Developing the relationship was different for me. I still lived on campus. She lived off, but we spent a lot of time together. Tim and I later rented an off-campus house, but she and I basically stayed together and did everything as a team. We bought groceries together. We bought a dog together, Hannibal, a rottweiler. We both got food stamps. The food stamp game is an old hook-up in neighborhoods from Detroit to Tallahassee. If you could get them, especially as a struggling college student, then you did.
I also met her parents. I admit, few people would want to make the first impression that I did. Remember, Carlita was the good girl, and I was Kwam, the good guy who was still immersed in college life. Her folks were in town, and I was supposed to meet them for dinner… and I forgot. A few of my partners had come over. We started hanging out, and things got a bit—how should I say it—smokey. In fact, the house looked like a Cheech & Chong movie scene by the time Carlita stopped by with her father. To make things worse, we were playing Dr. Dre’s album, The Chronic, as they walked in.
One… two… three, and to the fo’. Only, this was Carlita’s father at the door. Wow!
Needless to say, they didn’t appreciate my absentmindedness. As they stormed out, my friend Eiaon Conner looked at me.
“Hey, Brother,” he said, “this probably don’t look too good. I mean, from my perspective, it don’t look good. And I’m in here.” I had to sit through my friends’ laughapalooza while Eiaon continued. “If I was her daddy, I would beat her ass if she ever mentioned you again!”
I took a shower and rushed over to meet them at Chi Chi’s restaurant. I’d eventually win them over… but not that night.
Carlita graduated in 1992, a semester before I did. I finished my coursework in 1992, but completed a semester of student teaching afterward. She returned to D.C., partly due to my urging. She wanted to stay in Tallahassee, and we had a big argument about it. I knew that there was more opportunity for her in D.C., especially for someone with a journalism degree. The idea of living by myself one more time, during my last term, didn’t seem too bad, either.
It worked. She moved home. I was alone. And in no time, I was miserable. I wanted my woman back. She was just as pitiful, and I could hear it in her voice one day when we spoke on the phone.
It didn’t make sense for us to be apart, so I told her, “I’m coming to get you. Pack.” I jumped in my Bronco, drove to D.C., and called. “I’m on my way to your house.”
“I’m packed and ready to go,” she said.
Everyone was there when I arrived—her mother, father and brother. They weren’t happy, and the situation was tense. It didn’t help that I still hadn’t gotten past that first impression I’d made on them. I greeted everyone, but none of them responded. Taking her bags and easing out the door, I decided to wait in the car.
The saga was crazy not by the audacity of the trip, but by the fact that I had a game the Saturday before I left. I flew out on Sunday, picked her up and returned for practice on Monday. Meanwhile, she had no job, nowhere to live, and no plan, or so I thought. We returned to my dorm room, and that’s where she stayed for that first week back. We had an away game that weekend at Georgia Southern. I left on Friday, and when I returned, she’d found her own place, with furniture, and a job. She picked me up from the bus station in my car, and surprised me with all of it.
She got a job working for The Tallahassee Democrat, making about $20,000. We were rich! That was real money back then. We developed a rhythm in our relationship. I would come off the road from a game and go to my lady’s house. I finished school that December and taught at Rickards High in Tallahassee through the Spring. FAMU only held Spring graduations, so I walked across the stage in 1993.
Everyone knew that we were Kwame and Carlita, campus couple. Our dynamic, however, was less glamorous. Our personalities have always been a study in contrast. I’m a people person. I like talking to people and meeting new faces. I like the socialization, the smiling. Politics, the public service end of it, thrills me. Carlita is much more insular. She’s a loner. Spending a night curled up in bed with her favorite book and a cup of coffee is a perfect night for her. I’d slit my wrist if I had to do that for two or three nights. And she’d slit hers if she had to go a whole bunch of events.
