Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets
Speaker 2: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 2: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. My guest today
Speaker 2: is David Wright Falade, novelist, university professor, and author of
Speaker 2: the recent essay in The New Yorker, The Truth About
Speaker 2: My Father. David is a story of identity and belonging
Speaker 2: and the extraordinary unfolding of a buried secret history.
Speaker 3: My earliest memories are from Kansas City. I was born
Speaker 3: in France, but we came here when I was around two,
Speaker 3: So my earliest memories are from Kansas City, when I
Speaker 3: was probably about four. My dad, Jack Wright, we called
Speaker 3: him Dottie. My big sister Marriam and I were both
Speaker 3: born in France, and it's just what we called him.
Speaker 3: And it was only with age and I recognized that
Speaker 3: what we were saying was daddy, but we'd learned to
Speaker 3: pronounce it as little French kids. And so when we
Speaker 3: were here, cousins with teesus and whatnot. But we lived
Speaker 3: in a part of Kansas City in subsidized housing at
Speaker 3: that time, sort of projects We called it the Gateway Apartments,
Speaker 3: but it was a gateway to the West apartments, and
Speaker 3: I learned later that the police called it the cancer
Speaker 3: of Kansas City. It didn't feel I mean, you're a kid,
Speaker 3: and you just you're there. We played outside and my
Speaker 3: big sister and I were seventeen months apart and really close,
Speaker 3: but that's the space we lived in, so I have
Speaker 3: that first memory of there. And it was fairly tense
Speaker 3: between Dottie and my mom, and they divorced right around then,
Speaker 3: and we moved to Junction City, Kansas, where there was
Speaker 3: a military base. My mom, she was a GI bride,
Speaker 3: and another French GI bride that she knew, a woman
Speaker 3: named Lilian who'd also married a Black GI, was stationed there,
Speaker 3: and so we moved there. We lived with them for
Speaker 3: a brief time. That part of Kansas was you know
Speaker 3: Kansas as you would imagine, light rolled in grasslands and
Speaker 3: all that, and we eventually were able to have our
Speaker 3: own little house, my Mom and Miriam and I. Dottie
Speaker 3: wasn't always the most responsible person with child support. I
Speaker 3: got the document. Now he was ordered to pay fifty
Speaker 3: dollars a month or something like that, but he sent
Speaker 3: it irregularly. Another thing that I understood with time my mom,
Speaker 3: when she was raising us by herself, or when she
Speaker 3: was married, first to Dottie and then to my stepfather,
Speaker 3: she felt most safe. Is this woman, this French jew
Speaker 3: who had survived the Nazi occupation of Paris. People had
Speaker 3: been to Porto, She'd lost family, they'd been in hiding
Speaker 3: in her youth, and she was old enough to have
Speaker 3: memories of this. Also, with this understanding of sort of
Speaker 3: racism in the United States, she felt most comfortable when
Speaker 3: we were on or near military basis. This is loving
Speaker 3: v Virginia as nineteen sixty seven. I was born in
Speaker 3: sixty four, about nineteen sixty eight sixty nine. Interracial couples
Speaker 3: were just really, really rare, to the extent that I
Speaker 3: remember when we were little kids, Miriam and I and
Speaker 3: my mom and we'd see in you know, a mixed
Speaker 3: race family on the street. We would point them out, smiling.
Speaker 3: It was just that rare we felt for us. It
Speaker 3: was like a sort of joy. For my mom. I
Speaker 3: think she felt vulnerable and unsafe, so we typically lived
Speaker 3: on or near military basis. I think it was more
Speaker 3: than anything race. So I'm born in sixty four and
Speaker 3: Mirriam was born in sixty two. We were both born
Speaker 3: in France the Badatti and Mom married in fifty seven
Speaker 3: and at first they're stationed in New Jersey and then Colorado.
Speaker 3: But at one point he gets stationed in Georgia, and
Speaker 3: this is like fifty eight to fifty nine. She can't go,
Speaker 3: you know, as his white wife, and so she's in
Speaker 3: Kansas City with his family and she's probably the only
Speaker 3: white person around and has a sort of difficult relationship
Speaker 3: with his family, his mother. So my grandmother, Dotty's mother
Speaker 3: was shark with her, difficult with her. Maybe they had
Speaker 3: just a difficult relationship. So I think she was just
Speaker 3: fatally aware of a race more than anything. And also
Speaker 3: it was just sort of the precarity, you know, the
Speaker 3: danger of the sort of racial threat in the fifties
Speaker 3: and sixties United States.
Speaker 2: What sense did you have as a child growing up
Speaker 2: of your mom's history as a child herself during the Holocaust.
Speaker 2: I mean she was nine in France when she she.
Speaker 3: Was born in thirty one, so when the Nazis occupied Paris, yes,
Speaker 3: she was nine years old. And so that period of
Speaker 3: Nazi occupation from forty to forty four, she was nine
Speaker 3: to thirteen. Mom's pagental thouts, so her my grandfather's family
Speaker 3: were really wealthy. It was this great upple, but it
Speaker 3: would have been the quivalent of my mother's grandfather. He
Speaker 3: was the president of the Antiquarian Society of Europe. I mean,
Speaker 3: he was an art collector and they had this antique shop.
Speaker 3: They were very, very, very wealthy, and so my mom
Speaker 3: grew up in this real ease and comfort. And then
Speaker 3: when the occupation happened, that person and his wife, well
Speaker 3: he killed himself. She was deported. My grandfather was able
Speaker 3: to get papers that didn't claim they were not Jewish,
Speaker 3: but it diminished their jewishness before the law. So you know,
Speaker 3: had the occupation gone on longer, they could have been
Speaker 3: deported too, but they just weren't high up on the list.
Speaker 3: And in that time they enrolled my mom in Catholic school,
Speaker 3: Catholic day school, so she grew up in this. Really
Speaker 3: she just was really conflicted I think about her identity
Speaker 3: as a Jew. They were secular Jews, so I don't
Speaker 3: know that she really understood herself as a Jew, even
Speaker 3: though all her family, the people that they socialized with
Speaker 3: were Jewish and then suddenly she had to try to
Speaker 3: navigate this world where she's in Catholic school, she takes
Speaker 3: holding Communion. She had this memory of these twin girls
Speaker 3: who lived nearby teasing her and calling her a derogatory
Speaker 3: name for Jewish, and she didn't quite understand what they
Speaker 3: were saying. So I think it was very confusing for her,
Speaker 3: and that contributed to the rebellion of the outrage that
Speaker 3: she felt after the war.
