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

  Suddenly, without any warning, Kyle swung. His fist landed square on the man’s jaw, dropping him to the floor. I ran onto the court as the other players pulled Kyle away. His eyes were wide, his voice trembling as he watched the orderly struggle to his feet and spit out a wad of blood.

  “I ain’t no punk,” Kyle muttered. And then again, “I ain’t no punk.”

  We were lucky; somebody had called the security guard downstairs, but the orderly was too embarrassed to admit to the incident. On the drive back, I gave Kyle a long lecture about keeping his cool, about violence, about responsibility. But everything I said sounded like a cliché, and Kyle sat without answering, his eyes fixed on the road. When I was finished he turned to me and said, “Just don’t tell my momma, all right?”

  I thought that was a good sign. I said I wouldn’t tell Ruby what had happened so long as he did, and he grudgingly agreed.

  Kyle was a good kid; he still cared about something. Would that be enough to save him?

  * * *

  —

  THE WEEK AFTER Johnnie and I saw the shooting, I decided it was time to go into the public schools in a big way.

  They were in a state of never-ending crisis—no money, no textbooks, no toilet paper. And no one in the government seemed to care. The more I learned, the more convinced I was that better schools were the only solution for all those young men on the street. Without stable families and the promise of decent jobs that could support a family, education was their last best hope.

  The people I talked to—parents, administrators—were full of excuses for why things would never get better. There wasn’t enough money to do the job right, they told me—which was certainly true. The students, they said, were impossible. Lazy. Unruly. Slow. Not the children’s fault, maybe, but certainly not the schools’. Maybe they aren’t bad kids, Barack, but they sure have bad parents.

  Those conversations, full of cynicism and hopelessness, made me angry. So Johnnie and I decided to go ahead and visit some of the area schools on our own, hoping to drum up support from parents other than the ones at Altgeld.

  We started with Kyle’s high school, the one in the area with the best reputation. It was a single building: bare concrete pillars, long stark corridors, windows that couldn’t be opened. But it was there that we met a school counselor who made us think about the problem from a different angle. His name was Asante Moran. He was tall and imposing, his small office decorated with African themes: a map of the continent, posters of ancient kings and queens, a collection of drums and gourds. Dressed in an African print, he had an elephant-hair bracelet around one thick wrist.

  “The first thing you have to realize,” he told us, “is that the public school system is not about educating Black children. Inner-city schools are like holding pens—miniature jails, really. It’s only when Black children start breaking out of their pens and bothering white people that society even pays any attention to the issue of whether these children are being educated.”

  Asante argued that a real education would start by giving a child an understanding of his or her world, his or her culture. “But for Black children, everything’s turned upside down,” he said. “They’re learning about someone else’s history. Someone else’s culture. Not only that, this culture they’re supposed to learn is the same one that’s rejected them.”

  Asante leaned back in his chair. “Is it any wonder that the Black child loses interest in learning?”

  “It’s worst for the boys,” he went on. “At least the girls have older women to talk to. But half the boys don’t even know their own fathers. There’s nobody to guide them through the process of becoming a man. And that’s a recipe for disaster. Because in every society, young men are going to have violent tendencies. Either those tendencies are directed and disciplined or those tendencies destroy the young men, the society, or both.”

  Asante said he saw it as his job to fill the void. He exposed kids to African history, geography, artistic traditions. He tried to counteract the values of materialism and me-first individualism that they saw all around them. He taught them that Africans are a communal people, with respect for their elders.

  All at once he looked at me and asked about my name.

  “My father was from Kenya,” I said.

  He smiled. “That’s where I went for my first trip to the continent,” he said. “Changed my life forever. The people were so welcoming. And the land—I’d never seen anything so beautiful. It really felt like I had come home.” His face glowed with the memory. “When was the last time you were back?”

  I hesitated. “Actually, I’ve never been there.”

  Asante looked momentarily confused.

  “Well…,” he said after a pause, “I’m sure that when you do make the trip, it’ll change your life, too.”

  * * *

  —

  ON THE RIDE home, Johnnie asked why I’d never been to Kenya.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I’m scared of what I’ll find out.”

  We rode in silence.

  “Asante made me think about my own father,” said Johnnie finally. “He drove a delivery truck for twenty years. Never seemed like he really enjoyed life, you know what I mean? On weekends, he’d just hang around the house, and some of my uncles would come over. They’d complain about what their bosses had done to ’em this week. The Man did this. The Man did that. But if one of ’em actually started talking about doing something different, or had a new idea, the rest of ’em would just tear the guy up. ‘How’s some no-’count nigga like you gonna start himself a business?’ one of ’em’d say. They’d be laughing, but I could tell they weren’t laughing inside.

  “But you know, my old man never laughed when I talked about wanting to go to college. I mean, he never said anything one way or the other, but he always made sure me and my brother got up for school, that we didn’t have to work, that we had a little walking-around money. The day I graduated, he showed up in a jacket and tie, and he just shook my hand. That’s all…just shook my hand, then went back to work….”

