There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me

by Brooke Shields

  • • •

  But I didn’t stop missing my mother. I fixed my class schedule so that I was most free on Fridays to go home and see my mother. I didn’t think I wanted to give up going to Princeton and forfeit an education because I was “Mom-sick,” but why was everybody else so seemingly settled in and happy?

  Every night I would call Mom and fight back the tears. Her voice made me ache because I thought the feelings I had would last forever. Leaving Mom was something I had prepared to do when I threatened to live with my dad, but that was temporary. This felt different. I missed my house, my home, and the good parts of my mother.

  For the first term, I spent most of my time in the library or driving back to Haworth. I would have Mom drive out every Wednesday to take me to dinner. We would either go have Indian food or go to a healthy diner in a club car that served things like veggie burgers. I was still a vegetarian at this time from a stint I had working at the San Diego Zoo during my senior year in high school. Many times I would actually cry during dinner. The only other time I had ever cried like this was when it was over a boy. It felt like a similar heartbreak, only not romantic. I was being forced to understand the feeling of being on my own. I was worried about my mother being alone and not properly looked after, but I was also just missing my house and my mommy.

  I would always cry as she drove away. I’d bury my feelings until after my one Friday class (or sometimes as early as late Thursday night). Then I’d have Dick drive me straight home. Mom and I would go to the movies and eat Japanese food. I’d happily study in the car or at my rolltop desk. Sunday night, at about 60 Minutes time, I started to feel heavyhearted once again. I resisted going to sleep, because I knew when I awoke Monday morning I would have to leave her and go away again.

  • • •

  Being away from Mom made me idealize her and her alcoholic behavior. I had learned how to navigate her drinking and to deal with every element of it, but the feeling of being released into a totally foreign way of life (and only possessing resources that worked in rare and unique circumstances) made me buckle emotionally. During this first term I was so antisocial and lonesome that I would have taken drunk, nasty Mom with all her insults over being without her.

  I grappled with the idea of going home and commuting. I could get my courses done and still be home with Mom. Everything could go back to the way it was. One night at dinner I told Mom that it was time to quit. I couldn’t do it emotionally. My studies were great, but I did not need or want the life part of college. I did not fit in.

  Mom was calmer than I had ever known her to be, and her drinking at that time had curbed (temporarily) for some reason. She insisted that she knew me and that I knew me, too, and that if I quit the whole experience, I would never, ever forgive myself. High school had been a tough adjustment, and look how wonderfully that turned out. I had had a great high school experience and my best friend in the whole world, Lisa, I had met in ninth grade. I needed to give it my all this time as well, and just keep moving ahead.

  She somehow kept encouraging me, even though I know it must have cut her up inside to know she was ensuring that I stay away. I realize that nothing would have made her happier than to have me back under the same roof.

  She said, “Remember the Hula-Hoop, my darling.”

  “OK, Mom, I’ll try.”

  • • •

  And I did. But trying was tiring, and I felt a little bit like a failure and an ingrate. I tried out for dance companies and singing groups and did not get accepted. I had zero experience with anything musical but thought I could figure it out. It was also getting a bit more annoying with people trying to infiltrate the campus to get a glimpse of me. I kept my head down and went to class and the library, and I studied as if my life depended on it. And it did.

  Then exam time came, and although I had never experienced something so intense, I was very prepared. No surprise, since I had spent none of my time socializing and all of it in the library.

  Then a crazy thing happened. I took an early-level pysch course and the exam was a multiple-choice one. My grade would not be debatable. There were three hundred kids in the course and out of all of them, only four got A’s. I was one of them.

  I saw each student checking the grades posted on the bulletin board. The students would each look at their grade and then slide down to look at my name. I thought this was understandable, but it was still enraging. But this time I didn’t mind, because they’d see my A.

  Maybe the professors were not playing favorites or giving me any kind of break. Maybe I had actually studied my ass off to get through it.

  After the class realized I’d earned such a good grade, people started to approach me more. Some kids asked me if I wanted to study with them, and others asked me to share my notes from class. I would have rewritten every page of notes if asked because I was so excited that people knew I was a serious student and not there expecting any special treatment. It was an academic icebreaker, and I took it.

  As the year went on, the scholastic aspect was picking up and my social life was smoothing out a bit. I was making friends and decided to join a theatre group called the Triangle Club. I was no longer crying and Mom no longer had to visit me every Wednesday. I still enjoyed going home on the weekends because my roommate situation had not improved and our dorm was depressing. I was hardly in my room and could not wait to get out. But I was making friends and I had a better living situation planned for the next year.

  I’d made it through the year. But at what cost? Mom very selflessly convinced me to stay at school instead of leave and go back home. Mom undoubtedly missed me, and her life lacked any focus.

  At this point her drinking had become worse than ever. I couldn’t do another intervention because she was too savvy. Addicts can see one coming miles away. In my opinion you get only one real impactful shot. I could no longer claim I would go live with my father, because I was already separated from her and she was, seemingly, in support of this separation. Mom still felt she did not have a problem with alcohol and claimed she could keep her drinking habits under control.

