Obama_Barack_-_Dreams_From_My_Father

And I knew that the father was absent, although Mary never mentioned him. Only in bits and pieces, over the course of many months, would I learn that she had grown up in a small Indiana town, part of a big, working-class Irish family.

Somehow she had met a black man there; they had dated secretly, were married; her family refused to speak to her again, and the newlyweds moved to West Pullman, where they bought a small house. Then the man left, and Mary found herself beached in a world she knew little of, without anything but the house and two manila-hued daughters, unable to return to the world she had known.

Sometimes I would stop by Mary’s house just to say hello, drawn perhaps by the loneliness I sensed there, and the easy parallels between my own mother and Mary; and between myself and Mary’s daughters, such sweet and pretty girls whose lives were so much more difficult than mine had ever been, with grandparents who shunned them, black classmates who teased them, all the poison in the air. Not that the family had no support; after Mary’s husband left, the neighbors had shown her and her children solicitude, helping them fix a leaky roof, inviting them to barbecues and birthday parties, commending Mary on all her good works. Still, there were limits to how far the neighbors could accept the family, unspoken boundaries to the friendships that Mary could make with the women-specially the married ones-that she met. Her only real friends were her daughters-and now Will, whose own fall, and idiosyncratic faith, gave them something private to share.

With nothing left to do for the meeting, Mary sat down and watched me scribble some last-minute notes to myself.

“Do you mind if I ask you something, Barack?”

“No, go ahead.”

“Why are you here? Doing this work, I mean.”

“For the glamour.”

“No, I’m serious. You said yourself you don’t need this job. And you’re not very religious, are you?”

“Well…”

“So why do you do it? That’s why Will and I do this, you know. Because it’s part of our faith. But with you, I don’t-” At that moment, the door opened and Mr. Green walked in. He was an older man in a hunting jacket and a cap whose earflaps hung stiffly against his chin.

“How you doing, Mr. Green.”

“Fine, just fine. Getting chilly, though….”

Mrs. Turner and Mr. Albert quickly followed, then the rest of the group, all bundled up against the hint of an early winter. They unbuttoned their coats, prepared coffee for themselves, and engaged in the small, unhurried talk that helped warm up the room. Finally Will walked in wearing cut-off jeans and a red T-shirt with “Deacon Will” across the front, and after asking Mrs. Jeffrey to lead us in prayer, he started the meeting. While everyone talked, I took notes to myself, speaking up only when things started to wander. In fact, I thought the meeting had already dragged on too longa few people had slipped out after an hour-when Will added a new item to the agenda.

“Before we adjourn,” he announced, “I want us to try something out. This here’s a church-based organization, and that means we devote a part of each meeting to reflection on ourselves, our relationships to each other, and our relationship to God. So I want everybody to take out just a minute to think about what brought them here tonight, some thoughts or feelings that you haven’t talked about, and then I want you to share ’em with the group.”