B

ear with me here, because this doesn’t necessarily get easier. It would be one
thing if America were a simple place with a simple story. If I could narrate my
part in it only through the lens of what was orderly and sweet. If there were no
steps backward. And if every sadness, when it came, turned out at least to be
redemptive in the end.

But that’s not America, and it’s not me, either. I’m not going to try to bend
this into any kind of perfect shape.

Barack’s second term would prove to be easier in many ways than his first.
We’d learned so much in four years, putting the right people into place around
us, building systems that generally worked. We knew enough now to avoid some
of the inefficiencies and small mistakes that had been made the first time around,
beginning on Inauguration Day in January 2013, when I requested that the
viewing stand for the parade be fully heated this time so our feet wouldn’t freeze.
In an attempt to conserve our energy, we hosted only two inaugural balls that
night, as opposed to the ten we’d gone to in 2009. We had four years still to go,
and if I’d learned anything, it was to relax and try to pace myself.

Sitting next to Barack at the parade after he’d renewed his vows to the
country, I watched the flow of floats and the marching bands moving in and out
of snappy formation, already able to savor more than I had our first time around.
From my vantage point, I could barely make out the individual faces of the
performers. There were thousands of them, each with his or her own story.
Thousands of others had come to D.C. to perform in the many other events
being held in the days leading up to the inauguration, and tens of thousands more
had come to watch.

Later, I’d wish almost frantically that I’d been able to catch sight of one
person in particular, a willowy black girl wearing a sparkling gold headband and a
blue majorette’s uniform who’d come with the King College Prep marching
band from the South Side of Chicago to perform at some of the side events. I
wanted to believe that I somehow would have had the occasion to see her inside
the great wash of people flowing through the city over those days—Hadiya
Pendleton, a girl in ascent, fifteen years old and having a big moment, having
ridden a bus all the way to Washington with her bandmates. At home in
Chicago, Hadiya lived with her parents and her little brother, about two miles
from our house on Greenwood Avenue. She was an honor student at school who
liked to tell people she wanted to go to Harvard someday. She’d begun planning