Bernadette hoisted Tyrone up on her lap. “Tell that to him.”
Sadie didn’t join us for that meeting. She had called me to say that she had decided to stop working with DCP.
“My husband doesn’t think it’s a good idea, me spending all this time instead of looking after my own family. He says
that the publicity went to my head...that I became prideful.”
I suggested that as long as her family lived in the Gardens, she’d have to stay involved.
“Ain’t nothing gonna change, Mr. Obama,” she said. “We just gonna concentrate on saving our money so we can
move outta here as fast as we can.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I ’M TELLING YOU, MAN, the world is a place.”
“Say, the world is a place, huh.”
“That’s just what I’m saying.”
We were walking back to the car after dinner in Hyde Park, and Johnnie was in an expansive mood. He often got like
this, especially after a good meal and wine. The first time I met him, when he was still working with a downtown civic
group, he had started explaining the relationship between jazz and Eastern religion, then swerved into an analysis of
black women’s behinds, before coming to a stop on the subject of Federal Reserve Bank policy. In such moments his
eyes would grow wide; his voice would speed up; his round, bearded face would glow with a childlike wonder. That
was part of the reason I’d hired Johnnie, I suppose, that curiosity of his, his appreciation of the absurd. He was a
philosopher of the blues.
“I’ll give you an example,” Johnnie was saying to me now. “The other day, I’m headed for a meeting up in the State
of Illinois Building. You know how it’s open in the middle, right...big atrium and all that. Well, the guy I’m supposed
to be meeting with is late, so I’m just standing there looking down at the lobby from the twelfth floor, checking out the
architecture, when all of a sudden this body flies past me. A suicide.”
“You didn’t tell me about that-”
“Yeah, well, shook me up pretty good. High up as I was, I could hear the body land like it was right there next to me.
Terrible sound. Soon as it happened, these office workers rushed up to the guardrail to see what was going on. We’re
all looking down, and sure enough the body’s lying there, all twisted and limp. People started screaming, covering their
eyes. But the strange thing was, after people got through screaming, they’d go back to the railing to get a second look.
Then they’d scream and cover their eyes all over again. Now why would they do that? Like, what do they expect the
second time around? But see, folks are funny like that. We can’t help ourselves with that morbid shit....
“Anyway, the cops come, they rope things off and take the body away. Then the building crew starts cleaning up.
Nothing special, you know-just a broom and a mop. Sweeping up a life. Whole thing’s cleaned up in maybe five
minutes. Makes sense, I guess.... I mean, it’s not like you need special equipment or suits or something. But it starts me
thinking, How’s that gonna feel to be one of those janitors, mopping up somebody’s remains? Somebody’s got to do it,
right? But how you gonna feel that night eating dinner?”