City Kid (28 page)

The movie opened in March '93, and I'd trek between Brooklyn and LA heavily over the next two years, growing frustrated with my efforts to build a viable career as a screenwriter, but slowly reconnecting with my life as a journalist and author. Back in Fort Greene things were evolving. Between his film work, his
Saturday Night Live
tenure, and most profoundly, his breakthrough
Bring the Pain
special on HBO, Chris couldn't eat breakfast in peace at Mike's diner on DeKalb anymore, much less walk over the few blocks from his carriage house. Driving in the convertible made no sense, so it had to be ditched. People sought out his place to take photos outside. Much like the explosion Spike had ignited in Fort Greene a decade earlier, Chris became part of the lore of what, at the time, seemed a black cultural mecca.

Within a few years Chris's heightened celebrity would force him to move to Jersey. Spike would move to the posh Upper East Side. A lot of my peers who'd moved into the neighborhood around the same time I had had either moved to the suburbs or California. No more meetings at Cino's on Fulton Street, or house parties among people my age. Younger people and newer artists were moving in. Over on Fulton Street a spoken-word scene was hot at the new Brooklyn Moon Café, where you could see then unknown talents like Mos Def and Erykah Badu declaim poetry for an audience that finger snapped in appreciation (to keep the people living upstairs from complaining). Writers like Kevin Powell, Toure, and Colson Whitehead were building their reps living on the same streets Richard Wright had once strolled.

Things were changing in my world and mostly for the best. Using some of my movie money, I'd helped my mother move back to Newport News, Virginia, the town she'd abandoned for Brooklyn before I was born. Equally important was that she'd taken Ebony and Leigh with her, giving them a chance to grow in an area where grass, clean air, and trips to the all-American mall were commonplace. My mother and nieces would still face many challenges adjusting to a slower-paced suburban lifestyle, but this relocation, which was actually part of a historic shift of African Americans from northern big cities back to smaller southern communities, gave them all a safer, healthier life and me much-appreciated peace of mind.

I thought about moving too. Maybe get a place in Manhattan or go out to LA to capitalize on a growing movie career. My landlord wouldn't sell me the building nor would they invest in keeping the property up. Instead of moving out of Fort Greene, I moved to a similar apartment, on Fort Greene Place, around the corner from the Brooklyn Academy of Music and closer to the subway.

My last day in 19 Willoughby was incredibly sad. I knew that place was where I'd grown into an adult, blossomed as an artist, and made most of my deepest friendships. I would never be that young, ambitious, or naive again. That special twenties growth period, that time you remember fondly for the rest of your life, was over.

With all my furniture moved out, the place was as empty as the day I'd moved in. But it didn't feel empty. I could still feel it all—the books, the conversations, the sex, the laughter, the mistakes, and the dreams that had kept me up so many nights. I lit a small candle, placed it in a saucer in the center of the room, and closed the door.

The morning sun poured in through the big back windows of my dining room on Fort Greene Place. I sat at my long black lacquer dining table toying with a video camera. I had it aimed at a sun-splashed chair I'd set up by a corner window. My sister was coming over, and we were going to talk, not have a fight or an argument. I wasn't hiding my valuables. I wasn't anxious that she'd ask me for money or, by signing some papers, to participate in some scam. We were going to talk just like a brother and sister should. It was the morning my career and my family history would truly come together.

I was going to interview my sister on camera, which is not how most siblings communicate, but considering our recent history, this was a huge step forward. It meant that after years of tension and silence, I was going to listen to her and try to see the world through her eyes. I hadn't done that in years. Years? Maybe never.

My buzzer rang and I went downstairs to the front door. I didn't kiss Andrea and she didn't kiss me. It had been a long time since we'd been physically affectionate with each other, but the chaste hug we shared was still progress. I closed the door and followed her upstairs.

Interviewing her was the best way I knew to find out about her, as goofy and impersonal as it sounds. Moreover, I thought that in her journey maybe there was a documentary or screenplay. Maybe I could turn her struggle into something artistic, connecting my two Brooklyns through Andrea.

My sister had been HIV-positive for a little over a decade when we sat down in 2003 for our little summit conference. During those years, my view of Andrea had shifted almost 360 degrees. So much so that I'm prepared to say that my sister's acquiring the HIV virus was one of the most
positive
, transformative experiences of her life, a statement I agree is as perverse as it is true.

Back in '92, when Andrea first told me she was HIV-positive, I was sure she'd be dead in months. She was skinny and drawn, and her usual feistiness seemed to be ebbing away. You could see her eyes and her freckles, but the rest of the face seemed to be shrinking into her skull. The previous half decade had not gone well for her. Ebony had been diagnosed with a brain tumor at age ten and had battled the fallout from that surgery all through her teen years, suffering complications that sapped her self-confidence and strength for a time. Thankfully she made a full recovery. Ma had been granted legal custody of Ebony and Leigh in a court process that was painful for all of us. Andrea had married a man named Les who had just gotten out of jail. All I could think of was how Ebony and Leigh would handle their mother's imminent death. Just minutes after she'd told me she had the HIV virus, I was already thinking of my sister in the past tense.

Andrea, however, wasn't having it. She didn't plan to die, and wouldn't give up on life. In fact, for once she embraced life with both hands, focusing all her intelligence and street smarts on survival. Les had tested positive for the HIV virus in jail. When he told her, “I knew I had it,” she said. “There was no way I didn't.” Andrea's next move was to the library. “First I went to the local branches in Brooklyn, and then to the main library at the Grand Army Plaza. I wanted to know everything I could about the virus. You gotta remember, back then there wasn't a lot of info out there. People were still dying.”

