The Meaning of Mariah Carey

by Mariah Carey

  Tragically, I wasn’t surprised Morgan had begun to try and screw a siphon hose into me right away, but what got me to my feet and blew my mind was that my mother was going along with it. She remained savagely quiet the entire time Morgan spewed out conspiracy theories about blackmail, exposing and humiliating both her daughters, and her son arranging to “fuck up” her husband for money. Was she really willing to agree to place all of her children in such grave emotional, spiritual (and possibly legal) peril? Or, equally terrible, was she in on a plot with Morgan to extort money from me? Maybe she was just rendered powerless under his spell.

  I was not prepared for the implications all this was having for me and for my position in this family and in this world. Under no circumstances could I ever, ever entertain being involved in physically harming anybody, even a despicable dickhead like her husband. I categorically refused to even entertain their sick scam. Yet what was really beating me down was that I knew that if I gave Morgan this first five thousand dollars, and if he did something violent or criminal, he would definitely blackmail me. This would be the first five thousand drips in a faucet he would use to drain money from me forever.

  How delusional of me to even entertain the notion my mother and brother were going to toast me for making my only dream come true. Instead they called me back to gut me. I was in a sad shock. I don’t recall exactly what I said, but I remember walking in tight circles, that sick feeling now in my heart and pounding up to my eyes, and I was shaking my head—“No, No” … and something unseen inside me snapped, and I broke away from that pack.

  I stumbled out of the shack, knowing, without a doubt, that I did not belong to any of them. My father was estranged. My sister burned and sold me out. And now there was no more brother and no more mother. Standing alone.

  Still bruised, still walk on eggshells

  Same frightened child, hide to protect myself

  (Can’t believe I still need to protect myself from you)

  But you can’t manipulate me like before

  Examine 1 John 4:4

  And I wish you well …

  —“I Wish You Well”

  So, by “normal” standards, a record label reaching out to family for help in communicating with an artist was not a risky move. But they did not know the bad, bad moves my family could make.

  You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them,

  Because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world

  1 John 4:4

  * * *

  To say I was on the edge by the time Morgan got to Tots’s would be generous. Exhausted and hungry, I was deprived of all care. Looking into my wild and weary eyes, he tempted me: “Hey, how about a nice trip up to Pat’s house?”

  Though I hadn’t ever had a nice trip to my mother’s house, in my shattered state, my brother made a convincing argument. Nobody, he contended, would dare to disturb me at my mother’s house. His voice was sugary sweet, and I was too drained to access my gut instincts. If I were at full capacity, I would’ve known my mother and her son were the last people I should be around when I was so vulnerable.

  Even if she cared for me, at that point, my mother knew nothing about me, and nothing about what I was currently going through. She had absolutely no idea of the burden and responsibility of being an artist who generates so much money and energy: To have so many people living off of you, counting on you, and pushing you to constantly work and work. To sing and smile, dress up and twirl, fly and write and work and work! She had no concept of the humiliation I was suffering from the ravenous media monster that was feeding off of me. She couldn’t imagine how wounded and hunted I felt. My mother never could acknowledge my fear. In fact, she often triggered it.

  But now, I was going to go back with them. Any house my mother was in never felt like a safe haven, especially if Morgan was present, yet I was far too fragile to resist. In my fogginess, it actually made sense to me to go upstate to the house I had bought her, the house I knew so well, where it was quiet and comfortable and there would be plenty of room for everyone. Stripped of my better instincts, I agreed to go. But if I was going, I decided, we all were going. Safety in numbers, I thought. So Morgan, Tots, and I went off on a ride upstate. Over the river and through the woods, to my mother’s house we go.

