LEMIKA EARLY

My niece, Lemika Early, had one idol in her life. Like a lot of young black girls, her idol was Janet Jackson..
She had Janet’s pictures on her walls, all of Janet’s records, and even a scrapbook filled with Janet memorabilia.
She loved and admired her completely. My niece was also in a wheelchair. In 1995, she and two of her friends were
in a terrible car accident, and from the age of fourteen on, Lemika was paralyzed from the waist down. At the hospital,
she learned about the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and she got the opportunity to make a wish.

The Foundation arranged everything. Lemika and her entire family were invited to come to Los Angeles in June of 1996.
The plans included the chance to spend a half hour with Janet and a trip to Disneyland for the whole family.
I can’t tell you how excited everybody was. It’s all they could talk about. My niece had never been outside of Chicago and
she was getting the chance to spend four nights and five days in L.A. My sister Beverly called me up and told me
the news. She’d gone out and bought the family new clothes and everybody was just waiting for the designated day
when they were gonna got on that plane.
I’ll let Beverly and Lemika tell you what happened.

“At the last minute, they called and said Janet Jackson wanted to change the plans,”
said Beverly.

“I couldn’t believe it. They told us we were going to New York instead.”
“I said, ‘New York? What are we gonna do in New York?’ The kids already had their hearts set on California.
I’d already spent money on clothes, and with four kids, that’s a lot of money.”
Lemika was gonna be crushed. It’s bad enough she’s had to go through the accident, and lose the use of her legs,
spending the better part of two years in physical therapy. Now her wish didn’t look like it was going to come through, either.

“The lady told me, ‘Well, you can visit the Statue of Liberty,'” said Beverly.
“I said, ‘Hell no, we ain’t going to no New York to visit no Statue of Liberty.’ We can read about it in a social-studies book. Janet Jackson pissed me off. They said something about Janet had a favorite candy store in New York we could go to, I didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. All I know is, I have a five-year-old daughter , too, who had her heart set on going to
Disneyland, and it was turning into a big mess. This all came down at the last minute.”
“I was so disappointed,” says Lemika.

“I was her number one fan, and it meant a lot to be granted that wish.”
Working with Pac, I understand a celebrity’s busy schedule, but if you’re not game to do something, don’t say you’re
gonna do it. Simple as that. Beverly told the lady she was going to talk to Lemika when she came home from school.
Lemika had to make the decision. All we knew for sure was, Janet Jackson might spend anywhere from fifteen minutes to an
hour with her, and was it still worth it to her?

She decided no, it wasn’t worth it. When the lady called back, Lemika told her she wanted to go to California.
That’s when they called me. I was working on the set of Gridlock’d, and Beverly filled me in on everything that happened.
When I went to work the next day, I told Pac the story. I’d never told him anything personal about my family before, and I shared
with him everything that had happened to Lemika. Then I told him about Janet Jackson’s actions.
We were inside the trailer, and I’ll never forget what he said.

“I hate that shit,” were his exact words. “What can I do?”
I hadn’t even asked him to help out yet, because they were still going to be able to go to Disneyland, and I knew he was busy.
But just like Pac, he was ready to take on more. I said, “Maybe we can just call my sister and my niece and you can talk to them.”
That alone would have been a nice gesture. He said, “Go ahead. Make the call.” He handed me his cell phone.
I called Beverly, and told her Pac wanted to talk to Lemika.

“She wasn’t home from school yet, and I asked him if he could call back in twenty minutes,”
says Beverly. “He called back exactly twenty minutes later.””I was shocked,” says Lemika. “I didn’t think I’d get to talk to Tupac, but Uncle Frank had pub.” Everybody in the house was crying. I could hear it in the background. Lemika had been having a really hard time, and he made her feel so much better.

“She was walking on clouds,” says Beverly. As soon as Tupac hung up the phone with her, he asked me what size clothes she wore. I told him I didn’t know, and he told me to call Yaasmyn at his office, and give her my sister’s phone number and have them send Lemika anything and everything that she wants.

Mind you, he’d never met her, it was the first time they had spoken, and he was doing this out of the kindness of his heart.
My family was floored. But it gets better. My family flew into California, and Tupac invited them, to the set of Gridlock’d. He told them to take all the pictures they wanted, and he gave Lemika a blanket that belonged to him. He used that blanket every day on the set and she clung to it.

“I nearly caught hell when I washed it,”
says Beverly. “She had spilled something on it , and I put it in the washing machine. I thought she was never gonna forgive me.”
There was a whole crew of people. The kids each had a friend along, and her husband brought a buddy of his. Pac was so cool.
He wasn’t bothered at all. He even invited them to a barbecue at his house, and when he found out my brother-in-law, William,
played basketball, he ordered an entire basketball court down to the set. They took a million pictures. Believe it or not, it gets even better. Tupac invited them all down to the studio the next day. He had some recording to do. At the studio, they got to meet Snoop Dogg, Danny Boy, Kurupt, and everybody who was working for Death Row that day.

“It was my husband’s friend’s birthday,” says Beverly. “And Tupac told us to order anything we wanted to eat, have whatever we wanted to drink, anything we wanted.” Pac ordered about ten pizzas. I have most of the time we spent in the studio on videotape, and every now and then, i watch the tape again. Pac’s got a joint dangling from his lips most of the time, dressed casually in a button-down silk shirt and white pants. To watch him is to remember how damn funny he was.

At one point, one of the runners, James, walked in wearing a tank-top jersey, and Pac starts clowning him about a Chinese-looking tattoo he’s got on his arm. “Nigga’s gettin’ Chinese letters like he’s been somewhere, shit, you ain’t never left the block.”
Pac points to the tattoo and looks dead in the camera. “You know what this says? ‘Two egg rolls with hot sauce, to go.'”
Everybody in the studio started cracking up, and you can hear my voice saying, “Pac, you missed your calling. Shoulda been a comedian.” A couple minutes later Pac hears Lemika calling me “Frankie,” and he starts clowning me.

“Frank-E, Frank-E Knuckles. I’m gonna call him Frank-E, now, cuz the ‘E’ is for Extra Sexy!”
He starts singing to the tune of the Right Said Fred song, called “Catwalk.” “Frank-E’s too sexy for some sleeves, too sexy for some pants…” Man, he was funny that day, and everybody had a great time. He even put Lemika’s voice on one of the tracks.

“She gave Hanover Park, the area where she’s from, a shout-out,” says Beverly. “We all couldn’t believe it. When it was time to leave, he came outside with us and gave us all hugs, like we were family.”
Before they left, Tupac gave Lemika his driver’s license. It was just about to expire, his birthday is June 16, and he wanted to give her something special. I didn’t know about this until about a year later, but before they all left the studio that day, Tupac told William I was like a brother to him, and my family was his family. “Everything he did for us came out of a love for Frankie”.