Till You Hear From Me: A Novel (2 page)

The Rev’s voters, already organized and easily targeted, had been gathered from one hundred churches spread throughout the state who had participated in a program called One Hundred Percenters. Each church pledged to register 100 percent of the eligible voters in the congregation and make sure those voters got to the polls. Nobody thought they could do it, but they did. Access to that list would have given our campaign a huge leg up on the competition. His timely offer would also improve both my father’s access to the candidate and my own currency as a bright, energetic, but undeniably mid-level staffer.
Enter the Rev. Jeremiah Wright
.

Reverend Wright and my dad shared a belief in the Black Liberation Theology that had always been a strong strain in the African American religious tradition, but had remained largely unknown to most white Americans who first encountered its passionate, prophetic
cadences when a thirty-second video of Reverend Wright surfaced on the Internet. His fiery declaration that rather than saying “God bless America,” his parishioners ought to “Goddamn America,” for her long history of racial crimes, set off a storm of outrage that led to the candidate’s decision to craft and deliver as eloquent and unapologetic a treatise on race as has ever been heard anywhere. Rejecting the sound bite, but refusing to jettison Wright, Obama’s support for his pastor went too far for some, but not nearly far enough for some radical clergymen who leaped to Wright’s defense, charging the media with racism and ignorance and candidate Obama with abandoning a man who had been his pastor for more than twenty years. My father planted himself firmly in the latter camp and stayed there throughout those long, strange weeks when the full weirdness of American race relations was on display for all the world to see.

Jeremiah Wright scared the hell out of those of us who were spending every waking hour working to send Barack Obama to the White House. Trying to explain Liberation Theology to people whose only other exposure to black preaching is Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech is like trying to explain classical ballet to a group of wiggly eight-year-olds in tutus; a thankless task. By the time the smoke cleared, my father had reneged on his promise to share 100,000 new voter names and the campaign had decided I wasn’t the rising star they thought I was.

I’m not saying it’s the Rev’s fault that my dream job hasn’t materialized yet, but I don’t think his unwavering support of Rev. Wright, even after the man’s disastrous visit to the Washington Press Club, did me a whole lot of good either. Our last conversation before we mutually cut off communication with each other was a terrible exchange of defiance (him) and desperation (me), where we both said things we shouldn’t have. But you know what they say:
shoulda, coulda, woulda
.

“He’s not plugged in anywhere,” Miss Iona was saying urgently,
trying to make me understand. “Nobody’s asking his opinion on anything and you know that man needs to give his opinion!”

At least we could agree on that. “Go on.”

“You should have seen him on election night,” she said. “Me and Charlie had some folks over, but the Rev was just in a funk all night. He wanted to be somewhere with a little more light shinin’ on it, but nobody invited him but us.”

I sighed. This is exactly what I had warned him about. “Do the Obama people really have that much to say about what happens in Atlanta?”

“It appears they do. Precious Hargrove had a big party at the Regency and your father’s name was nowhere on the guest list.”

State Senator Precious Hargrove was a strong contender in the upcoming Georgia governor’s race. She had been a member of Rock of Faith as long as I had known her and the Rev had been the one who first encouraged her to go into politics when she was a young mother, newly arrived in West End, struggling to raise her son alone and make her way in the world.

“Now he’s going all over the state, bad-mouthing her.”

“Bad-mouthing her about what?”

“About supporting the president is what I’m trying to tell you! He called her a … wait a minute. Let me get it right. He called her ‘a card carrying member of the Ladies for Obama fan club who can be counted on to follow their handsome hero wherever he may lead them.’”

This was awful. I had never heard the Rev talk like that to anybody, much less a reporter from
The Atlanta Constitution
. His comments to the guy were bigoted and sexist, bitter and petty.

“Do you think he’s having some kind of breakdown?”

“I don’t know what he’s having,” she said. “He called a press conference last week and nobody came, so he read
The Constitution
’s editor the riot act until they promised to do a big feature story on
him. He spent the day talking to the reporter and this,
this
, is the article that came out of it.”

“What’s the headline?” I said.

“Angry Icon Blasts Obama.”

I took a deep, meditative breath.
Calm down
, I said to myself.
This doesn’t have anything to do with you
.

“I don’t know what you think I can do.”

“Talk to him!” she said. “Tell him he’s making a complete fool of himself.”

That was not going to happen. The very idea of judging my father and then offering him my opinion was not within the realm of possibility.

“I’d like to live to see my thirty-fifth birthday, if it’s all the same to you,” I said. “What about Mr. Eddie?”

Miss Iona snorted. “You know Ed Harper is not gonna tell the Rev nothin’ he don’t want to hear. That’s why they been friends so long.”

“Why don’t
you
tell him?”

“I
have
told him! He’s not paying me a bit of attention. He doesn’t think I know anything about politics.”

“This isn’t about politics. This is about bad judgment.”

“Exactly what I said. So will you come home and talk to him?”

