I'm not sure how many people on the set realized who I was. Certainly Spike knew, as did Denzel and Angela Bassett, who played Mommy. I thought she was a good choice to play Mommy, because she shared the same intelligence, beauty, grace, and elegance. She asked me questions about my mother and I answered as best I could. I told her how pleased my mother was to know she was portraying her.
The movie premiered in November 1992 at the world-famous Ziegfeld movie theater in midtown Manhattan. My friend Julie, who lived in my apartment building, had hired a car, but Mommy said, “Julie, you get in this car with us.” At the premiere Mommy introduced Julie as her cousin—she had a way of making everyone feel special.
It was at the premiere that I first met many of the Little family members, including Aunt Yvonne and her daughter Debbie. As fate would have it, we met in the ladies' room. I took one look at these women and they looked at me and we knew instantly that we were related, although we had never seen one another before. We hugged and squealed and sat in the lounge for a while, chatting about our lives. I was amazed that they were strong, proud, up-standing, smart, and attractive relatives, because I had been relying on the Autobiography's description of the Little family.
Mommy was very quiet during the movie itself. At several points she put her hands up, as if blocking something, some emotion, some memory she had not experienced in a while. Afterward she was smiling and gracious as people swarmed around her, offering congratulations. But in the car driving home she laid quietly against my chest.
And so the big question: What do I think of the movie? My answer is that I think Spike did a great job artistically. He made a long movie (more than three hours) intriguing and entertaining enough to hold the audience's attention. He was true to the details of my father's life as presented in the Autobiography of Malcolm X and in the screenplay by James Baldwin on which the movie was based.
But I don't think Spike really managed to capture the true depth of my father's life and work. If I could change one thing about the movie I would give more prominence to his words, his thoughts, his revolutionary vision for Africans all over the world. I would show how much he contributed to ending the physical, legal, and, more important, mental and spiritual oppression of our people. In X you saw that Malcolm X was a great, great man. But you didn't see why.
One other good thing came out of the movie for me: At the audition I met a man who would become my first manager and then my boyfriend. Kedar Massenburg was charming, intelligent, and very smooth. He had a cell phone—this was the early 1990s, before everyone had one—and he kept whipping it out to make important business calls. He was a Muslim. He had just graduated from law school and was running a multifaceted entertainment business out of his four-story home. He had a fully outfitted studio in the basement and everything was just hooked up.
I needed a manager because a friend of mine, Julie Bearden, had helped me land a record deal at East West Records. I was going to try my hand at recording freestyle, hip-hop poetry about science and knowledge and identity. My sister Gamilah joined me and we called ourselves Shabazz by Birth.
But before we could actually complete our studio sessions, Gamilah performed on the “Arsenio Hall Show” as a cameo with Big Daddy Kane and went off and left me in the wind.
I might have pursued the recording solo but after Kedar became my manager and then my boyfriend, he persuaded me to drop the idea. He basically said, “No, that's not what you're going to do.” He didn't think it was appropriate, and I acquiesced. In the end, things didn't work out with Kedar, so we parted as friends and went our separate ways. Today he is chairman and CEO of the legendary Motown Record Company.
A little later I met Jerrod at a social event in Washington, D.C. I was writing down my phone number for someone when a voice behind me said, “Can I have a copy of that?”
I turned around to see this gorgeous brother who stood seven feet one inch tall. I thought to myself, Now that's more like it!
We had a couple of dates. He told me he sold T-shirts for a living. Honest work, I thought. But maybe I can help him find something more productive to do with his life. Then he invited me to fly down to Washington to attend some fund-raising affair his parents were involved in, and met me at the airport in the biggest Mercedes I had ever seen.
“You must sell a lot of T-shirts,” I said.
“Well, to tell the truth,” he said. “I play basketball for the Phoenix Suns.”
I introduced him to Mommy, who was wary at first because she knew how professional athletes could be. But Jerrod was not a typical b-ball player. He was a deeply intelligent man who loved reading and who seemed to be spiritually connected as a Muslim. He had attended American University.
