Читать книгу Meghan Misunderstood - Sean Smith - Страница 13

Just like any other day at the Immaculate Heart High School for girls, the morning began with a prayer. The students did not have to cram into church or kneel in corridors, they just had to stop what they were doing, stand still even if they were late and hurrying to class and think quietly for a minute or two, listening to the words coming from the loudspeakers dotted about.

The greeting was familiar. ‘Good morning Immaculate Heart!’ It was the voice of Christine Knudsen, who chaired the theology department. Occasionally she would recite a formal prayer that might end with an Amen – after all, Immaculate Heart had been founded as a Catholic school – but more often than not she would choose some words of inspiration. Sometimes she would talk about a film or an important sporting event; she might mention Gandhi if it was 2 October, his birthday. She used an Eleanor Roosevelt quote to great effect: ‘You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.’ She encouraged the girls to think of the qualities that mattered in life, such as compassion, acceptance, fairness and personal integrity.

And she would always conclude with a rallying cry. If it was the start of the week, she would declare, ‘MAKE IT A GREAT MONDAY!’‘The idea is that we just take a moment to compose ourselves and reflect. It’s a great way to stop and be free to start class,’ explained the current school president, Maureen Diekmann.

On one particular morning, census forms were being handed out to the seventh graders in middle school during their English lesson. It was the usual kind of thing – just tick the box and move on. But for twelve-year-old Meghan Markle, it immediately presented a problem. There were four choices for ethnicity: white, black, Hispanic or Asian.

Meghan didn’t know what to do. She asked the teacher, who looked at her light-toned skin and told her to check ‘caucasian’ because that was how she looked. But Meghan was uncomfortable with that advice because, in her eyes, it was choosing one parent over another. Imagine looking Doria in the eye if she had done as suggested. She told Elle magazine, ‘I put down my pen; not as an act of defiance but rather a symptom of my confusion. I couldn’t bring myself to do that, to picture the pit-in-the-belly sadness my mother would feel if she were to find out.’

Instead she just left it unanswered, heartbreakingly: ‘I left my identity blank – a question mark, an absolute incomplete – much like how I felt.’ That evening she told her dad what had happened. Tom was clear and clearly angry: ‘If it happens again, you draw your own box.’

The school prided itself on its diversity. Neither race nor religion was of paramount importance. Although it was founded by the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1906, little more than fifty per cent of the pupils were Catholic by the time Meghan enrolled. She would have been thought of as Christian while other groups included Buddhists, Muslims and Hindi, as well as those who didn’t have a religion at all.

Even in the early days when all the teachers were nuns, the mindset was to be as welcoming as possible. The girls who did not share the Catholic faith were never told they were wrong. Despite being on one of the busiest junctions in the Los Feliz neighbourhood – Franklin and Western – the campus of Immaculate Heart was a tranquil urban oasis with plenty of space for conversation, laughter or some private moments. In the centre of the grounds was an inviting swimming pool that would have graced many of the movie-star mansions of Beverly Hills. Across the road was the building that housed the American Film Institute, just in case the pupils needed reminding that Hollywood was near.

Although the fees at the private school were expensive for those that could afford to pay the full amount, Immaculate Heart was not full of the children of millionaires; nor was it packed with celebrity offspring. Kim and Kourtney Kardashian, for instance, went to Marymount High School, another all-girl Catholic school on Sunset Boulevard; Jake Gyllenhaal and Ayda Field attended the Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City.

You can usually find at least one notable celebrity at any school in LA. Immaculate Heart was no exception. Until Meghan featured as an alumna, the best-known actress through the gates was probably the much-loved television and film star Mary Tyler Moore, who died in 2017.

Following her death, the president of the Screen Actors Guild, Gabrielle Carteris, said, ‘At a time when independence for women was not the social norm, both the fictional Mary and the real-life Mary set an example, showing that women could take control of their lives and their careers.’ It was an example that Meghan Markle would follow.

Mary Tyler Moore was a role model for the girls at Immaculate Heart, although more so probably for the mothers and grandmothers of Meghan’s generation. An alumna more relevant to Meghan was Tyra Banks, who had graduated just a couple of years earlier. Tyra had shot up by three inches when she was eleven and had to contend with negativity and name-calling from bullies who would call her ‘giraffe’ and ‘light-bulb head’, but she had the last laugh. While she was still at the school she embarked on her successful career as a supermodel.

