Dreams from My Father (Adapted for Young Adults) Page 9

  Anyway, most of the other Black students at Oxy didn’t seem all that worried about “compromise.” There were enough of us on campus to constitute a tribe, and we stayed close together and traveled in packs. Freshman year, when I was still living in the dorms, we grumbled and complained about the same things Ray and I and other Black folks back in Hawaii had grumbled and complained about. Otherwise, our worries were the same as those of the white kids around us. Surviving classes. Landing a job that paid well after graduation. Meeting women. I had stumbled upon one of the well-kept secrets about Black people: that most of us weren’t interested in revolt, that most of us were tired of thinking about race all the time. If we preferred to keep to ourselves, it was mainly because that was the easiest way to stop thinking about it. It was a lot easier than spending all your time mad or trying to guess what white folks were thinking about you.

  So why couldn’t I let the idea of race go?

  I don’t know. Maybe it was because I didn’t come from a poor Black neighborhood like Compton or Watts. If you grew up there, just surviving was a revolutionary act. When you got to college, your family was back there rooting for you. They were happy to see you escape; there was no question of “betraying your race.” I was more like the Black students who had grown up in the suburbs. You could spot them right away by the way they talked, the people they sat with in the cafeteria. They would tell you they weren’t defined by the color of their skin. They were individuals.

  That’s how my friend Joyce liked to talk. She was good-looking, with green eyes, honey skin, and pouty lips. We lived in the same dorm my freshman year, and just about every Black guy at school was chasing her. One day I asked her if she was going to the Black Students’ Association meeting. She looked at me funny, then started shaking her head like a baby who doesn’t want what it sees on the spoon.

  “I’m not Black,” Joyce said. “I’m multiracial.”

  Then she started telling me about her father, who happened to be Italian and was the sweetest man in the world; and her mother, who happened to be part African and part French and part Native American and part something else. “Why should I have to choose between them?” she asked me. Her voice cracked, and I thought she was going to cry. “It’s not white people who are making me choose. Maybe it used to be that way, but now they’re willing to treat me like a person. No—it’s Black people who always have to make everything racial. They’re the ones making me choose. They’re the ones who are telling me that I can’t be who I am….”

  They, they, they. It seemed to me that people like Joyce often talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided Black people. It wasn’t necessarily a conscious choice. White culture was everywhere, and they just gravitated toward it. They thought white people were the ones who didn’t see everything in terms of race, who were willing to adopt someone a little more “exotic” into their ranks. Only white culture had individuals. If you chose Black culture, you’d be just another member of a “minority group,” unwilling to think for yourself. So mixed-race people like Joyce or me would start to think, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don’t have to be?

  So you make your choice, pretending that you’re not making a choice, and it works for a while—until an available taxi drives past you or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, and you’re outraged. Less fortunate Black people have to put up with such indignities every single day of their lives, but that’s not why you’re upset. You’re upset because you’re wearing an expensive suit and speak impeccable English. And yet you’ve somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger.

  Don’t you know who I am? I’m an individual!

  * * *

  —

  THE FACT IS, I kept recognizing pieces of myself in Joyce and all the other Black kids who felt the way she did, and that’s what scared me. I needed to put distance between them and me, to convince myself that I wasn’t “compromised” the way Frank said I’d be—that I was indeed still awake.

  To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active Black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed the literature and philosophy of oppressed people, the history of European nations taking over small and less powerful countries. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we thought we were making a political statement against a “bourgeois” society that was stifling us.

  Ironically, it was Black friends who made me rethink such dopey ideas. The first time I met Regina, for example, was when a brother named Marcus was giving me grief about my choice of reading material.

  “Sister Regina,” Marcus said. “You know Barack, don’t you? I’m trying to tell Brother Barack here about this racist tract he’s reading.” Marcus held up a copy of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which is about a white man in the late nineteenth century who travels deep into Central Africa and sets himself up as a kind of crazed king over the indigenous Black people living there.

  “Man, stop waving that thing around,” I said, and tried to snatch it out of his hands.

  “Just being seen with a book like this makes you embarrassed, don’t it?” he said. “I’m telling you, man, this stuff will poison your mind.” He looked at his watch. “Damn, I’m late for class.” He leaned over and pecked Regina on the cheek. “Talk to this brother, will you? I think he can still be saved.”

  Regina smiled and shook her head as we watched Marcus stride out the door. “Marcus is in one of his preaching moods, I see.”

  I tossed the book into my backpack. “Actually, he’s right,” I said. “It is a racist book. The way Conrad sees it, Africa’s the cesspool of the world, Black folks are savages, and any contact with them breeds infection.”

  Regina blew on her coffee. “So why are you reading it?”

