Unbreak My Heart: A Memoir (6 page)

The first time I heard Anita Baker sing, I just about fainted. One morning while I was standing at the bus stop, my neighbor across the street began playing a record from the soul/funk band Chapter 8, which featured Anita as a lead vocalist. “Can I borrow that record?” I later asked my neighbor. I then smuggled it into my house, waited till Mommy was at the store, and played the entire vinyl on our record player. “I just want to be your girl,” she crooned in her smoky, molasses-tinged, androgynous tone that sounded as if it had been in a compressor. It was the first time I’d heard a soloist whose voice had the same texture and timbre as mine. I didn’t ever want to return the vinyl to my neighbor.

Grease
was also big for me. When that musical hit theaters in 1978, I couldn’t go to the movies to see it because our religion considered that a sin—surprise, surprise. But I still caught a few pieces of certain songs because everybody around me was singing them. In front of my bedroom mirror, I practiced the big hit by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John: “You’re the one that I want—ooh, ooh, ooh!”

The songs of the seventies infused the entire country with a certain vitality and joy—yet for me, music did far more than that. Hearing it made me sure that I wanted to be part of creating it. I could literally lose myself in the chords; a great song had the power to transport me to another place—to make me remember the best of who I was and to forget the things that brought me pain. All at once, I felt this amazing sense of profound fulfillment, as if an unscratchable itch had suddenly been relieved. Whenever I sang the first note of a song, I was hopeful. I was no longer that square religious girl who wore skirts down past her knees. I instead became the person I yearned to be. The cool girl. The popular kid. The beautiful one. The star.

OUR FAMILY GATHERED
for dinner every night at six. Mommy began preparing the meal around the time I got home from school at three
P.M.
—and I was always her little helper. “Set the table,” she’d tell me. I’d carefully pull down our stack of plates (olive green trimmed in blue . . . hey, it was the seventies!) and place each one around our table. The aroma of savory meatloaf with gravy, garlic potatoes, sautéed cabbage, and homemade butter biscuits rose from the oven and wafted throughout the house. Two Maxwell House cans sat atop Mommy’s gas stove—one for pork grease, one for chicken. She’d use the leftover oil to flavor everything from pork chops and vegetables to smothered chicken. It may not have been totally healthy, but it was the best Southern cooking you could find. “Is your mama making cheese biscuits tonight?” a neighbor would often ask me. In Severn, my mother’s recipes were legendary.

As Mommy finished dinner, I helped my younger sisters with their homework. I was around ten when my older cousin Kimmy left our home and returned to live with her family—and that’s when I really began to feel like the eldest. I became the second mom: I helped my mother chop and dice vegetables, I washed dishes (I was the official dishwasher—and let me tell you, we had a ton of dishes!), and I vacuumed the house. I also oversaw my younger siblings. “Did you finish your math assignment?” I’d ask Traci or Towanda. Because I was so much older than the other girls—I am five years older than the next sister, Traci, and a decade older than the youngest, Tamar—I felt more like their parent than their sibling. Mikey and I are only two years apart, but since he’s a boy, he got out of some of the domestic chores. That was considered women’s work. He did at least have to take out the trash.

Just before six, my father arrived home from E.J. Korvettes. We all lived on my father’s one income—which means my parents were very clever about how they used their money. Every Sunday when the newspaper arrived, my siblings and I would sit at our table and clip out all the coupons. We were far from wealthy (Dad once told me it would take him six years to earn $100,000), and yet we always seemed to have everything we needed, mostly thanks to how well my parents economized. My mother managed the weekly budget and used about $100 a week for groceries. Mom would go to this store called Maurry’s Steak House and buy what seemed like a quarter of a cow and store it in our upright freezer. She bought a lot of food on sale and froze it—which is how we saved a lot of money.

My parents also had very good credit—so they were able to get a loan for the town house. As for the extras we always seemed to have, Dad’s job came with plenty of perks: The employees at E.J. Korvettes got household items like televisions and microwaves at a steep discount. It didn’t hurt that my parents had inherited a piece of land and a house when they were married. That left them with enough money to care for our family, give to the church (my parents tithed 10 percent of their income), and even save up for a few luxuries (like our piano). By the way they managed their money, my parents passed on one lesson to me early: As important as it is to save, you should also spend and enjoy a portion of what you have. For instance, even when things were tight in our house, my parents would still set aside enough money for our family to go to an amusement park or on a road trip. And every week after Mom had written out the checks for all of our bills, she’d always leave herself with a few dollars for something she wanted for herself—like a new pair of panty hose.

