Dreams from My Father

Johnnie walked into my office late Monday afternoon.
    “You’re back early,” Johnnie said. “How was your trip?”
    “It was good. Good to see my brother.” I nodded, tapping on the edge of my desk. “So what happened while I was gone?”
    Johnnie dropped into a chair. “Well,” he said, “we met with the state senator. He committed to introducing a bill to get funding for a pilot program. Maybe not the whole half million, but enough.”
    “That’s terrific. How about the high school principals?”
    “Just got back from a meeting with Dr. King, the principal at Asante’s school. The rest of ’em haven’t returned my calls.”
    “That’s all right. What did Dr. King have to say?”
    “Oh, he was all smiles,” Johnnie said. “Said he really liked the proposal. He got real excited when he heard we might get funding. Said he’d encourage the other principals to work with us and that we’d have his full support. ‘Nothing’s more important than saving our youth,’ he said.”
    “Sounds good.”
    “Right.
Sounds
good. So then, I’m about to walk out of his office when suddenly he gives me
this
.” Johnnie reached into his briefcase, pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it to me. I read over a few lines before handing it back.
    “A résumé?”
    “Not just any résumé, Barack. His
wife’s
résumé. Seems she’s kinda bored around the house, see, and Dr. King thinks she’d make an ‘excellent’ director for our program. No pressure, you understand. Just once the money is allocated, some consideration, you know what I mean.”
    “He gave you his wife’s résumé—”
    “Not just his wife’s résumé.” Johnnie reached into his briefcase and pulled out another piece of paper, waving it in the air. “Got his daughter’s, too! Tells me
she’d
make an ‘excellent’ counselor—”
    “Naw—”
    “I’m telling you, Barack, he had the whole thing figured out. And you know what? The whole time we’re talking, he’s not batting an eye. Acting like what he’s doing is the most natural thing in the world. It was unbelievable.” Johnnie shook his head, then suddenly shouted out like a preacher. “Yessuh! Doctah Lonnie King! Now there’s a brother with some nerve! An enterprising brother! Program hasn’t even started yet, he’s already thinking ahead.”
    I started to laugh.
    “He don’t just want
one
job! He gotta have
two
! Go in to talk about some kids, he gonna hand you his whole goddamn
family’s
résumé….”
    I shouted out, catching the spirit. “Doctah Lonnie King!”
    “Yessuh! Doctah Lonnie King!” Johnnie started to giggle, which made me laugh even harder, until soon we were doubled over in loud guffaws, catching our breath only long enough to repeat that name again—“Doctah Lonnie King!”—as if it now contained the most obvious truth, the most basic element in an elemental world. We laughed until our faces were hot and our sides hurt, until tears came to our eyes, until we felt emptied out and couldn’t laugh anymore, and decided to take the rest of the afternoon off and go find ourselves a beer.
             
    That night, well past midnight, a car pulls up in front of my apartment building carrying a troop of teenage boys and a set of stereo speakers so loud that the floor of my apartment begins to shake. I’ve learned to ignore such disturbances—where else do they have to go? I say to myself. But on this particular evening I have someone staying over; I know that my neighbors next door have just brought home their newborn child; and so I pull on some shorts and head downstairs for a chat with our nighttime visitors. As I approach the car, the voices stop, the heads within all turn my way.
    “Listen, people are trying to sleep around here. Why don’t y’all take it someplace else.”
    The four boys inside say nothing, don’t even move. The wind wipes away my drowsiness, and I feel suddenly exposed, standing in a pair of shorts on the sidewalk in the middle of the night. I can’t see the faces inside the car; it’s too dark to know how old they are, whether they’re sober or drunk, good boys or bad. One of them could be Kyle. One of them could be Roy. One of them could be Johnnie.
    One of them could be me. Standing there, I try to remember the days when I would have been sitting in a car like that, full of inarticulate resentments and desperate to prove my place in the world. The feelings of righteous anger as I shout at Gramps for