necessarily forget. Roy’s memories of the Old Man seemed more immediate, more taunting; for him the past remained
an open sore.
“Nothing was ever good enough for him,” he told me as the busboy took our plates away. “He was smart, and he
couldn’t ever let you forget. If you came home with the second best grades in the class, he would ask why you weren’t
first. ‘You are an Obama,’ he would say. ‘You should be the best.’ He would really believe this. And then I would see
him drunk, with no money, living like a beggar. I would ask myself, How can someone so smart fall so badly? It made
no sense to me. No sense.
“Even after I was living on my own, even after his death, I would try to figure out this puzzle. It was as if I couldn’t
escape him. I remember we had to take his body to Alego for the funeral, and as the eldest son, I was responsible for
making the arrangements. The government wanted a Christian burial. The family wanted a Muslim burial. People came
to Home Square from everywhere, and we had to mourn him according to Luo tradition, burning a log for three days,
listening to people cry and moan. Half these people, I didn’t even know who they were. They wanted food. They
wanted beer. Some people whispered that the Old Man had been poisoned, that I must take revenge. Some people stole
things from the house. Then our relatives began to fight about the Old Man’s inheritance. The Old Man’s last girlfriend,
the mother of our baby brother, George-she wanted everything. Some people, like our Aunt Sarah, sided with her.
Others lined up with my mum’s side of the family. I’m telling you, it was crazy! Everything seemed to be going wrong.
“After the funeral was over, I didn’t want to be with anyone. The only person I trusted was David, our younger
brother. That guy, let me tell you, he was okay. He looked like you a little bit, only younger...fifteen, sixteen. His
mother, Ruth, had tried to raise him like an American. But David, he rebelled. He loved everybody, you see. He ran
away from home and came to live with me. I told him he should go home, but he refused. He didn’t want to be an
American, he said. He was an African. He was an Obama.
“When David died, that was it for me. I was sure our whole family was cursed. I started drinking, fighting-I didn’t
care. I figured if the Old Man could die, if David could die, that I would have to die, too. Sometimes I wonder what
would have happened if I had stayed in Kenya. As it was, there was Nancy, this American girl I had been seeing. She’d
returned to the States, so one day I just called her and said I wanted to come. When she said yes, I bought a ticket and
caught the next plane out. I didn’t pack, or tell my office, or say goodbye to anyone, or anything.
“I thought I could start over, you see. But now I know you can never start over. Not really. You think you have
control, but you are like a fly in somebody else’s web. Sometimes I think that’s why I like accounting. All day, you are
only dealing with numbers. You add them, multiply them, and if you are careful, you will always have a solution.
There’s a sequence there. An order. With numbers, you can have control....”
Roy took another sip from his drink, and suddenly his speech slowed, as if he’d dropped deep into another place, as if
our father had taken possession of him. “I am the oldest, you see. In Luo tradition, I am now head of the household. I
am responsible for you, and for Auma, and for all the younger boys. It’s my responsibility to set things right. To pay
the boys’ school fees. To see that Auma is properly married. To build a proper house and bring the family together.”
I reached across the table and touched his hand. “You don’t have to do it alone, brother,” I said. “We can share the
load.”
barré
(Barré)
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