Unbreak My Heart: A Memoir (23 page)

While I was at work on my album in 2004, Tyler Perry invited me to a screening of the first movie he’d produced for the big screen,
Diary of a Mad Black Woman
, which was still being edited. Afterward, he pulled me aside. “I would love for you to be on the movie soundtrack,” he told me. I’ve always loved Tyler—after one of L.A.’s assistants introduced us to each other, we clicked at hello!—so I said, “Yes, let’s talk about how we can work on something.” So Keri, the songwriter Cory Rooney, and I created a track called “Stupid,” which is a song about regret from a past relationship. At the end of the song, I sing, “Stupid is as stupid does, I’m stupid for you, baby, just because”—a lyric inspired by
Forrest Gump
.

When the track was finished, I sent it to Tyler. “I have to have this song!” he called to tell me. “Toni Braxton, you actually said, ‘Stupid is as stupid does’!” We both cracked up.

“Okay, then let’s do it on the soundtrack,” I said. “But let me run it by Blackground first.”

I did that—and Barry gave me the go-ahead. “Barry, maybe my whole album should be the soundtrack for Tyler’s movie,” I suggested to him one afternoon. “That would be hot—kinda like Stevie Wonder did with
Woman in Red
.”

But Barry didn’t like that idea. “Why would I split the profits of my blood, sweat, and tears with someone else?” Two days before
Diary of a Mad Black Woman
debuted in theaters on February 5, 2005, a rep from Lionsgate, the film’s distribution company, called Barry to check in. Barry asked them to take me off the soundtrack. Barry had given the green light, of course—but he hadn’t actually signed the paperwork. But the film was already sent to the theaters. Later, Tyler called me directly. “I talked to your uncle,” he said. My siblings and I used to call my manager “Uncle Barry” because he’d become like a family member during those years when he’d helped me through the bankruptcy.

“I am so sorry, Tyler,” I said. “I really do want to be part of your soundtrack.” We chatted for a couple more minutes—but I knew that our relationship had been damaged beyond repair. In the end, Barry had to agree to let Tyler and Lionsgate keep the song in the movie because there were letters of intent that could prove he’d okayed the deal.

My record,
Libra
, was released on September 27, 2007—and though “Stupid” is played briefly in the movie, and the track is on my album, the song is not on the film’s soundtrack. Now you know why. In the years after that incident, my friendship with Tyler eventually faded.

ON MY ONLY
record with Blackground, my sales were horrible—surprise, surprise. With hardly any promotion from the label and with a sour relationship between Barry and me, none of the three singles really caught on. The album did eventually sell nearly seven hundred thousand copies and reached gold status—which might be good for some artists, but that’s considered a failure for a singer whose previous records have sold in the millions. It’s a miracle that it even sold one copy in the midst of so much drama.

At a time when I should’ve been heading into my peak years as a musician, I’d instead found myself on the set of a western shoot-’em-up movie. For the sake of my family, my career, I knew I had to break ties with “Uncle Barry”—and fast.

G
ladys Knight helped get me my Vegas show. We’ve known each other forever—back in the day, my sister Tamar even went to the prom with her son. She’s like my auntie in the music business. So when I called her up and told her I wanted to get a show at the Flamingo—which is where she was just wrapping up a long run—Gladys put in a good word for me (the venue directors do a very extensive background check on new acts). “The Flamingo is a good house,” Gladys assured me. “I think you’ll do well there.” My goal was to start at the Flamingo and then move over to a larger venue—the Mirage.

“Doing Vegas will age you,” others told me. I disagreed. That’s an old way of thinking, because Vegas now has a newer, younger face. And besides that, I’ve always kept a list of all the experiences I’d like to have during my lifetime, and a Vegas show had been on my list for a long time—so I was determined to make it happen.

