Goddess: Inside Madonna (19 page)

After the proceedings were over, Tony and Joan had a celebratory lunch at their house with several close family friends and neighbors. The atmosphere was anything but happy. At one point Tony was forced to separate Paula and Martin, who began fighting, banishing them from the table, while Anthony disappeared into his room with a violent stomachache. Melanie was the only child who seemed oblivious to the sense of loss the others were experiencing. If she had any negative feelings, they were directed at Jennifer, who had taken her place as the “baby girl” of the family. Years later, when Melanie was an adult, she would suffer enormous guilt when she finally learned the facts of her mother’s illness and death. On the day of the adoption, Melanie spent the day cuddled against Joan, while Christopher sat like a “little soldier” at the table. One of the guests at the lunch recalls that Chris was the only child who kept his emotions to himself. “He was polite and quiet,” the family friend says. “The only indication that he was upset happened that night when he crawled into Madonna’s bed to sleep.” As for Madonna, she was also quiet, although she threw everything up immediately following the meal.

While Joan always made an effort to treat all the children equally and Tony is the biological father of all eight, the couple’s insensitivity to the six older children’s feelings was based more on ignorance than malice. Neither parent understood that for the children, the adoption represented irrevocable confirmation that their mother was never coming back. The couple never considered that each child, according to his or her own level of maturity, spent childhood and early adulthood in mourning. What made it even harder for the kids was that they lived in a typically middle-class environment where any deviation from the conventional was grounds for exclusion. Madonna always felt that “losing” her mother had set her apart from her peers, as if somehow her carelessness had resulted in the loss of her parent.

Another close friend of the family’s who also was present that day believes that it was up to Tony to have been more aware of the situation. “Joan was basically flaky,” the friend says, “so he [Tony] shouldn’t have expected her to be sensitive to the memory of his late wife. In a way, I can’t blame her. She came into this guy’s life when he had nothing except trouble and responsibility, and she lightened everything up. In her mind, he should have been happy, and he was, but on the other hand, he should have realized how the kids felt, especially the older ones.”

On the promise of anonymity, one of the Ciccone children talks about a nightmare that occurred for years after their mother’s death. “I kept seeing my mother trying to get into the house, except every time she tried a door, Joan would lock it, and then she’d try another door, but Joan was already there, locking that one, too. In my dream, we were all racing around the house in different directions. My mother would try one door, and Joan would lock it, and I would be right behind her unlocking it, but by then, my mother was at another door, and we all just kept going around and around . . .”

When Madonna was eleven, the
family moved from Pontiac to the more affluent suburb of Rochester Hills, where Joan was finally able to put her own personality into the family house. The result produced yet another rift between stepmother and stepdaughter. Madonna was embarrassed when she brought friends home to a house that was decorated in what she considered to be a boring style of muted colors and safe patterns, a decor that was similar to the display-window perfection found in the department stores in downtown Detroit. Madonna’s rebellion took a different form. She daydreamed about being poor and living in a home where the furniture was threadbare. Instead, she was condemned to live with Early American–style reproductions and matching lamps that sat on matching end tables that matched the coffee table, all demonstrating her stepmother’s lack of originality. Joan also chose several original oils done by local Michigan artists and posters of some of the more famous works of Manet and Monet, as well as posters for the children’s rooms. In keeping with her matching mania, she made sure that the colors of the paintings or posters blended with the upholstery and carpeting with no thought that the children might want to express their own tastes or experiment with color. Eventually, Joan developed certain special touches that she learned at a variety of craft classes she took. The kids called her “artsy-craftsy Joansy” behind her back. Handwoven baskets filled with potpourri were everywhere around the house, and for a while, on every available radiator, there were flowers in various stages of drying that were generously sprayed with inexpensive perfume. Invariably Madonna would make a point of throwing open the windows even in the middle of winter to get rid of the smell.

