It spoke so powerfully of how hard he was trying to find his way back to me, especially when he mixed an alternate version in which he sang, “My my my my Mayte tay tayyyyy, I’m the One.” The arrangement, a lavish background by the NPG Orchestra, is an intoxicating blend of jazz and Arabic vibe. I danced the lead with my husband and cast members of the NPG Dance Company as the women of the harem. The choreography felt natural and sensual, taking us back to everything that had brought us together in the beginning.
We created a story within a story: Dressed as a Charlie Chaplin hobo, he comes to the door of a shabby house where a girl (me) and her mother bicker. He sees her open a book that transports her to a harem where they dance with all the beautiful young odalisques. They try to distract him, but he always returns to the woman he loves, and by the end, we’re literally bound together. We return to the real world on the shabby front porch, and I open the door to find him standing there. In the colorful dream world that exists parallel to that gray place, The Prince puts his arms around The Princess, and they are one.
He gave me carte blanche to do this short film however I wanted, so I reached for the moon and got it: Rita Moreno was cast to play my mother. The first day on set, when I saw her in the flesh, every little Puerto Rican girl’s triple-threat dream, I had to go in the dressing room and sit with my head down for a minute. My husband came in to see if I was all right, and I said, “Do you know who that is?”
He laughed and said, “Breathe. Get it together, and go do it.”
I knew what I wanted, but I questioned myself. It meant a lot to have him show me such respect and approval, and to have Rita Moreno asking me for direction—I can’t even. Hyperventilation. She was alert to everything going on around her and willing to try anything. We went over the storyboard and discussed the scene where we’re arguing with each other, and she came up with some hilarious bits—blowing dust in my face and smudging my blouse with dirt—which had my husband in stitches. He laughed and listened and asked questions. Never once did he say, “Hey, you know what would be cool…” I couldn’t have asked for two actors I loved and looked up to more than these two. They both recognized how important this little film was to me and gave me everything I needed to make my vision a reality.
From the first rehearsals through the last cut of the editing process, I kept my hands around this piece. My husband came and went from the studio while I was working on it. He asked me to thread a secret message around the vignette scenes on the pages of the book, and he wanted the opening words of the story to be “In the beginning…” but beyond that, he left the whole thing up to me. He loved that I sensed the beats—of the music and of the eye—in a way he’d tried to explain to other editors without success.
“The One” is the truest work we created together. When you look at it, even if you don’t know the backstory, the love between us is tangible. There’s a shadow of sadness in the music, but the sensuality overwhelms it. There’s tension in the choreography, but it’s overcome by grace. I saw it as the story of us: two souls that drift apart and come together again, over and over, just like the story of “7.” In keeping with my belief in our eternal love, the video ends with a black screen that reads THE BEGINNING.
And for a while, it was.
Working together on “The One” brought the fresh surge of tenderness and connection I’d been longing for. We decided to buy a house in Spain. Something in Marbella, looking out over the sea. While he went out on tour again, I went to Spain and put wheels in motion. It felt like I looked at a hundred places, and finally, he circled one in a Realtor’s catalogue and told me to buy it. It was a big mansion on the coast, not a normal person’s house like our house in Minnesota. From the balcony, you could see the Rock of Gibraltar and the distant coast of North Africa. The plan was for me to go to Spain and buy this house after I did some media. I went on BET for the world premiere of “The One” in June 1998, but after that, I stuck around long enough to go on Vibe with my husband, Chaka Khan, and Larry.
My husband loved the details of the costuming in “The One,” including fine curls sculpted on my forehead instead of bangs. “You should do that for Vibe,” he said, so before we went on the show hosted by Sinbad, I had his hairdresser Kim carefully create them. She’s a true artist when it comes to curls.