The Flamingo’s directors and my agents and I worked out a contract—I was to do five shows a week, and then there’d be a dark house on Sundays and Mondays. The room I had to fill was small by Vegas standards—about twelve hundred seats. For me, that was actually a great size, because I wanted to sell out: The smaller the room, the more likely you are to sell out . . . and when you fill every seat consistently, you’re a better candidate for a bigger house. One of the hardest rooms to fill is the one built at the Colosseum for Céline Dion when she did her show with the director of Cirque du Soleil—it has 4,500 seats. But unlike my room, hers could be shared—the MGM Grand brought in Elton John to perform his show
The Red Piano
so she could take off a few months. There would be no time off for me.

My deal with the Flamingo was similar to the kind of deal I’d make with a record company during a tour: I was the producer for the show, and the Flamingo provided me with front-end money. Once that advance money was recouped through revenue from ticket sales, we’d split the profits. Artists who do well during their first couple years in Vegas can negotiate for a larger percentage of the profits—that’s how some end up earning $20 million or more a year. Not a bad living. It was also the perfect arrangement for someone like me—a mother who wanted to stay in town with her children. As my family’s main provider, I needed to work, but I didn’t want to tour. A Vegas show made stability possible for us

Once I got to the Nevada desert, I had just two weeks to rehearse before the show’s premiere—I was replacing Wayne Newton, who was just leaving, and the house directors never like to stay dark for long. As usual, Keri did all my sound production and helped me manage the show. My preview night was on May 19, 2006—and to be honest, it didn’t go so well. We had a couple technical glitches (the sound went out . . . and I was still getting used to singing in such dry desert air, which affects many singers who perform in Vegas). I wished I’d had longer to rehearse—but I didn’t want to risk losing my spot at the Flamingo. So I forged ahead with creating a show I called
Toni Braxton: Revealed
.

The show was a cabaret-style performance—which means I spent lots of money on lights, costumes, and set design. The whole thing was very Vegas cabaret: I wore a sexy black number (a sparkly body suit that I paired with a tuxedo jacket and fishnet stockings), I sang several of my most well-known songs, and I incorporated lots of interaction with the audience. I often called people up onstage and had them sing along with me—which taught me how to quickly read personalities and ad-lib. Throughout the ninety-minute show, I did seven costume changes; for the finale, I started with a slow version of “Un-Break My Heart” and then moved to an upbeat dance version. After a quick costume change (yes, another one!), I came out in a red dress and struck the same pose I was shown in on the front of the Flamingo building. The show was a lot of work—but it was also a whole lot of fun. And I absolutely loved it when other entertainers would drop by: Magic and Cookie Johnson once came through, and Nicole Murphy and Michael Strahan were regulars. Half of the time, I wouldn’t know they were there until after the show—the blinding stage lights make it hard to see faces in the audience.

A few months into the show, my family came to see me perform—and Tamar wasn’t impressed with the background singers. Mommy offered a great solution: “Maybe you should put your sisters in.” I did. And though I knew that could mean a little drama, it was always comforting to have my family close by; and besides that, they always sound incredible.

First, it was Tamar and Trina who moved to Vegas to be background singers for about a year—and then it was Trina and Towanda. And finally, it was Towanda and Sparkle, who was then on R. Kelly’s label, Rockland Records. In addition to my two background singers, I hired ten dancers—one of whom was Casper Smart, the dancer who, years later, dated Jennifer Lopez.

I ENROLLED BOTH
of my sons in preschool—in the fall of 2006, Denim was four and Diezel was three. One October morning a few weeks after I’d enrolled them, I dropped them off and gave them each a good-bye kiss. About three that afternoon when I was rehearsing at the Flamingo, I got a call.

“Hello—Mrs. Braxton?”

“Yes?”

“This is the principal at your sons’ school.”

I pressed the cell right to my ear so I could hear every word the woman was saying. “Is everything okay?”

“Well,” she said, “we need you to come pick up Diezel. He should not be at this school—we cannot facilitate his needs here.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Please come to the school and we’ll talk about it,” she said. I hung up, gathered my things, and went straight there. During the ten-minute drive, I could feel my hands trembling as I gripped the steering wheel.

At the school, the dean said that Diezel didn’t have the kind of social skills that a child of his age would normally have. “What do you mean?” I asked. “We just can’t facilitate his needs here,” she repeated. She said he wasn’t bothering the other kids—in fact, it was the opposite. He was staying off to himself and not mixing with the other children at all. His teacher noticed that and suggested that I take him to an organization called Child Find. I know it might sound odd to some that the dean would call me right in the middle of the day when there really hadn’t been an incident, but that’s just the way school administrators choose to notify parents if there’s an issue.

