Dreams from My Father (Adapted for Young Adults) Read online

  Maybe it was connected to everything Auma had told me about the Old Man. Before her visit, I’d felt the need to live up to his expectations. Now I felt as if I had to make up for all his mistakes—even if I didn’t know quite what they’d been.

  Change, real change, had seemed like such an attainable goal back in college, a matter of personal will and my mother’s faith. If I wanted to boost my grade-point average or drink less alcohol, it seemed like a simple matter of taking responsibility. But now, nothing seemed simple.

  Who was responsible for the disorder and deterioration of a place like Altgeld? There wasn’t some easily blamed cast of villainous, cigar-chomping politicians or racist sheriffs holding the neighborhood down. Those who held power in Altgeld were paid managers or members of the tenant council—a small band of older Black men and women, all of them bone-weary. Most of them did not mean badly, but they were fearful, sometimes greedy for power and perks. The people in the neighborhood included teachers, drug counselors, and police officers. Some were there only for the paycheck; others sincerely wanted to help, but they had lost confidence in their ability to keep the world around them from slowly falling apart. With that loss of confidence came a loss in the capacity for outrage. And so the idea of responsibility—their own and that of others—was gradually replaced by cynical humor and low expectations.

  So I did feel that there was something to prove—that what I did counted for something, that I wasn’t a fool chasing pipe dreams.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS DR. Martha Collier who eventually lifted me out my funk. She was the principal of Carver Elementary, one of the two elementary schools in Altgeld. The day I met her, a girl was coming out her office.

  “She’s the mother of one of our kids,” Dr. Collier told me. “A junkie. Her boyfriend was arrested last night and can’t make bail. So tell me—what can your organization do for someone like her?”

  “I was hoping you’d have some suggestions,” I said.

  “Short of tearing this whole place down and giving people a chance to start over, I’m not sure.”

  She had been a teacher for two decades and a principal for ten years, and had fought to set up a center that brought teenage parents into the classroom to learn with their children.

  “Most of the parents here want what’s best for their child,” Dr. Collier explained. “They just don’t know how to provide it. So we counsel them on nutrition, health care, how to handle stress. We teach the ones who need it to read so they can read to their child at home. What we can’t do is change the environment these girls and their babies go back to every day.”

  As she showed me out, I saw a wobbly line of five- and six-year-olds. How happy and curious and trusting they all seemed, despite the rocky way they’d come into the world—poor, often with no fathers around, their mothers too young or addicted to drugs.

  “Beautiful, aren’t they?” Dr. Collier said. “The change comes later.”

  “What change?”

  “When their eyes stop laughing. When they shut off something inside.”

  I began spending several hours a week with those children and their parents. The mothers were all in their late teens or early twenties; most had spent their lives in Altgeld, raised by teenage mothers themselves. They told me about getting pregnant at fourteen or fifteen, dropping out of school, rarely seeing their fathers. They told me about the waiting: to see the social worker, to cash welfare checks, for the bus that would take them to the nearest supermarket, five miles away, just to buy diapers on sale.

  They weren’t cynical, though; that surprised me. They still had ambitions. One girl, Linda Lowry, showed me an album full of clippings from a house-and-garden magazine, full of bright white kitchens and hardwood floors. She and her sister, Bernadette, told me they would have such a home one day. Bernadette’s son would take swimming lessons; Linda’s daughter would take ballet.

  Sometimes, listening to such innocent dreams, I would find myself fighting off the urge to gather up these girls and their babies in my arms, to hold them all tight and never let go. Meanwhile, they would smile at me and ask why I wasn’t married.

  “Haven’t found the right woman, I guess,” I would say.

  And they would laugh. I must have seemed as innocent to them as they seemed to me.

  My plan for the parents was simple. We didn’t have the power to create jobs or bring a lot more money into the schools. But we could try to get the toilets fixed, the heaters working, the windows repaired. A few victories and maybe the tenants would be inspired to form their own organization.

  Then we found out about the asbestos.

  Asbestos is a mineral—actually a set of six minerals—that can be extremely dangerous to inhale. But for a long time people didn’t know that, and so for more than a century asbestos fibers were used to insulate homes—to keep heat from escaping and sound from getting in. Eventually, scientists proved that people were getting cancer and other health problems from breathing asbestos, and so in 1989 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned most uses of it.

  The trouble was, there was still plenty of asbestos in old buildings, and one of those buildings turned out to be in Altgeld. The tenants would never have known except that a woman named Sadie Evans, one of the parents, saw a tiny notice in the local paper advertising for contractors to remove asbestos from Altgeld’s management office.

  Sadie was a slight woman with a squeaky voice that made her seem painfully shy. But when no one else volunteered, she agreed to come with me to the office of Mr. Anderson, who managed the buildings. It was clear he was surprised to see us. She thanked him for seeing us on such short notice, then pulled out the newspaper clipping and set it on his desk.

  “This is nothing to worry about, Mrs. Evans,” he said. “We’re doing renovation on this building, and after the contractors tore up one of the walls, they found asbestos on the pipes. It’s just being removed as a precautionary measure.”

