Janet Elopes
While Michael Jackson and his brothers were preoccupied with the Victory tour, trouble was brewing at home too. Much to everyone's dismay, Janet (who turned eighteen on 16 May 1984), had become involved with a young singer named James DeBarge. James is from a large singing family from Grand Rapids, Michigan (the same DeBarge that had been the Jackson's stable-mates at Motown), and he and Janet seemed to have common ground, at least superficially, since both were from show-business families. Joseph and Katherine disapproved of the relationship, saying that James was combative and unpredictable. Plus, in their view, Janet was young and inexperienced. James would later insist, though, that he and Janet were first intimate when she was just fifteen, and, he added somewhat indelicately, ‘that was some real lovemaking.’
When the Jackson parents finally figured out that James was abusing drugs, it was the end of their daughter's little romance, as far as they were concerned. However, Janet told them that she was in love with him and determined to marry him, despite – or perhaps even because of – their disapproval. She was aware that he had a drug problem, she said, but she thought she could handle it, and maybe even be of assistance. ‘You always think you can change people,’ she said in retrospect. ‘And I knew that he so badly wanted to change. He was trying, but he wasn't trying hard enough.’
They eloped on 7 September 1984, in Grand Rapids, DeBarge's hometown. Their wedding night was a disaster, as James recalled it: ‘I spoiled it completely. Janet had been shaking in her shoes at the wedding ceremony, and I thought the least I could do was to give her a night to remember. I booked the top suite of the Amway Plaza Hotel, which cost me a small fortune. But then I went out and got rotten drunk with some friends. I finally got back to the hotel at three a.m. and Janet was waiting for me, crying.’
The next day, Janet telephoned LaToya to tell her the news of her marriage. LaToya was then charged with breaking the startling news to Joseph and Katherine who, predictably, did not take it well. She also telephoned each brother, except Michael. They were all upset and angry, Jermaine in particular. ‘I know that he would have killed her if he could've gotten his hands on Janet,’ LaToya would remember.
The question, then, was how to tell Michael. Actually, no member of the family wanted to be the one to do it. It was as if they felt they would somehow be forever tainted in his eyes by being the person most remembered for having passed on such awful news. Michael had always felt protective of Janet; he used to say that she was his best friend in the family, ‘like a twin’. The news was sure to be upsetting, and the Victory tour was difficult enough for him without having to deal with such domestic turmoil. So, no one wanted to be ‘the one’. Finally, Quincy Jones's daughter, a friend of the family's, called Michael to tell him; she didn't have anything to lose. As expected, he was filled with anxiety by the news. ‘It killed me to see her go off and get married,’ Michael would say later. ‘I didn't know how to handle it.’
For a month, Janet and James lived at Hayvenhurst with Janet's family, much to James's dismay. ‘He wanted them to have their own place,’ explained his mother, Etterlene. ‘He felt that they needed to be alone to give themselves a chance to grow in their marriage. However, Janet didn't want to leave that house. She was still like a little girl, who never wanted to leave her bedroom.’
‘James DeBarge would come to the house completely out of his mind on drugs,’ Steve Howell remembered. ‘He would be so high on coke and alcohol that, on two occasions, the guards tried to stop him from going inside Hayvenhurst. “If you do, Mr Jackson will kill you,” they'd warn him, speaking of Joseph. However, he was belligerent and didn't care. The funny thing was that when he wasn't high, James was the nicest guy in the world. He was like Dr Jekyll and Mr DeBarge.’
‘You leave my husband alone!’ Janet was heard screaming at Joseph on several occasions.
‘He's not good for
you,
Janet,’ Joseph shot back. ‘And if you think you're going to ruin this family by staying married to this guy, you can forget it.’
Katherine tried to find a reasonable solution to the problem: she offered to enroll James in a rehabilitation programme. He refused to go.
In an interview, James DeBarge remembered the Encino estate as ‘The House of Fears’ and painted an eerie picture of Michael, who was at home for a short time in the middle of the tour schedule. ‘It was whileI lived there that I came to realize what a sad, lonely figure he is,’ James said. ‘He was like a ghost, wandering around the place looking for friendship. He would come to our room late at night, tap softly on the door, and say, “Is it all right if I come in?” One time, Janet and I were making love, and he came right on in! He got into bed with us and poured his heart out. He said, “I envy you two, because you have each other and love each other. But, I haven't got anyone.” There was never a sign of a woman in his life, ever.’
