Dreams from My Father (28 page)

“What do we do now?” Bernadette asked.

“We go downtown. If they won’t come to us, we’ll go to them.”

The next day we planned our action. Another letter to the CHA executive director was drafted, informing him that we would appear at his office in two days to demand an answer to the asbestos question. A short press release was issued. The children of Carver were sent home with a flyer pinned to their jackets urging their parents to join us. Sadie, Linda, and Bernadette spent most of the evening calling their neighbors.

But when the day of reckoning arrived, I counted only eight heads in the yellow bus parked in front of the school. Bernadette and I stood in the parking lot trying to recruit other parents as they came to pick up their children. They said they had doctors’ appointments or couldn’t find baby-sitters. Some didn’t bother with excuses, walking past us as if we were panhandlers. When Angela, Mona, and Shirley arrived to see how things were shaping up, I insisted they ride with us to lend moral support. Everyone looked depressed, everyone except Tyrone and Jewel, who were busy making faces at Mr. Lucas, the only father in the group. Dr. Collier came up beside me.

“I guess this is it,” I said.

“Better than I expected,” she said. “Obama’s Army.”

“Right.”

“Good luck,” she said, and clapped me on the back.

The bus rolled past the old incinerator and the Ryerson Steel plant, through Jackson Park, and then onto Lake Shore Drive. As we approached downtown, I passed out a script for the action and asked everyone to read it over carefully. Waiting for them to finish, I noticed that Mr. Lucas had a deep frown carved into his forehead. He was a short, gentle man with a bit of a stutter; he did odd jobs around Altgeld and helped out the mother of his children whenever he could. I came up beside him and asked if something was wrong.

“I don’t read so good,” he said quietly.

We both looked down at the page of crowded type.

“That’s okay.” I walked to the front of the bus. “Listen up, everybody! We’re going to go over the script together to make sure we’ve got it straight. What do we want?”

“A meeting with the director!”

“Where?”

“In Altgeld!”

“What if they say they’ll give us an answer later?”

“We want an answer now!”

“What if they do something we don’t expect?”

“We caucus!”

“Crackers!” Tyrone shouted.

The CHA office was in a stout gray building in the center of the Loop. We filed off the bus, entered the lobby, and mashed onto the elevator. On the fourth floor, we entered a brightly lit lobby where a receptionist sat behind an imposing desk.

“Can I help you?” she said, scarcely glancing up from her magazine.

“We’d like to see the director, please,” Sadie said.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“He …” Sadie turned to me.

“He knows we’re coming,” I said.

“Well, he’s not in the office right now.”

Sadie said, “Could you please check with his deputy?”

The receptionist looked up with an icy stare, but we stood our ground. “Have a seat,” she said finally.

The parents sat down, and everyone fell into silence. Shirley started to light a cigarette, but Angela elbowed her in the ribs.

“We’re supposed to be concerned about health, remember?”

“It’s too late for me, girl,” Shirley muttered, but the pack went back into her purse. A group of men in suits and ties came out of the door behind the receptionist’s desk and gave our contingent the once-over as they walked to the elevator. Linda whispered something to Bernadette; Bernadette whispered back.

“What’s everybody whispering for?” I asked loudly.

The children giggled. Bernadette said, “I feel like I’m waiting to see the principal or something.”

“You hear that, everybody,” I said. “They build these big offices to make you feel intimidated. Just remember that this is a
public
authority. Folks who work here are responsible to you.”

“Excuse me,” the receptionist said to us, her voice rising to match mine. “I’ve been told that the director will not be able to see you today. You should report any problems you have to Mr. Anderson out in Altgeld.”

“Look, we’ve already seen Mr. Anderson,” Bernadette said. “If the director’s not here, we’d like to see his deputy.”

“I’m sorry but that’s not possible. If you don’t leave right now, I’ll have to call Security.”

At that moment, the elevator doors opened and several TV film crews came in, along with various reporters. “Is this the protest about asbestos?” one of the reporters asked me.

I pointed to Sadie. “She’s the spokesperson.”

The TV crews began to set up, and the reporters took out their notebooks. Sadie excused herself and dragged me aside.

