By the time I was in the tenth grade I was “going out” with the biggest and scariest dude in town. He was six foot five and had biceps that were thicker than both of my thighs. He was in his early twenties, he had a car, and nobody messed with him. And that’s the main reason why I was with him. He was a protector, a force field. The previous boy I had gone out with was volatile; we even got into a physical altercation in front of a group of girls who stood around and watched. After we broke up he proceeded to stalk and harass me—a real charmer. Mr. Six Foot Five caught him verbally attacking me and proceeded to lift him up off the ground and toss him over five parked cars—pow! He actually was pretty cool beyond his brute strength. But high school can be treacherous, especially for an outsider 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 I never understood. It was the late eighties, and the street trends were so fresh, I really didn’t get what they were doing. Why were they harkening back to such a random retro look? 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 was making fun of them, and they were pissed. Rumblings started circulating that I was going to get my ass kicked. But Mr. Six Foot Five was famous; everyone was afraid of him, so getting at me wasn’t that simple.
One morning after completing my routine of going to the Bagel Station to get a bagel with bacon and cheese and coffee, I was walking on the path to “the patio” to finish my coffee and smoke a Newport before homeroom. The patio was a large brick square outside the cafeteria of the school where kids would hang out, smoke, and posture. Several hundred yards before I reached it, suddenly a semicircle of about a dozen white girls closed 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 from the pack and advanced toward me. I was freaked out but tried not to show how scared I was. 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 the situation, because surely I was not going to fight. I may have had a tough exterior and a wiseass mouth, but I never wanted to actually fight anyone. I used my wits to survive (plus I was the fastest runner in the school, except for one boy). The crowd had gotten close enough that the heat of their mob mentality was singeing the hairs on my arms. I had to say something, so I opened my mouth and just started yelling—I have no idea what. What I will never forget is seeing their bravado instantly wither into meekness while they slowly edged backward and quickly dispersed. For a quick instant I thought I had really told them off, 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 them said, and that was it.
There was no debate over “how Black” I was, or whether I “looked white”—those badass girls just let me know that when it got down to it, they were going to hold me down.
Years later, after the release of “Vision of Love,” I was all over the radio and on TV. My mother was still living on Long Island, and I asked her if we could drive by the house where the prettiest girl and her sisters lived. I stopped the car, got out, and just looked at the modest structure, a symbol of what I had survived. My mother, wrapped in a fur coat I’d given her, got out too. The father of the family (the one who beat the mother) came to the door and, in his dense, twangy Long Island accent, shouted, “Aw, look, Pat’s gone Hollywood!” 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 a star.
The brother called out, “You’re a loser!”
That family, that house, that town, that time, that day—suddenly it all looked like nothing 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’m so 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
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 with Tommy Mottola. It’s not that there are no words, it’s just that they still get stuck moving up from my gut,
