Twenty-five years later, things have changed for Mariah, on paper at least. I wanted to be famous-not Michael Jackson famous. I knew I wanted to live in Manhattan-in a penthouse. “I knew if I wanted anything, I would have to get it myself. Mariah decided early on that she would have to make some changes to her life’s trajectory. “In this one house, I would sit in the porcelain bathtub and touch it and think someone actually owns this…nothing in the house belongs to me.” She grabs the coffee table in front of her to illustrate hr point. “I never could look at something and say, I own this.” Mariah is perched on a sofa blanket on her lap ensconced in a tiny candle-lit room at the top of the tower that is her downtown New York City home. They could have taken issue with Alfred Carey, the Black man who walked the streets of Long Island with his daughter on the weekends or Patricia Hickey Carey, his free-spirited ex-wife, who could be spotted with her during the week.Īnd then there were the house she lived in, usually the caretaker’s place that her mom rented out from the owners of the “big houses” in some of Suffolk County’s most exclusive areas.īut if the kids in her fourth grade class really wanted to get under her skin, they could have asked her if she had any possessions besides the book bag on her bag. They could have focused on the fact that Mariah and her mother had just moved in with Ernie and Mort, a gay couple who’d given Mariah the most stable home she’d has since her parent’s divorce. So the girls were all wearing our Levis and corduroys and she comes in wearing this really frilly feminine dress. “Fourth grade was that time when you’re fighting with you’re parents about wearing what you want to wear. But the memory of Mary’s first day at Lahey Elementary is sharp in her mind. She hasn’t seen Mariah in nearly twenty years. Today, Wifall is an English instructor at Jersey City State University. Rachel Wifall, Mariah’s classmate, remembers the day vividly. Her classmates decide to stick with the dress. There’s a laundry list of stuff Mariah can be teased about on her first day. Then there’s her hair-light brown, bushy and all over the place. First of all, she’s not quite as dark as The Black Kid. In addition to getting the typical new kid stare she’s getting a few extra double takes. Mariah is a mid-year transfer because she’s just moved for the umpteenth time. Lahey Elementary School in Greenlawn, an appropriately named suburb on Long Island. It’s 1978 and Mariah Carey has started fourth grade at Thomas J.
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