Unlikely Brothers

by John Prendergast

  Anthony Lake was just ending his tenure as the national security advisor as I was coming on, and Sandy Berger was coming in to succeed him. I’d had the idea that I’d be a faceless drone in a windowless basement cubicle, churning out unread reports and hardly ever seeing Susan, let alone the national security advisor or the president. But instead I was right in the thick of things. The White House staff was small enough that you could play ball right away and be part of a team. Both Tony Lake and Sandy Berger were extremely sharp, passionately engaged, and surprisingly well informed on Africa. And both wanted to know more and more about the big African war zones: Congo, Somalia, and Sudan. It was never said, but I got the distinct feeling that the shadow of the 1994 Rwandan genocide was hanging over a number of people at the White House. It had happened on their watch, and they not only didn’t want to let it happen again but perhaps they wanted somehow to make amends.

  My six-month tenure was over before I could blink, and I was crestfallen at the thought of having to leave the White House just when I was starting to figure it out. Fortunately for me, Susan turned out to be brilliant not only when it came to international relations but also in navigating bureaucracies. I don’t know how she did it, but she found enough space in the White House budget to give me a permanent position, with the grand title “Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council.”

  In my entire life, I probably hadn’t spent more than $500 on clothes—cumulatively. After the rapprochement brokered by Jean, my father and I would go and buy suits at thrift stores and compete to see who could spend less. Cheap! We once got a couple of nice ones at a thrift shop for five bucks, brought in by some undertaker. That was one time I didn’t want to ask any questions. Most of the suits I wore to the White House every day were thrift-store specials. Shawn used to feel the material of my suit between his fingers at the beginning of our staff meetings, then walk over to the blue institutional curtains, feel those, and then just shake his head in mock disgust and murmur, “Johnnie, Johnnie, Johnnie,” as if my suits were made out of the same material as the curtains. Susan would double over laughing. She pestered me constantly to dress better. “Johnnie P, my brotherrrr, what were you thinking this morning?” She also pressed me to get a haircut, since although I had made concessions to the government lifestyle, my hair was still much longer than that of my other colleagues. Even the national security advisor needled me to get a haircut. After all, we were working for the president of the United States.

  Amazingly, we really were working for the president of the United States. Bill Clinton didn’t exist far above us in some murky firmament; he was our immediate boss. We wrote memos to him regularly, and they’d come back with his own handwritten notations in the margins: Can we do more here? Or: What can I do now to help? We frequently got chances to meet with President Clinton in the Oval Office. I’d go with Susan, and later with Ambassador Joe Wilson and then Gayle Smith, who replaced Susan when she went to the State Department. President Clinton exuded a palpable hunger to do right by Africa. He got few domestic political points for his deep and abiding interest, and yet he was constantly looking for a role or angle for the United States in problem solving. That mentality seemed to be part of his DNA: How could America’s wealth, prestige, might, and creativity be deployed in support of solutions? Plus, it was clear he was playing catch-up. After his administration was hurt by what had transpired in Rwanda and Somalia, it seemed to me he may have felt he had a lot to make up for and little time.

  Briefing President Clinton was a good lesson for me in the limits of power that even the president of the United States feels. He’s not a king, after all. And sometimes other voices in the system—Congress, cabinet officials, to say nothing of the other countries in the United Nations—were arrayed against action. A common argument was: If we put our prestige on the line and fail, it will weaken us. I guess President Clinton agreed that that argument didn’t apply universally; the consequences for the people of Africa if we did nothing were infinitely more severe, as Rwanda demonstrated. He probably had more briefings about Africa than any president that preceded him. Rarely, though, did President Clinton simply sit and listen. Sometimes he’d be reading a report while someone would be talking. Many times, I thought we’d lost him, that he was merely being polite, letting us drone on about Africa in his presence, and that his mind was a million miles away. But then suddenly he’d look up, with his reading glasses halfway down his nose, and ask, “What do you mean by that? Two minutes ago you implied something completely different.” He caught people off guard more than once that way. His mind was so active; he just needed to exercise it constantly, I guess. Spending time around Bill Clinton really sharpened one’s game.

  Meanwhile, the youngest little brother, Tyrell, wasn’t really coming with us too much, as he didn’t have much of an interest in playing ball. The time I was spending now with David was focused on sports more than games or fishing. We would mostly play football and basketball, and I marveled at David’s development as an athlete. He had the chance to be a special ballplayer. If I just would have spent more time with him, perhaps …

  I hardly ever saw James anymore. He seemed to sleep most days away. Michael was around his mom’s house a lot when he wasn’t with Nikki, but he had become very withdrawn when I showed up, too cool to even acknowledge all the history we shared. I often wanted to really talk with him, but I honestly didn’t know where to begin. So much time had gone by and so many things had happened, the gulf between us that had emerged seemed insurmountable.

  Looking back, at first I simply didn’t want to know what he was doing. Later, I was in denial about it all, once it became overwhelmingly obvious what Michael was into. But as time went on and I had opportunities to intervene, I chose not to get more deeply involved because of time constraints and other priorities. I simply let Michael down. And I couldn’t even talk to him man to man. My dad had never once discussed anything important with me in my life after I was eight, and I repeated that pattern with Michael.

