Life with My Sister Madonna

by Christopher Ciccone

  An example; I get up early for breakfast, make myself some sourdough toast, and leave the dishes in the sink because I intend to do them when I get home later in the day. I go upstairs, only to hear Madonna screeching, “Christopher, you didn’t put the damn dishes in the dishwasher again.”

  I am suddenly overcome with the sense that I am back home again and that Joan will rush out at any moment and chastise me.

  “I’ll do it when I get home,” I yell back.

  “Do it now!” she screams.

  I don’t. She does, with a great deal of clattering and complaining. She’s irritated and I guess I don’t blame her. I also understand why her behavior is sometimes a carbon copy of Joan’s. For just as Dietrich was one of the major cinematic influences on Madonna, her family—Joan and my father—also played a big part in making my sister the legend she has become, as I, too, would down the line.

  Thinking back to my childhood, I suppose Joan had little alternative than to rule us with a rod of iron. We were so wild, so willful, so set on undermining her at every turn. And I am sure that when she first married my father, she wasn’t fully prepared for us pint-size saboteurs determined to make her life miserable.

  Small, blond, Nordic, born in Taylor, Michigan, Joan, always in her green capri pants, with her love of antiques, “antiquing,” and freezer food, may well have started out in life as an archromantic. After all, she married our father the same year The Sound of Music—the tale of Maria, a governess to Captain Von Trapp’s seven children, who ultimately married him, whereupon the whole family all lived blissfully ever after—was first released and probably thought we’d become a Midwestern version of the Von Trapps and she’d be Maria, warbling “Climb Every Mountain” while we all clung to her adoringly.

  Instead, Marty and Anthony—probably deeply disturbed by the death of our mother—turn out to be the wildest kids in the neighborhood and sometimes make her life hell. Mostly, though, they take out their ire on us, their siblings. One time when Madonna isn’t looking, they pour pine sap into her hair, and she can’t remove it, so great chunks of her hair have to be chopped off, while she screams “My hair! My hair!” Then—when she sees her shorn image in the mirror—she bursts into tears. My brothers, however, remain unrepentant and continue to vent most of their aggression on her, and not on the rest of us, perhaps because she has always hogged our father’s attention and they sense that he may love her best.

  By now, the Ciccone family has moved away from Pontiac and settled down on Oklahoma Avenue in Rochester instead. Our new home is a two-story, redbrick colonial, with green aluminum siding and a wagon wheel embedded on the front lawn.

  The move to Oklahoma Avenue is exciting. There is a little creek at the back of our house, and a massive old oak tree in the backyard that I love to climb, until I fall out of it and almost break my back.

  The most glaring difference between Pontiac and Rochester is the alarming lack of people of color living in the neighborhood. Everyone is white, and I often wonder what happened to our multiracial little world.

  On the other hand, life chez Ciccone is never dull or uneventful. One morning during the summer, Madonna and I are in the kitchen having breakfast when we hear Anthony and Marty yelling our names.

  “Get out here, Madonna and Chris, we wanna see you right now!”

  Just yesterday, our father—much against his better judgment, and only because they have promised him they will rid the yard of the scourge of squirrels currently swarming everywhere—bought Anthony and Marty BB guns.

  Madonna and I exchange glances, then sneak out the side door and into the garden. Petrified that Marty, stocky and terrifying even without the BB gun, and Anthony, tall and intimidating, will start firing at us, we run as fast as we can.

  We get to the slimy green swamp behind our house and start wading, not caring that we both end up looking like understudies for Elphaba in Wicked. Fortunately for us, Anthony and Martin turn out not to be so intrepid. They prowl the edge of the swamp, fire the guns at us, and cast around for a way of catching us without getting all slimed up as well. Meanwhile, Madonna and I are halfway to Hitchman’s Haven—an old, boarded-up Victorian mansion, set on sixty acres with a large pond, surrounded by massive weeping willows and ancient oak trees—where we hide out for the rest of the morning until we know Marty and Anthony are safely inside the house scoffing their lunch.