Though my father was officially the head of the household, we all knew that Mommy was really in charge, especially regarding anything related to the house or us children. She simply had the loudest voice and the strongest opinions. Yet once Daddy got home and we all took our places around the table, he did sit at the head of the table, say grace over the food, and lead the dinnertime conversation. “We put up a new display at the store today,” he’d tell us. After giving us the full update on his day and listening to Mom’s, he’d sometimes turn to me and ask, “So what happened at school today?” I’d mutter a couple of sentences before stuffing the edge of a biscuit into my mouth.

Once I cleared the table and helped Mommy put away the food, my parents would often call us into the living room. “We need to pray right now,” Mommy would say. We prayed about everything—from an issue happening in the church to some struggle that had arisen in my parents’ lives. Sometime during the evening, Mommy would use her favorite line at least once: “The devil is raging.” I think my parents really feared that Satan was right there in the room, trying to overtake us. During our days at Pillar of Truth, Bishop Scurry would often oversee exorcisms, during which we’d cast demons out of people. Afterward, we’d all gather, hold hands, and pray that the spirits that left those people’s bodies didn’t get into ours. In 1977, my parents might have physically moved on from Pillar, but spiritually and emotionally, they were still quite connected to what we learned there.

Before bedtime, Mommy would occasionally pull out her gospel vinyl records and play either a Mahalia Jackson or James Cleveland eight-track. “Jesus is the best thing that ever happened to me,” sang Reverend Cleveland in that thick, husky voice that sounded as if it came from another world; his accompanying choir called out their agreement with a flurry of
amen
s. “Jesus is the best thing that ever happened to me.” I loved that style of music so much because it seemed closer to secular—and that made me feel closer to normal. What I didn’t know is that it was a remake of Gladys Knight’s song “You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me.” With every soulful note that lifted from Mommy’s record player, I was smitten. The piano. The drums. The tambourines. The spirit. It all filled a space inside of me that only music could. Even way back then, I somehow sensed that. I’m still certain of it today.

D
esigner jeans were all the rage in the early eighties—Jordache, Sasson, Calvin Klein. So you can imagine how excited I was when my cousin Felicia gave me a pair of original 501 button-fly Levi’s. I was fourteen—and my eighth-grade classmates had never seen me in pants, much less fashionable ones. On the day I got the secondhand jeans, I closed my bedroom door, slipped one leg at a time into the jeans, and quickly fastened each button. The Levi’s were a little big on me, which made them a perfect fit. Before Mommy could open the door and catch me wearing pants, I pulled them off and buried them in my bottom drawer. Every day for a week, I took them out and tried them on, just so I could practice what it would feel like to wear pants.

One evening in December 1980, a huge snowstorm hit Severn. As the temperature dipped into the teens, my big opportunity arose. “Mommy,” I whispered just before bedtime, “do you think I could wear pants tomorrow? It’s supposed to be very cold.”

“You got pants?” Mommy snapped.

“Yes, because Felicia gave me a pair,” I admitted. “I have them in my drawer.”

Mommy studied my face for several seconds. “No you can’t,” she said. “You know we don’t wear pants around here. Put on two pair of tights if you’re that cold.”

The following day, the snow continued falling. I don’t know where my courage came from, but I again asked my mother if I could wear the jeans. She ignored me. Then on the third day of the storm—on a morning when the wind chill factor was in the single digits—I repeated my request. My mother, who was combing Towanda’s hair for school, was in my room.

“Mommy, can I wear the pants today?”

She glared at me. “You want to wear the darn pants?” she finally shouted. “Then wear the darn pants!” She then stormed out of my bedroom and into hers—and I thought she was going to call my father.

Before Mommy could change her mind, I went over to the dresser and pulled out the Levi’s. As I put them on, I repeated to myself, “I’m not going to feel guilty.” Because of what I’d been taught, I truly believed I’d go to hell if I wore the jeans. But that fear wasn’t strong enough to eclipse my exhilaration. Once I buttoned the Levi’s, I then put on a plaid button-up top and brown leather boots with tassels on the front. I arranged my hair into a snatch-back, a layered style with two pink combs at the sides of my head. I then glided over to my bedroom mirror and peered at my reflection. For the first time in my life, I felt fashionable.

