Unlikely Brothers

by John Prendergast

  For the most part, Dylan and Michael, Luke and Kim’s sons, were too young to remember Khayree, and we had to explain to them his importance to the family. The last time Luke had seen Khayree and Nasir, Dylan and Michael were still in their infancy. Khayree and Nasir had showed up at Luke’s house for a quick and uncomfortable visit in a brand new car, and they were very cagey about the vehicle’s origins. Khayree’s reappearance that day, so many years later, certainly couldn’t erase all that had happened between all of us, but it was as though some small consolation had been wrested from the sadness of losing my father.

  I called Michael in D.C. to give him the news about my father’s passing. I could hear his heart break on the other end of the line. He said, “J.P., you know I had no father around. You were my big brother, but Mr. P, he was the closest thing I ever had to a real father.”

  Well, I suspect a lot of kids felt that way.

  Some friend of my dad’s wrote an online eulogy after his death: “I remember Jack being so proud of J.P.’s work in the inner city of Philadelphia.” Strange that I never knew that till after he passed away.

  The funeral was just as Willy Loman had dreamed. They all came—hundreds of people—with their strange license plates. The driver of our hearse told us he’d rarely seen such a gigantic procession. I stood awestruck at the impact my father had had on so many people. The love ran deep and broad. For years I’d listened to Dad’s stories about the road, and I’m sure some small part of me had always suspected at least some of those stories might have been embellished just a little bit. But there they were at the funeral, so many of the characters Dad had been telling stories about for years.

  As the older son, it fell to me to deliver the eulogy. I’d stayed up late the night before, and somewhere around two in the morning it struck me—finally—that despite all the tension and misunderstanding, despite the distance I had tried to put between us, I was my father’s son. I’d lost sight of it along the way.

  The man had given me some endlessly useful gifts. As I told the assembled crowd at St. Monica’s Catholic Church, “In all my travels all over the world—in refugee camps, in war zones, in soup kitchens—I have rarely seen such a vibrant combination of giving and loving that my father modeled every day of his life. It is why I am who I am, why I do what I do; and I suspect it is why Luke is a teacher at one of the most challenging schools in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

  After the funeral, everybody gathered at Jimmy Duffy’s restaurant, a favorite place of my father’s, to have a few drinks and tell Jack Prendergast stories. Then we took my mother home to the Berwyn house to begin her life as a widow.

  We all sat up late that night, and after Mom went to bed, a beautiful thing happened. Luke, Kim, Dylan, Michael, Khayree, and I found ourselves around the dining room table, amid the coffee cups and mourning-cake crumbs, planning out Khayree’s life as one big family. Khayree said he wanted to enroll in a school to become a barber, and we Prendergasts challenged each other to help him in one way or another.

  The product of several hours of laughing, cajoling, and hard bargaining was a handwritten paper contract that lays out each person’s commitment to Khayree’s future, including Khayree’s own pledges. Rather than enumerate all the ups and downs of that evening’s negotiations, I’ll just reproduce the document in its entirety. It isn’t grammatically correct in all places, but it says everything about Khayree, about the courage and love in my family, and—for better or worse—about the way I take on challenges and then spread them around to make other people share responsibility for them.

  July 20, 2008

  DYLAN

  —challenge Khayree in chess until he beats him twice in a row

  —will receive regular haircuts from Khayree

  MICHAEL

  —will work with Khayree on his essay writing to prepare him for the GED

  J.P.

  —underwrite GED test and expenses while attending barber school

  —pick him up and go to dinners

  —help get him placed at a barber shop and be his reference

  KIM

  —help Khayree find a GED site

  —arrange tutoring if necessary for GED

  —keep an eye out for Khayree

  —pick him up and have him over for dinner

  LUKE

  —work with Khayree on his essay writing to prepare him for GED

  —keep an eye out for Khayree

  KHAYREE

  —commit to being Dylan’s big brother

  —take GED within one month

  —if pass GED, enroll immediately at barber school

  —if fail GED, study and get tutoring and take it again

  —finish barber school in a timely manner

  —commit to find a job in a barber shop as soon as you can

  Michael, Khayree, and Dylan

  We all signed it, and in a typically halting, imperfect way, some of it actually started being implemented, though certainly not all according to plan. Khayree’s mom Dicie threw him out of the house because of some infraction, but after he lived temporarily in a halfway house with a group of ex-substance abusers just to have a roof over his head, she eventually relented and let him back in. He was in a car accident that smashed both his pelvis and his prosthetic leg, but he recovered stronger than ever. He became a valued big brother to Dylan, or more accurately they’re just brothers, without any big or little attached. They played chess all the time, and occasionally Dylan beat him, but never twice in a row. Khayree studied for the GED, and passed a couple of the test sections. Kim found him a barber who took him on as an apprentice, and she also found him a tutoring program for his GED prep. She and Luke brought Khayree over to their house for dinner on a regular basis.