  “Because it’s assigned.” I paused, not sure if I should go on. “And because the book teaches me things. About white people, I mean. See, the book’s not really about Africa. Or Black people. It’s about the man who wrote it. The European. The American. So I read the book to help me understand what it is about Black people that makes white people so afraid. It helps me understand how people learn to hate.”

  “And that’s important to you,” Regina said.

  My life depends on it, I thought. But I didn’t tell Regina that. I just smiled and said, “That’s the only way to cure an illness, right? Diagnose it.”

  Regina smiled back and sipped her coffee. I had seen her around before, usually sitting in the library with a book in hand, a big, dark-skinned woman who wore stockings and dresses that looked homemade, along with tinted, oversized glasses and a scarf always covering her head. I knew she was a junior, helped organize Black student events, didn’t go out much. She stirred her coffee idly and asked, “What did Marcus call you just now? Some African name, wasn’t it?”

  “Barack.”

  “I thought your name was Barry.”

  “Barack’s my given name. My father’s name. He was Kenyan.”

  “Does it mean something?”

  “It means ‘Blessed.’ In Arabic. My grandfather was a Muslim.”

  Regina repeated the name to herself, testing out the sound. “Barack. It’s beautiful.” She leaned forward across the table. “So why does everybody call you Barry?”

  “Habit, I guess. My father used it when he arrived in the States. I don’t know whether that was his idea or somebody else’s. He probably used Barry because it was easier to pronounce. You know—helped him fit in. Then it got passed on to me. So I could fit in.”

  “Do you mind if I call you Barack?” Regina asked.

  I smiled. “No
t as long as you say it right.”

  We ended up spending the afternoon together, talking and drinking coffee. Regina told me about her childhood in Chicago. Her father had left, her mother struggled to pay the bills. Their apartment building on the South Side was never warm enough in winter and got so hot in the summer that people went out by the lake to sleep. She told me about the neighbors on her block, about walking past bars and pool halls on the way to church on Sunday. She told me about evenings in the kitchen with uncles and cousins and grandparents, their voices bubbling up in laughter. Her own voice evoked a vision of Black life in all its possibility, a vision that filled me with longing—a longing for place, for a life I had never known. As we were getting up to leave, I told Regina I envied her.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. For your memories, I guess.”

  Regina laughed, a round, full sound from deep in her belly.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, Barack,” she said, catching her breath, “isn’t life something? And here I was all this time wishing I’d grown up in Hawaii.”

  * * *

  —

  STRANGE HOW A single conversation can change you. I felt my true, honest voice returning to me that afternoon with Regina. As time went by, I could feel it growing stronger, sturdier, a bridge between my future and my past. I began to remember my values, simple things I’d heard from my mother and grandparents, from TV sitcoms and philosophy books. Things like: Look at yourself before you pass judgment. Don’t make someone else clean up your mess. Don’t get so wrapped up in your perceived injuries, because it’s not always about you.

  Now I was hearing the same things from Black people I respected, people who had more excuses for being bitter than I’d ever had. My new friends made me realize that my ideas about who I was and who I might become had grown stunted and narrow and small—that the values that mattered weren’t Black or white.

  My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn’t, couldn’t, end there.

  At least, that’s what I would choose to believe.

  * * *

  —

  IN MY SOPHOMORE year at Occidental, I got involved in the national campaign to pressure colleges to stop investing money in South Africa, where Black people were kept down by the cruel system known as apartheid. At first, I was just following the lead of my politically active friends. But as the months passed, I noticed that people began to listen to my opinions, and I became hungry for words—words that could carry a message, support an idea. There was a meeting of the school’s trustees coming up, the people who decided where the college would invest its money, and our group decided to plan a rally outside the administration building. When somebody suggested me as the first speaker at the rally, I quickly agreed. I figured I was ready, and could reach people where it counted.

  It was going to be a kind of street theater, a little play to dramatize how hard it was for activists in South Africa to protest injustice. I was only supposed to make a few opening remarks and then a couple of white students would come onstage dressed in paramilitary uniforms and drag me away.

  I had helped plan the script, but when I sat down to prepare what I would say, something happened. In my mind it became more than a two-minute set-up, more than a way to prove I was down with the politics of protest. I started to remember my father’s visit to Miss Hefty’s class, the look on Coretta’s face that day, and the power of my father’s words to transform people. With the right words, I thought, everything could change—South Africa, the lives of ghetto kids just a few miles away, my own shaky place in the world.

  I was still in that trancelike state when I mounted the stage, the sun in my eyes, in front of a few hundred restless students who had just come from lunch. A couple of them were throwing a Frisbee on the lawn; others were standing off to the side, ready to head off to the library at any moment. I stepped up to the microphone.