  I was gone, but she knew it needed to happen, no matter the personal cost to her. She missed me unbearably because the day I left for school, our dynamic basically changed forever. Of course this would be traumatic for both of us.

  But this was the first time that my mom put her pain and her deep fears aside to do the best thing for my future and me. She didn’t want to live alone, or with anybody except me. This was the ultimate sacrifice for her and the first time she actually chose to physically let go. I will forever be grateful she would not let me quit.

  “You’re not a quitter, my darling.”

  Nobody would ever have guessed that Mom would have the strength to sacrifice herself for my benefit. She was always fighting for me and protecting me, but I was attached to her at the hip. Up until now, I hadn’t wanted emancipation. But here I was, with the perfect opportunity to cut loose and rebel, and I was fighting it with all my might. We both profoundly knew that a shift was occurring, and neither one of us wanted to fully commit. It meant a breach of some kind. One we both never thought we’d see, but one we silently knew was inevitable. Yet without the change, we might not survive. (It would be just like Grey Gardens.) I would become Little Edie to her Big Edie, and although we would be tied to each other, our relationship would fester and love would turn to hate.

  I wanted my mommy but I trusted that the outcome would most likely be better for me. Mom let me go and she did so as her ultimate sacrifice. I believe that this was a beginning to her end in many ways. In her mind, she was losing me. Now she had no impetus to not drink. I suppressed the guilt that I was leaving her. Sometimes when drunk she would glare at me, call me an ingrate, and coldly claim that she knew I would eventually leave her all alone.

  I suspect she held the conviction that everybody she ever loved would leave her. Her fat
her and her first fiancé—and a baby, I believed—and my father all disappeared from her life in one way or another. Why would I be any different? To her it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  Chapter Eleven

  America’s Sweetheart

  During the years I was at Princeton, even though I worked very little, the press remained interested in everything from my class schedule to my romantic life. Ever since Pretty Baby I’d been the subject of all sorts of speculation—much of it unfair—and I don’t think my mom reacted to the press in a systematic way, especially in regard to my sexuality and potential romantic relationships. Did she try to actively change my image from Pretty Baby and Calvin Klein model to an America’s sweetheart saving her virginity until her wedding night? I don’t think so.

  The most poignant part of all was how disassociated I was with my own body. As a model, I was primarily a cover girl. I was labeled “The ’80s Look” by Time magazine. People said I had the most beautiful face in the world.

  Well, that seemed ridiculous to me. It didn’t register as true. “Most beautiful” was an arbitrary concept and I was afraid to buy into it. Because I shot cover after cover and never did runway, I simply avoided ever really thinking about my body and consequently my sexuality. I was a face first and I knew how to work that face according to the demand. I’d be shooting a cover for Vogue, and underneath the table I’d be wearing jeans and Top-Siders. I thought about my persona as existing only from the neck up. It was as if I was disconnected from my body from the neck down. So when I became the most celebrated virgin of our time it became even easier to not think about my body.

  All my life, I’d been terrified of physical contact with boys. Perhaps it was because of the closeness and easy affection I shared with my mother; I didn’t feel a void or a need for affection from boys.

  I believe my mom wanted me to stay a virgin for as long as possible. I think she wanted to keep me her baby. I have to be honest: I’m a mother myself now, and I get it. I look at my girls and want them to be my delicious babies forever. I want to create designer chastity belts! The thought of them losing their virginity makes me cringe. Even the thought of them not letting me kiss them on their little rosebud lips makes me cry. I also hope and pray that their first experience is about love and trust and that they are not at all traumatized but feel free and safe.

  When my mother did talk to me about sex growing up, it was brief and she didn’t have to play the bad guy. She was raising me Catholic and it was the church that preached the sanctity of virginity and waiting till marriage. She was just the messenger. I also was so genuinely naïve and was kept so protected by my mother—Rapunzel in the tower—that intimacy with anybody seemed out of the question. I just didn’t want to deal with any of it.

  On top of all of that, my mom said I had a responsibility to my fans, who often wrote letters to me about pressure from boys and asking how I dealt with it. I would get hundreds of letters a month and most of them asked for autographs and advice.

  Villard Books approached my mom and me and presented us the idea of my writing a book. Unlike The Brooke Book, which my mother had put together with a friend, the plan was that I’d take an active part in writing this second one. I had almost finished my first semester at Princeton and had become much more confident in my writing than I had been in high school. I was excited by the chance to tell the truth in my own words. The price was evidently right and Mom was happy with the contract.

  The book was supposed to be an honest account of being a young woman during her first year of being away from home and going away to college. I was, of course, a famous young woman attending Princeton University, which was far from typical, but the book would integrate several universal themes.