Tyra launched her TV career in 1993, just as Meghan started at Immaculate Heart, playing Will Smith’s childhood friend Jackie Ames in seven episodes of his popular sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. She was only nineteen when she found fame. Meghan would have to wait far longer.

In some ways, Tyra has become a younger version of Oprah Winfrey, branching out into the world of broadcasting and philanthropy, and boasting a fortune estimated to be more than $90 million. As long ago as 1994, when Meghan was in eighth grade, Tyra started the Tyra Banks Scholarship so that disadvantaged African–American girls could attend Immaculate Heart. She recognised at a young age that not every girl of colour was going to become a supermodel.

In 1999, the year Meghan graduated, Tyra also founded TZONE, an annual seven-day camp designed to improve the leadership and life skills of similarly underprivileged girls in and around Los Angeles. Tyra wanted to build the self-esteem of pre-teen and teenage girls and help them to overcome gender stereotyping and body issues. The concept went nationwide in 2005 as the Tyra Banks TZONE Foundation.

For Meghan, her own confusion about her identity was not something that was going to disappear overnight. Despite the worthy philosophy of the school, she had to confront basic problems every day, including where to sit in the canteen at lunchtimes. Inevitably, there were cliques. Should she spend the hour with the black girls or the white girls, with the Filipino or Latino girls? Mostly she avoided the issue by joining every group or society going, making do with a sandwich during French club or giving her views on the next important question for the student body. It helped that she was intelligent and articulate, although there was a chance she was becoming a little earnest.

The girls at Immaculate Heart were encouraged to get involved in the community. In these early teenage years they were educated in the school’s ideology values ‘to become women of great heart and right conscience through leadership, service, and a life-long commitment to Christian values.’

In middle school, they were expected to volunteer for worthwhile projects in the Los Angeles area. Meghan, aged thirteen, chose a particularly challenging one, working at a place that was on Doria’s radar as something worth supporting.

The enterprise in the heart of downtrodden, downcast, downtown LA was run by a remarkable couple, Jeff Dietrich and Catherine Morris, a former nun, who is in her eighties now but still turning up two or three times a week to do her bit at the ‘Hippie Kitchen’, as the locals named their community kitchen back in the day.

Skid Row, fifty-four blocks of relentless misery, is not a place for a night-time stroll past the trolleys full of crumpled clothes and cardboard boxes, past the homeless men and women huddled round an oil-drum fire waiting for the sun to rise on another day; waiting for the soup kitchen on the corner of 6th Street and Gladys Avenue to open.

Jeff and Catherine met as volunteers there in 1974, four years after the kitchen opened in an old Victorian house. They were part of an organisation called the Catholic Worker movement that aims to help the most vulnerable members of society. The three hundred or so homeless people queuing for their only meal of the day were not fed religion as part of the deal.

Instead they were treated to an hour or so of respect where they could eat some freshly cooked food – vegetables, rice and beans or some salad with hunks of bread – in the tranquil, sunny courtyard dotted with palm trees and parrots, and chat about this and that and nothing in particular before stepping back into the harsh reality of their world. Perhaps best of all, it was a place of safety where they knew your name.

The kitchen was open in the mornings and the police were never too far away, patrolling the sidewalks where crack cocaine and bad alcohol were in competition to drag the Skid Row residents down even further. Meghan had been apprehensive, even fearful, of volunteering. She had seen the grim streets of Mexico and Jamaica, but here she was making a connection and becoming personally involved: ‘The first day I felt really scared. I was young and it was rough and raw down there, and though I was with a great volunteer group, I just felt overwhelmed.’

Meghan was more her confident self when she gave her first serious speech; she spoke at her middle school graduation ceremony at Immaculate Heart in June 1995. It was a masterful effort for someone not yet fourteen. Wearing the traditional white cap and gown, she showed no sign of outward nerves when she began, ‘Good evening parents, friends, faculty and fellow classmates …’

She thanked the school graciously for the previous two years, singling out the religious lessons that had helped her and others to ‘develop spirituality in our lives’ and the classes that had taught them ‘a deep compassion to those who suffer from the Aids virus’.

She concluded in a mature way: ‘We will graduate from high school in 1999 and begin college in the next century, taking many different paths. Some of us will go into politics, finance, entertainment, education and many other fields. But no matter what field we choose, we will always carry the spirit of Immaculate Heart with us. And always and forever as women of great heart, dedicate ourselves to making it a better world.’

