Dreams from My Father

his brothers. I swore I’d never end up like that. But you know, when I thought about it later, I realized 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, I remember 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….”
    Johnnie stopped talking; the traffic cleared. I started thinking about those posters back in Asante’s office—posters of Nefertiti, regal and dark-hued in her golden throne; and Shaka Zulu, fierce and proud in his leopard-skin tunic—and then further back to that day years ago, before my father came for his visit to Hawaii, when I had gone to the library in search of my own magic kingdom, my own glorious birthright. I wondered how much difference those posters would make to the boy we had just left in Asante’s office. Probably not as much as Asante himself, I thought. A man willing to listen. A hand placed on a young man’s shoulders.
    “He was there,” I said to Johnnie.
    “Who?”
    “Your father. He was there for you.”
    Johnnie scratched his arm. “Yeah, Barack. 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.”
    “Yeah, John,” I said, nodding. “Maybe you should.”
             
    Over the next two months, Asante and Dr. Collier helped us develop a proposal for a youth counseling network, something to provide at-risk teenagers with mentoring and tutorial services and to involve parents in a long-term planning process for reform. It was an exciting project, but my mind was elsewhere. When the proposal was finished, I told Johnnie that I’d be gone for a few days but that he should go ahead with some of the meetings we’d scheduled, to start lining up broader support.
    “Where’re you going?” he asked me.
    “To see my brother.”
    “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
    “I haven’t had one that long.”
    The next morning, I flew down to Washington, D.C., where my brother Roy now lived. We had first spoken to each other during Auma’s visit to Chicago; she had told me then that Roy had married an American Peace Corps worker and had moved to the States. One day we had called him up just to say hello. He had seemed happy to hear from us, his voice deep and unruffled, as if we had talked only yesterday. His job, his wife, his new life in America—everything was “lovely,” he said. 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.” After we got off the phone, I had told Auma that he sounded well. She looked at me doubtfully.
    “Yah, you never know with Roy,” she had said. “He doesn’t always show his true feelings. He’s like the Old Man in that way. In fact, although they didn’t get along, he really reminds me of the Old Man in many ways. At least that’s how he was in Nairobi. I haven’t seen him since David’s funeral, though, so maybe marriage has settled him down.”
    She didn’t say much more than that; I should get to know him for myself, she said. And so Roy and I had arranged a visit; I would fly to D.C. for the long weekend, we would see the sights, it would be a wonderful time. Only now, as I searched the emptying gate at National, 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, an even-toothed 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 African print, with an Afro, a goatee, a mustache. The