Unbreak My Heart: A Memoir (27 page)

As for my father, he’s always the one in the family that we can talk to—he’s easy to have a conversation with. If any of us tells him that we’re disappointed about something that happened in our childhood, he is quick to apologize. He doesn’t judge. He just listens. My brother Mikey is also a great listener—the men in our family are much better communicators than us women are! Mikey is also quite the prankster: He’ll call me up and say, “Do you have change for a penny?”

Doing the series had made my sisters recognizable to millions of viewers—and that’s one of the best results I could’ve hoped for. My biggest sigh of relief will come when they are all ultra-famous superstars. But even if that never happens, I’ve already made a choice: My job is done.
Braxton Family Values
is the final punctuation mark on a sentence of guilt that has gone on for too many years—since that day in 1991 when my mother, in her anger, told me, “Don’t forget your sisters.”

At the end of our series’ first season, I finally gathered the courage to ask my mother about something that has bothered me for a long time—her rage-filled reaction when I told her I would take the solo deal. Mommy paused and stared at me. “I was just doing what I had to do to keep my family together,” she explained. She went on to admit that she wasn’t ready for her children to disperse—but rather than resolving her parental fear, she instead handed me the burden of keeping the Braxtons together.

Two decades later, here’s what I finally understand: My sisters weren’t my responsibility in the first place. Just because someone hands you a weight doesn’t mean you have to take it. I know that now—but I didn’t at twenty-three. That’s why I not only took the burden—I willingly carried it around on my shoulders and allowed it to rob me of some of the most amazing years of my life. I can’t get those years back. None of us can return to the past. But there’s still one powerful thing I can do—put down the weight. That’s exactly what I’ve done—at last.

I
never meant to retire. But when I appeared on a February 2013 episode of
The Wendy Williams Show
, I told Wendy that I was done with making records. I wish I hadn’t opened my mouth—but let me tell you why I did.

First things first: I didn’t even go on Wendy’s show to talk about my music career. I was actually there to chat about my role in
Twist of Faith
, a Lifetime movie that I’d taken a role in. But once we covered that ground in the interview, I got very comfortable in my chair, mostly because Wendy and I have always been cool. I practically forgot the cameras were there—I’m sure that has something to do with constantly taping
Braxton Family Values
. So when Wendy said, “I heard that you are done recording,” my mouth started moving before my brain could catch up—and the following day’s headline became
TONI BRAXTON ENDS HER MUSIC CAREER.

I may not have intended to tell Wendy that I was finished—but there was some truth to my statement. For months, I’d been struggling with myself about what to do next in my career—and in my life. My last few records hadn’t sold as well as those earlier in my career. My marriage was over. My lupus was becoming more of a challenge to manage. And just the thought of spending hours in the studio made me feel more exhausted than excited. As much of a fighter as I am, I still have those moments . . . those days . . . those weeks when I just don’t want to pry myself out of bed and face the world. So when I walked out onto Wendy’s set last year, I was carrying all of those emotions with me. And once Wendy gave me her usual “Hey, girl!” treatment, a little of what I’d been feeling just came spilling out as if we were just two friends, catching up one-on-one. It just so happens that the whole world was listening in on our conversation. Oops.

Once the headlines hit, other singers started reaching out. Missy Elliott. Barbra Streisand. And even one of my musical heroes, Anita Baker. They all had the same message: “You cannot retire. I’ve felt exactly how you’re feeling—but it’s just not time.” Missy even rang me on my cell one afternoon and said, “Hey, whatcha doin’, Toni? You should swing by the studio and hang with me.” With such an outpouring of support, I suddenly didn’t feel so alone. Plenty of other artists had come to the crossroads where I stood—and they had pressed forward.

I’m at a new juncture right now—one that has both everything and nothing to do with music. My marriage has been over for a while, but the actual divorce in the summer of 2013 made our split official. I know it was the best decision for us to separate, but it still makes me sad sometimes. On the day I stood and exchanged vows with Keri, I wanted it to last forever, and I believed that it would. But some things just can’t continue—and our romance was one of those things. Even still, Keri and I are both committed to making sure that our sons know how much we love them. We’re friends. Long before there was a romance, there was a solid friendship in place, and that foundation will remain. And no matter how our connection evolves in the coming years, Denim and Diezel will always be our priority. We’ve promised our sons that.

