La Toya: Growing Up in the Jackson Family

CHAPTER ONE: ON JACKSON STREET (Part I)

"Guys, let's get up. Now." Opening my eyes in the dark, I heard my father's footsteps striding toward the room my five brothers shared. My older sister Rebbie lay sound asleep beside me on the sofa bed, oblivious, but his voice always startled me awake. It didn't matter that it was way past midnight; my father wanted his sons Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and Michael up, dressed, and ready to perform.

"Come on, let's go. I've got some people here to see you."

Through the wall I could make out the rustle of bedclothes and the soft thuds of Michael's and Marlon's feet hitting the floor as they climbed down from their upper bunks. Soon the discordant sounds of Tito and Jermaine tuning their guitars and the crackling hum of amplifiers reverberated through the house. Then they began to play and sing, four voices wrapped in seamless harmony around either Jermaine's or Michael's lead.

Without opening my eyes, I envisioned the scene: my brothers' flawlessly executed dance steps, the claps of approval from the living-room couch, and the polite bows before the guys sleepily made their way back to bed. Maybe one of them would softly mutter, "Why does he do this to us?" But probably not. The front door closed, car motors rumbled, and the small house on Jackson Street was dark and silent again.

People often ask me, What was it like growing up in the Jackson family? It probably sounds crazy, but in many ways our household appeared like most others, with a loving mother, a hardworking father, and their kids. For much of my life, that's how I thought of us.

To this day my mother remains the heart and soul of the Jacksons, her small stature and quiet manner belying a deep inner strength. She was born Katherine Scruse in Russell County, Alabama, to Martha Upshaw and Prince Scruse, known to us as Daddy. Our own father we called by his first name-never an affectionate Dad, Pop, or Papa, but Joseph. I remember how dignified and handsome my grandfather, a railroad Pullman porter, looked in his crisply pressed uniform. When I was a little girl, I loved gazing at the beautiful gold pocket watch that hung from a long gold chain looped between his vest and pants pockets. Of course, then I didn't really understand what a porter did, but I sensed it was very important, because Daddy always seemed so proud.

Mother was very young when she moved from Alabama with her parents and younger sister, Hattie, to East Chicago, Indiana. Kate, as everyone called her, contracted polio in infancy, and my grandfather carried her to and from the hospital nearly every day for treatment. There was no cure or vaccine for polio in the 1930s, so she was very lucky to have survived. Prince and Martha soon separated, each later remarrying, but Mother remained close to both. In my maternal grandparents I saw the source of her best qualities: love and courage.

With exotic almond-shaped brown eyes, high cheekbones, and soft, feminine features, Mother was strikingly pretty. As a girl, she wore a brace or got around on crutches, and because people feared catching the polio virus, children sometimes taunted her cruelly. Those that got caught had to answer to her sister Hattie, as much a tomboy as my mother was ladylike. I'm sure those experiences hurt Mother's feelings deeply, because she hardly ever talked about it.

Mother's polio made her self-conscious and shy with boys, so she was secretly thrilled to have her very first romance with Joseph Jackson, the handsomest young man in school. Not long after, in 1949 they married and settled a few miles east in Gary. Indiana, on Lake Michigan's southern shore.

It's funny, but my parents rarely told us anything about how they met and fell in love. While I know most children hear this kind of family history repeated time and again, that wasn't the case in our house. In fact, when Michael was writing his autobiography, Moonwalk, he and I often asked Mother to tell us. "I need this information for my book," he pleaded, but Mother always evaded our questions. Thus, I'm not the only Jackson to whom Joseph remains largely a mystery.

I do know that he migrated to East Chicago in the late 1940s from rural Arkansas, where he was born to Samuel and Chrystalee Jackson. My paternal grandfather graduated from Mississippi's Alcorn State University, a notable accomplishment for a southern black man back then, and went on to teach high school. The divinely beautiful, irresistible Chrystalee King was one of his students. Her mother, perhaps hoping that hot-blooded Chrystalee would settle down, married off her daughter to Samuel, old enough to be her father.

Joseph was the eldest of their three boys and one girl. His sexy smile, distinctive, sharply arched eyebrows, light reddish hair, and emerald eyes made him a "catch," as they say. But although girls threw themselves at him constantly, he wasn't interested. I remember my grandmother saying of him, "He was a loner. He had no friends, and he didn't want any."

Samuel and Chrystalee split up, married other partners, remarried each other, split up again, remarried again... Joseph's mother loved going out on the town, and so her eldest son sacrificed his childhood to raise the younger siblings. My uncle once told me that seeing Chrystalee with different men embittered my father, and neighborhood gossip about his mother embarrassed him terribly. Needless to say, this was hardly an ideal, loving environment for a boy.

After leaving school, Joseph boxed professionally for a time, earning a local reputation as a fearless fighter. Broad-shouldered, standing almost six feet tall, he is remarkably strong. One of my few fond childhood memories of my father is of him down on all fours and us kids climbing on top of his back. As we clutched at one another and giggled, he'd boast, "See? I can carry my whole family!" It's a small thing, but I think it says a lot about how he viewed us. Joseph needed to feel that we were his and that he could support and protect us.

By day my father operated a crane at the Inland Steel mill, but he dreamed of being a full-time mu sician. His taste in music ran from jazz to black rhythm and blues, the natural outgrowth of living. just outside Chicago, the cradle of electric blues. In the early 1950s he and his brothers started an r&b group called the Falcons (not the more famous Fal cons of "You're So Fine" fame), playing weekends. at area colleges and nightclubs. What their profes sional prospects might have been, who knows. But with us kids coming at a rate of about one per year in the fifties, Joseph eventually had to quit the band.

He never stopped loving music. Even today my father is a fine singer and an excellent blues guitarist, though he hasn't picked up the instrument in prob ably twenty years. My siblings and I have often play fully debated about where we got our musical talent. While we all agree the singing came from Mother, no one can account for the dancing ability. It sure didn't come from Joseph, whom she always chided, "You can't even keep a beat." It's true. He snaps his fingers or claps his hands to music, but off the beat.

When Mother brought me home from the hospital, there were four little Jacksons to greet me: Maureen Reilette, or Rebbie (pronounced "Reebie"); Sigmund Esco, or Jackie; Toriano Adaryll, or Tito; and Jermaine Lajuan. Mother's fondness for unusual names stopped with me, La Toya (which Mother insists she coined) Yvonne Jackson. The four kids to come received more typical names: Marlon David, Michael Joseph (whom we usually called Mike), Steven Randall (Randy), and Janet Damita Jo. A tenth child, Marlon's twin Brandon, died shortly after birth. My mother made her children her life, but my father was indifferent at best, never even coming to the hospital to hold any of his newborns.