  CALAMITY AND DOG HAIR

  My mother wasn’t home yet from being in the city with the record-label delegation at the hotel, and I was relieved. It meant I wouldn’t run the risk of being provoked by her and Morgan together, and I especially didn’t want to use the little energy I had left to try and explain to her why I just needed sleep. Thankfully, I also had my girl Tots as a buffer. As we approached the house, I began to relax a bit. I thought, This is the house I purchased for my mother and my family to live in, to find comfort in. Now I was the one who needed it more than anything. I had designed a guest bedroom for anyone in the family who needed a place to stay, that I knew I could surely use now. I could already picture its inviting warmth in my head. All I wanted to do was get a little bit of food in my stomach, get upstairs, close the door, and go to sleep before my mother got home.

  As we walked in the house I was struggling to hide how wrecked I was, especially in front of my nephew Mike, who was still living there. He was just a kid and had already been through so much with his addicted mother. I wanted to spare him the traumatic history that was pulsing through me, through all of us. But I was also beginning to panic, realizing I was now isolated from the city and my actual home. I didn’t have my driver, I was with Morgan, and my mother would be coming back any minute. They could be poisonous and manipulative together. I felt myself swinging back and forth, out of the house and back to the shack. I was in their world now. The past and the present felt the same—unsafe.

  The house smelled of calamity and dog hair. I scanned the clutter and disarray. (I never liked the way my mother kept the house; that’s why I always had cleaning staff for her.) Like my father, I’ve always liked things really clean. Mess causes anxiety for me. I began to put things in order, an activity I commonly do to recenter myself. I thought if I could bring some order to the chaos in the house, even in a small way, that I could stay in my body. But I kept slipping.

  I’m not helpless, I told myself. This was the beautiful house that I had bought, created, and managed as an adult. I was not a little girl in a haphazard shack. I can bring order to this. But God, I was so tired. Maybe, I thought, by some loophole of time and space, we really were back in the shack. I needed to sleep. Desperately. And I was starved. My mind again began to race.

  I went to the kitchen to see if I could scrounge up a little morsel to eat. Typically, when visiting my mother, I would bring all the provisions needed, including disposable plates and cutlery, to ensure everyone would have enough to eat and with an easy cleanup. In the kitchen, I found the sink piled high with dirty dishes. I knew it would help to ground me if I focused on a simple task. Washing the dishes—that would work. I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna do the dishes, I thought. I’m going to eat off a clean plate, then I’m gonna go to sleep.

  Reaching to turn on the faucet, I suddenly remembered. Six days. I haven’t slept more than two hours in six days. My hands trembled as I tried to begin the task I’d set for myself. All I could hear was my heart slamming inside my chest. What am I doing? Washing the dishes. Right. After what seems like an eternity, I finally got one plate done and placed it in the rack. Next I picked up a sudsy bowl, but I felt it slip through my fingers and clatter to the floor. I tried again: I got one done. I dropped one. Now I had to clean up the dish and water on the floor. The sounds of running water, clanging dishes, and people talking swirled together. I was frantically trying to clean up everything and get out of sight before my mother got home. I bent down to get the dish off the floor, and the light went dim and the sounds started trailing off. All the space around me narrowed, and I started to fall away. I blacked out for a split second but was able to recover before I completel
y collapsed.

  I made it. The surges of anxiety were gone, but so was every drop of my energy and every ounce of my will. But hey, if I couldn’t go to sleep naturally, passing out would do just fine. With the help of Tots I stumbled up the stairs toward the guest room, picking up clumps of dog hair on the steps along the way (I was barely conscious, but my standards were still awake). I was an exhausted refugee, and I thought that refuge was exactly what I had found. I collapsed onto the cozy bed, surrendering to its softness. Everything quickly turned to a long-awaited dark, and I sank down into it. Finally, peace.

  “Mariah! What are you doing? They’re looking for you!” A booming, dramatic voice violently pulled me out of the pool of quiet in which I had been floating. Lost and sputtering, I was wrenched into consciousness to find my mother hovering over me. My own mother had woken me up from the first sleep I’d had in nearly a week! To make matters worse, she was waking me up to tell me that the record label was looking for me to get me back to work—as if, rather than being my mother and caretaker, she was some kind of agent for the machine that had repeatedly placed my earning potential over my well-being.

