by Mariah Carey
One evening I had been walking aimlessly down the hall in one of the many houses we lived in. As I passed my mother’s dark little bedroom, I casually wandered in. I can’t remember whether I saw or heard her first, but I know something carried me into that room. The bedroom was lit only by the washed-out colors of the old TV facing the bed, where my mother was lying in silhouette, watching a special about the life and death of Marilyn Monroe.
I softly pushed open the bedroom door, walking in on the iconic scene from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in which Marilyn sings “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen.
Her energy was like a fairy’s, but she looked like a goddess, swathed in a luxurious electric-pink silk gown and matching opera gloves, with diamonds of every size dripping from her ears and wrapped around her neck and wrists. The only bits of skin exposed were her face, her shoulders, and her arms down to the elbow, yet I remember her flesh seeming so rich and creamy, glistening like homemade ice cream. Her hair was just a few shades lighter, dazzling like finely spun gold. She was voluptuously shaped, with round, curvy hips, a small, cinched waist, proud, purposeful breasts, and arms that stretched wide and hugged close. She was poised, like a dancer, yet her feet didn’t seem to move. Instead scores of people danced around her: fawning and fanning, kneeling and bowing down to her, conveying her above their heads like Cleopatra. Maybe she was a queen, I thought. The shining queen of movie stars.
I’d never heard the name Marilyn Monroe before that moment. But I was quickly hooked. Not your typical third-grade fare, perhaps, but my childhood was anything but typical. My mother very lovingly supported my fascination with Marilyn. While most girls my age adorned their walls with pictures of Holly Hobbie—the frontier rag doll with freckles and blond yarn braids in a strawberry-print bonnet—I had a poster of Marilyn Monroe dressed as a sensuous showgirl, complete with a black beaded bustier, fishnets, and black patent-leather pumps. I gazed up at Marilyn before I went to sleep and first thing when I woke up.
Later my mother bought me Marilyn: A Biography, by Norman Mailer. Though I was way too young for the material, like Marilyn herself I read voraciously. I pored over the large, glossy photos of her, studying all her different moods and looks. She was a shape-shifter—in some photos she was impossibly beautiful and glamorous, in others she seemed shattered and about to disappear. Her hair shifted shapes, too: pin curls, pigtails, sweeping updos, bobs with deep-diving waves. I even detected unruly curls and familiar fuzz underneath the perfect, almost white-blond wave of her hair. There was also something in her physicality, something about her body type, that didn’t read as typically Caucasian to me. Not only was she curvy, she had a very particular sensuality, bordering on soulful.
I read a lot about Marilyn, conspiracy theories about her death and about her upbringing. The more I read, the more I connected with her and understood why I was drawn to her. She had a very difficult childhood, moving from one foster home to another. That was close to my story: being uprooted and unprotected, feeling like an outsider. I intimately understood her struggles with poverty and family. Ultimately, what I loved about Marilyn was her ability to come from nothing—to belong to no one—and evolve into a huge icon. I latched onto that. I believed in that.
I’ve heard Marilyn might’ve even been my mother’s inspiration for my name. The first four letters are the same: M-A-R-I. However, my father claimed that my name comes from the Black Maria/Mariah, the infamous police van used to haul people off to prison in the UK. The story also goes that I was named after a hit 1950s show tune, “They Call the Wind Maria,” from Paint Your Wagon, a Broadway show about the California Gold Rush. (Both references use the soft pronunciation, with the second syllable having a rye sound.) Perhaps it’s a combination of all three: a 1950s starlet, a show tune, and a paddy wagon.
Whatever the origin, when I was younger I didn’t like my name. No one else had it, and when you’re a kid that’s not cool. I always wished I had a regular name like Jennifer or Heather. There were no cute stickers, key chains, or mini license plates with my name on them. But the worst part was hardly anyone could pronounce it. I always dreaded seeing a substitute teacher, knowing roll call would be a Maria/Maya calamity. I wouldn’t meet another Mariah until I was about eighteen years old; she was a cool Black girl and we commiserated good-humoredly on the mispronunciations of our childhood. I had no way to imagine that only a few years after that, many people would be naming their children Mariah, after me.
Of all the supposed inspirations for my name, the Marilyn Monroe connection resonates the most with me—self-created and controlled, confident and vulnerable, womanly and childlike, glamorous and humble, adored and alone. Marilyn is a source of inspiration for me, and Lawd have I needed that.
* * *
When I was in the eighth grade, there was a pack of pretty, mostly Irish girls whom I desperately wanted to befriend. At that time, in that town, most of these girls were considered the pinnacle of physical perfection: milky skin, silky hair, and blue eyes. They used to have a chant: “Blue eyes rule!” These were not nice girls.
And I felt wholly inferior around them. Compared to them (and in the eighth grade, comparison is the only method of measurement) my skin was muddy, my hair was lawless. They called me Fozzie Bear (from the Muppets) because of my unruly hair, and try as I might, I could never flatten it all out to look like theirs, and my eyes were distinctly and undeniably unblue. (I liked my dark eyes, but I never stood up for myself during their weird chant.) Clearly I stood out from their group, but they let me hang with them. Maybe it was because I was the class clown, always quick to crack a joke or snap on somebody and make the whole group laugh. Even if I was only there as entertainment, I was happy to put on a show.
