALL THAT GLITTERS-FIRECRACKER
PART III
ALL THAT GLITTERS
FIRECRACKER
“He knows we just did this shit with Mariah?… and he’s trying to fuck with Mariah.”
—Irv Gotti
The saga of making Glitter was a collision of bad luck, bad timing, and sabotage.
The soundtrack and film began as All That Glitters, and though I first began to work onthe project in 1997, we had to put it on hold for several years so I could fulfill morepressing obligations to Columbia. While I had significant creative control over thesoundtrack, I had virtually none when it came to the film. The initial concepts I developedfor the story were almost entirely rewritten. I started working on the script with my actingcoach and Kate Lanier, who had written What’s Love Got to Do with It. She’s such atalented and gifted writer, and I really trusted her. But every day we kept getting more andmore studio notes.
Tommy could not give up control, especially now that I was doing what I had alwaysdreamed of and he had always feared: acting. Glitter was being produced by ColumbiaPictures, which was owned by Sony, which connected it to Tommy. The chair ofColumbia Pictures at the time referred to him while we worked as “the white elephant inthe room”—that silent, invisible force we could not discuss. Anything that might havepushed the envelope, that would have made it an R-rated or even PG-13-rated movie, wasswiftly vetoed. Nothing could be too real, too edgy, too sexy, or too down-to-earth. Therewas a much grittier script to be had (come on, it took place in the eighties!), but we endedup with something very bubblegum.
As a result of continual back-and-forth and Tommy’s stifling control, we had scriptchanges every day. No one knew what was happening from moment to moment. Inaddition to a vastly different script, I had also wanted Terrence Howard in the lead (Ienvisioned him in this kind of role before Hustle and Flow, mind you). But the powersthat be were dismissive of the idea of a romance between Terrence and me. I suspected itwas because he looks Blacker than me (though he is also mixed!) and they didn’tunderstand how that was going to work, if you catch my drift. So that was disappointing.
No shade to Max Beesley, who was great.
In addition to a lack of creative control, I felt my acting was really inhibited for manyreasons by the acting coach, who by this time I believe had become too invested in mycareer. I don’t want to slay her, but she prevented me from doing my best by projectingher own personal shit onto the movie. I’ve heard this often happens in collaborations; itgot very Marilyn and Paula Strasberg-ish. With all due respect, it became an ego fest (I’msure she would agree with me now). What was important to me was that the extras andother people on set—from actors to crew—knew that I was serious, ready to learn, andready to work just as hard as them. Though the whole process wasn’t great, I did feel Igave some good performances (which would have been more evident with different edits).
I wasn’t upset because it was such a new medium for me, but I think at every turn therewere missteps.
But there was light at the end of this glittered tunnel. Frank Sinatra once said DaniJanssen was one of Hollywood’s “original broads,” and I love a good broad, especiallyone who knows how to throw a good party. Dani Diamonds’s (as she was famouslycalled) Oscar parties are legendary—and I do not throw the L word around haphazardly.
Most guests either have to have an Oscar or have been nominated for one in order to beinvited. Her regulars are all legends—Sidney Poitier, John Travolta, Quincy Jones, Oprah,Babs (Barbra Streisand), and on and on. And each year a hot new crop of fresh Oscarwinners mingle with icons amid her massive collection of white orchids. One year, I wasfortunate enough to receive a surprising and very special invitation (naturally, Dani and Ihit it off famously). One of the hottest leading men at the time, a two-time AcademyAward winner (Dani’s code of no “networking” or name-dropping is taken very seriously,so he shall remain anonymous), came up to me and said about my work in Glitter, “I knowpeople give you shit about it. I’ve been there. You were really hitting some things thatwere very genuine, and I think you should stick with that. Don’t let them make you feellike you can’t go there anymore.” He made me feel so much better because of theimmense respect I have for him as an actor. And it was a good thing I didn’t give up—because a few years later something truly “precious” would come my way.
Much of what went wrong with Glitter led back to Tommy. He was angry about thedivorce and my departure from Sony, and he used all his power and connections to punishme. And everybody else around me knew it was happening, including my new label.
Tommy and his cronies went as far as taking promotional items, like my stand- upadvertisements, out of the record stores. It was a real fight. He didn’t want it to look like Icould succeed on my own, without him, so he even interfered with the Glitter soundtrack.
I worked on it for a long time with people like Eric Benét and Brat, who were both in themovie. Terry Lewis was able to get us the original music for “I Didn’t Mean to Turn YouOn,” since he and Jimmy Jam produced it, of course! And having Rick James (whorequired a white suit, a white limo, and perhaps some other white accouterments for hissession) on “All My Life” was priceless.
The whole experience felt like a dream. And in many ways, it was exactly what I haddreamed of for so many years. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying Glitter was Cat on aHot Tin Roof or something, but I don’t think it deserved what it got. I think it could havebeen good had it been allowed to be executed as originally conceived, but by the end, itwas such a fight just to have it happen at all. But as always, I kept the faith. I told myself,Everything’s going to work out. I went to that place of hope. This is hard right now, I toldmyself, it’s a struggle, but I’ll make it through, no matter what. And I was stronger thanever on the other side. And though darkness followed, it was in that darkness that I learnedto build my own light.
Tommy was furious when I cut the strings he used to manipulate me. There was no wayhe would allow me to have a huge success after leaving him and Sony. He was not goingto let me or Glitter shine; rather, he was intent on stamping us out. He wouldn’t have beensatisfied unless I absolutely failed. He used to always say, “You do what you do, and thenI do my magic.” He would have me destroyed before I exposed that he was no magician.
If the Glitter soundtrack had been a monster hit, he would have had to face the fact that hewas not omnipotent, he was not indispensable, he did not single-handedly make MariahCarey. To add to his fury, he knew I’d just negotiated the largest cash record deal to date(and my family knew, too, but more on that later). And on top of it, I was making a movie,something he forbade when we were together, and that meant my career was expanding,which made him feel like he was shrinking. He had already been publicly humiliated whenI left him, but for me to be successful without him too? That was too much for his fragileego to withstand. What would it mean for his whole empire to be based on intimidation?
What would it mean to other artists if I made it without him? I fully believed he wascommitted to me not having a life he didn’t control. That he wouldn’t be happy until I wasburied in the ground.
I escaped a man and marriage that nearly smothered me to death. I was one of severalartists who called Tommy and his flunkies out for working against the best interest of thecompany because of petty personal vendettas.
Meanwhile over at the new label, all hell was breaking loose because “Loverboy,” thefirst single off the Glitter soundtrack, was only at number two on the charts, not numberone. I didn’t understand the panic around a number two single on a soundtrack for a filmthat wasn’t even released yet. But suffice it to say, on the heels of filming Glitter, my lifeand work were once again under tremendous scrutiny and pressure.
And then there was the sabotage. I had written the lyrics to “Loverboy”; the melodywas tight, and it had an infectious groove. Super producer Clark Kent and I had chosen“Firecracker,” by Yellow Magic Orchestra, as the sample, and the few insiders working onthe film’s production were really loving it. That did not go unnoticed by Sony executives(and spies). I had chosen the song and paid to have it used in the movie. After hearing mynew song, using the same sample I used, Sony rushed to make a single for another femaleentertainer on their label (whom I don’t know). They used the “Firecracker” sample andreleased it before “Loverboy.” Ja Rule and I wrote a song together too, and next thing youknow, Tommy was calling up his manager Irv Gotti, asking him and Ja to collaborate on aduet for the same female entertainer’s record—leaving me to scurry and remake the song.
Irv has even discussed it since, in an interview on Desus & Mero: “He knows we just didthis shit with Mariah?… and he’s trying to fuck with Mariah.” This was sabotage, plainand simple.
Look, I was well trained in the art of turning shit situations into fertilizer, but Tommyknew fucking with my artistic choices was particularly low. But I wouldn’t let him stopme. I switched gears and turned from the techno influence to a funkier sample from“Candy,” by Cameo (you can’t go wrong with Cameo), and Clark Kent produced it again.
After we were both robbed, he saved the day with a banging track (using some remnantsfrom “Firecracker,” which is my favorite part of the song). Da Brat pretty much said it allin her blistering and very real rap on the remix to “Loverboy.”
Hate on me as much as you want to
You can’t do what the fuck I do
Bitches be emulating me daily
Hate on me as much as you want to
You can’t be who the fuck I be
Bitches be imitating me baby
—“Loverboy (Remix)”
We even featured Larry Blackmon (in cornrows) in a poppy sexy-kitschy video shotby my good friend, the fabulous David LaChapelle. And we had a good time despite it all.
But the good times were about to turn real bad.
RESTING IN PIECES
RESTING IN PIECES
After leaving Tommy I lived in hotels and on the road before I was finally able to make ahome for myself. I came very close to buying Barbra Streisand’s exquisite, palatial CentralPark West penthouse in an impressive Art Deco building. She famously has a passion fordesign; her home was decorated with impeccable taste that was totally compatible withwhat I loved. After all I went through to build Sing Sing it would have been a relief tohave a gorgeous turnkey home. But alas, the conservative co-op board was afraid therewould be too many rappers, and their entourages, aka big black men, milling about, anddidn’t approve me. I eventually found a perfect building downtown, in Tribeca, andmoved into the kind of home I dreamed of as a child. Having my own glamorous, giganticNew York City penthouse apartment was exciting but also totally disorienting. I wasfinally in my own space, but I often didn’t know where any of my stuff was or where itwas supposed to be yet. And I had no time to get my new place in order because I wasworking nonstop. I had a reputation in the industry for being a beast when it came toproductivity. I went hard in the studio, and I went equally hard promoting and marketing. Iwas an all-in artist, and everyone I worked with knew it.
Having a new project on a new label was taking all I had, and I was giving as much asI could. There were all these new people at the label, and my personal management teamwasn’t properly restructured to accommodate the new demands. And quite honestly, allthe change and new, higher stakes overwhelmed them. My schedule was brutal. I wouldhave a shoot or an event until 3:00 a.m., then a 5:00 a.m. press call. It was relentless.
Nowhere in my itinerary was there R-E-S-T, and at the time I didn’t know how to demandit. When you’re working like a machine, there has to be human care built into the process:
nutritious food, bodywork, vocal rest, but most importantly, sleep. (I knew this, even if thenotion of “self-care” was a decade away.)
Of course, the timing of the soundtrack’s release couldn’t have been worse —something no one could have foreseen. People didn’t go see the movie. I still believeGlitter was ahead of its time. People may not have been ready to deal with the eighties inthe early 2000s, but I knew it was going to be a thing. And then it was! And I still love thatsoundtrack. I am so glad and so grateful that almost two decades later, the Lambs and I got#JusticeForGlitter, making it go to number one in 2018. I’m also glad I get to performthose songs now. The fans gave Glitter new shine, new dazzle—the life it deserved.
It was late in the summer of 2001. The few critics who were able to preview theGlitter movie almost unanimously panned it. The anxiety caused by its bad reception, andthe label’s reaction to the single only hitting number two, was seeping into my psyche.
Honestly, the only other artist I’ve seen under so much pressure to perform above andbeyond their own phenomenal success was Michael Jackson. Like him, I was also used tohaving unquestionable smashes. It was my idea to make a whole-ass album called #1’s!
But still, number two on a new label, on a soundtrack (not a studio album) didn’t seem sotragic, if you ask me.
And still the stress was mounting. It didn’t seem like the label had a strongpromotional strategy, and I didn’t have a coordinated management team in place yet. Ididn’t see anyone around me taking control of what was becoming the “single situation.”
Worry seemed to outweigh planning and problem solving; internally the project waslooking a mess. So my creative survival instincts kicked in. I felt like I had to dosomething—somebody had to do something.
High anxiety made what little sleep was allotted for in my schedule nearly impossible.
I couldn’t get to sleep. I couldn’t find my things. I couldn’t seem to get anyone to pull ittogether.
So I made my own move. Admittedly, it was too late and a bit messy, but it was somekind of action. I concocted a last-minute little publicity stunt to garner excitement for“Loverboy”: I staged a “crash” of TRL on MTV.
In keeping with the vibe of the video and the audience, I thought it would be festive tohave a little nostalgic summer moment. Running on pure panic and excitement, I showedup on set with a spunky ponytail, pushing an ice-cream cart full of Popsicles and wearingan oversized airbrushed “Loverboy” T-shirt with a surprise underneath: an eighties Glitterlook. It was an innocent and silly stunt and highly unrehearsed. I very much freestyled mydialogue, as I tend to do, and I was hoping Carson Daly could play off of me, riff, andinvolve the audience (as one would expect a host to do). But he didn’t play along. (I knowhe was probably told to act surprised, but he didn’t act at all.)I realized I was living in the moment all by myself. So I thought, Okay, let me pull outa little costume trick to get the energy going. I awkwardly removed the T-shirt to revealgold sparkly hot pants and a “Supergirl” tank top. But in response, Carson, acting allaghast, said, “Mariah Carey is stripping on TRL right now!” (Oh, now he decides to act.) Icertainly was not stripping—I was revealing. Granted, my performance was a bit sloppy,and came off as silly. But instead of ad-libbing, Carson was looking at me like I wascrazy. My adrenaline was dialed up to 1,000, and Carson asked me, “What are youdoing?” Really?!
I nervously answered, “Every now and then, somebody needs a little therapy, andtoday is that moment for me.”
The truth is, my fans are a part of my therapy. Some people have retail therapy, somehave chocolate therapy; I have fan therapy. I have always gone directly to my fans forenergy and inspiration. I established an independent relationship with my fans beforesocial media was even created. I used my website to personally talk to them; I would leavevoice messages for them and tell them what I was doing and how I was honestly feeling.
It was unfiltered, how I communicated with my fans, and how we communicated witheach other. So when I made that infamous call to my fans, while freaked out and feelingalone on a boat in Puerto Rico, leaving a sad message saying I was taking a break—theyunderstood. The way it was reported in the press was as if I had a meltdown and made adesperate, random call. Back then, people didn’t understand, and wondered why I talkeddirectly to my fans. The media had no concept of the bond I had with my fans. None.
My fans care, and they take note of everything I do and make it their own. The pressdidn’t understand how the fans named themselves “Lambs.” The fans paid attention towhen Trey Lorenz and I would go into our old-Hollywood affectation and say things like,“Be a lamb and fetch me a splash of wine.” We would call each other “lamb” as a term ofendearment all the time—and that’s how the Lambs (the deeply devoted fans) were born!
Now we are Lambily! My fans saved my life and continue to give me life every day. Sohonestly, I don’t give a fuck if publicists or press thought I was crazy for bringingPopsicles or making phone calls to my fans. The Lambs are everything, and every song,every show, every video, every post, every festive moment, everything I do as an artist isfor them.
TRL. Was. A. Stunt. Gone. Awry. And let’s be clear and logical, there’s no way I,Mariah Carey, or anyone could actually crash any MTV show, with an ice-cream cart noless. Maybe Carson Daly didn’t know I was coming, but producers had to schedule myappearance—coordinators, publicists, security, whole-ass teams of people knew I wascoming. It was a stunt. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Any idea was good at thattime. I was like a stand- up comic who bombed a set. All performers bomb, but mybombing set off a chain reaction that placed a target on my back. The tabloids and thecelebrity press at large acted like I’d actually stripped butt naked and given Carson a lapdance on live TV (which is now a mundane routine often performed by reality TV starsand rappers—oh, how the standards have changed)!
The press devoured my silly TRL stunt and me right along with it. It was the first timeI had experienced the phenomenon of a public fail that woke the monster in the media,that vicious vampire that gains its strength by feeding on the weaknesses of the vulnerable.
The bombed stunt mushroomed into a big, nasty, never-ending story. Some mainstreammedia is a glutton for negative energy and fear. It places a mask over pain and presents itas entertainment news. It was visible, and I was vulnerable. And when the Cinderella ofSony took a fall, no king’s horses or men tried to set the record straight, pick me up, or putme back together again. Rather, they fed on the spectacle and just wanted more—morestumbles, more embarrassment, more breaks, more ridicule. The monster in the media isonly satisfied when you are destroyed.
This was all happening before the phenomenon of social media. There was noclapping back on Twitter. No “Drag them, Queen!” No organic love mob of the fiercelyloyal Lambily to rush to my defense. Thousands of fans and Lambs did show me love andsupport through letters and comments on my website, but the “outside” world didn’t takenote of that. There was no YouTube and no ’gram. (Although a surprising ally also rose tomy defense: Suge Knight (who was so powerful then), in an interview on Hot 97, said,“Everybody needs to leave Mariah alone, or they’re going to have a problem with me.”
Trust, back then nobody wanted to have a problem with Suge.
Today it’s easy to coordinate a promo moment or change the narrative through socialmedia. It was freaking hard to penetrate pop culture back then. It was a huge undertakingto get on major TV shows and devise my own “moments”; practically every move youmade as an artist was controlled by the “corporate morgue” (as I lovingly call them). Now,when some celebrity mishap goes viral, there’s generally a twenty- four- hour mediatakeover; then it’s over. Back then, you did one thing, and it dominated the press for whatseemed like an eternity. TRL was that one thing.
And the press hunted me, ferociously. This was five years after Princess Diana’s death bytabloid. I studied how the press hounded her like hyenas. I once had a brief butunforgettable moment with Lady Di when our eyes locked at a Vogue party. She was in astunning sapphire-colored gown, neck dripping in the same blue gems. And she had thatlook—the dull terror of never being left alone burning behind her eyes. We were both likecornered animals in couture. I completely recognized and identified with her. We sharedthat understanding of how it felt always being surrounded by people, all of whom mightnot be trying to hurt you, but all of whom are trying to do something. They all wantsomething. I didn’t know she would be caught and killed shortly after our encounter. Icertainly didn’t know I would soon be in a dangerously similar position. The hunters wereclosing in.
With the August heat, my troubled sleep quickly deteriorated into no sleep at all. Sleephad disappeared, as had proper meals. I was barely eating. The panic around “Loverboy”
at the label was real, and they were desperate to make another video for the second singleright away. We had just spent several exhausting days shooting the “Loverboy” video inthe scorching California desert, in harsh conditions, with no water or basic necessities.
There had been no covered area to wait in and block me from the sun between takes,which not only fried me, it wasted time, because my makeup kept melting and had to bereapplied. I may have looked super peppy, but “Loverboy” was a technically gruelingshoot, and the label wanted me to get on a plane right away, fly back to New York, andstart shooting another video for “Never Too Far” the following day!
I was utterly exhausted, baked, fried, and frayed, and certainly wasn’t in any conditionto make another video. I should have had, at the very least, a three- or four-day bufferbetween shoots. Besides, there was a whole glamorous performance of the song in thefilm, which they could’ve and should’ve used as a video (ultimately they did). But thelabel wasn’t hearing me.
It didn’t matter that I was completely spent—what mattered was that they had spentmore than a hundred million dollars on “Mariah Carey.” They wanted all their glitteryproducts ready for sale now. There was no one around to intervene, to help coach the labelon how to pace the projects and my productivity. No one had the strength or power to sayno to unreasonable requests on my behalf, and the pressure was steadily rising. I wasexhausted. And the most difficult part was the diabolical delight the tabloid media wasmilking out of my moment of weakness. It was a nonstop, never-ending circus. I recallwatching one entertainment show after the TRL debacle where they were talking about mein the past tense. It was so surreal, as if I was watching an “In Memoriam” of MariahCarey. And all I really wanted was to rest in peace.
This, on top of dealing with Tommy and my family, was just too much. I was beyondtired. I was in urgent need of sleep. Sleep, this basic human requirement, this simplecomfort, became impossible to obtain. I tried to find refuge in the emptiness of myenormous new penthouse, but the label and “management” were calling me constantly,trying to convince me to do the video. I simply couldn’t do it. I had been working foryears without a break. It was totally out of the norm for me not to show up, but I reallydidn’t have anything left. I couldn’t think. And they couldn’t hear me. The phonewouldn’t stop ringing. No matter what room I was in—none of which were familiar orcomforting to me yet—I could hear the phone, ringing and ringing. Wait. Did Tommyknow where I was? Was Tommy trying to torture me too? Were his people following meagain? I was getting scared.
I had to find a safe place. I had to find sleep. Who could I trust? No one working forme was going to help me find somewhere to go. All I was asking for was a little bit oftime. All these people on my payroll, and no one lobbied for me to have one day off. I wastrying to tell them I just needed a couple of days blacked out, some time to rest,recuperate, and procure a bit of beauty sleep.
