Growing Up King (39 page)

Finally she said, “This is it.” I looked at her and said, “Fine.”

After the trial I started to smile, to be more carefree. That’s when she started talking about whether it was a good idea
to be committed. I knew Ami wanted more. She said, “I’m not going back to the same thing. Been there, done that, read the
book, saw the movie, heard the CD.” It would be four years we’d been seeing each other in April 2000—four years, off and on.

I told her I wanted and needed to move out to L.A., to be alone to clear my head and heal, live out there for a while, to
see if I wanted to live there permanently. Six months. Then I could make a move. I’d been drawn to the West Coast when I’d
stayed with Michelle Jenkins in Pacific Palisades, back in 1992.

Mon Ami looked at me and said, “Oh? Is that right?”

I was moving to L.A. to start the new millennium. She said she’d help me find a place. “If that’s what you want to do, go
on with your bad self,” she said. There was something about the way she said it. This is where she got off my merry-go-round.
“We’ve come this far, but if you don’t feel we can commit yet, that’s cool,” she said. “I support you, when you’ve got an
issue I’ll listen, if you ever feel you’re ready, you call me and if I’m available, I’m available. But I would doubt it…”

There had been periods of time when we broke up before— when the Ray meeting was coming up, where I didn’t want her along
for that. I said I’d call her afterward. Four months later she still hadn’t heard from me. One time we were going off on vacation
to an island. I was telling her to play it by ear two days before the plane took off, because I was all tied up with Pepper
and all these other things. I asked her to call one day at five, and she did. I was going through something and barked at
her, “I can’t deal with this and you right now,” and hung up. Yet we always hooked back up. Those days were gone. Frankly,
after the trial, and the resort at the Four Seasons in Arizona, things threatened to get more serious between us. I talked
to Mother and my siblings about it—about what would they think if I ended up asking her to marry me. She tried on engagement
rings. The whole bit. But I kept saying to her, “I need the time away—in L.A.”

“After what I’ve been through with you, I guess I do too.”

Every couple of days early in January 2000, Mon Ami would prod me, even though she knew I was thinking of going away. “So
are we still committed?”

“Um. Yes. We’re committed to each other’s well-being, for sure.”

“How does that feel?”

No answer.

“You doing okay?”

“Yeah, I’m doing okay with it… feels… good.”

“Okay, then.”

In a few weeks, as my deadline for moving out to L.A. approached, at the end of January 2000, I said, “Ami, I’ve been thinking
hard about this. I still have issues within myself I need to resolve. I don’t want to put you through any more hurt or pain;
but I think I just need to make my move and follow this other thing and—”

“Where are you going right now?” she asked.

“Right now? Home.”

“Home? What home?” she asked.

That stung. I came over to her place the next day. Had a basket of flowers, this big bottle of wine, good intentions, standing
at her front door. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“People are staring. Please let me in,” I said.

She let me in and said, “You can sit over there.” She sat across the room.

“Dexter, do you think that what we have is not normal?”

“… I don’t know.”

“The very thing you think you can’t have—you have it now, you’re living it, and when you’re not thinking about it, you’re
doing good at it. Dexter… I love you.”

“… I don’t see why you would.”

“Because for some reason God has given me the ability to see not what other people want me to see, not what other people have
told me, not what you want me to think about you. I see who you are and I’m hoping somehow I can help you let that out. I
don’t know if anybody knows what they deserve. People know what they want. If L.A.’s what you want, so be it. Uncover the
ghosts within yourself. You need to be okay with yourself in order to be okay with being with anybody else, or you will never
see what you have in me, because you don’t truly see all of who you are.

“I don’t know what the future holds,” she said. “But I think what this has done is help you find a key to unlock a door that
was closed a long time ago that can never be closed again. You can never go back. At the King Center, there is a centralized
system now, things move quicker, easier. More corporations are involved. If the properties are sold, that’s only land. What
the Center does can never be sold, because what you do is preserve the legacy. You have put together a structure to bring
the state holiday commissions under your leadership. There are King Centers around the world that should be tied here. The
future is good if you communicate the message. You have to be the one telling the story, if you want it told right. So, that’s
it.”

“Ami, I’m going out to L.A. to live. Give me six months…”

Mon Ami looked at me levelly. “I ain’t gonna give you six seconds. Oh, I’ll go out there with you, help you find a place,
help you set it up, always be your friend, but as far as waiting here for you— the hell with that. You ain’t getting six seconds
after that, let alone six months. Let me tell you something else. You have gotten all that you are going to get, because I
have given all I have to give to this particular type of relationship. I love you, I’ll always be there for you, as a friend,
but I ain’t giving you six seconds if you move to L.A. You want me to wait another six months while you… what? Are you out
your mind? No. No. No. It will not happen. No.”

“Well, then… Ami… I… no… It’s a shame you can’t be more understanding.”

“Now you’re really trying to get my goat, Dexter King,” she said. “You can’t sell I’m not understanding to anybody that knows
our situation. You can’t give that away. If you move to L.A., Dexter, then you ain’t getting six more seconds from me, let
alone six months. But know what? It’s okay. Because you will have lost the best thing that happened to you. Proverbs are full
of stories about that, you fool. You would have lost the best thing that has happened to you, but that’s okay, because you
know what? We’ll still be friends the rest of our lives.”