I called Child Find immediately—but the organization had just closed for the day. Later that evening, I broke down in tears as I told Keri what happened. He tried to console me, and though he wore his usual calm facial expression, I could tell that he was just as upset as I was. I don’t think either one of us slept a full hour that night. I was too overcome with emotion and fear about what could be wrong with my son. A couple weeks later, I took Diezel straight to Child Find and had him tested. And tested. And tested. After three weeks of enduring every diagnostic evaluation imaginable, I finally received this diagnosis: “Your son is autistic.”

My first reaction might shock you—I was furious. For more than two years before that diagnosis, I had noticed that Diezel wasn’t developing in the same way that his brother had. We all know that you should never compare children, but the signs were undeniable. For example, Diezel made almost no eye contact; at fourteen months, he stopped making noises altogether—no babbling or baby talk, and no short nouns like
cup
or
juice
or
ball
. He also became very standoffish—he seldom played or socialized with other children. I mentioned all these signs to his pediatrician, and he checked Diezel’s hearing—twice. Both tests showed that my son’s hearing was completely normal. All kinds of specialists were brought in, but everyone kept saying he was fine. One doctor said, “Oh, he’s just a little delayed—don’t worry about it.” But my mother’s instinct told me that something just wasn’t quite right. So the fact that I’d been dismissed by so many doctors—only to discover that my son was autistic—made me very angry. A mother always knows when something is wrong with her child.

There have been so many debates about whether vaccines have caused an explosion in the number of autism cases. The drug companies insist that no findings link immunization and autism. Perhaps there isn’t a link. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that after my son’s first MMR vaccine, I began to notice changes in him. He wasn’t the same spirited infant I’d brought home with me from the hospital. He seemed distant. He didn’t respond to affection. Most children embrace attention from their parents or grandparents. Diezel didn’t. At first, I thought it was a personality thing.
He’ll probably grow up to be a man who doesn’t want company—a loner
, I thought. It’s okay to come to that conclusion when your son is a teenager—but not when he’s still a toddler.

My initial rage was quickly followed by another strong emotion: guilt.
Is God punishing me for that abortion?
That’s the question that ran through my head the moment I heard the diagnosis. Autism wasn’t being discussed as much back then as it is now—and because I knew so little about it, I imagined the worst. I also started to go back through my mental files to see if I could connect Diezel’s autism with anything I’d done. I know it might sound outlandish to some people, but I actually blamed myself. I knew I’d taken a life—so I believed that God’s payback was to give my son autism.

On the day I received the news, I went to the Flamingo to do my show that evening. My heart was so heavy that it felt like it was about to fall right out of my chest. I tried to do my usual warm-up—I’d often go out and say something to the audience, like “A funny thing happened to me on my way over here. I’d just gotten back from Mexico where there was a terrible hurricane, and my son asked me, ‘Mommy, did you go through the New Mexico or the old one?’” That’s the kind of lighthearted story I’d typically share. But on this night, something far more private and sensitive came spilling out. “I just found out my son has autism,” I said with tears filling my lower eyelids. A hush fell over the room. “I heard that right before this show.” I wasn’t so much feeling sorry for myself as I was lost about what to do next. I didn’t even know how to begin helping Diezel.

I got one answer the next afternoon. Overnight, word of my breakdown had already made its way to the press, and like an angel, Suzanne Wright—the cofounder of an advocacy organization called Autism Speaks—called me up directly. “This is not your fault,” she told me after revealing that her own grandson has autism. “It’s not your son’s fault either. There’s nothing wrong with our babies—they just learn differently. You just have to figure out the right programs to get him the help that he needs.” God sent Suzanne my way at exactly the right moment. During one of the most confusing and painful experiences I’ve ever survived, she assured me that I wasn’t alone—and that my beloved Diezel would be just fine. And in the following years, I would do everything in my power to ensure that he would.