In desperation, I went to a hotel near my penthouse. I thought if I could just get aroom, draw the curtains, crawl under the covers, and go to sleep, things could be all right.
I had lived in hotels for long stretches of time, and found comfort in knowing peoplewouldn’t bother you. And I had stayed at this particular hotel several times before whilemy penthouse was being worked on. It never occurred to me to instruct the front desk notto contact my management or tell anyone I was there. Why should I have to? I stumbledinto my room and promptly hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the doorknob. Eventhough I’d just been run out of my brand-new, spectacular penthouse to a modest hotelroom, I began to feel relief. I drew a bath, slowly sank into the warm, scented water, andput on some soothing gospel (“Yet I Will Trust in Him” by Men of Standard), hopingsome of the trauma would dissolve. I began to calm down. The TRL incident was stillweighing heavily on me. I felt the whole world thought I had lost it. I wrapped myself upin the hotel bathrobe and curled up in the bed. But before I could shut my eyes, I heard aknock at the door. And then there was a bang!
I jumped up and stomped to the door, ready to cuss out whoever hadn’t read the sign. Iopened it to a crowd of people—management people, Morgan, even my mother!
“What the fuck is going on?” I yelled. “I gotta go to SLEEP!” I was panicking. I washysterical. I was caught. I began to scream—just scream. I couldn’t talk. A whole damndelegation had arrived to drag me back to work. All I wanted was a couple of damn daysoff. So I screamed.
Suddenly Morgan grabbed my arms and pulled me toward him. I became still. Hestared at me and quietly said, “This whole thing is just birthdays at Roy Boy’s.”
I immediately snapped out of it. “Birthdays at Roy Boy’s” was an inside joke we hadabout our father, because he always mixed up our birthdays. Morgan brought me back toour innocent familial language: the jokes and the silly sayings that only we shared, theway we used humor to cope. The words that existed before all of this, all of theseoutsiders. In that moment I believed Morgan understood how I felt, that he even caredabout my well-being. “Birthdays at Roy Boy’s” took me back to when I felt like he couldbe an actual family member to me. It was personal and funny, and I was in distress. It wasas if he had given me the secret code for “I got you,” appearing like a lighthouse in thestorm. Emotionally, I had cracked wide open—and Morgan slithered in.
I had been run out of my home and a hotel. There was an entire team of peoplehunting me down to pull me back to work, including my mother. I was beyond desperateand still in need of sleep. My record deal was an over 100-million-pound leash aroundeverybody’s neck.
I needed to find someone without any business interests or investments in me —someone who knew me and cared about me, who would help me or hide me. My mindimmediately went to Maryann Tatum, aka Tots. She’d been with me as a backgroundvocalist since Butterfly, and we became like sisters after her sister died. She was one of myfew friends who I thought knew how to contend with really fucked-up situations (and thisone certainly qualified!). She was solid and came from solid folk. Tots grew up one ofnine children in the projects in Brownsville, Brooklyn. And even though her mother had todeal with raising nine kids on her own, she was always clean, always put together. Totswas sweet and God loving but also knew her way around the streets. I thought she couldhelp me get away from all the people coming after me, and help me get some sleep.
We decided I could go to her apartment in Brooklyn because no one would think tolook for me there. By the time I managed to pull it together and sneak out to Brooklyn, Iwas riddled with anxiety. Not only did I know the label was looking for me, who knew ifTommy was following me too? It wouldn’t have been the first time. (Robert Sam Anson’s1996 exposé “Tommy Boy” in Vanity Fair reported on just some of his antics, but ittotally helped justify my claims of his maniacal control and surveillance.) And the tabloidswere hot on my trail and salivating for my slightest misstep (still are).
I took a private car service to Tots’s apartment. It was certainly a good place to goincognito, but not to sleep. It was cramped and wasn’t exactly comfortable for me, plusmy angst and exhaustion were giving me nervous energy. I suggested Tots and her nieceNini, and I all go for a walk to help me wind down.
She said “Girl, wait. You do know you’re Mariah Carey?”
I guess I couldn’t just go traipsing through the streets of Brooklyn. I needed a disguise.
Nini braided up my hair, and I put on her Mariah Carey Butterfly T-shirt, sweatpants, anda baseball cap with the brim pulled down low. Hiding in plain sight, the three of usstrolled down the Brooklyn streets in an attempt to recover some of my last, lost nerves.
No one noticed me comfortably flanked between two Black girls in the diverse Brooklynneighborhood.
Tots assured me I had nothing to worry about, joking, “They probably just thinkyou’re some cute Puerto Rican girl who went to a Mariah Carey concert.”
We had a little laugh, a little comfort, a little escape—but I still felt like I was beingtracked. I couldn’t find any relief. I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept or had ameal.
Time was collapsing in on me, the days and events all running together. Mymanagement and the label somehow discovered I was in Brooklyn with Tots. They calledand asked her to convince me to agree to do the video. My emotional instability, as aresult of sleep deprivation, was starting to take hold of me. I was cornered and confused.
Morgan was again dispatched to come and get me, since the “delegation” at the hotel hadsurmised that he was the only one I trusted. No one knew that, for me, trusting Morganwas a dangerous proposition.
I never knew what to expect with Morgan; he’d been so unpredictable, volatile, andviolent for so long. And yet, my mother trusted him the most. He’d become her strongman, her protector, almost a father figure to her—a position that should never be filled bya son. And though he had frightened me so many times as a child, I, too, saw him as asmart, strong man. Morgan was very intelligent and impressive and had developed atreacherous set of survival skills.
He was in the downtown New York scene in the late eighties. He worked in some ofthe hippest bars and clubs. He was strikingly handsome and occasionally worked as amodel. He was well known and well liked. He discreetly supplied the beautiful peoplewith their powdered party favors. He was diabolically charismatic.
At the beginning of my career, Morgan was on a mission to be known as the one whowas responsible for “discovering” me. (Seymour Stein, founder of Sire Records and signerof Madonna, actually had an opportunity for that distinction, as he was one of the first tohave my demo. Alas, he said, “She’s too young”—but that’s another tangent.) Morgan hadseveral sketchy contacts in the music industry but also introduced me to some importantplayers in the fashion scene, like the late legendary hairstylist Oribe. In some circles, I waseven known as “Morgan’s little sister,” though he hadn’t seen me as his little sister in avery long time. I was his little ticket to wealth and fame.
I’ve often publicly recognized Morgan for being the one who loaned me five thousanddollars to pay for my first professional demo, for which I remain grateful and which I paidback five thousand times over. And I would continue to pay and pay.
I never thought that modest initial loan made me beholden to him or should allow himto have any say in my career. I was very young, but I knew not to do business with any ofthe questionable music folks my brother tried to get me to work and sign with. I knew forcertain, that for me, business with Morgan would come with serious strings. Like a noose.
Less than a month after I signed my first recording contract, my mother and Morganproposed a family gathering at the shack—maybe to celebrate? Who knew? I really didn’tlike going back. The shame and fear I had endured while living there was still sticky onmy skin. Against my better instincts, I agreed.
The shack was as bleak as ever. The air in the tiny living room was thick with ananxiety and manipulation I could taste. The “wood” paneling had faded and worn down tolook more like cardboard from men’s shirt packaging. Dingy white polyester lace dime-store drapes hung over the murky windows; the heating vent on the floor coughed up alayer of gray soot that climbed from the hem to midway up those pitiful panels of Irishrespectability. My mother and Morgan sat together on the dreary blue corduroy couch. Isat across from them on a run-down beige recliner. Neglect was the overall accent color.
My mother was expressionless, occasionally darting her eyes over to Morgan forapproval. He was clearly the “host” of this suspicious homecoming. I could tell he was instraight scheme mode. His eyes had a wild, piercing focus. I could sense his tension, yethe had perfected the art of casting a smooth veneer over his emotions and over hisintentions.
Morgan launched straight into a rant about what a conniving lowlife my mother’ssecond husband could be, and how they were concerned that now that I was on my way tobecoming famous, he was likely to pose a “problem.” Warning me that he knew all of ourfamily’s dirty secrets and threatening that he would spill it all to the press. That he wouldtell the world about Alison being a drug-addicted prostitute and having HIV. What? Mymother was silent. I recall Morgan saying that I needed protection—that I needed to becareful, that this guy could end my career before it began—and that he could “take care ofit.” He could take care of him.
In less than ten minutes in the shack, I was back in that familiar storm cloud of fearconjured up by my brother. I certainly didn’t need convincing that this man was a horribleperson, but I couldn’t understand why my mother and brother dragged me back here totalk to me about some alleged threats from her terrible husband. I had just signed my firstrecord deal! I had just pulled myself out of this crazy, scary family drama. What were theyeven talking about? Why were they doing this? Why was I even there?
The vibe was getting increasingly creepy and claustrophobic. I remember Morgansaying in his quiet sinister way, “I got this plan to shut him up. You don’t need to knowthe details, but believe me I can make him shut the fuck up.” He went on to say that all heneeded was five thousand dollars. There it was.
I looked over at my mother, hoping to get some clarity. She just kept her eyes fixed onMorgan, who had obviously convinced her to let him run the show. He continued toremind me how mean and vindictive her husband was (and indeed he was—he’d beendisplaying opportunistic behavior since the moment he met me) and that the press wouldshame me and destroy my career. All I had ever lived for was to be an artist and I had justsigned a record deal. Maybe it all could be taken away in an instant? And he said it again—for “just five thousand dollars,” he could protect me and take care of the threat. “It’s justfive thousand dollars. No one will ever know.” Five thousand dollars for what? To dowhat? A sickening panic began to bubble in my lower belly.
Morgan had a long history of violence, of being mixed up with shady characters andshady situations, and there was no telling what he might do for money. In 1980, he wasinvolved in a scandalous Suffolk County murder case. John William Maddox wasmurdered by his wife, Virginia Carole Maddox. Their son was an acquaintance ofMorgan’s. Before the night she shot her husband in the neck with a rifle, she hadpropositioned Morgan to kill him for her for thirty thousand dollars. He accepted a $1,200advance but did not carry out the job. According to the court records, her solicitation ofMorgan (he was compelled to testify before a grand jury) was key evidence in disprovingher claim of self-defense and helped lead to her murder conviction.
I was barely in the third grade when Morgan was involved in a plot to murder a manfor money. I remember him and my mother talking about it, and I have a vaguerecollection of seeing courtroom sketches in the house. Morgan snitched, so he didn’t getany time for accepting the payment.
“C’mon, it’s only five thousand dollars, no one will ever know” kept ringing in myears. I sprang to my feet and began pacing the five or fewer steps between the little livingroom and the even smaller kitchen; both seemed to shrink an inch with each passingsecond. “You don’t have to do anything but give me the money,” he said again. I wasstruggling to process what was actually happening here. I don’t even think I’d receivedmy first advance check and already, already my brother and mother were trying to getmoney out of me?! And for what? To fuck up my mother’s husband?! What the fuck.
Tragically, I wasn’t surprised Morgan had begun to try and screw a siphon hose intome right away, but what got me to my feet and blew my mind was that my mother wasgoing along with it. She remained savagely quiet the entire time Morgan spewed outconspiracy theories about blackmail, exposing and humiliating both her daughters, and herson arranging to “fuck up” her husband for money. Was she really willing to agree toplace all of her children in such grave emotional, spiritual (and possibly legal) peril? Or,equally terrible, was she in on a plot with Morgan to extort money from me? Maybe shewas just rendered powerless under his spell.
I was not prepared for the implications all this was having for me and for my positionin this family and in this world. Under no circumstances could I ever, ever entertain beinginvolved in physically harming anybody, even a despicable dickhead like her husband. Icategorically refused to even entertain their sick scam. Yet what was really beating medown was that I knew that if I gave Morgan this first five thousand dollars, and if he didsomething violent or criminal, he would definitely blackmail me. This would be the firstfive thousand drips in a faucet he would use to drain money from me forever.
How delusional of me to even entertain the notion my mother and brother were goingto toast me for making my only dream come true. Instead they called me back to gut me. Iwas in a sad shock. I don’t recall exactly what I said, but I remember walking in tightcircles, that sick feeling now in my heart and pounding up to my eyes, and I was shakingmy head—“No, No”?… and something unseen inside me snapped, and I broke away fromthat pack.
I stumbled out of the shack, knowing, without a doubt, that I did not belong to any ofthem. My father was estranged. My sister burned and sold me out. And now there was nomore brother and no more mother. Standing alone.
Still bruised, still walk on eggshells
Same frightened child, hide to protect myself(Can’t believe I still need to protect myself from you)But you can’t manipulate me like before
Examine 1 John 4:4
And I wish you well?…
—“I Wish You Well”
So, by “normal” standards, a record label reaching out to family for help incommunicating with an artist was not a risky move. But they did not know the bad, badmoves my family could make.
You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them,Because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world1 John 4:4
To say I was on the edge by the time Morgan got to Tots’s would be generous. Exhaustedand hungry, I was deprived of all care. Looking into my wild and weary eyes, he temptedme: “Hey, how about a nice trip up to Pat’s house?”
Though I hadn’t ever had a nice trip to my mother’s house, in my shattered state, mybrother made a convincing argument. Nobody, he contended, would dare to disturb me atmy mother’s house. His voice was sugary sweet, and I was too drained to access my gutinstincts. If I were at full capacity, I would’ve known my mother and her son were the lastpeople I should be around when I was so vulnerable.
Even if she cared for me, at that point, my mother knew nothing about me, and nothingabout what I was currently going through. She had absolutely no idea of the burden andresponsibility of being an artist who generates so much money and energy: To have somany people living off of you, counting on you, and pushing you to constantly work andwork. To sing and smile, dress up and twirl, fly and write and work and work! She had noconcept of the humiliation I was suffering from the ravenous media monster that wasfeeding off of me. She couldn’t imagine how wounded and hunted I felt. My mother nevercould acknowledge my fear. In fact, she often triggered it.
But now, I was going to go back with them. Any house my mother was in never feltlike a safe haven, especially if Morgan was present, yet I was far too fragile to resist. Inmy fogginess, it actually made sense to me to go upstate to the house I had bought her, thehouse I knew so well, where it was quiet and comfortable and there would be plenty ofroom for everyone. Stripped of my better instincts, I agreed to go. But if I was going, Idecided, we all were going. Safety in numbers, I thought. So Morgan, Tots, and I went offon a ride upstate. Over the river and through the woods, to my mother’s house we go.
CALAMITY AND DOG HAIR
CALAMITY AND DOG HAIR
My mother wasn’t home yet from being in the city with the record-label delegation at thehotel, and I was relieved. It meant I wouldn’t run the risk of being provoked by her andMorgan together, and I especially didn’t want to use the little energy I had left to try andexplain to her why I just needed sleep. Thankfully, I also had my girl Tots as a buffer. Aswe approached the house, I began to relax a bit. I thought, This is the house I purchasedfor my mother and my family to live in, to find comfort in. Now I was the one who neededit more than anything. I had designed a guest bedroom for anyone in the family whoneeded a place to stay, that I knew I could surely use now. I could already picture itsinviting warmth in my head. All I wanted to do was get a little bit of food in my stomach,get upstairs, close the door, and go to sleep before my mother got home.
As we walked in the house I was struggling to hide how wrecked I was, especially infront of my nephew Mike, who was still living there. He was just a kid and had alreadybeen through so much with his addicted mother. I wanted to spare him the traumatichistory that was pulsing through me, through all of us. But I was also beginning to panic,realizing I was now isolated from the city and my actual home. I didn’t have my driver, Iwas with Morgan, and my mother would be coming back any minute. They could bepoisonous and manipulative together. I felt myself swinging back and forth, out of thehouse and back to the shack. I was in their world now. The past and the present felt thesame—unsafe.
The house smelled of calamity and dog hair. I scanned the clutter and disarray. (Inever liked the way my mother kept the house; that’s why I always had cleaning staff forher.) Like my father, I’ve always liked things really clean. Mess causes anxiety for me. Ibegan to put things in order, an activity I commonly do to recenter myself. I thought if Icould bring some order to the chaos in the house, even in a small way, that I could stay inmy body. But I kept slipping.
I’m not helpless, I told myself. This was the beautiful house that I had bought, created,and managed as an adult. I was not a little girl in a haphazard shack. I can bring order tothis. But God, I was so tired. Maybe, I thought, by some loophole of time and space, wereally were back in the shack. I needed to sleep. Desperately. And I was starved. My mindagain began to race.
I went to the kitchen to see if I could scrounge up a little morsel to eat. Typically,when visiting my mother, I would bring all the provisions needed, including disposableplates and cutlery, to ensure everyone would have enough to eat and with an easy cleanup.
In the kitchen, I found the sink piled high with dirty dishes. I knew it would help toground me if I focused on a simple task. Washing the dishes—that would work. I’m gonnado this. I’m gonna do the dishes, I thought. I’m going to eat off a clean plate, then I’mgonna go to sleep.
Reaching to turn on the faucet, I suddenly remembered. Six days. I haven’t slept morethan two hours in six days. My hands trembled as I tried to begin the task I’d set formyself. All I could hear was my heart slamming inside my chest. What am I doing?
Washing the dishes. Right. After what seems like an eternity, I finally got one plate doneand placed it in the rack. Next I picked up a sudsy bowl, but I felt it slip through myfingers and clatter to the floor. I tried again: I got one done. I dropped one. Now I had toclean up the dish and water on the floor. The sounds of running water, clanging dishes,and people talking swirled together. I was frantically trying to clean up everything and getout of sight before my mother got home. I bent down to get the dish off the floor, and thelight went dim and the sounds started trailing off. All the space around me narrowed, and Istarted to fall away. I blacked out for a split second but was able to recover before Icompletely collapsed.
I made it. The surges of anxiety were gone, but so was every drop of my energy andevery ounce of my will. But hey, if I couldn’t go to sleep naturally, passing out would dojust fine. With the help of Tots I stumbled up the stairs toward the guest room, picking upclumps of dog hair on the steps along the way (I was barely conscious, but my standardswere still awake). I was an exhausted refugee, and I thought that refuge was exactly what Ihad found. I collapsed onto the cozy bed, surrendering to its softness. Everything quicklyturned to a long-awaited dark, and I sank down into it. Finally, peace.
“Mariah! What are you doing? They’re looking for you!” A booming, dramatic voiceviolently pulled me out of the pool of quiet in which I had been floating. Lost andsputtering, I was wrenched into consciousness to find my mother hovering over me. Myown mother had woken me up from the first sleep I’d had in nearly a week! To makematters worse, she was waking me up to tell me that the record label was looking for meto get me back to work—as if, rather than being my mother and caretaker, she was somekind of agent for the machine that had repeatedly placed my earning potential over mywell-being.
That was the last straw. I really did leave my body. Something deep inside me rosequickly up and out of my throat; it was feral with seething rage.
“Well, I did the best I could! ‘I did the best I could!’ That’s all you ever say!” I roaredat her, imitating her exaggerated tones. It was a justification I’d heard from her, over andover again, for my entire life. After six days of being hunted down—six days of hiding,anxiety, and near demise; six days of no rest; six days of trauma—I had finally gotten tosleep in the house I’d bought, only to be awoken by my own mother. My mother, who hadfound so much rest for herself in that house I worked so hard for!
I wasn’t expecting a hug or a kiss on the forehead, homemade chicken soup or bakedcookies. I wasn’t expecting a warm bath. I wasn’t expecting a massage, hot tea, or abedtime story. I wasn’t expecting any comforts a sick child might receive from a healthymother. I knew my mother didn’t have the capacity for that kind of maternal response;after all, I was the one who took care of things. I took care of her, and everything else. Iwasn’t expecting her to do anything to help me feel better, but I certainly wasn’t expectingher to wake me up! My rage took over. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t feel mybody.
As a survival response, I dipped into the depth of my sarcasm and made fun of her,viciously. Cutting to humor when faced with extreme stress or trauma had been a defensemechanism I developed as a child.
“Well, I did the best I could! I did the best I could!” I imitated her mockingly, overand over. I was trying to wake her up, with her own words, to the cruel absurdity of themoment. I knew it was wrong, but every filter I might have had to stop me had beenripped away.
I screeched, “I JUST WANT TO GO TO SLEEEEEP!” All my fears, all myresentment, all the years of impressions I’d done of her behind her back—all my angerwas thrashing out with each word I hurled at her.
