Dreams from My Father (33 page)

Sometimes I would put such questions to the people I met with. They would respond with the same bemused look Reverend Philips and Reverend Wright had given me. For them, the principles in Trinity’s brochure were articles of faith no less than belief in the Resurrection. You have some good ideas, they would tell me. Maybe if you joined the church you could help us start a community program. Why don’t you come by on Sunday?

And I would shrug and play the question off, unable to confess that I could no longer distinguish between faith and mere folly, between faith and simple endurance; that while I believed in the sincerity I heard in their voices, I remained a reluctant skeptic, doubtful of my own motives, wary of expedient conversion, having too many quarrels with God to accept a salvation too easily won.

The day before Thanksgiving, Harold Washington died.

It occurred without warning. Only a few months earlier, Harold had won reelection, handily beating Vrdolyak and Byrne, breaking the deadlock that had prevailed in the city for the previous four years. He had run a cautious campaign this time out, professionally managed, without any of the fervor of 1983; a campaign of consolidation, of balanced budgets and public works. He reached out to some of the old-time Machine politicians, the Irish and the Poles, ready to make peace. The business community sent him their checks, resigned to his presence. So secure was his power that rumblings of discontent had finally surfaced within his own base, among black nationalists upset with his willingness to cut whites and Hispanics into the action, among activists disappointed with his failure to tackle poverty head-on, and among people who preferred the dream to the reality, impotence to compromise.

Harold didn’t pay such critics much attention. He saw no reason to take any big risks, no reason to hurry. He said he’d be mayor for the next twenty years.

And then death: sudden, simple, final, almost ridiculous in its ordinariness, the heart of an overweight man giving way.

It rained that weekend, cold and steady. In the neighborhood, the streets were silent. Indoors and outside, people cried. The black radio stations replayed Harold’s speeches, hour after hour, trying to summon the dead. At City Hall, the lines wound around several blocks as mourners visited the body, lying in state. Everywhere black people appeared dazed, stricken, uncertain of direction, frightened of the future.

By the time of the funeral, Washington loyalists had worked through the initial shock. They began to meet, regroup, trying to decide on a strategy for maintaining control, trying to select Harold’s rightful heir. But it was too late for that. There was no political organization in place, no clearly defined principles to follow. The entire of black politics had centered on one man who radiated like a sun. Now that he was gone, no one could agree on what that presence had meant.

The loyalists squabbled. Factions emerged. Rumors flew. By Monday, the day the city council was to select a new mayor to serve until the special election, the coalition that had first put Harold in office was all but extinguished. I went down to City Hall that evening to watch this second death. People, mostly black, had been gathering outside the city council’s chambers since late afternoon—old people, curiosity seekers, men and women with banners and signs. They shouted at the black aldermen who had cut deals with the white bloc. They waved dollar bills at the soft-spoken black alderman—a holdover from Machine days—behind whom the white aldermen had thrown their support. They called this man a sellout and an Uncle Tom. They chanted and stomped and swore never to leave.

But power was patient and knew what it wanted; power could out-wait slogans and prayers and candlelight vigils. Around midnight, just before the council got around to taking a vote, the door to the chambers opened briefly and I saw two of the aldermen off in a huddle. One, black, had been Harold’s man; the other, white, Vrdolyak’s. They were whispering now, smiling briefly, then looking out at the still-chanting crowd and quickly suppressing their smiles, large, fleshy men in double-breasted suits with the same look of hunger in their eyes—men who knew the score.

I left after that. I pushed through the crowds that overflowed into the street and began walking across Daley Plaza toward my car. The wind whipped up cold and sharp as a blade, and I watched a handmade sign tumble past me.
HIS SPIRIT LIVES ON
, the sign read in heavy block letters. And beneath the words that picture I had seen so many times while waiting for a chair in Smitty’s Barbershop: the handsome, grizzled face; the indulgent smile; the twinkling eyes; now blowing across the empty space, as easily as an autumn leaf.

The months passed at a breathless pace, with constant reminders of all the things left undone. We worked with a citywide coalition in support of school reform. We held a series of joint meetings with Mexicans in the Southeast Side to craft a common environmental strategy for the region. I drove Johnnie nuts trying to cram him with the things it had taken me three years to learn.

“So who did you meet with this week?” I would ask.

“Well, there’s this woman, Mrs. Banks, over at True Vine Holiness Church. Seems like she’s got potential … hold on, yeah, here it is. Teacher, interested in education. I think she’ll definitely work with us.”

“What does her husband do?”

“You know, I forgot to ask her—”

“What does she think of the teachers’ union?”

“Damn, Barack, I only had half an hour ….”

In February, I received my acceptance from Harvard. The letter came with a thick packet of information. It reminded me of the packet I’d received from Punahou that summer fourteen years earlier. I remembered how Gramps had stayed up the whole night reading from the catalog about music lessons and advanced placement courses, glee clubs and baccalaureates; how he had waved that catalog and told me it would be my meal ticket, that the contacts I made at a school like Punahou would last me a lifetime, that I would move in charmed circles and have all the opportunities that he’d never had. I remembered how, at the end of the evening, he had smiled and tousled my hair, his breath smelling of whiskey, his eyes shining as if he were about to cry. And I had smiled back at him, pretending to understand but actually wishing I was still in Indonesia running barefoot along a paddy field, with my feet sinking into the cool, wet mud, part of a chain of other brown boys chasing after a tattered kite.

I felt something like that now.

