La Toya Jackson’s Autobio, 1990

(filming the Wiz in NYC 1977)

While in New York we had a very strange experience. I enjoyed playing practical jokes on Michael, just as he did on me. One evening I attended some function with Dick Gregory, and Michael stayed home to relax watching television. He became absorbed in a Twilight Zone episode about a man who loses his identity. Everyone he thinks he knows treats him like a total stranger, until he begins questioning whether he exists at all. For some reason this story made an impression on Michael, blessed with an active imagination. At the same moment I was inserting the key into the door of our apartment, he was sitting in front of the TV asking himself, Who am I? Am I really real?

Why I did this, I don’t know, but on the spur of the moment I pretended I didn’t recognize Michael, staring at him blank faced and asking, “Who are you? And what are you doing in my house?”

Michael jumped on the sofa, aghast. “What do you mean? I’m Mike!”

“But who are you?”

“I’m Mike!”

“But who are you?” I asked him over and over again.

“Don’t do this to me, LaToya!” he pleaded.

I burst out laughing. “I’m just kidding, you creep,” I said, wondering why he looked so agitated.

“No, you don’t understand.” He gulped for air. “I saw this Twilight Zone episode where a guy loses his identity. And I said to myself, ‘If LaToya comes in here and asks me who I am, I am going to die.’ You almost gave me a heart atack.”

[...]

Another morning the entrie family was awakened by a heavy crash! and ran outside to investigate. We saw a tiny young woman tramping along the perimeter of the swimming pool, shrieking at the top of her lungs, and toppling these solid marble statues it had taken four brawny men to move into place. When all the statues were lying on their sides, she commenced turning on the gas valves that feed the heating units in the pool, the jacuzzi, and the gas lamps.

“I’m going to kill all of you” she screamed hysterically. “Every last one of you!”

My father managed to calm down the woman while waiting for security to arrive. They brought her in the house and he demanded,

“Okay, what’s your name? How did you get in here? Why are you doing these things?”

She glared at Joseph, Mother, Michael, Janet, Randy, and me, lifted her skirt, and in a deranged voice declared, “My name is Pussy, and I’m gonna give it to all of you! All of you! And I hate you! Because you’re close to Michael!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I hate you!” she said, looking at me. “And I’m gonna make sure you don’t live. God’s gonna strike you dead!” When I’d heard about enough, I walked out of the room.

[...]

Some of my most cherished memories of home centre on my mother and the many good times we shared. One day I teasingly told my brothers, “You guys go to Europe all the time, but I’m going to be the first person to take mother there.” It was going to be a special trip, just the two of us together. Before we left, Michael handed me an envelope. “Here,” he said, smiling. “Give this to Mother when the plane is up in the air, okay?”

What is it, I wondered. Once airborne, I took the envelope from my bag and handed it to her. “Mother, this is for you, from Mike.”

“For me?” she asked, surprised. No matter how many gifts her children lavish on her, for Mother each is like the first one.

Inside were $10,000 in cash and a piece of paper on which Michael had written the lyrics to one of her favorite songs, “Moon River.” As we read the words – “Two drifters off to see the world, there’s such a lot of world to see” – tears welled in our eyes. By the time we got to Michael’s inscription, “Please enjoy yourself. Don’t hesitate to do anything. Just go for it.

It’s your life, enjoy it. Love, Michael,” we were crying like a couple of idiots. All the passengers stared at us, and the flight attendants kept asking if there was something they could do.