  15. “Success Is Failure Turned Inside Out”

  MICHAEL MATTOCKS

  I was sitting on the porch of the Georgia Avenue house, looking across at Walter Reed, when J.P. pulled up to take David and Tyrell off to play basketball. They were really J.P.’s little brothers now. It was almost like they were from another family from me and James and Sabrina; they were a long way from the life. David was all about basketball; a lot of us thought he might really be headed for the NBA some day. He kept himself away from drugs and drinking and all like that. Tyrell, he was only twelve. A funny kid—very sweet natured and gentle. Almost feminine. It was like the meanness of those streets couldn’t touch Tyrell. I was glad he was getting his share of the J.P. thing—that relief from the stress of the lives we’d been born into.

  David and Tyrell weren’t around just then, or they were getting ready inside to go, so J.P. and I had a few minutes together on the porch. He looked good—not like a college kid anymore, but a grownup man with a nice suit, a beard, and long Jesus-style hair. We sat there, and I had a moment of wonder. This man had been in my life about fourteen years. He’d played a bigger role in my upbringing than my own father, or than the men my mom had lived with—Willie, Don, Kenny. Yet there was a big hole between us, a big gap neither of us could fill with words. It couldn’t have been true that he didn’t know what I’d become. Yet we pretended either that I wasn’t a big-ass drug dealer or that he didn’t know I was. I kept waiting for him to say, “Michael, you’ve got to give this up.” I was even planning, in my mind, what I’d say when he said it. But he never did. He talked a little about working in the White House, and we made some kind of bullshit small talk. Then David and Tyrell came out the door and they were gone.

  I’d gotten so powerful on my block, and I’d started to think I couldn’t get caught, that the police lived in some other dimension and couldn’t touch me. I even had my own police officer. This dude pulled up on me one day and said, “Here’s h
ow it is: You give me $100 every time I pass by, and I’ll come holler at you when the police are coming ’round.” A hundred dollars was cheap; I peeled one Franklin off for him right there, and sure enough, from time to time he’d cruise by and call, “Coming!” out the window, giving me just enough time to stash whatever gun or drugs or cash I had on me.

  I was careful. But no matter how careful you are, you can’t control the people around you. I come out the Chinese carryout one night, and out jump two guys with ski masks over their faces. They put me against the car, and I managed to take the cash I had and shove it down the crack between the fender and the hood so they wouldn’t find it in my pocket. If they had, they’d have known I had crack on me too, and they would have taken me apart to find it. They pushed me rough into the back of a car, and I was yelling, saying, “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me,” and they just laughed and pulled off their masks. They were cops. I’d served this lady, and she’d turned around and sold it to somebody else with the cops watching the whole time.

  “Where’s the shit, Mr. Mattocks?” they said, and like a good drug dealer, I said, “What shit?” The white cop slapped me across the face and said, “Give it to me or I’m getting out the rubber glove.” I figured, fuck. “You got me,” I said, reaching into my pants. My crack cocaine—about seventy-five rocks—was up under my nutsack. I handed it over, and they took me downtown.

  This was too big a beef for any court-appointed lawyer, and I had buckets of money, so I got me a paid attorney. He worked out a deal: Three years’ probation and thirty days of boot camp. Easy, I thought. I can do thirty days of anything, and no thirty days of boot camp is even going to touch my ass.

  They told me what to pack: fourteen pairs of underwear and socks. They told me to cut my hair off before I went, but fuck that; I didn’t listen. They picked me up in a bus with about twenty other guys and took us up to Fort Meade in Laurel, Maryland, and I’m thinking, this is going to be like summer camp. As we pull in though, I look through the window, and waiting for us are three big buff dudes in Army uniforms—one white, one black, and one Chinese. They look mean.

  Minute I step off the bus the white one gets right up in my face about my hair, screaming, “Are we going to have a problem with you?” I’m like, Who the fuck you think you’re talking to? I’m ready to throw down, but I know if I punch this dude, I’m going to jail for real. First thing they do is cut off all our hair and mustaches, so all we got left is eyebrows. And then it starts. Push-ups. Sit-ups. Ten-mile runs. Make your bed with a wrinkle in it and they tear the whole thing apart and make you start again. Calisthenics all morning, then a run, then classroom—math, history, English. Make you read an hour, hour and a half. Then cut the grass, pick up trash, more exercise, more running. By the time the end of the day comes, you’re ready to sleep. This goes on thirty days, with those big Army motherfuckers yelling in our faces every minute.

  But here’s the other side of it; they took good care of us. The food was real good, and lots of it. And they talked to us with respect, about man things—taking care of the family, saving money, getting ahead at a job, talking to children. They yelled at us all the time, but because they were talking to us at other times about how to be better men, and because they were feeding us so good, it felt like all that yelling wasn’t just to be mean but for our own benefit. There were guys in there who were just toughing it out and were going to go right back to what they were doing the minute they got out. They were hardened motherfuckers that nobody was going to touch.