  That was the last straw. I really did leave my body. Something deep inside me rose quickly up and out of my throat; it was feral with seething rage.

  “Well, I did the best I could! ‘I did the best I could!’ That’s all you ever say!” I roared at her, imitating her exaggerated tones. It was a justification I’d heard from her, over and over again, for my entire life. After six days of being hunted down—six days of hiding, anxiety, and near demise; six days of no rest; six days of trauma—I had finally gotten to sleep in the house I’d bought, only to be awoken by my own mother. My mother, who had found so much rest for herself in that house I worked so hard for!

  I wasn’t expecting a hug or a kiss on the forehead, homemade chicken soup or baked cookies. I wasn’t expecting a warm bath. I wasn’t expecting a massage, hot tea, or a bedtime story. I wasn’t expecting any comforts a sick child might receive from a healthy mother. I knew my mother didn’t have the capacity for that kind of maternal response; after all, I was the one who took care of things. I took care of her, and everything else. I wasn’t expecting her to do anything to help me feel better, but I certainly wasn’t expecting her to wake me up! My rage took over. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t feel my body.

  As a survival response, I dipped into the depth of my sarcasm and made fun of her, viciously. Cutting to humor when faced with extreme stress or trauma had been a defense mechanism I developed as a child.

  “Well, I did the best I could! I did the best I could!” I imitated her mockingly, over and over. I was trying to wake her up, with her own words, to the cruel absurdity of the moment. I knew it was wrong, but every filter I might have had to stop me had been ripped away.

  I screeched, “I JUST WANT TO GO TO SLEEEEEP!” All my fears, all my resentment, all the years of impressions I’d done of her behind her back—all my anger was thrashing out with each word I hurled at her.

  “Well! I! Did! The! Best! I! Could!” I shouted.

  No one, and especially not my mother, had ever seen me in such a rage. Throughout my childhood, it was always Morgan and Alison who would throw hysterical fits. They would scream and yell and throw condiment bottles at each other. They would fight. They would shriek and threaten my mother or knock her out cold. My brother and father had fistfights. But now it was my turn to let it rip. I wasn’t violent or throwing obscenities, but I was still going off, for me.

  I was in an angry, hysterical frenzy, but I was still also thinking about my nephew Mike. I didn’t want to continue the sick cycle we’d all been through. I was standing in front of his door, putting my body between my mother, my tirade, and his innocence. Before we arrived, I had asked Tots to look after Mike; I trusted her because of the countless nieces and nephews she’d taken care of over the years. I never knew what could happen with my family, so she was behind the door comforting him. I was screaming, “This has to stop! We have to break the cycle!”

  All the fear and fury I had bottled inside myself was now directed at my mother. She was in the center of the cycle I was desperate to break. My mother was finally experiencing the full bloom of my anger and was ill equipped to understand it or deescalate it. She couldn’t even get the joke—on the contrary, she felt threatened and embarrassed by it. She shook off her bewilderment; then an iciness consumed her, and she shot me a look that said, Oh really? You dare mock me? You dare threaten me? You have no idea who you’re messing with.

  When my mother feels scared, her complete assurance in the historic evidence that whiteness will always be protected activates—and she often calls the cops. At various times, she’d called the cops on my brother, my sister, and even my sister’s children. My mother called the cops even when she didn’t necessarily feel threatened. One Christmas, I brought my family to Aspen. It was the first year after I left Sing Sing, and I decided I wanted to create my own ultimate Christmas tradition, so I took the whole Carey clan. For me, Christmas means family. I rented a house so I could decorate and have home-cooked meals and we could sing Christmas carols at the top of our lungs if we wanted to, and I put my family up in a fabulous hotel.

  At one point we were all hanging out together at the house, and Morgan proceeded to get spectacularly inebriated. When he disappeared for a bit, my mother turned directly to her usual dramatics.

