Matriarch: Oprah's Book Club: A Memoir

by Tina Knowles

This, I knew, was how people died with undercurrents. You don’t drown close to shore, you drowned way out here with the surge popping you out far, the water so rough that you can’t move. This was how that boy died.

Wow

I looked up at the summer sky, darkening. There was a storm coming. I was twenty-one years old and I was sure that was the last time I would see that disappearing blue sky.

I hoped they’d find the body. I was that far gone. My body, I corrected myself. This was happening to me.

Rusty and I were bonded by that experience. We tried dating for a minute, maybe two weeks that summer, but settled into friendship.

Meanwhile, Rusty, who also moved to Houston, would keep telling his friends about this girl from Galveston. His friend from Fisk University, Mathew Knowles, was living in Houston, too, and he and some ex-roommates were hosting a house party.

I heard a man’s voice behind me, right at my ear. “Don’t put your fingerprints on my records.” I threw up my hands, offended by his tone. “Don’t nobody care about your records,” I said. “I don’t wanna touch nothing you have.” And that was how I met Mathew Knowles.

He called economics “econ” and I nodded like, sure. When he said he was in sales, I thought that made perfect sense. I had just gotten his elevator pitch.

“How old are you?” “I just turned twenty-four.” “I’m twenty-six,” he volunteered when I did not ask.

“Can I get your number?” I smiled politely but didn’t answer because I pretended to be distracted by something out the window.

“What’s your name?” he asked. “Beyoncé,” I told him, not giving him my first name. “B. Ounce?” he asked. “Like an ounce of weed?” I could not believe this conversation. I looked o...

Mathew picked me up later in his Mercedes, all shiny. “This is really a pretty car,” I said on the drive to make small talk. “Yeah, but it’s a piece of shit,” he said idly.

Selena took a puff on her cigarette, rolling the smoke along with her eyes.

“Girl! He’s gon’ come back and kill us! We gotta get outta here.” “He wouldn’t kill me.” Just like that. I thought, Well, gee, she didn’t mention me, did she?

“I’m getting out of here,” I said, already packing but suddenly trying to be polite. “Thank you for letting me stay here, Pat. I really do appreciate it.”

“You know, I gotta live my own life,” I confided to Johnny. “I’m gonna get married.” He sneered at my hand, “Okay well, that diamond must be small ’cause, uh…” He leaned in closer to look at my invisible ring and I lightly mushed my hand to his face. “Now where is that rock?”

“Tenie, just do it,” she said. I didn’t realize how important that moment would be to her, the completed circle of her oldest son walking her youngest girl down the aisle.

Mathew was brilliant and successful, but this feeling he gave me wasn’t about the money. He could have made a fraction of what he did, and I would still feel protected.

She tried to dress herself up for it, but I had to help her because she was so sick. But it was gratifying for us to see her do something for the sake of joy rather than only continued existence.

I was so proud of him and his ability to manifest.

When my mother did talk, it was not to us, but to someone we could not see. “God, just give me a little more time,” she repeated over and over, all day and all night. “Lord, have mercy. Give me a little more time.”

“I came because your mama wouldn’t have died with you looking at her,” Miss Camilla told me. “It was time. I wanted to be here with her holding her hand through that transition. You had to let her go.”

Mama had joined her mother, and her mother’s mother. She was now with all the mothers. The ones she could name under the pecan tree, and the ones who came before them. All of them watching over us.

I started the new year feeling nauseous. Not only in the morning, but all day. I missed my period and just knew. The doctor confirmed what was already sure in my heart: I was pregnant.

Mathew got me situated there like he was parking a boat,

“Ain’t nobody ever heard of Beyoncé, so this child will be original.”

There was a moment when a nurse left the room to check on something, and I was alone. My mom should be here to hold my hand, I thought. To greet this child and welcome them.

I lay my left hand beside me and tried to imagine my mama’s hand soft in mine, strong as it was when I was a child. When I felt nothing, the sadness was so huge I quickly backed away from it, shaking my head and placing my hand on my stomach.

Beyoncé Giselle Knowles was born at 9:04 in the evening, eight pounds, seven ounces.

On the beach, I took a piece of driftwood, drawing our names in the sand and including our new baby, Mathew + Tina + Beyoncé. I asked Mathew to take a picture of me with it, wanting to save the memory before it was washed away.

“Just don’t sleepwalk through your life, Tenie.” Johnny had an expressway from his mind to his mouth.

I got to know the other patients, and I would be devastated each time I realized another person had not come for treatment.

“I love you,” I said, kissing his cheek. “You ain’t going nowhere.” He nodded but seemed so sad. It was only later that I realized my daddy, who had spent my life bobbing and weaving from affection, had let me smooth his hair and kiss his cheek.

It would be a lesson I would return to again and again in my own life, mothering children born to other mothers. It’s not taking someone’s place, it’s sharing that love, and all the burdens and joys that come with it.

“Brought yourself here,” my father would tell me. And I still wish I had.

But this is what married people did, I told myself. My parents stayed together through everything.

Then I saw her. It was the saddest sight: Beyoncé was alone at the swing set, pushing an empty swing.

LMFAOOOOO

I said, “You know, I think that girl over there is looking for someone to play with. She’d push you on the swing.” She looked over quick, then right at me with the clarity that preschoolers have. “I don’t like her.” “Well, her name’s Beyoncé and she’s really nice,” I said. “No one likes her,” said the girl. Just like that.

“Beyoncé,” I said. She blinked at me, coming out of some spell, then stopped pushing the swing. She put her hands behind her back in embarrassment. “Mama” was all she said. “I know,” I said, reaching for her hand. I withdrew from beauty school that same day. We were not ready for this.

Then our tour left for Greece, where we accidentally visited a nude beach on Mykonos, and the people thought we were crazy voyeurs for staying clothed, facedown on our blanket to avoid looking at anyone.

But when we got home, Mathew had a black Jaguar with a white interior waiting for us in our driveway. He’d bought it without asking me. “What is that?” I asked him. “I wanted to surprise you,” he said. He couldn’t have picked a more impractical car for a person with a four-year-old who was trying for another. He told me it was perfect for us, but it was a perfect choice for him. Someone without impulse control. Who was he trying to impress, anyway? I came crashing down from my vacation high. So much for those nights over Egypt.

My codependency with my daughter was holding us back. I used her too long as an excuse to stay in a marriage and on a track that was not healthy. Maybe I thought a second baby would fix things, but now this new life growing inside me inspired me to move.

In the low light of my child’s seafoam green room, as Miles’s trumpet climbed higher and higher, I started to plan an escape.

Beyoncé could not wait to be a sister and kept staring at my huge stomach. “C’mon baby!” she said. “Come on out!”

Do you know we marched for an hour? All over the neighborhood in the Texas sun, Mathew and me with Beyoncé leading us. She made up songs to keep us in rhythm, then switched it up with the Jackson 5 and then New Edition’s “Cool It Now.”

“Anything?” she asked me at a corner. “No, Snoogums,” I said.

To our everlasting joy, it was a girl. And I could use that beautiful name: Solange Piaget Knowles.

“I can’t stay there,” I told her. Meaning my home, this place I loved. Now home was “there.” I was already mentally leaving it.

I was so angry for what he put us through and annoyed with myself for having escaped a lousy marriage to almost get killed.

Beyoncé was our Snoogums, and now Solange was our Punkin’, all three of us doting on her.

Beyoncé gave me a look of What is she doing? and I looked right back at her thinking, This girl has never picked up a plate in her life.