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

  She carefully folded the paper and slipped it into a drawer in the kitchen. Both she and Gramps fell silent. For a moment the air was sucked out of the room, and we stood alone with our thoughts.

  “Well,” Toot said finally, “I suppose we better start looking for a place where he can stay.”

  Gramps took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

  “Should be one hell of a Christmas.”

  * * *

  —

  OVER LUNCH, I explained to a group of boys that my father was a prince.

  “My grandfather, see, he’s a chief. It’s sort of like the king of the tribe, you know…like the Indians. So that makes my father a prince. He’ll take over when my grandfather dies.”

  “What about after that?” one of my friends asked as we emptied our trays into the trash bin. “I mean, will you go back and be a prince?”

  “Well…if I want to, I could. It’s sort of complicated, see, ’cause the tribe is full of warriors. Like Obama…that means ‘Burning Spear.’ The men in our tribe all want to be chief, so my father has to settle these feuds before I can come.”

  As the words tumbled out of my mouth and I felt the boys warm up to me, a part of me really began to believe the story. But another part of me knew that I was telling a lie, something I’d constructed from the scraps of information I’d picked up from my mother.

  In truth, I didn’t know what to expect my father to be. He was still unknown, and vaguely threatening.

  My mother sensed my nervousness in the days building up to his arrival—I think she felt the same. She tried to assure me that the reunion would go smoothly. They had written to each other while we were in Indonesia, and he knew all about me. Like her, my father had remarried, and I now had five brothers and one sister living in Kenya. He had been in a bad car accident, and this trip was part of his recuperation after a long stay in the hospital.

  “You two will become great friends,” she decided.

  Along with news of my father, she began to stuff me with information about Kenya and its history. I’d stolen the name Burning Spear from a book she gave me about Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya. But in general I remembered little of what she told me. Only once did she really spark my interest, when she told me that my father’s tribe, the Luo, were a “Nilotic” people who had moved to Kenya from their original home along the banks of the world’s greatest river, the Nile. This seemed promising. Gramps still kept a painting he had once done: a replica of lean, bronze Egyptians on a golden chariot. I had visions of the great kingdoms of ancient Egypt I had read about, pyramids and pharaohs, queens with names like Nefertiti and Cleopatra.

  One Saturday I went to the public library near our apartment and found a book on East Africa. There was only a short paragraph on the Luos. Nilote, it turned out, described a number of tribes that had originated in the Sudan along the White Nile, far south of the Egyptian empires. The Luo raised cattle and lived in mud huts and ate corn meal and yams and something called millet. Their traditional clothing was a leather thong across the crotch. There was no mention of pyramids. I left the book open on a table and walked out, crushed.

  The big day finally arrived, and Miss Hefty let me out early from class, wishing me luck. My legs were heavy, and with each step toward my grandparents’ apartment, the thump in my chest grew louder. When I entered the elevator, I stood without pressing the button. The door closed, then reopened, and an older Filipino man who lived on the fourth floor got on.

  “Your grandfather says your father is coming to visit you today,” the man said cheerfully. “You must be very happy.”

  Finally, when I could think of no possible way to escape, I rang the doorbell. Toot opened the door.

  “There he is! Come on, Bar…come meet your father.”

  And there, in the unlit hallway, I saw him, a tall, dark figure who walked with a slight limp. He crouched down and put his arms around me, and I let my arms hang at my sides. Behind him stood my mother, her chin trembling as usual.

  “Well, Barry,” my father said. “It is a good thing to see you after so long. Very good.”

  He led me by the hand into the living room, and we all sat down.

  “So, Barry, your grandmama has told me that you are doing very well in school.”

  I shrugged.

  “He’s feeling a little shy, I think,” Toot offered. She smiled and rubbed my head.

  “Well,” my father said, “you have no reason to be shy about doing well. Have I told you that your brothers and sister have also excelled in their schooling? It’s in the blood, I think,” he said with a laugh.

  I watched him carefully as the adults began to talk. He was much thinner than I had expected, the bones of his knees showing through his trousers. I couldn’t imagine him lifting a man off the ground and holding him over a cliff. Beside him, a cane with an ivory head leaned against the wall. He wore a blue blazer, a white shirt, and a scarlet ascot. His horn-rimmed glasses reflected the light of the lamp, so I couldn’t see his eyes very well, but when he took the glasses off to rub the bridge of his nose, I saw that they were slightly yellow, the eyes of someone who’s had the disease malaria more than once. He looked fragile and tired.

  After an hour or so, my mother suggested that he take a nap, and he agreed. He began to fish around in his travel bag until he finally pulled out three wooden figurines—a lion, an elephant, and an ebony man in a plumed headdress beating a drum—and handed them to me.

  “Say thank you, Bar,” my mother said.

  “Thank you,” I muttered.

  My father and I both looked down at the carvings, lifeless in my hands. He touched my shoulder.

  “They are only small things,” he said softly. Then he nodded to Gramps, and together they gathered up his luggage and went downstairs to the apartment they’d rented for him.

