Growing Up King (33 page)

I said, “I don’t want a heavy, committed relationship.”

Mon Ami said, “Oh really? Then what do we call what we have here?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t. Help me. I’m not going to assume. Help me understand.”

“I guess what I’m saying is, I’m not in the frame of mind to be committed. There are things I haven’t given myself, so I can’t
give them to somebody else. I suffer depression, anxieties. With what’s coming up in my life, I’ll be even more distracted.
It’ll get worse before it gets better.”

“I’ve seen all that,” she said. “When you deal with things of your past, some of this will be lifted. Things you suppress
have an impact on you physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.”

What gave her insight? We started dating in April ’96; by June, it was her thirty-first birthday, and I asked her to come
to Atlanta. She says it was starting to become clear to her that she was an aberration—I’d had girlfriends, nice ones, but
this was something different. It seemed to be so different at the time. Actually, it was similar to what I’d had with Good
Natured, only this came when I was older, at a different stage. Maybe. Also, the effect of not having a father in my life
to tell me certain things was obvious to her. It might be fair to say we were comfortable with each other. I’d ask, “Is this
okay for me to say this, feel that?” There was a profound sadness in her, so she and I had a bond that way; I didn’t know
how to handle it. It was hard, I couldn’t allow myself to feel too deeply about her, or anyone, yet I felt helpless, caught
up, as if I couldn’t help feeling it. In the end, my conflicted feelings would cost me the relationship. It was like she would
take on feelings of sadness and doubt I often fall prey to. She had to learn to manage that. You can’t take on other people’s
stuff. Everybody has to haul their own water. I’d learned from Good Natured not to try and put my baggage on others, but apparently
I hadn’t learned well enough.

Mon Ami’s birthday was coming up. I had a surprise for her. She came to Atlanta. I’d done everything. Made dinner. Didn’t
let her do anything. I took her out on a boat, on a lake, had made lunch, laid out a blanket, we watched the sunset, I brought
out a bottle of nice perfume, big production. I was all over the place, kind of frantic. We got back to my place. I’d forgotten
something so now I’d have to run out and get it. She looked at me and said, “Stop, will you?” We were in the kitchen. She
said, “Why don’t you let me help you? You’re boiling pasta. I can do that. Why don’t you let me watch the pasta? When it’s
done I’ll take it out. Tell me what you want to do with it, and you go take care of what you need to take care of. I’ll do
this and you do that. A team.”

I leaned back and away from her, on the kitchen counter. I looked at her, and I could feel these waves of emotion welling
up inside me—love, fear, but mostly anxiety. She said, “What’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that? You never let me
do anything with you, for you—you run around like a wild man…” As she spoke, I could feel a volcano erupting from the pit
of my stomach up into my throat, choking me and spilling out as hot tears from behind my eyes. I started crying. I knew where
it was going. Somehow it made me not secure but very insecure, violently insecure. I knew this was related to the deaths in
my youth, yet I could not overcome the impact, the symptoms in my own mind and body. She looked at me and walked across the
kitchen, and I put my hands on her shoulders and she put her arms around me. “What’s wrong?” she said.

“I don’t want to need you! I don’t want to need anybody!”

The tears were rolling down my face and I couldn’t stop them.

“If I start to need you, what happens when you’re taken away too?”

I loved her, but that didn’t solve my problem. Rather, it revealed it. I thought I was over it. I thought I had gotten over
it with Good Natured. I had played out a similar scene with her. But I was older now, at a different stage; this was different,
Mon Ami was different, I was different. It turned out that I wasn’t so different— I might be at a different stage, but I had
the same demons.

