by Mayte Garcia
“Where is he?”
“He’s in heaven.”
“With Boogie?”
“Yes.”
Thank God for Boogie, Gia’s guardian angel.
Hollywood Exes ended after a couple more seasons. I was grateful to have it last as long as it did. A steady gig is a precious commodity in this town. You’ve gotta open a lotta clams to find a pearl like this one. I kept going out on auditions and developed a belly dancing seminar much like the weekend programs Mama and I used to do when I was a kid. I was working hard and loving it, but being a single mother—let’s just say it has a way of clarifying one’s priorities.
When the house in Spain was sold, I was left with the chore of packing and moving all the personal belongings left in it. Ever since then, I’d been maintaining climate-controlled storage for the ton of clothes my husband left in his closet there. He never asked for any of it back at the time or answered when I repeatedly asked him, “What am I supposed to do with all this stuff?” In the fall of 2015, I decided to pull a few pieces from Prince’s wardrobe and auction them off online.
“I know I’ll get a lot of blowback from people online,” I said to Dave.
“So what?” he shrugged. “You ain’t made it till ya been hated.”
This I knew from years of celebrity life, and anyway, my alternatives were limited to:
Keep paying for storage. (Not.)
Donate the clothes to charity. (For all the size extra-petite rock stars living on the street?)
Dedicate 90 percent of the closet space in my house as a shrine to the Artist Formerly Known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince. (See option 1.)
Bottom line: According to the divorce settlement, the house and its contents went to me in lieu of a cash settlement. In the beginning and at the end, all I wanted was my husband. Before we were married, I asked him if he wanted me to sign a prenup, and he said no. Naturally, his people tried to get him to do a prenup. He wasn’t having it.
“This is my soul mate,” he told them. “We’re not getting divorced.”
I walked away with my dignity and never regretted it.
But now I have a child to support. I loved my ex-husband, but I couldn’t afford to be sentimental about his cast-off clothes. These were bell-bottoms and boleros, people, not sacred relics. I wanted to talk to Prince about it and ask him if there was anything he’d like to have back, but I wasn’t the one with the private numbers anymore. I called and e-mailed several times but didn’t hear from him. I wonder now if my messages ever made it past the front door.
In January 2016, I heard through the grapevine that he wasn’t doing well. I kept hearing rumors that he was sick and had alienated several people who cared for him. I reached out to our mutual friend Randee—the one who shot all that amazing footage in Egypt—and told her, “I’m going up there. I want to see with my own eyes that he’s okay. I just need to know if you think I should take Gia. I really want him to meet her, but if things are weird…”
Randee assured me that the rumors were just rumors. She said Prince was fine and there was no reason for me to come up to Minnesota. I accepted that reassurance the same way I had once accepted my husband’s promises that the thing with the pills would never happen again. It was easier to postpone the visit when I thought about Gia’s little legs in the unrelenting cold of a Minnesota winter.
“Maybe next summer,” I said. “After school gets out.”
I’ll never forgive myself for leaving it at that. I don’t blame Randee, and she says I shouldn’t blame myself, but I’ll always wonder—if I’d taken Gia to meet him, would he still be alive? Would it have made a difference if he’d seen that fate and coincidence were still on our side?
Pushing my gut instinct aside, I went back to my busy schedule. I selected a few items to sell and went ahead with the auction. These few items were the tip of a handcrafted artisanal iceberg, but the money was enough for me to plan a summer trip to Puerto Rico. It was also enough to make Prince’s lawyer call me.
He said, “Prince might be interested in buying back these items.”
“How is he?” I asked. “Is he—”
“He’s fine.”
“I would like to talk to him.”
“Send me a list of the items. We’ll be in touch.”
A few weeks later, Vanity died. I knew that must have left him feeling gut-shot, and I wanted to reach out to him, but the tone from the lawyer’s phone call had left me with the impression that he was angry at me. I figured I’d let that settle. Wait till summer, I thought, and then take Gia to see him. He wouldn’t turn us away if we were at the door, and I knew for a fact that it was impossible to look at Gia and not smile.
In April, there was a flurry of cancelled and postponed shows, and then it was all over the news one day that a charter jet Prince was on had been forced to make an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois, because he was “unresponsive.” An ambulance met them on the ground and took him to the hospital. There were rumors of a drug overdose, rumors that he had AIDS, rumors that he was suffering a mental breakdown of some kind, and rumors that all the rumors were just rumors, and it was the flu.
I called Manuela, and she said, “I was told dehydration.”
But we both knew that Prince drank water like crazy. That story didn’t pass the smell test. I was uneasy and frustrated. I had the distinct feeling that people didn’t want me to have the full story or access to anyone who could give it to me. I knew what it was like to be inside that isolated circle, so I knew what it meant to be outside. I saw a notice on Kirk’s Facebook that there was going to be a party that night at Paisley Park. I clicked a “Like” on the post, hoping he’d see my name and reach out to me, but that didn’t happen.
At that party, I’m told, Prince acknowledged everyone’s concern about the emergency landing and the hospital visit. He made people laugh about it.
