She’s a tiger

I’ve been thinking of Mz. Amy Adams a lot lately.

She grinds harder than a carrot awakening inside a juicer. She’s the Charmed Touch manicurist at Harbor Bay Spa in Alameda. She’s a top notch bartender; she started at her aunt’s Caribbean club as soon as she was of legal age. She’s been in book distribution and is working on a new LGBTQ In Play publication. She was an Executive Committee Member of the 2010 Femme Conference, a Core Officer of the Femme of Color Symposium and is currently Event Coordinator for Movement Productions.

She’s all velvet-voice and smooth operator, like that carrot juice would be. I thought she was so soft and mellow, 'till I heard her rip a poem. The eye doctor told me my vision was getting clearer, for the first time in my life - and I only thought one thing - carrot juice. I am laughing, wondering if Adams likes carrot juice? If she hates it, I don’t ever want her to tell me. (She will probably say, “You told me before that I was a tiger! Now I’m carrot juice?")

Rah!

Is how she rips a poem. I think OL readers will know what I mean when I say, “Meow, Kitten.” But just in case, click on the arrow below to listen.

fat poem by Mz. Amy Adams by tehearobie

Adams will be performing on July 9 at the 2011 nolose conference: the revolution just got bigger.

I’ve been thinking of her a lot lately because her mom had some hospitalization due to heart issues. A week after that stabilized, the recent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis hit in Japan, home of many of Adams' maternal relatives.

Adams has one of "those" moms

One of those I-don’t-have-time-to-take-any-sh-- kinda women, the kind that can clock your situation way before you do, the kind that can plainly say how stupid it is for you, her daughter’s friend, to be in a miserable relationship. Shuzie F. will plainly tell you. Then she gives you that look, the one that makes you bite your tongue because she is emitting the truth that you don’t want to realize - but do.

Mz. F’s still looking at you. 

“Why is your Mom so bad a--?” I asked Adams during the interview.

“My mom was 5 when Hiroshima happened. All the food was rationed. They lived outside of Tokyo. She would have to walk 20 miles or so and hide extra bags of rice on their stomachs, so that they would have enough. They would also feed the neighbors. One time she got stopped and searched.

“She didn’t finish school because she had to work to help support the family because her father had died. When she moved out, she would pay her basic living expenses and send all of the rest of the money back home.”

Adams grew up in Alameda, solidly middle class. The refrigerator was always stocked full of food.

“I asked her one time why we always had so much food. She said it makes her feel happy to know that there’s food there,” Adams said of her mother.

 Though they didn’t struggle financially, Adams had other challenges to deal with. Her first language was Japanese, so she basically learned English in school. She was mixed-race in a binary world.

“I never fit in. I didn’t fit in with the Asian people and I didn’t fit in with the white people ... not Asian enough or white enough," she said. "I always had a group of friends; we were all misfits. Some people weren’t white and could fit into the Alameda clique because they had money. We were middle class, but we weren’t rolling in money."

Her father was in the military and lived in many places: London, New Orleans, Mississippi, Hawaii, to name a few. Adams would travel during the summer to visit him.

She learned how to do nails as a child, when her mom was in beauty school.

“All the instructions were in English, so I would do nails with her and read her all her homework,” Adams said. “I still love it. You can be so creative and have so much fun with it. It’s relaxing, so it makes people feel good. It’s that little thing that women do that feels luxurious. A woman can look conservative, have a nine-to-five in corporate America, but have some wild and crazy design or some serious glitter on her toes.”

Adam’s son and her niece are her pride and joy. She came out when her son was in first grade.

Nothing is different

Adams believes in strategic community awareness around the issue of domestic violence. A few years ago, she was in a subway explosion in Chicago and in the process of escaping the car, she fell on the third rail of a subway track and sustained massive electrocution to her legs. While she was still in a wheelchair, her female then-partner battered her and left her stranded in a car with a standard transmission.

“I had to drag myself out of the car and pull my wheelchair out of the trunk, so I could wheel myself to a pay phone, because I’d left my phone at home. After it happened, I made a lot of excuses for her. I was mad that it happened, but I wanted to understand why, because I couldn’t understand how someone you loved could ever put their hands on you, in such a violent way. People around me did not want to talk about it. They didn’t want to act like anything was different.”

I don't know why the strongest women can end up in abusive scenarios, why we aren't immune. I don't know why it seems that feminine people are the ones likely to end up on the receiving end of a fist, in LGBTQ and straight relationships. I don't know why having friends who understand this miserable thing helps, but it does.

You’ve probably guessed by now, Adams is a very close friend of mine. Technically, she is myamy. My metaphors for her will forever unfold, but for now, we’ll just stick with tiger, and velvety-smooth, vision enhancing carrot juice.