by Mariah Carey
One day, she explained that it was time for me to meet her fabulous boyfriend, John, and the other girls she hung around, who she’d been telling stories to me about. John was tall, with green eyes, a large, fluffy Afro, and a strong charisma. Christine, a seventeen-year-old runaway white girl, an older woman named Denise—“older” meaning she was maybe twenty-eight—and my sister, then in her early twenties, all lived in a house together with John. I looked up to Christine; she had a worldly air about her, yet she also seemed like a little girl. Her pale skin was sprinkled with tan freckles, and she had medium-blond hair that fell softly to her shoulders, which were long and thin like the rest of her body. She could’ve been in a teen movie, but instead she was there, in that house. She was damaged.
John’s house was nicer, brighter, and cleaner than where I lived. They had a brand-new couch. There was a television, and I could watch whatever shows I wanted. They had all the snacks I could want. They had Juicy Juice. We couldn’t afford any of that at home. A couple of times my sister came to where I lived and filled the refrigerator with the stuff I liked. This was part of the confusion I felt about our relationship. It sometimes felt and looked like she cared, but her motives were always unclear. Was she being a nice big sister, or was she creating an appetite in me for what I knew I could have all the time at John’s house? It was manipulation masquerading as love.
My sister told me not to tell anyone I was going to the house where she lived with John, especially not my brother. She told me that my brother didn’t like him because John had beat him at backgammon. Being so young and naïve at the time, I believed their animosity was about a board game, not a prostitution and drug operation. So there was no one who knew, no one to protect me. Dysfunctional families are ideal prey for abusers, the exposed little ones vulnerable to being picked off. Now, of course, it’s clear to me that the fun house was a whorehouse. I think my sister was kind of like the hustler, the talent scout. But at the time, I had no idea; after all, I was only a twelve-year-old girl. Winning me over was so easy—literally like giving a kid candy, but instead of candy it was a hair rinse, a bra, and a Juicy Juice box.
John, my sister, and I would drive to the city together. I remember one time we were going somewhere, and the radio was playing a song he loved. He loudly screamed out the lyrics, while my sister and I giggled at his strangled singing. They let me smoke cigarettes in the backseat of the car. I felt cool and free.
We would go to IHOP to get pancakes. They took me to Adventureland and I played Pac-Man. In those moments, I almost felt like someone’s precious little sister. I was having all these fun adventures and thinking to myself, I finally know what it feels like to have a big sister who’s in my life for good. And I like this easy breezy guy, John. This was what I’d been missing. I was starting to feel something resembling stability, a sense that I had something that looked like a normal family and was moving toward somewhere I belonged.
But confusing and curious things quickly started happening.
* * *
The closer I got to my sister, the more clearly I could see her broken parts. She had secretly gotten me my own phone line, which only she called me on. She would have these desperate bouts of drug-induced hysteria and call me late at night, in the middle of an episode. I’d talk her down off the ledge, then try to go back to sleep, get up early in the morning, and complete the seventh grade. No one at school knew that frequently, just a few hours earlier, I had subdued my suicidal big sister. Killing herself became a common threat that she shared with me in the wee hours before I went to the school bus stop.
Then the calls stopped for a while. Finally, one day, Alison phoned and said she and John were coming to pick me up. I was excited to think of the three of us together again, riding, laughing, smoking, singing, and playing. But John showed up alone.
We began driving, but there was no radio blasting, no talking. It wasn’t fun at all, and I felt that something wasn’t right.
Finally I asked, “Where is my sister? When are we going to pick her up?”
John kept his eyes forward and assured me, “Oh, she’ll be here later.” I was sitting in the front seat, and I could clearly see the handgun resting against his thigh.
John, his gun, and I made two stops: a card game and a drive-in movie. There’s a look, a feel, and a smell to rooms where grown men play in the dark. It was dank and cluttered. The air was dense with cheap booze, stale menthol cigarette smoke, and unspoken perversions. There were no pretty things. It was hard for me to see and hard to breathe.