My mom and sisters have nudged me to get back out there and start dating. I’ve gone out a couple times, but to be honest, I don’t think I really know
how
to date. First of all, where am I supposed to meet someone—in the fresh produce section at Whole Foods? And what do I say during all those awkward silences that pop up during dinner? Tamar says I’m a control freak—but I think I just find the whole thing unnerving. In time, I’m sure I’ll figure it out, because I do want to have another relationship. And no, I’m not trying to be a cougar—a gentleman in his late forties or fifties would be perfect. And if he’s financially comfortable, all the better.

For now, it’s me and the boys—and our days are busy with school, homework, and family time. I’m a cooker (I call myself the Barefoot Contessa of my family!), so a couple nights a week, I make dinner for the three of us—like maybe salmon glazed with honey and garlic. “You make the kind of food you’d find in a five-star hotel!” my sisters often say, teasing me. “Nobody wants to eat like that all the time!” But trying out new recipes has always been my thing (I’m addicted to the Cooking Channel). I wish I could put a hot meal on the table every night, the way my mother did when I was growing up, but she was a full-time homemaker. For me, two or three nights a week is plenty—and besides that, Denim, Diezel, and I usually begin our days by having breakfast together.

Both of my sons are great students—and Diezel has made so much social and academic progress that he’s now considered high functioning. In fact, if you didn’t know he’d ever been diagnosed with autism, you probably wouldn’t figure it out. That’s because he has been in such intense therapy for so many years—and when it comes to intervention, early diagnosis makes all the difference. He excels in math, but like many autistic children, he has to work harder at reading. Texting on his phone has helped him tremendously. If he misspells a word, the phone automatically corrects it—and that reminds him how to spell it. The first few years after he was diagnosed, he was also surrounded by what autism advocates call “typical peers”—meaning that he was in a school where not everyone was autistic. And did I mention that he’s now at a regular private school? I’m one of the lucky parents: my son’s early diagnosis and extensive therapy changed everything.

I’m an international spokesperson for Autism Speaks—and Diezel has sometimes been able to join me in that work. For instance, I got to go to the U.N. in 2011 and share what it is like to mother a child who has autism. Diezel came with me—and he even talked with a correspondent from ABC News in the press room. Everyone was so excited to meet him—but probably not nearly as excited as he was to be there.

Denim says he wants to be a basketball player—or at least that’s his Plan A for right now. Plans B and C are attorney and judge. But his plans change all the time. He’s a super smart boy—he’s a year ahead because he skipped pre-K and went straight to kindergarten. He’s also a great big brother to Diezel. A few years back, one of Denim’s friends once said, “What’s wrong with your brother?” Denim said, “He’s autistic—you got a problem with that?” That was one of my proudest mommy moments. It let me know that what I’ve been teaching my sons about family and sticking together is being applied.

Diezel says he wants to be an actor, and maybe that dream will stick: He made his screen debut in
Twist of Faith
. Neither of my sons wants to sing—and I’ve never wanted to push my children toward entertainment or any other career path. I understand that my sons don’t actually belong to me. They are just gifts that I’ve been entrusted with for a time. As a mom, my job is to love them, mold them, teach them—and then to release them to live the lives they choose for themselves.

MY SECOND BANKRUPTCY
became settled in July 2013. I now have a clean slate—but it did come at a cost. For one thing, I lost the rights to several of my songs, including “You’re Makin’ Me High” and “How Many Ways” . . . thankfully, I was able to hold on to “Un-Break My Heart.” And you want to hear how I discovered I’d lost the rights to more than two dozen songs? This is another example of how nutty things can get in my industry.

