Blessed Life Read online

  I am painfully aware of how pathetic that story sounds today. My mom and I still laugh about it. All I have to do is say, “I’m not messing around,” and it brings back memories and laughter. She will admit to being a little overprotective, but her intentions were good, and I should’ve simply said I wanted to hang out with friends.

  The problem was solved the next semester when I moved into a dorm on campus. My mom and sister cried when I packed up my car and waved goodbye. For the sake of perspective, I was only going about ten miles from home, and I stopped by at least once a week. But it was still a big move. It was also the right thing to do. The TV show A Different World debuted that same fall, and though I was not at an all-black college like those characters, they made me want to experience college life to the fullest, and dorm life was perfect for me.

  My roommate was a sharp, beautiful girl from Idaho. With jet-black hair and violet eyes, Susan was a dead ringer for Elizabeth Taylor as a young girl. On paper, we did not have much in common. She was a white girl from the Midwest majoring in business, and I was a black girl from Harlem interested in film and TV production. But we were instant friends. We pushed our beds against the window, decorated with posters, set up our desks, and stacked our CDs together. Her parents always addressed care packages to Susan and Kim.

  One night I decided to get a little crazy and drink an entire strawberry daiquiri. I ended up falling on my bed. “Everything’s spinning,” I informed Susan, who watched with a bemused detachment.

  “Really, Kim?” she said, laughing. “You had one drink. You’re ridiculous, such a lightweight.”

  As the semester went on, I added broadcast journalism to my film and TV production interests. The pace and the skills required appealed to me. Like all the students in the program, I rotated between the different jobs on the school’s daily TV news program: anchor, director, cameraman, editor, computer graphics, sports and entertainment reporter, and general assignment news reporter. I profiled Olympic diving great Greg Louganis after meeting him on a special edition of Hollywood Squares and interviewed a young basketball hotshot named Michael Jordan.

  I was also involved in the religious side of Pepperdine, as were most undergrads there. To me, that is what made the school special. You could be interested in math or psychology, teaching or science; you could be a jock or an acting nerd like me; you could be a dashiki-wearing dude from Liberia studying political science or a girl from Idaho majoring in business; and no matter your background, skin color, or social status, there was a shared interest in faith and living a spiritual life.

  It made the large college seem small, friendly, and cozy. If you’ve experienced something similar, you know what I mean. People’s surface differences were transcended and, in fact, celebrated with an appreciative curiosity because of that bigger thing most of us had in common—our love of God. For those who practiced a different faith or none at all, that was fine, too. We discussed our beliefs, asked questions, debated, and learned from each other. As I think about it, I feel like my faith grew even deeper.

  I made Religion my minor. I took courses in the religions of the world. I learned about the mechanics of preaching. I took a class on the Bible as literature. Lectures were instructive and provocative, and even a dry, academic approach to religion, as some of the classes took, would be given a profundity by the beautiful campus. Like other students, I walked outside after class and found myself on a mountainside overlooking the ocean. It left no doubt, as far as I was concerned, that God was among us.

  You get the picture. I loved school. I was enthusiastic, eager to consume all the knowledge that surrounded me. I knew it was a growth opportunity. My mom had always encouraged me to get an education and use it. Years earlier, she had said, “Make sure you can be in a room and have a conversation about something besides making a TV show. Make sure you can talk about things that are real.” I had an older-brother type of friend who underscored that point. He was one of the coolest guys I knew. He dated cool girls and had a point of view and approach to life that impressed me.

  One day, we were on campus, sitting out in the sun with our coffees, and talking about various things, from school to our futures. As the conversation wound around to people both of us knew on campus and our social lives, I grew emboldened and opened up about my frustrations with guys. I told him about my history of being put in the friend zone by guys I liked. I didn’t only want a social life, I said. I also wanted a love life. I asked him what made a cool girlfriend.