I walked over to the window and looked outside. It was still dark and quiet, but a few miles away the D.C. rush hour was already shaping up. I couldn’t see it from this tree-lined Georgetown street where I was renting a tiny garage apartment from the parents of a well-connected friend, but I could
feel
it. If you’re addicted to politics, and I stand accused, this is the town that manufactures your drug of choice. The fact that the Rev’s craziness was splashing over into my life here was infuriating. I took another deep breath.

“Will you come?”

“For what? He’s not even speaking to me. You know that.”

“Are you speaking to him?”

Miss Iona knew all the gory details of our feud so she was not really asking for information. She was building a case. I had to choose my words carefully.

“We have not spoken to each other since before the election.”

Good job
, I said to myself.
Stick to the facts
.

“So if he was ready to speak to you, you would be ready to speak to him?”

“He’s the one who started it!” It never helps your argument to sound like a whiny six-year-old. Miss Iona heard her advantage and took it.

“Listen to yourself, Ida B,” she said.

In a rare confluence of his black nationalism and her incipient feminism, my parents named me after Ida B. Wells Barnett, pioneering journalist and tireless anti-lynching activist. Although I’m just
Ida
in the outside world, everybody in West End,
which is a world of its own
, still calls me Ida B.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I can’t just come down there, walk into the house, and say, ‘I know we’ve been out of touch recently, but what’s going on with you? That article in the paper made you sound like an angry, bitter old man. Say it ain’t so, Rev. Say it ain’t so!’”

“You’re being sarcastic, but why not? That would be perfect!”

“No, that would be crazy. Listen, Miss Iona, the Rev did a terrible thing. He let his ego make him refuse to help in the most important election of our lifetime.”

“He was being loyal to a friend.”

“There’s a limit to loyalty.”

She let that lie there for a minute, too. An unfortunate choice of words. Unconditional support is the essence of loyalty.
Limits ain’t in it
.

“Let me ask you something,” she said finally. “Have I tried to insert myself into this difference of opinion between you and your father?”

“It’s a little more serious than a difference of opinion,” I said, going for highly offended and sounding peevish instead.

“Granted. But have I ever?”

“No,” I said. “You have stayed remarkably neutral.”

“Have I ever asked you to come home?”

She had me there. In all the years and through a dizzying variety of crises, she had never called and demanded that I get my ass on a plane and get down there
posthaste
. “No, you never have.”

“No,” she said, repeating my words for emphasis. “No, I never have, so I would think the unique nature of this conversation would at least make you consider my request before dismissing it out of hand.”

She was right, of course, but I didn’t want to go to Atlanta. My feelings were still hurt, and besides, I had other things to do, like finding a job. D.C. was the place where I needed to put my focus. I had to look out for myself first. The Rev would have to wait.

“Even if I wanted to come,” I said, “it’s just not a good time. I’ve got so much to do here …”

“Look, I know you’re going to work at the White House and everything,” she said. “I know you’re busy, but you haven’t started yet, have you?”

A guilty flush crept over my cheeks and I was glad she couldn’t see my face. I had shared my working with Obama
fantasy
as working with Obama
fact
, and now my story was coming back to bite me on the butt.

“No, they’re still doing the vetting,” I said, hoping it might be true.

“All the more reason for you to be on top of this,” she said. “Think about it, Ida B. What are you gonna say when they call and ask you was that your father all over the Internet talking about tacos and sangria?”

The throbbing behind my right eye moved over to include my left one. This was my worst nightmare. I was hoping enough time
had passed so that I could be evaluated by Team Obama on my own merits, but Miss Iona was right. If this interview is as bad as she says it is, who knows how far its effect might ripple? On a slow news day, anything was possible. Look at Joe the Plumber.

“Just do this for me, will you?” Miss Iona said gently, correctly judging from my silence that her arrow had landed. “Look at the video of the whole interview on YouTube and then if you don’t think we need to worry, I won’t call you about this again.”

That wasn’t too much to ask. I felt guilty about not clearing up that White House thing, but as much as I hated to admit it, I guess there was a part of me that was still hoping I’d get that call:
Will you please hold for the president?
No way I was going to let the Rev mess that up for me if I could help it.

“All right,” I said. “You’ve got a deal.”

“Great,” she said. “Call me back as soon as you see it.”

“You want me to look at it right now?”

I don’t know how you can hear somebody raise their eyebrows through the phone, but when I said that, I heard Miss Iona raise hers. “You got something better to do?”

“I was trying to meditate.”

“Girl,
please
,” she said. “You got the rest of your life to meditate. This is your future we’re talking about!”

TWO

W
ES WALKED INTO THE SMALL ROOM WHERE HE KEPT HIS TREADMILL
and his weights, flipped on CNN for background noise, and laced up his new cross-trainers. They felt good. He was glad he could afford an apartment big enough to accommodate his workout. Wes Harper hated his body. Not the perfectly conditioned, well-muscled one you could see. The one he carried around inside his head. The fat one. The one his mother had so lovingly overfed that at thirteen, he had soft, fat thighs that rubbed together when he walked. He was the one with the cheeks too chubby not to pinch. The one who never made the team, never got the girl, and was the butt of every fat joke known to man, no pun intended. When he got to prep school, football changed all that, but it was the memory of his adolescent body that kept Wes motivated. He liked to sweat.