A neighbor recalls one example of Joan’s mania for perfection. The neighbor was visiting when Madonna cracked open one of the walnuts that were permanently on display in a dish on the living-room coffee table. She was immediately sent to her room without supper. In Joan’s defense, regardless of what she did or didn’t do—and she would certainly have been criticized had she not tried to make the house comfortable—she would never gain her stepchildren’s approval or gratitude.

As Joan became more interested in decorating, she spent more and more time in the antique stores in the Michigan countryside or at various antique fairs. Her most treasured acquisition was a nineteenth-century spinning wheel, which Madonna and Christopher, the most aesthetic of the children, thought was ridiculous. As adults, they found it amusing that Joan constantly referred to it as an antique, since the same spinning wheel was in almost every home in Rochester Hills.

Currently, the Ciccone house on the vineyard property in northern Michigan is arranged with the same kind of display-window perfection. The spinning wheel is still prominently displayed in one corner of the living room. The only deviation from Joan’s sense of order and determination to be recognized as the one and only mistress of the manor is a photograph that sits on the piano in the center of the living room. Among the pictures of children and grandchildren and several wedding photos is a picture of Madonna and Tony with their six children. The walnuts in a dish on the coffee table are now ceramic.

By the time she entered
Rochester Hills Junior High, Madonna had more freedom than ever before. She had classes with boys and didn’t have to wear a uniform. Though the other girls her age were permitted to wear light lipstick for special occasions, Madonna was not. Tight skirts and sweaters were taboo as well, and she was constantly admonished about looking “haughty and arrogant.” “Lower your eyes and look humble,” her parents would tell her when she was reprimanded. Tony also made it clear that “idle time was the devil’s workplace,” and going to school every day was not enough. “You always had to be doing something productive,” Madonna recalls, “like schoolwork or housework or prayer, never just sitting around and never having too much leisure time. You always had to be challenging your mind or body.” In keeping with that philosophy, Tony imposed new rules for her as well as for her two older brothers. He decided that his three older children would study a musical instrument, more to instill in them a further sense of discipline and accomplishment than to nurture any hidden talent they might have had. All three opted for piano lessons, although before long Madonna began a campaign to persuade her father to let her substitute ballet for music. Tony was not prepared to make an exception for one child, but he was getting weary, as was Joan, of the constant battle they were forced to wage to get her to practice. Madonna’s excuse was that she hated learning “other people’s music.” He finally relented and allowed her to study ballet, but only after she pointed out that she could take dance classes as part of the cultural program at Rochester Hills Junior High. From her first lesson, her teachers thought that she had talent and that dance was a good way for her to express herself. Rather than encouraging her gift, Joan made it clear that Madonna could only continue the lessons month-to-month, depending on her behavior at home and at school. Every month Joan made a calendar, and at the end of each day, Madonna was either awarded a commendation or a demerit. More than five demerits a month meant that ballet classes were suspended until she had thirty days in a row of good behavior. Madonna was so determined to continue dancing that she learned not to react when her brothers picked on her or when Paula, who was increasingly resentful, baited her. Madonna was blossoming into a graceful young woman with a body that naturally attracted boys, while Paula remained the family “jock,” boyish and flat-chested and considered a pal by the opposite sex. One of the often-told anecdotes is that once Paula, Anthony, and Martin hung Madonna by her blouse to the clothesline. According to a neighbor, when Joan found her there, she didn’t rush to cut her down but enjoyed the joke with the others while Madonna dangled helplessly.

Madonna was completely involved with her dancing lessons, but another side to her had little to do with her dedication to ballet or her enjoyment of classical music. According to Moira McPharlin and several other girlfriends from that period, Madonna still behaved like any normal teenager. She enjoyed popular music, especially the Monkees, and loved the usual teen magazines like
Seventeen
and
Glamour
. Ever the rebel, when Madonna was finally in a secular school where catechism was not part of the daily academic routine, she actually looked forward to mass on Sunday. In fact, the comfort she derived from the ritual and discipline would stay with her throughout her life.