  They made us memorize a poem, said we were going to recite it at our graduation. We hear that and we’re all groaning, like, what are we? In fourth grade? Graduation? Who gives a fuck about that? But you drill that poem into your head, and pretty soon you start hearing the words. Went like this:

  When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,

  When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,

  When the funds are low and the debts are high,

  And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,

  When care is pressing you down a bit,

  Rest, if you must, but don’t you quit.

  Life is queer with its twists and turns,

  As every one of us sometimes learns,

  And many a failure turns about,

  When he might have won had he stuck it out;

  Don’t give up though the pace seems slow—

  You may succeed with another blow.

  Often the goal is nearer than,

  It seems to a faint and faltering man,

  Often the struggler has given up,

  When he might have captured the victor’s cup,

  And he learned too late when the night slipped down,

  How close he was to the golden crown.

  Success is failure turned inside out—

  The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,

  And you never can tell how close you are,

  It may be near when it seems so far,

  So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit—

  It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

  Funny thing was, as we reach day twenty-seven, twenty-eight, I’m looking forward to graduation like I’m a little kid. I’m a different man now than when I went in. For one thing, I’m built now; I got muscles on my body I never knew I had. And all that man-talk, beaten into me with those runs and calisthenics, had found that soft spot in me, that side that wanted out of the life when I was hanging with Cool, the side that has kept me from shooting anybody but my cousin Glen, the side that Nikki always claimed to see. On graduation day, Nikki and my mom showed up to support me, and I marched past them proud as a motherfucker. I shouted out that poem like it was coming straight out of my own heart. I felt like a new man.

  JOHN PRENDERGAST

  The longest trip Bill Clinton had taken as president was one a team led by Susan Rice and Joe Wilson helped organize to Africa. During the trip, I helped write the speech the president would be delivering in Rwanda, which was tricky and fraught with implications beyond just the words that would be spoken. President Clinton wanted to acknowledge the failure of the United States to stop the Rwandan genocide. At the same time, the government lawyers knew that a president has to be careful not to admit too much. There’s international law to consider, and the possibility of giving somebody room for a claim against the United States. There’s the chance that too abject an apology will give America’s adversaries in the United Nations ammunition for an embarrassing resolution. The president, getting carried away with a mea culpa, might lock the United States into a policy it wouldn’t want to carry out in the future. So as we wrote the outlines of the speech, we felt all these countervailing currents, and every sentence needed to be inspected, debated, and agreed to by consensus.

  In the end though, Clinton delivered key parts of the speech in his own words. As we stood in the tension-filled Rwandan airport hangar, the Secret Service agents scanning the hills for any sign of the possibility of incoming mortar rounds, Clinton spoke from the heart: “We did not act quickly enough after the killing began,” he said. “We should not have allowed the refugee camps to become safe havens for the killers. We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name: genocide.” As familiar with President Clinton and the issue as I was, I still found myself choking up as I stood next to some of the Rwandan genocide survivors, many of whom had lost their whole families and everything but their lives. It was a powerful thing to hear him use the word “genocide” after all the deadly controversy back in 1994 when his administration was unwilling to use the word and to fulfill its obligations in international law to respond. And it’s even more powerful to hear a president say that the United States screwed up, and that it would do better the next time.

  I was spending most of my time in Africa at that juncture. I was traveling from one conflict zone to the next as an advisor to President Clinton’s high-level peace envoys. We were negotiating with presidents, rebel leaders
, militia commanders, and warlords, and we were trying to find peaceful solutions to some of the deadliest wars in the world since World War II. Susan Rice and her team were building serious momentum for broader, deeper U.S. engagement in Africa. And the president himself was willing to support these efforts with personal diplomacy. This was my chance to finally accomplish something tangible.

  It wasn’t in my nature to rest on my oars, but I owed it to Jean to take a vacation. We’d gotten through President Clinton’s marathon visit to Africa. Some of the negotiations were at a delicate stage where everything needed to cook a while, particularly in Sudan, where we were trying to build a peace process to end the deadly north-south war after some 2 million conflict-related deaths. Everything that could be said had been said, and all sides needed some time to look inward and find a way forward. And it was a couple weeks after the American embassies had been bombed by al-Qaeda in Kenya and Tanzania, and our White House team had barely slept working on the response. I needed a week off.

  Jean and I decided to go to Morocco. There was no way that I, the supposed superhero, the guy who had too much work to do with too little time, was going to go lie on a beach at some resort. Morocco was a good compromise—beautiful, dreamy, historic, but also a serious destination with much to teach. And of course, in Africa.

  We really needed the vacation together. I’d been largely absent from her life—working until midnight most nights, and then disappearing on foreign trips. In my absence, she had continued to strengthen my emotional bridge back to my father. He and I were talking even more now. I’d even taken him out to dinner a couple of times, just the two of us. Each time, I had intended to revisit our past, to find a way to ask him: What happened to us when I was a kid? What was it about me that made you so angry? But I could never find the words to ask, and instead we’d talk about sports or his memories of the frozen foods business. But after two decades of not making eye contact, talking football with my father was a huge step forward. It was Jean who had made that possible. And she was my wife! I had been an absent husband over the years, so I really owed her some of my undivided attention and a nice voyage.