“Well! I! Did! The! Best! I! Could!” I shouted.
No one, and especially not my mother, had ever seen me in such a rage. Throughoutmy childhood, it was always Morgan and Alison who would throw hysterical fits. Theywould scream and yell and throw condiment bottles at each other. They would fight. Theywould shriek and threaten my mother or knock her out cold. My brother and father hadfistfights. But now it was my turn to let it rip. I wasn’t violent or throwing obscenities, butI was still going off, for me.
I was in an angry, hysterical frenzy, but I was still also thinking about my nephewMike. I didn’t want to continue the sick cycle we’d all been through. I was standing infront of his door, putting my body between my mother, my tirade, and his innocence.
Before we arrived, I had asked Tots to look after Mike; I trusted her because of thecountless nieces and nephews she’d taken care of over the years. I never knew what couldhappen with my family, so she was behind the door comforting him. I was screaming,“This has to stop! We have to break the cycle!”
All the fear and fury I had bottled inside myself was now directed at my mother. Shewas in the center of the cycle I was desperate to break. My mother was finallyexperiencing the full bloom of my anger and was ill equipped to understand it ordeescalate it. She couldn’t even get the joke—on the contrary, she felt threatened andembarrassed by it. She shook off her bewilderment; then an iciness consumed her, and sheshot me a look that said, Oh really? You dare mock me? You dare threaten me? You haveno idea who you’re messing with.
When my mother feels scared, her complete assurance in the historic evidence thatwhiteness will always be protected activates—and she often calls the cops. At varioustimes, she’d called the cops on my brother, my sister, and even my sister’s children. Mymother called the cops even when she didn’t necessarily feel threatened. One Christmas, Ibrought my family to Aspen. It was the first year after I left Sing Sing, and I decided Iwanted to create my own ultimate Christmas tradition, so I took the whole Carey clan. Forme, Christmas means family. I rented a house so I could decorate and have home-cookedmeals and we could sing Christmas carols at the top of our lungs if we wanted to, and I putmy family up in a fabulous hotel.
At one point we were all hanging out together at the house, and Morgan proceeded toget spectacularly inebriated. When he disappeared for a bit, my mother turned directly toher usual dramatics.
“Where’s Morgan?” she bellowed. “I can’t find Morgan!” Mind you, Morgan was athirty-something grown man, but still my mother was in a self-induced panic. “I can’t findMorgan!” She called his hotel room repeatedly, but there was no answer. So, what did shedo? She called the cops. My mother called the cops in Aspen, Colorado, to find mynonwhite, sometimes drug dealing, been-in-the-system, drunk-ass brother. The cops cameto the hotel, and it was a whole big drama. She asked them to break down his hotel door,behind which it turned out Morgan was lying naked, butt up, passed out on the bed. Thenews spread like wildfire throughout the town, and that, ladies and gentlemen, was the lasttime Morgan and Cop Caller Mom were invited to spend Christmas with me in Aspen. Ireally don’t want a lot for Christmas. Particularly not the cops.
And so, that night in Westchester, she called the cops on me too.
The police arrived quickly, as they tend to do in white, affluent neighborhoods. Mymother opened the door. I heard an officer ask, “Is there a problem, ma’am?”
“Yes, we are having a problem,” she replied, welcoming the two white policemen intothe house. I could tell they kind of recognized me, though I was still in quite a state andlooked it. I had been passed out, asleep, for the first time in nearly a week. In a tumultuousemotional whirlwind, I had quickly put my hair into a bun. I had on leggings and a T-shirt(as one would, in one’s home, when one is trying to rest). I had somewhat pulled ittogether, because that’s what you do when there are police involved. But I didn’t have onmy superstar mask, which is how almost everyone knows me (except for the Lambs, ofcourse). Without all the wardrobe and glam, I did appear troubled, perhaps a little wild orunwell.
Though the officers were technically in my house, their attention was directed towardmy mother. She gave them an odd, knowing look, which felt like the equivalent of asecret-society handshake, some sort of white-woman-in-distress cop code. She had beendefied, and I had dared to be belligerent. I was being aggressive toward her. I was scaringher. And they received her signal loud and clear. It was in their training. The code was inher culture. This was her world, her people, and her language. She had control. EvenMariah Carey couldn’t compete with a nameless white woman in distress. If I had beengiven just a day or two to rest, I would’ve woken up and been ready to make a video. Butinstead, here I was, standing in my mother’s (actually my) house with the cops.
The most terrifying part was that I was too worn out to feel my source. The negativeenergy of my mother, Morgan, and the police—the whole scene—blocked my light. Ineeded to see Tots. She had a big God in her life too, and if I couldn’t access mine, Ithought maybe I could feel hers. I believed she could somehow keep me safe in a sisterly,spiritual way. I was trying to hold strong to her, but she was also really scared of the cops.
And could you blame her? It’s totally understandable. She was the only visibly 100percent Black person in the house. After successfully keeping out of trouble with policefor years in the Brownsville projects, how could she explain to her mother that she’dgotten arrested in an affluent suburb and was in some upstate jail? Lord knows what theywould have done to her in there (this was way before #BlackLivesMatter and cell-phoneactivism, although even a movement hasn’t stopped most of the brutality). So Tots wastrying her best to keep herself and Mike away from the turmoil and out of sight. Againsttwo white cops and one white woman, in upper Westchester, Tots knew she was out-privileged and totally out-powered.
Given his long, turbulent history with law enforcement, Morgan was lying low in thelittle den we called the “Irish room.” No one tried to explain to the police that it was just afamily blowout—that everything was okay, and I was just overworked and had lost mytemper. I needed care, not the cops. But no one defended me. The only thing the cops sawwas a scared white woman in a big house full of nonwhite people.
Betrayed, humiliated, and overwhelmed by reliving the neglect and trauma of mychildhood, I let go. Not that I had any fight left in me, but I knew better than to fight withthe police. I was done. Ironically, I was relieved that the police could take me away fromthis house of trauma and betrayal. My brother had lured me back into the same depths ofdysfunction that he, my sister, and my mother had dwelled in when I was a child. Mymother had stolen me from my sleep, then turned me over to the authorities. There wasnothing left to do but surrender. I agreed to be removed from my own house by the police,with one simple request—that I be allowed to put on my shoes. My family might havetaken my pride, my trust, and the last of my energy, but they weren’t going to get mydignity too.
I slipped on some heels (mules, most likely), neatened my ponytail, slapped on somelip gloss, and got in the backseat of the squad car. Being hauled off by cops was certainlyno comfort, but I was defeated and needed to get away by any means necessary. The firmseat cushions and the bulletproof protection inside the car provided a twisted sense ofsecurity. My body was reminded that it was still in critical need of rest. Morgan slid intothe backseat next to me.
I looked at him, empty of everything, unable to accept what my family had just doneto me. I couldn’t believe it. I had to outsource my pain, to put the blame on a substitutevillain. I thought back to how it had all begun—when had things started to unravel?
In a daze, I whispered, “This is all Tommy Mottola’s fault.”
Morgan’s eyes narrowed, and he flashed that sinister smile again. “That’s right.” Henodded. “That’s right.”
We drove off into the darkness.
BROKEN DOWN
BROKEN DOWN
That night, I did not “have a breakdown.” I was broken down—by the very people whowere supposed to keep me whole. I knew of a place the locals called a “spa” that was veryclose, and I asked the police if they would take me there. They obliged. I wasn’t familiarwith the services or reputation of the place, but I figured at the very least I could finally getsome sleep, some nutritious food, and perhaps some medical attention. After all I’d beenthrough, I was very concerned about my physical condition. I knew enough to know Ineeded healing from the compounded trauma I had just experienced. My body was there,but my mind, my emotions, and my spirit were all powered down, in what I now realizewas protection mode.
I remember getting out of the squad car and pacing in the parking lot, knowing I didn’tbelong in that place, but I didn’t belong at my family house either. I didn’t know where Ibelonged. After a long and groggy battle, Morgan convinced me to go inside. I could feelnothing. I signed myself in, believing I could sign myself out. I had no idea what I hadactually signed myself up for. After speaking with some of the staff, Morgan left me there.
The size, color, and smell of the place, the names, the faces of the people—I don’t havemuch memory of the details. I was led to a small room at the end of a hall. I perceived it aswindowless, though it most likely was not. There was a door to close me in. There was abed. I curled up tight on top of it.
Terror came quickly.
I could hear the dull thud of a heavy mop hitting and sloshing on the floor in thedistance, and the muffled, mingled voices of young girls chatting and giggling. Every oncein a while, I clearly heard them say “Mariah Carey.” The mop and the voices were gettingcloser and louder, settling right outside my door. Their laughter was ringing in my head. Icoiled tighter into myself, shut my eyes, and tried to disappear. No relief came. I wasdeeply scared and completely alone. Prayer wouldn’t come. Fear was my only companion.
The whimpering of frightened people behind doors like mine never ceased as the tortuousnight crawled toward morning.
The next day came. I was far from rested or clear-headed, but I was no longer totallynumb. I knew I was in need of healing, peace, therapy, food, rest, and restoration. I neededcare, and the rash decision to come to the closest place possible had clearly not been theright one. I was bombarded with frantic thoughts: Where is my purse? Where is all mystuff? What the fuck am I doing in this terrible, random place, sharing a bathroom I’m tooscared to pee in? How do I get out of here?
It was clearly not a spa; there was nothing therapeutic or restorative about it at all. Itwas closer to a prison. Full of confused young people, unruly and unsettling, it was runlike an upscale juvenile detention center. The food was disgusting. My mind was racing.
Had my mother really called the cops on me? Humiliated me? Escorted me out of thehouse I bought? Was I really here now, in some institution posing as a “spa”?
The most frightening thing was that I had no control over my situation. I didn’t havemy car, my things, or any money. I didn’t have my two-way pager to communicate withmy people. There was only one single, shared pay phone. When no one was looking, Itried to call a few people, but to no avail. There was no privacy. I was walking around as adeflated Mariah Carey, stripped of her professional mask and powers, fully exposed toGod knows what.
While my memories of my interactions with staff and other patients are mostly vague,I distinctly recall being brought into a bare little office that felt like a police interrogationroom, where an older, balding white administrator conducted a haphazard intakeinterview. I was clearly still upset, and it was difficult to quickly paint a picture of themisunderstanding that had happened at that house the night before, combined with theintensity and severity of all the work obligations I had ahead of me. I went on abouthaving to shoot a video, about the film premiere preparations for Glitter, and about all thepeople dependent on me. I was riddled with anxiety and frustrated that this man wasn’tunderstanding the stakes. Not only was he not caring, he was hostile.
“Looks like you need a dose of humility,” was his condescending response to all I hadtold him. Oh, he thoroughly enjoyed spitting out that line. It was such an obvious andpitiful power grab. I could almost see him puffing up, believing he’d taken the diva down.
Not only the tabloids revel in watching stars crash to the ground. I was defenseless—knifed in the back by my ex-husband and stabbed in the heart by my brother and mother.
And they all left me to bleed out inside some hellhole.
I went to try to sign myself out, but to my horror, I discovered that I couldn’t. I don’tknow what my brother told the staff, but people were treating me like I was out of controland out of my mind (and most seemed to be enjoying it). It took several days of red tapeand paperwork to get out.
I knew Morgan and my mother had been communicating, and I strongly believe theyorchestrated the whole thing. I returned to the scene of no crime, my mother’s house(correction: my house). “Coincidentally,” there were paparazzi waiting in the woods togreet me. The cover of the next day’s New York Post was a photo of me, shot with a longlens through the trees, in pajamas, with little dark sunglasses and a messy bun, sippingjuice through a straw. The photo was emblazoned with a giant caption, “World Exclusive!
Mariah: The First Photos.”
My mother was thrilled. She exclaimed, “Look, it’s just like Marilyn!” (It was not.)The Daily News cover even gave her a mention: “Mariah’s Crack Up! Mother’s desperate9-1-1 call as diva unraveled.” When I went back to the house to retrieve my things withmy road manager, my mother, in a drab housedress, was sitting on the floor of the porch inthe rain, playing jacks, in what appeared to be a trance. It kinda freaked my road managerout. What pathetic irony.
Her glee at the tabloid coverage was no surprise to me. Even though I was the childwho didn’t break the rules (or laws, or bottles), my mother didn’t seem to have thecapacity to fully celebrate me as I matured into an accomplished artist. Sometimes Iwondered if she couldn’t even tolerate my achievements. I often felt like there was anundertow of jealousy pulling on her smile, though I still included her in many of the majorevents in my life.
One of the greatest honors of my career was receiving the Congressional Award. I’ddreamed of receiving Grammys and Oscars for music or acting, but to be honored by mycountry for my service to others was a distinction beyond even my dreams—and I dreambig. I was the recipient of the 1999 Horizon Award, which is given for charitable workfocused on promoting personal development in young people, for my work with CampMariah, through the Fresh Air Fund. I’ve never been deeply involved in politics, and at thetime I really didn’t fully understand the significance of the award and the event. It’s one ofonly two medals legislated by a congressional act (the other being the Medal of Honor). Iwas being honored along with former secretary of state Colin Powell.
We were hosted like dignitaries, and there was a very elegant, formal sit-down dinnerbefore the ceremony. My mother and I were in high- powered, bipartisan company,including Tom Selleck; former Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, fromMississippi, and former Democratic House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (who ran forpresident a couple of times). This is one of the few events where both political parties putpolitics aside and proudly participate equally as Americans. On this night, in a room fullof politicians, it’s understood no one discusses politics (even I know that). I was proudthat a little girl who grew up feeling like an outcast now had an honored seat at one of themost esteemed tables in the world.
I had my mother all dolled up: hair, nails, professional makeup. I bought her a new,fancy dress—the whole nine. This was an occasion to look our best and be on our bestbehavior.
Well?…
She had a few cocktails on the short plane ride from New York to Washington, DC,and continued to booze it on up during the dinner. As the effects of the drinks kicked in,her decorum slipped away. She began to theatrically express her political opinions, whichyou absolutely don’t do at a distinguished event like this, even stone-cold sober. Herthoughts descended into insults, which melted down into a small but disturbing tirade. Theone thing everyone knew not to do was what my mother was now fully engaged in. I wasmortified.
My security leaned over and whispered, “We have to get her out of here.” I agreed.
They whisked her out of the dining area and hid her in my dressing room near the stagefor the awards ceremony—apparently just in time, because it was reported to me thatwhen she got into the room she started yelling, “I hate Mariah! I hate my daughter!” WhenI escaped from the dinner table to go and check on her, she was completely sloshed.
I slid back to my seat and cheerfully performed as if all were well (Lord knows I’vehad lots of practice). I was escorted to the stage accompanied by two beautiful youngBlack women from the Fresh Air Fund, who, thankfully, anchored me in the purpose ofthe evening. I managed to make it through my speech and accept the award. When I gotoffstage, it was clear we had to get my irate and inebriated mother out of the venue fast, asshe was now throwing a full-blown fit. My security worked swiftly to get her into the car,to the airport, and on the plane. On the flight, still decked out in the designer dress I hadbought her, she slinked into her first-class seat, continuing to drink and drone, “Morgan isthe only one I love. Morgan is the only one who loves me.” Security got my mother safelyhome and poured her into bed. Alone in the back of a limo, in my black silk gown,hugging an award from my country, I cried.
She may have been in a blackout and unaware of what she did or said. But I had toprocess the sadness, embarrassment, and pain of the experience. The next morning, I wasnervous her booze-induced performance would make it into the press. But it didn’t. I hadprotected her. I don’t know who saw her, but mercifully, her congressional calamity didnot make it into the tabloids.
She didn’t call to apologize. She didn’t say anything.
Being Mariah Carey is a job—my job—and I had to get back to it. I knew there would beeyes and lenses everywhere. I needed someone to light the way out of the darkness thatplace had become. By that time, I trusted only a handful of people. So before I was able tosee my way out of the shadowy “Cabin in the Woods,” I called on my trusted friend andanchor makeup artist Kristofer Buckle for support. He lifted me up, reapplied myprotective public face, and walked with me into the sunlight.
I was wounded, but I got myself back to my penthouse in Manhattan. There was somuch recovery and repair to be done. I was still quite fragile, very concerned with thecondition of my very new, very big deal at Virgin, and a very short time away from therelease of Glitter. The coverage of my “crack-up” had everybody understandably shook—not least of all me. I had not regained my emotional or spiritual strength. I was still verymuch inside the nightmare, and Morgan was still very much in control. But I didn’t seehim as a puppeteer just yet. I still held a desperate, distorted trust in him. He had snappedme out of my screaming fit at the hotel by saying “birthdays at Roy Boy’s.” He was not insight when the cops came in Westchester. He had ridden with me to the “spa.” So I didn’tassociate him with the current collection of catastrophes. He seemed at best an ally, atworst an innocent bystander. I needed someone. And I needed to believe that not everyonewas against me.
The pedestal I’d erected for my brother when I was a little girl had long since beenreduced to rubble, but I kept trying to place him back on top of it. Though I could not seeit then, we were clearly in ruins. If I had had my wits about me, or if someone on mypayroll had known better, I would have had a team of specialists and professionals linedup to evaluate and treat me at my home. I did have the wherewithal to want to tuck myselfaway at an actual spa for a few days, where at least I could get some rest, wholesomefood, maybe some body treatments—all the things I’d wanted on my way to that firsthellish “spa.” I also wanted the opportunity to clear my head and protect myself (and thelabel) from more salacious headlines.
Morgan recommended I go to Los Angeles, where he was currently living, making thecase that there were actual spas there (true) and no New York newspapers (also true). Aspa in LA seemed like a good idea at the time. I allowed Morgan to make thearrangements (not a good idea, at any time, but I was desperate).
When we got to LA my anxiety and disorientation was intensified by the tragedy ofAaliyah’s sudden and horrific death. Just a few days earlier she had told the press, “I knowthis business can be difficult, it can be stressful. Much love to Mariah Carey. I hope shegets better soon.” The entire music industry was rocked by her death, but the R & B andhip-hop community was devastated. She was indeed our little princess.
So much was happening, and I couldn’t fully understand the magnitude of the damagebeing done to me. Morgan hooked up with some random guy who he said would behelping us. I remember driving around on the highway for what seemed like an eternity.
We finally stopped at a place that did not look like a spa at all but, rather, a detox facility. Iwas still in the hold of extreme exhaustion, so while I wasn’t thrilled, I didn’t resist.
Morgan even went so far as to say, “Come on; it’ll be fun.” It was not fun. It was one ofthe most harrowing times of my life—and I had seen some times.
Once more, I didn’t have control of the situation. I could not speak up for myself, andwhen I could, I was ignored and overpowered.
The facility in LA turned out to be a hard-core detox and rehab center. The first thingthat happened to me was they administered drugs—heavy, hard narcotics. They were gianthorse pills the color of Pepto-Bismol. At first, I refused to take them, but I didn’t have thedrive to fully fight. I was so weak. I thought maybe I would just be able to get a little sleep(where was the Ambien when a girl needed it?). Eventually I did sleep, but fitfully. Thedrugs blocked me from whatever energy and will to fight I had in reserve. They put mybig, bright God further in the shadows. They made me sluggish, puffy, and compliant.
I was in a fog much of the time.
Frumpily ensconced in some piece of shit hideous institutional ensemble, I wasdrained, and my soul was heavy. My face was vulnerable and hadn’t had any protection inmany days. That’s one function of makeup—even while giving a natural look, it can serveas war paint, an invisible force field. It often does for me. It shields me from peopleliterally getting into my pores and under my skin. But I had no such protection in thatplace.
One morning, I was in my bleak room, feeling drowsy, when an attendant came andbrought me into the common area. It was crowded with staff and inmates — I mean,patients—and all were staring up at the large television in silence. On the screen was whatlooked like the view from the kitchen window in my New York City penthouse in the sky.
But the picture was framed in chalky, gray clouds of smoke. Orange and red fireballs wereshooting out from the top of the glistening silver Twin Towers like meteors against avibrant blue sky. Then the proud, monumental buildings crumbled from within. One at atime, they came crashing down in excruciatingly slow motion. The effects of the drugs I’dbeen kept on were no match for the shock I was experiencing. In that instant, I was stone-cold alert as I watched my majestic skyline disintegrate. My home city was burning andcollapsing, and I was thousands of miles away, locked inside a dismal detox—drugged,devastated, and alone.
