Life Is Not a Fairy Tale Read online

  On that day when I actually did try to get my driver’s license, the man looked at the mostly blank written test when I turned it in, and said, “Ma’am, go home andstudy. ” He didn’t know that I had never learned how to study.

  My fourth mistake was turning my back on God. When I needed God most, I completely gave up on Him. I was going through so many things and I felt like He wasn’t listening anymore. It wasn’t God’s fault. He was putting me through these trials and I was doing these things to myself. God could see that I needed to be woken up and brought back to Him. And this is the positive thing about making mistakes. If you do believe that God has a plan for you, while you are going through hard times, you can always know that His plan includes you learning the things that youneed to learn. Your pain is just God’s reminders and they getlouder and louder.

  God has successfully brought me back to Him and to my senses. But now, I worry that by tellin’ it all to the world, people might think badly of my parents. My parents did the best they could with what they had to work with. They taught us manners and the difference between right and wrong and to give our lives to God. Being raised in High Point was just a bad startin’ point, and so what happened happens to most families like ours: too many mouths to feed, too many children havin’ children, not enough money to feed them all, and a million dreams that never get off of Interstate 85.

  Some people would say that it’s a mistake to tell my story like I am. I can just hear the ladies from the church sayin’, “I can’t believe that girl put her business out in the street shamin’ her family like that.” I can just hear them! But what they don’t understand, or maybe they will someday, like the Bible says, is that “the truth shall set you free.” And by getting all of this out of my mind and having it stop weighing heavily on my heart, I can finally begin to mend all of my mistakes.

  Anyone who thinks that I should not be putting my business out should remember that it is just as hurtful to be the topic of a High Point porch conversation as it is to be on page 20 of atabloid with a made-up story about how I don’t speak to my father. What happens in every person’s life is private and up to the people who are livin’ it, not up to the people who are talkin’ about it to decide what is what. If anything, we should be there to help each other and prop each other up when we’re fallin’ down.

  Today, the only thing left to do after acknowledging my mistakes and learning from them is to move on. I have to move on for Zion. All young mothers have to move on and be the best mothers that we can be and not dwell on our mistakes. Our babies are a blessing. Truth is, our children are here now and they don’t want to live in the shadow of our mistakes. It’s our job to make life bright, finally.

  I want Zion to have all the things that I couldn’t have. I want her to love her own life. I want her to feel happiness all around her. I want her to have the vision of what she wants in her own head so she is not influenced by anything that she sees that someone else is doing. I want her to focus on God. I want her to be involved in sports because that will give her discipline. My main focus is her schoolin’. I want to see my baby graduate from high school and go to college. When I’m gone, I want to know that she can depend on herself, because she will be educated. Zion is smart.She can do it.

  I also want her to carry herself with respect. I don’t want her to make any of the mistakes that I made. Of course, all mothers want this! I want her to experience the things that I didn’t get to experience when I was younger. I don’t want her to learn these things when it’s too late. Not after the fact, like both my mother and I did.

  I want for Zion to be able to stand up for herself in relationships with men. I want Zion to be around good male role models. I want her to grow up around men who are married and love their kids and their wives. I want Zion to know how to pick a man for herself. My dream is that Zion will never let a man yell at her or put his hands on her. My dream is that the man in her life wouldn’t even think about that. In a relationship, I want Zion to look for a man who can be her friend and prayer partner. I hope that she meets a man who will never cheat on her. I don’t want her to accept a man cheating on her as normal like many women do, including my own mother.

  I wanted Zion to be able to say, “I didn’t see my mom go through abuse.” But she did, and now it’s up to me to paint a different picture in her mind. I want Zion to be a woman who demands respect. I want Zion to be a truly strong woman—not just look like one.

  I figure that the best way for Zion to learn all these things is for me to live them myself. I have made a lot of changes. I had to. I had to change the type of men that I was interested in. Now I’m working so hard on my career in music, I want a man who is also business oriented, someone who isserious. I look back and see a very different me and I can really see how much I have changed by how my idea of the man for me has changed. I used to be into guys who were thugs. I liked men with their pants hangin’ low and who were showin’ the bling-bling. I liked men who ran the streets all day, accomplishing nothin’ but seemin’ busy. That turned me on! Now I want an educated, righteous man. A man who looks good as well as a man who has respect for himself, for others, for me and my baby. I need someone who has some common sense and someone who prays when common sense is not enough. These days I want a man who works and who had a dad or a solid role model in his life who taught him how to treat a woman. That is what I really need in my life: someone who was raised right. Now, when I see some guy with his pants down to his ankles, all I can say is “Pull your pants up!”