  Sadie asked, “Shouldn’t the same precautionary measures be taken in our apartments? I mean, isn’t there asbestos there, too?”

  “No,” he said. “We’ve tested them thoroughly.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Sadie said. “Thank you.”

  She shook Mr. Anderson’s hand and started for the door. Then she turned back.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot to ask you something. The other parents…well, they’d like to see a copy of these tests you took. The results, I mean. You know, just so we can make everybody feel their kids are safe.”

  “I…The records are all at the downtown office,” Mr. Anderson stammered. “Filed away, you understand.”

  “Do you think you can get us a copy by next week?”

  “Yes, well…of course. I’ll see what I can do. Next week.”

  When we got outside, I told Sadie she had done well.

  “Do you think he’s telling the truth?”

  “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  Two weeks passed, and Sadie’s calls went unreturned. So did our calls and letters to the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA).

  “What do we do now?” Bernadette asked.

  “We go downtown,” I said. “If they won’t come to us, we’ll go to them.”

  The next day we planned our action. We wrote again to the CHA director, informing him that we would appear at his office in two days to demand an answer to the asbestos question. We issued a short press release. Children were sent home with a flyer pinned to their jackets urging parents to join us. Bernadette and Linda made calls.

  But when the day arrived, I counted only eight heads in the yellow bus parked in front of the school, along with some children. Parents told us they had doctors’ appointments or couldn’t find babysitters. Some didn’t bother with excuses, walking past us as if we were panhandlers. Everyone looked depres
sed.

  “I guess this is it,” I said to Dr. Collier.

  “Better than I expected,” she said. “Obama’s Army.”

  Once the bus was rolling, I walked to the front. “Listen up, everybody! We’re going to go over the script to make sure we’ve got it straight. What do we want?”

  “A meeting with the director!” the passengers yelled.

  “Where?”

  “In Altgeld!”

  “What if they say they’ll give us an answer later?”

  “We want an answer now!”

  The CHA office was in a stout gray building in the center of the city. We filed off the bus, entered the lobby, and mashed onto the elevator. On the fourth floor, a receptionist sat behind an imposing desk.

  “Can I help you?” she said, barely glancing up from her magazine.

  “We’d like to see the director, please,” Sadie said.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “He knows we’re coming,” I said.

  “Well, he’s not in the office right now.”

  Sadie said, “Could you please check with his deputy?”

  The receptionist looked up with an icy stare, but we stood our ground. “Have a seat,” she said finally.

  The parents sat down, and everyone fell into silence. The children giggled. Bernadette said, “I feel like I’m waiting to see the principal.”

  “They build these big offices to make you feel intimidated,” I said. “Just remember that this is a public authority. Folks who work here are responsible to you.”

  “Excuse me,” the receptionist said. “The director will not be able to see you today. You should report any problems you have to Mr. Anderson out in Altgeld.”

  “Look, we’ve already seen Mr. Anderson,” Bernadette said. “If the director’s not here, we’d like to see his deputy.”

  “I’m sorry but that’s not possible. If you don’t leave right now, I’ll have to call Security.”

  At that moment, the elevator doors opened and several TV crews came in, along with various reporters. “Is this the protest about asbestos?” one reporter asked me.

  I pointed to Sadie. “She’s the spokesperson.”

  As the TV crews set up, Sadie dragged me aside.

  “I don’t wanna talk in front of no cameras. I’ve never been on TV before.”

  “You’ll be fine.” In a few minutes the cameras were rolling, and Sadie, her voice quavering slightly, held her first press conference. As she started to answer questions, a woman in a red suit and heavy mascara rushed into the reception area. She smiled tightly and introduced herself as the director’s assistant, Ms. Broadnax. “I’m so sorry that the director isn’t here,” she said. “If you’ll just come this way, I’m sure we can clear up this whole matter.”

  “Is there asbestos in all CHA units?” a reporter shouted.

  “Will the director meet with the parents?”

  “We’re interested in the best possible outcome for the residents,” Ms. Broadnax shouted over her shoulder. We followed her into a large room where several gloomy officials were already seated around a conference table. Ms. Broadnax remarked on how cute the children were and offered everyone coffee and doughnuts.

  “We don’t need doughnuts,” Linda said. “We need answers.”

  And that was it. Without a word from me, the parents found out that no tests had been done. They were promised on the spot that testing would start by the end of the day, and a date was set for a meeting with the director.

  Out on the street, Linda insisted that I treat everybody, including the bus driver, to caramel popcorn.

  “Did you see that woman’s face when she saw the cameras?”

  “What about her acting all nice to the kids? Just trying to cozy up to us so we wouldn’t ask any questions.”

  “Wasn’t Sadie terrific? You did us proud, Sadie.”

  “We’re gonna be on TV!”

  I tried to stop everybody from talking at once, but Mona tugged on my shirt. “Give it up, Barack.” She handed me a bag of popcorn. “Eat.”

  As I chewed on the gooey popcorn, looking out at the lake, calm and turquoise, I couldn’t recall a more contented moment.