Speaker 2: David's mom stays with Dottie for about a decade before
Speaker 2: they split up in nineteen sixty seven, shortly after she
Speaker 2: meets a man named Ed Wheeler. Ed is about to
Speaker 2: be sent to Vietnam. Just as the two fall in love,
Speaker 2: they marry and Ed becomes David's stepfather. In turn, Dottie
Speaker 2: now resides on the paternal periphery.
Speaker 3: When Mom leaves, he's not very present, he's not sending
Speaker 3: child support. And then when she starts dating at Wheeler,
Speaker 3: but Dotty could be really funny. He would refer to
Speaker 3: Ed Wheeler as Jesus Christ. Because my mom, I think,
Speaker 3: just spoke up Ed Wheeler to anybody at the time,
Speaker 3: and so he wasn't very present, but he was the
Speaker 3: sort of person that people came to for help. His family,
Speaker 3: my cousins and things like that, his brothers and sisters.
Speaker 3: He was the person they would go to when they
Speaker 3: needed anything, and he would always find it. And so again,
Speaker 3: if we fast forward a little bit Ed Wheeler comes
Speaker 3: back from Vietnam, we follow him to you, Arizona, where
Speaker 3: he's stationed some Rencourt Air station out there. For some reason,
Speaker 3: he has an army person is stationed there. And my
Speaker 3: mom ended up getting pregnant and didn't want the child,
Speaker 3: and Ed Wheeler and my mom got into a terrible fight, violent,
Speaker 3: and she turns to Dottie. She calls Dottie. Dottie is
Speaker 3: the one who sends us the money for bus tickets
Speaker 3: from Yuma to LA, then sends you know, Wire's money
Speaker 3: Western Union to LA, pays for the abortion, and then
Speaker 3: wires it. So he's driving a cab at this time
Speaker 3: he's not in the military. And then so the time
Speaker 3: that he earns enough money, he then wires the money.
Speaker 3: So we took a bus from Mom and Miriam and
Speaker 3: I from LA to New York. And I remember that
Speaker 3: parts of it we'd all sit right behind the bus driver.
Speaker 3: I remember one bus driver told a joke, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm whatever I am at that time six He's like
Speaker 3: was stretched with an ow and ends with an oh
Speaker 3: and is high in the middle. And my little six
Speaker 3: year old Ed can't figured out it was pretty obviously.
Speaker 3: He's like, Ohio, and we're going through Ohio. But we
Speaker 3: end up in New York and I remember being in JFK.
Speaker 3: I remember wooden benches at that time, and Dotty wired
Speaker 3: the money and we got a flight back to France,
Speaker 3: where my mom wanted to be. She didn't want to
Speaker 3: be in Kansas City. She couldn't be in Yuma. So
Speaker 3: he was that person who when you needed him, he
Speaker 3: was there, but if not. There was a period of
Speaker 3: five years we kind of disappeared from Mirus in my life.
Speaker 3: So he was a conflicted character. He was a difficult character,
Speaker 3: but a big soul too.
Speaker 2: There's a line in your Wonderful piece in the New
Speaker 2: Yorker identity is rooted in place as well as in parentage.
Speaker 2: So what rooted you and how did you think about
Speaker 2: fatherhood as in your father during those years, how did
Speaker 2: you think about paternity? Dottie was your father, Ed Wheeler
Speaker 2: became your stepfather, there's so much that strikes me in
Speaker 2: your story of these kinds of fractures that then aren't fractures,
Speaker 2: or that are potentially confusing for a kid. I mean,
Speaker 2: how did all that reside for you during those years?
Speaker 3: This hole's really true when I think about that time,
Speaker 3: even as an adult, but as a kid, my understanding
Speaker 3: of family was my mom, Miriam and me, and Dottie
Speaker 3: was important and present at a young age. But I
Speaker 3: was so young. When they're fighting and they split up
Speaker 3: and we end up indruction City and intruction City, it's
Speaker 3: really just us. If Miriam was part of this conversation,
Speaker 3: she would recount many of the same things, but have
Speaker 3: a slightly different slant, by which I mean for Miriam.
Speaker 3: I think it was more difficult for me. My family
Speaker 3: was Mom and Miriam and me, and they were miriam
Speaker 3: Is just as much as my mom took care of me.
Speaker 3: As fathers came in, it was sometimes difficult. And I
Speaker 3: think that that my understanding of race, of myself as
Speaker 3: a black person, is tied to that. My mom always
Speaker 3: felt like she felt like I needed a black man
Speaker 3: in my life. I think she was drawn to black men,
Speaker 3: but she also felt like if there was going to
Speaker 3: be a man in our lives, it was going to
Speaker 3: be a black man, and so she dated black men.
Speaker 3: But for me until we move with Ed Wheeler, after
Speaker 3: they get together, after the you My Arizona breakup, they
Speaker 3: get back together eventually. Until then, family to me was
Speaker 3: Mom and Miriam at the time that we lived in
Speaker 3: the Gabway apartment, so it's you know, it's Dotty Miriam,
Speaker 3: me and Mom. And my mom used to have like
Speaker 3: what was called a vanity, you know, like that sort
Speaker 3: of little bureau with a mirror, and that's where she'd
Speaker 3: put on makeup at the beginning of the day. And
Speaker 3: as she recasts this event, like I'm over her shoulder
Speaker 3: watching or she's putting on makeup, and I'm really fixed
Speaker 3: on her, you know, like I was just sort of
Speaker 3: an adoration before my mother. And at a certain point
Speaker 3: I turned her and I point to myself in the mirror,
Speaker 3: and I go, who's that colored boy? Because I don't
Speaker 3: think I understood, Like I think what I thought of myself.
Speaker 3: I thought of myself as like my mom that so
Speaker 3: I should therefore look like my mom, as this white person.
Speaker 3: So I think that it was all kind of in
Speaker 3: my little four year old head was kind of muddled
Speaker 3: and in my mom I can't remember how she responded,
Speaker 3: but like that's you and da da dah, and you know,
Speaker 3: I think she's become very aware of helping me understand race.