“I don’t wanna talk in front of no cameras.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. I never been on TV before.”

“You’ll be fine.”

In a few minutes the cameras were rolling, and Sadie, her voice quavering slightly, held her first press conference. As she started to field questions, a woman in a red suit and heavy mascara rushed into the reception area. She smiled tightly at Sadie, introducing herself as the director’s assistant, Ms. Broadnax. “I’m so sorry that the director isn’t here,” Ms. Broadnax said. “If you’ll just come this way, I’m sure we can clear up this whole matter.”

“Is there asbestos in all CHA units?” a reporter shouted.

“Will the director meet with the parents?”

“We’re interested in the best possible outcome for the residents,” Ms. Broadnax shouted over her shoulder. We followed her into a large room where several gloomy officials were already seated around a conference table. Ms. Broadnax remarked on how cute the children were and offered everyone coffee and doughnuts.

“We don’t need doughnuts,” Linda said. “We need answers.”

And that was it. Without a word from me, the parents found out that no tests had been done and obtained a promise that testing would start by the end of the day. They negotiated a meeting with the director, collected a handful of business cards, and thanked Ms. Broadnax for her time. The date of the meeting was announced to the press before we crammed back into the elevator to meet our bus. Out on the street, Linda insisted that I treat everybody, including the bus driver, to caramel popcorn. As the bus pulled away, I tried to conduct an evaluation, pointing out the importance of preparation, how everyone had worked as a team.

“Did you see that woman’s face when she saw the cameras?”

“What about her acting all nice to the kids? Just trying to cozy up to us so we wouldn’t ask no questions.”

“Wasn’t Sadie terrific? You did us proud, Sadie.”

“I got to call my cousin to make sure she gets her VCR set up. We gonna be on TV.”

I tried to stop everybody from talking at once, but Mona tugged on my shirt. “Give it up, Barack. Here.” She handed me a bag of popcorn. “Eat.”

I took a seat beside her. Mr. Lucas hoisted the children up onto his lap for the view of Buckingham Fountain. As I chewed on the gooey popcorn, looking out at the lake, calm and turquoise now, I tried to recall a more contented moment.

I changed as a result of that bus trip, in a fundamental way. It was the sort of change that’s important not because it alters your concrete circumstances in some way (wealth, security, fame) but because it hints at what might be possible and therefore spurs you on, beyond the immediate exhilaration, beyond any subsequent disappointments, to retrieve that thing that you once, ever so briefly, held in your hand. That bus ride kept me going, I think. Maybe it still does.

The publicity was nice, of course. The evening after we got back from the CHA office, Sadie’s face was all over the television. The press, smelling blood, discovered that another South Side project contained pipes lined with rotting asbestos. Aldermen began calling for immediate hearings. Lawyers called about a class-action suit.

But it was away from all that, as we prepared for our meeting with the CHA director, that I began to see something wonderful happening. The parents began talking about ideas for future campaigns. New parents got involved. The block-by-block canvass we’d planned earlier was put into effect, with Linda and her swollen belly waddling door-to-door to collect complaint forms; Mr. Lucas, unable to read the forms himself, explaining to neighbors how to fill them out properly. Even those who’d opposed our efforts began to come around: Mrs. Reece agreed to cosponsor the event, and Reverend Johnson allowed some of his members to make an announcement at Sunday service. It was as though Sadie’s small, honest step had broken into a reservoir of hope, allowing people in Altgeld to reclaim a power they had had all along.

The meeting was to be held in Our Lady’s gymnasium, the only building in Altgeld that could accommodate the three hundred people we hoped would turn up. The leaders arrived an hour early, and we went over our demands one last time—that a panel of residents work with CHA to assure containment of asbestos, and that CHA establish a firm timetable for making repairs. As we discussed a few last-minute details, Henry, the maintenance man, waved me over to the public address system.

“What’s the matter?”

“System’s dead. A short or something.”

“So we don’t have a microphone?”

“Not outta here. Gonna have to make do with this thing here.” He pointed to a solitary amplifier, the size of a small suitcase, with a loose microphone that hung by a single, frayed cord. Sadie and Linda came up beside me and stared down at the primitive box.

