But there have been other times—moments when God seems blind and everything in the universe feels hopelessly out of sync.
In the midst of the Purple Rain craze, my parents officially divorced, and Daddy was transferred to Wiesbaden Army Airfield (WAAF) in Germany. It was decided that Jan and I would move to Maryland with Mama. Her boyfriend had already moved there. They’d rented a big, lovely house.
“Your room is painted pink,” Mama told me. “You’ve always wanted a pink room, right?”
I felt more miserable every time she told us how great it would be. Daddy drove us to Maryland, where we joined Mama’s boyfriend—a white guy with white hair, which threw me for a loop somehow. When it was time for Daddy to leave, Jan and I stood there at the door with our arms tight around him, not wanting to let go. And Mama stood there with big tears rolling down her face. She was clearly every bit as distraught as we were.
“She loved him. He loved her,” I told Prince years later. “Why—why—was that not enough?”
He had no answer, but now I think back on that moment in Purple Rain, when The Kid’s father turns to his mother with reproachful tears in his eyes and says, “I would die for you.” He thinks it’s the ultimate sacrifice, but in truth, it’s living for someone that presents the far greater challenge.
I sat in my pink room in Maryland, not knowing what to do with myself. I was twelve years old, and I’d been dancing professionally for more than half my life. Now we were far away from the places that hired me on a regular basis, and even if Mama had scoped out the gigs, I didn’t have Daddy to drive me there and manage the sound and play the tablas and just… be Daddy. When my parents lived together, they fought like cats and dogs, but they’d done pretty well as a separate but equal team, going along on parallel tracks with Jan and me securely between them.
Mama didn’t have loud shouting matches with the white guy. If there was some disagreement between them, they’d go into the room they shared and shut the door. When Mama and Daddy argued, I’d be hunkered down in a corner eavesdropping, taking in every word, but I didn’t even want to know what Mama and her boyfriend were saying to each other in those low, intense voices. It seemed so unnatural. Mama is Puerto Rican to the tenth power. To me, she always embodied the vibrant, loud voice of that culture. I didn’t want her to tone that down for anyone.
Right away, Mama researched all the dance studios and companies in the area and decided I should take classes at the prestigious Washington School of Ballet (WSB), where Shirley MacLaine and Goldie Hawn had studied. Under the umbrella of the Washington Ballet, WSB accepted a limited number of students who were expected to work hard, be diligent about the barre, and serious about classical studies—all of which I craved. It was expensive and not terribly convenient—about ninety minutes away on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, DC—but Mama thought it was the best place for me. She took off work early so she could take me there three times a week.
Belly dancing has always been my thing, personally and professionally, but I was a ballerina first. Dance, for me, began with ballet class, and I’ve always stayed grounded in it. When I wasn’t at ballet, I stayed in my room, reading and dancing. My home situation was enormously depressing, and I got off the school bus one day to discover I’d gotten my first period. Awesome, right? I was already dragging through the most awkward school year of my life. Now I was in the throes of puberty as well, the only non-white kid in my class and the only girl in gym class who wasn’t allowed to wear makeup or shave her legs, no matter how I begged. I absorbed several weeks of taunting and teasing—“You could braid that hair on your legs” and that sort of thing—and then I decided to take matters into my own hands.
I’d seen Mama use Nair on her upper lip, so I crept into the bathroom one day after school, read the instructions on the back of the bottle, and slathered it on my legs. Within minutes, the guilt got to me, and I quickly got into the tub and rinsed it off. When the dark hair washed away with it, part of me celebrated. The rest of me withered at the thought of facing Mama with my smooth, smooth—oh, so wonderfully smooth!—but soon to be broken legs. By the time she got home from work, I’d developed a strategy: play for sympathy, and then try to get off on a technicality.