I was frozen, eyes locked on the horror unfolding before me, when someone from thestaff tapped me on my shoulder. They told me it was being reported that terrorists hadattacked the World Trade Center, and that they would now be releasing me. I was free togo. Miraculously, it seemed, I was no longer in need of containment or sedatives. I was nolonger crazy and out of control.
So I was magically “good to go,” because terrorists had attacked America and a“cracked-up diva” wasn’t interesting anymore? (Hello?!!) But I didn’t ask questions. It feltlike the world was coming to an end for all of us. And if it was the end, I wanted to get thefuck out of there. Between being there, getting out, and the chaos and terror of the attacksback home, I didn’t even realize it was the day the Glitter soundtrack was scheduled forrelease.
The coincidence of my sudden release from “rehab” and the release of the Glittersoundtrack and the 9/11 attacks was haunting. You know how, in a sci-fi horror film, theapocalypse happens and then there’s a lone survivor wandering around surveying thedevastation? That was me on that warm and cloudy day in LA. On September 11, 2001, Iwalked out of detox pumped full of toxins. The city of LA was solid, but I was shaky. Ifelt alone, untethered, and out of my body. I got myself to a hotel and had the firstuninterrupted rest I’d had in weeks. With the tiny bit of strength that rest provided, I wasable to finally get to an actual spa, because I still had to do “the best I could” to prepare forthe Glitter movie premiere, which was now only ten days away.
It was a blur, but I pulled myself together. I got some highlights, a cut, and a blowout.
I wore a one-shoulder fitted tank top, as I do on the Glitter poster, but it had an Americanflag bedazzled on the front, in honor of the victims and heroes. I paired it with simple low-rise jeans, held my chin high, and hit the red carpet at the Village Theater in Westwoodwith a smile. I was blessed to have lots of kids and young people at the premiere, as theywere the intended audience. Glitter was not made for serious cinemagoers and art-galleryhoppers; it was an imperfect, fun, PG flick.
The box-office sales for Glitter were dismal, in large part because the country was stillreeling from the 9/11 attacks. The tragedy was still fresh, and no one was ready for thelightweight distraction that was Glitter. Out of respect for our collective mourning, onewould think the media would have turned their obsession away from me as well, but itseemed to only intensify.
After the Glitter premiere, I stayed in LA to prepare for the America: A Tribute toHeroes telethon, honoring the thousands who died in the attacks. Organized by GeorgeClooney, it would be my first performance since I emerged from that nightmare of family,cops, and institutions. The biggest stars in entertainment—Tom Hanks, Goldie Hawn,Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Muhammad Ali, Pearl Jam, Paul Simon, Billy Joel,Robert De Niro, and others—came out, united as Americans. I sang “Hero,” as Americans—first responders and so many other brave, unnamed people—showed the world whattrue heroes really look like. Never had I imagined when I wrote this song that it wouldmean so much in such a horrific moment in history.
I was anxious to get back to New York. It was inspiring how the city immediately gotto work putting itself back together in the wake of the attacks, and I was eager to put mylife back together too. I wasn’t permitted to resume residence in my penthouse yet, asmuch of lower Manhattan was still closed off for safety and security reasons. In themeantime, I stayed in a hotel and blocked my family and others from getting to me. I waswaking from the nightmare they’d created, and I had to get my own help; I wanteddesperately to get back to being okay.
I chose a therapist in upstate New York. He had a profound intellect, but also a deepsensitivity. His insights were not only acute but comforting—he gave me a modern whiteBuddha vibe. Under his qualified care, I was able to begin to unpack the demoralizing anddehumanizing ordeal I had just been through. Losing my power and being put in scary,inappropriate institutions by my mother and brother while the press ravaged my reputationwas almost the end for me.
My therapist named the physical illness I’d been experiencing for so many years—allthe nausea from being humiliated by kids and teachers, all the breaking out in hives allover, all the severe upper back and shoulder pain from stress from Tommy, all thedizziness and revulsion from the terror of my brother, all the psychological distress Iendured which wreaked havoc on my body had a name—somatization. Having a highlyrespected professional name, it validated that what I was physically experiencing was real.
It was suddenly all so real.
My career was everything to me, and because of my mother, my brother, and Tommy,it was nearly taken away. Honestly, it felt like they almost killed me. They came close, butthey didn’t kill me, or my spirit. They didn’t permanently damage my mind or my soul.
But, Lawd, they do try.
There is nothing more powerful than surviving a trip to hell and coming home coveredin the light of restoration. It wasn’t an easy journey back to myself and to God, but I wasback on my feet and walking forward. No one, I decided, was going to stop me or take allmy power again. Ever.
In therapy, my emotions were safe to come out of the frigid hold of survival mode, andI was fucking furious. I was supporting everybody around me, and they had the audacity tothrow me into institutions, give me drugs, and try to take control of my life. When I toldmy therapist what had happened, he assured me I was absolutely not crazy. At most, hesaid, I’d had a “diva fit.” It was a wonder I wasn’t permanently emotionally damaged,given what I lived through; however I will probably always struggle with PTSD. He alsoaffirmed that I was completely justified in being enraged. He very candidly suggested Iexamine the role money had played in the experience with my family. I was so wrapped upin the childhood history, the betrayal, the love I had once had for everyone involved that Iwas blind to motive. It was no coincidence that my mother and brother were working onthe side of the record company instead of protecting me and advocating for my well-being,and that they just happened to claim I was unstable and try to institutionalize meimmediately after I had signed the biggest cash record deal for a solo artist in history. Icould accept that I was a cash cow for record companies; after all, I was “the Franchise.”
It’s the name of the game—it may be dirty, but I had no illusions that the music businesswas, first and foremost, a cutthroat business. But though I hadn’t cut a business deal withmy mother or my siblings, they were happy to take me to the slaughter just like the recordcompanies and the media.
I knew for a long time that to my family, I’d been an “ATM machine with a wig on” (amoniker I gave myself). I gave them so much money, especially my mother, and still itwasn’t enough. They tried to destroy me in order to take complete control. The therapistmade an obvious suggestion: if they could prove I was unstable, they certainly could havebelieved they would become the executors of my affairs. He asked me to look at themobjectively—how they viewed the world, how they never really had consistent, legitimatework but still felt like the world owed them something. We all had varying degrees oftough shit to go through in my family, but in this way, we fundamentally differed. I didn’tthink the world owed me anything. I simply believed I would conquer the world I wasborn into, in my own way. As I worked myself to extreme exhaustion, they watched andwaited for me to fall, like scavengers, so that they might gain control over the fortune Ihad negotiated, built, and fought for.
Years later, the pattern still continued, as patterns do. My family didn’t change. One of thedefinitions of insanity, it’s often said, is doing the same things over and over andexpecting different results. My version of insanity was allowing the same thing to be doneto me, over and over, by the same people.
“Please change your cast of characters.” That was the simple and profound request mytherapist eventually made. While I couldn’t change the characters of my mother, brother,and sister, I did have the power to change how I characterized them in my life. So for mysanity and peace of mind, my therapist encouraged me to literally rename and reframe myfamily. My mother became “Pat” to me, Morgan, “my ex-brother,” and Alison, “my ex-sister.” I had to stop expecting them to one day miraculously become the mommy, bigbrother, and big sister I fantasized about. I had to stop making myself available to be hurtby them. It has been helpful. I have no doubt it is emotionally and physically safer for menot to have any contact with my ex-brother and ex-sister. The situation with Pat, on theother hand, is more complicated. I have reserved some room in my heart and life to holdher—but with boundaries. Creating boundaries with the woman who gave birth to me isnot easy; it is a work in progress.
After I was broken, I received a blessing. The trouble and trauma I endured was not onlyemotional, it was spiritual as well. As such, I sought healing for my soul. I knew I had torevive and recommit to my relationship with God. I am eternally grateful to have met mypastor, Bishop Clarence Keaton, when I did. I met him through Tots. We used to attendchurch together at True Worship Church Worldwide Ministries, right across from theLouis Pink Houses projects in East New York. Tots and I were even re-baptized theretogether. At True Worship, I became a student of the Bible, doing a three-year intensive.
We went through it from Old to New Testament. I took notes, and I took the healingwords in.
Bishop Keaton used to be a pool shark; he lived a very different life before becoming apastor. He’d already earned respect in the neighborhood, when at that time it would not beuncommon to duck bullets in broad daylight, so he had protection, and people didn’t messwith him. I would have security provided by the church, and the congregation wouldrespect my privacy—the bishop saw to it. I found community in the church and family inmy bishop, who treated me like a daughter. He often came to talk to me, even when hewas going through health issues toward the end of his life.
It was such an honor to solidify Bishop Keaton’s legacy as a great spiritual teacher inmy life and in the world by featuring him on two of my songs, “I Wish You Well” and“Fly Like a Bird.” He and the True Worship choir joined me on Good Morning America toperform “Fly Like a Bird,” before he took flight on July 3, 2009.
Having a family in God brought me back to my life in the Light. Pat couldn’t understand.
She left me a snide phone message on my Blackberry: “What is this with you and yournew friends and your new prayers?” None of my biological family understood what itmeant to care so much about God. But I had to. Returning to God was the only way Imade it out of all my trips to hell. I believe my ex-brother and ex-sister have been to a hellof their own; they may still be trapped there. They chose drugs and lies and schemes tosurvive, but that only seemed to dig them in deeper and to make them resent me more.
And I still pray for them.
Maybe when you’re cursing me
You don’t feel so incomplete
But we’ve all made mistakes
Felt the guilt and self-hate
I know that you’ve been there for plenty
Maybe still got love for me
But let him without sin cast the first stone brethrenBut who remains standing then
Not you, not I, see Philippians 4:9
So, I wish you well
—“I Wish You Well”
So gradually I overcame the dark time that my family had dragged me through. Andafter all that shit, “Loverboy” ended up being the best-selling single of 2001 in the UnitedStates. I’m real.
PART IV EMANCIPATION-MY COUSIN VINNY
PART IV
EMANCIPATION
MY COUSIN VINNY
After the whole Glitter fiasco, Virgin was spooked and wanted to change my deal to makeit much less significant. They felt they couldn’t justify spending all that money on such an“unstable” person. The woman who had signed me was fired, and they brought in two newpeople from England to replace her. I remember the first day I sat down with them—basically, they were pretty fucking awful. They were trying to change the deal, and I justknew I had to get out of there.
Getting to Virgin had seemed like a triumph because I was so desperate to get offSony. Virgin wasn’t as big, but it was a boutique label, and I knew how well they hadtaken care of Lenny Kravitz and Janet Jackson. They offered me such a good deal in partbecause they weren’t as slick and influential as other labels; they didn’t know all the tricksthat Sony and the other big labels knew. They were eclectic and saw me as a big, shinystar. Initially I chose Virgin over a larger and more cutthroat label for the deal they wereoffering, but when they wanted to “adjust” it, with all new players, I had no reason to stay.
They offered a revised agreement wherein they would pay me much less and have morecontrol. I refused.
Instead, the CEO of Universal Music Group, the genius Doug Morris, and visionaryhip-hop music executive Lyor Cohen (we both had come a long way since I met him onthe street with Will Smith, singing Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock’s “It Takes Two”), came tomy penthouse. The three of us sat in the living room with Marilyn’s white baby grand, andover champagne Doug proclaimed, “You know what, Mariah? We’re going to do this. Ithink we’re really gonna do this.” I felt safe and seen. They would have to pay a prettypenny to get me out of the deal I had with Virgin, but they were willing. I was like, Fuckeverybody else; I’m still good, I’m still here. I mean, I had two of the top music executivesin the world on my couch, with no middlemen. We were going to be all right. After all ofthe trauma I’d experienced, the faith and trust Doug showed in me, and his exciting visionfor the future, renewed me. And I was going to do it! I had no intention of dying with thenineties, as Tommy had prophesized. I always knew I could be even bigger than he saw. Ihad so much more music inside of me. Ready to begin again, I signed my new deal.
The first album I made on Universal was Charmbracelet. Recording Charmbraceletwas a chance at restoration and recuperation after the disaster that was Glitter. Waiting atthe end of my Rainbow bridge to freedom was a kind of paradise, an oasis. Quite literally—I recorded a lot of the album in the Bahamas and on the Isle of Capri (a semi-secret,retro-glamorous getaway like the old Hollywood of Italy). In the Bahamas, we did severallive music sessions with Kenneth Crouch (of the legendary Crouch gospel family), RandyJackson, and a bunch of other talented artists, including 7 Aurelius, who had been makingbig hits with Ashanti at the time. I was back in my sweet spot laying down light and airyvocals over heavy hip-hop tracks. All of us were there in the gorgeous Bahamas, justwriting music.
I loved those sessions. I’m glad I was able to arrange that, because I needed a palate-cleansing moment. Jermaine and I did “The One” together. I wanted “The One” to be thelead single, but Doug chose “Through the Rain.” It was a serious ballad, and Dougthought it would work because it was kind of a sob story, the sort of triumphant OprahWinfrey moment I needed in the wake of the Glitter debacle. It was a good song, but itdidn’t perform as well as it could have. The label was really invested in the “adultcontemporary” genre, which I could do in my sleep. But personally, I had alwayspreferred the so-called “urban contemporary,” whatever that means.
I went back to Capri, to the gorgeous studio on the top of a hill. It was so great: thereare no cars, there is no pollution, the air and the energy are very clean. I didn’t have kidsat the time, but kids could run around freely there because it was so safe. You can only getthere by ferry, and so it made for the perfect hideout for me to hunker down and record.
People came out to visit me. Lyor brought Cam’ron out there for a day to record “Boy (INeed You).” Cam snuck in some of that purple (cannabis), and he administered veryeffective shotguns (I don’t inhale directly—the vocal cords, dahling). We got fully festiveand watched Mel Brooks’s History of the World: Part I (one of my all-time favoritemovies) and laughed our asses off.
One of the songs I love on Charmbracelet is “Subtle Invitation.” That song is a greatexample of how I often take the small moments that happen in life and channel their largersignificance so that my music can connect to people all around the world who are goingthrough different experiences and coming from different situations and positions. Thoughthe song was about a brief and fleeting fling, it wasn’t a resentful song. It was for anyonewho could relate to experiences of losing a love but keeping the door open to it.
See it’s hard to tell somebody
That you’re still somewhat attached
to the dream of being in love once again
When it’s clear they’ve moved on
So I sat down and wrote these few words
On the off chance you’d hear
And if you happen to be somewhere listening
You should know I’m still here?…
If you really need me, baby just reach out and touch me—“Subtle Invitation”
Another important song for me was “My Saving Grace”:
I’ve loved a lot, hurt a lot
Been burned a lot in my life and times
Spent precious years wrapped up in fears
With no end in sight
Until my saving grace shined on me
Until my saving grace set me free
Giving me peace
Giving me strength
When I’d almost lost it all
Catching my every fall
I still exist because you keep me safe
I found my saving grace within you
—“My Saving Grace”
Charmbracelet was a real fan favorite. The Lambs have always wanted “Justice forCharmbracelet,” and it was actually a really good album. It featured Jay-Z and Freewayon “You Got Me,” Cam’ron on “Boy,” and Westside Connection on “Irresistible.” Joe andKelly Price joined me on the “Through the Rain” remix. The album was a real transitionfrom what I’d left behind into a new chapter. Universal supported me and stuck by myside; it didn’t feel like the hostile battle zone that was Sony during Tommy’s reign.
Commercially, Charmbracelet wasn’t massively successful, but Doug didn’t give up onme—and thank goodness, because liberation was just over the horizon.
It was around 2003, after Charmbracelet had been released.
I recall that time as a rare moment when I felt freeish and rather unattached. I was kindof seeing a guy, but just seeing, nothing else. I just wanted to have fun. That night it wasCam’ron, Jim Jones, Juelz Santana, and Tots—and me. We’d been hanging out all night—clubbing, cocktails, you know, that whole thing—and we ended up back at my place, up inthe Moroccan room. Many things start in the Moroccan room. When I first traveled toMorocco, the country spoke to me. I was inspired by the flavor of everything, the colors,the fabrics, the textures, the smells, the lushness, the exoticness, the glamour it was giving.
It was all so mysterious and sensual. The restaurants, the homes, the hotels, they were allfantastically designed, all ultra-comfortable yet dramatic. You must keep it dramatique—Dramatique!—for me to love it, dahling.
I wanted to re-create that rich, glamorous feeling in my home—to create a beautifulplace where I could make an easy escape. Silk pillows everywhere, leather tufts,embellished little tables, hammocks, ornate lanterns. I brought in fabulous North Africanaccouterments to make my own urban oasis, the exotic cherry on top of my belovedpenthouse.
It was the height of the ghetto-fabulous fashion era, and we were living it—diamondsand denim galore on all the boys. (Cam’ron was probably wearing a powder-pink leatherand flamboyantly furry ensemble. He was in his pink phase.) I’m certain I was in somescandalous micro designer frock. So we’re all dressed up and sprawled out amongst acacophony of cushions. It was almost dawn, and in the IMAX-like view from the wall ofwindows, the night sky was changing like a mood ring to shades of purple and pink. Thewhole aura of the room was purple; after all, Dipset (known formally as the rapsupergroup the Diplomats) loves everything purple.
All of a sudden, Cam burst out, “Let’s go uptown!”
We were still feeling festive, so it sounded like an inspired idea. Cam’ron is Harlem,so we trusted he would know of the appropriate shenanigans for late, late night into earlymorning. Me and Cam got in his Lamborghini, which was purple, of course. Everyoneelse giddily hopped into their own exotic cars. My bodyguard, not so giddy, was trailingus in a big black SUV. There we were, a small convoy of rappers and dolls inunimaginably expensive cars roaring east across a sleepy Canal Street, which soon wouldbe buzzing with Chinese and Senegalese vendors setting up their open- air market ofknockoff luxury handbags and watches. But at barely 6:00 a.m., aside from a streetsweeper or the occasional trash truck, it was just us, speeding down the wide street, beingyoung and fabulous, cutting through the quiet of the gritty city.
We were headed to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive, which lines the entirety ofManhattan’s smooth eastern edge. The FDR doesn’t have traffic lights, so I knew Cam andthe boys were ready to rip.
Back then—and to this day, for sure—it was life-threatening to be a young Black man inan exotic sports car speeding up the highway, especially on Manhattan’s east side. But wewere high on a night of frivolity and other purple treats, tearing into the fresh morning.
We were feeling young, sexy, and free; the fear of arrest (or death, for that matter) wasnowhere in sight. We were chasing fun and freedom, and we captured it, if only for a fewmiles on a stretch of New York City highway.
As one might imagine, much of my life has been monitored and measured by otherpeople, and in this moment of exhilaration, I got the urge to try and lose my security. Cameagerly accepted the challenge, shifted gears, and hit that gas. It was like being shot out ofa cannon, and the big black vehicle with the big bad bodyguard instantly became a tinyspeck in the rearview mirror. Cracking up the whole time, we felt as if we’d just pulled offthe hip-hop version of a Little Rascals-type caper, with me playing Darla, of course. I’veoften felt it was a struggle to just have fun, to keep that inner child alive. But Iremembered that promise I once made myself, that I would never forget what it felt like tobe a kid. I would never let my little girl go.
By the time we peeled off the FDR at 135th Street, the sun had risen. Good morning,Harlem! As we pulled up to the stoplight at the corner of Lenox Avenue, next to HarlemHospital, I realized we were somewhere close to my great-aunt Nana Reese’s church. Ionly knew of it through stories and a single photograph, but I thought if anyone could helpme find this brownstone basement church, it was Cam. And that’s exactly what he did.
This wasn’t a paper picture in a frame—I was actually there. I could touch the bricksthat my family once owned, in the place where they lived, prayed, sang, cried, praised,married, died, and caught the spirit: this is where they had church.
I know much of my parents’ families through frozen moments in gilded frames. Myfamily pictures are sacred—they ground me, reminding me who I come from and who hascome and gone from me. These photographs are kept in a private little room off myHollywood-style mirrored and marbled dressing parlor. Behind the endless rows of highheels, the racks of minidresses, floor-length ball gowns, glittering baubles, brooches, andbags, behind all that wardrobe opulence, there’s a hidden door leading to my littlesanctuary—my personal church of family history. Each picture is a story, evidence that Iam connected to all these other people, all different and beautifully complicated. I havethem all carefully and strategically placed; I want to piece my family together, to holdthem close to me through pictures. I mostly go into this room alone, to look at them and tobe with them. In this room, I study my beautiful, fractured, fucked-up family and storetheir faces in my heart.
