Dreams from My Father (Adapted for Young Adults) Page 19

  “Maybe we can play sometime,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I like to play basketball now. Like Magic Johnson.”

  I went with Auma to see the rest of the apartment, which consisted of two bedrooms, both jammed from one end to the other with old mattresses.

  “How many people live here?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure right now,” Auma said. “It always changes. Jane doesn’t know how to say no to anybody, so any relative who moves to the city or loses a job ends up here. Sometimes they stay a long time. Or they leave their children here. The Old Man and my mum left Bernard here a lot. Jane practically raised him.”

  “Can she afford it?”

  “Not really. She has a job as a telephone operator, which doesn’t pay so much. She doesn’t complain, though. She wasn’t able to have her own children, so she looks after others’.”

  We returned to the living room, and I sank down into an old sofa and let my eyes wander over the scene—the worn furniture, the two-year-old calendar, the fading photographs. It was just like the apartments in Altgeld, I realized. The same chain of mothers and daughters and children. The same noise of gossip and TV. The same cooking and cleaning. The same hurts large and small. The same absence of men.

  We said our good-byes around ten, promising to visit each and every relative in turn. As we walked to the door, Jane pulled us aside and lowered her voice. “You need to take Barry to see your Aunt Sarah,” she whispered to Auma.

  And then she said to me: “Sarah is your father’s older sister. She wants to see you very badly.”

  “Of course,” I said. “But why wasn’t she here tonight? Does she live far away?”

  “I’ll explain it to you in the car,” whispered Auma.

  In the car, she filled me in. “You should go see Sarah. But I won’t go with you. It’s this business with the Old Man’s estate. Sarah is one of the people who has disputed his will. She’s been telling people that Roy, Bernard, myself—that none of us are the Old Man’s children.”

  She sighed. “I don’t know. A part of me sympathizes with her. She’s had a hard life. She never had the chances the Old Man had to study or go abroad. It made her very bitter. She thinks that somehow we are to blame.”

  “But how much could the Old Man’s estate be worth?”

  “Not much. Maybe a small government pension. A piece of worthless land. I try to stay out of it. Whatever is there has probably been spent on lawyers by now. But everyone expected so much from the Old Man. He made them think that he had everything, even when he had nothing. So now, instead of getting on with their lives, they just argue among themselves, thinking that the Old Man is going to rescue them from his grave.”

  Then she told me about Bernard. “He’s really smart. But he sits around all day doing nothing. He dropped out of school and doesn’t have much prospect for finding work.”

  “Maybe I can help,” I said.

  “You can talk to him. But now that you’re here, coming from America, you’re part of the inheritance, you see. That’s why Sarah wants to see you so much. She thinks I’m hiding you from her because you’re the one with everything.”

  The rain had started up again as we parked the car. “The whole thing gets me so tired, Barack,” she said softly. “You wouldn’t believe how much I missed Kenya when I was in Germany. I thought how I never feel lonely here, where family is everywhere, nobody sends their parents to an old people’s home or leaves their children with strangers. Then I’m here and everyone is asking me for help, and I feel like they are all just grabbing at me and I’m going to sink. I feel guilty because I was luckier than them. I went to a university. I can get a job. But what can I do, Barack? I’m only one person.”

  I took Auma’s hand and we remained in the car, listening to the rain. “You asked me what my dream was,” she said finally. “Sometimes I have this dream that I will build a beautiful house on our grandfather’s land. A big house where we can all stay and bring our families. We could plant fruit trees like our grandfather, and our children would really know the land and speak Luo and learn our ways from the old people.”

  “We can do all that, Auma.”

  She shook her head. “Yes, but who would take care of the house if I’m not here? Who can I count on to make sure a leak gets fixed or a fence gets mended? Then I get mad at the Old Man because he didn’t build this house for us. We are the children, Barack. Why do we have to take care of everyone?”

  “It sounds lonely.”

  “Oh, I know, Barack. That’s why I keep coming home. That’s why I’m still dreaming.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Bernard rang the doorbell at ten o’clock sharp. He wore faded blue shorts and a T-shirt several sizes too small; in his hands was a bald orange basketball, held out like an offering.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Almost. Give me a second to put on my shoes.”

  He followed me into the apartment and stepped over to the desk where I had been working. “You’ve been reading again, Barry,” he said, shaking his head. “Your woman will get bored with you, always spending time with books.”

  I sat down to tie my sneakers. “I’ve been told.”

  He tossed the ball into the air. “Me, I’m not so interested in books. I’m a man of action. Like Rambo.”

  I smiled. “Okay, Rambo,” I said, standing up and opening the door. “Let’s see how you do running down to the courts.”

  Bernard looked at me doubtfully. “The courts are far away. Where’s the car?”

  “Auma took it to work.” I went out onto the veranda and started stretching. “Anyway, she told me it’s just a mile. Good for warming up those young legs of yours.”

  He followed me halfheartedly through a few stretching exercises before we started up the graveled driveway onto the main road. It was a perfect day, the sun cut with a steady breeze, the road empty except for a distant woman, walking with a basket of kindling on top of her head. After less than a quarter of a mile, Bernard stopped dead in his tracks, beads of sweat on his forehead.

