Madonna (4 page)

“I was never a Girl Scout,” Madonna recalls, “but I was a Campfire Girl and a Brownie. Campfire Girls had a cooler uniform.” She was never good at being part of an organization, she further explains. “I'd camp out with the boys and get into trouble.”
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Of all the childhood memories that come to her, thoughts of her mother seem to come most often. “I remember her being a very forgiving, angelic person,” says Madonna of her mother. “I have a memory of my mother in the kitchen scrubbing the floor.”
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Madonna remembers that her parents were quite permissive, and, within certain parameters, they allowed their six kids to run rampant around the neighborhood. The family's house was on the outskirts of the urban center of Pontiac, and there were undeveloped lots and fields, with woods and trees to play in. Her parents angered a lot of the neighbors because they had so many undisciplined kids. Madonna's two unruly older brothers would play with fire and break things around the house. They would never be fiercely punished, only spoken to mildly about their behavior.

“When I was a little girl, I wished I was black. All my girlfriends were black,” says Madonna of the integrated neighborhood that her family lived in.
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She views it as a positive growing experience. She was fascinated with the braided hairstyles her black girlfriends had, and she fell in love with the rhythm and blues and soul music that they would listen to together on the radio.

As time progressed, Madonna made several unsuccessful attempts to make her own hair stick up in tight braids. She also found herself jealous of her neighborhood girlfriends' more lenient upbringing. They were allowed to bring their portable record players outside and play music until late in the evening. Madonna's free time was far more structured.

When Tony Ciccone came home from work, it was time for the kids to come in for dinner and to do their chores and/or homework. Madonna used to envy the neighborhood girls whose parents let them stay out late playing in their yards while Madonna and her sisters and brothers were corralled in the house.

Madonna was especially jealous of the fact that the neighborhood girls didn't have the structured life of a strict Catholic upbringing. “I envied them. They didn't have any rules,” Madonna still recalls.
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With her strong sense of independence, and the fact that she is as aggressive as any of the men she regularly competes with in show business today, one would think that Madonna must have been quite an unfeminine hellion as a child. However, she was quite the opposite. Her sister Paula was really considered the tomboy of the family, while she was more the “sissy.” In fact, Madonna used her feminine wiles to get what she wanted.

Instead of being the type of child who was always getting away with something and trying to hide it from her parents, she was the clan's primary stool pigeon. She had her father wrapped around her finger, she confesses. Whenever her brothers would skip school or do anything else they weren't supposed to, little Nonnie would “rat” on them. Of course—as in all sibling fights—her brothers extracted their own revenge. They would all pick on her, and she in turn tattled on them to their father. “Or,” she recalls, “they'd pin me down on the ground and spit in my mouth. All brothers do that, don't they?”
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By all accounts—in spite of Tony Ciccone's efforts—Madonna was spoiled rotten, and that's basically how she's always been. As the first girl in the family, she was fawned over at an early age and treated special. To this day, if she doesn't have everyone's attention, she simply does or says something to be noticed.

“I wasn't quiet at all,” she admits. “I remember always being told to shut up everywhere: at home, at school.”
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For her, mouthing off has always come naturally.

Tony and his wife were pretty strict about what their six children could and could not do. Television and candy were two of the things on the “limited access” list. Since candy was very rarely found in the Ciccone household, when Madonna grew up and left the house, she indulged in all sorts of junk food to make up for the lack of sugar in her childhood diet—especially since it was at one time forbidden to her. Forbidden things only make her want them more zealously.

Although she didn't get to watch very much television while she was growing up—her father didn't approve of it—she did watch lots of old movies and recalls fantasizing about the glamorous images she saw up on the screen. Show business was a realm she had yet to encompass as a pre-teenage girl growing up in the industrial Pontiac area.

“The only remotely entertainment-oriented dream I ever had,” she says, “was one where I dreamed I kissed Robert Redford.”
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At the time, she was in the sixth grade, and the dream has yet to come true.

When she was allowed to watch TV, it was either Saturday morning cartoons or other harmless teenage fare like “The Partridge Family” or “The Monkees.” When she was in junior high school, she would sneak over to girlfriends' houses to catch episodes of “Dark Shadows” on the sly.

“I used to try to copy Shirley Temple when I was a little girl,” she says, remembering still another cinematically inspired image.
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She would turn on the family record player and dance in the basement. Sometimes she danced alone, other times she would give dance lessons to her girlfriends.

According to Madonna, it was her mother who first introduced her to dance. “She taught me my love of dancing,” says Madonna. “I learned by watching her dance to Chubby Checker records.”
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Reaching the ripe old age of five meant that it was time for Madonna to start attending school. Instead of going to the local public schools like the rest of the kids in the neighborhood, the Ciccone children were bused to the local Catholic schools. Nuns, identical school uniforms, and mysterious religious imagery suddenly became a dominant influence.

At first Madonna was fascinated by the serene beauty of the nuns. At one point during her childhood, she actually considered becoming a nun when she grew up. But it wasn't long before she grew to resent the regimentation that Catholic school presented. Rationalizing, she explains, “The reason I'm not a nun is because you can't take your own name. How could I change my name? I have the most holy name a woman can have.”
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“I went to three Catholic schools as a child, with uniforms, and nuns hitting you over the back with staplers,” Madonna was later to reminisce with a certain lack of reverence.
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The three parochial schools that she attended in the Pontiac area were St. Andrew's, St. Frederick's, and Sacred Heart Academy.