  “He was there for you,” I said to Johnnie.

  “Yeah. I guess he was.”

  “You ever tell him that?”

  “Naw. We’re not real good at talking.” Johnnie looked out the window, then turned to me. “Maybe I should, though, huh?”

  * * *

  —

  OVER THE NEXT two months, Asante helped us to develop a proposal for a youth counseling network to provide at-risk teenagers with tutors and mentors, as well as reach out to their parents. It was an exciting project—which made it all the more frustrating when few of the school principals we contacted even called us back. One who did, the most enthusiastic, handed Johnnie a sheet of paper as he was leaving the man’s office.

  “It was a résumé,” Johnnie told me. “And not just any résumé. His wife’s résumé. Seems she’s kinda bored around the house, and he thinks she’d make an ‘excellent’ director for our program. No pressure, you understand.”

  Then he reached into his briefcase and pulled out another piece of paper, waving it in the air. “Got his daughter’s résumé, too! Tells me she’d make an ‘excellent’ counselor.”

  He began to giggle.

  “Now, there’s a brother with some nerve! He don’t just want one job! He’s gotta have two! You go in to talk about some kids, he’s gonna hand you his whole family’s résumé.”

  I started to laugh, too, and we both laughed until our faces were hot and our sides hurt, until tears came to our eyes, until we felt emptied out and couldn’t laugh anymore. It wasn’t really funny, of course. It was sad and infuriating that an educator who should be putting his students first thought more in terms of making a little extra money for his kin. But sometimes our job seemed so absurd that we had to laugh.

  * * *

  —

&
nbsp; IT WAS AROUND this time that I decided to go to Washington, D.C., to meet my brother Roy for the first time.

  Roy had married an American Peace Corps worker and moved to the States. On the phone, he described his job, his wife, his life in America as “lovely.” The word rolled out of him slowly, the syllables drawn out: “Looove-leee.” A visit from me would be “fan-taaas-tic.” Staying with him and his wife would be “nooo prooob-lem.”

  My sister Auma warned me, though, that he didn’t always show his true feelings. “He’s like the Old Man in that way,” she said.

  When I arrived at the airport, Roy was nowhere to be found. I called his house and he answered, sounding apologetic.

  “Listen, brother—you think maybe you can stay in a hotel tonight?”

  “Why? Is something wrong?”

  “Nothing serious. It’s just, well, me and the wife, we had a little argument. So having you here tonight might not be so good, you understand?”

  “Sure. I—”

  “You call me when you find a hotel, okay? We’ll meet tonight and have dinner. I’ll pick you up at eight.”

  I checked into the cheapest room I could find and waited. At nine, I heard a knock. When I opened the door, I found a big man standing there with his hands in his pockets, a grin breaking across his ebony face.

  “Hey, brother,” he said. “How’s life?”

  In the pictures I had of Roy, he was slender, dressed in kitenge print, with an Afro, a goatee, a mustache. The man hugging me now was much heavier, over two hundred pounds, I guessed, the flesh on his cheeks pressing out beneath a thick pair of glasses. The goatee was gone; the African shirt had been replaced by a gray sports coat, white shirt, and tie. Auma had been right, though; his resemblance to the Old Man was scary. Looking at my brother, I felt as if I were ten years old again.

  “You’ve gained some weight,” I said as we walked to his car.

  Roy looked down at his generous belly and gave it a pat. “Eh, it’s this fast food, man. It’s everywhere. McDonald’s. Burger King. You don’t even have to get out of the car to have these things.”

  He threw back his head to laugh, a magical sound that made his whole body shake, as if he couldn’t get over the wonders this new life had to offer.

  It was infectious, his laugh—although I stopped laughing along when he drove twice the speed limit, almost collided with oncoming cars, and careened over a high curb.

  “You always drive this way?” I shouted over the music blasting out of his speakers.

  Roy smiled. “I’m not so good, eh? Mary, my wife, she’s always complaining, too. Especially since the accident…”

  “What accident?”

  “Ah, it was nothing. You see I’m still here. Alive and breathing!” And again he laughed and shook his head.

  Over dinner, I asked why his wife hadn’t joined us. His smile evaporated.

  “Ah, I think we’re getting divorced,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “She says she’s tired of me staying out late. She says I drink too much. She says I’m becoming just like the Old Man.”

  “What do you think?”

  “What do I think?” He lowered his head, then looked at me somberly. “The truth is,” he said, leaning his weight forward, “I don’t think I really like myself. And I blame the Old Man for this.”

  For the next hour, he told me, as Auma had, of all the hard times: how he had left his father’s house and bounced from relative to relative. After he went to the University of Nairobi, he’d gotten a job with an accounting firm and taught himself discipline. He always arrived at work early and completed his tasks no matter how late he had been out the night before. Listening to him, I felt the same admiration that I’d felt when listening to Auma. Except in Auma I had also sensed a willingness to put the past behind her—to forgive, if not necessarily forget. Roy’s memories of the Old Man seemed more painful.