  “Where’s Morgan?” she bellowed. “I can’t find Morgan!” Mind you, Morgan was a thirty-something grown man, but still my mother was in a self-induced panic. “I can’t find Morgan!” She called his hotel room repeatedly, but there was no answer. So, what did she do? She called the cops. My mother called the cops in Aspen, Colorado, to find my nonwhite, sometimes drug dealing, been-in-the-system, drunk-ass brother. The cops came to the hotel, and it was a whole big drama. She asked them to break down his hotel door, behind which it turned out Morgan was lying naked, butt up, passed out on the bed. The news spread like wildfire throughout the town, and that, ladies and gentlemen, was the last time Morgan and Cop Caller Mom were invited to spend Christmas with me in Aspen. I really don’t want a lot for Christmas. Particularly not the cops.

  And so, that night in Westchester, she called the cops on me too.

  The police arrived quickly, as they tend to do in white, affluent neighborhoods. My mother opened the door. I heard an officer ask, “Is there a problem, ma’am?”

  “Yes, we are having a problem,” she replied, welcoming the two white policemen into the house. I could tell they kind of recognized me, though I was still in quite a state and looked it. I had been passed out, asleep, for the first time in nearly a week. In a tumultuous emotional whirlwind, I had quickly put my hair into a bun. I had on leggings and a T-shirt (as one would, in one’s home, when one is trying to rest). I had somewhat pulled it together, because that’s what you do when there are police involved. But I didn’t have on my superstar mask, which is how almost everyone knows me (except for the Lambs, of course). Without all the wardrobe and glam, I did appear troubled, perhaps a little wild or unwell.

  Though the officers were technically in my house, their attention was directed toward my mother. She gave them an odd, knowing look, which felt like the equivalent of a secret-society handshake, some sort of white-woman-in-distress cop code. She had been defied, and I had dared to be belligerent. I was being aggressive toward her. I was scaring her. And they received her signal loud and clear. It was in their training. The code was in her culture. This was her world, her people, and her language. She had control. Even Mariah Carey couldn’t compete with a nameless white woman in distress. If I had been given just a day or two to rest, I would’ve woken up and been ready to make a video. But instead, here I was, standing in my mother’s (actually my) house with the cops.

  The most terrifying part was that I was too worn out to feel my source. The negative energy of my mother, Morgan, and the police—the whole scene—blocked my light. I need
ed to see Tots. She had a big God in her life too, and if I couldn’t access mine, I thought maybe I could feel hers. I believed she could somehow keep me safe in a sisterly, spiritual way. I was trying to hold strong to her, but she was also really scared of the cops. And could you blame her? It’s totally understandable. She was the only visibly 100 percent Black person in the house. After successfully keeping out of trouble with police for years in the Brownsville projects, how could she explain to her mother that she’d gotten arrested in an affluent suburb and was in some upstate jail? Lord knows what they would have done to her in there (this was way before #BlackLivesMatter and cell-phone activism, although even a movement hasn’t stopped most of the brutality). So Tots was trying her best to keep herself and Mike away from the turmoil and out of sight. Against two white cops and one white woman, in upper Westchester, Tots knew she was out-privileged and totally out-powered.

  Given his long, turbulent history with law enforcement, Morgan was lying low in the little den we called the “Irish room.” No one tried to explain to the police that it was just a family blowout—that everything was okay, and I was just overworked and had lost my temper. I needed care, not the cops. But no one defended me. The only thing the cops saw was a scared white woman in a big house full of nonwhite people.

  Betrayed, humiliated, and overwhelmed by reliving the neglect and trauma of my childhood, I let go. Not that I had any fight left in me, but I knew better than to fight with the police. I was done. Ironically, I was relieved that the police could take me away from this house of trauma and betrayal. My brother had lured me back into the same depths of dysfunction that he, my sister, and my mother had dwelled in when I was a child. My mother had stolen me from my sleep, then turned me over to the authorities. There was nothing left to do but surrender. I agreed to be removed from my own house by the police, with one simple request—that I be allowed to put on my shoes. My family might have taken my pride, my trust, and the last of my energy, but they weren’t going to get my dignity too.