  * * *

  —

  A MONTH. THAT’S how long we had together. The five of us spent most evenings in my grandparents’ living room. During the day we would drive around the island or take short walks past places my father wanted to show me: the lot where his apartment had once stood; the hospital where I had been born; my grandparents’ first house in Hawaii. There was so much to tell in that single month, so much explaining to do, and yet when I reach back into my memory for the words of my father, they seem lost. I often felt mute when I was with him, and he never pushed me to speak. I’m left with mostly images that appear and fade: his head thrown back in laughter at one of Gramps’s jokes; his grip on my shoulder as he introduces me to one of his old friends from college; the narrowing of his eyes, the stroking of his wispy goatee as he reads his important books.

  I remember those images—and his effect on other people. Whenever my father spoke—one leg draped over the other, his large hands outstretched to direct or deflect attention, his voice deep and sure, sweet-talking and laughing—a sudden change took place in the family. Gramps became more vigorous and thoughtful, my mother more bashful; even Toot, who normally hid in her bedroom, would debate politics or finance with him, stabbing the air with her blue-veined hands to make a point. It was as if his presence brought back the hopeful spirit of earlier times. The last time my father was in Hawaii, Martin Luther King had not yet been shot; John F. Kennedy was president, his brother Robert still alive. Now, once again, it seemed that anything was possible so long as you had the courage to bring about change.

  It fascinated me, this strange power of his, and for the first time I began to think of my father as something real and immediate, perhaps even permanent.

  We did things together. At a concert by the jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, I struggled to understand the unusual chords and changes in tempo, watching my father carefully and clapping when he clapped. We stood in front of the Christmas tree and posed for pictures, the only ones I have of us together. I held an orange basketball
he’d given to me, and he showed off the tie I’d bought him. (“Ah,” he said when I gave it to him, “people will know that I am very important wearing such a tie.”) Sometimes during the day I lay beside him in his sublet, reading my book while he read his. Although I did not feel I knew him any better, I began imitating his gestures and turns of phrase. I grew accustomed to his company.

  After a couple of weeks, though, I could feel things getting more tense. Gramps complained that my father was sitting in his chair. Toot muttered, while doing the dishes, that she wasn’t his servant. One evening, I turned on the television to watch a cartoon special—How the Grinch Stole Christmas—and all the whispers broke into shouts.

  “Barry, you have watched enough television tonight,” my father said. “Go in your room and study now, and let the adults talk.”

  Toot stood up and turned off the TV. “Why don’t you turn the show on in the bedroom, Bar.”

  “No, Madelyn,” my father said, “that’s not what I mean. He has been watching that machine constantly, and now it is time for him to study.”

  My mother tried to explain that it was almost Christmas vacation, that the cartoon was a Christmas favorite, that I had been looking forward to it all week. “It won’t last long.”

  “Anna, this is nonsense,” my father said. “If the boy has done his work for tomorrow, he can begin on his next day’s assignments. Or the assignments he will have when he returns from the holidays.” He turned to me. “I tell you, Barry, you do not work as hard as you should. Go now, before I get angry at you.”

  I went to my room and slammed the door, listening as the voices outside grew louder, Gramps insisting that this was his house, Toot saying that my father had no right to come in and bully everyone, including me, after being gone all this time. I heard my father say that they were spoiling me, that I needed a firm hand, and I listened to my mother tell her parents that they were still interfering in her life. We all stood accused.

  Even after my father left and Toot came in to say that I could watch the last five minutes of my show, I felt as if something had cracked open between all of us, goblins rushing out of some old, sealed-off lair. I watched the green Grinch who wanted to ruin Christmas but was touched to the heart by the faith of the little Whos of Whoville, and I thought: This is a lie. People don’t change like that.

  I began to count the days until my father would leave and things would return to normal.

  The next day, Toot sent me down to the apartment where my father was staying to see if he had any laundry to wash. I knocked, and my father opened the door, shirtless. Inside, I saw my mother ironing some of his clothes. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and her eyes were soft and dark, as if she’d been crying. My father asked me to sit down beside him on the bed, but I told him that Toot needed me to help her, and left after giving him the message. Back upstairs, I had begun cleaning my room when my mother came in.

  “You shouldn’t be mad at your father, Bar. He loves you very much. He’s just a little stubborn sometimes.”

  “Okay,” I said without looking up. I could feel her eyes follow me around the room until she finally let out a slow breath and went to the door.

  “I know all this stuff is confusing for you,” she said. “For me, too. Just try to remember what I said, okay?” She put her hand on the doorknob. “Do you want me to close the door?”

  I nodded, but she had been gone for only a minute when she stuck her head back into the room.

  “By the way, I forgot to tell you that Miss Hefty has invited your father to come to school on Thursday. She wants him to speak to the class.”

  I couldn’t imagine worse news. I spent that night and all of the next day trying not to think about the inevitable: the faces of my classmates when they heard about mud huts, all my lies about chiefs and princes exposed, the painful jokes afterward. Each time I remembered, my body squirmed as if it had received a jolt to the nerves.