  “Nothing was ever good enough for him,” he told me. “If you came home with the second-best grades in the class, he would ask why you weren’t first. ‘You are an Obama,’ he would say. ‘You should be the best.’ And then I would see him drunk, with no money, living like a beggar. I would ask myself, How can someone so smart fall so badly? Even after I was living on my own, after his death, I would try to figure out this puzzle. It was as if I couldn’t escape him.

  “After the Old Man died, everyone fought over his inheritance. It was crazy! The only person I trusted was David, our younger brother. That guy, let me tell you, he was okay. He looked like you a little bit, only younger…fifteen, sixteen. His mother, Ruth, had tried to raise him like an American. But David, he rebelled. He didn’t want to be an American. He was an African. He was an Obama.

  “When David died, that was it for me. I was sure our whole family was cursed. I started drinking, fighting—I didn’t care. I figured if the Old Man could die, if David could die, that I would have to die, too. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed in Kenya.

  “But I had been seeing this American girl, Nancy, who had returned to the States, so one day I just called her and said I wanted to come. When she said yes, I bought a ticket and caught the next plane out. I didn’t pack, or tell my office, or say goodbye to anyone, or anything.

  “I thought I could start over. But now I know you can never start over. Not really. You think you have control, but you are like a fly in somebody else’s web.”

  Roy took another sip from his drink, and suddenly his speech slowed, as if he’d dropped deep into another place, as if our father had taken possession of him. “I am the oldest, you see. In Luo tradition, I am now head of the household. I am responsible for you, and for Auma, and for all the younger boys. It’s my responsibility to set things right. To pay the boys’ school fees. To see that Auma is properly married. To build a proper house and bring the family together.”

  I reached across the table and touched his hand. “You don’t have to do it alone, brother,” I said. “We can share the load.”

  But it was as if he hadn’t heard me. He just stared out the window, and then, as if snapping out of a trance, he waved the waitress over.

  “You want another drink?” he asked me.

  “Why don’t we just get the check?” I said. It was clear he’d had too much.

  Roy looked at me and smiled. “I can tell you worry too much, Barack. That’s my problem, as well. I think we need to learn to go with the flow. Isn’t that what you say in America? Just go with the flow….” Roy laughed again, loud enough for the people at the next table to turn around. Only the magic was gone out of it now. His laugh sounded hollow, as if it were traveling across a vast, empty distance.

  I caught a flight out the next day—Roy needed to spend some time with his wife, and I didn’t have the money for another night at the hotel. We had breakfast together, and he seemed in better spirits. But I couldn’t rid myself of the sense that Roy was in danger somehow, and that if only I were a better brother, I could somehow prevent his fall.

  * * *

  —

  THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, well past midnight, a car pulls up in front of my apartment building carrying a troop of teenage boys and a set of stereo speakers so loud that the floor of my apartment begins to shake. I’ve learned to ignore such disturbances—where else do they have to go? I say to myself. But my neighbors next door have just brought home their newborn child, and so I pull on some shorts and head downstairs.

  As I approach the car, the voices stop, the heads within all turn my way.

  “Listen, people are trying to sleep around here. Why don’t y’all take it someplace else.”

  The four boys inside say nothing, don’t even move. I feel suddenly exposed, standing in a pair of shorts on the sidewalk in the middle of the night. I can’t see the faces inside the car. It is too dark to know how old they
are, whether they’re sober or drunk, good boys or bad. One of them could be Kyle. One of them could be Roy. One of them could be Johnnie.

  One of them could be me. Standing there, I try to remember the days when I would have been sitting in a car like that, angry and desperate to prove my place in the world. Maybe I swaggered into a classroom drunk or high, knowing that my teachers would smell beer or reefer on my breath, just daring them to say something. I start picturing myself through their eyes, and I know they’re probably calculating that if one them can’t take me out, the four of them certainly can.

  But there is a difference between them and me: The world in which I spent those difficult times was far more forgiving. I could afford to have emotions other than anger. Sadness at my elders’ injured pride. Empathy toward other people.

  These boys know they have no margin for error, and that knowledge has forced them to shut off the part of themselves that could feel empathy for someone else’s situation. They can’t allow themselves to go soft. Their unruly maleness will not be contained, as mine finally was. Their rage won’t be countered by a sense of imminent danger or of guilt at disappointing the people who raised them.

  As I stand there, I find myself thinking that guilt and empathy have an important role to play. They’re emotions that speak to our own buried sense that an order of some sort is required and that we have a stake in it. But I suspect these boys will have to search long and hard for that order. As far as they can tell, the world regards them with fear or contempt; they see no place for themselves in it. And that suspicion terrifies me, for I now have a place in the world, a job, a schedule to follow. As much as I might tell myself otherwise, we are drifting apart, these boys and I, into different worlds, speaking a different language, living by a different code.

  The engine starts, and the car screeches away. I turn back toward my apartment knowing that I’ve been both stupid and lucky, knowing that I am afraid after all.