“Do you want to go?”
Auma shook her head, a look of disgust on her face. “Ruth knows I’ve been here almost six months now. She doesn’t
care about me. The only reason she’s invited us is because she’s curious about you. She wants to compare you to
Mark.”
“I think maybe I should go,” I said quietly.
Auma looked at the note again, then handed it back to the driver and said something to him in Swahili. “We’ll both
go,” she said, and walked into the apartment.
Ruth lived in Westlands, an enclave of expensive homes set off by wide lawns and well-tended hedges, each one with
a sentry post manned by brown-uniformed guards. It was raining as we drove toward her house, sending a soft, gentle
spray through the big, leafy trees. The coolness reminded me of the streets around Punahou, Manoa, Tantalus, the
streets where some of my wealthier classmates had lived back in Hawaii. Staring out Auma’s car window, I thought
back to the envy I’d felt toward those classmates whenever they invited me over to play in their big backyards or swim
in their swimming pools. And along with that envy, a different impression-the sense of quiet desperation those big,
pretty houses seemed to contain. The sound of someone’s sister crying softly behind the door. The sight of a mother
sneaking a tumbler of gin in midafternoon. The expression on a father’s face as he sat alone in his den, his features
clenched as he flicked between college football games on TV. An impression of loneliness that perhaps wasn’t true,
perhaps was just a projection of my own heart, but that, either way, had made me want to run, just as, an ocean away,
David had run, back into the marketplace and noisy streets, back into disorder and the laughter disorder produced, back
into the sort of pain a boy could understand.
We came to one of the more modest houses on the block and parked along the curve of a looping driveway. A white
woman with a long jaw and graying hair came out of the house to meet us. Behind her was a black man of my height
and complexion with a bushy Afro and horn-rimmed glasses.
“Come in, come in,” Ruth said. The four of us shook hands stiffly and entered a large living room, where a balding,
older black man in a safari jacket was bouncing a young boy on his lap. “This is my husband,” Ruth said, “and this is
Mark’s little brother, Joey.”
“Hey, Joey,” I said, bending down to shake his hand. He was a beautiful boy, with honey-colored skin and two front
teeth missing. Ruth tousled the boy’s big curls, then looked at her husband and said, “Weren’t you two on your way to
the club?”
“Yes, yes,” the man said, standing up. “Come on, Joey...it was nice to meet you both.” The boy stood fast, staring up
at Auma and me with a bright, curious smile until his father finally picked him up and carried him out the door.
“Well, here we are,” Ruth said, leading us to the couch and pouring lemonade. “I must say it was quite a surprise to
find out you were here, Barry. I told Mark that we just had to see how this other son of Obama’s turned out. Your name
is Obama, isn’t it? But your mother remarried. I wonder why she had you keep your name?”
I smiled as if I hadn’t understood the question. “So, Mark,” I said, turning to my brother, “I hear you’re at Berkeley.”
“Stanford,” he corrected. His voice was deep, his accent perfectly American. “I’m in my last year of the physics
program there.”
“It must be tough,” Auma offered.
barré
(Barré)
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