The girl in that clique who was my closest friend (and I use that word liberally) was also the prettiest. I guess now they’d call her a “frenemy.” I would tell her I was interested in a boy at school, and, knowing full well I never acted on any of my crushes, she and her big blue eyes would go after him and almost always score. I believe she did this just to push me down, to let me know she had all the power. But what she didn’t know was that I didn’t ever pursue boys because I wanted to avoid the inevitable humiliation once they learned that half of me was Black and all of me was poor. She also didn’t know that I didn’t want to get wrapped up in some stupid boy and derail my dreams or, worse, get pregnant like my sister. She didn’t know me at all. None of them did.
Some of the girls’ parents did know my mother, however. They had a modicum of respect for her because she was also Irish and a professional opera singer—and opera was classy. Adult drama works differently than that among teens, but they often intersect. Word got out that the Irish father of the prettiest girl was physically abusing her mother. My mother, who can get really righteous when she wants to, took it upon herself to write him a letter. In that letter I’m pretty sure she disclosed that she had been married to a Black man and that he was the father of her children (of course, I wouldn’t learn of the letter until much later).
As I said, these were not nice girls, but eventually I was invited to go with some of them, including the prettiest one, to Southampton for a sleepover. One of them had a rich aunt, Barbara, with a fancy house near the beach. Fancy-schmancy Southampton? A sleepover with the popular girls? Of course I wanted to go. We piled into one of their big cars and took the two-hour-long drive along the lovely Atlantic edge of Long Island to the small village where the wealthy “summer.” (Summer was a season for me, not a verb.)
The house was big, airy, and orderly. It even had an all-white room no one was allowed to enter. I was awestruck when we arrived, so busy comparing and craving that I hadn’t noticed that the girls had gathered into a cluster by a door.
They called over to me: “Come on, Mariah. Let’s go back here.”
Without question, I followed. They led me to what I thought would be a playroom or a den (I knew wealthy people
had dens). It was a smaller room in the rear of the house, a guest room perhaps. One of them shut the door with a click, and suddenly the mood grew heavy, fast. I thought maybe they’d snuck in some alcohol or something. But there was no excitement, no naughty, girly energy. Instead, all the girls were glaring at me. Suddenly, into the heavy silence, the sister of the prettiest girl spit out her ugly secret for all to hear:
“You’re a nigger!”
My head began to spin when I realized she was referring to me. Pointing at me. It was my secret, my shame. I was frozen.
The others quickly joined in. “You’re a nigger!” they all shrieked. All together, in unison, they chanted, “You’re a nigger!” over and over. I thought it would never end.
The venom and hate with which these girls spewed this new iteration of their usual chant was so strong, it quite literally lifted me out of my body. I had no idea how to handle what was going on. It was all of them against me. They had planned it. They fooled me into thinking they actually liked me. They lured me hours away from home. They isolated me. They trapped me. Then they betrayed me. I exploded into hysterical tears. I was disoriented and terrified, and I thought that maybe, if I held on and just kept crying, surely a grown-up would come and stop the assault. But no one came.
Eventually, I heard another voice whimpering among the mob.
“Why are you doing this?” the small, brave voice asked. It was the older blond one.
The ugly sister of the prettiest shot back, “Because she is a nigger.”
I don’t remember anything else about that day. I don’t remember the ride home. I don’t remember telling my mother when I got back. How do you tell your all-white mother that your all-white “friends” just dragged you into their big all-white house in all-white Southampton, past an untouchable all-white room, just to corner you and call you the dirtiest thing in their all-white world? Nigger.
I was also scared my mother might make a massive public scene and make navigating life at school even more difficult for me. I had no language or coping skills for any of it. It was certainly not the first time I had been degraded by my schoolmates. I’d been singled out on the school bus and spit on. I’d gotten into physical fights. Often, I would clap back; my tongue was sharp, and I could be a real wiseass. Sometimes I even started fights. But for this I had no defense. I was not only outnumbered and isolated, I was bitterly betrayed. This was not your garden-variety schoolyard mean-girl scuffle. It was a devious and violent premeditated assault by girls I called my friends. I never spoke of it. I stuffed it inside. I had to find a way to survive those girls, that town, my family, and my pain.
She smiles through a thousand tears
And harbors adolescent fears
She dreams of all
That she can never be
She wades in insecurity
And hides herself inside of me
Don’t say she takes it all for granted
I’m well aware of all I have
Don’t think that I am disenchanted
Please understand
It seems as though I’ve always been
Somebody outside looking in
Well here I am for all of them to bleed
But they can’t take my heart from me
And they can’t bring me to my knees
They’ll never know the real me
—“Looking In”
* * *
“Mariah only has three shirts and she puts them in rotation!”
