by Mayte Garcia
In November 2006, I wrote Prince a long letter and told him that I was ready to forgive him. He called me, and we talked for a long time.
“We’re bound to run into each other,” I said. “I don’t want it to be weird.”
“No, no. It’s not weird. Not on my side.”
“Good. I’m glad,” I said. “I’ve actually been talking to Manuela.”
“What? No. Why? Don’t do that.”
“She’s a cool girl. It’s fine. I’m over it. It’s been a long time.”
He sighed heavily. “What is time?”
“A magazine.”
“Oh, so you’re still funny.”
“Yep.”
“I don’t believe in time. It doesn’t exist unless you believe in it. It has no power over you unless you grant that power.”
“It has power,” I said tartly. “Take a look at my butt.”
He roared at that, and I savored the fact that I could still crack him up.
“You seem to be holding up pretty well,” he said. “From what I see.”
“Well, they do keep asking me to do Playboy.”
“Ah, hell no!”
“Just saying.”
We talked and laughed for a long time. He told me about his Las Vegas residency, 3121 @ Rio Casino, which was essentially a six-month tour with only one venue. I was thinking about what a luxury that would be when he circled back and started talking about time again, saying how he wanted to be like the Dalai Lama, always moving into the future, and that he didn’t age because he didn’t celebrate his birthday.
“Oh, shut up already,” I said. “You’re a human being. We all age. We all need to sleep and eat and breathe—everything in moderation—and what’s wrong with celebrating your life if that comes from a loving place and makes you happy?”
“Hmm.” He took that in for a moment. “So what are you doing for your birthday?”
“Vegas.”
“Would you want to come to the show?”
“Of course.”
“Okay.”
“Well. Okay then.”
We said good-bye, and I hung up feeling very glad that he had called. On my birthday, I sat in the audience, basking in that old familiar torrent of purple light and energy, and feeling that, for the first time in years, I cried. I realized how much I’d missed it. I was still in awe of what he could do as a performer, and the idea that this extraordinary man was once—Oh. Whoa. What…
He had come down from the stage and was walking toward me. When he got to the aisle seat where I was sitting, he took my hand and pulled me up into his arms and hugged me. Despite the lights and loud music and a thousand pairs of eyes in the room, I closed my eyes and let myself feel the muscle and bone of his arms. For a moment, he was that man I loved. The next moment, he was Prince again, and I found I was once again able to love him purely for that, the way I did the first time I saw him in Spain when I was sixteen.
I thought he might call me that night and ask if I wanted to come and hang out, but I was no longer the girl who waited by the phone. I went out gambling.
Over the next few years, I was happy to see him reconnecting with Wendy and Lisa and other people who’d been important in his life as well. He was always good at keeping track of the people he truly cared about. He’d have an assistant grab tapes of TV performances, appearances, articles, whatever they were doing. So I knew he was watching as I worked on movie and television gigs, some in English, some in Spanish, and one movie where I got to dust off my old German skills. Over the years, I did guest spots on Nip/Tuck, Las Vegas, Psych, CSI:NY, and Big Shots, and scored a nice recurring role on Army Wives.
In 2011, I agreed to do a reality show called Hollywood Exes on VH1. The opportunity to star in a series that could potentially last several seasons was a gift from God. It wasn’t exactly the artistic direction I had dreamed of for myself, but I was grateful, because I really needed a steady gig at that moment.
I had been diagnosed with MS.
This is something I had to keep hidden at the time and have spoken about very little in the years since, because it’s difficult enough to be a woman over forty in Hollywood. I want to keep up the impression that I am vibrantly healthy—because I am. I work hard to maintain my belly dancer body, and I don’t want people looking at me like I’m sick or wondering if I can hack it. When I feel the need to share my diagnosis with someone, I want them to be every bit as stunned and disbelieving as I was when I first heard it myself.
To this day, I’ve never experienced any of the typical large muscle symptoms of MS. I woke up one morning with a weird blurry spot in my vision. The optometrist referred me to an optic neurologist, who came in and casually said, “It’s optic neuritis. It’s a side effect of multiple sclerosis.” Before I could even wrap my head around what he was saying, I was in the MRI machine—my new home away from home—and the scans showed several lesions on my brain.
Which brings us once again to the cold pages of a medical text: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an abnormal response of the body’s immune system directed against the central nervous system, including the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves. The myelin sheath protecting the nerve is damaged and sometimes destroyed, causing nerve impulses to slow or even stop. There is no cure. The goal is to manage the disease and preserve remission as long as possible.
“This can’t be right,” I told the neurologist. “I’m healthy. I eat healthy. I work out. I’m a dancer.”
“All that’s working in your favor,” she said, “but this is serious, Mayte. This is something we need to stay on top of for the rest of your life.”
She started me on a regimen of interferon injections, which I gave myself three times a week in the beginning, alternating thighs to control the spread of huge purple bruises, which didn’t exactly jibe with my work and life. One of my friends had been diagnosed with MS ten years earlier, and I sometimes gave her those injections. Now I was sticking my own leg and reading everything I could get my hands on. I quickly became fluent in yet another language I didn’t want to understand.
