by Kim Fields
I sat up in bed and listened intently as she described her breakthrough. She said that she had revisited the work of her father, Vincente Minnelli, the great movie director whose films included An American in Paris, Gigi, Father of the Bride, and Meet Me in St. Louis. That surprised me, as I expected her to have said something about her mother, Judy Garland. But she didn’t. She spoke about her father’s work and wrapped up by saying, “I realized I come from that stock.”
That hit me as really powerful and something clicked. I had a revelation, and it immediately recharged my battery. I got out of bed, opened the drapes, and walked outside into my backyard. From there, I had a view of nearby oak and eucalyptus trees and beyond them, the Verdugo Mountains, which were shades of green, brown, purple. The sky was blue streaked with long strands of white clouds. As I took all this in, I heard Liza’s voice in my head. “This is my father’s work. I come from this stock.”
Who would have thought Liza Minnelli would be the one to get me out of my Dark Ages? I was and am forever grateful for her transparency.
For the next few weeks, I took baby steps. Just one foot in front of the other. I did not try to walk a mile so to speak. One step was fine with me. It was a start. One step begets another step. I opened my drapes. I called friends. I went on walks to look at the trees and the mountains, listen to the birds, and bathe in the sunshine. “I know this is You,” I said to God. “I know this is where I come from.”
I had started locking my hair under Regine’s wigs during the last season of Living Single. I wanted Kim to have her own identity and look apart from Regine. I had even started lightening my hair slowly…baby steps. I adored the look of locks, and wanted to include the natural hair path as a part of my journey. I also wanted to make sure I had a different look and vibe from the other actresses and celebs out there. Coming out of my Dark Ages, I regarded my new crown with a new energy of caring for myself, for my hair, for my spirit. Letting the hot waters flow through my hair was soothing and the cleansing element transcended a shower and gave me new life to wash away what wasn’t working for me. I began to really get the concept that your hair is an extension (no pun intended) of you—your soul—if you allow it to be.
At the same time, my thirst for the Word returned. I opened my Bible and read a few sentences at a time. Random readings turned into pointed searches. I thought about David, my biblical hero, and sought out the passages in Psalms where he confronts his troubled soul, asking in Psalm 42:5: “Why are you so discontent? What’s wrong with you, soul?” He says, “Oh my soul, why are you this way?” I asked the same of my soul. I examined my own past, as one does when finding themselves in unexpected places, and wondered where I had made mistakes. I began to question the hope and trust I had placed in God and started running down my resume, as I had so often in the past, when suddenly I caught myself. I stopped and instead ran down God’s resume, specifically His track record with me, and then I shut up.
Years later, when my husband, the marvelous and all-wise Christopher Morgan, saw me slipping back into one of those periods of disappointment, he put his hand up like traffic cop and stopped me in my place. “Baby,” he said, “you can’t worry and remember at the same time.” Meaning that I was either going to worry about things that have not yet happened or I could remember all the blessings, the stock, and what He has done. But I could not do both.
David’s struggle helped guide me through my own journey of doubt. Weary and weak from groaning, his pillow drenched with tears, he still praised God, knowing that was the only way to get to the other side of his anguish. Again in Psalm 43:5, he puts his soul in check: “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” I got it; I knew the actions I had to take. Though frustrated, confused, and disappointed, I was not going to abandon my faith. Nor was I going to lie in bed and criticize and complain to God. I had been doing that, which left me one option, the only one that made sense. I praised Him. I read. I prayed. And I praised Him.
And as I did, gradually, I felt the woe-is-me worries that had been weighing me down begin to disappear. This is the beauty and power of saying, “I will yet praise Him.” I quit focusing on excuses and looking for blame. I stopped punishing myself. I stopped counting what I did not have and instead counted the blessings that were mine. Yet, I praised Him.
And my load began to lighten.
My perspective began to change.
The lights came on.
I started looking out the window again.
By the spring, I had reconnected with my agents and started reading scripts and going on auditions. No one was happier to hear this than my mom. “Are you back?” she asked one day as we caught up on the phone. “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m dressed, smelling good, and ready for when the time comes.”
* * *
In May, the time came. It was my thirtieth birthday. As far as the world was concerned, I still did not look more than twenty, but inside I was excited about the step up into this new decade. I was one of those people—not necessarily one of those women, just one of those people in general—who felt thirty was the decade to be my best. It was about adulthood, independence, freedom, and hopefully confidence. To prepare, I did something bold, drastic, and wonderful. I dyed my locks nearly platinum blond. No more baby steps.
Look, if you’re not in therapy, the beauty salon can be the perfect place to find your footing after a breakup or a breakdown. Or it can be a disaster. At first, my stylist reacted like it was the latter. To her, I was conservative Kimmy. But my explanation changed her opinion. “No, I made the decision,” I said. “I’m turning thirty. It’s time to come out of hiding. It’s time to do something different.” The transformation was immediate, and I loved it. I felt lighter. My spirit felt lighter. Like I could breathe and just be, in a word, easier. At the same time I felt very empowered, incredibly strong. Dare I say glimpses of a boldness were starting to enter my radar?
