Dreams from My Father

after I was living on my own, even after his death, I would try to figure out this puzzle. It was as if I couldn’t escape him. I remember we had to take his body to Alego for the funeral, and as the eldest son, I was responsible for making the arrangements. The government wanted a Christian burial. The family wanted a Muslim burial. People came to Home Square from everywhere, and we had to mourn him according to Luo tradition, burning a log for three days, listening to people cry and moan. Half these people, I didn’t even know who they were. They wanted food. They wanted beer. Some people whispered that the Old Man had been poisoned, that I must take revenge. Some people stole things from the house. Then our relatives began to fight about the Old Man’s inheritance. The Old Man’s last girlfriend, the mother of our baby brother, George—she wanted everything. Some people, like our Aunt Sarah, sided with her. Others lined up with my mum’s side of the family. I’m telling you, it was crazy! Everything seemed to be going wrong.
    “After the funeral was over, I didn’t want to be with anyone. The only person I trusted was David, our younger brother. That guy, let me tell you, he was okay. He looked like you a little bit, only younger…fifteen, sixteen. His mother, Ruth, had tried to raise him like an American. But David, he rebelled. He loved everybody, you see. He ran away from home and came to live with me. I told him he should go home, but he refused. He didn’t want to be an American, he said. He was an African. He was an Obama.
    “When David died, that was it for me. I was sure our whole family was cursed. I started drinking, fighting—I didn’t care. I figured if the Old Man could die, if David could die, that I would have to die, too. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed in Kenya. As it was, there was Nancy, this American girl I had been seeing. She’d returned to the States, so one day I just called her and said I wanted to come. When she said yes, I bought a ticket and caught the next plane out. I didn’t pack, or tell my office, or say goodbye to anyone, or anything.
    “I thought I could start over, you see. But now I know you can never start over. Not really. You think you have control, but you are like a fly in somebody else’s web. Sometimes I think that’s why I like accounting. All day, you are only dealing with numbers. You add them, multiply them, and if you are careful, you will always have a solution. There’s a sequence there. An order. With numbers, you can have control….”
    Roy took another sip from his drink, and suddenly his speech slowed, as if he’d dropped deep into another place, as if our father had taken possession of him. “I am the oldest, you see. In Luo tradition, I am now head of the household. I am responsible for you, and for Auma, and for all the younger boys. It’s my responsibility to set things right. To pay the boys’ school fees. To see that Auma is properly married. To build a proper house and bring the family together.”
    I reached across the table and touched his hand. “You don’t have to do it alone, brother,” I said. “We can share the load.”
    But it was as if he hadn’t heard me. He just stared out the window, and then, as if snapping out of a trance, he waved the waitress over.
    “You want another drink?”
    “Why don’t we just get the check?”
    Roy looked at me and smiled. “I can tell you worry too much, Barack. That’s my problem, as well. I think we need to learn to go with the flow. Isn’t that what you say in America?
Just go with the flow.
…” Roy laughed again, loud enough for the people at the next table to turn around. Only the magic was gone out of it now; it sounded hollow, as if it were traveling across a vast, empty distance.
             
    I caught a flight out the next day—Roy needed to spend some time with his wife, and I didn’t have the money for another night at the hotel. We had breakfast together, and in the morning light he seemed in better spirits. At the airport gate, we shook hands and hugged, and he promised to come visit me once things had settled down. The entire flight back to Chicago, though, and through the rest of the weekend, I couldn’t rid myself of the sense that Roy was in danger somehow, that old demons were driving him toward an abyss, and that if only I was a better brother, my intervention would prevent his fall.
    Roy was still on my mind when