  I’m trying my best to correct my mistakes. I have this incredible chance to change my life and I have my whole life ahead of me. I have started reading and writing at every opportunity I get. I have a lot of people who love and support me and understand why I might not know some things that they know. They even help to push me a little further. And every day, I feel my confidence grow just a little because I know a little more today than I knew yesterday. Now that is real news! I am trying to get my GED and my driver’s license. I am blessed to have my music give me so much, but as I work to write this book and tell my story, I know that my education just started.

  After all, I was raised right. I justchose to be wrong.

  MY MOMENT OF

  FAITH:WHAT I LEARNED

  “For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness: and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

  ROMANS10:10

  It’s always good to listen to somebody. Listen and learn. You don’t know everything even when you think you do. I should have listened to people who have been living much longer than me.

  I have learned that prayer does change things.

  I have learned to take my negatives and turn them into positives.

  I have learned that I can do anything I want if I put my mind to it.

  I have learned to let go of the negative; it is irrelevant to me right now. I am becoming a strong woman.

  I have learned how to be strong. I have learned not to care what people are sayin’, as long as I’m making a difference in my life. That’s all you have to do—try—to make a difference.

  4.Never

  GiveUp

  “Girl, you needto do somethingright for the first time.” My grandmother’s hard words lingered in my mind. She was right. I needed to get out of my haze, get back with God, and continue my search for my gift, whatever it was. The problem was, I didn’t even know how to begin or where to look. The time I spent being invisible, hiding behind self-pity, had become a bad habit. It was especially hard because most of my family was in some sort of a haze—either in a drug haze, a smoke haze, or just a plain depression haze. I have been surrounded by people growing up who have had their struggles with drugs and alcohol. Family photos always show the adults in my family with a bottle of beer in their hands or a cocktail, as my aunts used to call those mixes of juice and alcohol. When we kids would ask for a sip, my aunts would always say this is “adult juice.” Everyone’s eyes were red and they all had ci
garettes in their hands. When we would pose for pictures with our aunts and uncles, the smell of their hot alcoholic breath would burn our noses, making us want to grow up so we could smell just like them.

  Smoking was glamorous back then, and it was especially glamorous in the ghetto, where it seemed luxurious because you had topay for it, which meant you had some money. Smoking was a sign of maturity when I was comin’ up.

  Although I didn’t have a real plan for my life, I knew I wasn’t going there—or at least not that far. I had some dreams that I had not yet figured out how to accomplish, but I had dreams. My dreams came from watching the people on the television with their fancy new cars and their big houses. I knew that people who sang could have those things, and I was always amazed that my aunts and uncles who sang didn’t have those things.

  Yes, I had smoked a little, but not when I was pregnant and not often because of my voice. Everyone else around me sang and smoked, so I thought, by comparison, that I wasn’t that bad. B. started me drinking, and I did drink too much sometimes, but there are no pictures of me in those days. All my friends in the projects were always posin’ for pictures, showing all the “good times” we had. I never wanted to be in those pictures. I didn’t want that to be how I was remembered.

  A lot of people had been suggesting that I try out forAmerican Idol. They all kept saying it. My father’s sister, Aunt Sheryl, and J.B. were pushin’ it the most. Aunt Sheryl had called me and told me about Kelly Clarkson, saying, “There is a white girl who can reallysing ! And then there is a guy named Ruben who is fat but he’s really good, too!” It went on and on and on. Everyone was talking about this TV show that I had never seen. My aunt Sheryl sounded so excited, it was as if theseAmerican Idol victories were personal victories. Seeing all of those young people succeeding with music, I guess, reminded her of me and my big voice that was wastin’ away in High Point, North Carolina, only heard by churchgoers and wedding and funeral guests.

  Aunt Sheryl talked about all those singers like she knew them personally, and I didn’t even know what she was talkin’ about. I kept wonderin’, What is thisAmerican Idol?

  J.B. did more than talk about it. He came home with all the information about the competition, the upcoming auditions, and the seven cities they were going to that year. One of the cities was Atlanta, which was only four hours away. J.B. knew I could get to that one. Suddenly, this thing calledAmerican Idol seemed more possible than I thought. I was curious about it, since the only thing that was needed was that you sing, and that I could do, without any fear. For once, I could do something without any help from anyone.

  My family had never watched the show on television. All we knew was that my aunt Sheryl and J.B. had watched it and recommended it and we trusted them. So I went to my brother Rico and said, “Let’s go to this audition. I want you to take me.” Rico is a singer, too, and he plays bass and drums and he has a natural talent for arranging music. He has a great “ear,” as my father used to say. He has always been interested in auditioning for anything that would get him into the limelight and out of High Point, so he was the perfect driving companion.

  As always, we had no money between us, so my grandmother gave us money for gas and Daddy gave us eatin’ money. My mother offered to watch Zion while I was gone. My mother didn’t realize what it would mean, so she offered to take care of Zion without even thinking about it. Now she jokes with me that she never thought I would even get into the competition, so she thought she was only going to have Zion over that one weekend.