True story: Just before I set out on a performance tour, I did an interview with a newspaper reporter. My publicist set up the call, connected us, and then stayed on the line. So the interviewer goes, “I read that you lost the publishing rights to a lot of your songs. So what’s next for Toni Braxton?” I paused. “Excuse me?” I finally said. I had no clue what she was talking about. Right then, my publicist cut into our conversation and put the reporter on hold. “We’ll call you right back,” she told the journalist. A couple minutes later, my manager called me. “We had to auction off your publishing rights,” he said. Apparently, my attorneys had gone to the auction to buy back my songs (once the bankruptcy was settled, a buyback was an option) but when someone put in a large bid for the song, my lawyers had decided it wasn’t worth it to offer a higher bid. “The song rights will eventually revert back to you anyway,” my manager explained. He apologized profusely that he hadn’t yet circled back to tell me what happened at the auction. Let me be honest with you: Even though my lawyers’ rationale makes sense, I’m nonetheless pissed that I no longer own the rights to those songs. But then again, there’s far more to be grateful about in my situation than there is to be annoyed about. I’ve been given a chance to start over. Twice. And I intend to use the opportunity to move myself and my family to the next place.

IT WAS KENNY
—my brother in the music business—who ultimately convinced me not to hang up my microphone. “You’re just going through a hard time,” he told me. “You’re angry about your life. You’re angry about some of the choices you made. You’ve gotta work through that—but you can’t let it stop you from recording.” That breakthrough conversation turned into a duet album that we called
Love, Marriage, Divorce
.

Working with Kenny again on this new album has been as much fun as I expected—and then some. At this point, we’re like family, so the jokes are constantly flowing. We did have to sort out a few issues in the beginning of our collaboration: Because Kenny is the one who first molded me as a musician, I think he has a tendency to see me as his little sister. So during our recording process, I’ll admit that I was at first walking on eggshells when it came to expressing my ideas—but that changed rather quickly as I asserted myself and began to speak up. This project is 50–50, so our artistic opinions carry equal weight. I have just as much invested in our success as Kenny does. Also, when I would show up at Kenny’s studio for us to work together, the engineers would sometimes say, “Well, we have to wait till Kenny comes in.” I’m like, “Guys, I’m here—we can start.” We are full partners—and I had to make that known in a nice but firm way. When I’m in the room, my voice matters. My perspective matters. I matter.

“Hurt You”—that’s one of the first singles Kenny and I worked on. He wrote the hook, which I must say is pretty darn perfect. But when it came to the verses, I wasn’t in love with some of the lyrics and melodies he wrote, so I said, “Let me try some stuff.” When I came back the following day with some lyrics, he didn’t really like what I’d created. At first, he resisted. But he surprised me a week or so later when circled back and said, “You know, you’re right: What you came up with actually works.”

In one part of the bridge in “Hurt You,” I added the line “loving you causes so much pain.” Kenny asked, “What do you mean by that?” I said, “Have you ever been in love with a person, and you try to love him, but no matter what you give him, you can never make him happy—so it makes you feel pain?” He kinda understood—yet he had a different perspective, because he has always been the kind of man who provides for his family. But I was there to remind him that in our world, it’s often the working class woman who pays the bills. Guys are becoming the new girls. So there are many men at home with the kids, and plenty of them earn less than women do. “But that’s a small percentage of situations,” he protested. I said, “Kenny, you live in Bel Air. Once you get out of your neighborhood, there’s a greater percentage of people who are in exactly that situation.” It was conversations like this one that made our collaboration so rich. You can’t put out an album called
Love, Marriage, Divorce
and not represent the experiences of both genders—so we worked hard to be sure that our lyrics would resonate. The only way you can do that is by writing from a place of honesty. And since Kenny and I have both been through painful divorces, we had no shortage of material from which to draw on.

Either Kenny or I wrote pretty much every song on the album. The melody and lyrics came to us through so many different channels. For instance, after my mother initially discovered my dad’s affair, she was so angry. The rage was practically written across her forehead. One day when she must’ve been in a lot of pain, she said something like, “I hope that woman breaks his heart.” That’s what inspired the song “I Wish.” One of the lyrics is, “I hope she breaks your heart like you did me.” That turned out to be one of Kenny’s favorite songs on the album. He goes, “Not only are you an artist—you’re a real songwriter.” It felt good to hear Kenny say that.