Speaker 3: But I think that that ties into how she felt
Speaker 3: like Miriam and I both needed and maybe I especially
Speaker 3: needed a black man in my life, and I think
Speaker 3: it becomes associated with that. To me, it's it's more
Speaker 3: like me, Miriam and my mom and then these men
Speaker 3: who might be part of our lives that I might
Speaker 3: more or less feel close to.
Speaker 2: When David's mom and Ed Wheeler get back together, the
Speaker 2: family follows him to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. They spend three
Speaker 2: years there. After Ed Wheeler retires from the Army, they
Speaker 2: end up in Amarillo, Texas, when David is about eleven.
Speaker 2: David and Miriam are two of four black students in
Speaker 2: the entire middle school in Amarillo. Here, David encounters racism
Speaker 2: for the first time, or at least this is his
Speaker 2: first conscious experience of it. Some other boys pin him
Speaker 2: down in the playground, hold him down, and give him
Speaker 2: something called red belly. After the school treats this as
Speaker 2: just a prank, not racism.
Speaker 3: When we moved to Amarillo, we're in a space where
Speaker 3: we are the no biracial families that I remember, and Amula,
Speaker 3: there's a black Community's small, but there's one. But that's
Speaker 3: not where we lived. We lived on the outside of
Speaker 3: town at the Texas State Technical Institute, where my stepdad
Speaker 3: to good job in security. And so, yeah, we're four
Speaker 3: black kids. I'm the only black boy, and I remember
Speaker 3: sort of the class clown in my class, funny kid,
Speaker 3: but he was kind of also you know, western shirt,
Speaker 3: big belt buckle, sort of stereotypical, and I'm aware enough
Speaker 3: to be leery, but he was one of the boys
Speaker 3: that jumped me on the playground and they hold me
Speaker 3: down and just that feeling of power, I mean, the
Speaker 3: red bellies when they hold you down and they expose
Speaker 3: your stomach and then they just slap you know, stomach
Speaker 3: with their open hand until your skin turns red. They
Speaker 3: called a red belly. It hurts, I have to say,
Speaker 3: but it was less the hurt than that, you know,
Speaker 3: to be physically held down and restrained in that way,
Speaker 3: vulnerable in that way, completely vulnerable, and it's these white boys. Yeah,
Speaker 3: to me, it was a completely like racialized hazing, and
Speaker 3: you know in the school again, the school is just like, ah,
Speaker 3: these these are boys. They just sort of ride it off.
Speaker 3: But in my family, we understand like this is a problem.
Speaker 3: And so Miram and I actually went back to Lawton
Speaker 3: where Fort Sill was and lived with my mom's friend
Speaker 3: for a while so that we wouldn't be in that school.
Speaker 3: And then when we came back to Amberillo, one of
Speaker 3: our neighbors taught at a school in town that was
Speaker 3: more racially mixed, and my mom found somebody's address and
Speaker 3: used the address that we could enroll in that school,
Speaker 3: and we ended up going to that school. The hazing
Speaker 3: actually continued in weird ways for both of us. Merriam
Speaker 3: and I met a little bit less so, but you know,
Speaker 3: it was a very it was a mixed school that
Speaker 3: there was a black population. It wasn't huge, but it
Speaker 3: was notable. It was a very big a Mexican American population,
Speaker 3: and probably a white population about the same size as
Speaker 3: the black population. But in that mixedness it was it
Speaker 3: could be kind of a rough school. And I remember Miriam,
Speaker 3: I didn't notice what had happened, but she told me
Speaker 3: afterwards like she had been being hazed by black girls
Speaker 3: because she's like complected and she's you know, pretty, and
Speaker 3: these black girls were threatening Miriam and she ended up
Speaker 3: taking a steak knife to school to defend herself. Emerl
Speaker 3: wasn't great for us.
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 2: In David's personal history piece in The New Yorker, he writes,
Speaker 2: indignation simmered within me, a rising fury at the sweep
Speaker 2: and scope of the horrors that we African Americans had
Speaker 2: born since our very beginnings. That feeling is also coupled
Speaker 2: with a tinge of shame that comes from a long
Speaker 2: history of oppression. Then one evening, David and his family
Speaker 2: watched the Alex Haley television series Roots, a cultural sensation
Speaker 2: when it came out in nineteen seventy seven, And so like.
Speaker 3: We are watching Roots together and I don't know why.
Speaker 3: It wasn't conscious, it was subconscious, but I just I
Speaker 3: just I just didn't want to do it. I just
Speaker 3: was like, I don't want to see that we all
Speaker 3: have to do it. Part of it like being a
Speaker 3: eleven to twelve year old resisting what her parents want
Speaker 3: to do, but in retrospect, part of me understands, or
Speaker 3: I think I understand that there was something deeper going on.
Speaker 3: My mom made me sit there, so I sat there
Speaker 3: and watch and completely getting grossed from the beginning. And
Speaker 3: as I'm watching sort of you know Punti Quinte's experiences
Speaker 3: first in Africa and then you know he's in the
Speaker 3: United States, and we're watching this as a family, My mom,
Speaker 3: my stepdad, my little sister, shaw Tala is born at
Speaker 3: that point. She's way too young to know what she's watching,
Speaker 3: but she's sitting in my mom's lap. And over the
Speaker 3: course of having that experience felt to sort of racial
Speaker 3: awakening where there's a certain pride. J are you're feeling
Speaker 3: this moments? I mean, it just was a moving experience
Speaker 3: for me. And this again is when we're at Ambrillo,
Speaker 3: so that hazing experience that happened, Ream and I at
Speaker 3: this point are in the school in town. So there's
Speaker 3: this feeling of black pride but also at anger. So
Speaker 3: pride and anger that this is what we, as black
Speaker 3: people we were subjected to, but also a little bit
Speaker 3: of a tinge of shame that we are also associated
Speaker 3: with these people who were constantly diminished and depressed and whatever.