Mon Ami had tears rolling down her face and I kept crying, and we couldn’t stem the tide. All she could do was comfort me
for a little while. She took me by the hand and hugged me and cried and told me, “Go ahead and cry, then. You need to cry.
You need to let it go. I’m here.” Then she wiped my face and said, “Know what? I can’t tell you someone won’t take my life.
I can’t guarantee I’ll be here, I can’t say I’ll live forever or that we’ll be together. Nobody has any guarantees. I don’t
know how long God has destined for me to be on this earth. No one can ever make you that promise. I know what has happened
in your life, to your family. But I also know this—you have to let go of that, somehow. You have to find a way to let it go.
You have to look at it squarely and deal with it, then move on, because if you don’t, it will follow you all your life and
never allow you peace. There will be situations in life that will force you to deal with your father’s death. God will bring
about a situation where you have nowhere to run or hide, but you have to look at it and you have to feel it. All we can live
by is faith. You have to be willing to go out on the limb. That’s where the fruit is. Out on the limb. You’ve got to go out
there, Dexter.”

October 1996. Mon Ami called and said, “You know what? Here’s what I’ve decided. I decided that I really love you and I know
you love me and for whatever reason you can’t be in a committed relationship with me, so we’ll just address it another time.
I’ve already learned a lot from you about myself.” I told her, “I’ve learned a lot about myself from you too.”

If someone says, “I love you and I love everything about you,” he or she is lying to you. I’m terrible to get along with sometimes.
Mon Ami was impatient. We didn’t love everything about each other. But to love the other person in spite of those things,
that’s true love. We had that.

February ’97. The first meeting with Pepper is imminent. We are going to look closer at our father’s assassination, and maybe
after that, my mother, my sisters, my brother, and I will be free. I’m totally distracted. Ami and I are sitting in my living
room, eating dinner. By now she’s used to the business phone calls at nine at night on the cell phone, on the car phone. The
phone rings; it’s Phil Jones; I’d already been having conversations about meeting with Pepper. We always pray before we eat,
so she was waiting for me to get off the phone. She later said she could feel the tension building, but she didn’t know what
it was about; I knew what it was about, but I didn’t know it was that obvious. I tried not to tell her a whole lot about that.
It was my baggage. Subconsciously I felt that would put her in danger.

In December ’97, Phil asked her, “We can use some help with the legacy, why don’t you come on board?” And after thinking about
it, she said okay. I asked her, “Do you think you can do this? I mean, I know you can do the job. But can you handle the job
and the personal stuff too?” I knew she had the skills—she was a shrewd MBA.

“Yes,” she said, “but can you? Are you committed to it? If you’re not committed to changing the face of this, then don’t ask
me to do this, because people hire me to make real changes that are not easy and often painful. You have your vision; do things
your way, in your style; what happened to him is not going to happen to you. Use your other eyes; see what God has before
you instead of fighting it.”

Many others had said what Mon Ami said to me, but maybe she was anointed in a special way for me to hear her. So she came
on board in the summer of ’98, and we started shaking things up. By July ’98, we placed the day-to-day operations of IPM (Intellectual
Properties Management) and the King Center under her authority.

First she was a consultant, then director of external affairs, then managing director. The King Center ran more efficiently.
The fact that we were in a relationship gave fodder to office gossip, but that’s always going to be there—my father knew that.
He was impugned, and his reputation imperiled, by many people within the Civil Rights Movement. But he was patient with it
because he had the Cause of that movement—ending segregation. Our Cause now was the next level after that—individual economic
empowerment, not nearly so noble a cause. Once, and not so long ago, a simple ride from Atlanta to Birmingham, even on interstate
buses, let alone private automobiles, could be fraught with danger. Now, for me and my generation, it was just a ride—we could
pop in a CD, make plans to see a beautiful lady, or have her there with us. But we had a Cause too.

Daddy left off with the peace movement and the Poor People’s campaign. Our Cause had to be the propagation of nonviolence,
the propagation of economic viability and the honoring of our father’s legacy and name. One look around at the differences
of the living conditions of the bulk of the population—one look at the house at 234 Sunset, and its environs in Vine City,
where my mother still lived—made it clear to me. Outdoor advertising for cigarettes, alcohol, and organ donation was very
prominent. That’s all there was, really. The Cause was now economic.

The office gossip was difficult for Mon Ami at times. But it didn’t matter to her what people thought. As long as I was being
honest with her. At times, I was honest with her to a fault. She’d ask questions many women ask of men. She’d get straight
answers. Sometimes she’d regret it.