We fell head over heels in love. He kept encouraging me to move out to Phoenix, and after about eight months of dating, I finally agreed. I packed up my life in New York (still keeping my apartment just in case) and got on the plane with dreams of marriage in my head. I thought Jerrod and I would fly off together into the Arizona sun.
Looking back, that time of my life seems like one long, frolicking movie. The parties, the concerts, the expensive trips and expensive cars. Jerrod and I had a lot of fun together and got along so well we started an entertainment business with him as president and me as vice president. I see now that to him the business was mostly like a toy he bought to keep his girlfriend interested. I, on the other hand, was serious. I had written a hip-hop musical and we planned to produce it and take it on the road. We signed several up-and-coming artists and planned to use them in the show. We were going to make a record, recording and producing it ourselves. We had the studio and the money. We were going to be big.
But a few months after moving to Phoenix I found out Jerrod was not being faithful to me. Not only that, but the woman he was seeing turned out to be the daughter of Elijah Muhammad! She even told Jerrod her mother was, at one time, planning to marry my father, a story that turned out to be partly true. When my father decided he needed to be married to best continue his work as a minister of the Nation of Islam, he considered several young Nation of Islam sisters and even got engaged to one of them, this woman's mother. But then he met Mommy and there was no one else for him after that. Between Malcolm and Betty it was love.
But not, apparently, between Jerrod and me; at least not the kind of love I wanted for my life. I was devastated and so stunned I barely knew what to do. I went into a holding pattern. Not wanting to just throw away all the time and effort I had put into building the business, I moved out of Jerrod's bedroom into my own room upstairs and tried to carry on.
Eventually it was all just too strange and I gave up on the business and left Phoenix. Back home in New York, I crawled into my apartment and stayed there for weeks, not working, not dating, just being depressed.
One day Mommy came over and dragged me out of the house. In the back of the car in which we were riding she said, “Yasah, I have something for you.”
She put a ring on my hand, a diamond ring. It was so beautiful I gasped. And I realized she was trying to tell me I had to be more important to myself than any man could ever be. And that a mother's love was more powerful and more enduring than any romantic love I would ever know.
Two days later I got up, got dressed, went out, and landed myself a job at Boardman in Greenwich, Connecticut.
That time in my life taught me a lot about the behavior of men. Before Jerrod, if I found out a man I was dating was cheating on me, I immediately ended the relationship and never spoke to him again. I thought cheating was a monstrous aberration. I didn't understand it at all.
But in Phoenix, surrounded by Jerrod and his friends, I came to believe that all men cheated. Professional athletes are not typical, of course; they live in a hypermasculine world where women are constantly throwing themselves at their feet. But watching their behavior I grew to believe that although they might be extreme, they were representative. Even guys who seemed so good, so decent as they drove to church with the
ir families every Sunday, on Monday would be making a pass. Seeing this I said to myself, oh, I see. Men cheat. Okay.
But then I remembered my father, who never cheated on my mother, and even in the years immediately before marrying her lived a life of integrity and self-discipline. I realized that even if most men cheat, not all of them do. So what matters is not a man's looks or his job or the size of his wallet, but his values and goals. My father was an exception, yes. But where there is one exception there can be another. All I had to do was not compromise.
As for the women who tolerated that kind of behavior, I often wondered why they did it. I finally asked one woman I knew, who was dating a notoriously philandering player. She told me she was honored someone like him wanted someone like her, even if it was only part-time. After all, he could only be interested in that ultimate prize of the black professional athlete: a blue-eyed blonde.
“Most of these players want anything but a black girl,” she said. “Especially if you're not light.”