I don’t know exactly how many men there were; I don’t know how many guns, how much money, or how many vile thoughts were at the table—but I do know it was all men, and me. I sat in a corner on the sticky floor where I could see the door and held onto myself. I stayed still and kept my eyes down as the grown-man jokes, grown-man cussin’, grown-man hungers, grown-man fears, and grown-man fantasies flew above my head. Every now and then I’d catch a glimpse of one of them leering at me or hear a lewd reference to me in their conversation.
I don’t remember how I got from the card-room floor back into the front seat of his car. What I do remember is feeling dirty from the sticky floor and the men’s filthy words. I knew my sister was not coming to clean me up this time. A panic bubbled up in my throat. Where am I going? Why am I alone with my sister’s boyfriend? Why did he take me around those disgusting men? Why can’t we just go to IHOP? Where is my sister? Where is she? I began to pray.
Our next stop was the drive-in, where almost immediately John put his arm around me. My body went stiff. My eyes were fixed on his gun. John pushed in closer and forced a hard kiss on me. I was nauseous and scared; I felt immobilized. From the corner of my eye I noticed an elderly white man pull up and park next to us, peering directly into John’s car.
The look on the man’s face was a mix of revulsion and recognition. He clearly saw an adult man—John, with his round Afro—and a little girl, small with blond coils of hair. He saw the powder-blue car and John’s light-brown skin. He saw the details, and even if he didn’t detect my distress, he could see this was no place a little girl would ever want to be. John pulled out of the drive-in slowly and drove me home in silence.
I committed that man’s face to memory. He is still there, fresh and frozen in that terrible time. I believe he was a prayer in person.
After a couple of days back in my room, the phone began ringing again, but this time I wouldn’t pick it up. I resumed pretending I had a regular seventh-grade life. I wanted to be a child again. Sometimes all the kids in my neighborhood would play chase (tag) at night. Most of them lived in nice houses with two parents, and sisters who didn’t burden them with thoughts of suicide and set them up with pimps. I longed to blend in to a typical summer night in an everyday Long Island neighborhood, to play and clown around with other regular kids. I just wanted to outrun my drama through a game of chase.
We often played in an area not far from the beach that had a kind of roundabout. We would hang out at that spot and sometimes build a fire, make funny voices, and sing. One night we were deep in a group game of chase, kids scattered about running and weaving, when I saw a car coming down the road. I immediately recognized it as John’s car. It was creeping along, ever so slowly, as if the driver was looking for something or someone. Panicking, I instinctively ducked behind a house, pretending to hide from whoever was “it.” There was no way I could tell my friends that I was “it” to a pimp with a gun.
John eventually drove away. Though I had narrowly escaped him again, the fear of men followed me for a very long time. When I got home I unplugged the phone from the wall and disconnected from trusting my big sister forever.
I had nobody to tell what had happened. I couldn’t tell my mother. I didn’t have any real, close friends. I had never really fit in. Even if I did, how could I have explained it to a kid from a regular household who ate dinner at six o’clock, went to bed at nine thirty, and got in trouble when they didn’t br
ush their teeth? They’d never be able to understand. Big sisters are supposed to protect you—not pimp you out. So I didn’t tell or trust anybody.
* * *
But as a girl, you still want your big sister, and dandelions are still flowers when they first bloom.
One visit from my sister, among all the visits and memories, marked me the deepest.
We tried to have tea. Tea was a thing in my mother’s house, but it was anything but proper. There was no cheery, whistling kettle; we boiled the water in a small beat-up saucepan on an old stove in the tiny, flavorless, dingy, grime-colored kitchen. Matching cups and saucers were certainly nowhere to be found; we had mismatched cups and mugs, the kind found in the box marked “Free” at yard sales on Long Island. English breakfast was the staple tea flavor; we each had a cup with a steeping tea bag. I had a thick ceramic brown drip-glazed mug that was chipped at the lip. I was holding the steaming, fragrant black tea with both hands when the phone rang.
“Oh hello, Al,” we heard our mother answer. It was our father.