He said, “Wait a few days before you waste any prayers.”
Six days later, he died.
tears go here
tears go here
afterword
spirits come and spirits go
some stick around 4 the aftershow
Since the day Prince died, people have remembered him on street corners and in cathedrals. There were a number of memorial services, some of which I participated in. One of the most meaningful moments for me was standing onstage with Sheila E in June at the 2016 BET Awards, raising his guitar over our heads. In October, I went back to dance in a tribute concert put together by Prince’s family. I think people were a little surprised that I could still do the whole “7” routine, including backbends with my sword balanced on my head. Two weeks later, I returned for Purple Philanthropy, Sheila E’s benefit concert for the charities Prince supported.
I’ve reconnected with so many people from my NPG years. We laugh and cry and feed each other’s souls with stories about Paisley Park at its happiest. Even the doves felt the difference. When Prince built Paisley Park, there were two—Majesty and Divinity—and he hoped they would breed, but they didn’t for many years. Apparently, they just needed to feel some procreative love and energy in the air. Suddenly, while I was pregnant with Amiir, eggs appeared and hatched. The hatchlings matured, and then more eggs appeared. Eventually, we had to get their growing family a bigger cage. The constant murmur of the doves was one of the first things anyone noticed walking into Paisley Park, but there are only two left now, and Prince’s sister Tyka says that in the days after he died, they were strangely silent.
“Play some of his music,” she told the caretakers, and that was wise. They heard his voice and responded, engaging him in conversation.
I hear the doves now, as I enter Paisley Park for the first time in sixteen years. It’s not exactly allowed, but Prince’s brother Omarr takes me there, and Fred, the property manager Prince and I hired twenty years earlier, lets me go upstairs.
“The carpet is different,” I say to Omarr and Fred as we wander the quiet space
. “The zodiac signs have been removed.”
“Oh, yeah. None of that back then.” Fred shrugs, knowing I understand.
I nod and smile. “Whatever peanut butters your jelly.”
I have to laugh, because I’m not convinced the suns and moons that have replaced the signs of the zodiac had any less mystic significance to Prince.
The elevator where Prince’s body was found has been tastefully sealed off. As I pass it, I feel sadness but no sense of his spirit lingering there. If anything, I feel the distinct not there –ness of him—the same vacuum I felt when I held the urn containing Amiir’s ashes. I knew he was gone; I clung to it only because that was all I had.
ELEVATE
I smiled remembering how I felt the first time I saw that word on the wall. It was the perfect word for what he did to everything he touched, including me. It was the thing he desired most for himself: to elevate to a consciousness of bliss. Now there was no doubt in my mind that he had.
His office, which is now downstairs, has been left almost exactly as he left it, several style generations from what it was when he and I had our neighboring offices upstairs. It’s very global, Afro-chic meets psychedelic with a circular desk and purple phone. There’s a dinner table, because he liked to eat dinner without actually taking a dinner break. They left his stacks of CDs and papers and other items undisturbed, including an odd pair of shoes by a chair—like bowling shoes, but wedges—and on a credenza, there are several framed photos of family and friends, Larry’s family, children of staff members. Looking at their smiling faces, I wish I’d sent him a picture of Gia. I’m touched to see that he kept a well-worn book about Egypt close at hand, and for some reason, the little pet carrier we used for our cat Isis is still sitting in the corner.
It won’t be part of the tour, I’m told, but I have to insist on visiting the doves before I go. They spark a familiar conversation with me, cooing and bobbing as I approach their ornate cage. I wish I could take them with me. They love to be around people, so it’s good to know that soon people will be coming and going, keeping the birds entertained.
Before I leave the doves—and leave Paisley Park, perhaps for the last time—I lean in and whisper, “Have more babies.”
I’ve witnessed many beautiful things being created in the hours when everyone is asleep. At my house, it’s the only time that’s quiet. As I write this, it’s been six months since Prince’s death. For the most part, I’m finally able to keep it together when I hear his music, but some songs I’ll never be able to hear without weeping. Others have taken on an eerie aftertaste.
… if the elevator tries to take you down
go crazy, punch a higher floor
I try not to invest his lyrics with more meaning than he intended. Sometimes these were just words that rhymed. Some songs were written or pulled out of the vault to pay the bills. But most of the time, they were more than that. I feel a shiver of privilege whenever I get the private joke or hear a turn of phrase that originally came out of my own mouth. Sometimes, when I’m listening to a song I’ve heard a thousand times before, I hear him speaking to me as plainly as if he was lying next to me in bed.
To make you all smile:
Jan and Myra remain happily married, restoring my faith in love, marriage, and happily ever after. My parents remain happily re married—for the third time, having divorced each other twice. Manuela remarried, has two adorable daughters, and works hard to improve the lives of children through her nonprofit foundation. Sheila E and all the amazing people I worked with in New Power Generation continue to rock the world. I’m a little surprised that I haven’t bumped into Larry at any of the many events celebrating Prince’s life. I haven’t thought about him in years. And Larry… Larry is an amazing musician who’s lost a dear friend. I hope his faith brings comfort to him now, just as my faith brings comfort to me.