If that was me coming out of my shell, I also stepped forward as a political activist, a slightly different space from being a part of political campaigns. Three days before my birthday, I was among forty-six people arrested outside a Riverside courthouse, protesting a judge’s decision to not charge four police officers for killing nineteen-year-old Tyisha Miller after finding her unconscious in her car. The incident had happened in December. Miller had been driving her aunt’s car late at night with a teenage friend, and they got a flat tire. After her friend returned from getting help, Miller was unconscious in the driver’s seat with the engine running and the radio on. According to reports, she was comatose, with foam oozing from her mouth. A gun was also on the seat next to her.
Police were summoned—and four arrived within minutes. Because of the gun on her seat, they approached the car with their own guns drawn. Unable to rouse her, and seeing she needed emergency medical help, they broke the window. At that point, Miller supposedly awakened, reached for her gun, and the officers shot her twenty-three times. The community was outraged by the incident and further incensed when an investigation called the action an error in judgment rather than a crime, or more specifically, a homicide.
A local judge concurred, and that is when I responded to the call to join a protest outside the courthouse. Hundreds of others turned out and we stood in front of the police station chanting, “No justice! No peace!” Many of us were arrested, including Reverend Al Sharpton, comedian-activist Dick Gregory, Martin Luther King III, Sandra Moore from CORE, and myself. It was intense. The rage from both protestors and police was like a keg of dynamite on the verge of exploding.
It was scary, like nothing I’d ever been a part of. This was seven years after Rodney King had been beaten by police and touched off riots across Los Angeles. Just three months earlier, an unarmed twenty-three-year-old black man named Amadou Diallo was shot forty-one times by officers outside his apartment in New York while reaching for his wallet. I knew the possibility exist
ed that something similar could happen to me, my teenage sister, or one of my friends simply for the color of our skin, and if it did, there was a high probability that those involved would not be held responsible. Why? Because they were white.
And that is why I stood outside the Riverside police headquarters when the call went out for protestors. The lesson I’d learned from Jesse Jackson and those of his generation who had marched in Birmingham, Selma, and Washington was that change only happens if you show up.
Days later, I celebrated my actual birthday in St. Lucia, a paradise of gorgeous sandy beaches and lush, green mountains in the Caribbean. After receiving an invitation from BET and the St. Lucia tourist board to be their guest at the island’s annual jazz festival, I went there with a sisterfriend to keep me company. Luckily, she was an independent and understanding type because I met a handsome young man whose family owned a resort there and indulged in a fun-in-the-sun romance to go with my new blond locks. We went horseback riding on the beach, explored hidden canyons, swam in calm pools under dramatic waterfalls, enjoyed romantic candlelit dinners, and saw live shows with David Sanborn, Patti LaBelle, and my friend Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who tore it up with his band.
I had such a good time that I continued going to St. Lucia for my birthday for the next few years. My mom was delighted when I told her about my island boyfriend. “Well, you know, honey, Jesus’s people didn’t take Him in,” she said. “He had to go far away to get Him some love, too.”
16
Scrappy
It was a beautiful day, one of those afternoons that make living in California feel like paradise, and I returned home from a hike in a nearby canyon, hot and sweaty. I drank half a glass of ice water, put it down on the kitchen counter, patted some sweat off my face, and looked at myself in the mirror. I was not the athletic type on a regular basis, but a little exercise felt good, and it looked good. I had on a pink T-shirt and sweatpants. My hair was a little messy, but my blonde locks gave me a sort of sexy Shari Belafonte glow, emphasis on sort of. “But I’ll take it,” I said.
I was enjoying the way thirty and then thirty-one felt, even if I was painfully aware that my exit from the Dark Ages was made by taking baby steps. For one thing, there was the lack of a relationship. I was ready and open to meeting someone special, and I was looking, but my prince was nowhere in sight. Then there was work, which consisted of a little bit of everything. I directed an episode of the Nickelodeon series 100 Deeds for Eddie McDowd. I guested on the Lifetime series Strong Medicine and took a part in a cute, small-budget coming-of-age movie called Glow.
I probably did my best dramatic work on a TV movie titled Hidden Blessings. Starring Cynda Williams and Marc Gomes, it was a suspenseful BET movie about a female cop who falls in love with an architect accused of killing his wife. I played his assistant, who, it turned out, actually committed the murder. I had worked with the director, Timothy Wayne Folsome, on Uninvited Guest, and he allowed me the room to discover and shape my character. I am sure he picked up on how much I enjoyed being in a drama. It was a different playground for me.
But it was only a couple of weeks of shooting, and then I was back home, waiting for the next opportunity. Whether in front of the camera or behind it, jobs were few and far between. This was a difficult reality for me to deal with. It was not like I woke from a dark period, left my bedroom, and everything magically changed. My agents were not sitting on offers. No one was writing a series for me. My accountant was not on the phone telling me I had no worries.