I’m also more trusting of people, whereas you have to earn her trust. For years, we viewed and treated these differences as negatives in our relationship. They were natural traits, which meant they’d never go away. At one point, we’d have to face brutal realities, and deal with some brutal honesty, to turn them into positives. I’ll state my belief right now that God had a plan in putting us together, because our relationship is not about opposites attracting. It’s about the check-off and meeting in the middle. When Carlita and I do that—touch and agree—we make great decisions. Whether it’s about finances, the kids, or the family, we always steer things in the best direction by coming to the table and exchanging our best selves. Our conscious and subconscious personalities are so opposite that coming to the center forces us both to give up something. That compromise brings greatness. That notion alone could teach many couples how to focus on the positives in their relationships.
Our family backgrounds also differ. Her family was nuclear – mother, father, brother and her. She had other relatives, but her family only gathered with them on holidays and major occasions. My family, on the other hand, will drop by because it’s Wednesday or Tuesday, or because I was down the street. Aunts, uncles and cousins. I guess it was that black community ethos that says, “Come on in!” The Cheeks and Kilpatricks are heavily into that kind of flow. Family meetings would take place for all kinds of reasons—or no reason at all. And then there was Christmas, Kwanzaa, family picnics, family trips, bowling activities, and campaigns.
That dynamic caught Carlita off guard, because she was unaccustomed to sharing her personal space that way. And I would have to learn about boundaries, because I’d never had that in my life. These differences, in retrospect, ground themselves into the foundation of our relationship. We had no idea that they’d become buoys years later, when we’d go through storms the nature of which I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
Carlita actually had two jobs in Tallahassee—one at the newspaper, and another on campus. So she remained a presence on campus. She still came to my games and was active on some campus communities. I’d matured a lot, as well, and had stopped going to parties and hanging out. She became my social life. I’d also made the All-American Football Team that year (I was a two-time All-Conference player), which gave my sports career some forward movement. I attended some banquets and tried out for a couple of pro teams during the Spring while teaching school. My teaching job wrapped in June. I bid Rickards goodbye. I didn’t make the teams I tried out for, so I took that as a clear sign that it was time for me to take the next step in my life. I decided to go home to Detroit.
My mother talked me into returning, and that decision placed the first strain on my relationship with Carlita. I’d gotten teaching offers in Austin and in West Palm Beach. I liked both places when I visited, and Carlita and I had discussed heading to West Palm and setting up shop. Detroit wasn’t really in the equation. Carlita wasn’t sure she wanted to come, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted her to be there.
It’s hard to articulate why I felt that way about her living in Detroit, but I’ll try. Detroit represented my old world, the old Kwame. Carlita was a part of the Tallahassee world. She didn’t quite seem to fit Kwam B.T. (Before Tallahassee). Still, Mom convinced me that there was not only opportunity in Detroit, but a chance for me to make a contribution to the city where I had been raised. She even had Dr. Cliff Watson, of Malcolm X Academy, call to talk to me about a series of all-male schools that had opened back home. All-male academies existed in Detroit, but not in the public school system. These were the first, and they were designed to benefit the city’s population of youth who were considered to be at-risk. So I returned, and after being there for two months, I asked Carli
ta to come.
chapter 4
Startup Costs
I WENT BACK to Detroit in June 1993, found a house in August, and lived there for one week before asking Carlita to join me. She brought Hannibal, all her belongings, and we moved into the house I’d purchased on Santa Rosa Street, near 7 Mile Road and Livernois Avenue. Life in Detroit had begun. And it happened incredibly quickly.
I had decided to propose to her, and I had it all planned out. We traveled to Toronto by train the day after Christmas. We were broke, but there were packages available that allowed us to pay for the train, the hotel and a show, so I bought it. We stayed at the Sheraton, and went to see Phantom of the Opera. There’s a restaurant called Hy’s in Downtown Toronto, and we went there to eat. I’d been saving to pay for her ring, and I had it with me, hidden. When we got to Hy’s, I gave it to the Maitre d’ with specific instructions.
