Matriarch: Oprah's Book Club: A Memoir

by Tina Knowles

At night Beyoncé and I would sit out on the balcony, no questions to answer or decisions to be made. Just us and the breeze off the water, watching the waves caress the shore under the light of the moon.

During a regular visit, I said to her, “You gotta try on your wedding dress.” “Oh my God, you did a wedding dress?” “Yeah,” I said, and she answered, “Okay, Mama.” She was so sweet about it, but I noted that she wasn’t excited like I thought she’d be. Then she tried on the dress, and I got teary. “I love this dress,” she told me. “It’s beautiful.”

I always fought to have at least up to 18 in our sizing on all our items, constantly being told, “We’re going to lose money doing that.” “I don’t care, that’s what we’re doing.”

The fights I had. Anything that showed skin, I heard, “They wouldn’t wear that.” “Yes, they will, and they’re gonna look and feel great.” Isn’t that the point of fashion?

“Mom, I don’t know how to do anything,” she said. “Oh, now that’s not true,” I said. “What’s anything?” “I don’t even know how to book a hotel room.” “Trust me, that’s overrated, baby,” I said. “You’ve got people to do that.” She looked down, and I pressed. “Why do you care?”

“You’re a singer and an actress, why would you need an office?” “Because I need to start my own company.” “Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

She would make her plans soon enough, but I get emotional even now thinking about how she was standing at the threshold of leadership. God puts this vision on your heart sometimes, this feeling of needing to be more when you think you’ve already given all you have.

One of my favorite pieces of poetry in the Psalms is 34:18: “The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and He saves those who are crushed in spirit.” God was about to hold me very close.

The weeks leading up to the start of a world tour are always a crunch-time blur. We were prepping for the March 26 start of Beyoncé’s I Am…Tour, her most theatrical concert performance yet. And in that period when the stakes were so high, when even dreams in three-hour snatches of sleep were continuations of discussions with the team planning the tour, Mathew told me he had recently ended an affair.

It was over, he said, and he wanted nothing to do with her. Telling me was part of the counseling he was once again undergoing to figure out why he kept doing this, and he told me that my forgiveness would be the key to his recovery. That key might set him free, I knew, but it would trap me again.

He showed up at my hotel room, and when I wouldn’t let him in, he harassed me until morning. Knocking at the door, begging me to talk to him. I did not sleep, and the next day there was no time for rest. The show had to go on.

What made me blow up at him was that I could not focus on the work. I opened my door slightly, leaving the door latch on and whisper-screamed at him. “Leave me alone,” I said.

I didn’t know what they knew: They were tipped off that Mathew had been served with paternity papers inside. It was the woman he’d told me about.

I KNEW IT WASNT CRAZY

I’d woken up that morning not knowing I was living in the Before, oblivious for a few more hours, and now I was in the After.

I threw some things in bags, sailed past the reporters to a waiting car, and headed to the airport to get the first thing smoking out of town.

As a reporter talked, there was footage of me leaving the luncheon without sound, smiling like a fool in her Before life.

In Houston, people really were looking at me because I was in and out of there so much. I’d always smiled, always taken a second to compliment someone. I loved that moment of contact between people. Now, I kept my head down and sunglasses on to hide my tears. One more thing he’d taken from me.

Landing now, I couldn’t wait to see him. I’d promised to be there in time for us to watch the sunset together. And there he was, waiting for me at the house. Mathew.

NOOOOOOO

My phone rang. “Guess where we are?” Solange said. I looked at Mathew, holding a finger to my lips. “Where?” I said. “Who’s we?” “Mom, we’re in Galveston!” Beyoncé shouted. “Oh my God,” I said slowly, hoping my shock would read as delight. “We’re in the car,” chirped Solange, so pleased with the surprise.

“Listen,” I said, “I gotta tell y’all something and I know you’re not gonna be happy about it. Your daddy just left here. He got help and we…we decided not to get a divorce and we’ve been together ever since.” It was dead quiet. Then Beyoncé nodded solemnly. “Okay. Fine.” Solange exploded. “Mom, what? What? What are y’all doing? What are you doing?”

I was torn, protective of my daughters and protective of Mathew. Only later would I realize I didn’t worry about me.

On the day our divorce came up in court, we were no-shows. We spent the day on the water, out where reason could never find us.

