A woman in a floor-length white mink applauded Barack Obama for marrying well, for choosing Michelle—an attorney with her own well-established career, an inherent sense of confidence, and beautiful dark skin.

Tess agreed. “You don’t have to look twice to know she’s a sister!”

Nodding, Xavier added, “I know that’s right. She’s a descendant of slaves. That matters.”

In a French accent that hadn’t diminished in the five years he’d been back in the States, Victor tapped his white cane to get everyone’s attention. “You American Blacks are always consumed with the question of race.”

Penelope shot back, “Since when is Detroit not in America? You were born in Detroit, right?”

Bolstered by her friend and bristling herself at Victor’s condescension, Ruth raised an eyebrow and kept her voice low. “And who do you think you are? Are you not claiming Black these days?”

Having been raised by grandparents who had lived through the ugliness of the Jim Crow South and the oppression that continued when they migrated north, she couldn’t let Victor minimize the lasting impact of racism in America.

He lifted the rim of his top hat to reveal his hazel eyes. “I’m a citizen of the world, to put it plainly.” Ignoring the eye rolls in the room, he continued. “What we have to get a handle on is class warfare. We must lift ourselves economically, and I know we can do it.”

Xavier stood and smoothed the jacket of his white linen suit. “Ruth is right and so are you. It’s both. We can’t ignore race, but we also have to pool our money together and raise the capital to start something of our own. Look at the talent in this room. We got engineers, accountants, lawyers, and me to market the shit out of this thing. We’re sitting on a gold mine if we figure out how to leverage it right.”

A familiar fire lit in Xavier’s eyes, and soon a local alderwoman and Victor were both trying to convince Xavier to not only pursue his entrepreneurial dreams but also consider a future in politics. Obama had gotten his start with grassroots community organizing and then state politics, and Victor, having served on the incoming president’s campaign committee, told Xavier he could follow a similar model. She couldn’t deny her husband’s natural affinity for moving and mobilizing people.

Ruth remembered the night five years ago when she’d met Xavier, at a Bronzeville art gallery exhibition where he spoke to the audience about Blacks who settled in Bronzeville during the Great Migration. The first thing she noticed was how tall he was, towering over most of the crowd. He stood with his feet hip-width apart, the toes of his dress shoes pointed outward. His stance exuded confidence and power, but not in an arrogant way. As he detailed the history of the community, the audience leaned into him that night, hanging on to his sentences, like plants bending toward the sunlight.

From a corner of the room, Ruth watched him, equally impressed and skeptical. Her suspicion often roused around men with silver tongues after Ronald, her high school boyfriend, had seduced her with his manipulative wordplay.

That night they met, the gallery had been filled with beautiful women whose bodies contracted and expanded in the right places, while Ruth’s arms and legs hung long, her entire body one straight line. Even she couldn’t stop staring at the other women, their skin glistening like they’d just stepped out of the shower. Their hair—the conventionally good kind—welcomed a hard rain instead of shrinking from it.

Xavier politely acknowledged their thirsty gazes and then singled out Ruth, asking her opinion on gentrification, embracing her challenge to a statement or two he’d made that she found obtuse. Even though she felt out of her element, she surprised herself by holding her own, springing forth like a baby chick hatching and pushing her way out into a new world. Abandoning the social traditions that she’d grown up with, Ruth pursued him as much as he pursued her. Leaving her son behind had been about running away from Ganton and everything her hometown represented, but she’d never run toward anything until Xavier.

Ruth scooped rotisserie chicken salad and spread it on a cracker while listening to the others plan the trajectory of her husband’s career. She stewed over the direction their lives could go in next. For the second time this year, she’d been passed over for a promotion and had politely and diplomatically applauded the rise of another engineer she’d mentored. Unsure of her own future with the company, she worried that Xavier would let others stoke his ambitions, forcing him to risk too much when they needed stability right now.

But no one wanted to be practical in the bubble of this special night. As hedonistic and heady as it was, to Ruth it still felt fragile and new. Like if you pulled the thread of a coat button, it would surely unravel until the button fell off. Yet no one else seemed to be consumed with caution. And so they partied the night away in white, embodying the title of the famous Lorraine Hansberry play To Be Young, Gifted and Black. With a brother on his way to the White House, they had state-sanctioned permission to dream.

Four

Ruth

On Thanksgiving, candles scented the house with cinnamon and cloves. They usually spent the holiday with Xavier’s parents, but this year, the Shaws—unbelievably young and spry at sixty—had flown to Costa Rica for a week of hiking in a rain forest and kayaking through mangroves. The timing worked out well for Ruth, who much preferred to be home alone with her husband on their first Thanksgiving in their new home.