  But suddenly one afternoon, a knock on the door was followed by Khayree’s arrest on a dormant parole violation charge. Visiting him in prison and then after his release, we began reconnecting as brothers again. As he overcomes adversity and Team Prendergast expresses our belief in him, he is slowly building self-esteem and a belief that he is capable of more and better. He wants a better life for himself, and he is learning, sometimes painfully, how to overcome the barriers to reentering society after prison, such barriers arising both from his own self-doubt and from the formal and largely unfair restrictions placed on someone with a felony conviction.

  If the people running most mentoring organizations were aware that I would finance Khayree’s education, I suspect they might not like it. They’d be even less happy that I write Michael a check whenever he needs it. The rap in these programs usually is: Don’t help the kids financially because of the perception that becoming some kind of a sugar daddy distorts the relationship. And if the financial help happens when they’re young, that perception may be true. But as people try to assume law-abiding adult responsibilities in a world filled with racism, educational disparities, redlining, urban unemployment, and limited opportunities, a little bit of financial help now and then can make all the difference. If Khayree had had a little help at the right moment earlier in his adult life, he might not have done some of the things that set him back so badly.

  As for Michael, with five boys of his own, my regular checks are not about making him dependent on me; they’re about supporting his very tough choices. He knows that any night of the week he could make thousands of dollars by going back to drug dealing. But he doesn’t do it. He stayed with that low-paying job at the hospital, borrowed some money with me as his cosignatory, used it for a course to get a commercial driver’s license, got the relevant training while he kept his hospital job and while he totally invested himself in the lives of his precious boys, and then he got a better paying job as a bus driver. He endured the blows to his self-esteem as he remembered how high he rode when he was selling crack, and how he now lives on little because he knows it’s the right choice. How can I not want to support that? It’s fine to talk about how relationships should be above money, but if Michael gets in t
oo tough a squeeze, he might feel he has to go back to doing things that could separate him from his wife and boys forever.

  I have absolutely no doubt that if the tables were ever turned, he would do the same for me. It may sound like a cliché, but I’m certain we would do pretty much anything for each other now, our bond of brotherhood is that strong.

  That brings me to the essence of commitment. The most important lesson I learned while negotiating those peace deals in Africa concerned the difference between passively treating the symptoms of a crisis versus actually committing to addressing the root causes. In a place like Sudan, for example, when the United Nations sends in peacekeeping forces and billions of dollars of food that are critically needed, it certainly saves lives and momentarily treats the symptoms. To resolve the crisis, however, and to keep it from worsening require a far deeper level of political commitment.

  As kids, Michael and James were trapped in a series of crises, and for a long time I beat myself up for my lack of commitment to them and to helping them overcome the challenges they were facing. I was reactively trying to manage symptoms of their lifelong series of crises, not committing to working with them to really resolve their problems as they might have seen them. I was their big brother, their protector, and by not confronting their reality, I had in some ways betrayed them. I’d been willing to go just so far, and no further. It turned out that yes, Father, he is heavy. So I set him down and didn’t carry him for a while.

  I went back to the Big Brothers Big Sisters program a few years ago and re-upped. My newest little brother, Jamaar, is tough and guarded, perfecting the art of speaking in monosyllables when he’s around me. In earlier years I might’ve eventually walked away due to the lack of interaction and, ultimately, affirmation. But I’m learning that bonds can be formed that don’t have to be expressed verbally, and sometimes just showing up counts for something in the life of a boy whose father chose not to. His grades are way up; he was the valedictorian of his sixth-grade class. He still doesn’t say much to me, but he’s on the steps ready to go every time I come to pick him up, football in hand, in an apartment on Georgia Avenue just a few blocks away from where Michael and James ruled the streets a little over a decade before. I hope he knows I won’t ever leave his side, no matter what might happen, even though that degree of commitment remains unspoken.

  Michael and I together have continued to lend an occasional hand to David. Once when he was falsely accused of aiding and abetting a robbery, the court set bail at an unreasonably high amount. Michael called me up late one night with the news, and he said he didn’t want David spending one night in that particular jail. So we drove out to Maryland and went to the bail bondsman, plunked the cash down on the counter, and got David the hell out of there. We stayed up with him nearly the whole night at some crummy fast food place, trying to talk some sense into him. I got David a job at a smoothie shop, and he was their prize employee until he got into an unnecessary dispute with one of the managers, after which he was back into the familiar ranks of the unemployed. David is a work in progress, but I continue to hope and suspect that his turning point is coming sooner than anyone might be willing to predict.

  Dylan, J.P., and Michael

  My own family is really close now. I visit my mom all the time in Pennsylvania. Either Luke or Mom sits in Dad’s seat at the kitchen and dining room tables; I somehow don’t feel right sitting there. Even though Mom is pretty self-sufficient, I still can’t get used to the idea of someone being married to another for fifty years, and then losing that person and just being expected to move on, eating meals alone at the table you shared for half a century. After a lifetime of running away, suddenly family is everything to me.

