Dreams from My Father - Barack Obama [156]
“Does Bernard know about this?”
“Yes, he knows by now. You understand, such things made no difference to your father. He would say that they were all his children. He drove this other man away, and would give Kezia money for the children whenever he could. But once he died, there was nothing to prove that he’d accepted them in this way.”
We turned a corner onto a busier road. In front of us, a pregnant goat bleated as it scuttered out of the path of an oncoming matatu. Across the way, two little girls in dusty red school uniforms, their round heads shaven almost clean, held hands and sang as they skipped across a gutter. An old woman with her head under a faded shawl motioned to us to look at her wares: two margarine tins of dried beans, a neat stack of tomatoes, dried fish hanging from a wire like a chain of silver coins. I looked into the old woman’s face, drawn beneath the shadows. Who was this woman? I wondered. My grandmother? A stranger? And what about Bernard—should my feelings for him somehow be different now? I looked over at a bus stop, where a crowd of young men were streaming out into the road, all of them tall and black and slender, their bones pressing against their shirts. I suddenly imagined Bernard’s face on all of them, multiplied across the landscape, across continents. Hungry, striving, desperate men, all of them my brothers ….
“Now you see what your father suffered.”
“What?” I rubbed my eyes and looked up to find my aunt staring at me.
“Yes, Barry, your father suffered,” she repeated. “I am telling you, his problem was that his heart was too big. When he lived, he would just give to everybody who asked him. And they all asked. You know, he was one of the first in the whole district to study abroad. The people back home, they didn’t even know anyone else who had ridden in an airplane before. So they expected everything from him. ‘Ah, Barack, you are a big shot now. You should give me something. You should help me.’ Always these pressures from family. And he couldn’t say no, he was so generous. You know, even me he had to take care of when I became pregnant, he was very disappointed in me. He had wanted me to go to college. But I would not listen to him, and went off with my husband. And despite this thing, when my husband became abusive and I had to leave, no money, no job, who do you think took me in? Yes—it was him. That’s why, no matter what others sometimes say, I will always be grateful to him.”
We were approaching the garage shop; up ahead, we could see Auma talking to her mechanic and hear the engine of the old VW whine. Beside us, a naked boy, maybe three years old, wandered out from behind a row of oil drums, his feet caked with what looked like tar. Again Zeituni stopped, this time as if suddenly ill, and spat into the dust.
“When your father’s luck changed,” she said, “these same people he had helped, they forgot him. They laughed at him. Even family refused to have him stay in their houses. Yes, Barry! Refused! They would tell Barack it was too dangerous. I knew this hurt him, but he wouldn’t pass blame. Your father never held a grudge. In fact, when he was rehabilitated and doing well again, I would find out that he was giving help to these same people who had betrayed him. Ah, I could not understand this thing. I would tell him, ‘Barack, you should only look after yourself and your children! These others, they have treated you badly. They are just too lazy to work for themselves.’ And you know what he would say to me? He would say, ‘How do you know that man does not need this small thing more than me?’”
My aunt turned away and, forcing a smile, waved to Auma. And as we began to walk forward, she added, “I tell you this so you will know the pressure your father was under in this place. So you don’t judge him too harshly. And you must learn from his life. If you have something, then everyone will want a piece of it. So you have to draw the line somewhere. If everyone