  “I think a cool girlfriend is the kind of girl who has things to talk about,” he said. “Being able to talk about big things in the world, like history, politics, and social issues, and also about little things, like sports and people—just knowing stuff—that’s what makes anyone cool. Like you. You’re cool.” Then why was I constantly relegated to the friend zone? He smiled and said, “Kim, you’re always going a million miles an hour—and I suspect you always have. If you want love to happen, you have to slow down just a little bit to give it a chance to catch up to you.”

  Hmmm…

  Okay. Got it.

  8

  The Cool Girlfriend

  After nine seasons, The Facts of Life called it quits. The series was still going strong and anchoring NBC’s Saturday night for all the reasons it had remained on the air for nearly a decade. The writers were still addressing controversial issues, the show was still funny, and the cast still had chemistry. In pictures from that final season, we also had hairdos that provide ample proof of why the ’80s had to end. We’d taken it to the limit.

  Though the network would have renewed the show, Nancy and Mindy wanted to move on, Lisa was engaged, and I was starting my sophomore year of college minus the charming courier boyfriend, who had moved to another show and another part of his life. The stage was set. After more than two hundred episodes and a Who’s Who of guest stars—including George Clooney, Jermaine Jackson, Helen Hunt, David Spade, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Charo, Pamela Segall (now Pamela Adlon), Juliette Lewis, Seth Green, and Mayim Bialik—it was time to say goodbye. Following the last taping, the cast and crew partied at a nightclub on Sunset Boulevard. Then, late at night, we drove off into the rest of our lives.

  I moved with my roommate, Susan, into a cute two-bedroom apartment near the Pepperdine campus. This was my first real foray into independence, and it suited me. For the first time, I was setting my own schedule. I went to class, studied, got involved with clubs, and explored new interests, like politics. Growing up, my mom had steeped me in the social movements of her youth: civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, the Vietnam War, and so on. When the actor’s union went on strike in 1980, she marched in front of the studios with a picket sign in hand—and my tween self marched next to her.

  Similarly, she made sure I worked with the Brotherhood Crusade, participated in community parades in Watts and St. Louis, and campaigned for family friend Maxine Waters when she ran for reelection in the California Assembly. I had also testified in front of a congressional committee after a Facts of Life episode addressed the sensitive issue of teen suicide.

  But the present was what mattered. I was going to be a first-time voter in 1988, and I took that responsibility seriously. I backed Reverend Jesse Jackson. His effort four years earlier had fallen short, but not before introducing a progressive platform (tax cuts on the very rich, universal health care, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for drug users) that now seems more the norm than the radical agenda of a political outsider.

  This time around, I thought he had a shot at the nomination, and being able to vote for a person of color was huge.

  I attended several campaign rallies on campuses around the country, and it was at one of the earliest rallies that I met the Reverend’s middle son, Jonathan Jackson. Our parents were friends. Mom was a part of Mrs. Jackson’s women’s delegation to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. During their layover in London, Mom met Jonathan and Jesse Jr., who were with their father. Mom suggested if Jesse Sr. was going to r
un again, he should have his sons and me do college compaigning to get the college vote. When he ran again, he called me. After meeting Johnny at the ralley, we talked, had dinner, talked some more, and clicked. Sure, there was a genuine attraction. But we also had politics and a historic sense of purpose, and that was even bigger. We moved fast. Jonathan was three years older than me and a graduate of North Carolina A&T University. He planned on attending business school after taking care of a more pressing matter: getting his father elected president of the United States.

  When we were apart, Jonathan sent me beautiful, detailed letters. Like his father, he had a special gift for words and made me feel like I was with him. In a letter from New York, he described gazing across the water at the Statue of Liberty, the campaign, and missing me all in one breath. Was I that girl? Was I really part of this?

  I put it down and thought, Oh my gosh, this is big.

  Jonathan and his brother, Jesse Jr., and I played a key role in getting out the college vote, and as I got involved with Jonathan, I hit the college trail with them. I went out nearly every weekend.