Statements like that are so sad I scarcely know where to begin addressing them. But this much I do know: Although I am (proudly) honey brown like my mother, I never felt unattractive while I lived in Phoenix. In fact, I had players coming on to me all the time, even though they knew I was dating Jerrod. I think that's because deep down inside men respect a woman who views herself as the prize, not as the competitor. And you have to draw the line, to make clear what kind of behavior you will and will not accept. If a woman compromises her values just to hang on to a man, she won't win his respect. More important, she won't win her own.
After I returned home from Phoenix, my mother and I grew closer than ever. Then two events occurred that changed the nature of our relationship. For the first time in my life, I stood up before an audience and spoke without fear of disappointing expectations.
And then Mommy got sick.
C H A P T E R T W E L V E
Growing Up X
The National Political Congress of Black Women planned to honor Mommy, Myrlie Evers-Williams, and Coretta Scott King—“The Three Ms,” the widows of Malcolm, Medgar, and Martin—at its annual brunch. Someone from the organization called Attallah to ask if she would speak during the ceremony. Attallah couldn't do it, so she telephoned me.
Had it been anything else I would have said “No. Sorry, can't do it.” I was more than a decade out of college by this time, but the fear of speaking in public, of being held to mountain-high expectations, still held me in its grip. Since sneaking off the stage at the Delta convention, I had avoided, to the best of my ability, any circumstances in which hundreds of people would sit in a room and hang on my every word.
But this was different. This was an event being held to honor Mommy, the most important person in my life and a woman I firmly believed deserved to be honored in her own right. How could I refuse a chance to stand up and tell the world what an amazing woman she was? How could I let pass a chance to publically thank her for all she had done?
So I agreed to speak. I decided not to tell Mommy, wanting to surprise her, and the organizers agreed to keep my secret. Finally the day arrived. My friend Kathy accompanied me to the ballroom in Washington, where we were greeted and taken into a special room to wait.
When it was time for all of us to take our seats on the stage, I walked over to where Mommy was sitting and surprised her. “Hey, Mommy!” She gave a little squeal of delight and hugged me before I went to my seat at the other end of the long table. There were the usual welcoming speeches and acknowledgments of guests. Then the program moved on to the unveiling of a specially commissioned painting that depicted the faces of my mother, Mrs. King, and Mrs. Evers-Williams, all overlooking a grand and glorious tree. Everyone applauded and posed for photographs. I sat next to Bernice King, feeling my heart speed up and my fingers tingle. But it was from excitement, not fear.
This time I was first up. I heard Eleanor Holmes Norton telling the guests of honor that the day was special not only because of them, but because it was their own daughters who would do the honoring. As I walked to the podium I saw that Mommy had jumped up from her chair and was also approaching the microphone. It made me smile. I don't know whether she was worried I'd fall apart or that she just wanted to give me a hug. But deep down inside I think she was just being Mommy—watching out for everyone, carrying the load for everyone, backing us all up because she knew we might not be able to make it alone.
But this time I didn't need my mother to speak for me. I knew what to say and how to say it; I could stand on my own as the living representative of all my mother's hard work and sacrifice. I could show the world that my sisters and I, fully realized human beings, were my mother's greatest accomplishments. I wrapped my arm around Mommy's shoulders and took the microphone without nervousness or fear.
I began by paying my respects to Mrs. King and Mrs. Evers-Williams, acknowledging their perseverance and triumphs over so many obstacles. I finally understood their collective pain and courage because I finally understood how hard Mommy's own struggle must have been. Then I told the audience how much I admired my mother for all she had accomplished against nearly overwhelming odds. I told them all she had done for her six daughters and for the world. I told them she was my role model, past, present, and future.
I told the story of how once, when I was about seventeen and Malaak was fourteen, we were driving on the parkway in Westchester County when Malaak announced she had to use the rest room. I pulled into the first available place, which happened to be a very fancy and expensive restaurant.
“I can't go in there,” Malaak said.
“When in doubt, think of Mommy,” I said, taking her hand.
I told the audience that Malaak and I marched into that restaurant like we owned it. We greeted all the folk going in and all the folk coming out and no one said a thing because we projected such self-confidence. Perseverance and self-respect. That's what I learned from my mother.