  According to local lore, Hitchman’s is a former asylum where Judy Garland was once an inmate. Unlike ex-child-star Judy, Madonna neither sings nor dances as a child. But when it comes to cozying up to our father and grabbing all his attention, she definitely upstages the rest of us—not because she is in training for a future career as an actress, but because she is clearly suffering from some type of Electra complex—the female version of the Oedipus complex.

  All of us kids are competing for our father’s love and attention, but ever the competitor, Madonna usually wins and gets it. No matter that she is too old to sit on our father’s knee, she clambers up and stays there. At Easter, she demands that out of all the dyes we use for coloring Easter eggs the blue dye be reserved just for her, and he makes sure it is. At her confirmation, she demands a special dress and gets it from him. And whenever possible, she snuggles close to our father and pushes the rest of us away.

  None of us can quite work out why our father is so in Madonna’s thrall. In retrospect, after looking at a picture of her without makeup, the reason becomes dramatically clear: she is the mirror image of our mother. The uncanny resemblance must simultaneously have broken our father’s heart and exercised a haunting power over him. Moreover, my sister’s very name, Madonna, must vastly have strengthened her emotional hold over him.

  I think of my mother with a mixture of love, loss, and longing, and irrational as it may have been, for as far back as I can remember, I believe I unconsciously transferred a degree of those tremulous emotions onto my sister Madonna. And I’m sure my father did as well, which afforded her a certain power over all of us and instilled in her the confidence that she could be and do pretty much what she wanted. A partial explanation, I think, of how our adult relationship would subsequently unfold.

  No matter that Madonna generally wins the battle for our father’s love and attention, the rest of us keep trying for the leftovers. Consequently, there’s always an undertone of animosity among us all, which makes it impossible for us to get to know one another, or to genuinely care about one another. As we grow older, we each sort of break off from the family and do our own things.

  Madonna divides her time between studying, cheerleading, and luxuriating in her unchallenged role of daddy’s girl; Anthony and Marty are the “bad boys” who become authentic macho men, the kind both Madonna’s husbands aspired to be; Paula is always left out; and I am generally lumped together with Melanie and our half-siblings, Mario and Jennifer, and deeply resent it.

  Usually, Melanie and I are forced to babysit for Mario and Jennifer, and—to our shame—vent our dislike of Joan upon them, while simultaneously reenacting our older brothers’ bullying behavior without realizing that we are robotically repeating their pattern. One time, Melanie and I are alone in the house babysitting Mario and Jennifer. We gravely explain that something terrifying has just happened. There’s been a news flash on the TV: a serial killer has escaped and just been spotted prowling around our neighborhood. We whisper that we have to turn off the lights so he won’t know we are home, otherwise he might break in and slaughter us all.

  Mario and Jennifer huddle together behind the couch, petrified. Meanwhile, Melanie and I sneak into the kitchen, grab butcher knives out of the kitchen drawer, and creep out of the house and into the street. About five minutes later, we burst through the front door, brandishing the knives, and chase Mario and Jennifer around the house in the dark. They scream and cry so much that, in the end, we get them a cup of granola and say we are sorry. When Joan discovers what we have done, Melanie and I are grounded for a week and forced to do double chore
s.

  In the best of times, even if we are all being close to angelic, chores remain a fact of life for us. First thing every morning, we all check the chore list Joan has posted on the refrigerator. An example from my late teens: “Christopher to do the dishes and clean the yard. Paula to do the laundry. Marty to take out the garbage. Melanie to polish the cutlery. Mario to match the socks. Anthony to cut the grass. Jennifer to mend the clothes.”

  Generally, my older brothers never have to do dishes or the laundry. And my sisters are never enlisted to cut the grass or take out the garbage, but I always have to do both the girls’ chores and the boys’. I never understand why. I don’t mind doing the laundry, though, because that way I can get a march on my brothers and sisters by grabbing the only 100 percent cotton sheets we possess, a floral print. When I do, I feel as if I am sleeping on silk. To this day, I retain an addiction to 100 percent cotton sheets.

