Dreams from My Father

wish that my mother and father, sisters and brothers, were all under one roof. Here it was, I thought, what might have been. And the recognition of how wrong it had all turned out, the harsh evidence of life as it had really been lived, made me so sad that after only a few minutes I had to look away.
    On the drive back, I apologized to Auma for having put her through the ordeal. She waved it off.
    “It could have been worse,” she said. “I feel sorry for Mark, though. He seems so alone. You know, it’s not easy being a mixed child in Kenya.”
    I looked out the window, thinking about my mother, Toot, and Gramps, and how grateful I was to them—for who they were, and for the stories they’d told. I turned back to Auma, and said, “She still hasn’t gotten over him, has she?”
    “Who?”
    “Ruth. She hasn’t gotten over the Old Man.”
    Auma thought for a moment. “No, Barack. I guess she hasn’t. Just like the rest of us.”
             
    The following week, I called Mark and suggested that we go out to lunch. He seemed a bit hesitant, but eventually agreed to meet me at an Indian restaurant downtown. He was more relaxed than he had been during our first meeting, making a few self-deprecatory jokes, offering his observations about California and academic infighting. As the meal wore on, I asked him how it felt being back for the summer.
    “Fine,” he said. “It’s nice to see my mom and dad, of course. And Joey—he’s really a great kid.” Mark cut off a bite of his samosa and put it into his mouth. “As for the rest of Kenya, I don’t feel much of an attachment. Just another poor African country.”
    “You don’t ever think about settling here?”
    Mark took a sip from his Coke. “No,” he said. “I mean, there’s not much work for a physicist, is there, in a country where the average person doesn’t have a telephone.”
    I should have stopped then, but something—the certainty in this brother’s voice, maybe, or our rough resemblance, like looking into a foggy mirror—made me want to push harder. I asked, “Don’t you ever feel like you might be losing something?”
    Mark put down his knife and fork, and for the first time that afternoon his eyes looked straight into mine.
    “I understand what you’re getting at,” he said flatly. “You think that somehow I’m cut off from my roots, that sort of thing.” He wiped his mouth and dropped the napkin onto his plate. “Well, you’re right. At a certain point, I made a decision not to think about who my real father was. He was dead to me even when he was still alive. I knew that he was a drunk and showed no concern for his wife or children. That was enough.”
    “It made you mad.”
    “Not mad. Just numb.”
    “And that doesn’t bother you? Being numb, I mean?”
    “Towards him, no. Other things move me. Beethoven’s symphonies. Shakespeare’s sonnets. I know—it’s not what an African is supposed to care about. But who’s to tell me what I should and shouldn’t care about? Understand, I’m not ashamed of being half Kenyan. I just don’t ask myself a lot of questions about what it all means. About who I
really
am.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I should. I can acknowledge the possibility that if I looked more carefully at myself, I would…”
    For the briefest moment I sensed Mark hesitate, like a rock climber losing his footing. Then, almost immediately, he regained his composure and waved for the check.
    “Who knows?” he said. “What’s certain is that I don’t need the stress. Life’s hard enough without all that excess baggage.”
    We stood up to leave, and I insisted on paying the bill. Outside we exchanged addresses and promised to write, with a dishonesty that made my heart ache. When I got home, I told Auma how the meeting had gone. She looked away for a moment, then broke out with a short, bitter laugh.
    “What’s so funny?”
    “I was just thinking about how life is so strange. You know, as soon as the Old Man died, the lawyers contacted all those who might have a claim to the inheritance. Unlike my mum, Ruth has all the documents needed to prove who Mark’s father was. So of all of the Old Man’s kids, Mark’s claim is the only one that’s uncontested.”
    Again Auma laughed, and I looked up at the picture hanging on her wall, the same picture pasted inside Ruth’s album, of three brothers and a sister, smiling sweetly for the camera.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

    T OWARD THE END OF