Speaker 3: So it was a really complex feeling, Like I feel
Speaker 3: like the resistance that I didn't probably have words for
Speaker 3: that made me a little averse to what I was
Speaker 3: about to watch had something to do with that when
Speaker 3: I watch it. When I watched this series over the
Speaker 3: course of that week, you know that it comes on
Speaker 3: or whatever. You know, I feel this pride and this
Speaker 3: anger and a rebelliousness that I'm trying and hear it
Speaker 3: from my mother on some level, but it's beginning to
Speaker 3: find voice. But there was also a little hint of
Speaker 3: shame that was mixed in there too that I have
Speaker 3: to acknowledge.
Speaker 2: After Amarillo, David and his family follow ed Wheeler again,
Speaker 2: this time to Borger, Oklahoma. This feels like a whole
Speaker 2: new world, described by David as the epitome of late
Speaker 2: seventies Bible Belt, socially conservative Christian symbolism everywhere proselytizing in
Speaker 2: this landscape, David begins to learn code switching as he
Speaker 2: continues to question and develop his identity. He's always been
Speaker 2: a self described mama's boy, but now that his mom
Speaker 2: is made sure her son has yet another male presence
Speaker 2: in his life, David's leaning more toward traditional male behaviors
Speaker 2: and activities. For instance, he joins the football team. This
Speaker 2: is also when he really begins to clock and navigate
Speaker 2: the racial nuances around him.
Speaker 3: When we first moved to Borger, there's still a Black
Speaker 3: You Center and a White Youth Center, at least that's
Speaker 3: what they call them. The White You Center everybody can
Speaker 3: go to, but mostly black folks didn't. That's where the
Speaker 3: pool was, and the Black You Center only black folks
Speaker 3: went to. You know, it wasn't sort of hardline segregation
Speaker 3: like it had probably been ten years before, but the
Speaker 3: remnants were still there. As a kid, you don't quite
Speaker 3: know what you're seeing, but that was how it was.
Speaker 3: But even though that stuff was there, people were just
Speaker 3: kind of friendly. You're driving down the street and people
Speaker 3: hank at you in wave and like aftertime you're like,
Speaker 3: I don't know who that is. But it was friendly
Speaker 3: in that way. And I think also I was maturing
Speaker 3: as a racial being, sort of learning to coachwitch and
Speaker 3: navigate these spaces and all that. One of my first
Speaker 3: best friends was a Mexican American kid named Lord Gardunio
Speaker 3: Jerry Paul Smith down the street with his white kid
Speaker 3: But then from school, Leroy Horton, who to this day
Speaker 3: is still one of my best friends, was a black
Speaker 3: kid from the other side of town. So I just
Speaker 3: had just a more diverse experience and generally people were
Speaker 3: more friendly, and even though the racism was there, it wasn't.
Speaker 3: It could be on the surface, but it wasn't necessarily
Speaker 3: on the surface. And the other difference was that my
Speaker 3: stepdad was hired by the sheriff to be a deputy sheriff,
Speaker 3: and he was the first black deputy sheriff in the county.
Speaker 3: There was another a black man named Greg Belton who
Speaker 3: was an engineer and he was active, like on the
Speaker 3: school board. But aside from that that, we were kind
Speaker 3: of the black bourgeoisie of Borger to the degree which
Speaker 3: serves a black bourgeoisie and Borger and it is bourgeois,
Speaker 3: so we had the different sort of class and caste
Speaker 3: experience too in that way. I mean, I probably had
Speaker 3: some inclusive code switching before then, but it really is
Speaker 3: something that I'm very consciously doing at that point when
Speaker 3: we moved to Borger in seventh eighth grade.
Speaker 2: Perhaps unsurprisingly, there's also a huge church culture in Borger.
Speaker 2: In the pervasive tension between being both insider and outsider.
Speaker 2: David starts to attend. It's not like he is committed,
Speaker 2: but he is curious. But then one day, all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, he finds himself being saved.
Speaker 3: My friend Jerry Paul, he went to that church, and
Speaker 3: my football coach was at the church, and he taught
Speaker 3: our Sunday school class, and it was very social to me.
Speaker 3: It was like guys from the team and my friends,
Speaker 3: and I mean these are the kids that like, at night,
Speaker 3: we're sneaking out of the house and were like, you know,
Speaker 3: vandalizing stuff, and we called it being roguish. I mean,
Speaker 3: there was nothing Christian about my friendship with these boys,
Speaker 3: but on Sunday we would get together at church and
Speaker 3: the youth minister and my coach and then eventually the
Speaker 3: preacher were like, have you thought about being saved? Have
Speaker 3: you felt christ in your life? And then one day
Speaker 3: it just sort of kind of happened bigger than me,
Speaker 3: and I just was like, yeah, you know, I felt
Speaker 3: really good about it, like in this way, like I
Speaker 3: don't know that it was the I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 3: on some level was the Christian part of it. You know,
Speaker 3: I'd sort of been receiving all these messages about heaven
Speaker 3: and Hell again it's fire and Brimstone Church, Heaven and Hell.
Speaker 3: And all my other friends Lee Roy across town. I'd
Speaker 3: go to church with him sometimes because his mother was
Speaker 3: very religon just I mean, Christianity was just part of
Speaker 3: the culture. And so when I get saved, I think,
Speaker 3: I'm I think I'm understanding myself as as being Christian.
Speaker 3: I don't think I fully understand how that might have
Speaker 3: implications on me being Jewish, because I understand myself to
Speaker 3: be Jewish. But I'm just like, you know, hey, And
Speaker 3: but my mom, she was she could be mad. She
Speaker 3: had She was a tiny, tiny wish. She was like
Speaker 3: five to one. You know, I'm her son, I'm her child.
Speaker 3: I had seen her mad, but I had never seen
Speaker 3: her mad like that. When I came home from being saved,
Speaker 3: I was all like, you know, in the clouds, sort
Speaker 3: of like, oh, I just had this great experience and
Speaker 3: I'm feeling good about myself and I'm going to heaven
Speaker 3: and I'm part of this community. And she was waiting
Speaker 3: for me in the yard because the preacher, who had,
Speaker 3: you know, asked if I was feeling the Lord or whatever.