Not for the last time in her life, a Meghan Markle speech was greeted with a rapturous round of applause. The last sentiment was one she has endeavoured to follow throughout her life and that she could have included in almost any speech she has made since.

Doria continued to nurture her daughter’s empathy by taking Meghan with her to weekend meetings of her church, the Agape (Greek for unconditional love) International Spiritual Center in Santa Monica. These were very popular across a wide spectrum of ages and ethnicity. Dismissing these gatherings as an exuberant, exclusively black gospel event is completely wrong.

Of course the hall resonates with some glorious, uplifting singing, accompanied by the Agape house band of musicians, but there’s also the chance to meditate, spending time in soothing silence and quiet reflection, that particularly appealed to Doria and her embrace of yoga culture.

The centre was founded in 1986 by the Rev Dr Michael Beckwith, a charismatic advocate of the New Thought movement that promoted positive thinking as a modern way of dealing with the universal problems of today – feeding the homeless, preserving the environment and helping children whose lives have been shattered by war and disease. They are the virtues that Doria and Meghan already followed and ones that would become even more important to them in the years to come.

These were religious gatherings and God did not take a backseat, but they were a world away from a draughty Sunday service at Crathie Kirk, next to Balmoral. A celebrity or two might drift in, happy that they were not going to be photographed or disturbed. The Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank was a particular devotee and would often be there when Doria and Meghan attended.

In the school holidays, when Meghan was thirteen going on fourteen, Agape started a summer drama camp for some of the members’ children. The camp, which met every day, was called Agape’s 38 Flavours, because that was the number of children who signed up for it. They were from different cultures, all encouraged to share their experiences of life.

Meghan was one of thirteen or fourteen young teenagers, alongside a pocket of pre-teens and a group of little children. Another girl was known as Meg so Meghan adopted her own special jingle: ‘Meghan Markle with a Sparkle’ and everyone called her that.

Generally, Doria would be the morning taxi, dropping her off at 8am, then Tom would pick her up at 4pm. Meghan’s domestic arrangements had changed. Tom and Doria had swapped roles to a certain extent. One of the popular myths about Meghan’s childhood and beyond is that her mum and dad remained great friends. That was not the case, but like many parents, they made the best of it for the sake of their child.

Meghan was faced with the tricky dilemma of keeping both parents happy and including both in her life. During the week she lived with her father. The Woodland Hills home had proved far too large for one person after both Yvonne and Tom Jr had moved out, so instead, he found a second-floor apartment in an unassuming West Hollywood street called Vista Del Mar, conveniently near his work and the school.

At weekends she was back with Mum. Doria was following in her own dad’s footsteps by setting up in business for herself and becoming a store owner. She found premises for two businesses in a modest shopping mall on La Brea Avenue, just a five-minute drive from home; one was a gift shop called Distant Treasures and the other, catchily named A Change of a Dress, included some of her own designs. Understandably, the stores required a lot of attention so there was little time for the school run, so Tom’s place seemed a sensible option for Meghan during the week.

Tom didn’t go to the Agape church but he was happy to do his share of parental chauffeuring for camp. This was the first time the teenage Meghan had come into contact with boys. She went to an all-girls school so the opportunities had been thin on the ground. That changed when she met Joshua Silverstein, a year older than her and just as keen on theatre.

Like her, Joshua was mixed race. His father David was Jewish and his mother, Beverly, African–American. His parents, who divorced when he was eleven, went to high school with Michael Beckwith. Some years later David bumped into Michael, who invited him to come along to Agape. He loved the sense of community there and would take his son to the services, often twice a week.

Joshua did not need to see which box Meghan might or might not have checked to understand her ethnicity: ‘When I saw Meghan, I saw a lighter-skinned brown person with curly hair and freckles and fuller lips. And I was like, that person is a person of colour.’

Meghan and Joshua got together in a time-honoured way. He recalled, ‘It was very typical of what kids do at that time. A friend told me Meghan thought I was cute and then I told my friend I thought she was cute. That was really the impetus we needed to become a couple. I took a day to think about it and figure out what to do. It was camp and we would be seeing each other every day so it was a big commitment to show up as a couple.

‘So the next day I made my move and we just fell into it. It was very innocent and very cute. And everyone took it that we were together. If she was doing anything acting-wise, I was very focused on it and very, very interested in what she was doing.’ Even though they were young, they talked about the black experience from the perspective of someone who had a white parent. They weren’t overly serious conversations but ones in which they discussed what it might be like to be a person of colour in the entertainment industry.

