“You Make Clothes for Them? They Will Do Anything For You”: Tina Knowles Remembers Beyoncé and Solange’s Beloved Uncle Johnny

My oldest sister, Selena, was 27 when I was born in 1954, and she and her husband, John, had eight kids by the time she was 30. My nieces and nephews were closer in age to me than my siblings, and they were my very best friends. The music of all that life in Selena’s house enveloped me, excited me, held me. The sounds of her five daughters and three sons: Deanne, Linda, Leslie, Elouise, Elena, Tommie, and of course Ronnie and Johnny. Don’t try to keep track of all of them—even Selena couldn’t.

My nephew Johnny was four years older than me, and he was my very best friend. If you ask me what my earliest memory is of him, you might as well ask me about how I knew I needed air to breathe or water to drink. Johnny was just there. Once a week, Ronnie and I would have to have at least one real fistfight, always squaring off. But Johnny cut in.

“It was funny, Tenie,” said Johnny, using my nickname, trying to get me to see the humor. And maybe it was funny, I thought, but only because Johnny said so. Johnny was the boss, and we all knew it. Even at just nine years old, he ran everything. As powerful as Johnny was in the family, he could be instantly fragile in Galveston, Texas, where we were all growing up. Johnny was obviously gay, and I had never known him to hide that light. Selena filled him with such love and had him so confident that he never hid who he was. But he would be called things, and strangers would sometimes eavesdrop on our conversations and grimace. They would shoot him a look, menacing and judgmental, and I would give it back.

Johnny would listen to my stories, my explanation for how I skinned my knee or how I got sick trying to see if breathing underwater would turn me into a real mermaid. He’d shake his head. “Lucille Ball,” he called me—even that young, the “Lu” sung high as he laughed at my latest predicament. In Johnny, all that energy I had, all those big feelings, found a focus. It was my honor to be his protector. To give him the flower that he tucked behind his ear.

When I told Johnny about my troubles at school, he seemed to get it on a deeper level than the rest of the family. Not just because he knew what the teachers at Catholic school were capable of—he understood what it was to be constantly shown that, outside our family, you don’t fit in.

After I turned six, we all readied for Johnny to turn 10. Double digits. There was something about him turning 10 that made my brothers anxious for him. He was as confident as he’d always been, and no one in our family had urged him to “act” less gay. But my brothers knew the world of boys in middle school and were afraid of what might happen to Johnny.

They had found their social standing in sports. So with the best of intentions, my three brothers and Tommie and Ronnie decided they were going to make Johnny play basketball. He went along with it, going to the court at Holy Rosary, with me tagging along. I sat cross-legged on the edge, watching. He was trying, running around in his natural way, not putting on some butch act. When he would shoot the ball, he’d groan a loud oooh, sounding somewhere between Lena Horne and himself. He used humor to hold on to his dignity.

“Man up, Johnny,” one of my brothers said. “Man up!”

“Get the ball and shoot it,” Ronnie said. They had never talked to him like this, but this was their language on the court. That was the culture, and they had convinced themselves that Johnny had to learn it too.

Johnny looked down for a second, and quietly said, more to himself than the boys, “I don’t like this at all.” That was it. I jumped up like I was saving someone from a train, as dramatic as could be.

Johnny and I went home to my mother, and I immediately started in on how they made Johnny play when he didn’t want to. “They were making fun of him.”

“Were they, Johnny?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Not really. I just don’t like basketball.”

My mom took a beat. “Here. Come.” She waved her hand toward her sewing table and let him take her chair. This was her “fixer” mode, the quick, efficient movements she made when taking on a project. “Johnny, if you make clothes for people? They will adore you. They’re not going to make fun of you.” She also knew what bullies at school could do, and she knew he needed armor. She took his hands and guided him along the path of a stitch. “I know you have an imagination,” she said. “You make clothes for them? They will do anything for you.”