Life Is Not a Fairy Tale (13 page)

The thing I love about Toya is that although my life started to change I didn’t have to pretend to be any way with her. She was just the truth all the time. She never pretended about nothin’. When she was broke, she would say it. When she had a new man, she told me about him, not worrying that I would take him. When she didn’t have a new man and needed one, she would say, “I am lookin’ for a man tonight.” She was just so
real
and that allowed me to be real, free, and myself with her. Toya always knew the real me and even though my circumstances have changed, she knows that ’Tasia is still in here no matter what. That is why Toya didn’t mind being her loud self backstage at Jay Leno’s show. Jay Leno doesn’t mean anything to her, and I love that about her, because just when I am thinkin’ “Jay Leno” means something, Toya reminds me that he is just a person with a job,
just like me.

Toya and I still have the same friendship we had before the madness of
Idol.
Toya has my back and I have hers. I never had a sister, and so she does all the things that a sister would do. Toya has been through some things similar to me, like dropping out of school, and she, too, is only twenty-one years old. When we are together now we can talk about God and her experience with church. Toya and I have laughed and cried together. Toya is my “dog.” She is so strong and I admire her. She has recently gone back to school.

I will never forget that during
Idol,
Toya called me and said, “Dang, dog, you are doing your thing on TV.” She wanted to tell me that because I was doin’ my thing, she was doing hers by goin’ back to school.

Although Toya can be ghetto and loud, she is very smart and her daughter Shnaya thinks she is the best mama ever. Being with Toya just keeps me knowing where I come from, without shame. I am proud of where I come from when I am with Toya. I salute her. We have grown
together,
not apart.

As you can see all of my friends except for my brother are women. I think that is true for most women. I guess it is still very hard for me to trust men. I think trust is hard for most of the women I have known in my life. Many of the people I know have not had good male role models in our lives or any decent romantic relationships, for that matter. Many of us have had our fathers abandon our families, and our mothers are full of hate toward the men who left them. If the men stayed around they were cheatin’ on their wives or not even marrying the mothers of their children at all. Seein’ all these things has trained many women to choose the wrong men, who always end up doin’ us wrong. It’s a bad cycle. It’s sad to say, but many of us don’t even know the difference between a good man and a bad one. We think that a good one is the one who can say the right things and looks the best. I have learned that words are cheap, and the things that men can say to us don’t mean anything without the actions that back them up. I keep trying to have a good relationship with men, and I now realize that trust is the main factor that is lacking in me and making my relationships hard.

But trusting people is the hardest thing to do because you never really know them until they have shown their feelings with their actions. Actions always speak louder than words. And actions still can never tell the whole story. That’s another reason that life is not a fairy tale. You just have to live it and trust in God to put you in the right place and the right time with the right person.

Honestly, this is one of the hardest lessons that I need to learn and I’m still workin’ on it. But I just keep tryin’ and everyone I meet who disappoints me just makes me stronger and able to see more clearly the next time. It’s not easy. As I told you, I fall in love easily—but I’m more choosy now, and that’s a good thing.

You just have to keep God’s love at the center of your heart. And if one person disappoints you, you have to keep lovin’ until you meet the person who doesn’t disappoint you. If you stay mad at all the people who have wronged you, you will not be able to open up your heart to someone new and receive what they have for you—which may be what you want. Women like us, who have been though a lot, truly deserve to get what we are looking for. We too need our props.

T
he highest props
for my success go out to my mother. Diane Barrino is my biggest role model. She is my angel. My mother is my guide and my friend. We are almost the same person. I can tell her anything and she doesn’t judge me. We never judge each other. We both have done it all, lost it all, found out what we were made of, and managed to change our lives. And we are both still standin’.

I come from a long line of strong women who have kept their heads up through a lot of adversity and hardship. My grandmother, Addie, was born on Christmas morning in 1941 in Bennettsville, South Carolina. Her mother, my great-grandmother, died from bronchial asthma at the age of thirty-two when Addie was only eight years old. She had told Addie that she was going to the doctor to see about her asthma and sinus infection and never came home. She died in the doctor’s office. Addie moved in with her aunt and uncle, who took good care of her and made sure she was raised right. My grandmother was raised in the church and got saved when she was fifteen years old while attending Oak Grove Mississippi Baptist Church. She also became the first victim of our “generational curse,” as my mother calls it, by having children too young, but at least Addie was married. My grandmother married my grandfather, Neil Washington, at nineteen years old and had her first child and namesake, Addie, at twenty.

Over the years, Addie had two more daughters, my mother, Diane, and Surayda, the youngest. But, my mother told me, like so many of the men in my history, Neil was an alcoholic and he was abusive throughout my grandparents’ marriage. Although Addie was going to church and doing all of her regular activities with a smile on her face, she was constantly covering up bruises, which were the result of Neil’s beatings. He would blacken her eyes right before prayer meetin’, so she had to go to church with a face full of crusty makeup, trying to hide her swollen eyes and busted lips. As scared as my grandmother was of Neil’s rages, she felt she needed to honor her marriage vows, which were made before God—she took her promise seriously. She also did not want to disappoint her beloved aunt who had raised her. But Neil’s abuse got worse—any little thing would set him off. If Addie didn’t make his dinner just right, or the house wasn’t just right when he came home, he would beat her. After a while, he didn’t need a reason, and he beat her in front of her girls. Addie was convinced that one of Neil’s punches would eventually kill her and leave her precious daughters with a man who might hurt them, too. But Addie never left him. It was Neil, not my grandmother, who finally broke the cycle of violence. After fourteen years of marriage, he asked Addie for a divorce with the soured smell of liquor on his breath.

