The day my mother died, my brothers and I set foot in her house for the first time in many years. To search for our secrets. Not hers. In the bathroom there were still the broken plastic swans, with their long, determined necks. Petrified. As if nothing had happened.
I took down from the wall of his bedroom the only photo he had ever hung, of Pope John Paul II. It had been taken during his trip to Ireland in 1979. “Young people of Ireland,” he had said after kissing the ground at Dublin airport, as if the flight had been terrifying, “I love you.” A load of bullshit. No one loved us. Not even God. Not even our mothers and fathers could stand us.
In 1978 Bob Geldof had torn live from Top of the Pops a photo of Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, whose shitty Summer Nights had remained at the top of the charts for seven weeks. Result: the single Rat Trap by the Boomtown Rats had knocked it off the number 1 spot.
I had always wanted to destroy that picture of the Pope. It represented lies, liars and abuse. People who kept things like that were devils, like my mother. I didn't know when, where or how, but I knew that when the time was right I would destroy it. That's why, from that day on, I took it with me wherever I lived. Because no one ever gave a shit about Irish children.
I wake up after going to bed at six in the morning. It's one o'clock. There are only a few hours left until the rehearsals for SNL. I will sing two songs, the second of which is War by Bob Marley, a cappella. The lyrics are a speech on racism as the cause of all wars given in 1963 at the United Nations in New York by Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia. I'm going to change a few lines, though, so as to turn it into a declaration of war against violence against minors. I'm pissed off about what Terry told me last night (the Rastafarian manager of a New York juice bar who became “my master”, ed.). I'm pissed off because he used kids as drug mules.
And I'm pissed because he will be dead by Monday.
I've been pissed off for a few weeks now, also, because I read The Holy Grail (an unconventional and sacrilegious history of the origins of the Church), but also because I found some hidden blurbs in the back pages of Irish newspapers about stories of children raped by priests whose papers had been “lost” by the police and bishops to whom the parents had reported the abuse. And I feel even more like destroying my mother’s GP2 photo.
I've decided, tonight is the right time.
I take the photo to NBC studios and hide it in the dressing room. During rehearsals, when I finish singing War by Bob Marley, I show a photo of a Brazilian street child killed by the police. I ask the cameraman to zoom in during the show. I don't tell him what's on my mind. No one objects. A dead child in a faraway country is certainly not a problem.
I know there will be war if I do this. But I don't care. I know the Scriptures. Nothing can touch me. I reject the world. No one can do anything to me that hasn't already been done. I can go back to singing in the streets. I'm not in danger of getting my throat cut.
Here we go. I'm wearing a white lace dress that once belonged to Sade. I bought it at a rock auction in London when I was nineteen. Eight hundred pounds. It's beautiful. There are two lead weights the size of coins on either side of the back slit, to keep the dress upright and make it fall gracefully. Brilliant idea. A dress for a woman who wants to be bad. Maybe one day I'll have a daughter who'll wear it to her wedding.
The show goes on. The first song, Success Has Made a Failure of Our Homeit's a dream. At the end, the backstage is full of people: producers, managers, makeup artists and other guests. I'm on a high. Everyone wants to talk to me. They tell me I'm a good girl. But I know I'm a fraud.
The set for the second song is gorgeous. With some candles next to me and my rasta prayer mat tied to the microphone, I belt out War a cappella. No one has the slightest suspicion. In the end, however, I don't show the photo of the child. I show the photo of GP2 and tear it to pieces. “Fight the real enemy!” I shout. (I'm speaking to those who will kill Terry.) Then I turn and blow out the candles.
The audience is silent. There is literally no living soul backstage. The doors are closed. Everyone disappears. Including my manager, who hides in his room for three days with his phone off the hook.
People want pop stars, you know? But I'm a protest singer. And I had a weight on my chest that I had to get off my chest. I didn't want fame. That's why I chose the first song: “success” was really ruining my life. They were already calling me crazy because I wasn't acting like a pop star. Because I wasn't worshipping fame. I realize that I've shattered the dreams of those around me. But those aren't my dreams. No one ever asked me what my dreams were; they just got mad, because I wasn't what they wanted me to be. My only dream is to fulfill the pact I made with God before I even entered the music business. And that's a better fight than murder. I have to get to the other side of life.
I'm in the dressing room with my assistant Ciara. We gather our things and leave the building. Outside 30 Rockefeller Plaza, two guys are waiting for me and they throw a mountain of eggs at us. They don't know that Ciara and I can run a hundred meters in 11.3 seconds. So we chase them when they run away. We catch up with them in an alley. Out of breath, they're leaning against a black fence that they don't have the strength to climb. We burst out laughing: “Hey, you don't throw eggs at women.” That's all we say. In disbelief at having been chased and caught up, they laugh too, and it all ends happily. They pull themselves together and help us find a taxi back to the hotel.
The news is already on, and I find out I'm banned from NBC for life. It hurts a lot less than the rapes of those Irish children. And it hurts a lot less than Terry's death. Which happens promptly the following Monday.
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