  “I’m warmed up, Barry,” he said, gulping for air. “I think now we should walk.”

  The courts were on the campus of the University of Nairobi, above the athletic field, their pebbled asphalt cracked with weeds. I watched Bernard as we took turns shooting, and thought about what a generous and easy companion he’d been these last few days, taking it upon himself to guide me through the city while Auma was busy grading exams. He would clutch my hand protectively as we made our way through the crowded streets, infinitely patient whenever I stopped to look at a building or read a sign that he passed by every day.

  His innocent sweetness made him seem much younger than his seventeen years. But he was, I reminded myself, at an age where a little more independence, a sharper edge to his character, wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I realized that he had time for me partly because he had nothing better to do. He was patient because he had no particular place he wanted to go. I needed to talk to him about that, as I’d promised Auma I would—a man-to-man talk….

  “You have seen Magic Johnson play?” Bernard asked me now, gathering himself for a shot. The ball went through the netless rim, and I passed it back to him.

  “Just on TV.”

  Bernard nodded. “Everybody has a car in America. And a telephone.”

  “Most people. Not everybody.”

  He shot again and the ball clanged noisily off the rim. “I think it is better there,” he said. “Maybe I will come to America. I can help you with your business.”

  “I don’t have a business right now. Maybe after I finish law school—”

  “It must be easy to find work.”

  “Not for everybody. Actually, lots of people have a tough time in the States. Black people especially.”

  He held the ball. “Not as bad as h
ere.”

  We looked at each other, and I tried to picture the basketball courts back in the States. The sound of gunshots nearby, a guy peddling drugs in the stairwell—that was one picture. And another, equally true picture: boys laughing and playing in their suburban backyard, their mother calling them in for lunch. The two pictures collided, leaving me tongue-tied. Bernard returned to his dribbling.

  When the sun became too strong, we walked to an ice-cream parlor a few blocks from the university. Bernard ordered a chocolate sundae.

  “Auma tells me that you’re thinking about trade school,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “What kind of courses are you interested in?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe auto mechanics.”

  “Have you tried to get into some sort of program?”

  “No. Not really. You must pay fees.”

  “How old are you now, Bernard?”

  “Seventeen,” he said cautiously.

  “You know what that means, don’t you?” I said. “It means you’re almost a man. Somebody with responsibilities. To your family. To yourself. What I’m trying to say is, it’s time you decided on something that interested you. Could be auto mechanics. Could be something else. But whatever it is, you’re gonna have to set some goals and follow through. Auma and I can help you with school fees, but we can’t live your life for you. You understand?”

  Bernard nodded. “I understand.”

  We both sat in silence for a while, watching Bernard dip his spoon in his sundae.

  I imagined how hollow my words must be sounding to this brother of mine, whose only fault was having been born on the wrong side of our father’s divided world. He must have been wondering why I thought my rules applied to him. All he wanted was a few tokens of our relationship—Bob Marley cassettes, maybe my basketball shoes once I was gone. So little to ask for, and yet anything else that I offered—advice, scoldings, my ambitions for him—would seem even less.

  As we stepped into the street, Bernard draped his arm over my shoulder.

  “It’s good to have a big brother around,” he said before waving good-bye and vanishing into the crowd.

  * * *

  —

  WHAT IS A family? Is it just a genetic chain, parents and children? Or is it two people who choose each other—who form a partnership—with the idea that together they will establish a household? Does sharing the same memories make you family?

  My own family circumstances were so complex and confusing that I’d never found a definite answer. Instead, I drew a series of circles around myself. An inner circle, where love was constant and unquestioned—almost taken for granted. Then a second circle, in which love and commitment were freely chosen. And then a circle for colleagues and acquaintances, like the cheerful gray-haired lady who rang up my groceries back in Chicago.

  Finally, the circle widened to embrace a nation or a race, or a set of moral choices, and the commitments were no longer tied to a face or a name but were commitments I’d made to myself.

  In Kenya, this planetary circle of mine almost immediately collapsed. For family seemed to be everywhere: in stores, at the post office, on streets and in parks, all of them fussing and fretting over Dr. Obama’s long-lost son. If I mentioned that I needed a notebook or shaving cream, I could count on one of my aunts to insist that she take me to some far-off corner of Nairobi to find the best bargains, no matter how long the trip took or how inconvenient it might be.

  “Ah, Barry…what is more important than helping my brother’s son?”

  If a cousin discovered that Auma had left me on my own, he might walk two miles to her apartment on the off chance that I was there and needed company.

  “Ah, Barry, why didn’t you call on me? Come, I will take you to meet some of my friends.”

  And in the evenings, well, Auma and I simply surrendered ourselves to the endless invitations that came our way from uncles, nephews, second cousins, or cousins once removed, all of whom demanded, at the risk of insult, that we sit down for a meal, no matter what time it happened to be or how many meals we had already eaten.