Addie finally had the escape she had wanted but had been unwilling to bring on herself. God had intervened. Addie heard those words from her husband, “I want a divorce,” and realized that she could raise her daughters on her own. Addie decided to move with the girls to High Point, where she had family who could help her. She didn’t have a plan and she didn’t have much money, but she had a faith in God that was unshakable. And she knew that after living through fourteen years of hell, she and her girls would survive.

My grandmother had a dream for each of her daughters. My grandma says that my aunt Addie, the eldest, was “all business,” even as a young girl. Aunt Addie was on a mission to get out of High Point as soon as she could, and so she eventually attended the Wilma Boyd Career School in Pennsylvania. My grandmother was so proud because it is exactly what she wanted. Aunt Addie graduated, took a job in Dallas, and never looked back.

Aunt Surayda, the youngest, was also ambitious, and my grandmother had high hopes for her, too. Rayda wanted to get her certification and become a registered nurse. Unfortunately she never got the chance. Two weeks before the start of her first nursing job, a stranger came to Surayda’s house, calling out her boyfriend’s name. When she opened the door to say that he wasn’t there and she hadn’t heard from him in a while, the man opened fire and shot her in the neck. Surayda fell dead in front of her daughters, Kima and Kadijah, who screamed over their dead mother’s body. The murderer was never caught. My grandmother says, “I am still living with that.” She has never gotten over the death of her baby girl.

My grandmother had dreams for her middle daughter, too. She had hoped that my mother, Diane, would find happiness in her gift of music and arranged for her to interview at music schools and possibly earn a scholarship. Addie pushed Diane to focus on school, but Diane chose love, marriage, and having her own family. Mama’s love for Daddy and the birth of her first son, Rico, changed her mind about education and singing. It just wasn’t that important to her anymore. Addie still says Diane giving up her dreams devastated her, but she also says, “I did get Diane with the church.” To this day, my grandma says that my mama was the daughter who was always with her at church. Mama was always sensitive to the Spirit. That spiritual thread runs through all of the women in my family, but especially through my mother and me. I pray I can pass it on to Zion.

As my grandmother used to say about mothers like mine, “She makes a way out of no way.” And all those nights when we didn’t have enough to eat or enough electricity or enough heat, we always had a song in our hearts and a smile on our faces. That is because of the things that my mother was able to give us. Although my brothers love my mother to death, there is something mysterious and unseen that ties her and me together so tightly. It is more than love between us. It is not just the fact that we look so much alike. It is not the fact that we both love shoes and fashion. It is not that we love God above all else. It is that our souls are the
same.
We have had the same circumstances. We have made the same mistakes. We have both hurt our mothers and in some ways we are both trying to make up for it—my mother became a minister and I became the star that her mother wanted her to be.

Mama is my biggest role model. She is my guide and my friend. I can tell my mother anything and she doesn’t judge me. We never judge each other. We both have done some crazy things. We are standin’ proud because of how far we have come. But no matter how far I rise, my mother will always be my angel, looking out for me.

In fact, “I need an angel” is the name that is programmed into my cell phone instead of “Mama.” Every time Mama calls me, I am reminded of what I need most in my life: Diane Barrino.

I have never seen my mother do anything wrong. But that’s because I was born after she had turned her life around. The truth is my mother, like me, used to do
everything
wrong. She partied, she drank, and she smoked—just like me. Just like many young girls from the church who are told that all those things are so wrong. Don’t get me wrong, Grandma Addie tried to keep my mother in line, but she rebelled. She wanted to experience everything. We both did. When Diane said she was going to the park, she would usually wind up somewhere else that meant trouble. I guess that’s how Mama ended up seeing my daddy on those nights when they weren’t supervised. My mother fell in love with a boy from the church and got pregnant with a kid when she was just a kid herself. I did the same thing.

These mistakes that we both made are nothin’ to be proud of. But these experiences are the root of where we come from. The excitement of rebellion and the pain of irreversible mistakes are what have made us the women that we are today. And in spite of the embarrassment, pain, fear, and humiliation that we have both endured from the world, the church, and our men, we are still standing tall and that is what keeps our heads up.

In order to fully understand ’Tasia and how she has kept her head up, you have to understand Mama and who she is. I want to tell you about her because without understandin’ her, there is no understandin’ me.