  We campaigned very hard throughout Michigan. It felt like I was giving blood. We rode on buses all over the state, trying to stick to schedules and follow an itinerary, yet reacting to moments that felt critical. The spontaneity of charging to a gathering and feeling like we changed hearts and minds, or at least opened them to new possibilities, was a rush.

  We were joined there by Rae Lewis-Thornton, a black woman who had been diagnosed with HIV. She was one of the earliest women, if not the first woman, to step into the public eye as a heterosexual woman challenging stereotypes. She had the fire of a genuine agent of change. She evidenced what it took to create awareness and break down barriers so people could live without being swept into the shadows.

  The spirit was amazing. I remember arriving in Kalamazoo on an afternoon when the cold was like nothing I had ever felt before. I had lost my luggage—or it had lost me. I walked into the local campaign headquarters with nothing but the jacket and clothes on my back and the boots on my feet. I bought a toothbrush in a nearby sundry store. One of the girls working the phones there gave me a campaign T-shirt to crash in. I had nothing else with me, none of the items that usually mattered when I traveled, but I did not feel like I needed anything other than coffee and food to fuel me so I could talk to people, hand out fliers, answer phones, and make sure they voted.

  Then the Reverend won the Michigan caucus. Suddenly, history seemed possible. Some of the pundits actually thought he might be able to snatch the nomination away from the more traditional Democratic candidates, Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale. The Los Angeles Times ran a front-page photo of the Reverend, Johnny, and myself. I was hoarse from screaming throughout the night as the returns came in. I do not remember any one of us on the inside asking whether America was ready for a black president, not the way people did when Barack Obama ran in 2008. We focused on reaching people of every color, a rainbow coalition, not just black people. However, questions about race, though unspoken, were ever-present: Could the nominee actually be black? Could he come from the south side of Chicago instead of from a famous, powerful family? Could he have a history in the Civil Rights movement? Could he be Jesse Jackson?

  For a moment, it seemed like it. Then Dukakis won several important primaries and accumulated enough states to pave the way for the party’s nomination, and the moment we worked around the clock to make a reality faded from view. With the Reverend having captured 6.9 million votes and eleven state wins, Jonathan and I went to the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, hoping that his father might be Dukakis’s pick for vice president. We thought that partnership would have a broad and exciting appeal. It did not happen. Dukakis chose old-guard Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen.

  I experienced every kind of emotion during that week in Atlanta. In addition to my relationship with Johnny, I attended as an alternate delegate from California. The atmosphere was electric. You can read about politics and primaries and presidential elections, but standing in the middle of a crowded convention floor and listening to speeches from former president Jimmy Carter, emerging superstar Bill Clinton, Texas state treasurer Ann Richards, and ’60s antiwar icon George McGovern gave me an exhilarating front-row seat to the unfolding of history.

  I cheered till I was hoarse for each of the votes the Reverend did get. Though the outcome was foregone, I still cried at the end when Dukakis was officially named the Democrats’ pick. I lost it even more when Jesse Jr. mentioned Jonathan and me in his speech to the convention. All the pent-up emotion drained out of me. When the Reverend took the podium, I had nothing left other than to stand absolutely still, with only my heart beating, so I could hear every word, indeed every syllable, he uttered, as if we were in church on a holy day.

  I thought his speech was the most profound of the convention. He talked about the “blood and sweat of the innocent” that led to “his right and privilege” to stand in front of the convention. He acknowledged those who had lost their lives fighting for the right to vote. He addressed farmers, workers, blacks, whites, Hispanics, women, gays and lesbians, and conservatives and progressives. He spoke of health care, housing, and education as a path to hope. He urged people to see their common thread as the only way to progress.