  A couple of weeks later, Rico and I were ready to head to Atlanta, Georgia. I walked around the house with a new sense of purpose.I was going to a singing competition. I was practicing my Aretha Franklin tone and my Patti LaBelle riffs and my Ella Fitzgerald scats and my own dance and church moves. My mother feared privately that I was setting myself up for a major disappointment, so she just walked around shaking her head gently.

  The drive to Atlanta was pleasant because with Rico and me, it’s always jokes. We make fun of each other, imitate each other, and sing songs from the radio together. Other times we just talk about our family and our kids. We would always laugh at the stories that our uncles and aunts told us about drinkin’ and all the crazy things they used to do. The whole family thought those stories were so funny, and so Rico and I told them again and again. It was harder to tell them without acting them out, but we did the best we could while driving and being confined in our seatbelts. Other times during the drive, I would tell Rico stories about Zion and the cute things she would say and the way she would hang around my neck because she never wanted to be away from me, even when I was just going to the store.

  When we arrived in Atlanta, we drove straight to the Georgia Dome. We were excited just to be a part of something so huge. The Dome seats seventy-five thousand people. All we knew about the Georgia Dome was that it’s where the Atlanta Falcons play football. When we arrived the first night at the Dome, I was shocked by how many people there were. Rico and I had no idea of the magnitude of this competition. They were auditioning seven thousand people in Atlanta that day alone. People had begun lining up two days before because they thought it was important to be the first in line. Most people don’t realize that Kelly Clarkson and I were both the last to audition in our cities. Being first means nothing at all.

  The way that the audition was set up was that everyone was sleeping on the floor of the Georgia Dome on the concourse level, waiting on their chance to sing.

  When we got to the building seven thousand people were singing, sleeping, talking on cell phones, and making sure that they looked good. There were beautiful black girls with long legs, big voices, and perfect teeth. There were handsome guys trying to be the next D’Angelo or Maxwell with their hair in braids and Afros and locks. They wore nice shirts and sunglasses to make them extra cool. There were gorgeous blondes, brunettes, and redheads. They had blue eyes, green eyes, and eyes that were dark as night. There were short girls, fat guys, even singing twins. I had never seen so many people in my life, and I could never have imagined that that many people thought they were singers. I was confident because those years singing’ in church choirs made me know that my voice was big and that people really loved to hear me sing. I was just overwhelmed that the world was so big and that so many people also thought that they could sing.

  The morning of the audition was spent getting people into the building and into the bleachers in the stadium. Once we were seated, there was a huge TV screen that showed the images taken by a giant camera scanning the audience from overhead, showing how large the crowd really was. There were a lot of production assistants, which I learned meant anyone who was associated with the show but did all kinds of things, from little jobs like getting coffee to big jobs like trying to control a crowd of seven thousand desperate singers.

  Someone on the production staff was giving us instructions and information about when the auditions would actually start and what to do in the meantime. The way that it was set up was that people could come and go as they pleased once they were checked in. There was a door on one side for entering the Dome and another door for leaving the Dome, in order to control the traffic flow and avoid the press. The production staff wanted to make sure that the press didn’t get any footage before the show aired. The production staff was also afraid that people who were told that they should go home, based on their audition, would then leave the stadium and try to come back in to audition again.

  It was February in Atlanta, and so it was actually warm outside and sunny enough that people wanted to go outside. On the official Web site ofAmerican Idol they had mentioned what we could bring and what we couldn’t. They suggested sleeping bags, folding chairs, and water. The Dome also had a menu especially for all the aspiring singers, like Rico and me, who only had enough money to get there. The two-dollar burger special and the one-dollar nachos special that they offered was all we could buy, and we were appreciative that they had anything on the menu that we cou
ld get.

  Rico had forgotten his identification, so I was the only one who could audition. I stayed with Rico for a minute after he realized that he had left his ID in his other pants. He was very upset but trying hard not to show it. Because I’m his sister and I know him so well, I knew that he was near tears, but don’t ever tell him that I told you that.

  I went up to the registration desk and received the number that would be my new name throughout the competition. I was hoping that I would make it far enough that they would use the number a lot. My number was 34572.

  There were three rounds of auditions to be held out on the enormous football field. Across the field there were about twelve tables with three judges at each table. There were three lines of singers in front of each table. The producer at each table was responsible for the initial selection. This selection process was just to narrow down the number of contestants. These producers are not musicians, they are TV people, so this initial round was just to create a group that would be ready for the executive producers to see. It looked like the other thing that these producers were doing was looking for talented singers as well as not-so-talented singers, but ones who would make good television. These auditions are the ones that you see on the outtakes of the audition process. It made me sad when I heard that they take some people just for the sake of making good TV, but then again, I’m not a producer and I have no idea what makes people watch a TV show. They must know what they are doing. With seven thousand people and only twelve hours, the first comments to the people auditioning were very brief.