The new couple also had the more traditional teenage problem – how to find any privacy. They would sit together at lunch but the other campmates would always be around. Joshua explained, ‘It was this awkward and uncomfortable thing – like you are sitting with us and infringing on our space. But they were like – “Are you guys going to kiss? Kiss now.”’ They did kiss, making sure they practised a lot at every opportunity during camp.

Having been together most of the day, Meghan and Joshua would spend much of the evening on the phone to each other. He would be on the floor of his mother’s bedroom and she would be in a closet upstairs – both of them trying to keep the conversation away from parental ears.

Camp was an enjoyable way of spending the summer holidays. The Agape theatre programme was different in that it combined theatre games and practice with a sense of spirituality. There was nothing overtly serious but it just seemed natural to take a break with some guided meditation or ‘visioning’, where you think about your goals for the future, or to end a day of fun with a prayer.

Meghan celebrated her fourteenth birthday at the beginning of August and was given a rousing chorus of ‘Happy Birthday Meghan Markle with a Sparkle’ at the camp. Her memorable summer ended with a spectacular show in the Sanctuary, Agape’s main hall on Olympic Boulevard in Santa Monica. It was a culmination of all the various stories and presentations, improv games and sketches that they had worked on for six weeks. They each had to perform a monologue in which they created a new and totally original character. Meghan made sure her hair was at its wildest, smeared lipstick on her face and wore clothes that didn’t really fit. Joshua remembers it as being ‘quirky’. She loved the applause – the cheering, screaming and laughing that stays with you. The big finale was a huge, choreographed dance number entitled ‘Agape’s 38 Flavours’, in which every boy and girl took part.

After camp was over, the group got together and met up at the promenade next to Santa Monica beach. Everyone was relaxed, just hanging; Megan and Joshua held hands as they walked along before they all went into the local cinema to watch the film Clueless, a big summer hit in 1995.

The movie, set in Beverly Hills, is loosely based on Jane Austen’s classic novel Emma. The heroine, Cher Horowitz, played by Alicia Silverstone, is a high-school matchmaker who eventually falls in love with the Mr Knightley character (Paul Rudd), who in the film is rather coincidentally called Josh.

Unfortunately, the other, real-life Josh was unimpressed. He observed, ‘I wasn’t a fan. I was a young African–American boy watching a film about white women. It revolves around a shopaholic white woman and I was not relating to any of that.’ When his guy friends said they were leaving, he went too and told Meghan that he would see her outside. He left just before the tender kiss between the two lead characters: ‘I left my teenage, romance-driven beautiful girlfriend in a theatre while the kissing scene happened. What a dummy! I didn’t understand back then that you don’t do that. You don’t leave – that’s when you kiss the girl in the movie theater.’

That evening, Meghan let Joshua down gently during their long evening phone call. She explained to him why he shouldn’t have done that. She was, he acknowledges, a little ahead of him in understanding how a relationship works. He recalled, ‘I listened to her and I understood and I felt bad.’ Meghan also observed, sensibly, that they were both moving up from middle into high school next term and would inevitably see little of each other. She told him she wanted to enjoy the high school experience, the next stage of growing up. ‘So it was like “Oh heartbreak – but you are probably right,”’ observed her now ex-boyfriend.

And that was that, although Meghan always remembered Joshua and she told chat show veteran Larry King in 2013 that he had been her first kiss.

They didn’t keep in touch, although over the years he would still see Doria at Agape. When the church moved to new premises in Culver City, the entrance hall would be filled with various book, bric-a-brac and clothing stalls. Doria had one for her vintage lines and Joshua would stop to chat and discover how ‘Meg’, as her mother called her in public, was doing.

Joshua has become a well-known name in Los Angeles performing arts. He mentioned Meghan in his one-man show and later was a resident performer, the expert beat-boxer, on the Drop the Mic spot that proved so popular on The Late Late Show with James Cordon. As Meghan would also do, he has given back to the community; in his case with workshops and residences in local schools that have provided a safe and non-judgemental environment for boys and girls to realise their creative potential.

Meghan had enjoyed her first romantic interlude, but perhaps just as importantly she couldn’t wait for the next show at Immaculate Heart; another step on her Yellow Brick Road.