Every day I came home from school and checked the mail like I’d spelled out HELP on a deserted isle. I felt marooned, still stuck between being a regular kid and being someone on TV. On a Saturday afternoon, my family and I went to see a matinee of My Father the Hero with Katherine Heigl. We looked alike, and as I leaned back in my seat I watched her and put myself into her life. One of the acting coaches from the camp talked about the importance of “choices,” so I followed the character during the movie, but also Katherine. Why had she lifted her chin when she laughed? Was that her or her character? I wanted to be in the movies, to be that big and important on the screen.
We came home and I knew the letter would be there. It just felt like it was time. I admit I thought that every other day, too, so I am not that psychic. But I wasn’t surprised to see a skinny little envelope from Disney, certain it would be a rejection. I still had the hope to pray, though. I opened it in front of my parents in the living room.
It was a no.
I started crying as soon as I realized. I handed it to my mother and ran to my room. As I remember, the letter amounted to “Not you.” But here’s the thing: It was a nice letter. I only know because I just now called my mom. I knew she would still have it.
“It was addressed to us, first of all, Jessica,” she said. “It said your daughter has a ton of talent, she’s amazing. ‘Keep doing what you’re doing. I know we’re gonna see you again someday.’ ”
I had to sit with that for a minute. For over twenty years, I just remembered the “We don’t want you.”
“Well, everyone got in but me and one other person,” I said.
“Jess, that’s not true.”
“It was just me that got cut?”
“Honey, no,” she said. “They were choosing eight but instead they chose seven.” She paused, realizing that I messed up my final audition so bad that they lowered the final head count to seven to exclude me. “You were gonna be the eight. There were twelve of y’all there, so five people didn’t make it.”
When I got the letter, something shifted in me. That afternoon I had imagined what it would be like to be on the screen, big and in front. And now I shrunk from it. I never wanted to sing again. Not if it could lead to me feeling that forsaken. I cried for days. I know people say things like, “I cried for days” and you kinda think, Well, didja really? Well, I can assure you, I cried for days. I cried eating cereal, I cried peeing, I cried praying at church . . . the sense of loss and missed opportunity was suffocating.
It scared my parents, but they differed on what to do next. Every parent thinks their kid has a gift, or at least they should. But Matt Casella’s words stayed with them. I had talent. I had been so close. What if I got that close again and, oh I don’t know, didn’t blow it? My mother acted like we’d touched a flame, and now we knew better. She didn’t know that we could handle something that devastating again. My father, on the other hand, was mesmerized by the flame. They had told him his daughter was a star, and it was his responsibility to make that happen for me. And, yes, for us. They had huge fights about it, when they thought I couldn’t hear them. When my father would start in on some new plan to launch me—saying maybe he should call one of the casting agents or look into getting me my own agent—she would stop him. That summer I was in the bathroom, staring at my reflection so long in the mirror they probably forgot I was even home.
Dad’s new idea was that he’d found a pastor named Buster Soaries who had started a gospel record label. Dad was planning a vacation bible school in the Destin area of Florida. He would invite him as a speaker, and then have me perform.
“It’s gonna happen now,” my father said. “This is it.”
“Why can’t she just be a regular girl?” my mom yelled.
“Tina, she can be a regular girl,” he yelled. “She can be that girl. She can be that girl and be a star.”
I came out of the bathroom. “I want to do it.”
My dad grinned, but my mom just said, “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “I want to be that girl.”
MY PARENTS LOOKED FOR A VOCAL COACH IN THE AREA, AND MY DAD took me to Linda Septien. A former opera singer with a Texas twang, Linda was blonde and just gave off an air of being well-to-do and professional, even though her place sat at the end of a strip mall on the edge of Dallas. She asked me to talk about myself, and I looked at my dad, who ran through the whole tragedy of the Mickey Mouse Club audition. She asked me to sing, so I did “Amazing Grace.”
“You have a beautiful voice,” she told me. “You just got squelched and you have to get past it.” She told me I seemed shy and that I sang “churchy.” Linda saw the potential there, if I worked on getting more control of my vocal cords. As we worked together, she tested my octave range by having me sing notes. Notes go on a scale of one to eight, and I learned that I have a vocal range spanning four-and-a-half octaves.
“Is that good?” I asked.
“Well Mariah is a five,” she said. She could do lower notes like me but go even further up the scale to the highest notes. That was why I couldn’t do the high-pitched whistle she did when I sang along to “Emotions.”
Linda gave me the confidence I needed when I tried to impress Buster Soaries at the church camp my dad organized for that summer. Rev. Dr. DeForest B. Soaries was the stately, if a little flashy, lead pastor of one of the largest African American congregations in New Jersey. More important to my dad, he was starting a small gospel record label, Proclaim Records. He was there to discuss one of his favorite subjects, teen abstinence, and I was there to sing as an intro to warm up the crowd. I chose “I Will Always Love You,” telling the crowd it was about true love waiting.
Afterward, Buster came over to me. “You remind me of Nippy,” he said.
“Nippy?” I said, looking at the splotch of gray on top of his otherwise jet-black hair.
“Whitney Houston,” he said. He told me he knew her when she was around my age, and that he would slip into her church in Newark during choir rehearsal just to hear Nippy sing. I admitted to him that was why I chose that song, because my dad had told me he was friends with her family. He smiled and right there, that day, he signed me to the label.
Dad and I went up to New Jersey to go to a recording studio he’d booked, only to find that his plan was for me to record with a full gospel choir crammed into the room. They seemed to be just as surprised to see me as I was to see them. Like, Who is this little girl? We recorded an absolutely abysmal song that I gave my all to, because now everything seemed like an audition and I was not going to blow it. The song was “God Says Wait” and it was about—guess what?—not having sex. I will spare you the lyrics, but it was basically a call to arms-length love.
Buster got me gigs on the gospel circuit. When the travel got tough or I seemed too nervous to sleep, I would drink some NyQuil. I realized it knocked me out when I was sick, so I took it when I was healthy, too. Then I started taking Tylenol PM. It was a godsend after years of lying awake with fears of being alone. I took each pill like it was a magic potion, because it freed me. I was able to sleep in my own bed, or a bed on the road, without needing Ashlee. I didn’t think I was dependent. In fact, those pills actually helped me feel independent.