  A couple years ago I was playing a particularly muscular game of hide-and-seek with four of the Mattocks boys—Lando was off somewhere being a teenager—and as I raced around with Michael’s boys, I was flooded with a new sensation. I’d ended up alone. I’d spent my married years traveling too much to Africa—taking the concept of workaholism to a new level—to even consider parenthood. My marriage to Jean didn’t last; our separation ended in divorce. Sadly, Jean is one of a number of victims of my single-minded focus on work, though my friendship with her remains a very important part of my life. A small symbol of the end of the marriage came on the day when I had to move our stuff out of the house before it was sold. Jean’s things went to her new apartment, but I left most of my belongings right on the curb in front of the house. I sat in my car for hours that afternoon, watching people come by from all over the place to pick through and take what they wanted like seagulls through the Dumpster that had become my personal life.

  I used to feel that I’d grow old with no children of my own, but Michael, by his example, is showing me how it can work by doing all the fathering that I haven’t yet done. Through his strength, his heart, and his success as a father, he is illuminating a path that I have rejected for years but that I am now thinking about walking myself.

  Everyone always says that good things come in threes. I had those three teachers in high school and three role models in San Francisco when I was twenty that laid the groundwork for my devotion to Africa and my little brothers. I took three trips to Africa before I finally found my path, which led me to be a human rights and peace activist.

  The best came last. There have been three factors in my redemption, three gifts in the process of dissolving that bowling ball of depression in my stomach and finally reducing the internal storm to a whisper.

  The first dose of grace has come from Michael, as I just described, and the light he is shining as an example to me.

  The second gift has been my developing spirituality. Stories from the Gospels have particularly spoken to me, such as the Prodigal Son, who leaves the father as a young man full of arrogance and ignorance but finally returns, humbled but wise, asking for forgiveness and reconciliation. In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul talks about suffering which produces endurance, which in turn creates character, which finally leaves one with hope that will never disappoint. In that regard, Michael and I are brothers somehow justified by faith.

  My faith has deepened and given me a stabilizing and peaceful anchor that my nomadic and restless soul hasn’t experienced before. In this arena, I can’t discount the fervor with which my mother has prayed for her prodigal son. Like St. Monica’s commitment to St. Augustine during his wayward phase, my mom has never let go of my hand over all these years, reminding me with numbing regularity and rock-hard certainty of God’s love and forgiveness. My favorite prayer during the services I attend these days is “Lord, I’m not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.” Blows me away every time that such a power exists.

  The third gift involves a prison, a woman, and a bolt of emotional lightning. On December 31, 2009, I decided to go visit Khayree during his imprisonment on that horseshit parole violation technicality. My friend Sia, a Yale Law School grad who had decided to spurn the life of a corporate lawyer and defend folks on death row in the Deep South, was in Philly, and I invited her to come with me to see Khayree. It was a scene right out of a Coen Brothers movie, with all of the family members of the prisoners dressed to the nines in their New Year’s Eve best while sitting in what must have been one of the filthiest, dingiest waiting rooms in the American penal system.

  Sia navigated our way effortlessly and patiently through the bureaucratic maze of visiting regulations, somehow circumventing the immediate family holiday rule, and we were finally inside four hours after we arrived. It was a big room with prisoners and family members all thrown together, with the entire range of human emotion all on display at once.

  Finally, Khayree appeared at the door, and I jumped up and we gave each other a hug. He seemed apologetic for his situation, but I was so angry at the system for what had happened that he quickly realized that he didn’t need to be sorry for anything to me.

  Then the coolest thing happened. I introduced Sia to Khayr
ee, and they started talking. I watched as Khayree began to blossom right before my eyes. Sia’s way with him, Socratic and compassionate, brought out his true qualities and his best spirit. As I watched Sia’s warmth and tenderness peel back so many layers of Khayree’s self-protection, I felt the same thing happening to me. After we hugged Khayree and left the prison, Sia and I went on a drive through memory lane, going around Philly to my old haunts, to the street with the old lady sentinels in South Philly, to the congressman’s storefront office in West Philly, and to a church where I used to volunteer in North Philly.

  We talked and talked at an all-night diner I had gone to regularly a quarter century before—a really high class New Year’s date. As the sun began to come up on the Philly skyline in that humble diner booth, it was a wrap. I had fallen in love. Six months later I was on my knee, shaking and quivering, asking Sia to marry me. In a moment of unrivaled grace and redemption, she said yes.

  Sia has given me confidence and the belief that I can stop compartmentalizing and wearing masks, that I can allow all the strands of my complicated life to be transparently illuminated for another person to see, and that I can be the kind of father and husband I never thought was possible for me. In Congo, my friend Nicole Young had told me something that kept echoing in my head until the night at the diner with Sia: “Find someone who loves you for who you are, not for who they want you to be.” In some ways, Sia is for me what Nikki has been for Michael. Nikki has loved Michael for who he is. She didn’t ask him to change; he just did.

  It took me long enough, but finally my relationship with Michael helped teach me the value of commitment. Now that I’ve learned some of the most important lessons about being dedicated to someone, I get to live them out with Sia and truly put my heart on the line for the first time in my life. Because of my work and my continuing travel to war zones, I can’t help but think of death every hour of every day. Sia, however, fills me with an eagerness for life that I haven’t felt since I was a little kid, when I started building walls against disappointment and judgment and anger, all the things that take away from an open heart.