  “Progress will not come through boundless liberalism nor static conservatism, but at the critical mass of mutual survival…It takes two wings to fly. Whether you’re a hawk or a dove, you’re just a bird living in the same environment, in the same world. The Bible teaches that when lions and lambs lie down together, none will be afraid, and there will be peace in the valley…

  “The only time that we win is when we come together.”

  Amen.

  * * *

  Following the election, Jonathan and I visited each other as often as possible. He flew to Los Angeles, and I traveled to Chicago. I stayed in his parents’ home and always got a good feeling from being there. It was the first time I had been included in a large family environment. They were five kids deep and close to their grandparents. I saw the inner workings when they got along, did not get along, drove each other crazy, and ended the day loving each other. They were a normal family, yet they lived with a sense of purpose.

  In December, a month after Dukakis lost the election to George H. W. Bush, I was staying with the Jacksons. I was reading my broadcast journalism textbook when the phone rang. Moments later, I overheard Mrs. Jackson and Reverend talking in a hushed, solemn tone. I put my book down and waited. A short time later, they gathered their family and close friends, including me, and shared the sad news that their friend, ABC World News Tonight anchor Max Robinson, had died. The Chicago-based newsman was only forty-nine years old.

  It was like a sad breath filled the house. The Jacksons knew what their friend had refused to address while he was alive—that he had spent his final days battling AIDS. Upon his passing, though, he requested that his family confirm the rumors as a wake-up to the black community. I watched Reverend transform himself from the private family man to the public figure who would be called upon for statements and to stand larger-than-life ready to lead.

  Within these heady times, there were lighter moments. One night Johnny and I went to the movies. During the movie, I laid my head on his shoulder, as cool girlfriends do, but when I sat up straight again I noticed that one of my braids was still resting on his shoulder. Luckily it was dark and Johnny was engrossed in the movie while I figured out what to do. After my prayer to have it pop back on my head went unanswered, I very slowly and carefully reached up, slid that sucker off his shoulder, and put it in my pocket. “What was that?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Let’s watch the movie.”

  We continued this way for another year or more. We attended events together and went to church as a couple. I had feared our relationship would not survive the post-election reality of our lives. But that was not the case. As we spent more time together, our chemistry,
along with our friendship, grew. It was a fairy-tale relationship. Everyone saw that we were good together.

  But that wasn’t enough. It was early 1990, and we were about two years into our relationship. By taking year-round classes, plus some at night, I had put myself on a fast track to graduation in just three years. As such, the future was right around the corner. I wanted to figure out what I was going to do—and what that would mean for Jonathan and me.

  For a while, I thought about broadcast journalism. But I changed my mind after an internship with a local TV news station. Riding along with the station’s seasoned reporters as they covered stories gave me a different sense than reading about the process in a book. One time we pulled up at a car wreck that resulted in the death of a local pro football player. Another time we followed the cops to the scene of a drive-by shooting. There, the body had already been removed, but the little girl who had been present as bullets flew was sitting in shock on the curb, the glass of milk she had been holding shattered on the ground by her feet. Around her, neighbors wailed. The reporter I was shadowing surveyed the scene with me and then said, “Okay, let’s go ask people how they’re feeling.”

  I put a microphone in front of a woman and asked her to tell me what happened. She shook her head like I was speaking a foreign language or something and said, “No, I can’t because I can barely speak right now. People were just shot here. Do you see this little girl? She ain’t got no daddy anymore. So get the hell away from me.”

  This was too real for me. Shaken, I drove to my mom’s house and broke down. “I can’t do this,” I said. “I can’t listen to police scanners, waiting for something bad to happen. It’s too depressing.” I also spilled to Jonathan, who listened and calmed me down. In the midst of his own changes, he had just left an internship with an investment company and was figuring out his own next moves. He wanted to be an entrepreneur. The unpredictability of that bothered me. One time, as I watched him read a book, I wondered if he might ever run for office. I could see him rising up the ranks. I could also see myself with him. As embarrassing as it sounds now, I did let myself wonder, What if I’m the first black First Lady?