The picture that I stepped into that day on 131st Street is of my great-aunt, Pastor NanaReese. It looks like it was taken in the 1950s. She’s tiny and elegant against the weatheredbrownstone wall: shiny brown skin, deep-set eyes, pressed black hair, no jewelry but aflower corsage near her shoulder. She is wearing a billowing white preacher’s robe, whitesheer stockings, and square-toed church-lady shoes. She holds a big ol’ pocketbook—nota handbag, mind you, a pocketbook—with a towel wrapped around the handle, just in casethe Holy Ghost busts out and brings the heat during service and she has to mop a sweatybrow. Propped up against the wall by her feet, in rough handwritten capital and smallletters that are all the same size, is a sign in white chalk bearing a simple menu: B IBLES CHOOL, P REACHIN’, Y.P.H.A., and N IGHT S ERVICE , with corresponding times. Nana Reesewas barely five feet tall; her head didn’t even come up to the molding on the windowsill.
However, she loomed large in the picture and in her neighborhood, robed and ready topreach the Gospel to the congregation.
My cousin Vinny, full name Lavinia, was raised by Nana Reese, so Vinny called her“Mama.” It is from Cousin Vinny that most of the stories from that time and that part ofmy family come down. Both sisters, Nana Reese and Vinny’s Aunt Addie, mygrandmother, each had one son—Addie’s was Roy, my father, the only one who survived.
No one ever spoke of Nana Reese’s son, but the story, according to Cousin Vinny, is thathe died as a child from “consumption.” Such a crude- sounding diagnosis, isn’t it?
Consumption.
“Mama said he was disobedient, wouldn’t put on his coat, so he died,” Vinny says.
Nana Reese was extra-crispy Christian. As a child Vinny lived in one of the apartmentsabove the church. Nana Reese and her husband, the Good Reverend Roscoe Reese, ownedthe brownstone that housed the church and the one next door, while my grandmotherAddie owned two more farther down the block. The church provided typical Pentecostal-style holy-roller storefront-type services on the ground floor, but as Vinny tells it, the realhealing was done under the church, in the basement-basement. She recalls, as a child,witnessing a woman who’d come to see the pastor one day: “Her leg was tore up, lookedlike chopped meat,” Vinny claims. “Mama put spiderwebs on that lady’s leg and prayedover it, and when the lady came back her leg was perfect. Absolutely perfect.” Growingup, I heard of many such miracles happening in that basement. Nana Reese was God-gifted.
My father’s mother, Addie, and Nana Reese were close as sisters but far apart intemperament. While Nana was sweet, Addie was strong-willed and set in her ways. Sheand my mother had issues, to say the least. I remember a time when my mother threw herout of our house. Because of their conflicts, my mother kept me away from this part of myfather’s family, and my knowledge of them mostly came from spectacular andcontradicting stories. I clung tightly to the sketchy scenes and the precious pictures mygrandmother saved for her son, Roy. I rescued them when my father died. I love them andI protect them.
So there I stood, that sunny morning, in front of 73 West 131st Street, posing for apicture, just like the pastor, my great-aunt, my blood, had done fifty years before. Only Iwas hardly in a choir robe; I was most likely wearing a dress the size of Nana Reese’ssweat towel—boobs propped up and legs for days, diamonds twinkling. And the man withthe camera was one of the flyest and flashiest rappers in the world, leaning against a one-hundred-thousand-dollar whip while he snapped the photo.
This dignified and decaying brownstone I stood before was the site where my motherand father were married. Their wedding was another drama, another story I was told inmismatched pieces. Most of my family can at least agree on this: my mother faintedduring the ceremony. Exactly why she fainted is still up for debate. Cousin Vinny wasthere, and although she was a child at the time, she clearly remembers how beautiful mymother looked on that day. She describes her dress as a “pretty, shiny blue,” satin perhaps,and it is in that blue wedding dress that my mother collapsed to the ground, her newgroom having to slap her face to revive her. I had once been told my mother lostconsciousness after seeing a large rat scurry across the floor during the service, but later Ilearned that she was pregnant at the time. In either scenario, it’s appropriately dramatic foran opera diva’s wedding in a Harlem basement church.
As we pulled off the block, I thought about what kind of strong, faithful, andresourceful sisters Reese and Addie had to have been back then. These two Black women—armed with little education—owned four brownstones in Harlem. In addition to thechurch on 131st Street, Nana Reese also owned a brick church in Wilmington, NorthCarolina, so big it had its own baptismal pool. Its size and strength (at the time it was theonly brick building in Wilmington’s Black community) also made it a neighborhoodsanctuary: it was the place where all the Black folks would gather and seek refuge fromthe tornadoes that regularly pummeled the coast.
Nana Reese and the church were a fixture in their town in so many ways. Everymorning the choir, called Voices of Deliverance, would sing on the local radio. She wassuch an influential leader in the community that she was a threat to some, particularly inthe days of segregation and violence in the Jim Crow South. One day Nana Reese wasvisited by some white men in uniform: police and a fire chief. Cousin Vinny rememberstheir large, imposing bodies towering over her small five-foot frame. Immediately afterthis “meeting,” and without saying a word, she packed up the kids and left her brickchurch and the congregation it served faithfully for so long, never to return again.
I thought about those women as I posed for my photo, just before climbing back into thepassenger seat of a car that cost more money than they’d ever made in their entirelifetimes. My women elders, who made something from nothing. They had a visionbeyond Jim Crow, beyond third grade, beyond fear. I wonder if they ever had a vision ofwhat was in store for their little Roy’s baby girl?
So much of the pressure from the recent past had been lifted: I had a new record deal. Ihad people who were excited and enthusiastic about my comeback. I had thought thatGlitter would be the death of me, but it gave me new life. I took it as an opportunity toretreat, rest, and renew my purpose. If Rainbow was a bridge to safety, Charmbraceletwas a cocoon, a place of shelter, healing, and growth that made it possible for me tobloom again.
THE LATIN ELVIS
THE LATIN ELVIS
One year, for Christmas, I took a whole chosen family of close friends to Aspen.
Unbeknownst to me, the real- estate agent who handled my Aspen rental had gottentogether with a coworker to set me up on a blind date. It was a simple scheme: they toldthe mystery man that I really wanted to meet him, and they told me that he wanted to meetme. He turned out to be international megastar Luis Miguel, the “Latin Elvis.”
Our first date was at a restaurant, and it was hardly a date, for me. I was like, Who isthis guy? He was drinking a lot, and his hair was blown out and all over the place. But asmall part of me was intrigued. He had an undeniable passionate flair; I could see thepotential for adventure in him. Though he needed to smooth the hair down first. (I did thatfor him and Tommy, by the way — smooth the hair down, figure it out; you know,Hairdressing 101. Five hundred hours!)
After we had both had a few drinks and an awkward dinner, I still couldn’t get rid ofhim. I went to my nephew Shawn’s room and told him, “Shawn, you got to come help mefigure this out.” I had just met this guy, and he was drunk off his ass! I was thinking tomyself, We’re not going anywhere with this; it’s not going to work. So Shawn made up anexcuse for me and got me out.
The very next day Luis’s assistant showed up to my door with a spectacular Bulgaridiamond necklace (diamonds aren’t my best friend, but we’re close). I was surprised—andyes, impressed—but in the back of my mind I was also thinking, What, does he just keep abunch of diamond necklaces nearby in case he meets a girl? I know they have jewelrystores in Aspen, but I also knew to be cautious: he’d dated Daisy Fuentes, Salma Hayek—all of these incredibly beautiful and famous Latin women. I soon learned that was his way;he was an authentic, over-the-top Latin lover, for real.
Luis was exciting and extravagant. We were both Aries, and we vibed energetically.
He was incredibly romantic and spontaneous. We would go on adventures: ditch securityand go for a ride, or pick up and go to Mexico City. He had a phenomenal house on apiece of pristine Acapulco beach, with real pink flamingos! His mansion was majestic,with dramatic carved wooden doors and porches and balconies everywhere. He wouldoften have a full mariachi band serenading us while we had dinner outside on a warmMexican evening. One of my favorite things to do was jump off the master-bedroombalcony with my beloved dog, Jack, into the sparkling pool below. (Me and Jack were theonly ones who didn’t speak Spanish, which wasn’t always easy.) His staff was so devotedto him; he was like a god to them. Luis was beloved and cherished by all his people.
One time I teased him for not having a hot tub (I got a pip penthouse with a sick hottub / We can watch the flat screen while the bubbles filling up). So what did he do? Hesurprised me for Christmas with an entire planetarium-style hot tub that you can swiminto! We threw a fabulous New Year’s Eve party there, going from 1999 to 2000, with thehot tub grotto as a main attraction. Luis didn’t hold back in his material displays ofadoration. Once, he filled an entire private jet with red roses to surprise me. His dramaticromantic gestures spoke to the eternally twelve girl in me, because they really were likesomething you saw in the movies.
It was all grand and exciting, but it was far from perfect. For one thing, ourrelationship was characterized by culture clash. Though we were both young andsuccessful, he was a lot stodgier than me. Our friends were total opposites. His were moreconservative, serious and uptight and boring, while I’d have Brat, Tots, Trey, and whoeverpopping all around. What was more difficult were the cultural gaps between us when itcame to race. He would always insist that he didn’t see me as Black. We’d have thesearguments, and I’d explain, “No, when your dad is Black, it makes you Black, so you’regoing to have to accept that about me.” But in his mind, if I didn’t look Black, I wasn’t.
For him it was simply skin deep. It was too difficult to explain that for Americans, it’smuch more complicated. I think for him, easier was better.
Though we made an effervescent couple, it’s always hard to live and love in thelimelight. He may have been the Elvis of the Spanish-speaking world, but when he cameto the United States, no offense, but for the most part I was the “star of the show.” He’dbeen through a lot and lost his mother at a very young age. From what I’d been told, hisfather was very difficult and controlling. I tried my best to support him emotionally, but Iwas going through my own shit, and it got to a point where I could no longer deal with it.
We were not helping each other heal. At his best Luis was generous, spontaneous, andpassionate, but at his worst he was erratic and anxious, and had a dark cloud hanging overhis head.
After three years, I knew it was time for us to part ways. We had a good run, and I stillhave fond memories, but ultimately, he wasn’t the one.
As the great Cole Porter wrote, “It was great fun / but it was just one of those things.”
Okay, so it’s five am, and I still can’t sleepTook some medicine, but it’s not working
Someone’s clinging to me, and it’s bittersweet’Cause he’s head over heels, but it ain’t that deep—“Crybaby”
THE EMANCIPATION OF ME
THE EMANCIPATION OF ME
After Charmbracelet, circumstances forced me into a new place. I said to myself, I’mgoing to do what I want to do completely, and with that I began to work on my nextalbum. I was going to do something from my heart, something empowering. In 2004, L.A.
Reid became the CEO of Island Def Jam Music Group. I was so excited because we hadalways wanted to work together. He heard some of what I had been working on—“Staythe Night,” a song I wrote with Kanye West. He said, “If this is what you’re doing, I’min!” One night L.A. and I were sitting in the Mermaid Room in my New York penthouse,talking about the essence of the album and how I felt it was going to be all about personalfreedom, my emancipation. We discussed the meaning of emancipation—we even lookedup the definition in the dictionary. I went on to tell him “Mimi” was a nickname a selectfew people called me. So, I suggested, “Let’s call it The Emancipation of Mimi.”
L.A. had always loved what I did with Jermaine on “Always Be My Baby.” Eventhough there were already some very good songs for this album, and I had already workedwith a bunch of incredible people, including the Neptunes, Kanye, Snoop, Twista, andNelly, L.A. was inspired to bring the dream team of me and JD back together to see whatour next level would be. I was like, “Let’s do it!” I called up Jermaine and said, “Let’s getto work.” We sat there on the floor at Southside Studios, Jermaine’s awesome creativeoasis, and within a couple weeks we had written “Shake It Off” and “Get Your Number.”
In a second session at Southside, we made “We Belong Together,” “It’s Like That,” andthen, eventually, “Don’t Forget About Us,” which was on the platinum rerelease of thatalbum.
For the first time in a long time, I had real vocal rest (something of which LutherVandross had taught me the critical importance), clarity, and a deep sense of creativecontrol. I initially started writing in the Bahamas and laid down some vocals there; theocean air and the warm, moist atmosphere were very good for my voice. They were alsogood for my songwriting. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis had previously introduced me tothe brilliant musician “Big Jim” Wright, an extremely talented and very special person inmy life. At one point, Jim and I were at a house in the Bahamas, doing a writing session. Iwanted to have a song that had a seventies live-band vibe; I imagined something NatalieCole or even Aretha would have done back in the day. Being that Big Jim was aconsummate musician, he and I almost effortlessly wrote “Circles.” After the session, ashe was about to leave—and just as I had written “Hero” on a walk to the bathroom—suddenly a melody washed through my mind as I was walking upstairs.
I came back down very quickly.
“Wait! Wait. Before you leave, I have this idea,” I said to Jim. “Fly like a bird / take tothe sky,” I sang. I knew this song was going to be something meaningful. I begged him notto leave yet. “Can we write this?” I asked. He loved the idea and stayed put. We laid outthe music together, and then I wrote these words:
Somehow I know that
There’s a place up above
With no more hurt and struggling
Free of all atrocities and suffering
Because I feel the unconditional love
From one who cares enough for me
To erase all my burdens and let me be free to fly like a birdTake to the skyI need you now Lord
Carry me high
Don’t let the world break me tonight
I need the strength of you by my side
Sometimes this life can be so cold
I pray you’ll come and carry me home
—“Fly Like a Bird”
Big Jim laid down sublime live instrumentation in New York. Later, in the Capristudio, I recorded the vocals. I stayed secluded in the studio for two days working on thebackgrounds; I was lost in a song that would eventually be one that would often help mefind my way out of the shadows. I worked through the night, so it was dawn when thesong was ready for me to listen to all put together. I opened up the big sliding glass doorsof the studio, stepped out into the morning air, and looked at the majestic cliffs jutting outof the sapphire sea as the song came pouring out of the booming speakers. The sun wasrising as the background vocals were peaking: “Carry me higher! Higher!” I closed myeyes, knowing God had laid His hand on the song and on me.
Later I brought Bishop Keaton in to the studio to anoint “Fly Like a Bird” with a readingof Psalm 30:5: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Thosewords were a reflection of all that I had survived. That passage in the Bible really meantsomething to me. The song is really about how messed up the world is—“Sometimes thislife can be so cold / I pray you’ll come and carry me home.” It’s about both difficulty andstrength: I can’t handle this life alone, but the Lord will help me through it. I’m so gratefulto have memorialized Bishop forever with one of my songs that’s most important to me.
I give a lot of credit to L.A. Reid, who by then had become a friend, for the success ofMimi. He and Universal still believed in me. My album Butterfly was an emotionalawakening. Mimi was a spiritual evolution; there’s a lot of my true heart and raw emotionin it. And there are so many good moments. For instance, not everybody knows how muchI really love “Your Girl” (it should have been a single). It’s innocent, yet still a bit grimy. Ifirst heard Scram Jones’s beat while in N.O.R.E.’s studio drinking something out of aStyrofoam cup (I know it’s bad for our ecosystem, but that’s all they had). There was alittle more confidence and a lot more liberation in it: “I’m gonna make you want to / Getwith me tonight.” And there’s a little talking part in the middle of the song “I Wish YouKnew,” which was inspired by Ms. Diana Ross. There are so many intimate, special,inside, almost intangible details that are specific to me on that album. You can actuallyfeel my authentic emotions; there are no dramatic, overproduced ballads to appease labelexecutives. This was pared down, simple, real shit. I think that’s why it resonated with somany people.
It was on Emancipation where I first started working with a new engineer, BrianGarten (thanks to Pharrell). When we work together, it’s seamless. Even though it wasn’ttelevised—because they were in the R & B category—I won three Grammys for thatalbum. (They did the same thing to Usher the year before.) It was still a triumph, because Ibelieve Emancipation deserved it. It was a triumph over the fucked-up people who weretrying to harm me and use me—my family, Tommy, the record labels, the press, andvarious others—and it was a triumph over my own trauma and fear.
The Adventures of Mimi tour was so much fun. It had its share of typical mishaps, butlargely it felt like a liberation. Emancipation had so many hits that at each show theenergy was just fire the whole time, thousands of people singing every single word of allthe new songs on the album, and some of the hottest artists would come through and dosurprise guest appearances. It was a huge commercial success, and it was a real blast.
We took an old-school, almost Motown review approach of packing up a small fleet ofbuses and driving across America. We did big shows in twenty-five cities (we also didseven in Canada, seven in Asia, and two in Africa). Though there were plenty of people onthe road with me—a full band, background singers, dancers, and crew—I was lonely. Iwas on a huge upswing moment and, as usual, responsible for everyone’s livelihood. I hadto make sure I was in top condition; my voice was rested so I could do my best for myfans first, of course (I never take for granted the money, effort, and time it takes to come toa concert), but also all the folks who depended on me to eat. While I was certainly reallyfriendly with everybody (of course Trey and Tots were there), after each show I wouldgenerally retreat to my bus to quietly decompress and rest. This was usually a simple ritualof taking a long, hot, steamy shower and sipping tea with honey. While my big silverbullet of a bus was completely tricked out and outfitted with all the comforts andeverything I needed, it didn’t provide me with company.
The other performers and crew would have a more typical tour atmosphere on theirbus—it’d be rocking with raucous laughter, liquor, card games, smoke, jokes, movies, andmusic. When musicians and dancers ride for hours together down little highways for days,they develop a rowdy family-like culture. And as the “boss” I was often on the outside ofthe camaraderie they created.
One night I decided I just needed a little levity, and I went to the dancers’ bus, whichwas by far the most popping in our fleet. It was like a basement party happening up inthere, just very lively. I easily slipped into the shenanigans. It felt like I was in high schoolsneaking out with friends and not on my own massive sold-out tour. It was simple andfestive.
One dancer stood out. I had seen him before, but something about this night feltdifferent. He was playful and certainly commanding the center of attention with hisexpressive gestures and buoyant laugh. I’d always thought he was cute, but that night itfelt different. There was something really compelling about him—serving a deliciousblend of grown-man gorgeousness and boyish charm. I was going to stay on this bus for awhile. It was a joy ride, for sure.
It was past the middle of the night, probably close to dawn. We had all been drankin’
and singing and carrying on for a few hours when we stopped to go into an all-night dinerin some little town in the middle of almost nowhere. We burst into the quiet little localjoint about a dozen deep, all loud, laughing, and extremely colorful. What few folks therewere in there—maybe a truck driver, a couple of late-shift workers—there were definitelynot any of color of any kind. They all stopped chewing and sipping to stare at whatprobably appeared to be the UniverSoul Circus that had rolled into town and barreled intotheir spot.
We were all a little too lit to realize we’d lit up that sleepy little diner with ourtheatrics and flavor. We sprawled out over several tables and booths. That dancer’s namewas Tanaka. We’d already started shooting flirty glances at each other in the bus abouttwenty miles back. We sat across from each other in a booth like eighth graders. We softlytouched each other’s legs under the table, undetected while the rest of the party roared on.
Tanaka and I quickly became friends, and over time a meaningful relationship wasbuilt. He is always right there, the effortless life of the party, and when everyone looks toyou for something, that can mean everything.
Thank God for the transformational “Mimi” era. I needed to have such massive success forthe public to finally forgive me for the “sin against humanity” that was Glitter.
After Glitter, many people wrote me off. But as Jimmy Jam said, “Don’t ever writeMariah Carey off.” And I say, “Don’t ever write anyone off.” You don’t ever know wherestrength will come from. I always go to my main source for strength—faith in God, butalso love from my fans and all the people who didn’t give up on their faith in me. This isnot to say I don’t struggle with PTSD from the collective events in my childhood, mymarriage, and the dark Glitter years. I work on my emotional recovery daily. But it is trulyfascinating how insignificant the press has become in making or breaking an artist’scareer, in shaping our narratives. I still feel like parts of the media are patiently waiting forme to have another spectacular meltdown (actually, I’ve noticed now some people stagebreakdowns for publicity), but the difference is, in today’s world, they don’t matter. Now,all artists have an unfiltered voice and enormous public platforms through social media.