The cruel words crashed into the buzzing bustle of the in-between-class traffic of my seventh-grade hallway like a stink bomb. All the pattering of feet, clanging of lockers, chirping of small talk, and little giggles morphed into one giant laughing monster made of kids, sitting in the middle of the hallway pointing at me. My stomach collapsed and my face burst into flames. I thought I might vomit right there on the tile floor.
Middle school is a contact sport, and I was pretty skillful with my own sharp tongue. A lot of kids have to suffer having mean or “funny” names given to them by their peers because of how they look or some embarrassing event, but being teased for being poor felt like a different kind of cruel.
I was severely injured, but I did not let it show. I didn’t get sick in front of everybody. I didn’t give anyone the satisfaction of seeing me weakened. I showed no emotion and waited patiently for the monster to melt away, as the traffic had to resume and kids had to get to their classes. I understood after that there would be no recovering and no trying to belong. I would survive on the outside with three shirts and no friends in hopes that I would inevitably move again.
In our middle-class community, I was extremely self-conscious of living with a shabby wardrobe in a small dilapidated house; however, by the time I entered high school, I had developed some new survival skills. At that age I didn’t have any control over where I lived, but I could do something about what I wore. One of the few advantages of moving so many times was that I got a fresh crop of kids to try to fit in with. One go-round I managed to scrounge together a few girlfriends and convince them we should have a fashion swapping system where we’d exchange our trendiest pieces with one another and coordinate them differently. This gave the illusion that I had a more expansive and up-to-date wardrobe than I could ever afford.
The coolest thing I owned was an oversized red wool and black leather varsity jacket with AVIREX in big letters emblazoned across the back. It was a big deal for me to have a name-brand item, so I made sure I had a signature piece that was adaptable to a variety of looks. I did my best to look the part of a typical cute suburban teen, to fit in with all the other Long Island girls.
* * *
By the time I was in the tenth grade I was “going out” with the biggest and scariest dude in town. He was six foot five and had biceps that were thicker than both of my thighs. He was in his early twenties, he had a car, and nobody messed with him. And that’s the main reason why I was with him. He was a protector, a force field. The previous boy I had gone out with was volatile; we even got into a physical altercation in front of a group of girls who stood around and watched. After we broke up he proceeded to stalk and harass me—a real charmer. Mr. Six Foot Five caught him verbally attacking me and proceeded to lift him up off the ground and toss him over five parked cars—pow! He actually was pretty cool beyond his brute strength. But high school can be treacherous, especially for an outsider like me, so having the toughest guy in town as my guy was good for that moment.
There was a crew of girls who were into a sixties tie-dyed Grateful Dead vibe that I never understood. It was the late eighties, and the street trends were so fresh, I really didn’t get what they were doing. Why were they harkening back to such a random retro look? Also, they were aggressive and hard, not hippies, Dead Heads, or peace lovers at all. Being the smart aleck I was, I named them the “Peace People.” Word got out that I was making fun of them, and they were pissed. Rumblings started circulating that I was going to get my ass kicked. But Mr. Six Foot Five was famous; everyone was afraid of him, so getting at me wasn’t that simple.
One morning after completing my routine of going to the Bagel Station to get a bagel with bacon and cheese and coffee, I was walking on the path to “the patio” to finish my coffee and smoke a Newport before homeroom. The patio was a large brick square outside the cafeteria of the school where kids would hang out, smoke, and posture. Several hundred yards before I reached it, suddenly a semicircle of about a dozen white girls closed in around me, and they were all hyped up to fight.
They were screaming at the same time, and the hardest girl of them all broke out from the pack and advanced toward me. I was freaked out but tried not to show how scared I was. The bagel in my stomach had turned into rocket fuel and was going off in my belly, and my head was spinning trying to devise something to say to defuse or derail the situation, because surely I was not going to fight. I may have had a tough exterior and a wiseass mouth, but I never wanted to actually fight anyone. I used my wits to s
urvive (plus I was the fastest runner in the school, except for one boy). The crowd had gotten close enough that the heat of their mob mentality was singeing the hairs on my arms. I had to say something, so I opened my mouth and just started yelling—I have no idea what. What I will never forget is seeing their bravado instantly wither into meekness while they slowly edged backward and quickly dispersed. For a quick instant I thought I had really told them off, but then I felt a powerful energy behind me. I turned around, and looking like a fly-girl teen version of a Black Panther protest, there was a big beautiful wall of every style, size, and shade of every Black girl I knew in school. “Oh, we got your back,” one of them said, and that was it.
There was no debate over “how Black” I was, or whether I “looked white”—those badass girls just let me know that when it got down to it, they were going to hold me down.
* * *
Years later, after the release of “Vision of Love,” I was all over the radio and on TV. My mother was still living on Long Island, and I asked her if we could drive by the house where the prettiest girl and her sisters lived. I stopped the car, got out, and just looked at the modest structure, a symbol of what I had survived. My mother, wrapped in a fur coat I’d given her, got out too. The father of the family (the one who beat the mother) came to the door and, in his dense, twangy Long Island accent, shouted, “Aw, look, Pat’s gone Hollywood!” The rest of the family filed out of the house. The prettiest one was stunned. She couldn’t believe it had happened.