  I had taken many psychology courses by this time and felt I had a lot to say. I delved into the first chapter with excitement and clear self-awareness. The chapter was a heartfelt account of how scared and alone I felt my first semester away from my mom. I wrote about how strange it was being the only recognizable person on campus. It was humorous and vulnerable and focused on the complexities of trying to grow up.

  My mom read it and was proud. I even showed my writing to a professor and he said he was impressed by the writing and my candor. He thought it would be a good book for young people. I handed in the first chapter and an introduction and awaited editorial notes.

  To my dismay, the editor read it, trashed the whole chapter, and hired a ghostwriter. They said something about it being faster and easier for me . . . blah blah blah. My mom thought that because of my heavy workload at school, it might actually be more convenient for me to meet with the ghostwriter and have the questions and conversations recorded, rather than having me pen the whole book. I remember thinking that if they were not interested in publishing the book I wanted to write, then I’d just have to give up on the tone I was trying to create. I had committed to the book, so I did not have much choice other than to just follow along with the new plan. It didn’t occur to us to scrap the whole thing, because it was a job. We had a contract and it was money in the bank.

  According to my mom, it would keep my name out there while I was at school and on hiatus from Hollywood. I am sure she had never thought to include an out clause in the contract should we be disappointed with content. Mom would have been satisfied with anything because it was all about me. I never read the contract and I doubt Mom read the fine print. I had no agent to help draw up or review anything. That was the way most of our deals were handled. We only thought about if the job would be interesting, pay well, and keep me in people’s minds. It was a bonus if it fit into my school schedule. And that was about it.

  I began by meeting with the ghostwriter on the weekends. Mom always left us alone to do the taped sessions. She said it was important that it was in my words.

  When I started seeing the pages the ghostwriter was producing, I was appalled. All the deeper feelings and observations I made about this period of my life were overlooked. I hated the questions she was asking and kept trying to steer it all to a deeper level. The result, sadly, was a very silly book with short sentences about important things like the versatility of leg warmers. I gave up. I had bigger things with which to concern myself, such as surviving away from my mom and getting a degree.

  Mom seemed unfazed by the vapid direction the book was taking and seemed to have no problem with its content. She hired the amazing Robert Risko to do illustrations and went about helping the publisher gather permissions from various photographers who would be featured in the book. I could tell she was happy to have a project and one that revolved around her finest creation: me. She liked being busy and necessary. She also seemed thrilled with the wholesome image that was being created by the book, which portrayed me as a hardworking, responsible, chaste America’s sweetheart. I don’t think my mom ever wanted to face the deeper side of all of it. Photos of me in leg warmers and a unitard, taking readers through a series of leg lifts and jumping jacks or describing packing the perfect weekend wardrobe, did not bother my mother one bit. She was satisfied with creating and upholding the sweet, untouchable, yet “normal” teenager image on the pages of a book ironically titled On Your Own.

  One chapter of the book was dedicated to the idea of peer pressure and the subject of my virginity. I had agreed to divulge this truth because of a responsibility I felt to my female fans; I wanted to be a good role model. I admitted to being a virgin and expressed my plan to save myself for marriage.

  I felt no shame in admitting that I was still a virgin at age nineteen. I had previously spoken out about the evils of drugs and smoking. Talking about the value of waiting until marriage to lose one’s virginity didn’t seem like a big deal. I also did not think it was going to cause such controversy. But I cringe now at the thought of my being so open, because there really was nothing off-limits with regard to my personal life. Looking back, I think it was actually sad that there was so much access to my
life for press (and consequently the public). I mean, one of my orthodontist appointments was filmed! I guess it was all in attempts to paint me as a regular kid.

  I did want to help however I could, though, and when you read the outpouring of admiration and respect from kids who wrote to me, it was easy to want to uphold my image in their eyes. I basically wanted to tell my young women fans that they need not fall prey to peer pressures regarding anything including their sexuality. My mom said it was important to include this in the book so my fans wouldn’t feel alone. If Brooke Shields was a virgin, maybe it was OK for them to be as well.

  Mom always impressed on me to lead by example. It became a torch I would happily carry. Mom had not lived her life that way, and I believe she used her sexuality slightly desperately and as an attempt to feel loved and accepted. The hypocrisy of it all would not become evident till decades later.

  Here was my mother, an alcoholic who had lost a baby that she had conceived out of wedlock and had become an unmarried pregnant person a second time. Yet Mom was telling me to uphold the virtues of virginity and abstinence from all vices. I have recently wondered if it was all an attempt on my mom’s part to counteract the overly sexual image with which I had been associated in my younger years. Was Mom now trying to dictate how the public viewed me? I believed my mom wanted me to be universally adored and untouchable. It is hard enough just dealing with being a teenager, let alone bearing the burden of the fate of young women everywhere.

  In addition, because Mom and I had been so enmeshed, I wasn’t able to have any romantic feelings without making her somehow a part of them. I told her everything and was constantly seeking her approval. There was little room for anybody else.