Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story (32 page)

I tried not to think about it, and focused on the fact I was in debt. I hated debt. My worst fear was being homeless again. I looked at the assets I had that could be sold. There was my house in San Diego, filled with expensive art. There was an office in San Diego.

I was in shock but tried to keep my attention on what I could do. I have always been at my best when all the chips are down. Plus, I could live with nothing. I was not attached to anything. I just wanted to be out
of the hole. I could tolerate the intolerable, as many children of abuse learn to do. Selling everything off would get me out of debt, and as I put the finishing touches on my pop record, I knew it had to be a success so I could get back on my feet.

Most normal people at this point would tell their parent to shove off, but I couldn’t go that far. I couldn’t cut the cord entirely, or envision life without my mom in it. But I did work up the courage to tell her we should consider not working together anymore—I wanted to just be her daughter, and I wanted her to just be my mom. This was very hard for me to do. I was scared and lonely, and deep down I sensed that if my mom quit being my manager, she would also quit being my mother. Solano’s words kept ringing in my ears: “If you leave your mom, what is yours will decline and what is your mom’s will continue to rise.” I also couldn’t help thinking of what Nedra had told me about one of our friends. He had worked for us, and after he quit, my mom told me he had developed cancer. I felt terrible for him. Separation equaled sickness. But I had to separate our business and family lives, so I carried on.

I got back to work. I was given a tall order on the first single off
0304
, because my mom had arranged a deal with Schick. They had paid me and the label to name my next single after their new razor. When the deal was coming together, Val Azzoli, the head of my label, took me aside and said he was concerned that it was not in my best interest. But my mom had prepared for this and had already planted the likelihood in my head that the label would try to stop us, but that it was best for me. I signed the deal. I set about trying to write a hit single called “Intuition.” I wrote about twelve different incarnations and hated all of them. It was nearly impossible to write a single with a hook that revolved around intuition, and it couldn’t sound like a sellout or a TV commercial. It had to sound like a song I’d written and that a company later heard and wanted to license. That’s what I wanted at least. And it had to be in line with my new
musical vision as well. I had wanted to make a pop record for some time, but starting it this way took a lot of focus and skill to pull off.

I began working with Lester Mendez, a young producer and songwriter. We had music chemistry and wrote feverishly together. I wanted a dance record that had soul. I wanted pop music with poetic lyrics. I wanted to re-create my version of postwar big band music. I wanted to write clever pop songs like Cole Porter did. The country was at war, Bush was president, everyone was scared of terrorists in a post-9/11 world. I wanted to be free. I wanted to dance. I wanted to feel young and like everything was okay. I loved writing
0304
, even as my life fell down around my ears. Once again writing saved me. My mom’s voice began to fade, and I could hear my soul speak to me. I wrote “Becoming,” eerily full of portent, though still I didn’t know the extent of what I was dealing with. A deep part of me was screaming at myself to wake up.

Listen, heart

Listen close—listen

to the melancholy

Melody of your own voice

I am weary of my own dreaming

I am tired of waiting

So this time, I’m leaping

I am hurting

Oh, I am not yet born

I am the mother and the father

Of what is not yet known

Darkness surrounds me

I scratch, I struggle, I breathe

I’m witnessing my own becoming

The beginning of the album was the beginning of the end for my mom and me. I told no one what was going on. I quit talking to Solano, though Dean called often. I would not give up and just fall in line again, although I held out an impossible hope that I would see it was all just an honest mistake and my mom and I would get to live happily ever after. I was desperately alone. No Ty, my relationship with my mom strained even as she kept managing me. There were many days I cried in the vocal booth, where no one could see me, trying to keep my throat relaxed enough to let the song escape and lift me. I would walk out of the booth, a smile painted on my face, and get back to dealing.

I was in my room at the Sunset Tower the day I finally saw who my mom really was. I had been trying to get her to sign off on selling her vacation house. I needed the money, as I was unable to tour or work while I made the record. She kept stalling. I had invited her over, thinking we could resolve this once and for all. She always had that calm Buddha’s smile on her face. She had never once apologized for all that had happened. It just “was.” The prevailing wisdom around me was that there was nothing that was truly real. Not the way most people thought of things as real. It was all a projection of our spirit’s wanting. Life itself was only what we chose it to be, and if a person chose pain or illness, it was what their soul wanted. If I was broke, then it was an experience I must have wanted. I sat in that hotel room and pleaded with her. She needed to sign it over to me so I could sell it. Finally she cracked. I had never seen her speak above practically a whisper my whole life, and suddenly the mask fell away. She screamed at the top of her lungs, “
I will give you the fucking house!
” Spittle flew from her mouth. Her face was twisted with such sudden rage and anger that I sat back in my seat. She scared the daylights out of me. I knew then that she would not give it to me. She would not let it go. She never did.

