Angela looked like she was going to pass out. The mayor asked if she would introduce him to her associates, and she
began to laugh and flutter about before gathering enough composure to take him down the row of leaders. They all
stood at attention like a line of scouts, each one wearing the same helpless grin. When the review was over, the mayor
offered Angela his arm, and together they walked toward the door, the crowd pressing behind them.
“Honey, can you believe this?” Shirley whispered to Mona.
The ceremony lasted about fifteen minutes. Police had closed off two blocks of Michigan Avenue, and a small stage
had been set up in front of the storefront where the MET center would soon open. Angela introduced all the church
members who’d worked on the project, as well as the politicians in attendance; Will gave a brief speech about DCP.
The mayor congratulated us on our civic involvement, while the senator, Reverend Smalls, and the alderman jockeyed
for position behind him, smiling widely for the photographers they’d hired. The ribbon was cut, and that was it. As the
limousine sped away to the next event, the crowd dispersed almost instantly, leaving just a few of us standing in the
litter-blown road.
I walked over to Angela, who was busy talking to Shirley and Mona. “When I heard him say ‘Ms. Rider,’” she was
saying, “I swear I just about died.”
Shirley shook her head. “Girl, don’t I know it.”
“We got the pictures to prove it,” Mona said, holding up her Instamatic camera.
I tried to break in. “Did we get a date for the rally?”
“So then he tells me that I look too young to have a fourteen-year-old daughter. Can you imagine?”
“Did he agree to come to our rally?” I repeated.
The three of them looked at me impatiently. “What rally?”
I threw up my hands and started stomping down the street. As I reached my car, I heard Will coming up from behind.
“Where you off to in such a hurry?” he said.
“I don’t know. Somewhere.” I tried to light a cigarette, but the wind kept blowing out the match. I cursed, tossing the
matches to the ground, and turned to Will. “You wanna know something, Will?”
“What.”
“We’re trifling. That’s what we are. Trifling. Here we are, with a chance to show the mayor that we’re real players in
the city, a group he needs to take seriously. So what do we do? We act like a bunch of starstruck children, that’s what.
Standing around, cheesing and grinning, worrying about whether we got a picture taken with him-”
“You mean you didn’t get yourself a picture?” Will smiled cheerfully and held up a Polaroid shot, then put a hand on
my shoulder. “You mind if I tell you something, Barack? You need to lighten up a little bit. What you call trifling was
the most fun Angela and them have had all year. Ten years from now, they’ll still be bragging about it. It made ’em feel
important. And you made it happen. So what if they forgot to invite Harold to a rally? We can always call him back.”
I climbed into my car and rolled down the window. “Forget it, Will. I’m just frustrated.”
“Yeah, I can see that. But you should be asking yourself why you so frustrated.”
“Why do you think?”
Will shrugged. “I think you’re just trying to do a good job. But I also think you ain’t never satisfied. You want
everything to happen fast. Like you got something to prove out here.”
barré
(Barré)
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