  “There’s a struggle going on,” I said. My voice barely carried beyond the first few rows. A few people looked up, and I waited for the crowd to quiet.

  “I say, there’s a struggle going on!”

  The Frisbee players stopped.

  “It’s happening an ocean away. But it’s a struggle that touches each and every one of us. Whether we know it or not. Whether we want it or not. A struggle that demands we choose sides. Not between Black and white. Not between rich and poor. No—it’s a harder choice than that. It’s a choice between dignity and servitude. Between fairness and injustice. Between commitment and indifference. A choice between right and wrong…”

  I stopped. The crowd was quiet now, watching me. Somebody started to clap. “Go on with it, Barack,” somebody else shouted. “Tell it like it is.” Then the others started in, clapping, cheering, and I knew I had them, that the connection had been made.

  Then I felt someone’s hands grabbing me from behind. It was just as we’d planned it, my white friends in uniforms looking grim behind their dark glasses. They started yanking me off the stage, and I was supposed to act like I was trying to break free, except a part of me wasn’t acting. I really wanted to stay up there.

  I had so much left to say.

  CHAPTER 6

  I spent my first night in Manhattan curled up in an alleyway.

  It wasn’t intentional. While still in L.A., I’d arranged to rent an apartment in Spanish Harlem, near Columbia University, from a friend of a friend who was moving out. After dragging my luggage through the airport, the subways, Times Square, and across 109th from Broadway to Amsterdam, I finally stood at the door, a few minutes past ten p.m.

  I pressed the buzzer repeatedly, but no one answered. The street was empty, the buildings on either side boarded up. Eventually, a young Puerto Rican woman emerged from the building, throwing a nervous look my way before heading down the street. I rushed to catch the door before it slammed shut, and, pulling my luggage behind me, proceeded upstairs to knock, and then bang, on the apartment door. Again, no answer, just a sound down the hall of some scared resident’s deadbolt lock being thrown into place.

  New York. Just like I pictured it. I checked my wallet—not enough money for a motel. I knew one person in New York, a guy named Sadik I’d met in L.A., but he’d told me that he worked all night at a bar somewhere. With nothing to do but wait, I carried my luggage back downstairs and sat on the stoop. After a while, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the letter from my father that I was carrying. It had been sent from Kenya.

  Dear Son,

  It was such a pleasant surprise to hear from you after so long. I am fine and doing all those things which you know are expected of me in this country. I just came back from London where I was attending to Government business, negotiating finances, etc. In fact it is because of too much travel that I rarely write to you. In any case, I think I shall do better from now on.

  You will be pleased to know that all your brothers and sisters here are fine, and send their greetings. Like me, they approve of your decision to come home after graduation. When you come, we shall, together, decide on how long you may wish to stay. Barry, even if it is only for a few days, the important thing is that you know your people, and also that you know where you belong.

  Please look after yourself, and say hallo to your mum, Tutu, and Stanley. I hope to hear from you soon.

  Love, Dad

  I folded the letter up and stuffed it back into my pocket. It hadn’t been easy to write him; our correspondence had all but died over the past four years. In fact, I had gone through several drafts when composing my reply, crossing out lines, struggling to find the right tone, resisting the impulse to explain too much. “Dear Father.” “Dear Dad.” “Dear Dr. Obama.” And now he had answered me, cheerful and calm. Know where you belong, he advised. He made it sound simple, like calling directory assistance.

  “Information�
�what city, please?”

  “Uh…I’m not sure. I was hoping you could tell me. The name’s Obama. Where do I belong?”

  Maybe it really was that simple for him. I imagined my father sitting at his desk in Nairobi, Kenya’s largest city, a big man in government, with clerks and secretaries bringing him papers to sign, a minister calling him for advice, a loving wife and children waiting at home, his own father’s village only a day’s drive away. The image made me vaguely angry, and I tried to set it aside, concentrating instead on the sound of salsa coming from an open window somewhere down the block. The same thoughts kept returning to me, though, as persistent as the beat of my heart. Where did I belong?

  Two years from graduating college, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, or even where I would live. Hawaii lay behind me like a childhood dream; I could no longer imagine settling there. Whatever my father might say, I knew it was too late to ever truly claim Kenya as my home. And even though I had come to understand myself as a Black American, I had no community, no place where I could put down stakes and test my commitment to my people.

  And so, when I heard about a transfer program that Occidental had arranged with Columbia, I’d been quick to apply. I figured that even if there weren’t any more Black students at Columbia than there were at Oxy, there would at least be Black neighborhoods close by. Maybe New York would turn out to be the place where I belonged. There wasn’t much in L.A. to hold me back. Most of my friends were graduating that year. Regina was on her way to Spain for a study-abroad program, and Marcus had dropped out, disappeared.