“Sir, will you bring this out at nine o’ clock on the dot?” I asked.
“No problem, Sir,” he responded. Now, I’ve got to give him credit, because that’s all I asked. He had additional plans that would take my idea through the roof. So we sat down to dine, and I struck up a strategic conversation around 8:50 p.m.
“How’d we meet?” I asked. We love reminiscing, so down memory lane we went, laughing about the different events in our relationship. Like many couples, we had stories that benchmarked our development. We’d actually broken up once which, I suppose, is typical of young lovers. While we were apart, I went to a party on campus, not expecting to see her. But she was there, on the dance floor with some dude. In my mind, this wasn’t acceptable, because we were only apart physically. So I walked onto the dance floor, cut the hell in and dragged her away. It was a young, brash move, and I manhandled her a little. It was nowhere near an Ike and Tina Turner moment, but way too much for our relationship. It was definitely stupid and childish of me, and she went off on me. But later, it was good to be able to laugh about it.
“You’re just crazy as hell,” she said, back at the dinner table.
“Yeah,” I said, preparing to pivot. “Even through our breakups, I always knew that we’d get to this moment right here.”
“What are you talking about?” she said.
There it was, the perfect setup. Just at that moment, the Maitre d’ approached our table with a big platter full of rose petals, and on one of the petals, he’d propped the ring. He laid it down in front of Carlita, and simply said, “Madame?” Man, that was so sweet.
I got on one knee, grabbed the ring, and asked her to marry me. She started boo-hooing. Hard! She had a hard time breathing, actually, so I decided to help her.
“Can I get an answer?” I said.
She said yes, and the restaurant erupted! We set September 9 as the wedding date, and the planning became as adventurous as the proposal. Carlita began planning a big ceremony and, in the spirit of custom, I called her father to break the news. As I told him of our decision, he listened quietly on the other line.
“Sir, as you know,” I said, “it’s tradition for the father of the bride to pay for the wedding. I’m not asking you to do that. I just want to see if you can help me out.”
“Well, Kwame, I’m gonna send you $500. That’s it.” He was curt.
“Well, Sir,” I said, “it’s going to be a lot more than $500.”
“I’m sending $500. You all want to get married, that’s the decision you’re making. My wife and I, we struggled. But we did it. That’s all I’m sending you.”
I thanked him, hung up the phone, and then cursed. “Damn that. We won’t be having a big wedding.”
On top of this wrinkle, Carlita had gotten pregnant with our twin boys early in 1995, but we didn’t change our plans. She planned to walk down the aisle with babies on board.
My parents were absolutely thrilled to hear the news about the pregnancy. Ours would be their first grandchildren. They immediately began to brag to everyone, purchase things and ready themselves to be grandparents. Carlita’s parents’ reaction was the opposite. They were immediately unsupportive, and it hurt Carlita badly. Though her father’s response was lukewarm at best, he remained respectful. Her mother dropped the phone upon receiving word of our news, and she didn’t speak to Carlita for weeks. I don’t know why she reacted that way. Carlita and her mother’s relationship had always been a mystery to me. They have a great bond now, but in those days, they ran either hot or cold. I really love Mr. and Mrs. Poles. We get along very well now, and they have been amazing through our rough patches. It was just rough getting off the ground.
After that conversation with Mr. Poles, I resolved to handle the wedding plans myself, and I went to a travel agent named Patty Green who told me about group packages to the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. Patty was the bomb! She discovered a deal for us by which Carlita and I could travel for free if we got twenty people to go with us. We decided to cruise to the island on Royal Caribbean and invited forty guests, including our minister.
The stage was set for a great trip, but Carlita’s parents didn’t want to come. They felt they shouldn’t have to pay to attend their daughter’s wedding. Money, however, was not their issue. They could afford it. They were just obstinate, and it was hard to contend with their feelings. Carlita almost lost her mind over the whole thing. And me? Well, I knew they weren’t too fond of me at that point, but I still had a hard time understanding their rejection of everything.