When Mommy spotted me on the way out the front door, she didn’t say a word—but her chilly gaze told me she disapproved. I rushed out and made my way to the bus stop. I saw a few of my classmates huddled together, trying to keep warm. “Who’s that?” someone said as I approached. Once I got close enough for them to see my face, one of them yelled out, “Oh my God—Toni Braxton got on pants!” All I could do was stand there and beam. Once I boarded the bus, everyone stopped, stared, and drew in a collective gasp. “Wow,” said a kid in the front row, “she’s wearing pants!” In that moment and for the rest of the school day, I felt famous. And above all else, I felt like I fit in.

The next morning, I put on the same jeans. In fact, I wore them every day until it was summer. At school, a girl named Cheryl came up to me in the hall. “I ain’t sayin’ no names,” she said, “but someone told me you wear the same pants every day.”

I smirked. “I have several pair of the pants,” I lied. She gave me a look that said, “Yeah, right.”

After I’d worn the pants for a whole week, Mommy intervened: “I said you could wear those pants for one day because it was cold.” That’s how my modeling spree ended.

In a sense, that episode marked a beginning. Six weeks later, my mother actually bought me a pantsuit. “You can only wear it when it’s cold outside,” she told me. Later that same year, she also bought me a tube of lip gloss and pale pink nail polish. “This is only for special occasions,” she said. I wasn’t sure what “special occasions” she had in mind, but I wasn’t going to argue it. Little by little, my mother was changing. For me—the awkward religious girl who’d never felt cute—that shift couldn’t happen fast enough.

I LOVED TELEVISION
. By the time I was in junior high, our family owned four TV sets that Dad had brought home from Korvettes. We had one in the family room downstairs (a color console!), one in my brother’s room, and another in my parents’ room; the fourth was in the kitchen. I eventually moved the kitchen TV into my bedroom, which is where it stayed. By then, my parents still weren’t allowing us to listen to secular music, but they did let us watch television. They knew that by the time a movie appeared on TV several years after it had been released in the theaters, the cursing and other offensive material had usually been edited out. Yet once I had a TV in my room, I managed to sneak in some programs that my parents considered too worldly.

Like
Solid Gold
—a TV series that debuted in 1980. Every Saturday, I sat in awe of the show’s dancers, who pranced around in flashy costumes as the week’s top hits played. The first season was hosted by Dionne Warwick, and in the premiere episode, Irene Cara belted out her hit “Fame.” I was hooked from the first note. I also loved
American Bandstand
. The DeBarges, a family singing group, once performed on that show. The whole time I watched, I thought,
Maybe the family-singing-group thing is okay
. Maybe I could be cool after all.

My all-time favorite show was
Soul Train
. Every week, I saw black artists who looked like me—and watching them perform on TV was very different from just hearing them on the radio. All the big stars were on there: the Jacksons, Luther Vandross, Rick James, Johnny Gill, Stacy Lattisaw. Janet Jackson once came on the show to sing “Don’t Stand Another Chance.” With every tilt of her head, her hair bounced like Tootie’s on
The Facts of Life
. I paid attention to those kinds of details, especially when it came to the young singers. And I never missed an episode. Every Saturday, my parents took a forty-five-minute drive to Baltimore so they could go to the farmers’ market—and I knew that gave me two to three hours to watch
Soul Train
in peace.

By the early eighties, stars like Donna Summer and Diana Ross were on all of the music shows I watched. I wanted large eyeballs like Diana’s. I also imagined what I’d look like in the gaucho pants that Donna often strutted around in onstage. The big hair, the double-knit jersey fabrics, the cute sandals with the toes out—I longed for the glamour of the big stars. I also dreamed of becoming a famous soloist, but that didn’t seem possible because I was always singing with my family. In the African-American community, a certain idea has persisted for generations: If one gets, we all get. We’re all in the boat together, so we must all get out together. In my family, it was taboo to separate from the group. But secretly, that’s exactly what I wanted to do. I didn’t simply want to be an extension of my parents and siblings. I wanted to be an individual. I wanted to be like Donna and Diana.