So the first great gift I got from Hollywood Exes was a new circle of fabulous friends at a moment when I really, really needed good friends. The show featured several women who’d married A-list celebrities, including Andrea Kelly (ex–Mrs. R. Kelly), who was a dancer, so right away, she and I had a lot to talk about. If you haven’t seen it, open a bottle of wine and watch it sometime. Right now, let’s fast-forward again. Because we’re getting to the good part. The best part. The life-changing part where everything that went wrong takes a hard right, because God is good and never banished me one bit.
In July 2012, I was managing my immunotherapy and had my MS in a symptom-free remission, which I hope to maintain for a good many years. I was making decent money with Hollywood Exes, and in this business, work begets work, so I was getting more one-off acting jobs as well. I was busy with Mayte’s Rescue, a charitable organization that finds loving homes for abused and abandoned animals. I adopted Boogie, the dear old golden retriever, and together we had a really nice life going. But there was this achingly open space. Not in my schedule, but in my soul. In my heart. I’d been thinking about adoption for years. I finally felt ready—way beyond ready—to be a mother again.
My friend Diane had adopted a child, and she nudged me to take the first step: a seminar that educated me on the whole process and explained the legal requirements and procedures. I loved the idea of having a baby in my arms, but I would have been just as thrilled to adopt an older child with special needs. But with my MS diagnosis on the paperwork, I wondered if I’d even be able to make it onto the long waiting list. I filled out all the state-required paperwork, but something stopped me from sending it in. I knew they’d ask me to be a foster mom first, and it was terrifying to risk loving and losing another child, but I was ready to take that leap of faith. The paperwork was on my desk, ready to be sent out the next day, when God decided it was time to play some jazz.
&nbs
p; Fate or coincidence? I’ll let you decide.
Gia’s birth mother (her name and identifying details will be kept private here) is tough but beautiful. She’s a feisty, intelligent girl and she owns it. Her choices are inked into her skin, a personal manifesto that was in her bones long before tattoo needles brought it to the surface. She made the choice to have Gia and place her for adoption, and she was adamant about finding her a good home, but she didn’t want to put her into the foster care system, so she asked a counselor to help her find someone and navigate the legal issues. In August 2012, Gia was nine months old, and the counselor still hadn’t found anyone who wanted her—not anyone who measured up to the standards of Gia’s birth mother, that is.
One day in August, this girl had a minor accident at her job. Some cleaning solution splashed into her eyes, and she was sent home for the afternoon to take care of it. As she lay on her bed, thumbing the remote control, she settled on a reality show about fabulous women formerly married to famous men. Rich ladies, she figured, with rich lady problems. Drama, drama, drama. Gossip about the drama. More drama. It made this girl roll her swollen eyes.
But she decided this one chick was different. She was Latina, like her and her sisters. Like Gia. In the midst of all that fake reality, something about the Latina chick seemed real. She displayed no bitterness toward the rock star she had been married to. She spoke of him with respect and affection. It was obvious she still loved him. This woman talked about devastating losses and about moving on.
“In a perfect world, I’d be pregnant right now,” she said as the cameras followed her into a doctor’s office. “I’m nervous but optimistic. Whatever works, right?”
The lady was so flustered when the receptionist called her name, she dropped a stack of papers and had to get down on the floor to pick them up. After some uncomfortable small talk, the doctor said, “Currently, you’re thirty-eight years old, and you’ve been pregnant twice, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And what were the results of those pregnancies?”
“They’re not here.”
“Did both pregnancies result in miscarriage?”
“No. The first one was to term.”
“Was there a genetic issue?”
“Yes.”
“And the second one?”
“The second one was a partial molar pregnancy.”
The girl watching the show didn’t know what that meant, and they didn’t break away to explain it, so she figured, Whatever that is, it must be bad.
“I can’t wait for this part to be over,” said the lady in the doctor’s office. “It’s hard for me to talk about the past, especially when I’m here to talk about the future.”
But the future she envisioned was fading by the minute. A stark conversation about ovarian function, daily injections, chromosomal anomalies, and surgical procedures basically boiled down to the harsh reality that her perfect-world pregnancy was not going to happen.
The girl clicked off the television and stared at the ceiling. Gia was in her crib, crying the demanding, full-throated cry of a nine-month-old. The depth of the woman’s sadness resonated in a strange harmony with the sound of Gia’s crying—a motherless child and a childless mother—their need for each other vibrated like the silver tines of a tuning fork. The girl picked up her cell phone and Googled the name of the woman in the doctor’s office.
mayte garcia
Thousands of results spilled out, led by the Wiki basics: Mayte Jannell Garcia is an American belly dancer, actress, singer, and choreographer. She is of Puerto Rican ancestry… On Valentine’s Day in 1996, Garcia, then 22, married Prince, then 37, in Minneapolis.
The girl scrolled through a cache of images. She saw me dancing with a sword on my head, diving from the stage to crowd-surf in Berlin, standing outside the soaring white walls and windows of Paisley Park, and walking a gauntlet of paparazzi with Prince in happier days. There was cryptic news coverage of our lost child, blunt reports of our divorce, snarky blog posts about the reality show, and a Realtor’s desperate sales pitch for the rambling mansion in Spain.