You can own your own business—whether it’s a hair salon or a record label—and instead of changing yourself to become someone’s idea of a “boss” you can remain who you are as success brings new challenges and goals.

4 began in that packed little office. When she outgrew those fifteen hundred square feet, we went down the street, securing the whole twenty-fourth floor for a girl who just a short while ago thought she couldn’t book a hotel room.

I had been avoiding Mathew lately, afraid to cut the cord, and he had retaliated by seeing another woman.

Elizabeth held my hand as I talked about everything, even about the latest woman Mathew had brought into my house and onto the boat where he made me feel so special and safe.

WHERE

Psalms 40: “I waited patiently for the Lord. He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.”

“That was a gift,” I said. “You go buy another one. You’re good for it.” “I’m sentimental,” he said, looking at me, trying to make this a moment.

“I declare this divorce final,” she said. There was no rush of relief. I did not feel some new freedom. I felt sick. Physically ill in my stomach, the core of me. I managed to thank my lawyer and then get to my car. I was deeply sad, not about him but about the marriage. I felt like I failed. I failed us, my kids—myself.

We’d been a couple for more than thirty years. I lost not just a husband, but a witness to each other’s lives. It was as if I’d stored three decades of home movies and photo albums in a library, then watched it burn down.

The plane touched down in New York, an abrupt landing that made the people around me lurch forward, then joke to show they weren’t shaken. I didn’t react. I was too numb.

I shook my head, skipping forward in time to why I was such a mess right then. I’d been married for thirty-three years and my husband consistently cheated on me. The obvious conclusion was always, I must not be good enough.

There were times I didn’t feel attractive, but more important, I wrote: “People don’t respect me as a designer. I’m not formally educated, so people make fun of me.”

I sat with that last one and had a curious sensation: If you love water like I do, you know that there is the moment when you’ve dived down, down, down. Your body instinctively curls, rolls, until your feet touch the bottom. All the strength in your legs is called into action, and you are launched from the floor, tha...

And then I thought, If I met me, I would want to date me. If I met me, I would want to be my friend. I would like me.

There was new life to inspire me as I began to fight my way back to mine. Beyoncé had her baby girl Blue Ivy on January 7, 2012, just after my fifty-eighth birthday.

The very next day after opening up to her girls in person, she went to the doctor for a checkup, only to be told there was no heartbeat. I was at House of Deréon when she called me in tears, devastated, and I rushed over to be with her.

People study the footage now, freeze-framing on a turn in her gold dress, claiming they can see the bump now. But not then. For a little while longer, her secret remained safe.

This sacred time, after such tragedy and pain, was marred by some of the stupidest shit I had ever seen.

This child was prayed for and prayed over—a wanted, cherished, real baby, and people were making a living off saying she was a lie.

So at my apartment, Blue and her grandfather met for the first time. Unfortunately, Mathew arrived with a cold, so we all thought it was best that he not hold the baby. He was crushed.

“I miss y’all so much,” he told me when Beyoncé finally left to head home with her newborn. “I would do anything to have my family back.”

Um chile anyways so

I admitted to my girls that I hoped to find love again.

“Just say ‘thank you’ because it’s true,” Kelly said softly.

I didn’t regret living for them, following them around the world, and having their backs against anything and anyone, but I had missed out on a lot of life standing guard.

“No, don’t wear that,” she said, right to it. “That’s too old—wear something fly.” “Fly,” I said. “Okay.” We talked it out, going through four looks and looping in Solange until I decided on these tight straight-leg jeans, a really cool jacket, and all my jewelry. Which is funny, because that was my style every day.

We remembered Julia, the first weekly series on TV to star a Black woman, the incredible Diahann Carroll, and he told me all about visiting the set of Soul Train when he was young. But besides these throwbacks, he didn’t have any other conversation except his work. I thought, That young woman was probably so bored with his ass.

LMFAO

But when we got there, he told me he never danced. It was a mid-tempo song, so I asked, “I mean, can you just move? Like, if I get up will you just sway?” “No, I don’t dance.” And that was it. I worried this is what dating would be. Sitting down with men who’d settled in their ways.

I didn’t want to talk about where I first heard Marvin Gaye sing “What’s Going On” and have him say, “Oh, my mom used to play him.”

I would hear “You’ll meet someone” so constantly that I felt like a failure.