‘He really was a very lonely man-child,’ James DeBarge recalled of his brother-in-law, Michael. ‘The only time he had any fun was when he had friends over to play in his two-million-dollar amusement arcade, but they had to let Michael win most of the time. If they didn't, they wouldn't be asked to come back.’
James has a litany of amazing memories about his life in the ‘House of Fears’. He recalls the day it rained and Michael danced naked around the pool. ‘His mother screamed from the house, “Put your clothes on, Michael. Your father will be home soon.” Fear of Joseph was what controlled them all,’ James said. (Of course, James was on drugs, so who knows how reliable his memory is of that time.)
After a few months, James and Janet moved into their own condominium at 12546 The Vista, in Brentwood. ‘They moved out of the house because Joseph was gonna kill James,’ recalled Steve Howell. ‘I'm serious.’
‘James had it out with Joseph a number of times,’ confirmed his mother, Etterlene. ‘They were enemies. They detested each other.’
Janet wanted nothing to do with her family as long as they could not accept her husband. Actually, Janet had begun distancing herself a couple of years earlier when she began working as an actress on the TV show
Fame.
‘My parents were very strict whileI was growing up,’ she once told me. ‘It was really our music and our work. We missed out on our childhood, getting to know what really goes on out there. It was bad, because once you step out there for the first time, it stuns you. I saw a lot of things I'd never seen before.’
In a short time, Janet was miserable in her new marriage. She had wanted her independence, and she got it, but at what cost? Now, she found herself staying up nights worrying about James, who was rarely at home.
According to Jerome Howard, Joseph and Katherine's former business manager, ‘Janet would get phone calls in the middle of the night from James's friends telling her where he was, which was usually out in the ghetto, about twenty-five miles from Encino, buying or doing drugs. Janet, who'd never been there in her lifetime, would get up and drive out to the ghetto to find him. In time, she got to know the ghetto better than any other Jackson. She loved him and would do anything for him.’
With the entire Jackson family opposed to the marriage, each member took turns trying to persuade Janet to end it with James. The problems the newlyweds were having in their marriage, especially the drugs, went against everything Michael stood for personally and spiritually. Besides, he could see what the marriage had done to his sister emotionally. At one point she collapsed and had to be rushed to a hospital. She was exhausted, physically and emotionally. Michael was the only person to whom she would now listen. He begged her to leave James, crying on the phone with her from different stops along the Victory tour. Janet was finally convinced.
‘God, I felt like my whole life was falling down, and I could see him [James] going down, but there was nothing I could do,’ Janet said. ‘And he said to me, “Well, you haven't tried to help me,” but I thought, What about helping yourself? I thought, Well, I can either go down with him and that's the end of my life, or I can let go and continue on, alone.’
Janet left James on 7 January 1985, and immediately filed for a petition to nullify her marriage and restore her former name, Janet Dameta Jackson. On the petition, she listed her total gross monthly income as just $3000 – a minuscule amount considering the millions she would earn later. She said the amount of her husband's income was ‘unknown’ to her. When she got home from the courthouse, she called her friend René Elizondo and said, ‘God, I can't believe what I've just done.’
(The annulment was finally granted on 18 November 1985. By then, Janet was back at Hayvenhurst.)
James claims that Janet terminated a pregnancy while he was married to her. ‘I don't think she told many family members,’ he said, ‘but, her mother knew. I wouldn't have minded a child, but it had to be Janet's decision. I think her career, her plans, her family had a lot to do with it. We went to a clinic in Los Angeles but we had to go in and out the back door because we were so well known. It was real scary. Afterward, I took her home and held her in my arms and told her everything would be okay.’
For years, Janet has dealt with the rumour that she actually did have the baby she was carrying at the time, and that this child is secretly being raised in Europe. Janet denies it. Of course, she spent almost ten years denying that she was married to René Elizondo when, the entire time, she actually
was.
It was only when he filed for divorce that the truth came out… would it surprise anyone, then, if Janet Jackson one day reveals that she and James de Barge had a child so many years ago, and that rather than having an abortion she thought it better if he or she was raised away from the limelight?