Following her reading Andrea began seeing doctors in Brooklyn, and was disappointed to find, as she explained to my camera, “I often knew more about treatment and research into the virus than they did. No wonder black folk were dying.” Shrewdly she decided, “I needed to go where the information was. I started going to the gay men's health center in the Village, getting their pamphlets and finding out what the gay men were doing. They were starting to live longer. Some of the gays called us ‘Breeders,' as if women didn't belong in these places, but I didn't care. I needed to know everything they did.”

Unknown to me, Andrea had volunteered for various experimental treatments. She'd decided it was better to be a guinea pig than to be a passive victim. One treatment nearly put her in the hospital, as the lining of her throat and stomach became inflamed every time she swallowed. She tossed those pills as soon as she got home, but still she wouldn't stop trying.

“I got to understand how the doses of antiviral meds were overprescribed for women,” she told me. “They'd have you taking five pills of a medication based on what they'd tested on gay men. But I'm a woman. My system was different. I could feel what worked and what was too much. So I began deciding for myself how many meds to take. You gotta remember, no one knew anything about how these treatments affected women. And I knew myself better than they knew me, no matter how many tests they gave me.”

Andrea's trademark willfulness wasn't just aimed at self-preservation. Despite the fact that she and her husband were both HIV-positive, Andrea was determined to have another child. My mother and I both thought she was being irresponsible and quite crazy. The truth was, she knew the odds better than we did. “At that time there was a one in four chance the baby would be born with the virus. I was willing to take that chance.”

So, with a clear conscience, my sister got pregnant, and delivered Jade in October 1996, a lively little girl who was born HIV-negative. Not only did Jade give Andrea another chance at motherhood, but the pregnancy pointed her life in a new direction. “At Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan I participated in a program for women pregnant with the virus. I got to know the doctors and counselors there. I'd always stayed on top of all the treatments. I was good at talking to the other women about how to handle themselves.” After Jade was born, Andrea began doing some consulting there.

Getting the virus, educating herself, and the pregnancy and birth had by 2001 transformed my sister. Drugs were out. The romance of the streets was history. She began eating well, and put on weight for the first time in her life. She began favoring gospel over R&B. She and Les—who was himself now drug-free—settled in together, building the most stable romantic relationship Andrea's ever had.

Just as pleasing to witness was how conscientious a mother Andrea was to Jade. Perhaps making up for lost time, Andrea was involved in every aspect of Jade's life, helping with homework and getting her into dancing classes, karate courses, the extracurricular works. For several years it's been a spring ritual for me to join Jade and Andrea at the Univer-Soul Circus, and a winter one for us to see Jade in
The Nutcracker
. A few years back I went to a day care center to attend Jade's graduation. To my surprise, and to that of Andrea as well, the teaching staff gave my sister an award for her contributions to the PTA. I was filled with pride, truly moved by how the teachers spoke about her.

It was a feeling that I'd have often in the weeks after our interview, as I followed her to various HIV support group meetings. After her time at Bellevue, Andrea moved on to other HIV outreach groups, including a Brooklyn-based organization where she promoted safe sex, gave out condoms, and cleared up misconceptions about how HIV is caught (and hepatitis C and D too!). To see her make her presentations and command her audiences of black and Latino women and men is to see echoes of my mother as a schoolteacher. Andrea, much like my mother, was a natural leader, whom people easily responded to. It was eerie that after all those years, and all that conflict, Ma and Andrea had ended up sharing something as important as the same blood—a gift of advocacy and instruction.

I'd sold a pitch to HBO about a doing a film about contemporary race relations. Through the process of developing that idea (which in 2003 turned into the fine Jim McKay-directed
Everyday People
), I got to know the folks at HBO Films, specifically president Colin Calender and a vice president, Sam Martin, one of the few black studio executives in LA who actually gets to make movies. It took years to get
Everyday People
made, but the struggle built a bond of trust between myself and the executives there.

So when I pitched them the idea of doing an HIV film based on my sister's journey, they let me pursue it. As I'd learned in my previous film experiences, getting a movie made is like pushing a boulder up a mountain wearing roller skates. One step up can turn into three steps back in one phone call. The script, which I called
Life Support
, was spiritually and personally the right thing to do, so I laced up my skates and kept pushing that boulder.

At a certain point I, and HBO, felt we had a good script, but I didn't have a movie until Queen Latifah agreed to star in it. There were very few actresses I could see embodying Andrea's commitment, cunning, and contradictions. I needed someone who could realistically be “street,” yet wasn't the over-the-top caricature Hollywood (and too many black actresses) substituted for humanity. Before Latifah had become a product spokesperson and a red carpet presence, Dana Owens had been a New York-area gal who rocked the microphone with feminist gusto.

Plus, we'd actually worked together before. Back in '93 I had written and codirected an antiviolence public service announcement that she appeared in. It was my first time directing, but she'd already been building her chops as an actress with some small film roles and her part on the sitcom
Living Single
. A reason raptors (rapper actors) are so popular is that their MC personas are usually artistic creations as well designed as a movie character. That voice that pops out of your iPod is a heightened, sometimes cartoonish version of who they truly are. It was clear to me back then that Queen Latifah/Dana Owens was well in control of that duality.