The girl went to my website and saw my tattoos, my dogs, my dog rescue mission, and more dancing. She clicked on the Contact tab and filled out the form, typing rapidly with her thumbs:
This will touch your heart and change your life…
Mayte I had a baby that ended up with father offering to pay abortion I am Mexican he is White he said I would be on my own if I didnt get abortion I agreed to figure it on my own and would rather pray to God to let me cross roads with someone who can adopt her she is now a 9 month old girl she is mixed with ginger strawberry blond hair and i dont want to be a Mom on welfare something about you touched my heart that u would be the right person to adopt her u can see pics of her on my instagram you can email me
When I saw this message, my initial reaction was a sharp flash of skeptical irritation. This was someone pranking me in a very cruel way. The worst possible way. It couldn’t be real, I told myself. Babies don’t just drop out of Heaven into your arms. That’s not how it works—as I had recently learned, sitting through many hours of a seminar, being told how the adoption of a healthy baby could be difficult, expensive, potentially heartbreaking, and often impossible. If this was real, it would be… it would be like two souls recognizing each other from opposite sides of the universe, simply because they were meant to be together.
How could a sensible person put her faith in something as unlikely as that?
I called my friend Diane for a reality check. “I know this sounds crazy, but I’m forwarding this message to you. It can’t be real… can it?”
“Probably not,” she said, “but let me call her and see what I can find out.”
I sat there, clinging to Boogie for support, waiting for what seemed like hours. Diane finally called me back. She’d had a long conversation with the girl.
“She’s legit,” said Diane. “Her counselor has been trying to help her connect with a family. At the very least, you should think about meeting her.”
Still feeling very cautious, I messaged the girl on Twitter, and we began a long conversation. She told me how she’d been struggling to provide and care for Gia, how she’d prayed for the right family to come along—a family that spoke Spanish and English so Gia would grow up knowing both.
When I asked the baby’s age, she messaged:
Gia was born November 12, 2011
“Oh!”
Boogie looked up when she heard me cry out. I had to push my hand against my chest and breathe for a minute before I replied:
That’s my birthday!
A moment later, she sent me a picture of Gia. I clicked on the attachment and started to cry.
I was looking at the most beautiful girl in the world.
There was a process, of course, and I made sure that it was all done by the book, just as I’d learned in that adoption seminar. I didn’t want any mistakes to be made, so I was determined to stick to the protocol outlined by the caseworker, but the first time I brought Gia home for a visit, I couldn’t bear to part with her when the time came. When I called to ask her birth mother if we could extend the visit a few more days, the girl knocked the floor out from under me.
“I’ve said good-bye,” she told me. “I can’t say it again. I need you to keep her.”
“What? But that’s—Is that even—I’m not sure we can do that.”
“It’s done.”
She left me staring at the phone with baby Gia on my hip, smiling up at me with her angelic smile as if she knew already that there’s nothing more terrifying than getting the one thing you’ve always wanted. I didn’t know what I’d have to do next, but I knew I didn’t want to miss out on another minute of my daughter’s life. I knew that this and all the cascading challenges of motherhood were now mine to figure out and push through. I would figure this out and make it happen, and for the rest of my life, I would have this baby girl’s back the way Mama always had mine.
And I wouldn’t have to do it alone. Mama took on grandmotherhood with her usual energy. Aunties Jan and Myra were enthusiastically on board. My friend Dave, aka Uncle Dave, was always there for us when we needed a hand. Gia immediately had him wrapped around her little finger, and to this day, this tough-talking Jersey guy gets misty-eyed with emotion whenever he talks about her.
Not long after Gia’s first Christmas with us, she was mine—signed, sealed, delivered—and life settled into a lovely routine. Daddy (aka Buelo) said I won the lottery. Actually, he said, “You won the fucking lottery,” but we don’t use that sort of language in front of Gia, who is whip-smart. By the time she was two and a half, she was articulate enough to parrot bad words she heard.
The first few years of her life went by in a blissful blur of creating, coloring, singing, storytelling, dancing, jumping, thinking, and asking questions. She filled my life with a specific brand of Gia-flavored joy I could not have imagined, piles of blessings I never even knew I was praying for.
She’s four—almost five now—so she hasn’t seen Purple Rain yet, but I showed her the “7” music video a few months before Prince died.
“Mama, what’s this song?” she asked.
“It’s called ‘7.’”
“Why?”
“Because seven mysterious assassins chased after Princess Mayte, and Prince smoked them all with an intellect and a savoir faire.”
“Mama, you’re a dancer.”
“Yep.”
“Mama, who’s that?”
“That’s Prince with the guitar.”
“Do you love him?”
“Yep.”
“Mama, did you have a baby?”
Every once in a while, she stops my heart. I don’t know where these things come from. Maybe that particular question was because of the children in the video, but I didn’t shy away from it.
“Yes,” I said. “Prince and I had a baby boy.”