“Why haven’t you ever gone to Kenya?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m scared of what I’ll find out.”
“Huh.” Johnnie lit a cigarette and rolled down the window to let out the smoke. “It’s funny,” he said, “how listening
to Asante back there made me think about my old man. I mean, it’s not like my old man is real educated or nothing. He
doesn’t know anything about Africa. After my mother died, he had to raise me and my brothers on his own. Drove a
delivery truck for Spiegel’s for twenty years. They laid him off before his pension vested, so he’s still working-for
another company, but doing the same thing every day. Lifting other people’s furniture.
“Never seemed like he really enjoyed life, you know what I mean? On weekends, he’d just hang around the house,
and some of my uncles would come over and they’d drink and listen to music. They’d complain about what their
bosses had done to ’em this week. The Man did this. The Man did that. But if one of ’em actually started talking about
doing something different, or had a new idea, the rest of ’em would just tear the guy up. ‘How’s some no-’count nigger
like you gonna start himself a business?’ one of ’em’d say. And somebody else’d say, ‘Take that glass away from
Jimmy-that wine done gone to his head.’ They’d all be laughing, but I could tell they weren’t laughing inside.
Sometimes, if I was around, my uncles’d start talking about me. ‘Hey, boy, that sure is a knobby head you got.’ ‘Hey,
boy, you starting to sound just like a white man, with all them big words.’”
Johnnie blew a stream of smoke into the hazy air. “When I was in high school, I got to feeling ashamed of him. My
old man, I mean. Working like a dog. Sitting there, getting drunk with his brothers. I swore I’d never end up like that.
But you know, when I thought about it later, I realized my old man never laughed when I talked about wanting to go to
college. I mean, he never said anything one way or the other, but he always made sure me and my brother got up for
school, that we didn’t have to work, that we had a little walking-around money. The day I graduated, I remember he
showed up in a jacket and tie, and he just shook my hand. That’s all...just shook my hand, then went back to work....”
Johnnie stopped talking; the traffic cleared. I started thinking about those posters back in Asante’s office-posters of
Nefertiti, regal and dark-hued in her golden throne; and Shaka Zulu, fierce and proud in his leopard-skin tunic-and then
further back to that day years ago, before my father came for his visit to Hawaii, when I had gone to the library in
search of my own magic kingdom, my own glorious birthright. I wondered how much difference those posters would
make to the boy we had just left in Asante’s office. Probably not as much as Asante himself, I thought. A man willing
to listen. A hand placed on a young man’s shoulders.
“He was there,” I said to Johnnie.
“Who?”
“Your father. He was there for you.”
Johnnie scratched his arm. “Yeah, Barack. I guess he was.”
“You ever tell him that?”
“Naw. We’re not real good at talking.” Johnnie looked out the window, then turned to me. “Maybe I should though,
huh.”
“Yeah, John,” I said, nodding. “Maybe you should.”
barré
(Barré)
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