When I hired Irving, he helped me find a good and reputable business
manager, Lester Knispel. Irving and Lester spent countless hours helping me dismantle all the organizations that had been built around me. In a bizarre turn I still can’t explain, the auditor I had been working with disappeared. We could find no trace of her. It was completely strange. So I had to start from the beginning again, and Lester had to sort through all the books. I had to pay severance to every employee. A bitter pill does not begin to describe it. Money I did not have. My mom and I had quit talking. I kept working on the album and moving that ball forward. It was my only hope and it was my joy. My salvation in more than one way yet again.

I would never get to sell her vacation home. I was on my own and it was up to me to clean up the mess. I did not want more fighting. We would never have a coming together of the minds. I would never get an apology. I would never get a hug. And I would have killed for just a hug. I was alone, a scared little girl.

I decided to walk away and be done with it. Let go. Forgive. Rebuild. I didn’t want to let her ruin me this way, or ruin my legacy. I didn’t want to be known as the girl who was broke. The girl who once believed she and her mom were the same soul in two bodies. I was deeply ashamed and embarrassed. I wanted her gone and that was all I wanted. We had to have a legal parting of ways. I needed her to absolve herself of my career and all future earnings. I needed her to sign an agreement saying so, and I needed my lawyer for this, so he could draft up the paperwork. I would have to tell him everything. Well, almost.

I remember calling Eric—the same Eric who had come to my show in San Diego years earlier before I was signed. He had been with me ever since, though we rarely talked once my mom took over. He was surprised to hear my voice. I had no idea how to start, so I just blurted it out. “Eric. I’m broke. I’m in debt. I need my mom out of my life and I need you to draft something that she can sign.” He was dumbfounded. It took him a
while to catch up with my words. Everyone in the business knew my mom and I were best friends. We held hands everywhere we went. The first thing he asked was whether I was okay. I was so surprised by the tenderness it brought tears to my eyes. It was hard to be seen like this, even just a little, and I was unprepared for empathy. Tears began to flood down my cheeks. “Not really,” I said weakly. “But I’m dealing.”

A few weeks later I sat across from my mom in the conference room of Irving’s office. Irving, Lester, Eric, and I sat on one side of an impossibly long wooden table. On the other, my mom and her lawyer. I shook with adrenaline and fear. She sat still. Her hair freshly dyed blonde. Her capped teeth pearly white. The same Buddha smile. Hands folded in her lap. This was my mother. This was the woman I had known my whole life and loved dearly as life itself, and yet never knew. And this was how it was all to end. As the lawyers spoke, my mind drifted back to the days in San Diego. Her bedroom was painted in a pearlescent white that shimmered. Her bed was white and ghostly, and sheer drapes fluttered in the breeze when the patio door was open. It felt like the inner sanctum of a palace. We would lie on her bed, that warm wind playing with our hair, laughing like schoolgirls. Sharing secrets. She would hold me and pet my hair and it felt like the sun was shining down on me. God how I loved that woman with my whole heart and being. And it almost killed me. And still there is such a sad and tender girl in me who tears up thinking back on this same image. I would always be a child. I would always love my mom.

When it was all done and decided, she looked at me for the first time that day, and said, “I look forward to just being your mom now.” I knew better. I never saw her again.

I think about my son reading this one day. I think about what I tell him every night: Mommies always love their babies. I will always be your mommy. I love you when you are angry or happy or sad or silly. I love you all the time.

This is not always true. Some mommies don’t love their babies like that. I can’t tell you the tears I’ve cried to see who my mom really is. I can’t tell you about the pain, and how my heart to this day screams to have a mom in my life. But I know that it is not safe with her. Every day I miss having a mom. But I don’t miss Nedra. I will always want a mom, the concept of what a mom is. But I don’t have that. I never did, no matter how hard I tried to fool myself. Nedra is not that. Reality wins, and I’d rather see the truth than stay in love with a fantasy.

THE INFINITE ACHE

disoriented

standing in the shadow

of what yesterday

was a great brightness

in my life

so sure the brightness was forever

that I’m confused now

by the feeling

that shadow is all

there is left

how could this be?

yesterday I knew the sun

it was so present in my life

that I was sure

I could never be unsure again

so happy that I just knew

there could never be

sorrow again

worst of all

ashamed

feeling like a bad child

cast from heaven

by some deed I did in my unknowing

I search for my badness

so that I may expunge it

so I might feel the grace of sunlight on

my face again

shame robbing me of the

true gift

often I have been gripped

by the terrifying fist

of a sadness so complete

it shut out the sun entirely

like an eclipse

I had landed

on the other side

of myself

a stranger to me

. . .

this sadness has come and gone

since childhood and so

ever a student of nature

here is what I learned:

there is nothing wrong with me. nothing.

in fact, my sadness

is the result of something right

I am not just body but also spirit

and so it is true in reverse

I am not just spirit but body

and my body has the same salt

in its cells as the ocean does

and is under the same influence

as all living things

the physics of being an organic being

on earth mean I cannot escape

the natural rhythm and order of things

by praying it away

and shame only locks me out

of my experiencing the gift

paralyzing me with fear instead

of reaping the benefits of the cycle

sometimes the tide is just out

but it always comes back in

sometimes hibernation is required

to build and prepare for a new season of awakening

sometimes there is devastation