Over the next two months, Asante and Dr. Collier helped us develop a proposal for a youth counseling network,
something to provide at-risk teenagers with mentoring and tutorial services and to involve parents in a long-term
planning process for reform. It was an exciting project, but my mind was elsewhere. When the proposal was finished, I
told Johnnie that I’d be gone for a few days but that he should go ahead with some of the meetings we’d scheduled, to
start lining up broader support.
“Where’re you going?” he asked me.
“To see my brother.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“I haven’t had one that long.”
The next morning, I flew down to Washington, D.C., where my brother Roy now lived. We had first spoken to each
other during Auma’s visit to Chicago; she had told me then that Roy had married an American Peace Corps worker and
had moved to the States. One day we had called him up just to say hello. He had seemed happy to hear from us, his
voice deep and unruffled, as if we had talked only yesterday. His job, his wife, his new life in America-everything was
“lovely,” he said. The word rolled out of him slowly, the syllables drawn out. “Looove-leee.” A visit from me would be
“fan-taaas-tic.” Staying with him and his wife would be “nooo prooob-lem.” After we got off the phone, I had told
Auma that he sounded well. She looked at me doubtfully.
“Yah, you never know with Roy,” she had said. “He doesn’t always show his true feelings. He’s like the Old Man in
that way. In fact, although they didn’t get along, he really reminds me of the Old Man in many ways. At least that’s
how he was in Nairobi. I haven’t seen him since David’s funeral, though, so maybe marriage has settled him down.”
She didn’t say much more than that; I should get to know him for myself, she said. And so Roy and I had arranged a
visit; I would fly to D.C. for the long weekend, we would see the sights, it would be a wonderful time. Only now, as I
searched the emptying gate at National, Roy was nowhere to be found. I called his house and he answered, sounding
apologetic.
“Listen, brother-you think maybe you can stay in a hotel tonight?”
“Why? Is something wrong?”
“Nothing serious. It’s just, well, me and the wife, we had a little argument. So having you here tonight might not be so
good, you understand?”
“Sure. I-”
“You call me when you find a hotel, okay? We’ll meet tonight and have dinner. I’ll pick you up at eight.”
I checked into the cheapest room I could find and waited. At nine, I heard a knock. When I opened the door, I found a
big man standing there with his hands in his pockets, an even-toothed grin breaking across his ebony face.
“Hey, brother,” he said. “How’s life?”
In the pictures I had of Roy, he was slender, dressed in African print, with an Afro, a goatee, a mustache. The man
who embraced me now was much heavier, over two hundred pounds, I guessed, the flesh on his cheeks pressing out
beneath a thick pair of glasses. The goatee was gone; the African shirt had been replaced by a gray sports coat, white
shirt, and tie. Auma had been right, though; his resemblance to the Old Man was unnerving. Looking at my brother, I
felt as if I were ten years old again.
barré
(Barré)
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