Speaker 3: He had gone home and told her, which was first
Speaker 3: mistake back at his part, because I think he got
Speaker 3: probably worse than I did. My mom was not afraid to,
Speaker 3: you know, get in somebody's face. But then when I,
Speaker 3: you know, walk down the street and she's sitting in
Speaker 3: the are, she started screaming at me. When she saw me,
Speaker 3: she was outraged, and I think it was because she
Speaker 3: was very struck by the hypocrisy of how she experienced
Speaker 3: what she felt like was a hypocrisy of Christianity the
Speaker 3: United States. Even though she was not a practicing Jewan anywhere,
Speaker 3: she always wore a Star of David, very prominently a pendant,
Speaker 3: and I never asked her actually, but she must have
Speaker 3: experienced it as some sort of betrayal.
Speaker 2: Well. It's fascinating because she was very focused on and
Speaker 2: made sure that there would be a black man as
Speaker 2: a role model in your life, and understood that as
Speaker 2: a biracial man, a boy, you would be walking through
Speaker 2: life recognized as black, not recognized as Jewish. I mean,
Speaker 2: you weren't wearing a Star of David, right.
Speaker 3: I think the thing that my mother feared I was
Speaker 3: betraying was race, at least as much as not more
Speaker 3: than Jewish is, because both Dottie and Ed Wheeler were
Speaker 3: Christian and Dotty wasn't practicing in any way. He was
Speaker 3: sort of he was a jokestra and he wouldn't make
Speaker 3: jokes about anything, and he would call himself Christian, I'm sure,
Speaker 3: but he wouldn't go to church. But his family very
Speaker 3: much so you know, his mother Midi right with whom
Speaker 3: my mother had a complicated a difficult relationship, and his
Speaker 3: sister his older son were very Christian. But Ed Wheeler too.
Speaker 3: There was a time where when they were first dating,
Speaker 3: when we were still in Joussian City, where we went
Speaker 3: to church with him a few times. So it wasn't,
Speaker 3: or at least it wasn't mostly the Christianity part. I
Speaker 3: think it's the fact of that white church. And I
Speaker 3: learned this from Miriam because Miriam overheard everything, which he's
Speaker 3: you know, cussing out the creature, but the note that
Speaker 3: it ends on he had two daughters and she says
Speaker 3: to him, what are you going to do when my
Speaker 3: son wants to date your daughters? So for her it's
Speaker 3: the racial piece. It's the racial threat that me and
Speaker 3: this white community, and as a black boy, and I'm
Speaker 3: interacting with these people and they're calling me, you know,
Speaker 3: their brother or their whatever in Christ. But you know,
Speaker 3: if I step across some line that I maybe she
Speaker 3: fears I don't know how to navigate, like this is
Speaker 3: I mean, a real threat. Not so long after that,
Speaker 3: it was the summer that I was sixteen. There was
Speaker 3: a small town named Stanette, about ten miles away. It's
Speaker 3: much smaller than Borger, maybe a few thousand people. But
Speaker 3: one of my best friends was this kidnamed Bud, a
Speaker 3: white kid, and but now were really close. But he
Speaker 3: was dating this girl from Stanett, a white girl. But
Speaker 3: the three of us were hanging out, and I remember
Speaker 3: I was working at this place called the Mister Burger.
Speaker 3: It was just this little drive through burger place and
Speaker 3: I was the only person there. The manager had quit
Speaker 3: and I basically ran the place, even though I wasn't
Speaker 3: technically the manager. And Bud pulls up and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: these guys for Stinette, they want to kick your ass.
Speaker 3: And I was like huh. And they're like, they think
Speaker 3: you're dating Susan and I was like what, And so
Speaker 3: you know, again testosterone, sixteen year old me and budd
Speaker 3: get in the car and we wround up some guys
Speaker 3: and it's mostly other white guys, interestingly, but from them,
Speaker 3: their point of view is sort of Borger versus Stanette.
Speaker 3: When we get there, I realize, you know, this fight
Speaker 3: that's about to happen, this is potentially dangerous. And Susan
Speaker 3: comes and she's crying, and she was there visiting her uncle.
Speaker 3: She was saying how her uncle, so a grown man,
Speaker 3: had gathered some of his friends and they had guns.
Speaker 3: So my mom's fear was not it wasn't irrational. This
Speaker 3: is a real danger, and between those experiences, I always
Speaker 3: sort of understand that it's there, but I understand in
Speaker 3: real terms that I could die, This could end very
Speaker 3: poorly for me. So my mom's fears weren't unreal, right, right,
Speaker 3: of course?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it strikes me that the whole insider
Speaker 2: outsider dynamic only goes so far right, you're an insider
Speaker 2: until until you're not.
Speaker 3: And maybe it's too late at that point to retract
Speaker 3: or to back up. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The spring David turned sixteen, his mom's marriage to Ed
Speaker 2: Wheeler is deteriorating. They're heading toward divorce. It's during this
Speaker 2: time David's mom and sits him down to tell him something,
Speaker 2: something worth shaking.
Speaker 3: They had gotten together and split up so many times.
Speaker 3: I mean, they had a really rocky relationship. And at
Speaker 3: this point on the one end, I'm born again. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm pretty you can't see it, but I'm putting your quotes.
Speaker 3: I'm bored grand I'm Christian in some way. And he
Speaker 3: wants to hold this secret that she has told him
Speaker 3: over her head as a way to I don't know,
Speaker 3: shame her in front of me, or I don't know
Speaker 3: exactly what his motivation was. So she beat him to
Speaker 3: the puncha. She sits me down. She goes, you need
Speaker 3: to know that, you know, Dottie, isn't your father. Your
Speaker 3: real father is this man, Max falla Day. And it's
Speaker 3: this man I knew from my youth. He was my
Speaker 3: first love. And when you know, we were stationed in
Speaker 3: France after Miriam was born. Dottie had always been a
Speaker 3: little bit of a lady's and he was very handsome.
Speaker 3: He was tall and carried himself in that way, and
Speaker 3: he had not been faithful, and my mom was like
Speaker 3: an eye for an eye. This is how she's explaining
Speaker 3: to me and you know, it makes a certain sense
Speaker 3: of me. Know how I knew my mom and she's like,
Speaker 3: she told me she'd only they'd only slept together once,
Speaker 3: which I find as an adult, I find kind of improbable.
Speaker 3: But she told me we'd only slept together once. But
Speaker 3: I got pregnant, and so Max Valade is your real father.