  I was still trying to figure out how I’d explain myself when my father walked into our class the next day. Miss Hefty welcomed him eagerly, and as I took my seat I heard several children ask each other what was going on. I became more desperate when our math teacher, a big, no-nonsense Hawaiian named Mr. Eldredge, came into the room, followed by thirty confused children from his homeroom next door.

  “We have a special treat for you today,” Miss Hefty began. “Barry Obama’s father is here, and he’s come all the way from Kenya, in Africa, to tell us about his country.”

  The other kids looked at me as my father stood up, and I looked away, focusing on a tiny chalk mark on the blackboard behind him. He had been speaking for some time before I could finally bring myself back to the moment. He was leaning against Miss Hefty’s thick oak desk and describing the deep gash in the earth where mankind had first appeared. He spoke of the wild animals that still roamed the plains, the tribes that still required a young boy to kill a lion to prove his manhood. He spoke of the customs of the Luo, how elders were respected more than anyone and made laws for all to follow. And he told us of Kenya’s struggle to be free, how the British had wanted to stay and unjustly rule the people, just as they had in America; how many had been enslaved only because of the color of their skin, just as they had in America. But the Kenyans, like all of us in the room, longed to be free and develop themselves through hard work and sacrifice.

  When he finished, Miss Hefty was beaming with pride. All my classmates applauded heartily, and a few struck up the courage to ask questions, each of which my father appeared to consider carefully before answering. The bell rang for lunch, and Mr. Eldredge came up to me.

  “You’ve got a pretty impressive father.”

  The ruddy-faced boy who once asked me if in Africa they still ate people said, “Your dad is pretty cool.”

  And off to one side, I saw Coretta watch my father say good-bye to some of the children. She was concentrating too hard to smile; her face showed only a look of simple satisfaction.

  * * *

  —

  TWO WEEKS LATER, my father was gone.

  The day he left, as my mother and I helped him pack his bags, he dug up two records, in dull brown dust jackets.

  “Barry! Look here—I forgot that I had brought these for you. The sounds of your continent.”

  It took him a while to figure out how my grandparents’ old stereo worked, but finally the disk he chose began to turn, and he carefully placed the needle on the groove. There was a tinny guitar lick, then sharp horns, the thump of drums, then the guitar again, and then voices, clean and joyful. They seemed to be urging us on.

  “Come, Barry,” my father said. “You will learn from the master.”

  And suddenly his slender body was swaying back and forth, the lush sound was rising, his arms were swinging, and his feet were weaving over the floor. His bad leg was stiff but his rump was high, his head back, his hips moving in a tight circle. The rhythm quickened, the horns sounded, and his eyes closed in pleasure. Then one eye opened to peek down at me and his solemn face spread into a silly grin, and my mother smiled, and my grandparents walked in to see what all the commotion was about. I took my first tentative steps with my eyes closed: down, up, my arms swinging, the voices lifting me. As I follow my father into the sound, he lets out a quick shout, bright and high, a shout that leaves much behind and reaches out for more, a shout that cries for laughter.

  I hear him still.

  CHAPTER 4

  Five years after my father’s visit, I was in high school, and things had gotten complicated.

  On the surface, things were going well enough. I was doing the things American kids do. I took a part-time job at a fast food restaurant. There were some mediocre report cards and a few calls to the principal. I dealt with acne, learned to drive, and thought a lot about girls. I made my share of friends at school and went on an occasional awkward date. Sometimes I puzzled ov
er the change in my classmates’ status. Some rose in popularity while others fell, depending only on how they looked or the make of their cars. I watched from the sidelines, relieved that my position steadily improved.

  But all the while I was struggling inside. I was trying to raise myself to be a Black man in America, and no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant.

  I hung out a lot with a friend named Ray. He was two years older than me, a senior who had moved from Los Angeles the year before when his father, who was in the army, was transferred. Despite the difference in age, we’d fallen into an easy friendship—it had a lot to do with the fact that together we made up almost half of Punahou’s Black high school population.

  I enjoyed his company. He had a warmth and brash humor that made up for his constant boasting about his life in L.A.—the women who supposedly still called him long-distance every night, his football triumphs, the celebrities he knew. I dismissed most of what he told me, but not all. It was true that he was one of the fastest sprinters in the Hawaiian islands. Some people even said he was good enough for the Olympics, in spite of the big stomach that quivered under his sweat-soaked jersey whenever he ran and left coaches shaking their heads in disbelief.

  Ray was the one who told me about Black parties at the university or out on the army bases, and I counted on him to help me navigate my way around.

  In return, I listened to him when he wanted to vent his frustrations. One day, we were having lunch and he declared that he wasn’t going to any more school parties. He said he thought the girls at Punahou wouldn’t look twice at Black men, that they were “A-1, USDA-certified racists.”

  “Maybe they’re just looking at that big butt of yours,” I said. “Man, I thought you were in training.” I grabbed one his French fries.

  “Get your hands out of my fries. Buy your own.”

  “Just ’cause a girl don’t go out with you doesn’t make her racist,” I said.