The tabloids have become the pathetic, rubbish wrapping paper I’ve always known themto be. They are out of power; they cannot hunt and destroy any more of us. Our fans cancome to our defense, bring all the receipts, and create a united front so strong that no blandhost or commentator or ravenous paparazzi can even begin to compete with theirinfluence. We are the media. I only wish Princess Di had lived long enough to haveInstagram or Twitter. I wish she had lived to see the people become the press. Perhaps sheand others would have lived to tell their story. I am so grateful to my fans I’m alive to tellmine.
PRECIOUS
PRECIOUS
Push pulled me in immediately. It’s one of the few books that, upon finishing it, I turnedright back to the first page and read it again. I was on a beach during a girls’ trip with myfriend Rhonda, who insisted I read it. The voice created by genius author Sapphirecompletely took me away. She gave such singular and significant expression to a girl anda world that are often invisible. It was challenging and intensely beautiful material.
I first worked with Lee Daniels on Tennessee, a film I did in 2008. He was theproducer, but he basically ended up directing me, and he totally got me. I was thrilledwhen I learned he had acquired the rights to Push, though not at all thinking I would beinvolved.
A trusted friend, actress and director Karen G, was working as an acting coach withsome of the cast, especially the young women, and she let me know that something reallyincredible was happening on the set. One day, out of nowhere, with one day’s notice, Leeasked me to play the social worker character, Ms. Weiss (a role originally intended for thephenomenal Helen Mirren). I was over the moon, but a little freaked out too. I had a littlemore than one day to prepare. I learned my lines and did some deep, quick-and-dirtyimprovisation and backstory building with Karen. I loosely based Ms. Weiss on theupstate New York “Sweetie, it’s not normal” therapist Tommy and I used to see.
The entire process of filming was renegade and brilliant. Lee believed in me, and Ibelieved in him. I believed in the remarkable cast, and of course I believed in thebrilliance that was on the page. Lee’s major concern was that I didn’t “look like MariahCarey.” He insisted on no makeup and even had a prosthetic nose made for me. We didn’tend up using it, but the application aggravated the rosacea around my nose, which,ironically, really worked for the character (now, ain’t that some peculiar mixed ish, tohave both keloids and rosacea).
I remember once, on set, Lee caught me applying a little blush and screamed, “NOMAKEUP, Mariah!” Another physical note he gave me was to “walk flat-footed!” (oh,these tippy toes). I was confident in my grasp of the Ms. Weiss character; the mostchallenging work was not to be emotionally moved by Mo’Nique’s amazing and powerfulperformance. Ms. Weiss had to be detached, but the human being in me struggled withthat. There was a moment when Mo’Nique’s sublime acting got into my heart, and aninvoluntary tear welled up in my eye. I discreetly wiped it away, hoping it wasn’t caughton camera.
What she and Gabby Sidibe brought to their characters was simply stunning, stellarwork. I loved working on the film. My management at the time discouraged me fromdoing it, because it was last minute and low budget, but I knew it was a rare andexquisitely human story. It was also a creative stretch, which was artistically enriching forme. I was so proud to be involved. After Precious was screened at Sundance in 2009 andwon both an Audience Award and a Grand Jury Prize in the Dramatic category (plus aSpecial Jury Prize for Mo’Nique), Tyler Perry and Oprah announced they would come onas producers, giving the film the marketing, promotional support, and shine it deserved.
And it got glamorous. Cannes was the epitome of red carpets, with tons ofinternational paparazzi (you better believe Ms. Weiss was left on the screen and MariahCarey, in full effect, was there). The European press tour was fabulous, full of red carpets,dozens of couture gowns, and a thousand parties, including a secret one on RobertoCavalli’s yacht. Precious won awards wherever it went. The biggest night was the 82ndAnnual Academy Awards. The film received six nominations, including best picture, bestdirector, and best actress, and won best supporting actress for Mo’Nique and best adaptedscreenplay for Geoffrey Fletcher—making him the first African American to win in thatcategory.
I also won a few awards for my small but significant role. I won the BreakthroughPerformance Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, where Lee and I wereextra festive, using our pet names onstage (me, “Kitten,” and him, “Cotton”), laughing,and whispering to each other. And, okay, maybe we were a little tipsy too, but it was oneof those bottles-on-all-the-tables award shows! Mostly we were totally thrilled.
I was thrilled. Not only did Precious give me public validation for my acting afterGlitter, but because Lee believed in me, I was able to believe in myself again as an actress.
It was evidence that with the right material and the right people (with the right vision), Icould seriously pursue acting. Lee later gave me another unexpected and challenging roleas Hattie Pearl, mother of Cecil Gaines (the main character) and field slave in The Butler.
Lee easily saw in me what so few dared to even look for, and we have a rare and realconnection. A trust.
DIVAS
DIVAS
diva (n): A distinguished and celebrated female singer; a woman ofoutstanding talent in the world of opera (usually soprano) and byextension in theater, cinema, and popular music.
My definition of diva is the classic one.
Aretha Franklin is my high bar and North Star, a masterful musician and mind-bogglinglygifted singer who wouldn’t let one genre confine or define her. I listened to and learnedfrom all of her. When she was in her late teens she moved from singing gospel to jazz—orrather, she added jazz to her repertoire, because she never moved from gospel. (One of myfavorite albums of hers is still gospel: One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism.) And when shesang standards, there was nothing at all standard about her delivery. She brought asoulfulness to everything that was all her own.
Aretha had a bigger vision for herself. Her debut album had “I Never Loved a Man(The Way I Love You),” “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” and “Respect,” placing heron top of the R & B and pop charts. There was a great Aretha song in every era of my life.
I still believe most people don’t understand how amazing she was as a pianist andarranger. I think if you are a woman, with an incredible voice, your musicianship alwaysgets underplayed. I had the distinct honor of working with Big Jim Wright as a producerand musical director. Big Jim had worked with Aretha Franklin, and he told me, whenAretha felt the spirit, she would tap him on the shoulder, and that would be his cue to getup from the piano, where she would sit down and commence to play.
The first time I met Ms. Franklin was at the Grammys—my first year, when I wasnominated for five awards. What wrecked my nerves was not that I’d only been in thebusiness for about six months, and I was performing at the Grammys for millions ofviewers on live TV, and every big music star was in the audience: I was most concernedabout the fact that I had to sing in front of her. The one who I thought was the one, Ms.
Aretha Franklin. I had to sing “Vision of Love” with Aretha Franklin sitting in the frontrow. Many times I had visualized a dream of singing at big awards shows, but I neverimagined I would have to do so in front of my idol on my first go-round. I couldn’t evensleep the night before. The day of rehearsal, I summoned the courage to go up to her. Shewas quietly sitting in the front row, on the left- hand side. I knelt down by her seat(because that’s what one does in the presence).
“Ms. Franklin, I just wanted to say thank you. My name is Mariah,” I said. Humbly, Iwent on, “I just wanted to say thank you, from all of the singers that you’ve inspired.
Thank you. It’s an honor to meet you.”
Years later, she said to me, “Mariah, you’ve always had good manners, and that’s thething that most of these young girls are lacking. It’s the manners. They don’t have them.” Icouldn’t imagine doing any less for someone who gave the world so much. I got throughthe performance of “Vision of Love” and won Best New Artist and Best Pop VocalPerformance. Later, I totally scrutinized my performance at the Grammys that night, and Iheard every nuance I missed. But I sang before the Queen.
My next great encounter with her was in 1998, when I was asked to perform for VH1’sDivas Live show, for which they were going to do an Aretha Franklin tribute. Of course Isaid yes, because it was Aretha, and when you are summoned to pay homage to theQueen, you jump, jump, jump to it. When I arrived the day before the show for rehearsal,Aretha was giving the producer something he could feel. Ken Ehrlich is a giant in theindustry. He has produced countless honors and awards shows, including more than thirtyGrammys (and my #1 to Infinity show at The Colosseum, in Vegas). He and Aretha hadhistory. Good: he produced her operatic debut on the Grammys. Not So Good: theyseemed to have had power struggles, like an old married couple. The other “diva” singersselected for the show were Céline Dion, Shania Twain, Gloria Estefan, and Carole King(because of her having written the amazing “[You Make Me Feel Like a] NaturalWoman,” which Aretha loved and made a classic). Ken told me that on several occasionsAretha said, “Mariah’s the only girl that I’ll be singing with this evening.” Which is why Iwas the only one to do a duet with her on the show.
Temperatures were rising between Ken and Ms. Franklin because the air-conditioningwas on and she doesn’t sing with air-conditioning (or outside in the freezing cold).
Luther Vandross was the first artist to warn me of the risks of singing in the cold. Hetold me that I needed to care for the fragile physical place that holds the muscles, thetendons, and the sensitive strings that vibrate and allow my voice to come through. Listen,if being in the cold can make fingers go numb, imagine what it can do to delicate vocalcords! There’s a certain performance of mine in the bitter cold wearing a sheer bedazzledleotard and eight-inch Louboutins at the world’s busiest intersection, in intimate proximityto stinking, putrid garbage that everyone seems to want to remember, and that I, quitehonestly, often forget. To me, it’s as if I was a child playing in the sandbox and I got sandin my eye, wept theatrically, and caused a scene—then arrived twenty years later at myclass reunion, after haven gotten a PhD and become a celebrated scholar only to have myclassmates ask, “Oh, but how’s your eye?”
I was a lot of things in that fleeting moment in the cold, but I knew one thing Icertainly was not. I was not broken. Not even close. I had been through so much worse.
All debacles are not created equal, dahhhhling.
But the Queen of Soul, of course, knew better than to sing in the cold. When I arrivedfor our rehearsal, I was so excited and nervous. Aretha greeted me with, “Mariah, they’replaying games. And I’m not having the games. So we won’t be rehearsing this evening,”
she said, matter-of-factly.
Wait. Who the fuck is playing games? I wanted to scream. It’s enough that I’m goingto sing with Aretha Franklin, and now I can’t rehearse with her?! I could see Ken pacingaround, sweating, losing hair, and freaking out. “She’s doing what she always does,” hesputtered. I don’t know what the two of them always did, but this was the first time I wasgoing to sing with arguably the greatest singer on the planet, my idol, and I couldn’t get arehearsal! Why couldn’t they just turn the fucking air off? I was dying.
The night of no rehearsal was a nightmare, except that it was the time she told me shereally liked “Dreamlover” and suggested we sing it together. I died again. I was just blownaway that she even knew my song, let alone wanted to perform it. Years later, she did singsome of my songs, like “Hero” for Jesse Jackson’s birthday and “Touch My Body” ontour, where she ad-libbed all the frisky bits. She said, “Tell Mariah I’m a churchgoingwoman, and I can’t sing that stuff, now” and the audience sang along with the hook. It wasincredible.
But back to Divas Live. I humbly asked her if we could please do one of her songs. Ididn’t think my heart could take Aretha singing one of my songs on this occasion. Isuggested “Chain of Fools” instead. Mercifully, she agreed. Show day came, and I wasbrought to her trailer, where she was sitting with a keyboard, so we could go over the songtogether. We talked for a bit and worked on the song a little bit, but honestly I felt like Iwas in a bit of a blackout, because it was such an amazing and intimidating experiencehaving that intimacy with her, and the anticipation of performing with her with so littlepreparation—and for her to trust that I would carry on.
The time for our first number in the show came. She told the audience that she and“my newest girlfriend didn’t get to rehearse, but she’s going to come out and join me.”
The band began “Chain of Fools,” and I walked out on the stage. Her energy was sopowerful, I just kept my focus on her and sang when she told me to sing, and we did thesong. I ended with a bow and “All hail to the Queen!” How else do you exit a moment likethat? And she gestured to me and said, “Miss Carey.” That was enough for my soul.
At every tribute there’s always a big finale with a “We Are the World” moment whenall the artists sing some big song together (we love everybody, but I don’t love this part ofthe show ever, but here we go). All the other divas were on the stage, set to go out with“(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman,” a natural choice. Everyone knew her part,but we all knew that it was Aretha’s song. Well, almost all of us knew. Look, if Arethawas going to riff or ad-lib anywhere, that was her prerogative as Queen, but you do not—repeat, do not—take it as a challenge. One of the divas didn’t understand the culture of thecourt and tried to come for the Queen a little bit during the song. It was fine. I wouldn’thave ever done that. To quote Ms. Franklin, “Something was askew.”
But at the very end, Aretha decided to take us to church and started to sing gospel. Shecame and put her arm around me, and I blew out a few big “Jesus!”es because she invitedme to. It’s like jazz: she was the bandleader; you followed her. So the dueling diva hadgone too far before (in my humble opinion) and appeared to try and outsing Aretha. That.
Happened. I couldn’t believe anyone would try to upstage Aretha Franklin on her tribute,while singing about Jesus, no less. Maybe it was a big culture gap, but it seemed like sheerlunacy to me, and I wanted no part of it. As it was happening, my body began toinvoluntarily back up out of the Diva lineup and I headed back to join the backup singers,most of whom I knew. It seemed like blasphemy to me, and I wanted to be out of strikingdistance should the lightning come.
I was mortified, but of course Aretha didn’t care. She had more skills, soul, and naturaltalent than all of us combined and then multiplied. She had so much fun that night and toreit down.
Later I told the story to Patti LaBelle—Godmother, as I call her. (One day she juststarted calling herself my godmother, after I had the sublime honor of singing “Got to BeReal” with her on her TV special Live! One Night Only. She truly is one of the realestsingers ever.) She has given me good, seasoned advice and has literally held my handthrough some tough situations. So when I called her and told her about the scene, she said,“Mariah, if you would’ve participated in that hoedown, I would’ve had to come slap youin the face.”
Hopefully the one lesson we all learned on that stage was: R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
Aretha Franklin will always have not only respect from me, but also an ocean ofgratitude that will water me forever.
The year following the “hoedown,” VH1 Divas Live called me back to do a Diana Rosstribute. The Boss, Donna Summer, and I were supposed to do a Supremes kind of amoment. Of course I lived for the idea, because?… Ms. Ross! However, it would be a bitof a stretch for me, because while I was very familiar with both Ms. Ross and Ms.
Summer’s iconic disco-diva periods—I grew up with their dance hits—the Supremes erawould require research. I loved Ms. Ross’s eighties dance anthems like “I’m Coming Out”
and big ballads like “Endless Love” (which I so loved remaking with Luther); I couldcapture that feeling. Of course I knew some Supremes classics, like “Stop! In the Name ofLove,” but I didn’t really know their specific performance styles and qualities, or all of thelyrics.
To prepare, I turned to my friend Trey for the Ms. Ross background and backstory. That’swhen I put it together that Ms. Ross and I were born within the same week in March, a dayapart from each other. (Aretha too—when I was with Ms. Franklin in her trailer, trying tolearn “Chain of Fools” in a flash, I made some snarky comment (respectfully, of course),and she said, “Like the sense of humor. Typical Aries.” And Chaka Khan and BillieHoliday have birthdays in that week too!) As much as I loved Diana Ross growing up,Trey is the biggest Diana Ross fan there ever was. He lives for her.
Trey and I became friends before my first album came out. I was working in a studio,and he was doing backgrounds next door. I heard this voice going all up in thestratosphere, and I had to find out from whom that glorious sound was coming. It was aninstant click with us, not only because of his dynamic vocal abilities that were socomplementary to mine but because his spirit was light and full. We also got each other’shumor — particularly when it came to impersonating retro film and music stars andparodying great musical moments. And Ms. Ross was an endless reservoir of inspiration; alot of our sayings—our “-isms”—were derivative of the Boss. Trey was an expert when itcame to her mannerisms, her ad-libs, things he learned watching vintage Motown andSupremes clips, or little gems he picked up from movies and tapes. He just adoredeverything about her. The way I am with Marilyn, Trey is with Ms. Ross.
Once I was in London, where Ms. Ross and I were both doing the Top of the Pops TVshow. At the time, and for a very long time, Top of the Pops was the most important showto debut a song and make it an international hit record. Your performance of the song onthe show could literally make or break it. It wasn’t an awards show, it was a televisedshowcase, and after an appearance, a song could make it to the top of the pop charts.
Almost all of the UK and most of Europe would watch. There really is no Americanequivalent. It was one of the very few places where you could pass superstars like Princeor the Rolling Stones in the hallway.
Ms. Ross was so wonderful to me on set, telling me, “I love you; my kids love you.”
She was beyond lovely. She even came into my dressing room just to hang out! Instantly Ithought, I’m here casually with Diana Ross; I gotta call Trey! I did, and she left him areally sweet message in that high-pitched but low-volume singsongy voice: “Oh, this is forTrey? This is for Trey. Happy birthday, Trey.”
When he heard it, he just about died, right on his birthday. He saved that voicemessage forever. He probably still has it to this day.
To prepare for the Divas Live Ms. Ross / Supremes tribute, Trey was schooling me onall these Motown moments, and I was getting into her feeling, but how to integrate withDonna Summer was not as clear. I have such a tender memory connected with DonnaSummer. I was quite young and at a publicly funded New York City summer sleepawaycamp for kids. Let’s just say, it was not the most organized, and the staff were practicallykids themselves. It was predominately Black, and I was one of the very few mixed orlight-skinned children there, and the only blondish one. But I most certainly was nothaving more fun. Rather, I was a flash point for animosity. None of the girls liked me.
Why are they mad at me? I wondered. I didn’t understand, then. It wasn’t just the lightskin and blondish hair—if that weren’t enough, Khalil liked me. Khalil was the cutest boyin the whole camp. He had dark, curly brown hair, caramel skin, and greenish eyes. I wasalso taller than he was, so I think the girls also thought I was too old for him (even thoughwe were the same age).
At any rate, the dreamiest boy at the nightmare camp thought I was cute. There was aclosing-day dance, and just as the first bird-twinkling-flute sound with soaring strings andthe melodic ooohs began, Khalil walked over to me. He took my hand, and “Last dance,last chance for love” slowly started to fill the room. We went out to the dance floor, andour little selves moved in a waltzlike sway until the song broke out into the bright andhappy up-tempo part; then we jumped around in our own disco-ball world, letting jealousgirls made mean by harsh environments melt away.
I carried that less-than-ideal experience of being at a public camp with me. It inspiredme to conceive Camp Mariah, a summer camp focused on career awareness. I intimatelyunderstood there were countless children who didn’t have access to resources at theirhands, space under their feet, and sky above their heads. The first fundraiser was aChristmas concert at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Harlem in 1994, where Iperformed “All I Want for Christmas Is You” live for the first time. It stood as one of thelargest fundraisers ever for the Fresh Air Fund, Camp Mariah’s amazing partner. TheFresh Air Fund’s Camp Mariah allowed me to create what I didn’t have for thousands ofdeserving children. It has been not only fulfilling but healing.
So for me, Ms. Summer’s classic hit was the soundtrack to “Camp Khalil,” thatinnocent childhood moment (and there weren’t many). I had never met her. Divas Live is alive concert, but it’s taped in front of an audience at Radio City Music Hall. There werecrew and people bustling all about. Everyone was excited about the arrival of the icon,Ms. Ross, and I was having my own current big pop-culture moment celebrating Rainbow,my seventh consecutive album to produce number-one hits on the Billboard Hot 100—“Heartbreaker” was my fourteenth. We were doing a walk-through of the staging andpreparing for a run-through of the Supremes medley (without Ms. Ross). Donna Summerquietly came up, appearing shy and uncomfortable. No one said much as she went off tothe side to have a conversation, I think about the teleprompter, which was scrolling lyricsto “Baby Love.” Then someone came and held up three hideous green sequined gowns.
They were cheap costume types, nowhere near couture. Putrid.
Who do they think is wearing that? I thought. ’Cause I’m not wearing that. I was sure Ms.
Ross would find them distasteful (to say the least) too. The next thing I knew, someonecame over and told me Ms. Summer wouldn’t be doing the performance with us. And sheleft. Oh, okay. There was no time to find a Cindy Birdsong (she replaced Florence Ballardin the Supremes). I don’t know what made Ms. Summer bow out (if it was the dresses, Icertainly don’t blame her), but it looked like this year’s Divas Live was going to beanother wild ride.