We were both a little shocked. My father rarely called my mother’s house, and if he did, it was almost always to scold us about something. Alison and I exchanged a quick glance—who had done what now? Suddenly my mother looked in my direction, and I could tell they were discussing me. I vigorously shook my head “no” and mimed refusal. Alison and I were just about to have tea, maybe even a rare light moment, and I knew I’d have to get serious when it came to talking with our father. And who knew what Alison might have done that I’d have to hear about.
But Mother didn’t cover for us. “Yes, she’s here; hold on,” she said, holding the phone out and shaking it at me. Whatever “normal sister moment” Alison and I were trying to create was totally blown. I straightened my face, got up begrudgingly, and took the phone. Then I shook it and stretched the cord over to Alison, gesturing for her to take it.
“Nooooo, you take it,” she said back. A silly back-and-forth commenced between us for a few moments—a game of who would take the burden of talking to Father. It was almost fun.
Finally I put the receiver to my ear. “Hi, Father. I’m fine,” I said, repressing the urge to let out a little giggle. As I went through the mechanical niceties of the conversation, my sister began gesturing wildly, shaking her head and slicing her hand across her throat, signaling for me not to let on that she was there. As I tried my best to carry on the conversation with our father, I made silly faces back at her, doing all I could not to break into laughter. My sister could be pretty theatrical, and in that moment I found her extra hilarious. I thought we were playing a game. Eventually I figured it was her turn to try and talk seriously to our father while I tried to make her laugh, so I said, “Guess what—Alison is here! Want to talk to her?” Laughingly, I motioned at her to take the phone.
But she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking down at her mug of still-steaming tea in her hand, and when she lifted her face, her eyes were rabid, without a trace of their former playfulness. Before I realized what was happening, she yelled “No!” and, in a flash, threw the boiling-hot tea on me.
The next thing I remember I was stripped down to my waist, and a doctor was removing the remaining bits of my white-and-turquoise diagonal-striped top, which was embedded into the flesh of my shoulder, with large tweezers. The doctor had had to slice off my shirt with an instrument, as some of the fibers had begun to fuse with my skin. (I fucking loved that top—one of the very few cute pieces I had, and now it was out of rotation, stuck to my back.)
My back was splattered with third-degree burns. I couldn’t recognize it as mine, as it turned different shades of maroon from the violent scalding I received at the hands of my sister. The horrific physical sensation had been so intense that I blacked out. Afterward, my back was numb and couldn’t be touched without causing me excruciating pain. It took years before I could accept a simple pat on the back, as most of my skin had to completely renew and repair itself.
The deepest injury, though, was from the emotional trauma. Feelings are not like skin; there are no fresh new cells coming to replace ruined ones. Those scars go unseen, unacknowledged, and unhealed. The truly irreversible damage to me came from the burn of my big sister, not the tea. Her arson was deliberate—she burned my back and my trust. Any faint hope I’d held up to that point of having a big sister became scorched earth.
I know my sister was deeply wounded. She is the most brilliant and broken person I have ever known. I may never understand what hurt her so badly that it made her hurt so many others in return, but to me, she was her own most permanently damaged victim. From my perspective she chose to take up permanent residence in “Victimland.” The promise of her life was squandered in a tragic series of cheap bargains rather than being redeemed through the difficult, lifelong work of recovery and rebuilding oneself.
Alison has burned me in many ways and more times than I can count. Over and over I have tried to be her fire department, financing treatments and paying for stays in premium rehabs. But even with substantial resources, there is no way to rescue someone who doesn’t realize they’re burning. The scars I carry from my sister are not just a reminder, they are lessons. They have taught me that perhaps our worlds are far too different to ever overlap, hers made of fire and mine of the light.