Then I told this story:
“As an adolescent I would say to her, ‘Mommy, you're the most important person in my life.' And she would say, ‘Ilyasah, you are the most important person in your life. Focus on yourself.'
“At the time I didn't understand, but now that I'm an adult, I do,” I said. “And so I say, thank you, Mommy. And still, you are the most important person in my life.”
At the end of my speech Mommy hugged me and I could feel through the embrace how moved she was. I returned to my seat and she took the microphone. Wiping away tears, she told the audience how surprised and pleased she was to have me there.
“But,” she joked, “I have a few words for the honorable C. DeLores Tucker afterward.”
Then, slowly, deliberately, she began a story that was not part of her prepared remarks. She told of a little two-year-old girl whose father would come home late at night, grab a plateful of oatmeal cookies in one hand and her in the other, and go watch the evening news. It was, Mommy said, that girl's favorite part of the day and she looked forward to it with all the joy in her young heart.
It was a sweet memory, one I had heard so many times before that I had made it my own. But then Mommy went on to tell another part of the story, a part I had never heard before.
“When my husband was assassinated,” Mommy said, “every car that passed, Ilyasah would get on the chair and look out the window. The car wouldn't stop. She would kick the door and go back to bed and go back to sleep.”
After a pause, she went on. “And I didn't know how you explain to a little two-year-old about death. So what I began to do was, I'd take a cookie and break it in half and put it on a plate near the door. And she would come and get that. She would still look, but at least she'd be a little happier.”
Listening to this story filled me with emotion—pride in my mother, sadness at her sorrow, grief at our collective loss. I thought of my father and how different life would have been for us had he lived. Not only for Mommy, but for my sisters and me and my nephew Malcolm. And for the world.
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With a tissue from Dr. Tucker, Mommy dabbed at her eyes and said she had never talked to me about my feelings surrounding Daddy's death. Sounding as if she were speaking more to herself than to the hundreds of people in the room, Mommy said, “I still don't know how she feels.”
Then she took a deep breath and looked out. “But today, I'm delighted to see that on her own she has learned about life and death.” She looked over the long line of people toward me. I smiled my biggest smile.
“Standing here today I am delighted that she at least appears healthy,” Mommy said.
And then she laughed.
That was a very important day in my life. After that day, my mother saw me in a new and different way: not simply as her daughter, a child who still needed the shelter and protection of her mother's arms, but as an adult, a woman on whom she herself could lean.
That was no small adjustment for Mommy to make. Since the day she watched her husband fall, my mother had driven herself relentlessly on our behalf. And although she was blessed with many dear friends who came to our rescue time and time again, Mommy knew that at the end of the day, it all came down to her.
Once, in a speech, she said, “You see, I am not for women having typical female roles. I had to do everything. I was the head of the household. When my husband lived, there was a role I played. When he was assassinated, I had to do everything. If I didn't make the money and bring the food in and pay the mortgage and pay the car note, and pay the school bill, we didn't eat, we didn't sleep, we didn't have a house. So I am not for women having specific roles and not doing what they should do, ought to do, and can do. Maybe if my life had been different I would say that women should not be in politics, that they should be in the home caring for their families. But my experience has not been that. I no longer believe that.”
Mommy had pulled the load alone for so long, it was hard for her to scoot aside and let someone grab hold of the rope. But after my speech before the National Political Congress I detected a change in the way my mother viewed me. We had always been close, but after that day, we truly became best friends. She opened up to me in ways she had not before and talked, really talked, about my father and what he had meant to her as a woman and a wife. She told me about his discipline and all the work he did and his incredible commitment to his family and his people. She said something like, “Just because my husband taught me to love who I am doesn't mean he did anything wrong!” Meaning why in the world should people try to vilify a man who simply helped her become more in tune with herself and helped a people know and love their heritage?
Growing Up X Page 18
