She had a heart and gave me the keys to the apartment, for which I was so grateful. But when I unpacked my suitcases and said good-bye to my cousin and I closed the door behind her and sat down on my chair with my baby in my lap, something just didn’t set right with me. Perhaps I was experiencing a little bit of postpartum depression. I was a new mother with a one-year-old, sitting in a little-ass studio all alone, my support system—my parents, my friends, my rocks—thousands of miles away on the other side of the country. Perhaps I was upset that the studio apartment, though mine, didn’t stand up to even the bare-minimum lifestyle I’d promised to build for my son. When I found out I was pregnant, every night my prayer for my baby and me was that God would allow me to provide for my son exactly what my mother had provided for me. I always had my own bedroom; we always had a car; we always had food on the table, and the lights were always on; we never had to move from place to place and were never put out. Luxuries were scant, but we had the basics. Still, something else was speaking to me. Call it a mother’s intuition.
Turns out my instincts were right.
It was a coworker who inadvertently let me know that I was living in one of the sketchiest buildings in one of Hollywood’s sketchiest neighborhoods. I was in the break room with him, unpacking my lunch, when I asked, quite innocently, “Where’s the hood around here? I haven’t really seen the projects. What do they look like? Where I’m from, they’re high-rises.”
“You know the little garden apartments? The ones that look like motels?” he asked between sips of his coffee. “Those are low-income housing.”
“What? Really?” I asked, stunned. He was describing exactly where I lived. In the hood!
I took off my rose-colored glasses and started paying attention from that moment on. One evening I arrived home late with Marcell bundled in my arms, just in time to witness a little two-year-old girl wandering around outside in the courtyard looking lost, her hair unkempt, her clothes disheveled. I stopped in my tracks and watched her in wonder, alternately concerned she was going to hurt herself or someone was going to snatch her, and curious, too, about why, exactly, a toddler was teetering around in the dark by herself. Then a piercing scream filled the air, startling me. “You trifling bitch, come get your daughter,” a Latino woman yelled from the balcony of her apartment, a few flights up.
Another woman, this one white, snatched open her door; a black man, partially undressed, was standing just beyond her, as she leaned over the rail, calling out to her baby. I don’t know if she was a whore or getting high off crack or what her deal was, but it sure put me on edge. A few days later, again when I was arriving home late with my baby in my arms, I spotted a guy stalking around, looking like a total pedophile. “That’s it,” I mumbled under my breath as I jiggled the key in my door. “I gotta get out of here. I can’t do this anymore.” My baby and I were on the move.
I’d visited my friend and fellow Howard alum Jemal McNeil at his place in what is now known as Silver Lake, and really liked where he was living; it was an apartment in a cluster of bungalows overlooking a private courtyard. It was very family oriented; the landlord and her husband lived downstairs in a one-bedroom, and another single mother lived in the other two-bedroom with her son, who also happened to be Marcell’s age. As fate would have it, the two-bedroom just above Jemal was available; the landlord’s mother had lived there before she died, and her son, who inherited the property, couldn’t bring himself to rent it out. The place was exactly as the mother had left it: old, with a granny apple–green shaggy carpet and odd colors on the wall. But it was just perfect for Marcell and me. I cried my way out of my lease at the hood spot—all that landlord knew was that I had a family emergency and I needed to get away—then got my little change together and my performance face on and told the new landlord my story. I left there with the keys to my new place and a five-hundred-dollar-per-month lease. I had just enough money to replace the ratty shag carpet with some of that cheap, thin, gray carpet that buildings use in their offices. It wasn’t much, but it had exactly what I needed: a parking spot, a bedroom for my child, a friend downstairs who made it so that I felt safe, a familylike atmosphere with a fellow single mom whose son got along with my baby, a day care just down the street for Marcell, and a landlord who trusted I was going to do what I promised I would do. It wasn’t the most luxurious spot in the world, but this time, it felt right.
“Okay,” I said, sitting down in my living room, peering into Marcell’s eyes. “Now we can build.” In that moment, I couldn’t help but think that this was how my mother must have felt when she got her first apartment when I was a young girl.
Build is what I did. With a safe place to stay, a car, and a job, I could work on my purpose: to become a big-time, paid, SAG-card-carrying actress in the city where stars are made. My manager from back home, Linda Townsend, put me in touch with an agency whose sole direction was to get me the gigs I needed to score that SAG card. I needed to book three roles as an extra, plus pay the $1,100 fee to join the union. Two of those extra roles came at my cousin’s job on Minor Adjustments. It was a relatively easy gig—nothing like the non-SAG hustle I had to pull on Malcolm X—because my cousin took good care of me, letting me chill in his dressing room and eat with him and his mom. The third role came when I worked as an extra on 3rd Rock From the Sun, a sitcom on which my DC homegirl Simbi Khali was working. Simbi, an alum of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, was an inspiration because she, too, had left DC and was doing exactly what I wanted to do: making it in Hollywood. Every time I was around Simbi, she would talk about the process—what it took to secure roles, how to hone my craft, what events I should be sure to attend, the people I needed to know—and I absorbed it like a sponge. I’m grateful to her for that.
With her help, I became SAG eligible. And every time I would book a job after that, I would chip away at that union fee until finally it was official: I was a card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild. I was on my way to my blessing—exactly what God intended for me, and everything I’d hustled practically all my life to be: a working actress. This single mother was on a mission not only to make that dream a reality, but also to be the finest example of a success story for my son—to let him know that when I whispered in his ear, “You can be anything, baby,” I wasn’t bullshitting. This, my story, is proof positive of that.
8
Raising a Black Boy
My mother swears all the singing and dancing I did at Howard University when I was pregnant with Marcell made my baby push his way into this world with a heart full of joy. I can’t say I disagree with her. Marcell was the cutest, jolliest baby ever. He never cried, was never sick, and was always laughing—a bundle of dimples and giggles with the pull of a magnet. My study group would show up to my apartment to go over lessons and scenes together and they’d barely say hello to me at my front door before they rushed in looking for my Marcell. There he’d be, tucked in his crib with John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme floating from my boom box’s speakers, staring up at the gaggle of smiling faces cooing his way; he’d stick out his tongue, wave his little arms and legs in the air, and flash that mouthful of gums, and my classmates’ hearts would do Alvin Ailey–worthy leaps across the room. The same was true when I’d take Marcell’s little hand in mine and walk with him through the mall or the grocery store. There he’d be, this sweet, bubbly little three-year-old, toddling by my side; he’d barely keep time with my stride as we tried to get some shopping done, only to be stopped every ten feet or so to let a crowd of strangers ooh and ah over my adorable baby. He was a rock star, my kid. The whole world loves a sweet little chubby brown boy.