  Joan rarely allocates any tasks to Madonna, in tacit recognition, I think, of her special place in our father’s heart. Besides, I believe Joan is a little afraid of her.

  I don’t recall my father ever scolding Madonna or disciplining her, except once. Madonna comes home late one night, Joan slaps her, and she slaps Joan back. Madonna is grounded for a week and banned from driving her car—a 1968 red Mustang that we all wish we had.

  Another time, Madonna and some friends drive over to the local gravel pit, about twenty miles north of Rochester, where we always go swimming. She and Paula much prefer swimming when they aren’t with our father and Joan because our father has banned them from wearing bikinis, which Madonna resents.

  During the summer, though, because Madonna wants to protect her fair skin, she never sunbathes like the rest of us. But she’s always been a good swimmer and enjoys swimming at the pit. On this particular day, however, we aren’t with her.

  Late that night, she arrives home with a black eye and a bloody nose. Joan is really upset because she does care about Madonna, and all of us, and asks her what happened.

  It turns out that a group of bikers drove up to the pit and started playing loud music. Everyone else was really annoyed, but only Madonna had the guts to go up and say something. So one of the biker chicks beat her up. Madonna shrugged the whole thing off, her confidence and bravery intact.

  Apart from the odd excitement, such as Madonna and the biker chicks, our lives fall into a certain rhythm.

  School days invariably begin with us all rushing to get ready, always late, flinging our clothes everywhere, making Joan so mad that she invariably comes out with her favorite phrases: “Your room looks like the wreck of the Hesperus” or “Your room looks like the Russian army went through it.” We, of course, have no idea what she is talking about.

  She sighs, then makes us her school lunch standby: cracker sandwiches—two saltine crackers with mayonnaise between them, which we hate. Then we all run for the bus stop, just two houses away, slipping and sliding along the key road, trying to catch up with the yellow school bus, and usually making it—but not always. Which means having to walk the three miles between our home and school.

  When we ride home from school in the bus, we crane our heads out of the windows to see if Joan’s car is in the driveway. Because if it isn’t, we know we’ll have a great afternoon. No red-faced stepmother, no one to yell at us or chase us around with a wooden spoon or slap our faces if we defy her.

  If Joan is a strict disciplinarian, our father isn’t exactly a pushover either. He is a man of action, who makes his intentions clear and doesn’t deal in ambiguities. He lets us know when we did wrong and lets us know when we did right. A conservative Catholic, he attends church every Sunday and is a church deacon. If we swear or make a smart-ass comment, he drags us into the bathroom and tells us to stick out our tongues. Then he gets out a bar of soap and scrubs our tongues with it. When he’s worked up quite a lather in our mouths, he finally lets us rinse our mouths and spit. It’s a long time before any of us make the same mistake again.

  If our father and Joan decide we have been well behaved, in the evening we are allowed to watch TV with them in the family room. Our favorite programs are My Favorite Martian, Mister Ed, The Three Stooges, and I Dream of Jeannie.

  We aren’t allowed to watch television often, but it isn’t banned. Madonna, however, doesn’t allow Lola or Rocco to watch any TV whatsoever. But when I last visit Madonna’s Sunset Boulevard home, I find it puzzling that there are TVs all over the house.

  AS THE YEARS go by, our father and Joan develop a benign, loving companionship. They are not touchy-feely—but then neither am I, nor Madonna, not even when she was married to Sean Penn, or when she was dating Warren Beatty.

  Although we are a Catholic family and always celebrate Christmas and Easter, our father belongs to the Christian Family Movement, which fosters tolerance between Christians and Jews. So every year, we celebrate Passover together. I often wonder whether Madonna’s early familiarity with this sacred Jewish holiday—and with Judaism in general—was not only the genesis of her attraction to Kabbalah, but what also helped her bond with the powerful Jewish music moguls whom she charmed at the start of her career. As for me, as a child, I assume that our Passover celebrations are part of Easter and, until I become an adult, never quite grasp that there is a difference.