I had scheduled a luncheon that week at our office for the twenty or so ministers whose churches had agreed to join the organization. Most of the ministers we’d invited showed up, as did most of our key leadership. Together we discussed strategies for the coming year, the lessons learned from Harold’s death. We set dates for a training retreat, agreed on a schedule of dues, talked about the continued need to recruit more churches. When we were finished, I announced that I would be leaving in May and that Johnnie would be taking over as director.

No one was surprised. They all came up to me afterward and offered their congratulations. Reverend Philips assured me I had made a wise choice. Angela and Mona said they always knew I’d amount to something someday. Shirley asked me if I’d be willing to advise a nephew of hers who had fallen down a manhole and wanted to sue.

Only Mary seemed upset. After most of the ministers had left, she helped Will, Johnnie, and me clean up. When I asked her if she needed a ride, she started shaking her head.

“What is it with you men?” she said, looking at Will and myself. Her voice trembled slightly as she pulled on her coat. “Why is it you’re always in a hurry? Why is it that what you have isn’t ever good enough?”

I started to say something, then thought about Mary’s two daughters at home, the father that they would never know. Instead, I walked her to the door and gave her a hug. When she was gone, I returned to the meeting room, where Will was working on a plate of leftover chicken wings.

“Want some?” he asked in between bites.

I shook my head, taking a seat across the table from him. He watched me for a while, chewing silently, sucking hot sauce off his fingers.

“Place kinda grows on you, don’t it?” he said finally.

I nodded. “Yeah, Will. It does.”

He took a sip from his soda and let out a small burp. “Three years ain’t that long to be gone,” he said.

“How do you know I’m gonna be back?”

“I don’t know
how
I know,” he said, pushing away his plate. “I just
know,
that’s all.” Without another word he went to wash his hands, before mounting his bike and riding off down the street.

I woke up at six
A
.
M
. that Sunday. It was still dark outside. I shaved, brushed the lint from my only suit, and arrived at the church by seven-thirty. Most of the pews were already filled. A white-gloved usher led me past elderly matrons in wide plumaged hats, tall unsmiling men in suits and ties and mud-cloth
kufis,
children in their Sunday best. A parent from Dr. Collier’s school waved at me; an official from the CHA with whom I’d had several run-ins nodded curtly. I shunted through to the center of a row and stuffed myself between a plump older woman who failed to scoot over and a young family of four, the father already sweating in his coarse woolen jacket, the mother telling the two young boys beside her to stop kicking each other.

“Where’s God?” I overheard the toddler ask his brother.

“Shut up,” the older boy replied.

“Both of you settle down right now,” the mother said.

Trinity’s associate pastor, a middle-aged woman with graying hair and a no-nonsense demeanor, read the bulletin and led sleepy voices through a few traditional hymns. Then the choir filed down the aisle dressed in white robes and kente-cloth shawls, clapping and singing as they fanned out behind the altar, an organ following the quickening drums:

I’m so glad, Jesus lifted me!

I’m so glad, Jesus lifted me!

I’m so glad, Jesus lifted me!

Singing Glory, Ha-le-lu-yah!

Jesus lifted me!

As the congregation joined in, the deacons, then Reverend Wright, appeared beneath the large cross that hung from the rafters. The reverend remained silent while devotions were read, scanning the faces in front of him, watching the collection basket pass from hand to hand. When the collection was over, he stepped up to the pulpit and read the names of those who had passed away that week, those who were ailing, each name causing a flutter somewhere in the crowd, the murmur of recognition.

“Let us join hands,” the reverend said, “as we kneel and pray at the foot of an old rugged cross—”

“Yes …”

“Lord, we come first to thank you for what you’ve already done for us …. We come to thank you most of all for Jesus. Lord, we come from different walks of life. Some considered high, and some low … but all on equal ground at the foot of this cross. Lord, thank you! For Jesus, Lord … our burden bearer and heavy load sharer, we thank you ….”

The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.” He began with a passage from the Book of Samuel—the story of Hannah, who, barren and taunted by her rivals, had wept and shaken in prayer before her God. The story reminded him, he said, of a sermon a fellow pastor had preached at a conference some years before, in which the pastor described going to a museum and being confronted by a painting titled
Hope
.

“The painting depicts a harpist,” Reverend Wright explained, “a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn down to the scene below, down to the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.

“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere … That’s the world! On which hope sits!”

And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic, the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountain-top, worrying about paying the light bill. But also the pain of those closer to the metaphorical summit: the middle-class woman who seems to have all her worldly needs taken care of but whose husband is treating her like “the maid, the household service, the jitney service, and the escort service all rolled into one”; the child whose wealthy parents worry more about “the texture of hair on the outside of the head than the quality of education inside the head.”

“Isn’t that … the world that each of us stands on?”

“Yessuh!”

“Like Hannah, we have known bitter times! Daily, we face rejection and despair!”

“Say it!”

“And yet consider once again the painting before us. Hope! Like Hannah, that harpist is looking upwards, a few faint notes floating upwards towards the heavens. She dares to hope …. She has the audacity … to make music … and praise God … on the one string … she has left!”

People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters. As I watched and listened from my seat, I began to hear all the notes from the past three years swirl about me. The courage and fear of Ruby and Will. The race pride and anger of men like Rafiq. The desire to let go, the desire to escape, the desire to give oneself up to a God that could somehow put a floor on despair.

And in that single note—hope!—I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories—of survival, and freedom, and hope—became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shamed about, memories more accessible than those of ancient Egypt, memories that all people might study and cherish—and with which we could start to rebuild. And if a part of me continued to feel that this Sunday communion sometimes simplified our condition, that it could sometimes disguise or suppress the very real conflicts among us and would fulfill its promise only through action, I also felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams.