Matriarch: Oprah's Book Club: A Memoir

by Tina Knowles

True wealth was measured in their ability to share blessings, feeling the honor of someone letting you care for them, and staying grateful that you even have anything to give.

I was that girl in Galveston; I was that woman standing there putting two people together in Headliners; and I am that woman writing to you now.

Then, once they had local success, the question evolved to “When am I gonna see that little singing group do something big in Houston?”

It did not help that Mathew still spent money like he had a six-figure paycheck. When the cellphone came out, this man ran up two-thousand-dollar bills letting the kids get on the phone to call all their friends. I’d find him with them sitting in the driveway, calling just to tell their friends they were using a cellphone.

“Be quiet, Solange.” Beyoncé’s answer was to remove Solange to keep the peace. “Get out of here, Solange.” Where could Solange go? This was her home, and her childhood too.

At the end, whereas Shanice sings “Go, Branford, go,” in response to Branford Marsalis’s saxophone solo, Solange changed the lyric to “Go, judges, go.” She charmed them, not just winning the night but getting a standing ovation.

She and I had spent all this time backstage at places for the girls, adrenaline finally ebbing because we made it somewhere on time.

The girls were seven and almost twelve, and any parent of girls with a five-year age difference like mine can tell you about that time when the older one starts to want to be more independent. This comes as a shock to the younger one, who has literally spent her life in the presence of her sister.

Solange offered advice on a step, and one of the girls snapped at her. “Don’t talk to my sister like that,” Beyoncé said. “Solange, come on and show us the step.”

Beyoncé held Solange’s hand in her lap, their eyes closed as they sang in harmony.

Weirdos

“You need to share clothes with Kelly,” I told Beyoncé privately. “Well,” she said, like it was a negotiation. “I don’t really want to share my clothes.” “Well,” I said, matching her tone. “You’re going to have to share some of your stuff.” “I’ll give them to her,” she said. She’s still like that: Will give you the shirt off her back, but once she does you can keep it.

Eventually, years later, Kelly and I would have a conversation when she was eighteen. We talked about how we both had always held space for Doris—who she called Mama—to be her mother, but I could be her mother too. Kelly began to call me Ma, and I am continually astonished and grateful to God for giving us this gift of Kelly.

But the house was such a 1970s time capsule. The entry hall had a disco-ball light fixture and was covered in a rice-paper wallpaper in an avocado green shade.

Cool

The bedrooms were okay, with skylights because that had been a big thing in the seventies. And it had a beautiful pool in a great neighborhood.

For one, nobody could curse around the girls, and people couldn’t smoke around them.

Good.

“Y’all are just not gonna work in the industry,” he said, and I’m sure my neck was rolling a little bit at him getting heated. I listened to him say the girls would never make it with me and Mathew—with all the parents—because we were too “square.” I’d never been called square in my life.

Someone might have assumed success made my lonely burden lighter, that having to tell my daughters “I messed things up for you” would become an increasingly vague memory that blurred with each blessing. It did not.

When I went to our first meeting, the teacher walked by me several times until I asked if she was Solange’s teacher. “I just wasn’t expecting someone that looked like you,” she said to me. “What do you mean?” “Well, your daughter is very…” She searched for the word. “Ethnic.”

HUUUHHH

Beyoncé and LeToya both got in, but the school had not accepted Kelly. She had been devastated, and Mathew and I had gone up there to tell them exactly what a big mistake they were making missing out on this incredibly talented student. “You are going to regret this one day,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “It’s yours.” So easily and with such kindness that I wondered if someone had done her a favor some time back and I was reaping the benefits.

Wanda took one look at this big black lacquer wall unit and the giant sectional sofa that took up so much space in the apartment. “Why would you bring that in here?” “I don’t know,” I answered, sounding lost. “I just want my kids to have all their stuff.”

I asked Solange what she recalls. “Oh, I just remember that place being a one-bedroom tiny little apartment….” “What?” I said. “Girl, that apartment cost more than our house. It was a nice size. And it was a two-bedroom. Beyoncé and Kelly had a bedroom, and you slept with me.” “Are you sure, Mom?” she said. “I remember that being a one-bedroom.” “I’m going to call Beyoncé.” And I did. “What’s your memory of that apartment?” I asked her. “That two-bedroom one.” “Mama,” Beyoncé said, “I don’t remember much about that apartment because I did not like being there.” “It wasn’t that bad,” I said. “I was so sad,” she said. Just as I was taking that in, she added, “And it was a one-bedroom—”

“We won’t have that pool anymore,” I said, not realizing the pool was never the draw.

I’d bring a Ziploc or two and fill them with the restaurant’s chocolate-covered strawberries to save for the movie. Mathew always rolled his eyes at this, telling me “Y’all are so country,” and we teased him back for being so bougie.