Speaker 3: And at this point, you know, Africa to me is
Speaker 3: still like, you know, what I'd learned from roots, LeVar
Speaker 3: Burton and OJ Simpson in the forest or whatever. You know,
Speaker 3: I have no conception of what Africa is. It's a
Speaker 3: UNICEF commercial where they're wanting change or something for starving children.
Speaker 3: But she's like, you know, he comes from Dahome and
Speaker 3: he's an architect, and he works for the un and
Speaker 3: he's from this very distinguished family, and so you need
Speaker 3: to know this. My reaction was the oppostion where my
Speaker 3: stepdad would have expected. To me, it just it just
Speaker 3: made a weird sort of sense. I had no idea
Speaker 3: who Max Validay was, but I it just made a
Speaker 3: weird sort of sense to me. It's hard to.
Speaker 2: Explain why, even in the instant.
Speaker 3: Even in the instance, it sort of made a weird
Speaker 3: sort of sense. My mom. She had this thing what
Speaker 3: she interpreted of the character of her men with the
Speaker 3: character of her children. So Dottie was a tricker. So
Speaker 3: her big fear for Miriam was at Miriam would be
Speaker 3: an alcoholic with Ed Wheeler, you know, he could be
Speaker 3: very kind of petty, he could be kind of small,
Speaker 3: and he was, yeah, vindictive and all that, and she
Speaker 3: would fear that. Shall tell my little sister inherited that.
Speaker 3: And with me, I don't know, she just put different
Speaker 3: expectations on me. I mean, I didn't seek to explain it,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't easily explicable. Had I Miriam Micheal both
Speaker 3: are really smart, and Miriam was always like I had
Speaker 3: idolized Mirham. She was just so sharp, she read and
Speaker 3: she was super funny. In my mind, she was the
Speaker 3: smart one. But I was always treated as the smart kid,
Speaker 3: and I think it sort of associated with things like that.
Speaker 3: And so when when I get this information, I find
Speaker 3: out he's from this distinguished family and he was, you know,
Speaker 3: the first West African to graduate from it called de
Speaker 3: Boza in Paris. You know, I was like, okay, it
Speaker 3: just made a certain sense.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah, I do, And really a feeling
Speaker 2: of like, oh, every like the pieces are falling into
Speaker 2: place now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very much, so I wrote in this letter. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm also like I'm sixteen, and so I'm also becoming
Speaker 3: more independent, autonomous. I was, you know, developing as a
Speaker 3: football player. I was ranked high in my class. You know,
Speaker 3: I just was getting closer with Dottie. I never had
Speaker 3: a close relationship with Ed Wheeler, but you know, I
Speaker 3: was just my own person in my own mind. And
Speaker 3: so when I find out about Max Falla Da, the
Speaker 3: letter that I wrote was just sort of like, dear Max.
Speaker 3: I'm sure I called him Max. My mom told me
Speaker 3: I found out Da Da Da. It was more or
Speaker 3: less just I wanted you to know that I know.
Speaker 3: And he wrote me a letter back totally that was
Speaker 3: very neutral. What I remember most distinctly is he wrote
Speaker 3: me in English. He's like, I need you to know
Speaker 3: that there is nothing for you. I have nothing for you.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't that it felt like a rejection. I
Speaker 3: think it just felt it's stung because I deliberately did
Speaker 3: not ask him for anything. You know, I was like going, hey,
Speaker 3: I want to meet you have nothing. It was just
Speaker 3: sort of like, I know and his response was to
Speaker 3: sort of create this distance. But even more so, the
Speaker 3: thing that I understood from how my mom had told
Speaker 3: me about him, her best friend growing up was these
Speaker 3: two African women, and one of them I had met
Speaker 3: when we lived in France briefly, maybe both of them,
Speaker 3: but one of them, and they were It turns out
Speaker 3: these are her relatives. What is his sister, and other
Speaker 3: is his niece, And those were my mom's best friends
Speaker 3: from growing up, and they remained best friends. So I
Speaker 3: knew I had a sense of the fila of day family,
Speaker 3: or at least as these figures that I had met
Speaker 3: when I was six, and so what she's telling me
Speaker 3: about him when I'm sixteen, that was part of it
Speaker 3: making sense. And so his complete rejection in that way
Speaker 3: felt like it wasn't just of me but also of her,
Speaker 3: and that because I to this day I admired my mom.
Speaker 3: She was complicated and difficult, and I'm not sure she
Speaker 3: always made the best choices, but I loved her then
Speaker 3: and love her still and admired her, and so for
Speaker 3: him to treat her in that way, in my eyes,
Speaker 3: was worse than what Ed Wheeler was threatening to do
Speaker 3: or Ed Wheeler had ever done. It was really it
Speaker 3: felt terrible because it felt like it said something about
Speaker 3: my mom.
Speaker 2: And you also, I think had or developed the sense
Speaker 2: that he was her one true love, that there was
Speaker 2: a quality of their relationship that was unrequited for her. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and somehow this was the beginning of him letting you
Speaker 2: know that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean she said as much when she was
Speaker 3: explaining to me the affair. She was like, he was
Speaker 3: my first love. And she said it subsequently, and not
Speaker 3: just to me, but to Miria Michelle Tall. She's like,
Speaker 3: you know, this is the man that I truly love.
Speaker 3: She told me she was first attracted to Ed Wheeler
Speaker 3: because they had the same voice. The Valadays all the
Speaker 3: men and the women all have a very grave voice,
Speaker 3: and I do too, And she would say that she
Speaker 3: was first drawn to Ed Wheeler because he had Max
Speaker 3: Valaday's voice, and so, yeah, I understood the depth of
Speaker 3: her feeling for him, and the thing on the other
Speaker 3: end was so unreciprocated. It just it was painful. It
Speaker 3: was really painful.