So now I was adjusting to the notion of doing a duet with Ms. Ross. Of course that wasexciting, but the green abominations? No ma’am. I would not be foiled by bad fashion onthat particular night—not in front of Ms. Ross, who is a well-documented internationalfashion icon.
Growing up, I so vividly recall seeing giant black-and-white posters of Diana Ross allover New York City. She was wearing a white T-shirt with rolled-up sleeves and worn-injeans; her hair was imperfectly perfectly slicked back and tucked behind her ear, and shewas in minimal makeup. It was très chic—she was so beautiful. My eye couldn’t help butfocus on her gaze. The poster simply had her first name—“Diana”—written in largelowercase letters off to the side. I pasted that image on my inner inspiration board andsubsequently pulled it out for my #1’s cover. The composition was different, but I wasinspired by the poster’s simplicity and intensity. From the beginning I sought to maketimeless, not trendy, images, and Ms. Ross is a trailblazer in creating modern, classic high-glamour iconography.
I made it known that I would not be wearing the shiny green horror. I don’t ever leave thehouse without my own wardrobe possibilities, because in this business you never reallyknow what might happen—and something very tacky was happening this night. I had aplan. Since Donna Summer had backed out, I offered this to Ms. Ross:
“Well, I have a dress. I actually have two dresses that are the same, if you wanted tolook at them.”
Donatella Versace had made me two fine metallic-mesh-link mini toga-style numbers—one gold and one silver—and I had brought them both with me. (What a perfect night tohave options!)
“Yeah, let me see the dress,” Diana said.
This was a woman who had been in countless gorgeous dresses, made fashionstatements in every language, and I was humbly offering my dress (fabulous as it was) toher. Needless to say, I was nervous. I presented the tiny, backless dresses to her, and shetook the silver one. Yes.
“I promise not to bend over.” Those were her first words as she tiptoed out on thestage like a diva nymph with an Afro in the mini metallic silver sheath. She made it herown. I joined her in the gold version, and we stopped! in the name of love for the people.
The memory of having her teaching me the hand choreography for the song is sitting inmy treasure box of all-time precious moments. I felt a Love Supreme.
Recently, I’ve been reflecting on something Ms. Ross said to me that time in London. Ihad sold tens of millions of records, and I was rolling deep, with a big team—makeupartist, hairstylist, wardrobe stylist, publicist, manager, and various assistants. As she wasflawlessly putting on her own makeup (she went to beauty school too!), she said, “Mariah,someday, you’re not gonna want to have all these people around you.”
I believe that “someday” is not far away.
One final “diva” moment. For the 1998 MTV VMAs, Whitney and I were opening theshow and presenting the Best Male Video award. It was supposed to be a whole staged“Clash of the Divas” stunt where we would enter from opposite sides of the stage andmeet in the middle, only to discover we had on the same dress—a chocolate Vera Wangslip-style gown. We did some cute banter: “Nice dress,” and “They told me it was a one ofa kind.” Then I said something like, “It’s a good thing I come prepared,” and reachedbehind me to detach the long skirt portion of the dress, revealing an asymmetrical mini asI declared, “Try it on me!”
Then Whitney said, “I can do better” and also ripped away the long piece of her dress,showing a new and different shape. We had a great laugh about it, but the gag is themoment that almost didn’t happen. When I showed up at the venue, my dress had notarrived. Because the whole opening revolved around the dresses, it wasn’t like I or anyonecould just whip out a replacement. There was a panic! Apparently the dress was still at theshowroom, and so production arranged for a police escort for the dress, clearing the streetsto get it up to the theater on time.
That day, the police saved my one-of-a-kind-dress moment. If only someone couldhave saved our once-in-a-lifetime Whitney Houston.
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT A FEW GOOD MEN
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT A FEW GOOD MEN
-Karl-
Karl Lagerfeld was always very nice to me, which was not the case with some of the more hautyhaute-couture houses. We did a fashion shoot together for America magazine—which was a new“luxury urban” publication launched in the early 2000s, when the words “luxury” and “urban”
were not common neighbors. The magazine and Karl were willing to go to a newer, fresher visualplace with me. Karl produced and photographed the cover shoot. He captured me in both anintimate and a very glamorous light, giving you a little Marilyn-Monroe-by-Eve-Arnold vibe.
They are, to this day, some of my most cherished portraits. Karl also photographed my “V BelongTogether” V Magazine cover during the launch of The Emancipation of Mimi. The giant V logowas designed with the pattern from my Dior diamond bracelet — absolute perfection (LoveStephen Gan).
Once, Karl made me a very special couture dress for a big event. It was just beautiful—black satin with a deep V in the back. I wore it with my hair parted down the middle,slicked back (I very rarely wear it this way) and held with an ornament. It was giving avery classic high-fashion look. Because the dress was made of silk satin, though, whichcan be reflective, it requires proper lighting (in my opinion, every situation really does). Ilooked heavier in most of the photos as I featured the details in the back. The flashes mademy ass look huge. Keep in mind, these were the days before ample booties—faux orauthentic—were accepted or celebrated in the mainstream. Back then I wasn’t allowed tohave an ass.
The traditional press was very “Oh. My. God. Becky, look at her butt!” It was beyondfrustrating. I was in this gorgeous dress, serving a classic couture look, and the press hadto criticize my butt and foil the moment. I wasn’t that far removed from the time when Icouldn’t afford actual food and so I had no curves to attack. Mercifully, my thenhairdresser Lou Obligini took the picture of me in the dress, sitting with my friend Rachel,and superimposed Marilyn Monroe on the other side of me, altering my original badfeelings about being photographed looking curvy—and illustrating how creativity andvision can change perceptions, people, and points of view. That little black dress had a bigimpact, as did Mr. Karl Lagerfeld himself, both one of a kind to me.
-Mandela-
When Oprah invites you to go to South Africa, you drop everything and go. (When Oprah invitesyou anywhere, you go, but this was super major.) It was something pretty extraordinary even forher—the opening of her Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls. It was a once-in-a-lifetimeprivilege to be among the few people she invited (including Tina Turner, Sidney Poitier, Mary J.
Blige, and Spike Lee), and then I was one of the even fewer people she selected to personallymeet the phenomenal transformational figure Nelson Mandela.
I was brought into a small, simple, elegant room where Mr. Mandela was sitting in alone gray wingback chair in one of his signature patterned shirts. He looked like a king.
He looked like a father. I was with him for just a moment, but what an incredible,powerful moment. I leaned down to hug him, and in that brief embrace I felt the energy ofancient ancestry and of the future, of struggles and sacrifice, of unshakable faith andvision—of revolutionary love. Mr. Mandela smiled at me, and in an instant I felt my veryconstitution change.
-Ali-
Muhammad Ali was turning sixty years old, and a CBS television special was being produced incelebration of his triumphant life. It was 2002, right after Will Smith portrayed him in the film Ali.
I was asked to close the show with the “Happy Birthday” song. I had admired Mr. Ali immenselysince childhood. He was one of the few people my entire disjoined family came together on. If hewas on TV, we would all gather around; all of us agreed Muhammad Ali was undeniably theGreatest. He was a big presence to me, like Michael-Jackson-status big.
Inspired by the Marilyn moment when she famously sang to President Kennedy, I dida little rearrangement of the classic and sang soft and breathy at the top: “Happy birthdayto you / Happy birthday to you / Happy birthday to the Greatest”—after which I movedinto a big, vocal gospel- choir- type rendition. Of course I was honored to have theopportunity. However, I did not realize my singing to an icon, inspired by another icon,might have been a bit improper. You see, I was dressed in a simple icy-pink-silk short slipdress, and I did a few kitschy winks and shimmies during my performance. I was thinking,of course, Everyone is in on the reference. What I didn’t take into consideration was thatMr. Ali was Muslim, as were his wife and daughters. I also didn’t know, at the time, thatMuslim women dress and act modestly.
Mr. Ali and his wife were seated in special chairs at the foot of the stage. As part ofthe performance, I was to walk down the stairs and sing right in front of him. I must haveappeared to literally be in my underwear to him and his wife. The camera was cutting tohim so the audience could see how animated he was, seemingly trying to get out of hischair with excitement—which at that stage in the progression of his Parkinson’s syndromewas not an easy task, but which also caused a delighted reaction from the audience (well,most of them). Thank God, during the performance I didn’t know I was beinginappropriate to his family; none of the producers brought this small but significantreligious-respect issue to my attention. You know, they could’ve just said, “Maybe tonedown the cute kitten moves and bring the hem down a little—perhaps some sleeves wouldbe nice?” I didn’t know. I truly hope the family forgave my youthful ignorance andinexperience.
Legends and heavy hitters like Angela Bassett and Diahann Carroll were there. At theend of my song, Will Smith was to stand on his other side, and he and I would help Mr.
Ali walk up to the stage for a finale. All the presenters and performers were gathered, andthere was a huge confetti drop, and I was on the arm of one of my absolute heroes. In allthe festive mayhem, he leaned over and whispered in my ear, “You’re dangerous.” Mindyou, he wasn’t talking very much at that point, but I heard him loud and clear. We bothhad a private laugh about it.
The man—the people’s champion, who knocked out some of the toughest men in theworld and knocked down some of the toughest racial barriers—used his precious breath tojoke with me that I was dangerous. After that experience, proclaiming a momentlegendary elevated it to a whole new weight class.
-Stevie-
“What color are the lights on the Christmas tree? What do they look like?” I overheard StevieWonder ask his brother as he led him through the MGM Grand. We were both there for theBillboard Music Awards. He had come to present me with the Artist of the Decade award. Of allthe musicians and all the music I’ve been inspired by, Stevie Wonder would have to be myfavorite. As a writer and composer he is a deep diver. He goes all the way to the floor of his souland brings back treasures so vivid, so full of emotion, they sonically shift your composition. Andas a singer, he delivers with complete honesty and heart. He is truly my diamond standard.
I have had the privilege to work with him a few times. Once, he even played me somenew material he was working on and asked my opinion. One of the greatest songwritersever casually let me listen to his work and was genuinely interested in my feedback—as amusician. A musical moment I will always treasure was an ad-lib he did on my song“Make It Look Good” on Me. I am Mariah?… The Elusive Chanteuse. Right at the verybeginning, he says or plays, “I love you, Mariah” through his harmonica! And then laughshis sweet, brilliant, healing laugh, and then the song begins. It was like a little blessingbefore the meal. He played his distinctive harmonica throughout the whole thing, as onlyStevie Wonder can.
I often think about that moment when he asked about the Christmas lights on the tree.
This man who has brought so much pure joy to people all around the globe, spanninggenerations, through the power of his incredible musical contribution—a man who has litup the world with his presence and his songs, a man who has done so much for humanity—was asking to have a twinkle described to him. In that moment, “Mr. Wonder-full”
showed me how not to take the simple things for granted and confirmed a Christmas treecan bring happiness, seen and unseen, as long as it is made from love.
When I received the Billboard’s Artist of the Decade award, I declared, “Now I can bewho I really am,” because I had just finished the Rainbow album and was on my road toemancipation. Receiving that recognition was a huge accomplishment, yet what I receivedfrom Stevie Wonder transcends statues, accolades, and all decades.
-Prince-
Prince gave me a Bible, bound in deep-brown leather, with gold embossed letters. I still have thatholy book, sent to me from a brilliant being, a brother angel, who came to my aid in difficult timesmore than once. Prince defended me as an artist. Around the time of Butterfly, a couple of labelexecutives who shall remain nameless (because I don’t really know them) were questioning mymusical direction in conversation with him. By that time he had reached guru status as a musician(which didn’t stop labels from trying to screw him as a recording artist—when it comes to moneyand power, nothing and no one is sacred, not even music royalty).
They asked him: “Why is she trying to be so urban?” and “What is she doing?”
“I think that’s just her shit. That’s what she really likes,” was his transcendent answer.
Exactly right!
It’s just her shit. Namaste, suckahs.
When I first met Prince, he told me he loved “Honey.” Oh! My! God!
Prince knows my song! I shouted in my head. I was over the moon—the maestro ofmodern music knew my song! We went on to talk about songwriting and the treachery of“the industry” in subsequent casual meetings at parties or a club (Prince was notorious forrandomly, mystically appearing at a nightclub); he was always very giving of his timewith me.
One night he, JD, and I stayed up all night talking about the State of the Industry andhow, as new leaders, we could gain more independence, agency, and ownership over ourwork. Then, one day, I got the invitation to Paisley Park. I had frequently fantasized aboutwriting with him, like Wendy and Lisa, or Sheila E.—all incredible, undercelebratedmusicians. (I really, really wanted to write and record a “Purple Rain”-esque ballad duet. Imean, who didn’t, but I know it would’ve been pretty perfect.) I remember when I arrivedat the Paisley Park compound, from the outside it looked like an unremarkable series ofbig white structures, almost like a big car dealership. But then I went inside and saw themagnificent purple motorcycle from Purple Rain. I knew I had entered a whole ’nothaworld.
I brought Prince sketches of a song I had been playing around with. My process withwriting partners is to come in with some concepts—lyrical or melodic sketches—then goback and forth with ideas. We did a lot of talking. I think it was a bit of a test; you see,Prince was a real writer and composer—a lot of people claim they are, but we know. Ithink he wanted to see where my head and my writing chops were. I was already thinkingabout songs for Silk (the girl band I had in Glitter, who I loosely modeled after Vanity 6).
I talked to him about how I wanted to use “Nasty Girl,” the song he wrote for Vanity 6, asa sample for a film I was working on (similarly to the way ended I up using “I Didn’tMean to Turn You On”). Prince challenged me.
“That’s Vanity’s song,” he said.
He asked me why I couldn’t be “inspired” by it, as Puff and Biggie were with “Younasty, boy / You nasty.” I let him know rather than just the catchy words, I loved thestructure and the beat of the song—the feeling. Prince wasn’t at all being shady; he wasbeing protective. He was being instructive. He told me to finish the song I had begun, andwe would work on another new one. I never finished the song, and we never made oursong together. I really wish we had (remaking “The Beautiful Ones” would be the closest Iwould get). Protect your ideas, protect your music, was the message I got from that trip toPaisley Park.
When the Glitter debacle was in full swing, Prince reached out to me. He called meoften, and what he said to me then I always will cherish inside. He was deeply private, andI will keep the details to myself. But I will say his wise words soothed me. He gave meencouragement, like the big brother I never had. I listened to Prince’s music nearly daily(and to this day—Roc and Roe can identify all his G-rated songs!). I don’t know if hecould ever know what his connecting with me in that storm meant to me. It gave me hopein a desolate time.
Prince had his own singular and wondrous relationship with God. He composed hisown concept of spirituality and sexuality, and it was as special and unique as he was. Butin the end, when my soul was in need, Prince sent me the sacred scriptures, the belovedbooks, the Word of God bound together. Prince helped save me on a soul level, when Ineeded it the most, and through his music he continues to save the day, every day.
DEM BABIES
DEM BABIES
Boy meets girl and looks in her eyes
Time stands still and two hearts catch fire
Off they go, roller coaster ride
—“Love Story”
Much of the iconic television of the 1990s missed me. I never got to watch Seinfeld (nowI’m such a stan of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee) and I had no time for—and wasisolated from—actual friends, let alone sitcom ones. All my time was spent hustling,working, praying, and making “Mariah Carey.” I barely watched children’s shows when Iwas a child, so I certainly didn’t know of any Nickelodeon shows or their stars. I had noclue All That was all that, and I had no idea who Nick Cannon was until 2002, when I sawthe film Drumline (which I loved). I thought he was very good in it (I also thought he wascute—very). That was all.
A couple of years later, Brat was telling me, “He loves you. He always talks aboutyou,” referring to Nick. She was a fan of Wild ’N Out, his hip-hop-infused improv sketch-comedy show on MTV, which I also had no knowledge of. Wild ’N Out came out the sameyear as The Emancipation of Mimi, which consumed me in a good way—finally. It was anincredible moment of long-awaited, phenomenal success. I was hearing one of several ofmy songs from that album on the radio thirty times a day! It was a massive moment formy fans too. It was what they needed. They need to see me come back like that. I reallybelieve, for better or worse, the Lambily, the fans and I, go through things together.
“We Belong Together” was a colossal song. It was breaking chart and airplay recordsall over the United States and internationally. It became my sixteenth number-one recordon the Billboard Hot 100 (also making me the first woman artist to concurrently hold thenumber-one and number-two spots, with “Shake It Off”). It ended up staying in a top-tenposition for twenty-three weeks and charted for forty-three weeks total. It tied for thethird-longest-running number-one song in US chart history (behind “One Sweet Day,”
Billboard ’s most popular song of the nineties). Billboard named “We Belong Together”
song of the decade (song of the what?) for the 2000s, and the ninth most popular song ofall time.
It won two Grammys, two Soul Train Awards, and Song of the Year at the ASCAPAwards and BMI Awards (among others). It even won a Teen Choice Award—the ChoiceLove Song award. I didn’t know Nick was set to present the award to me (apparently heinsisted to the Teen Choice producers). The show was loud, bright, and zany—the awardis a surfboard. I recall first seeing Nick and taking in his curious oversized nautical-inspired ensemble, consisting of giant white shorts, a big ocean-blue polo shirt, a lemon-yellow sweater tied around his neck, ankle socks, and sneakers. After he presented mewith my board-award, I said, “I heard about all the nice things you’ve been saying aboutme.” With a genuine beaming smile and a flame in his eyes, he replied, “If you give me achance, I’ll prove all of it is true.”
A cute moment—very.
More time passed, and Brat wouldn’t let up, insistent that Nick and I really connect.
We began talking on the phone, almost daily. Then, finally, we did get together, and it wasirresistibly fun. And at the time, I was all about having fun. I wasn’t ready to be grown-upagain. I had had to be so grown so fast, professionally and especially in my first marriage.
(Marrying was something I vowed never to do again.)I missed out on so much as a teen, and Nick, who had a perpetual teen spirit, wascharmingly refreshing. He also felt safe to me. Look, I was hanging out with Dipset in thisera, and while it was a blast, the element of legitimate danger was ever present, okay?
Besides, no matter how famous or fine, no matter how well they could rhyme, I held astrict “no rappers” rule. I was very serious about protecting myself from being labeled“that girl.” It was critical to me to maintain, most importantly, my self-respect, but alsomy professional respect from the tight boys’ club of artists, producers, and management Icollaborated with. I worked with some of the greatest (and some unknown at the time)hip-hop artists of all time. I didn’t ever want things to get reality-show messy up in thestudio. And the “rap packs” will talk amongst themselves (c’mon; they talk for a living!).
It was bad enough there were already a plethora of ridiculous rumors about mesleeping with rappers anyway. If you’re not careful, all your business could be all up insomebody’s bars (“cause they all up in my business like a Wendy interview”). AfterWendy Williams went on a tangent about me on the radio, the New York Post picked upthe story and I woke up to the headline “Sexcapades,” with my photo underneath. Theycalled me, JD, Q-Tip, and some of my creative collaborators the “Hard Partying RapPosse”—I can’t. I was not going to give the mill actual fodder. What mattered was that Iknew what the truth was, and I was committed to holding to it.
But I regarded Nick as a producer, comedian, and actor—I had no idea he had realrapper aspirations. He laughed a lot, and he made me laugh. We made each other laugh alot. We talked about life and music. I just wanted to be around him. Once, I even left adate with a very handsome and legendary basketball player to ride in the car with Nick sohe could be the first to listen to my newest album, E=MC 2 . I was excited about it, and Iwanted to listen to it with him.
During this time I was finally pulling my whole self together. I’d already gone througha spiritual cleansing, getting baptized and continuing my therapy. Now I was focusing onmy physical self as well. I was working intensely with an amazing trainer, Patricia. Thefirst single for the new album was “Touch My Body,” so I had to get “fit in the body” inpreparation.
I was feeling stronger, and I hadn’t felt good about myself in a while. We were goingto cast my new friend Nick in the “Touch My Body” video, since he was a comedian andwe were taking a humorous twist with it. (I mean, c’mon, what other direction could I gowith a lyric like, “’Cause if you run your mouth / And brag about this secret rendezvous / Iwill hunt you down”? Otherwise, it would’ve been a stalker movie.) But the role in thevideo was for a computer geek, and while Nick was really funny, he wasn’t a convincinggeek. Jack McBrayer, however, was a genius pick, and we had the absolute best timemaking the video.