A lot of women say, “You better tell me the truth; I can handle the truth,” but that’s not really true. There were some exgirlfriends
of mine around; and she’d run into them at functions, they’d come up to her and kiss her on the cheek and shake her hand and
not think she knew that two years ago, five years ago, that person and I were dating; she always knew because I was always
honest. We had a bond that way. My mother, my brother, my sisters, from the time she met them, were nice to her. Mother and
Mon Ami had their sticking points in business, everybody does, especially since Mon Ami ended up running, as managing director,
what Mother built, and Mon Ami was not married to me. Mother respected her acumen. So did I.

Her parents accepted me. I claim no real depth there, though. Her mother is two years younger than mine. Her father came to
Atlanta to visit. He and I smoked cigars. Mon Ami and her dad are as close as Mother and I. He’s her best friend. So we’re
smoking cigars. He says something in Spanish.

“He said you’re not holding the cigar right. How can he not be holding a cigar right?” Mon Ami translated for me, smiling.
“So I said to him, ‘Dad, his father wasn’t around to teach him. Why don’t you?’”

Damned if Mon Ami’s father didn’t show me how to approach smoking a Cuban cigar, right then and there, right down to the attitude
with which you smoke a Cuban cigar. Mr. Ami had a laid-back, quiet persona, which Mon Ami always said reminded her of me.

I’d never before been romantically involved with anyone I worked with professionally; it was awkward for me. We became involved
first, then it turned out she had so many qualities in terms of her training, skills, and was in the right place at the right
time. She was loyal, dedicated, efficient. I saw her as my “significant other.” One of the things she helped me to see is
I have big problems committing on a personal emotional level. I can commit to a cause, an idea—but a living being of the opposite
gender? People I love, who touch my heart, I keep them at a distance. All four of us, the children of Dr. King, are like this.
None of us is married, none of us has ever been married. None of us has children. So there are issues there.

If I’ve still got insecurities or problems about how to express myself, and about how to make it all okay, well, I wish I
didn’t, okay? I’m impressionable. I take in data and send it back out like a refracting lens sometimes. Mon Ami not being
African American, for instance. Once we were out and a sister as light-skinned as Mon Ami came up to me yelling, “Sellout!
You sold out!” I said, “Why do you say that to me?” I was trying to be rational; she was totally emotional. The fact that
she could just come up to me, a stranger, and tell me that, and more: “We look up to you! You’re supposed to be our black
prince. Look at you with this snowbunny!” I said, “Not that it matters, but she’s not white, whatever that is, she’s Cuban.
Like everyone, she has African ancestry too. Not that it matters, but you’ve missed my father’s message if that’s what you
think.”

I can’t deny it affected me.

* * *

Mon Ami and I went out for four years and also advanced the business of the King Center. The truth is, in my heart, I felt
strongly for Mon Ami, but I also was not ready to make an ultimate commitment. She was the closest woman to me apart from
my mother. Then she wanted more and I didn’t know if I was able to give her more. Part of her wished I’d step to her on faith.

Once, she was ill with walking pneumonia. I went to Birmingham to nurse her back to health. She talked about how I was so
loving. And I did often show her the sensitive part of me, but it was under glass; maybe she was able to see it, access it
for a minute; there was a small window of time. Then that window closed; it was frustrating for her. Because she saw this
relationship as having potential, and then, it wasn’t happening… all relationships come to a point where you either take it
to the next logical point or level, or you accept it for what it is, or it just kind of peters out. We were coming to that
turning point. She said she never considered going out with a man who wouldn’t be committed to her. She said she couldn’t
be proud enough to pretend she didn’t love me, or that we didn’t have a bond. There was something between us I’d never experienced.

It bothered me.

Right before I was going to meet James Earl Ray, I said to her, “It’s too chaotic right now.” I saw a relationship like ours
as something you had to maintain and nurture. Not something that just happens. My whole point of view then was that I needed
to break away so I could focus on James Earl Ray.