“You’re joking,” Linda said.

I tapped on the mike. “It’ll be okay. You guys will just have to speak up.” Then, looking down at the amp again, I said, “Try not to let the director hog the microphone, though. He’ll end up talking for hours. Just hold it up to him after you’ve asked the questions. You know, like Oprah.”

“If nobody comes,” Sadie said, looking at her watch, “we won’t need no mike.”

People came. From all across the Gardens, people came—senior citizens, teenagers, tots. By seven o’clock five hundred people had arrived; by seven-fifteen, seven hundred. TV crews began setting up cameras, and the local politicians on hand asked us for a chance to warm up the crowd. Marty, who had come to watch the event, could barely contain himself.

“You’ve really got something here, Barack. These people are ready to move.”

There was just one problem: The director still hadn’t arrived. Ms. Broadnax said he was caught in traffic, so we decided to go ahead with the first part of the agenda. By the time the preliminaries were over, it was almost eight. I could hear people starting to grumble, fanning themselves in the hot, airless gym. Near the door, I saw Marty trying to lead the crowd in a chant. I pulled him aside.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re losing people. You have to do something to keep them fired up.”

“Sit down,
will you please.”

I was about to cut our losses and go ahead with Ms. Broadnax when a murmur rose from the back of the gym and the director walked through the door surrounded by a number of aides. He was a dapper black man of medium build, in his early forties. Straightening his tie, he grimly made his way to the front of the room.

“Welcome,” Sadie said into the mike. “We’ve got a whole bunch of people who want to talk to you.”

The crowd applauded; we heard a few catcalls. The TV lights switched on.

“We’re here tonight,” Sadie said, “to talk about a problem that threatens the health of our children. But before we talk about asbestos, we need to deal with problems we live with every day. Linda?”

Sadie handed the microphone to Linda, who turned to the director and pointed to the stack of complaint forms.

“Mr. Director. All of us in Altgeld don’t expect miracles. But we do expect basic services. That’s all, just the basics. Now these people here have gone out of their way to fill out, real neat-like, all the things they keep asking the CHA to fix but don’t never get fixed. So our question is, will you agree here tonight, in front of all these residents, to work with us to make these repairs?”

The next moments are blurry in my memory. As I remember it, Linda leaned over to get the director’s response, but when he reached for the microphone, Linda pulled it back.

“A yes-or-no answer, please,” Linda said. The director said something about responding in his own fashion and again reached for the mike. Again, Linda pulled it back, only this time there was the slightest hint of mockery in the gesture, the movement of a child who’s goading a sibling with an ice-cream cone. I tried to wave at Linda to forget what I’d said before and give up the microphone, but I was standing too far in the rear for her to see me. Meanwhile, the director had gotten his hand on the cord, and for a moment a struggle ensued between the distinguished official and the pregnant young woman in stretch pants and blouse. Behind them, Sadie stood motionless, her face shining, her eyes wide. The crowd, not clear on what was happening, began shouting, some at the director, others at Linda.

Then … pandemonium. The director released his grip and headed for the exit. Like some single-celled creature, people near the door lurched after him, and he broke into a near trot. I ran myself, and by the time I had fought my way outside, the director had secured himself in his limousine while a swell of people surrounded the car, some pressing their faces against the tinted glass, others laughing, still others cursing, most just standing about in confusion. Slowly the limo lurched forward, an inch at a time, until a path onto the road opened up and the car sped away, lumping over the cratered street, running over a curb, vanishing from sight.

I walked back toward the gymnasium in a daze, against the current of people now going home. Near the door, a small circle was gathered around a young man in a brown leather jacket whom I recognized as an aide to the alderman.

“The whole thing was put together by Vrdolyak, see,” he was telling the group. “You saw that white man egging the folks on. They just trying to make Harold look bad.”

A few feet away, I spotted Mrs. Reece and several of her lieutenants. “See what you done!” she snapped at me. “This is what happens when you try and get these young folks involved. Embarrassed the whole Gardens, on TV and everything. White folks seeing us act like a bunch of niggers! Just like they expect.”