Speaker 2: David's sixteen seventeen. He's thinking about college, becoming more and
Speaker 2: more autonomous. When he starts taking PSATs and thinking about
Speaker 2: where he might want to go. He knows two things
Speaker 2: for sure. He wants to play college football, and he's
Speaker 2: not going to school in Texas. He ends up very
Speaker 2: much in a place that is not Texas, far from
Speaker 2: the Panhandle, at Carlton College in Minnesota. As for Max Falladay,
Speaker 2: David packs that information up into a box and intends
Speaker 2: to move on with his life. If his father doesn't
Speaker 2: want to have anything to do with him, well, then
Speaker 2: the feeling is mutual. Max Faladay is nothing more than
Speaker 2: a bullet point. David has a great experience at Carlton,
Speaker 2: becomes captain of the football team, and is on his
Speaker 2: way to earning his BA when his mother calls. She
Speaker 2: had stayed in contact with Max, and Max has told
Speaker 2: her that he wants David to come visit him in
Speaker 2: Addis Ababa, where he's employed by the UN Economic Commission
Speaker 2: for Africa.
Speaker 3: It very much cold cocked me. It was very very unexpected,
Speaker 3: and it was also coupled at the time. So Dottie
Speaker 3: had been a drinker and I had been with him
Speaker 3: as he was getting sick and he ended up developing
Speaker 3: gangreen and so he's hospitalized and you know, they amputated
Speaker 3: toe and then another toe, and eventually a foot. And
Speaker 3: at the end of this process, it happens over two years.
Speaker 3: But at the end of this process, you know, he's
Speaker 3: basically gotten either legs and he's living in a nursing home.
Speaker 3: And this is happening at the time that my mom
Speaker 3: is like, Max wants to meet you, Dottie. At that
Speaker 3: point we had grown close. Again. I'm not a grown man.
Speaker 3: I'm a college student, but I feel like a grown man.
Speaker 3: And I'm on my own in Minnesota. And on the
Speaker 3: way to Minnesota, I would spend time with Dottie and
Speaker 3: one time he told me, you know, this is before
Speaker 3: the gangreen, but he had told me, you know, captain
Speaker 3: of the football team, and you're in college. He told me,
Speaker 3: you're my hero. You know, I'm tearing up now. It
Speaker 3: just sort of broke my heart. I mean, it was
Speaker 3: the same time Max reappears, and so I was in
Speaker 3: all that mix of things. But I agree to go.
Speaker 3: And when I I agree to go, we made up
Speaker 3: this big elaborate lie, or I made up Mom and
Speaker 3: I made up this big elaborate lie to Dottie that
Speaker 3: I was going to be traveling in Europe with friends
Speaker 3: and stuff. So he wouldn't know. And I do meet
Speaker 3: some friends in Paris, and I stayed with my grandmother
Speaker 3: and my aunt for a little bit, and I meet
Speaker 3: an African ant, my mom's best friend, who again i'd
Speaker 3: seen as a six year old, but I you know,
Speaker 3: when I met her as a six year old, she's
Speaker 3: just my mom's African friend. And then I fly to
Speaker 3: Adis Ababa, and I meet Max.
Speaker 2: Dottie never knew about Max. Is that right?
Speaker 3: So what's complicated? My understanding at the time was that
Speaker 3: Dottie did not know that he never knew the same aunt.
Speaker 3: Max Holiday's sister. She's still alive and she and I
Speaker 3: are very close, and we talked still, and she is
Speaker 3: convinced that my mom told Dottie, And that may a
Speaker 3: certain sense to me too, in that my mom was
Speaker 3: my mom again if he's cheating on her, and she
Speaker 3: maybe is inclined to want to be with Max, but
Speaker 3: the pretext is Dottie cheating on her, and Dottie was gone,
Speaker 3: he was in Vietnam briefly, and the timing of the
Speaker 3: pregnancy maybe doesn't work. And Jeraladine, Max's sister, who's who's
Speaker 3: my aunt who I'm close with She's like she told him.
Speaker 3: That makes a certain sense to me because the most
Speaker 3: angry that Dottie ever got with me. This is again
Speaker 3: around that time that I'm fifteen or sixteen and Mia
Speaker 3: and I would spend the summer with him. Then right
Speaker 3: before going this is before I knew about Max. When
Speaker 3: we were about to go up, Miriam was just super chrying.
Speaker 3: Everybody still do this day likes Miriam better than me.
Speaker 3: It's just just fun and funny that I could be
Speaker 3: a oldle dower maybe, But I remember thinking, I don't
Speaker 3: think Dottie likes me very much. And I made the
Speaker 3: mistake of telling my mom, like just sort of we
Speaker 3: were close, I confided in her, right, I told her,
Speaker 3: don't tell him. But the first thing she does is
Speaker 3: she tells him. And so I'm at Kansas City with
Speaker 3: him and We're riding the cab, just him and me
Speaker 3: and his anger. When he confronted me about it, it
Speaker 3: was not just anger, but it was like this hurt.
Speaker 3: And when I revisited that in retrospect a few years later,
Speaker 3: when he tells me I'm his hero, you know, that
Speaker 3: plays into it. And then fast forward two decades and
Speaker 3: I find out that mom had told him, like, it
Speaker 3: just makes a certain sense. Yeah, But at that time
Speaker 3: I was told, or at least led to believe the opposite,
Speaker 3: that he didn't know because we construct this elaborate live
Speaker 3: so he doesn't know that I'm going to Adiz.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that's so fascinating
Speaker 2: to me about your story is that there's kind of
Speaker 2: a reckoning with what it's not possible to know. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's some things that you know, you're left to put
Speaker 2: the pieces together as best as you can. Yes, you'll
Speaker 2: never a thousand percent know because the principal players are gone,
Speaker 2: and you know, what you're left with is that gut
Speaker 2: feeling that oh yeah, this makes sense and kind of
Speaker 2: going with that and yes, and that's enough.
Speaker 3: That's a lot, It's a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So David goes off to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It's nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty five. There's widespread famine, and the country is under
Speaker 2: a dictatorship.
Speaker 3: It's my first time in the developing world, and it
Speaker 3: is really the developing world. It's in a really difficult place.
Speaker 3: The night before I had been out because again we
Speaker 3: had this pretext of travelery friends, and I did meet
Speaker 3: some friends. The night before, I'd been at like Jim
Speaker 3: Morrison's grave with these friends, and we met these other
Speaker 3: folks and we were drinking from a Jerger wine. So
Speaker 3: I'm on airy Ethiopia in shorts and a tank top
Speaker 3: and hungover. So you know, I landed adis in the
Speaker 3: developing world, completely disoriented, not feeling very good physically. Ethiopia
Speaker 3: at that time. You know, this is nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3: It's not computerized in any way, and you know there's
Speaker 3: a strong military presence, and there's this crowd of people.