Anyone who has worked with her knows that the enterprise known as “Madonna” never goes on holiday. It is a twenty-four-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year business that is open to any and all new ideas and talent, revivals, scripts, music, videos, and any other creative and innovative project that comes along. Madonna has made it a policy to give anyone a chance if she believes in that person’s talent and commitment and, above all, recognizes a willingness to work night and day to achieve a goal. Even when she is not working on a project, she finds it difficult to settle down and sleep. Once she is on tour or making a film, she trains as if for a marathon, making sure she cuts down on her socializing to get her rest. She has often said that if she wants to “feel good,” she sleeps six hours a night; if she wants to “look good,” she sleeps seven; and if she wants to “feel ecstatic,” she sleeps eight. In addition to the tireless work ethic that she learned from the Church, she has always appreciated the sense of family that the priests and nuns instilled in her. Even after she left home and was estranged from her siblings and father, they remained important to her.

When Madonna was fourteen years old, she was confirmed and, by tradition, reaffirmed her faith in the Church. She chose the name Veronica as her confirmation name after the woman who gave Jesus her veil to wipe his brow as he carried the cross to Golgotha. As a child, Madonna thought the gesture was dramatic. As she got older and reread the passage, she decided that she, like Veronica, was a passionate person who relied on instinct to survive. Veronica stepped away from the crowd to reach out and comfort a condemned man who had been rendered powerless. Madonna also took risks that ultimately changed her life. “When I chose Veronica as my confirmation name,” she says, “it was the beginning of my own awareness that I was different than other people. Just like Veronica had the nerve to step forward to comfort Jesus, when I got successful, I dared to step forward and expose my most private fantasies, which gave my fans the courage to be different.”

Though the mystery and gothic aura of the church intrigued her and she found the moral aspect of Catholicism appealing, her connection to religion and her relationship with her father became increasingly confused. According to one of the nuns who taught Madonna and who took a special interest in her when she was a teenager, the Church and her father became inseparable. Both were so firmly entrenched in her daily life that every action was weighed against a reaction, either from her priest or the nuns who taught her or by her father, who expected her behavior to be beyond reproach at home.

One nun, a small woman as round as she is high, with bright blue eyes and a ruddy complexion, recently retired after having taught at St. Andrew’s parochial school for thirty-five years. She is convinced that Madonna’s “sexual rebellion,” after she became a star, was less against the Church than it was against her father. “In Catholicism,” the nun explains, “we teach the children to strive for perfection, and as a result, we are all asking the Lord to forgive us and cleanse our soul so that we can serve Him better.” At one point Madonna confided in the nun that she was always getting in trouble with her father and constantly asking him to forgive her. “She asked me to explain to her what the difference was between God and her father,” the nun says, smiling slightly. “An interesting question for a little girl . . .”

Years later, after that same little girl became an international star, she would address that dilemma in many of her most controversial hits. For instance, when Madonna sings “Oh Father” in her video “Like a Prayer,” she is hunched over a pew in church and choking out lyrics, the gist of which left many fans wondering whom she is singing to, God or her father: “. . . you never wanted to hurt me, why am I running away? Maybe someday when I look back, I’ll be able to say somebody hurt you, too . . . you can’t hurt me now, I got away from you. I never thought I could . . .”

Madonna always felt that the
nuns were the only ones who deeply cared about her after her mother’s death. In an effort to show her gratitude and affection, at one point she announced that when she grew up, she would either be a movie star or a nun. For Madonna, it was a completely rational choice since nuns, despite their vows of chastity and modesty, represented the epitome of cloistered sexuality. A nun was the bride of Christ, and Christ was the ultimate erotic man. That declaration was perhaps the first inkling of what would be her obsessive contradiction between sex and religion, abstinence and sensuality, the Madonna and the whore. After all, what better example of this conflict than to transform the image of her name from an asexual and passive figure to the ultimate sexualized and liberated woman?