No, instead I stepped back into real life. One step at a time. Like every other actor in Hollywood, I had to hustle and hope, and when I got work, I praised God, called my mom, and jumped up and down the way I used to when I was a little kid and one of us booked a job. At one point, I did think about trying to get a job in development at NBC. It seemed stable. In reality, it was probably as fraught with insecurity as any other job in the creative field. But when I looked inside myself, I did not just see an actor. I saw the soul of an artist. Like it or not, I was a performer—and the truth was, I loved it. I said to myself, “Yes, this life can be excruciating. But this is my life. This is the life I chose. This is the life that feels right for me.”
Everyone has these moments of questioning their path. God knows, I had mine. I asked the questions. I listened for a response. I heard my inner voice provide the answers. “You’re an actress.” I knew it was not easy—not now or ever. I wanted things to be sure. But life was not about certainty. I wanted to know why it felt like I was constantly having to prove myself. But who doesn’t have to prove themselves every day in one way or another? Who doesn’t have to dig in?
I was scrappy. I liked that about myself. I liked that word—scrappy. I had thought of myself in that way for years. But now, in my thirties, it really fit. As did so many other things. Everyone goes through periods when they ask, Am I good enough? Am I pretty enough? Am I sexy enough? Am I smart enough? Am I black enough? Am I funny enough? Are my boobs enough? Is my butt enough? Is my car enough? Is my bank account enough? Oh my God, I had asked those questions, too—and then some. The answers were not always what I wanted to hear. This time, though, I told myself, “You know what? You are enough the way you are. More than enough.”
Translation: No matter how much I struggled between jobs, no matter how much I wished I had steady work, no matter how much I wanted to have a great man in my life, no matter how much I wished I was taller, smarter, richer, prettier, whatever, I liked who I was, and that kept me afloat and looking forward.
I hiked.
I read.
I recarpeted my bedroom floor.
I hung out with friends.
I saw my family.
I went to church.
I locked my hair—and hair is key, isn’t it?
I was transforming inside and out. Reinvention was in the air and I was taking deep breaths, drinking in change. My hair was the giveaway.
I was connecting more and more with a bohemian vibe.
I was getting comfortable in my skin.
I was living my life—really making a conscious effort to live—as best I could.
* * *
Then the phone rang. It was work. I went to Chicago for a three-week run in The Vagina Monologues. It was summer 2001, and I arrived on one of those hot, sticky days I remembered all too well from when I used to visit Jonathan Jackson and his family. But I was ecstatic to be there. I loved Chicago. I also loved the play. The Vagina Monologues was a tremendous piece of work about femininity, self-esteem, sex, reproduction, the strength of women, what it meant to be a woman, independence, politics, and life. I was all in. The subject, the fit, and the timing all worked for me.
* * *
Theater in the summertime traditionally does not do well because everyone is outside having fun. Seats often go unfilled. So I appreciated that the show’s producer, Rob Colson, tapped me in the hope of that not being the case, and it wasn’t. We had a tremendous turnout. I also had some very good friends in Chicago who took me out to cool neighborhood hot spots whenever I had free time. One night they introduced me to spoken-word poetry. It was open mic night at a club. I was enthralled. Not every person was great, but many were, and I appreciated what it took for each person to get up there and present their words on that otherwise bare stage.
“Oh my gosh, this is fantastic,” I kept saying to my friends, without mentioning the pull I immediately felt to get up there myself. It was as if the words were already poised at the tip of my tongue.
Forget baby steps. Forget glimpses of boldness. Getting up there would be a giant leap off a cliff. But I knew I had to do it. I knew I would do it. The play had given me a new level of confidence in terms of doing monologues onstage with only a microphone. Years earlier, while on the road in a play called One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show, I had a small monologue in the middle of the show. Ron Milner, the great playwright, was the director, and he spent days working with me on that small but significant portion b
ecause I was horribly uncomfortable standing onstage by myself, talking to the audience.
I was used to working with other people, playing off them, and being able to stop and redo if I messed up. The vulnerability of flying solo unnerved me. For many actors, that is part of the thrill of doing theater. I enjoyed that rush, too; it just required a lot of internal pushing to get me to that point. Doing The Vagina Monologues liberated me from some of that fear. The words Eve Ensler had written were empowering, personally and professionally. I could feel the audience react and used their energy to get me past my fear. Then I wanted more.
As I digested that spoken-word experience, I could feel my inner poet emerging from my soul. It was being drawn out by a beautiful memory I had of seeing the incomparable Ruby Dee in her one-woman show, My One Good Nerve: A Visit with Ruby Dee. In it, she talked about her life, played numerous characters, and dished up commentary on all that mattered. “Love is when you sink into his arms, and end up with your arms in the sink,” she said. How many years earlier had I seen her perform that piece? Maybe five. Maybe four. Yet her poet prowess was indelible and intoxicating, and it was calling mine forth.
A few days later, I went back to the club with my friends. I was ready to take my turn onstage. I’d journaled in a pretty little notebook for years, filling it with thoughts and feelings that I realized I had written in verse-like fragments. As I prepared for my debut, I reworked some of those lines into very personal pieces.