  “Ah, Barry…we may not have much in Kenya—but so long as you are here, you will always have something to eat!”

  At first I was grateful for all this attention. I had always thought life in Africa might be this way. Yes, there was less modern technology, and it was harder to get from one place to another, but the joy of human warmth was all around me. It struck me as very different from American life, where people were so often isolated.

  As the days went by, though, I began to feel less joyful and more tense. Some of it had to do with what Auma had talked about that night in the car—the awareness everyone had of my good fortune, at least compared to theirs. Not that our relatives were suffering, exactly. Both Jane and Zeituni had steady jobs; Kezia made do selling cloth in the markets. If cash got too short, the children could be sent to stay with relatives upcountry for a time.

  Still, the situation in Nairobi was tough and getting tougher. Clothes were mostly secondhand, a doctor’s visit reserved for only extreme emergencies. Almost all the family’s younger members were unemployed, including the two or three who had managed, against stiff competition, to graduate from one of Kenya’s universities. And if Jane or Zeituni ever fell ill, if their companies ever closed or laid them off, there was no such thing as collecting unemployment or disability insurance. There was only family to help—and family members were burdened by similar hardships.

  Now I was family, I reminded myself; now I had responsibilities. And for the first time in my life, I found myself thinking about money: my own lack of it, the pursuit of it, the crude but undeniable peace it could buy. A part of me wished I could live up to the image that my new relatives had of me: a corporate lawyer, an American businessman, able to turn a faucet and send the riches of the Western world raining down on them.

  But of course I wasn’t that person. And even in the States, wealth involved trade-offs, hours devoted to making money instead of spending time with family.

  Auma was in that situation. She was working two jobs that summer. With the money she saved, she wanted not only to fix up Granny’s house in Alego but also to buy a bit of land around Nairobi, something that would grow in value. She had plans, schedules, budgets, and deadlines—all the things needed in the modern world. The problem was that her schedules also meant turning down invitations to family get-togethers; her budgets meant saying no to the constant requests for money that came her way. And when this happened, she would see the looks of hurt and resentment. Her restlessness, her independence, her constant planning for the future—all of this struck the family as unnatural and…un-African.

  It reminded me of the tensions certain children on the South Side of Chicago suffered when they took too much pleasure in doing their schoolwork—how some kids might accuse them of “acting white.” And it made her feel the same guilt I expected to feel if I ever did make money and had to pass those groups of young Black men on street corners as I made my way to a downtown office. It seemed as though success always threatened to leave others behind.

  Toward the end of my first week in Nairobi, Zeituni took me to visit our other aunt, Sarah. She and my father had been raised by my grandfather’s second wife—Zeituni’s mother, who everyone called Granny—after their own mother, Akumu, left.

  Sarah now lived in an area known as Mathare, a shantytown with miles and miles of corrugated rooftops shimmering under the sun like wet lily pads.

  “How many people live there?” I asked. “Half a million?”

  Zeituni shook her head. “That was last week. This week, it must be one million.”

  We came to a series of concrete buildings along a paved road, eight, maybe twelve stories tall, and yet strangely unfinished, the wood beams and rough cement exposed to the elements. We entered one, climbed a narrow fl
ight of stairs, and knocked on a scuffed door. A middle-aged woman appeared, short but sturdily built, with hard, glassy eyes set in a wide, rawboned face. She took my hand and said something in Luo.

  “She says she is ashamed to have her brother’s son see her in such a miserable place,” Zeituni translated.

  We were shown into a small room, ten feet by twelve, large enough to fit a bed, a dresser, two chairs, and a sewing machine. Zeituni and I each took one of the chairs, and a young woman brought us two warm sodas. Sarah sat on the bed and leaned forward to study my face.

  Auma had said that Sarah knew some English, but she spoke mostly in Luo. Even without the benefit of Zeituni’s translation, I could tell that she wasn’t happy.

  “She wants to know why you have taken so long to visit her,” Zeituni explained. “She says that she is the eldest child of your grandfather, Hussein Onyango, and that you should have come to see her first.”

  “Tell her I meant no disrespect,” I said “Everything’s been so busy since my arrival—it was hard to come sooner.”

  Sarah’s tone became sharp. “She says that the people you stay with must be telling you lies.”

  “Tell her that I’ve heard nothing said against her.”

  Sarah snorted and started up again, her voice rumbling against the close walls. “She says the trial is not her fault,” Zeituni said quietly. “She says that it’s Kezia’s doing—Auma’s mum. She says that the children who claim to be Obama’s are not Obama’s. She says they have taken everything of his and left his true people living like beggars.”

  Sarah nodded, and her eyes began to smolder. “Yes, Barry,” she said suddenly in English. “It is me who looks after your father when he is a small boy. My mother, Akumu, is also your father’s mother. Akumu is your true grandmother, not this one you call Granny. Akumu, the woman who gives your father life—you should be helping her. And look how I live. Why don’t you help us, instead of these others?”

  Before I could answer, Zeituni and Sarah began to argue with each other in Luo. Eventually, Zeituni stood up and straightened her skirt. “We should go now, Barry.”