With six kids in the family, Tony Ciccone made certain that his children didn't have a lot of unstructured time on their hands in which to get into trouble. Madonna explains, “My father was a real disciplinarian, very strict, and you'd get up every morning and go to church before you go to school. You'd wear a uniform and, when we'd get home from school, we'd change our clothes and do our chores. We did our homework.”
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After dinner the Ciccone children weren't allowed to watch TV. Their lives were regimented until they were older. Their father was a hard worker who frowned on his children having idle time. If they didn't have schoolwork to do, he found projects for them around the house.

As Madonna grew older, her relationship with him was often strained. “My father was very strong,” she says in retrospect. “I don't agree with some of his values, but he did have integrity, and if he told us not to do something he didn't do it either.”
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A lot of parents who tell their children not to smoke cigarettes actually smoke cigarettes themselves. Madonna's father also had strong beliefs about sex. He believed that making love was a sacred thing reserved for marriage.

Instead of immediately rebelling, Madonna learned to work around her father's authority. “I was my father's favorite,” she insists, “I knew how to wrap him around my finger.”
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In school, Madonna was a very good student who got all A's on her report cards. Her father would reward his children for good grades. He gave them quarters for every A. This family ploy of being paid for the best grades trained Madonna to become competitive at an early age. If she wanted special privileges, she would simply employ some special talent or accomplish some task more proficiently than anyone else. If she failed to win a competition, she was never entirely defeated—she simply pushed herself harder the next time around.

All of the kids in the neighborhood recall that Madonna's mother always had a smile on her face. In spite of the fact that she had six kids of her own running through the house like a band of hellions, she always welcomed her children's friends in the house as well.

“If you wanted to send a few more kids over to her house it was always okay,” remembers family friend and neighbor Patrick Mc-Farland.
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His daughter, Moira, was one of Madonna's playmates and a frequent visitor to the Ciccone menage.

Madonna pioneered new ways to get noticed on the school playground: “We had to wear uniforms to school, so I would put bright panty bloomers underneath and hang upside down on the monkey bars at recess.”
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From an early age she took a cue from Shakespeare's
As You Like It
and made all the world her stage.

Most people who were raised Catholic will agree that Catholicism is based as much in authority and fear as it is in adherence in the Ten Commandments. The double standards that it imposes are quite inconsistent, and Madonna was quick to realize that there were going to be some severe differences of opinion between her, the nuns, the church, and her father.

“So often I would be confused about who I was worshiping, God or my father,” she says in her typically haughty fashion. “Then, as I got older, I hated the idea that I had to go to church all the time.”
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In addition, she found the Catholic Church to be extremely sexist in its edicts. Her Barbie doll rewrote all the rules to fit her needs—why shouldn't Madonna perform the same task? “I also remember being really annoyed that I couldn't wear pants to school or church,” she says. “My brothers could, and that seemed to me all locked up with the religion.” When she questioned her father, his answer was always, “Because I said so.”
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As an adult she would look back on Catholicism with some disdain: “You know how religion is,” she ponders, “guys get to do everything. They get to be altar boys. They get to stay out late. Take their shirts off in the summer. They get to pee standing up. They get to fuck a lot of girls and not worry about getting pregnant. Although that doesn't have anything to do with being religious.”
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She did, however, glean some positive lessons from the church. It taught her the importance of family, which is something deeply ingrained in her. “I was also raised to believe that when you marry someone, you marry him for life.”
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When she was five years old, something tragic occurred in Madonna's young life: her beautiful mother died. The tragedy left an emotional scar on the young girl, which she is still struggling to deal with as an adult.

“I knew she was sick for a long time with breast cancer,” recalls Madonna.
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As the disease progressed, her mother grew very weak, but she continued to do the things she had to do. Because she was so fragile she would often stop during the day to rest. Madonna was disappointed she couldn't play with her like before.

Throughout the ordeal Madonna's mother tried to keep her feelings inside and not alarm her children. Despite constant pain, she never complained. One day when she was sitting on the couch, Madonna remembers climbing on her back and demanding, “Play with me, play with me,” but her mother couldn't, and she started to cry. Madonna remembers pounding on her back with her fist, not understanding what was going on. Then she realized her mother was crying. “I stopped tormenting her after that. That was the turning point when I knew. I think that made me grow up fast.”
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In retrospect, Madonna realized how much strength her mother had. “I don't think she ever allowed herself to wallow in the tragedy of her situation. So in that respect I think she gave me an incredible lesson.”
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When things took a turn for the worse, Madonna's mother spent several months in the hospital. It was devastating for Madonna and her siblings to watch this happen to their mother, and it was also very disturbing to watch their father live through the anguish as well. Says Madonna, “It is awful to see your father cry. But he was very strong about it.”
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He would take his children to the hospital to visit their mother. She was often cracking jokes, which made the visits easier.

Her mother died on December 1, 1963. Madonna remembers that right before she died one of her last requests was for a hamburger. This struck Madonna as funny. After her mother died, everything changed; the family was often split up and the kids had to go stay with relatives.

“Once you get hurt really bad when you're young, nothing can hurt you again,” says Madonna.
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Witnessing the slow death of her mother left a profound mark on the girl's life. That period when Madonna realized that her mother wasn't fulfilling her role has a lot to do with her current zest for life. “It left me with an intense longing to fill a sort of emptiness,” she confesses.
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Uncontrollably, her innocent world of Barbie dolls and Shirley Temple dance lessons was shattered by the reality of death and loss. For the first time in her life she had to look death in the eye and try to comprehend it. “I think the church pretty much stays with you,” she says contemplatively. “Whatever was drilled into you when you were growing up, whatever your picture of God was, I think you die with that image in your head.”
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