Gia started pre-K this year with a crisp little school uniform and a backpack full of socially responsible school supplies designed by Pharrell Williams.
“Don’t take my picture,” she frowned.
“I’m taking it.”
“Fine…”
I Instagrammed her little face and looked at it with tears in my eyes a hundred times before lunch. Yes, I am that mommy.
Late in the evening, Gia and I snuggle on the couch, watching TV. I’ve been meaning to show her Under the Cherry Moon. I still love the choice Prince made to have it be black and white. It didn’t start out that way. He started it with a vision of bright colors and Gatsby fashions. In the middle of things, he fired the director and made the post-production people meticulously un-color it. The end result is so charming and romantic. In garish color, it could have gone a little cheesy at the end when Christopher Tracy is gunned down on the pier. The grayscale keeps it classy and reminds me of the hours we spent playing Wuthering Heights and Philadelphia Story on the roadie box VCR.
At the very end of Under the Cherry Moon, the camera zooms in on a note Christopher Tracy has left on a table in the hall.
With love, there is no death.
And then the credits roll, taking us up into heaven where Prince and The Revolution jam in living color, dancing in the clouds.
Gia has slumped over sound asleep on my lap. I kiss her soft cheek and stroke her bangs from her forehead. Her hair smells like summertime. It’s an enormous truth I’ve had to wrap my heart around: If I hadn’t lost my precious son, if the pain of that loss hadn’t torn me away from the husband I loved, I wouldn’t have my daughter now. And I can’t bear to imagine life without her. I don’t know what to make of that, other than to say that I’ve learned to trust God to sort it out. Someday when I’m in heaven with Boogie and Mia and Amiir at my side, I’ll ask a passing angel to explain it to me.
I’m glad I took Gia to see Paisley Park that first week, because it’s already changing. I feel a moment of sorrow every time I see some news item about another small piece of my memories slipping away. But when I start to get sad about it, I have to remind myself that Paisley Park was always changing. During the decade that I was with Prince, I watched Paisley evolve—inside and out—just as his music evolved, and the bands evolved, the colors, shapes, and faces always changing. We all saw our seasons come and go, and it’s okay, because that’s what life is: seasons turning, one after another, a spiral of birth and rebirth.
His fans have evolved too, from big-eyed kids hitting Record just in time to catch “Let’s Go Crazy” on the boom box to grown-ups addicted to our iPhones. Those of us who love his music will never allow it to die. As the years go by, his music will take on new dimension for us, because we’ll grow wiser. We’ll get closer to the sun.
Those of us who loved the man will never forget him. I couldn’t begin to scratch the surface of his story in this space—much of it will always be a mystery, even to me—but I’ve tried to speak to what was most important to me personally: He was my family. His love lives on in me, and in a strange way, our love lives on in Gia. Maybe someday she’ll tell her grandchildren, “He fathered me, in a way.” And they’ll hear his music, and his love will live on in them.
“Never say gone, never say gone,” my husband told me over and over during those terrible days after our son died. Alone in the studio, he sang:
when you lose someone dear to you never say the words “they’re gone”
they’ll come back
With Gia in my arms, I hear his voice in my heart, and I know as surely as I know my name that I will see my love again.
“Princess” Mayte, age 7, in the That’s Incredible days.
My business card from my professional bellydancing days in Europe—I attached this card to the tapes I sent backstage to Prince.
Me as a young ballerina, shortly after I met Prince—this was the sort of photo I’d send him during the “pen pal” stage of our relationship.
One of Prince’s typical letters to me, in his lovely script (and unique spelling).
1992, outside Paisley Park. My dad f
inally came to visit me in Minneapolis after the Japan Australia tour, to make sure things were good. I was embarrassed and upset with him at the time, because I knew Prince was quite protective about cameras in his home, but now I’m happy he took it.
In Cairo with Randee St. Nicholas in 1991—I didn’t know how much my life was about to change.
This was one of the first times he appeared with me publicly—I was shocked he invited me to this public event with him.
That’s my outfit he’s wearing—one of many he “borrowed” from me and made his own. I had bought it in New York, and it disappeared soon after I put it in my closet.
He had this photo of me framed and next to his sink.
The wardrobe designer for the tour would take a Polaroid of me in my costume, to show Prince for approval. I smiled because I knew he’d see it, but my smile also said if I liked the costume or not. On very rare occasions, I would not smile.
Just goofin’ around in one of my pregnancy sweaters—yet another thing he swiped from my closet.
He would tease me into laughter during a photo shoot, and then get serious in seconds. We hadn’t yet become intimate during this shoot, but you can see the chemistry between us.
He was ticked off during this shoot; his bags had been lost, and he was forced to wear black pants with orange striped shoes—not the outfit he’d planned on. They promised to airbrush his shoes to match his pants, but as you can see they didn’t. Afterward he told me, “Now you know why I’m so picky about getting photo approval.”
The famous V-shaped bangs that caused a thousand girls to reach for their scissors. He has “South Bitch” written on his cheek (we were in Miami).