Kelly, for one, had a biology teacher who saw her in the paper and then teased her constantly—a man who singled her out as needing to be brought down a peg. Though she never discussed music at school, he was aware of her performing in the group. Handing her back a quiz, he would say in front of everyone, “Maybe if you weren’t trying to be a singer, you’d do better.”

Bitch!

I overheard them discussing a party a classmate had invited them to in the neighborhood. “Everyone is gonna be there,” said Kelly. Then a noncommittal “yeah” from Beyoncé.

In the car, Beyoncé explained it with a sigh. “We just don’t know anybody like that.” “Like, we’re not popular,” said Kelly. “Well, nobody’s talking about being popular,” I said. “I just want you to have fun. Do more than singing.” “But singing is fun,” said Beyoncé.

Ecclesiastes 9:1–12, with the heading “A Common Destiny for All.”

Mathew had the vision to add one additional, important word, and the group now had a name, one they loved: Destiny’s Child.

Beyoncé loved that dress. Through the years, she and I would fall in love with dresses, but never again like that.

There was so much beginning, but in the back of my mind, I felt something ending.

Before they hung up, Beyoncé said quietly into the phone, “Mama, it was on the radio.”

Chris Maldonado and Eric Ferrell were best friends, both around thirty and so handsome, both incredibly talented and both determined to not be nice to me.

Then Beyoncé came bursting into the room. “Okay, put them in,” she said to me.

I did what I had to do: I looked at myself in the mirror, took a little scissors, and began to cut some highlights from my own hair, just enough here and there to glue into my daughter’s hair without leaving me bald-headed.

Wooowww

When Beyoncé came over, she said, “Aaliyah, this is my mama.”

Mathew hadn’t recognized her either, so Beyoncé and Kelly were just humiliated as he went into full dad mode. “Well, how old are you?” he asked Aaliyah. Even when he realized who she was, he still asked, “Do you have your driver’s license? Okay, let me see.” Aaliyah laughed, showing her ID. “I’ll get ’em back,” she said. “I’ll get ’em back to you.” Aaliyah said it was very sweet that the girls were so protected.

One of the first uses of their power was when Beyoncé and Kelly found out a boy at Solange’s school had singled her out for bullying. All four girls got in the car to go pick up Solange at school and asked her to point out the kid. They surrounded him, each one telling him in their own way to stop messing with Solange. Until Beyoncé finally hissed, the executioner in his ear: “Destiny’s Child has warned you.”

When Wyclef came over just before they went on, he stepped back in surprise. “Yo, who styled y’all?” he asked. Beyoncé nervously answered, “Oh, my mom.” Wyclef knew me from the studio and looked right at me. “Well, you need to style them all the time,” he said. “Because this is unique—they don’t look like everybody else.”

Or seeing a photo of Cher, the happiness on her face as she danced in a Bob Mackie flame dress sparkling like fire, and wondering how could I create a tribute that gave the girls that joy?

I also found another seamstress, Miss Enid, an older Jamaican woman who was an artist with the sewing machine.

I went to Cheryl. “Solange don’t wanna spend the evening with me,” I said, sounding like Miss Pitiful after hiding all that hurt. “And I gotta leave on Friday.” “Well, Tina, you can’t just be popping up,” she said. “You should have told her that you were coming.”

The funny thing is Beyoncé found out she is just not a car person. That Jag is still in storage somewhere, the last car she bought that wasn’t some vintage thing for a video.

It was the same way they hated that Beyoncé braided her hair. “We want her to look pretty,” someone said. “She is beautiful,” I said, ending the conversation that I knew would never end. “She is a beautiful Black girl.”

When it was time for me to take him back, he would cry. “I don’t want to go.”

We loved the sun, and it would relieve his chill, the one he felt down in the bones that his skin clung to.

“Mama,” he said. “Mama, come here. Please.” I put my head in. “Good morning,” I said. Just to say it. Give him a chance to realize I wasn’t his mother. But he still thought I was—“Mama,” he sighed—and the rush of relief in his voice was enough to make me start crying. I was not his mother, but I am a mother. What could I do but go in?

I talked to the nurses, and the man was one of many who never had a visitor. As a parent, I could not imagine abandoning my child to die alone.

“Hey, hey,” he whispered, gesturing his chin toward the poster. “They’re laughing at me.” “Oh, that’s Beyoncé,” I said. “She wouldn’t laugh at you. She would never, ever—” “No, they’re making fun of me.” I took the poster down, turned it around on the floor to face the wall. The next day, he asked me what happened to his poster. “Oh, it must have fallen,” I said, putting it back up.

“Uncle Johnny made my dress.” I started to cry and smile at the same time, knowing this was what Johnny wanted. To be loved and celebrated.