  * * *

  —

  I CHANGED IN a fundamental way as a result of that bus trip. The memory of it kept me going through all the disappointments that came later. Maybe it still does.

  That evening, Sadie’s face was all over the television. The press discovered that another South Side project contained pipes lined with rotting asbestos. Aldermen began calling for immediate hearings. Lawyers called.

  But it was away from all that that I saw something wonderful happening. The parents began talking about ideas for future campaigns. New parents got involved. It was as though Sadie’s small, honest step had tapped into a reservoir of hope, allowing people in Altgeld to reclaim a power they had had all along.

  CHAPTER 12

  By the spring of 1987, I had been in Chicago long enough to know that something ugly and frightening was beginning to happen to the children of the South Side.

  One night I was walking with my new assistant, Johnnie, when we heard a small pop, like a balloon bursting. A boy came running around the corner, his limbs pumping wildly. He couldn’t have been older than fifteen.

  Johnnie dropped flat onto the grass, and I quickly followed. A few seconds later, two more boys came around the same corner, also running at full speed. One of them, short, fattish, with pants that bunched around his ankles, was waving a small pistol. Without stopping to aim, he let out three quick shots in the direction of the first boy. When he saw that his target was out of range, he slowed to a walk and stuffed the weapon under his shirt.

  “Stupid m—————,” said the second boy. The two of them laughed. As they continued down the street, I watched their shadows on the pavement. They looked, for an instant, like regular kids, just goofing around.

  The drive-by shootings, the ambulance sirens, the chalk marks where bodies had fallen—none of this was new. In places like Altgeld, fathers with prison records had sons with prison records. It was, almost literally, an inheritance passed from generation to generation. During my very first days in Chicago I had seen the groups of young men, fifteen or sixteen, hanging out on corners, their hoods up, scattering whenever police cars on the hunt for drug dealers cruised by in silence.

  But there had been a change of atmosphere, like the electricity you sometimes feel in the air when a storm is approaching. There was a sense that some, if not most, of our boys were slipping beyond rescue.

  Even lifelong South Siders like Johnnie noticed the change. “I ain’t never seen it like this, Barack,” he told me that night. He was normally full of enthusiasm, but now his round, bearded face was dark. “I mean, things were tough when I was coming up, but there were limits. In public, at home, if an adult saw you getting loud or wild, they would say something. And most of us would listen.

  “Now, with the drugs, the guns—all that’s disappeared. Don’t take a whole lot of kids carrying a gun. Just one or two. Somebody says something to one of ’em, and—pow!—kid wastes him. Folks hear stories like that, they just stop trying to talk to these young cats out here. After a while, even the good kid starts realizing ain’t nobody out here gonna look out for him. So he figures he’s gonna have to look after himself. Bottom line, you got twelve-year-olds making their own rules.

  “I don’t know, Barack. Sometimes I’m afraid of ’em. You’ve got to be afraid of somebody who just doesn’t care. Don’t matter how young they are.”

  Back at home, I thought about Johnnie’s fear, and how different it was from mine. When I wandered through Altgeld or other tough neighborhoods, my fears were always the old ones of not belonging. The idea of physical assault just never occurred to me.

  I thought abo
ut Kyle, Ruby’s son. He had just turned sixteen and was several inches taller than when I’d arrived two years ago, with a shadow above his upper lip, his first effort at a mustache. He was still polite to me, still willing to talk about the Bulls. But he was usually gone whenever I stopped by, or on his way out with friends. Some nights, Ruby would call me at home just to talk about him, how she never knew where he was, how his grades had continued to drop, how the door to his room was always closed.

  Don’t worry, I would tell her; I was a lot worse at Kyle’s age. I don’t think she believed that particular truth, but hearing the words seemed to make her feel better.

  One day I invited Kyle to join me for a pick-up basketball game at the University of Chicago gym. He was quiet most of the ride, fending off questions with a grunt or a shrug. I asked him if he was still thinking about the air force, and he shook his head; he’d stay in Chicago, he said, find a job and get his own place. I asked him what had changed his mind. He said that the air force would never let a Black man fly a plane.

  I looked at him crossly. “Who told you that mess?”

  Kyle shrugged. “Don’t need somebody to tell me that. Just is, that’s all.”

  “Man, that’s the wrong attitude. You can do whatever you want if you’re willing to work for it.”

  Kyle smirked and turned his head toward the window, his breath misting the glass. “Yeah, well…how many Black pilots do you know?”

  On the court, Kyle’s game wasn’t bad, but he was guarding a guy a few years older than me, an orderly at the hospital—short but aggressive, and very quick. After a few plays, it became clear that the man had Kyle’s number. He scored three baskets in a row, then started talking the usual talk.

  “You can’t do no better than that, boy? How you gonna let an old man like me make you look so bad?”

  Kyle didn’t answer, but the play between them became rough. The next time the man made his move for the basket, Kyle bumped him hard. The man threw the ball at Kyle’s chest, then turned to one of his partners. “You see that? This punk can’t guard me—”