Regina is my heart; we have not only matured and excelled in this industry together, but our friendship runs deep, deeper than simply passing one another on the red carpet or powwowing on movie sets. Ours is a bond made between two busy single mothers who depended on one another for the thing that matters to us most: the care and keeping of our babies. When Marcell and Ian were school age and Regina and I were juggling parenting with the hectic schedules that came with our burgeoning careers, we banded together to provide for one another some of the inherent support that comes with two-parent households: a helping hand with the logistics of having to be in two places at one time, an understanding ear on which to bounce tricky parenting predicaments, commiseration on the challenges of school, thoughtful discussions on what it means to be a mother raising boys. Fortunately, our sons attended the same school, so we came to count on each other for help when the other was working—taking turns picking up the boys, getting them dinner, shuttling them to after-school activities and such. If Regina was busy, she would still look out for me and mine, arranging for her sister, Raina, and her best friend, Patty, to watch our boys, and for that and for them I am forever grateful. Knowing Marcell was in good hands gave me the peace of mind I needed to take care of business. Though our boys are now men, Regina and I remain inextricably linked, so much so we share just about everything, even the same housekeeper, Daisse! So when I called her name for that Emmy award, and she strutted her pretty self onto that stage and we got lost in our screaming and jumping and joyful exaltations, my happiness for her was coming from the realest place. I was, am, and always will be so proud of her.
Unbeknownst to me, the embrace Regina and I shared onstage would go on to become one of the most discussed and dissected moments of the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards—that, and the moment I stood and applauded, hugged, and kissed Viola when she became the first black woman to win best actress in a drama, the category in which I’d also been nominated. I woke up the next morning in a plush hotel room, slightly hungover from celebrating both the evening and the huge, historic night for us black actresses, and it seemed the entire media world—newspapers, websites, gossip columns, blogs, and social media—was lit with stories that made me out to be the personification of “squad goals,” the cultural catchphrase of 2015 everyone was using to describe the power and magic of friendship. I have to admit, though, I found the collective reaction to my actions odd. After all, isn’t this what you do when your friend is winning? Squeal and cheer, hug and fist-bump, giggle and yell, “Yaaaaassss!” as she takes her place in the spotlight and shines in its glow? Where I come from, showing up and out for your girl is a basic tenant of true friendship.
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I learned from the best. When I was a kid, I would get downright giddy when I would catch wind that my mother’s sisters and good girlfriends were coming by. They just knew how to have fun: the old-school jams would be cranked up on the stereo, and they’d sip their wine while they told stories, worked together on sewing projects, flower arrangements, crocheting, and a bunch of other crafts, and laughed from the very bottom of their guts until well after the moon rose to its heights and the stars were shining their brightest. I had to remain inconspicuous; the adults in the room were from a generation that firmly believed that children were to be seen, not heard, and that little people better not even think about getting mixed up in grown-folk business. But the warmth and love in the room was palpable; it was evident, even to my immature eyes and still-developing heart that my mother and her friends were there for one another in every kind of way—when they were happy, when they were unsure, when they were lost in love and trying to see their way clear, when the world was on their backs, and when they needed a firm shoulder to lean on.
I didn’t realize it when I was little, but my mother’s BFFs were modeling valuable lessons for me—lessons on how to be. Watching them, I learned how to enjoy childhood and also how to be a lady. I learned, too, the value of friendship, of creating safe spaces for children and laughter. I lived for my aunties’ hugs, their counsel, their approval, their truth. And they gave it—in spades. When I think of the most significant moments in my life—my graduation, the birth of my son, and the saddest day of my life, the burial of my dad—it is their faces that I see, their voices that I hear, their love that I feel. I always knew, even as a little girl but especially as I grew into a woman, that I needed a collection of ride-or-dies like my mom’s.
Though my mother showed me what friendship is, it was my cousins who taught me how to practice it. Our bond was sealed on the living room and basement floors of our parents’ homes, on my cousin’s pallets. Our parents, all very close, would get together and laugh and play and do what grown-ups do when they’re having a good time through the wee hours of the morning, and then, invariably, everyone would be too tired to go home, so the grown-ups would find their way to a spare bed, a pullout couch, or a nice cushiony chair, and the kids would toss a bunch of blankets on the floor and snuggle close to one another, giggling and playing until we passed out. We were thick as thieves: we ate together, played together, bathed together, prayed together. If one got in trouble, we all got in trouble. And we had each other’s backs.
A friend of my cousin Kim found this out the hard way. Kim is the daughter of my aunt and uncle who when we were kids lived out in the suburbs in a mostly white community that, socially and financially, felt a million miles away from the southeast DC neighborhood where I grew up. The environmental chasm had no bearing on the connection Kim and I shared, though; even with a difference in age (I’m three years older), family composition (she grew up in a two-parent household), and living quarters (she grew up in a house that, to my child eyes, felt bigger than an entire floor of apartments in my urban complex), we were joined at the hip—this close—and of all the cousins, she was the one with whom I spent the most time. I have to admit, I wasn’t really feeling her little friends. Though she liked them enough, often I would swoop in, take a bird’s-eye view of her relationships, and call it like I saw it: some of the girls she was counting as pals weren’t really friends at all. I didn’t like how they made fun of her and treated her like she was a second-class citizen in her own home, and I took delight in letting them know this, too, striking the fear of God whenever I entered the room. See, in their eyes, I was a scary menace—the big, bad cousin coming from the hood in southeast DC—and I happily played on their every fear. You messed with Kim, you messed with me.