Carlita wasn’t completely without support from her family, though. Her grandmother, Laura Jayne, had been her rock throughout her life, and she had even visited us in Tallahassee. She loved whomever Carlita loved. Not only was she Carlita’s favorite person in the world, she really liked me. Still, Laura Jayne was no substitute for her parents, and their attendance at our wedding was critical. So, I do what I sometimes do best—I got on the phone and begged them to come.
They relented, finally, but after the reservation deadline had passed, so they flew to the Bahamas for the wedding. We married at the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. The ceremony was beautiful. Carlita was a stunning, pregnant bride. I sang a song to her that I’d written. Afterward, I secured permission from the ship’s captain to bring Mr. and Mrs. Poles on board (Laura Jayne was on for the entire trip) so they could celebrate with everyone until we departed that night. Her parents had a great time once they arrived on board. They hit the buffet, danced and celebrated with everyone else as our families got to meet and spend time with each another. In fact, they were sorry that they hadn’t taken the cruise with us. Somewhere in that scenario is a good sermon.
Real life, of course, was waiting at the end of our fantasy-like ceremony. Things were happening fast. Carlita was nearly six months pregnant when we married, and that shifted and narrowed my focus on my new family. We were young homeowners who became parents in a flash. The boys were born on January 1, 1996, and our lives changed from that day forward.
My focus had actually begun to change when Carlita originally informed me that she was going to have a baby. My priorities certainly transitioned at that point, and my family became my absolute priority. I entered Detroit College of Law at Michigan State University and, for the first time, began taking steps to firmly establish our future. The Kwame that most people would come to know publicly began to show himself. I conditioned myself to work feverishly for extended periods of time. Carlita certainly understood my new zeal. She and I had always agreed that we would never be broke. This became a conscious thought when we married and the boys were born. It triggered an urge in me to move constantly, to always be working on, or toward, something. It was all for the sake of my family, because I wanted to provide a better life for them.
I had no inclination then, but I’d actually begun establishing a frenetic work pace that wouldn’t let up until the day I went to jail in October 2008. I started teaching by day, attending school in the evening and assuming “twin duty” at night (and the boys would not sleep). Within the next few years, I would add
my first political campaign to the regimen.
Carlita, meanwhile, found Detroit difficult to embrace. She was used to having me to herself, but I was home, back in the midst of my family and ever-ready social circle. Carlita coveted her solitude, and didn’t gibe with the intrusive revolving door of my family and friends.
On top of that a tension, the origin of which I still have difficulty pinpointing, began to develop between her and Ayanna. She and my mother didn’t hit it off too easily, either. Theirs just wasn’t the kind of warm, fuzzy rapport that spouses hope to develop with their in-laws.
My father, on the other hand, established a great rapport with her. Interestingly, her relations with both of my parents had been good when we lived in Tallahassee. I really believe the Detroit dynamic caused this adverse effect.
Building her own life in the city was hard, because Carlita didn’t have many friends in the city, and it takes a long time for her to develop friendships due to her personal filters. Andrea Carroll, a great person, also became a great friend of Carlita’s. Their relationship took a lot of pressure off me, but not all. She held to her nature just as fast as she did in college, securing employment at St. John’s Hospital in their Community Relations department, and at Lerner’s, a store in Oakland Mall, just outside Detroit. She’d also pledged Delta Sigma Theta sorority in 1995, which gave her a good social outlet and sense of sisterhood.
My situation was the antithesis of Carlita’s. I was home and engaged in the community, but I was only twenty-five. We didn’t know how to balance our perspectives in an environment in which we hadn’t grown up together, but we were linked. So, like many married couples who find themselves in unchartered waters, we just began living this life together, doing our best, come what may.
Surrendered: The Rise, Fall & Revolution of Kwame Kilpatrick Page 5