“Everybody should look different,” he said. “Like their hair should be purple or electric blue or shocking pink.”
This was before shocking pink hair was popular, so I was into that and figured I could run interference if anyone objected. After a few months, these dancers were like my kids. They trusted me. The advance press was going well. Booking was a challenge, because he was going through a period of being very anti-agent, anti-promoter, anti-everybody. He did all this himself. He’d pick up the phone and say, “Yeah, I’d like to come and play at your place for a couple days next month.” Whoever was on the other end of that phone call was instantly falling all over themselves to pay him whatever he wanted to be paid and make sure he had the right brand of bottled water backstage.
He expected me to do the same thing and couldn’t understand why it didn’t really work that way for me. I was pretty good at a lot of things. By this time, I had experience directing music videos, editing, and being the company director. I was choreographer, stage coordinator, stage director, lighting—all that. But booking a company of forty dancers was a bit more complicated than booking myself at a Turkish restaurant. We had some choice words about it, but these arguments felt like Akhenaten and Nefertiti in a joint effort to rule the world, not like Mama and Daddy in a jealous rage. It felt like the soul exercise Prince wrote about in that letter so long ago. We were finally there.
Mama says she knew the minute she was pregnant with me because she was monitoring her temperature every day with a basal thermometer. My basal thermometer was a superfancy digital version of that, accurate to a millionth of a degree or something, so when it showed a slight shift three days in a row, I checked my calendar and realized I was late. I hopped in my pink BMW and dashed to the grocery store for a basketful of pregnancy tests. I went to my office at Paisley and held the first box between my hands, saying a prayer before I opened it. I took that one in the office, then went home to take the rest.
The little plus sign wasn’t as bright as it was the first time, but it was positively positive. Excitement and fear tangled up and tied a knot in my stomach. My hands were shaking when I called my husband and said, “Can you come home?”
“We’re rehearsing,” he said. “I’ll be there soon.”
“No. Come now.”
I sat on a kitchen chair, willing myself not to freak out, waiting for the sound of the big garage door and that distinctive jingling step in the hallway.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“I’m pregnant.”
Everything that I’d been feeling—excitement, fear, hope, caution—it all flashed through his eyes, before he took a deep breath and said, “You are?”
I held up the little stick, but he already had me tight in his arms, laughing for joy, kissing me, kissing my belly, shifting into Papa Bear mode.
“What are you going to do with the dance company?”
“Not dance.”
“Maybe we should cancel.”
“No, they’ve worked too hard for this,” I said, “and I want to stay busy so I don’t obsess on every little thing with—with everything. But I won’t dance. I’ll take it easy, I promise.”
“I’ll step up and help however I can.”
It was the end of August. My OB calculated the baby’s due date: May 10, 1998. Mother’s Day. Mama’s birthday. It felt like a good omen.
“Let’s not tell people right away,” I said. “Let’s get through the first trimester and make sure everything’s okay.”
All we had to do was make it to November 19, I told myself. Then we could breathe again. We could open the door to that big playroom at Paisley Park, turn on the lights, and give ourselves over to the sheer happiness.
He flew with me to the dance company’s opening night in Chicago. All the band members came, so I felt wonderfully loved and supported. And I was proud of what I’d created. During dress rehearsal, I felt a surge of pride and a capable yeah, I got this handle on life. The baby growing in my belly made me feel like a creative tour de force. One of the guys in the dance company came to me fussing about his wig, and in full-on Nefertiti mode, I said, “Wear the wig or go home. Don’t stress me out.”