cook for himself, could load up on a hot breakfast before his morning classes. In
the evenings, he parked himself in my room and did his schoolwork, giddily
dressed in one of the hotel’s thick terry-cloth robes.
At Christmastime that year, we flew to Honolulu. I’d never been to Hawaii
before but was pretty certain I’d like it. I was coming from Chicago, after all,
where winter stretched through April, where it was normal to keep a snow
shovel stashed in the trunk of your car. I owned an unsettling amount of wool.
For me, getting away from winter had always felt like a joyride. During college,
I’d made a trip to the Bahamas with my Bahamian classmate David, and another
to Jamaica with Suzanne. In both instances, I’d reveled in the soft air on my skin
and the simple buoyancy I felt anytime I got close to the ocean. Maybe it was no
accident that I was drawn to people who’d been raised on islands.
In Kingston, Suzanne had taken me to powdery white beaches where we
dodged waves in water that looked like jade. She’d piloted us expertly through a
chaotic market, jabbering with street vendors.
“Try dis!” she’d shouted at me, going full throttle with the accent,
exuberantly handing me pieces of grilled fish to taste, handing me fried yams,
stalks of sugarcane, and cut-up pieces of mango. She demanded I try everything,
intent on getting me to see how much there was to love.
It was no different with Barack. By now he’d spent more than a decade on
the mainland, but Hawaii still mattered to him deeply. He wanted me to take it
all in, from the splaying palm trees that lined the streets of Honolulu and the
crescent arc of Waikiki Beach to the green drape of hills surrounding the city. For
about a week, we stayed in a borrowed apartment belonging to family friends and
made trips every day to the ocean, to swim and laze about in the sun. I met
Barack’s half sister Maya, who at nineteen was kind and smart and getting a
degree at Barnard. She had round cheeks and wide brown eyes and dark hair that
curled in a rich tangle around her shoulders. I met his grandparents Madelyn and
Stanley Dunham, or “Toot and Gramps,” as he called them. They lived in the
same high-rise where they’d raised Barack, in a small apartment decorated with
Indonesian textiles that Ann had sent home over the years.
And I met Ann herself, a plump, lively woman with dark frizzy hair and the
same angular chin as Barack. She wore chunky silver jewelry, a bright batik dress,
and the kind of sturdy sandals I would guess an anthropologist might wear. She
was friendly toward me and curious about my background and my career. It was
clear she adored her son—almost revered him—and she seemed most eager to sit