My mother is a very caring woman. She is the most generous person I have ever met. Her kindness to others is the thing I think of most when I think of her. I believe that trait has been passed to me as well. When my brothers were growing up, there was always someone whose mother put their son out of the house. They put them out because of those teenage fits that young men go through. It was the usual High Point dramas: girls, pregnancies, not workin’, bein’ lazy, bein’ messy, drinkin’, smokin’, and not goin’ to school. They were all the things that my brothers were going through too, but they were never put out of our house. My mama would never do that. During a particularly terrible fight with Daddy, he had put her out of her own house, so she knew personally how it felt to be on the street. Grandma Addie used to tell Mama, “There’s nothing worse than not having a place to go.” Those boys, my brother’s friends, knew they could always come to our house even when there was no guarantee that
our
family would be eatin’ that night. My mother always told those boys that they could stay with us. She used to say, “You just lay down on that couch, take this blanket, and stay as long as you want.” Mama was just
carin’.

She passed that carin’ to my heart like a torch. Now, I’m like that, too. We both can’t help helpin’ people, in whichever way we can. So now, years later, I have helped my brothers with their child-support payments, I have bought Tiny a car, I have given my mother a car and started her first bank account. I can’t help wantin’ to help. If I could help everybody in the world, I would. Now, my mother sees me helpin’ everybody and she warns me by saying, “Fantasia, you’re just like me. You want to help everybody, but you can’t.” She is probably right, but I learned it from her. I guess I want to be somebody’s angel someday, too.

My mother is a true mother. We kids go to her with every need. It’s as if we think she is the smartest woman in the world. As her kids, we think that, but it is not true. My mother, like me, didn’t graduate from high school, yet we go to her with our health and our legal problems, our spiritual dilemmas, just everything. When I am sick on the road, I call and tell her that I’m sick. She says with her soothing voice, “I’m going to get out there to take care of you.” She books a flight for herself and Zion and comes to wherever I am. Knowing that they are on their way makes me feel better even before they arrive. She gives me her homemade remedies and I’m miraculously healed. I remember one time she came to my rescue when I thought I was losing my voice. She brought some tea and honey with lemon and whiskey. She called it a hot toddy. Mama rubbed my neck with Vick’s ointment and wrapped my neck and chest with white hotel towels, and then put me to sleep with her humming a tune in my ear. I was able to sing the next morning.

As a teen mother of three before she was twenty, my mother has provided me with wisdom that you can’t get in school or in books. She has taught me really important lessons that I take with me in everyday life. My mother’s values continue to sustain me. I hope to pass these valuable life lessons that began with my grandmother, were passed on to my mother, and given to me to pass on to Zion—I only hope it won’t take Zion so long to get it. And I hope that she won’t have to make all kinds of terrible mistakes to realize that she should listen to me.

Mama always said, Respect yourself and others. My mother always tells me that she tried to be the kind of woman who would avoid certain situations that made her appear to be anything less than a good mother. Mama tells me this is because of the kind of mother she had in Addie. She tells me now, “If I ever drank a beer, you would have never known. I carried myself in a respectful way, just like my Mama did and just like you should at all times.” She wanted us to always respect her. “I wanted y’all to be proud of me,” she still says with tears in her eyes, fearing that we don’t because of the mistakes she has made, like staying with Daddy after he cheated on and disrespected her. But I know now that she did the best that she knew how to do at the time.

Because my mother created such an image of who she was and still is, I use the same way of thinkin’ toward Zion. I never want her to be able to say to me that she saw me in a compromising position, disrespecting myself. I make sure of that, even though I’m in an industry where sex sells. I work extra hard to be someone that my baby can emulate and be proud of, so that she can be proud of who she is. I want to have the freedom to tell Zion when she gets to be thirteen years old, “You ain’t wearing that skirt.” And Zion won’t be able to look at me and say, “Why not? You were wearing it in that video you were doing.” That’s because her mama would have taught her to respect herself, just like my mama tried to teach me.

“Believe in God” was what my mother told me every single day of my life, because that was what her mama told her, but also because it was how she lived. My mother taught me from the womb about God. She taught me that God was something bigger than us and something bigger than the eye could see. My mom saw God in action when Aunt Surayda was killed and when Grandma Addie almost lost her mind from the grief of it all. Grandma Addie carried the loss of Surayda in her heart, mind, and body. My mother thought she would lose her mother, too. But Grandma Addie got through it by asking God to take the pain away. She asked Him to lift the pain—and He did. Within a few weeks Grandma Addie was able to carry on with her life and raise Aunt Surayda’s two daughters, who needed her. Mama saw God in action and that’s why she always told me to enlist God in my battles and He will make everything better. And I have seen it happen in my own life time and time again.

Mama also taught me how to pray. Prayer was instilled in me just like the principles of right and wrong. It was just something that we did,
often.
And I always remember that she would say, “Although, you don’t see the results right away, keep the faith. Faith will give you peace beyond understanding.” Mama said that God was the man who is behind the scenes to keep us going. After those initial talks about God, I still have Him with me behind the scenes, on the stage, and in my heart at all times. One of the things that I love about my mother is that she continues to be a prayin’ mom. I love that her prayers keep a shield over all her kids. But I never knew until I grew up how much praying to God Mama had to do to survive the many hardships her family had gone through. She prayed through her mother’s pain, then her own, and finally her children’s. She is always on her knees prayin’ for us. And I believe in my heart that God answers prayers.