Dreams from My Father

mistakes.
    “And the director sure knows who we are now,” Shirley said.
    This last line drew some weak laughter. Sadie said she had to get home; I told the group that I could take care of cleaning up. As I watched Bernadette pick up Tyrone in one arm and carry his slumbering weight across the gymnasium floor, I felt my stomach constrict. Dr. Collier tapped me on the shoulder.
    “So who’s gonna cheer you up?” she asked.
    I shook my head.
    “You take some chances, things are gonna blow once in a while.”
    “But the looks on their faces…”
    “Don’t worry,” Dr. Collier said. “They’re tough. Not as tough as they sound—none of us are, including you. But they’ll get over it. Something like this is just part of growing up. And sometimes growing up hurts.”
             
    The fallout from the meeting could have been worse. Because we had run so late, only one TV station replayed the tug-of-war between Linda and the director. The morning paper noted the frustration residents felt with CHA’s slow response to the asbestos problem, as well as the director’s tardiness that evening. In fact, we could claim the meeting as a victory of sorts, for the following week men dressed in moon-suits and masks were seen all over the Gardens, sealing any asbestos that posed an immediate threat. CHA also announced that it had asked the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for several million dollars in emergency cleanup funds.
    Such concessions helped to lift the spirits of some of the parents, and after a few weeks of licking our wounds, we started meeting again to make sure that CHA followed up on its commitments. Still, in Altgeld at least, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the window of possibility that had been pried open so briefly had slammed shut once again. Linda, Bernadette, Mr. Lucas—they would all continue to work with DCP, but only reluctantly, out of loyalty to me rather than to each other. Other residents who had joined us during the weeks leading up to the meeting dropped away. Mrs. Reece refused to speak to us anymore, and while few people paid attention to her attacks on our methods and motives, the squabbling only served to reinforce the suspicion among residents that no amount of activism would alter their condition, except maybe to bring trouble that they didn’t need.
    A month or so after the initial cleanup, we met with HUD to lobby for CHA’s budget request. In addition to the emergency cleanup funds, CHA had asked the feds for over a billion dollars to make basic repairs on projects all over the city. A tall, dour white man from HUD went over the line items.
    “Let me be blunt,” he told us. “CHA has no chance of getting even half the appropriation it’s requested. You can have the asbestos removed. Or you can have new plumbing and roofing where it’s needed. But you can’t have both.”
    “So you’re telling us that after all this, we gonna be worse off than we was,” Bernadette said.
    “Well, not exactly. But these are the budget priorities coming out of Washington these days. I’m sorry.”
    Bernadette hoisted Tyrone up on her lap. “Tell that to him.”
    Sadie didn’t join us for that meeting. She had called me to say that she had decided to stop working with DCP.
    “My husband doesn’t think it’s a good idea, me spending all this time instead of looking after my own family. He says that the publicity went to my head…that I became prideful.”
    I suggested that as long as her family lived in the Gardens, she’d have to stay involved.
    “Ain’t nothing gonna change, Mr. Obama,” she said. “We just gonna concentrate on saving our money so we can move outta here as fast as we can.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

    I ’M TELLING YOU, MAN, the world is a
place
.”
    “Say, the world is a place, huh.”
    “That’s just what I’m saying.”
    We were walking back to the car after dinner in Hyde Park, and Johnnie was in an expansive mood. He often got like this, especially after a good meal and wine. The first time I met him, when he was still working with a downtown civic group, he had started explaining the relationship between jazz and Eastern religion, then swerved into an analysis of black women’s behinds, before coming to a stop on the subject of Federal Reserve Bank policy. In such moments his eyes would grow wide; his voice would speed up; his round, bearded face would glow with a childlike wonder. That was part of the reason I’d hired