Thanks to my fans, who really got behind the song, knowing how significant it wouldbe, “Touch My Body” became my eighteenth number-one single. I’m forever grateful tothe family of Lambs. I’m also grateful for everybody at the record label who was sodevoted to the album and to me. It was my biggest so far; it seemed to do the impossibleby pushing me past the record long held by Elvis Presley for the all-time most number-onesingles. We did end up casting Nick as the love interest in the next video, “Bye Bye,”
which we shot in Antigua. Our chemistry was natural, strong, and familiar. The comfortand the intimacy captured on film were real. And after that shoot, we didn’t say bye-bye toeach other for a long time.
I was enjoying having a fresh, new romantic moment with Nick. We even joked abouthow we were going to pace ourselves and not rush anything. Once, he sent me a gigantic,gorgeous bouquet of flowers while I was in London, signing the card, “from a PaceUniversity dropout,” because things were going fast, fast. We’d quickly established a solidfriendship, then even more quickly hopped on our own underground love roller coaster.
We could share our layers with each other. We connected on some very core things. Hewas a good guy. He was faith based. He was ambitious. He had been in the entertainmentindustry for a long time, so he understood the madness. He paid attention to me. Thepower dynamics between us felt even.
I was clear with Nick that I was not at all interested in becoming physically vulnerableagain. I was not going there unless there was complete commitment, which at the timemeant marriage. (So, obviously I would have had to break the vow I made to myself aboutnever marrying again.) Nick respected my position.
I sincerely thought I would never have kids. Our relationship changed that. We talked veryseriously about having children, and that changed everything. Having children togetherbecame our reason. Our desire to have children became a force of nature and why we gotmarried so quickly.
Way back then it was the simple things
Anklets, nameplates that you gave to me
Sweet Tarts, Ring Pops
Had that candy bling
And you were my world
—“Candy Bling”
The whole world is pink yet lavender when you’re in a good swirl, and we were in asweet swirl (a swirl is the opposite of a spiral). Nick’s proposal to me was wrapped inchildlike romance. He was always eating candy, which the “eternally twelve” in me foundtotally acceptable for a grown man. On the evening the Empire State Building wasscheduled to be lit up in my signature “pink yet lavender” colors, in celebration of a nativeNew Yorker making history with “Touch My Body” setting a new record, Nick and I werechilling in the Moroccan room, talking, laughing, and listening to music. With thatenormous, luminous smile of his, Nick gave me one of those big candy Ring Pops; it wasamong other confections inside a little metal Hello Kitty lunch box. I thought, Okay, thisis cutely festive—I’ll eat some celebratory candy with him. Disguised as a candy pop ringwas a large, clear emerald-cut diamond, flanked by two moon-cut diamonds, surroundedby smaller pink diamonds—a very real ring! It was dazzling and matched the situation. Iwore a lavender dress with a pink cardigan, and we took a helicopter ride over the city andmarveled at the lights and reveled in our moment. That night, Nick and I sparkled andshined brighter than the Empire State Building itself.
Our wedding was just about the absolute opposite of my first. It was a total spiritualcelebration, not mostly an industry production. It was intimate—maybe a dozen people inall. I had my pastor, Bishop Clarence Keaton, come in from Brooklyn to officiate. We heldit at my beautiful house in Eleuthera, Bahamas. The white silk matte jersey gown I worewas custom-made for me by Nile Cmylo, an independent women’s designer I’d workedwith for years, not by a high-profile fashion house. It had a simple, form-fitting silhouette,and my shoulder-length veil required no handlers, only a few bobby pins. My ex-sister’sfirst son, Shawn—whom I lovingly refer to as my nephew-slash-brother-slash-uncle-slash-cousin-slash-grandfather, because he really has been the blood family member who hasbeen with me and for me in so many capacities, and I cherish him—walked me down thesandy, salmon-colored aisle. And after the ceremony, I kicked off my Manolos and twirledbarefoot in the fine pink grains, allowing the hem of my cloud-colored gown to swish andsway in the aqua-blue waters. We basked in the glow of the Bahamian sunset and genuinelove. It was ours to have and to hold. We didn’t overstage anything. We didn’t even reallycare about photos (though, ironically, they ended up as a cover story for People). Thistime, I was sipping fine champagne with fine friends—no more lonely, salty tears in sad,sugary daiquiris.
It was near Christmastime, and I was ten weeks pregnant. It was our Christmas miracle!
Nick and I were beyond excited. We kept our little secret just between us, but of course Iplanned to make the revelation an event over our Christmas vacation. I was evendesigning tree ornaments as the announcements for friends and family. But on a routinecheckup at our obstetrician’s office, the sonogram was silent. The sacred, rhythmic swooshof our baby’s heartbeat was gone—and in that silence I could hear my own heart crack. Isurvived my miscarriage, but I will never forget it.
After the devastation I made it my mission to prepare my body to healthily hold andsustain new life. I totally detached from the industry machine and went underground toheal and build. It was the first time in my entire career when I turned down work toconcentrate on my well- being (I passed on some big acting opportunities, and afterPrecious, that’s really where I wanted to go). I employed mostly non-Western medicinalpractices, like Chinese herbs and acupuncture. I had meditation moments (and it’s hard),whatever it took. Nothing mattered except putting myself in the best possible position tobecome and stay pregnant.
All my efforts paid off double—the next time, we were blessed with the miraclepregnancy of the twins! Growing two humans was rough on my body. I gained over ahundred pounds and got very ill. I developed poisonous edema — I was dangerouslyswollen full of toxic fluid. I also developed gestational diabetes. But the most damaging ofall my afflictions was the loneliness. All my fun party friends were nowhere around,because I couldn’t twirl around the city, I couldn’t partake in splashes of wine and late-night gallivanting. On the contrary, I was in constant discomfort. Again, I didn’t have ateam that knew how to surround me with the proper care. I was often by myself. Butfortunately, this time I did have a mother-in-law who was there for me more than anythingelse. Nick’s mom, Beth, would come and rub my back (the backaches were debilitating)and feet, which were under excruciating strain from all the weight. She helped me slatheron my very special cream that I developed with my dermatologist on my giant, tight drumof a stomach (over a hundred pounds gained, and no stretch marks ’pon de tummy!). Shewould just sit with me and her grandbabies growing inside my big belly. A kindness.
Nick, on the other hand, didn’t quite comprehend the enormity of what I was goingthrough. Once, we were at an appointment with our specialist for high-risk pregnancies.
While I was hooked up to a machine, with the weight of two human beings and a smalllake of fluid filling my entire body, the memory of comfort of any kind far in the distance,my kind, older doctor, in his thick Middle Eastern accent, looked over at my sulkingsecond husband and said, “Poor Nick; he’s so exhausted.”
The recording of Merry Christmas II You is what held me together during mytreacherous pregnancy. I loved creating the first Christmas album so much; I thoughtdoing another would keep me from slipping into sadness. I totally immersed myself in thewriting and recording. I wanted this album to be more diverse and the production lusher. Iwas collaborating with a broader range of producers, like James Poyser from the Roots(we made “When Christmas Comes” as a classic R & B song, and it’s one of my all-timefavorites) and Broadway musical producer Marc Shaiman (the 1950s- esque standard“Christmas Time Is in the Air Again”), in addition to my own go-to favorite partners likeRandy Jackson, Big Jim Wright, and JD. The doctors wanted me to be on bed rest, buthow, tell me, how do I rest? As I was being pulled down from the loneliness and the fluidI was retaining, working on this album was lifting me.
I recorded most of it in our house in Bel Air, which once belonged to the late,legendary Farrah Fawcett. In my many imaginative roles as a child, one of my all-timefavorites was private investigator Jill Munroe of Charlie’s Angels. No surprise, I wasfascinated by her hair: the perfection of the color and cut, just laid. (I’ve paid it severalhomages in my career.) I recall my mother telling me her hair was “frosted,” which mysix- or seven-year-old mind heard as “frosting.” And I just knew someday I would slathermy hair with a chocolate-and-vanilla swirl and come out looking just like Jill.
One of the highlights of the album was arranging the “O Come All Ye Faithful /Hallelujah Chorus” duet with Patricia Carey, where I was able to blend opera and gospel.
We performed it on my ABC Christmas special, with a full orchestra and choir (and withme very pregnant—three generations onstage together!). During this time I also recorded“When Do the Bells Ring for Me” with the incomparable Tony Bennett for his Duets IIalbum; the timeless icon himself came to my home studio to record. I squeezed my bigpregnant self into my little pink vocal booth, and we set up microphones outside in thestudio for Mr. Bennett, so that our voices would be separate and smooth, but we could bein the same room, which was very important to Mr. Bennett. I recall looking out my littlewindow at a living legend singing with me in my house—a moment. “I never sang with atrio before” was his witty remark (as there were technically four hearts beating in thesession), a memory that will always remain with me.
I promoted and performed Merry Christmas II You while enormously and dangerouslypregnant. One invitation I simply could not turn down was performing a song I wrotecalled “One Child” for the twenty-ninth annual Christmas in Washington special. It wasfilmed in the majestic National Building Museum, and I was singing with a full choir ofbeautiful and hope-filled young people backing me up. President Obama, the First Lady,Sasha, and Malia were in the front row, directly in my line of sight, beaming with dignity.
It was such an honor to perform for the Obamas, and by extension the country, again. Forthe finale all the performers were gathered on stage and the First Family joined us. EarlierNick had suggested I tell FLOTUS our then secret. She and President Obama were goingdown the line, thanking all of us, and when she came to me, I seized the moment andwhispered in her ear that I was having twins. After I sang “One Child,” Michelle Obama,our forever historic First Lady, became the first to know we were having two children.
What a blessing.
Monroe and Moroccan got their names because I wanted them to have the initials MC,like me. My precious daughter was obviously named after my childhood hero (thesonogram revealed her posed like a Hollywood starlet, reclining on a chaise in thewomb!). We arrived at Moroccan because both Nick and I loved the name Rakim (becausehe is one of the greatest rappers to ever do it). “Moroccan” was a bit of a hybrid name: itrhymed with Rakim, it’s a gorgeous, mystical country where I had a special experience,and it’s the name of the room where so many creative and magical moments happened,including Nick presenting me with my candy bling.
It was wonderful and fun when “dem babies” were little. Together, Nick and I lavishedthem with as much joy, attention, and safety as we could. But along with double the joycame double the responsibility. It was a lot of work, and a lot of having to be home and beavailable. Making the necessary adult adjustments to being working parents inentertainment took its toll on our relationship, and the end of our marriage came fast, as itbegan. Even though we had prenuptials in place, the divorce took two years to becomefinal and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
I call your name baby subconsciously
Always somewhere, but you’re not there for me—“Faded”
Honestly, I think Nick and I could have worked it out between the two of us, but egosand emotions got inflamed (which can translate into many billable lawyer hours, andultimately it did). It was tough. We both wanted to make sure everything was cool for ourfamily. We will always be family, and we make it work. We still have fun, reminisce, andjoke. And we both are certain that Roc and Roe are indeed our light. Every day they giveus new life.
I’ve often wondered if there’s ever been a perfect family—“Petals”
I don’t wonder anymore. Now, I know for certain that there’s never been and probablynever will be a “perfect” family. But I have finally found stability in the family I created.
There are times I cannot believe I was a little girl who lived in shacks, who always feltunsafe, under-cared for, lonely, and perpetually scared. I have wanted to go back in timeto protect and rescue that little girl from the precarious world she was trapped in. Andnow, I marvel at my own wonderful children, Monroe and Moroccan, and the safe andabundant environment that has been created for them. Rather than being uprooted thirteentimes, they live in multiple gorgeous, pristine, and palatial homes. Instead of exposed nailsin the stairs and filthy carpeting, they run freely down long, shiny marble hallways, slidein their socks, and squeal with delight. In lieu of a three-legged rocking couch, they watchfilms on a cinema-style screen from a steady, luxurious custom-made one of goose-downcushions that’s bigger than my first apartment.
My children are surrounded by my uninterrupted love. I have never been away fromthem for more than twenty-four hours, and when I am working, they are watched over bya loving family of friends and professionals. They have never, ever, ever been left alone.
They have never wondered where I am or if their father knows what their lives are reallylike. They have multitudes of memories and images of being with two loving parentstogether. Their lives have never been threatened. Cops have never stormed our house.
They probably have three hundred shirts to rotate and donate, and their sweet, soft curlsare deeply understood. They do not live in fear. They have never needed to escape. Theydon’t try to destroy each other. My children are happy, and they play with each other,learn with each other, joke, laugh, and live with each other. And no matter what, they willalways have each other. They are Roc and Roe for life.
Of all the many gifts God has blessed me with—my songs, my voice, my creativity,my strength—my children are a vision more beautiful than I could have ever conceived. Itis by divine design that the children of a wayward child (who as a child professed shewould never have children) are so extraordinarily fortunate. And though I’ve worked sohard for so long, it is still miraculous to me that in one lifetime such a leap has been madefor my mixed-up lineage. We have broken a cycle of brokenness.
Guided by grace, I am emancipating myself from the bondage of all the dysfunction ofmy past—rerouting my legacy and rooting it in pure love. And the blessings keep flowing.
Twenty-five years after writing a love song for Christmas that came out of a deep desirefor joy and peace in my own family, I have all I ever wanted—topped with big, happy,festive family holiday celebrations.
SNOW GLOBE OF JOY
SNOW GLOBE OF JOY
I was standing decked out in a bedazzling red sequined gown inspired by the dressMarilyn wore in the “Two Little Girls from Little Rock” number in Gentlemen PreferBlondes, on a spectacular, cheerfully decorated stage, at my sold-out 2019 Christmas showin Madison Square Garden. My face was aglow from the joy of the occasion, but mostlyas a result of the gifted hands of my gorgeous longtime makeup artist, kiki—confidant anddear friend Kristofer Buckle. Roc and Roe, in their own little merry ensembles (theyperformed a special rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” that night!) were onone side, and Tanaka was on the other. Behind me were my “singing siblings”—mybrother, Trey, and sisters Tots and Tekka, who have been with me through all my seasons,tumultuous and tranquil. And in front of me, yaaaass, in front of me, were tens ofthousands of my amazing, diverse, enormous family of loving fans.
I looked out and saw fabulous flocks of Lambs in sequined onesies and other suchglitzy garb (the arena was overflowing with sequins, studs, and crystals!), holding signsand holding hands. There were little girls in crushed-velvet dresses on their fathers’ bigshoulders; there were old men with no hair next to young women in head wraps; therewere Black people, white, indigenous, Asian, Middle Eastern, and countless mixes andvariations; gay, straight, fluid, trans, nonbinary, people who were liberal, conservative,devout, agnostic, abled and disabled; people of every shape, hue, persuasion, and beliefyou could imagine.
And as I gazed upon the marvelous multitudes, as if a lone, bright star was shiningright down on her face, I saw Liron, a woman who was once a twelve-year-old girl whohad the lyrics to “Looking In” written on the door of her bedroom in Tel Aviv, now awoman who is an invaluable member of my inner team and a treasured, loyal friend. I sawthe knowing eyes of girlfriends and colleagues—people I have worked with, laughed andcried with during every era of my life. My universal family of fans, who have given meunparalleled, unstoppable, unconditional support since Day One, were spread out beforeme like a crystal-clear ocean of love.
For so long I wished I could get five people to be in harmony at Christmastime, andhere I was in a family of thousands of Lambs, fans, and friends, and everybody wassinging “All I Want for Christmas Is You” together! They were singing with me; theywere singing to me. Our voices were ringing so loudly and jubilantly all of New York Citycould’ve heard us and joined in. In that moment we were all united in our own universe ofthe Christmas spirit. Tons of white confetti flakes came floating down on top of us fromthe ceiling. It was like the whole world was with me in one big snow globe of joy!
The next day I was utterly exhausted and entirely exhilarated as I woke up to theBillboard headline: “Wish Come True: Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’
Hits No. 1 on Hot 100 After 25-Year Wait.”
Wait. What?!
Right at the end of 2019, I got my nineteenth number one! The Lambs made it happenagain! My fans made it the most streamed song globally in a single day ever! I had workedhard and focused with my small team to give the song big energy on its shining silveranniversary, but making it to number one—that’s huge! That’s only something genuinefans, not just marketing plans, can do.
After the wonderful whirlwind of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” ended I made mytraditional sojourn to my own winter wonderland, Aspen. With blood and chosen family—Roc and Roe, Tanaka, Shawn and his wife, two of my dogs, Cha Cha and Mutley, in tow,I was ready to nestle in and let our new traditional festivities begin! The days weresparkling and crisp. The grassy fields outside our homey- yet- sprawling chalet wereblanketed with thick crystal-white snow, as if glittery clouds had settled down to sleep inour backyard. Content to stay in our cozy onesies all day, the kids and I put on our puffycoats and ski boots right on top of our PJs and dashed out into the fluffy blanket of flakesto make snow angels. Eyes pointed up at the bright-blue sky, we let the fresh smell of pinewaft over our faces and tickle our noses.
Inside, the beautiful bustle of family warmed the whole house. From Handel’sMessiah to the Jackson 5, Christmas music was the infinite soundtrack (with laughing,dogs barking, and kids scurrying as the backgrounds). The halls, the walls, everywherewas decked and decorated, and fires roared in the fireplaces. In the living room themassive tree was filled with white lights, gold balls, cherubs, and gilded butterflies andtopped with a beautiful angel star with gold-tipped wings and cream gossamer fabricflowing down from them. (In the family room is always another old-school-style tree withbig, multicolored lights, giving a fuller, much happier Charlie Brown vibe. We decorate itwith homemade ornaments and happy Polaroid pictures of each other; I also add cherishedornaments Lambs from all over the world have sent me over the years.) Garlands andlights cascaded down mantels and doorways, and white candles and poinsettias were allabout. Cups were filled with rich hot cocoa and yummy butterscotch Schnapps.
At Christmas I have time to cook my favorite dishes—my father’s linguine with whiteclam sauce (for Christmas Eve, of course) and stuffed shells. Santa comes by the house tospread some cheer, and we ride and sing on a two-horse open sleigh, hey! We sing carolsand actually frolic in the snow. It is real. It is loud. It is fun. It is Joy. It is my world.
I was already feeling full of gratitude (and hot chocolate and Schnapps) during ourAspen getaway holiday when another Billboard headline broke: “Mariah Carey BecomesFirst Artist at No. 1 on Billboard Hot 100 in Four Decades, Thanks to ‘All I Want forChristmas.’” Yes, thank you to the fans who have loved my little Christmas love song sodeeply—so much so that it held the number-one spot on the charts for three weeks,making it the last number-one song of 2019 and the first number-one song of 2020, thefirst year of a new decade?… Really, what is a decade again?
After all the swirling, toasting, singing, and celebrating. folks peeled off to cozy upinto their places for the night. The kids were snuggled up in the family room, watching amovie, and everyone else was content in their bedrooms. I tiptoed quietly into the livingroom and sat by the fireplace. All was dark except for the stars twinkling outside of the bigwindows against the black-blue sky and the warm amber glow from the fire. I reveled in asweet, quiet, private moment with myself. I took it all in.
I am peaceful.
I am complete.
EPILOGUE
EPILOGUE
Lord knows
Dreams are hard to follow
But don’t let anyone
Tear them away
—“Hero”
In the middle of a violent storm, very young, I was given a glimpse of God’s vision forme. As a child, awakened to my dream, I believed with my entire being in what I wasmeant to do and who I was meant to be, long before anyone else did. And holding on tothat belief required everything I had. Along the way I was given signs of hope, but mostlyI faced chaos and calamity, heartbreaks and brutal betrayals to derail me. Some almostkilled me, or worse, almost killed my spirit. The toughest truth was that the people I lovedthe most hurt me the worst. The ones closest to me were the ones who came closest tostripping me of my dreams. If I have learned anything in this life worth sharing, it is,protect your dreams. Even in the face of disadvantages and dysfunction, you can’t letanybody define, control, or take away your vision of your life—not your mother, brother,sister, father, spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, fake friend, boss, bully, bigot, manager,partner, assistant, critic, cousin, uncle, auntie, classmate, mogul, predator, influencer,president, false preacher, fake teacher, coworker, frenemy with a phone, coward with acamera, or chicken with a keyboard.
For I assure you: If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell thismountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move. Nothing will beimpossible to you.
—Matthew 17:20
In the end, and in the beginning, it’s all about faith for me. I can’t define it, but it hasdefined me.