I always hoped and wished Alison would get better, so we could get better. I understand she was severely emotionally injured and had to take her enduring pain out on someone. She chose me. Through the years, both my sister and brother have put me on the chopping block, sold lies to any gossip rag or trashy website that would buy or listen. They have attacked me for decades. But when I was twelve years old, my sister drugged me with Valium, offered me a pinky nail full of cocaine, inflicted me with third-degree burns, and tried to sell me out to a pimp. Something in me was arrested by all that trauma. That is why I often say, “I’m eternally twelve.” I am still struggling through that time.
And I miss you, dandelion
And even love you
And I wish there was a way
For me to trust you
But it hurts me every time
I try to touch you
—“Petals”
DETANGLED AND SWEPT AWAY
In the photograph, bright rays of sun shine down on me like a spotlight, and the hot dog I’m holding has a big, happy bite taken out of it. My hair is a range of gold highlights, raw sienna, wheat blond, and sweet lemon, lit by the sun. Soft, thick waves of it are blowing in layers away from my face as a few ringlets sweep up off my shoulders. There is a tenderness in my gaze, cut slightly with seriousness at the edges of my eyes.
This photo is one of my favorites from my childhood. In it, I look like a typical first grader on summer break. I look like I belong to somebody who knows how to look after me. I appear well cared for. But I wasn’t.
My childhood was rife with neglect. There were many things about me that my mother didn’t understand how to nurture or maintain—but the most obvious, most symbolic, and most visible was my hair.
My hair was rooted to no one. No one did my hair. No one knew how. We didn’t have conditioner (or “cream rinse,” as it was called back in the day) at my mother’s house. There were no pomades, wide-toothed combs, or hard-bristled brushes. There was no Sunday ritual of getting my hair washed and braided; certainly, there was no greasing of the scalp. There was no order made in my hair. I never felt the tidiness or security of having my hair done.
As a result, my hair was often a matted, tangled mess. And no one around me could fully understand the particular humiliation of being a nonwhite little girl with unkempt hair. I didn’t have the language for it, but I carried the burden of how it felt. My neglected hair was a siren, signaling that I was different from all the little white girls—and from little Black girls too. My wild, mixed, and mangled curls made me feel inferior, unworthy of receiving proper attention.
There was no going to the salon, dahling. I don’t recall my mother ev
er going to a salon. She fully subscribed to that bohemian, no-fuss beauty philosophy of the 1950s and ’60s. For her, a full beat face was eyeliner—a little cat wing, if she was being extra fancy—a swish of mascara, a touch of blush, a lip, and voilà! Flawless face. Her hair was fabulous, either up or down. Even if she had believed in seeking professional grooming services, for her or me, we could never afford it. And besides, there were no salons in that part of Long Island that could comprehend the contradictions of my tendrils, the sheer complexities of the needs of my hair. At that time there weren’t mixed-texture professionals anywhere, really, nor were there any specialized products. I was living tangled in between an Afro Sheen and a Breck Girl world.
The two constant representations of female beauty I saw on a daily basis were my mother and TV commercials. I admired and deeply desired the dark, smooth perfection of my mother’s long, luxurious hair. The contrast between how my mother’s hair looked when she woke up in the morning and how mine did was profound. She would shake her head, and thick, straight hair would tumble down like a yard of heavy silk crepe, draping into an elegant pool across her shoulders. I, on the other hand, had smashed-down, fuzzy, sweaty clumps, exploding in a cacophony of knots, waves, and curls all over my head.
And then there was the hair I saw on TV, the magnificent, sunshine-filled, slow-motion-blowing-in-the-wind-while-running-barefoot-through-fields-of-flowers hair. I was enchanted by those commercials, especially the ones for Clairol Herbal Essence shampoo. It was as if Eve herself was in the Garden of Eden, bottling the thick, emerald-green nectar made of earthly delights of herbs and wildflowers. I was convinced this shampoo would give me the heavenly hair, blown by gusts of angels’ wings, that I saw in the commercial. I wanted that shampoo so bad. I wanted that angelic, blowing hair so bad. (Because of those commercials, Olivia Newton-John, and the Boss, Diana Ross, I still am obsessed with blowing hair, as evidenced by the wind machines employed in almost every photo shoot of me ever.)