  At Christmas, we always attend midnight mass at St. Frederick’s or St. Andrew’s, which is intensely dramatic and our first introduction to theater. During Lent, our father makes us go to church every morning before school. We are such a large family that we each can’t afford to buy nine gifts every Christmas. Instead, about two weeks before Christmas, our father puts a big paper lunch bag on the kitchen table. We each write our names on a separate piece of paper, then put them in the bag. Our father shakes the bag, and we each pull out a name. Then we buy a Christmas gift for the named person, and no one else.

  One Christmas, when I am fourteen, I draw Madonna’s name, but don’t have any money to pay for her gift. My father goes to Kmart for an auto part. Marty and I go with him. The place is abuzz with Christmas shoppers, loud Muzak, and glowing fluorescent lights. I wander the aisles worrying how I am going to get a gift for Madonna. When my father and Marty aren’t looking, I steal a small bottle of Zen perfume for her, stick it in my overcoat pocket, and skulk out of the store. Suddenly, I’m grabbed from behind, marched into the manager’s office, ordered to empty my pockets, and the Zen falls out. I am caught and fear my father’s wrath more than anything else.

  Next thing I know, I can hear over the PA system, “Is there a Mr. Ciccone in the store?” Within a moment, my father is in the manager’s office. He looks at me, says, “You stupid little shit!” and yanks me out of the store.

  In the car, he doesn’t say a single word to me, but I know I am in big-time trouble. I am shocked when he does nothing. I suppose he knows that I haven’t stolen for myself, but because I wanted Madonna to have her Christmas present.

  I realize that it would be heartwarming if I claimed to have stolen the perfume for my sister because I loved her so much, but that isn’t true. I didn’t then really love her at all. In fact, I hardly knew her. I felt alienated from her, alienated from my whole family. I was not a bad child, not a good child, just quiet, and watching, always observing.

  IN 1972, THE whole family takes a road trip across America in our dark green van. True to form, Madonna makes sure always to squeeze herself into the front bench seat, between our father and Joan, practically pushing Joan out of her seat.

  Each of us is allowed to bring as many things as we can that will fit in a cardboard Rolling Rock case—Rolling Rock was my paternal grandfather’s favorite beer—with our name on it. The girls paint flowers on their boxes; I paint mine with red, white, and blue stripes.

  At night, my father and Joan sleep in the van, and we kids all sleep in a dark green army tent that reeks of mold and mildew. We drive for hours and hours, and the whole trip is a free-for-all. We visit the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, the Black
Hills of South Dakota, the Hoover Dam, and Yellowstone National Park. When we get to California, Joan suggests driving along Santa Monica beach, but the van gets stuck in the sand. We are all tired and irritable.

  Luckily for us, nearby surfers come to our aid and explain to my father that by letting air out of the tires we will widen their surface contact with the sand and the van can be dislodged. We do and it works.

  LOOKING BACK, I suppose our grand road trip across America is another example of my father’s educational ideals, which include exposing his children to their country. He also believes in the virtue of hard work. When I’m twelve, one morning during summer vacation, he opens the front door, pushes me out, and says, “Don’t come back without a job.”

  I wander around Rochester for hours until I come across a sign at a local country club looking for caddies. I get the job, train for a week, and on my first day at work, I walk out because my employer treats me so badly.

  My father, too, has more lofty ambitions for me. In fact, his dearest wish is that all his children become attorneys, engineers, or doctors. Fortunately for Madonna and me, he isn’t opposed to the arts either. Thanks to him, all us Ciccone kids have piano lessons. And when any of us admit that we have artistic ambitions—albeit slightly reluctantly—he encourages us to live out our creativity. I’m surprised by his somewhat laissez-faire attitude toward our career choices. Then I learn from my father’s mother that my father’s brother Guido, a talented painter, was forced by his wife to jettison his ambition to become an artist and work in the steel mills instead. Consequently, he was deeply unhappy for most of his life. Clearly, my father witnessed Guido’s unhappiness and vowed that none of his children would suffer in the same way.