F
ree at last, free at last… but free to do what? Go where? And with whom? I get off the plane and enter into a brilliant blue
day in L.A. I find my place easily. It’s a place on the beach. I sit in the sand with my pants legs rolled up. I listen to
the roar of the waves breaking in off the Pacific. They’ll always be there. They’ll never stop. As long as there’s an earth,
a sun, a moon, and the tides. I walk along the beach at the ocean’s edge, getting my feet wet, thinking, “On Christ the solid
rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.” I know what sinking sand feels like. Feels like— this. I see a boy of six
or seven. We resemble each other, I think, as though we might be related, although I don’t see how this could be. But he looks
at me expectantly, as if he knows me, or wants to ask me something. I try to ignore him. But I find I really can’t…

Later I meet with the Man from CBS. His name is Leslie Moonves, head of the network. We are meeting about the CBS case. The
estate lawyers won a reversal before a federal judge. “We could keep paying lawyers,” I said. CBS has deep, deep pockets;
we do not. They could take it all the way to the Supreme Court, I remember what one once said. Copyright and intellectual
property are the real estate of the future. I am about to repeat this to Mr. Moonves. But I wait. He is smiling.

I say nothing. We will agree to agree today. He is a nice and pragmatic man. He is in a good mood. He has authorized a show
called
Survivor.
And it has done very well for CBS, soundly beating
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
At the time,
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
on the ABC network, was not only the number-onerated show—it was four of the top five shows. ABC was riding high, and heads
hung low over at CBS. Ratings are important because they dictate the rates the networks can charge advertisers. Leslie Moonves
decided to green-light
Survivor
on May 31, 2000, after two previous denials. It beat the pants off
Millionaire. Survivor
had been getting 25 million viewers—1.3 million more viewers than all other broadcast networks combined. Leslie Moonves was
therefore happy. And I was getting there.

A few months later the CBS case is settled. Mr. Moonves and I have dinner. His
Survivor
is still going strong, outdrawing everything but Super Bowls. He’s ecstatic. We discuss prospects. He turns reflective; the
first
Survivor
ends in September. I wanted to tell him I wish his version of
Survivor
could go on forever. I don’t tell him that I’ve waited all my life for my version of
Survivor
to end.

I go to Los Angeles Lakers NBA basketball games. They are the playoff games, conducted with a great intensity. The games are
held near downtown L.A., at the Staples Center. The Philips Arena in Atlanta has better sightlines. But here at Staples Center,
I feel I am in a better seat.

The Lakers, with young stars Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, are going for the NBA title. I’ve been invited to the game
by producer and television personality Byron Allen. We’ve hit it off. He is smart and savvy. He owns the TV shows he is involved
with as a personable host. He has innumerable contacts. He hears buzz. All the buzz. He’s been talking to this hot African
American female screenwriter about Mother’s book,
My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr.
Byron says he loves it. I love it too. Hollywood people are good at agreeing. It is a fairly new experience for me.

We sit near Paul Allen as the Lakers play the Portland Trail Blazers. Paul Allen, he of Microsoft wealth, owns the Portland
Trail Blazers. Steven Spielberg sits near him. Spielberg nods knowingly, spreads his mouth in a smile, and cocks his head
in artistic appreciation when one of the Trail Blazers makes a play, even though he is a Lakers fan. Paul Allen is one of
the primary investors in the DreamWorks studio run by Mr. Spielberg, Mr. Geffen, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who is also present.
Mr. Katzenberg says something wry about “knowing who to cheer for.” I shake hands with Mr. Spielberg. He seems a nice man,
and, on balance, a good man. He was given an NAACP Image Award, came to get it, spoke well. Maybe things will be all right
in America. Maybe…

Many stars are at the Lakers playoff games, stars so big the world knows them by first names only—Dustin, Denzel, Arnold,
Jack. I get lost in the crowd. No one pays me much attention. The anonymity is like a warm blanket. I go back home. Out here
I can do what I want, maybe even be whoever I am. Why not? Michael Ovitz was also at the Lakers game. He once ran the Creative
Artists Agency, and served as the president of Disney for a short stint. In the early ’90s, Michelle Clark Jenkins and I talked
with him about prospects for a movie about my father. He told me he was recently on a podium with my brother, Martin, said
Martin spoke before he did, wowed the room, left a tough act to follow. I smile…

Funny how it broke down—Yoki and me, child No. 1 and child No. 3, in California, in “La-La Land,” trying to make our way,
Yoki as an actress; Martin and Bernice, No. 2 and No. 4, in Atlanta, in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, August 26, 2000, at
the “Redeem the Dream” rally, on the Mall, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, almost thirty-seven years to the day from the
March on Washington, where Daddy gave the “I Have a Dream” speech. He wanted his children and all people judged by the “content
of their character,” not the color of their skin. Thirty-seven years later, Martin III, gray-bearded now, told the gathered
crowd, estimated at 100,000, that the dream hadn’t been fulfilled—not when an unarmed black man named Amadou Diallo could
be shot forty-seven times by a group of five New York policemen who emptied the clips of their automatic pistols into him
for holding up his wallet in the foyer of a Bronx apartment building.

The “Redeem the Dream” rally was organized to protest police brutality and “racial profiling,” the bad habit of many law enforcement
jurisdictions of stopping and harassing motorists because of skin color. The March was co-organized by the SCLC, of which
Martin had been installed as president—it is the activist arm of what could gently be called our father’s legacy.

Earlier in August, Martin had written a letter, as president and chief executive officer of the SCLC, to Cedric Dempsey, president
of the NCAA, National Collegiate Athletic Association, requesting that the NCAA move three of its basketball championship
game sites from Atlanta, because Georgia uses the Confederate battle flag as part of its state flag. The current governor
of Georgia, Roy Barnes, said, “It’s a difficult issue, about which discussions are ongoing,” and then I thought back to past
Georgia governors, from Lester Maddox to Ernest Vandiver to Jimmy Carter. They all had to react one way or another to three
men who had been named Martin Luther King. “The right one got the name,” I thought. I’m proud of my brother Martin Luther
King III.