An Author’s Tribute to Michael Jackson
By Lena Fields-Arnold
Copyright 2009
It was the summer of 1978 and to this day I don’t know whose mother it was who called us. It could have been Pam & Dawn’s Mother who worked at the cleaners next to the record store, or mine, who also worked there from time to time doing light sewing. One thing
I know is that when we received that call we all jumped on whatever mobile vehicle we had, be it
bicycles, skateboards, go-carts, etc., and made a mad dash!
We arrived at the record store, located at the Westtown shopping center just as the Jackson's were making their exit from the store and to their limousine. We stood there, me and all my childhood friends; Tina, Pam, Dawn, Sheila, Danielle, and Sylvia, and watched as five of the most handsome men we’d only dared to dream we’d ever meet stood before us!
In my head, this is what happened next:
I stood there as if in a dream, when before I could muster up the courage to say hello, Pam pushed me into Michael. Why because that’s just the kind of thing Pam did. She was always pushing me into stuff. Like the time she pushed me into fighting Jill Jones.
I liked Jill; I didn’t want to fight her. But this time it was okay, I mean, after all, it was Michael
Jackson.
So before I could say excuse me, Michael, all six feet of him (at least 2 inches was afro) said, “What’s your name?”
“Marie.” I answered without looking up.
“Well, Marie, how old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
“Thirteen. Well you have the prettiest eyes I have ever seen! What is your last name?”
I gave him all my names just in case he ever needed to look me up.
Then he said. “In ten years I am going to find you and marry you.”
I almost passed out as my friends giggled and swooned behind me. Ten years later, that is just what he did, and we lived happily ever after…
In reality, this is what happened.
We did nothing! We just stood there staring, a bevy of pre-teens, all afraid to move or speak. I wished there had been a frog in my throat, because at least I could have croaked!
Worse than that, we all watched as grown ass Debbie (she really was grown 18-21 something like that) walked right up to them and started talking. In horror we witnessed her get the coveted autograph we’d all longed for.
In ultimate pissivity (yes, I know it is not a word) we aimed evil eyes at her for not introducing us and helping us get an autograph too! I can’t speak for the rest of them, but I don’t think I ever spoke to Debbie again after that.
Over the years I have racked my brain trying to figure out what happened to us that suddenly turned us into a group of dumb mutes. But now I know. It’s that three-word devil better known as low self-esteem. In that brief moment we looked at ourselves and decided that we weren’t good enough to talk to them. We were in that awkward stage. Not quite women, but neither were we little girls.
Nothing about us was acting right and we were suddenly aware of it. These guys had been all over
the world and had access to the most beautiful women in it. Who were we that they would want us? Better to leave it at a fantasy where there was no fear of failure or rejection.
But there was something else besides myself I saw in that moment too, and I will never forget it. For a brief moment I locked eyes with Michael, and even at thirteen I recognized that look. It was fear! I carried that look with me for a long time because I could not for the life of me figure out, what he could possibly be afraid of. He was a member of one of the most famous families on earth. He was one of the most talented people on earth, and as far as we were concerned, the best looking man on the planet; so why the look of trepidation?
Perhaps it was a deep dread that came from never knowing when and if a fan would recover from the doped looks and snap into a crazed, maniacal fanatic? Maybe it was the fear that comes from knowing, you will never know what it is like to be that kid who jumps on a skateboard and braves traffic to get a glimpse of their idol. Or possibly it was the fear of being trapped in a life that consumed you and left you no room to decide for yourself how you wanted things to be.
As a child residing in a home that was crumbling all around her, I understood that fear. And even though I never spoke to my (at that time) idol, that connection formerly sealed a bond between us that began developing at the age of six, when I received my first Jackson Five album.
No matter how much the world claimed Michael, to all us African–American girls who lived in the 70’s, he was uniquely ours. When as yet, no other culture had embraced him, we loved him. For many of us, he was not just our first crush; he was our first formal introduction to music.
From the moment my fingers first lifted the needle onto the record player I was in love! Not so much with Michael or the Jackson Five, which would come later-but, I fell in love with music.
They were my official introduction to the melodious world of harmony and melody. The music was soulful, passionate, moody, unpredictable, sad, and joyful; and spoke to me in a language I figured only I could understand. It understood me! It said all the things my young heart could not say. And it was coming from people who looked like me. Young and Black!
Jackson posters were the first to adorn my wall; gently ripped from the pages of Ebony, Essence, Jet, and Right On magazines. Over the years, they would be followed by a long succession of other stars, but they would always have their own special place of veneration—as the Jacksons were the original boy band! Others have tried and come close, but no other band has been able to capture the magic that was the Jackson Five.
And it goes without saying that no other entertainer has ever been able to rise to the status of American Icon that Michael Jackson achieved.
I will never forget summer afternoons spent swooning on the back porch of my neighbor’s yard as Lonnie, my brother, and several other of the neighborhood W2nd Street Crew played –Jackson Five; while us faux groupies would give them their due by screaming and pretending to faint.
And I, like virtually every other American girl of African descent, followed his career path like top
notch crime investigators followed a lead. We faithfully hunted out and purchased every album and
magazine with a Jackson face, attended every concert, and watched every cartoon and TV special. To say something bad about a member of the Jackson family, was risking life and limb.
As the years passed there came to be much bad to be said, even by us, his most loyal fans. We often whispered in the shadows about how the price of tickets was forcing his original fan base out further and further to the fringes, until finally we were barely anywhere to be seen. We complained that the women he seemed to prefer looked nothing like us. We agonized over whether the allegations of child molestation were real. We cried as we watched the beautiful black boy we fell in love with change into an alien. We experienced anger, as we pondered why our acceptance of him wasn’t enough. Why did he have to change?
But we stuck by him because we loved him. We understood him. We knew his life had been filled with hard and tedious task masters who often demanded too much of him. We appreciated the sacrifices he made for us in the early days of our love affair. We’d all been witness to his pain and his vulnerability. See, if I saw the fear in his eyes when I was but a child of 13, then others saw it too. And as young black girls dealing with our own racially motivated insecurities we’d also often felt that pain ourselves. So we were willing to patiently wait on the sidelines, praying for Michael to find himself and return to us again.
Perhaps that is why his death was doubly devastating to us. His death forever dashed our hopes of holding him again in that innocent childlike embrace of unconditional love. We felt cheated! Forgotten! And as the world mourns him, they too seem to have forgotten us. We were that scorned lover, waiting for our prince to return.
Over the years as Michael traveled the world, leaving his mark on it, he would come to be known as a lot of things. Eccentricities and allegations aside—some disrespectfully called him Whacko Jacko. To others he will eternally be the King of Pop. Yet we feel affection for him, because for me and all those girls like me, he will always be affectionately known as-our first love!
Lena M. Fields-Arnold is the author of For This Child We Prayed: Living with the Secret Shame of
Infertility, For This Dream We Prayed Companion Journal, and Strong Black Coffee: Poetry and Prose to Encourage, Enlighten, and Entertain Americans of African Descent. For more information visit www.strongblackcoffee.info or www.INfertilitypress.com.
All Material above is copy written and and cannot be re-published, printed in any form or manner without the express consent of the author. for more information contact author directly at
lena@infertilitypress.com