Speaker 3: So when I finally work my way into the airport,
Speaker 3: going through customs and getting a little bit harassed, I'm
Speaker 3: looking around for somebody who looks like me. I've never
Speaker 3: seen a picture of Max, so I'm looking around for
Speaker 3: somebody who looks like me, whatever that might mean. And
Speaker 3: I see somebody who's built more or less like me,
Speaker 3: and he's looking my way, but then it's clear it's
Speaker 3: not him. And at a certain point, as the airport
Speaker 3: is clearing out because there's two flights a day or somebody,
Speaker 3: it's not like a huge airport like we might imagine,
Speaker 3: like all the people from the from the plane are
Speaker 3: basically leaving and gone, and the airport's clearing out and
Speaker 3: I realize I'm on my own. I changed some dollars
Speaker 3: into two beer and I got a cab and I
Speaker 3: just said the africahol and I get there and the
Speaker 3: security lets me through with my American passport and I
Speaker 3: find my way to his office and he's not there,
Speaker 3: and Tricity's in a meeting his secretary. It's not clear
Speaker 3: she knew I was coming or not. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 3: I didn't say I was his son, but I explained
Speaker 3: I'm David Wright, and she doesn't know who I am.
Speaker 3: But she lets me sort of wait in this ante
Speaker 3: chamber and there's a couch and I just remember just
Speaker 3: falling asleep, you know, sort of too much me and
Speaker 3: Paris and I before and the trip and the stress.
Speaker 3: And when I wake up, he's standing above me, and
Speaker 3: I will remember forever this really warm smile that was
Speaker 3: so much the opposite of that letter I got when
Speaker 3: I was sixteen, that made me feel welcome. So we're talking,
Speaker 3: and it was just from the very beginning it was
Speaker 3: just so warm on a personal level. But then as
Speaker 3: soon as other people, I mean, he's married at that point,
Speaker 3: and I have a little brother and sister who's like
Speaker 3: my little brother is he's between one and two, and
Speaker 3: my little sister had just been born, and his wife
Speaker 3: is only like five years older than me. But so
Speaker 3: when it's us in that context, you know, he lives
Speaker 3: in this house with and this is very true in
Speaker 3: the developing world, certainly in Africa, you know, especially for
Speaker 3: people of his status. He has housekeepers and all this stuff,
Speaker 3: and to me from small town Texas, that's super uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: But when we're in the context of his house, him
Speaker 3: and me, or him and me and his family, it's
Speaker 3: very warm. I would go with him to work at
Speaker 3: se there's nothing to do. I'd go with him to work,
Speaker 3: and I'd spend time in the library, right you know.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I'd just walk around on diese. Whenever we'd find
Speaker 3: ourselves with other people, he would immediately create this distance.
Speaker 3: He would introduce me as mister David Wright from America.
Speaker 3: He would never go this is my son. It was difficult. Frankly, again,
Speaker 3: I wasn't expecting this warm embrace, but I clearly must
Speaker 3: have been expecting more than that, because it was it
Speaker 3: was difficult. There was one instant this friend because she
Speaker 3: was a woman, and he had this way of being.
Speaker 3: He was very charming, he had this way of being
Speaker 3: that it was all sort of plurirtatious. And this woman
Speaker 3: was just a good friend of her. She was married
Speaker 3: and had children, but they were clearly good friends. And
Speaker 3: as they're talking, he introduces me mister David Wright from America,
Speaker 3: and she's looking at me and they're kind of playing
Speaker 3: back and forth in a certain port. She goes, Max,
Speaker 3: don't tell me this boy is in your child, and
Speaker 3: he looks at her and he has this sort of
Speaker 3: smirk and he goes, situvu if you wish, And that
Speaker 3: broke my heart really again. I wasn't asking to be
Speaker 3: recognized as his son, but he was so deliberately have
Speaker 3: a leer about it that I was just like, I
Speaker 3: was so happy to have met him. I was enjoying
Speaker 3: the stay, and I felt a little bit like when
Speaker 3: I was sixteen. It felt clear to me that when
Speaker 3: I left that that was it. We would never see
Speaker 3: each other again, and I was okay with it. It
Speaker 3: turns out that I wasn't exactly welcome. I've arned over
Speaker 3: the course of the two and a half weeks I
Speaker 3: was there, my mom and my aunt, his sister had
Speaker 3: sort of, you know, gotten together and sort of forced
Speaker 3: his hand. He would have been just as happy for
Speaker 3: me not to come. I sort of figured out over
Speaker 3: the course of that visit.
Speaker 2: So on the flight home, you felt that you had
Speaker 2: met your father, you had checked that box, and that
Speaker 2: was going to be it. You had all the information
Speaker 2: that you needed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was good to go, and I was twenty.
Speaker 3: And so if I was beginning to feel independent at sixteen,
Speaker 3: at twenty, you know, I'm coming into my own, especially
Speaker 3: like the angry part of me. Like my little sister
Speaker 3: would call me Malcolm Farakahn, you know, playfully, because I
Speaker 3: could be really angry about stuff, and that twenty year
Speaker 3: old me was that person. I was very you know,
Speaker 3: when I left the country and I went to England
Speaker 3: in France, it was to get to know family. Part
Speaker 3: of it was to play football, but that was the pretext.
Speaker 3: It was really I was reading James Baldwin and I
Speaker 3: was leaving the country like I was going to be
Speaker 3: an expatriate, and as a black man in America in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty six, that was just not tolerable. And so
Speaker 3: if there was a part of me, like when I
Speaker 3: you know, I'm on the plane out of Adis and
Speaker 3: Max and I will never see each other. I'm okay
Speaker 3: with it. I mean, I'm going back to the States
Speaker 3: at that point. But it's the nacid part of that
Speaker 3: part of me, the beginning of that part of me
Speaker 3: that's just angry black man, and try to reckon me
Speaker 3: as a black man in America.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back a couple of years past Dave.
Speaker 2: It is a year out of college and he's living
Speaker 2: in England, where he's playing semi professional American football. One day,
Speaker 2: he gets another teutonic shifting phone call from his mom.
Speaker 2: She says, your grandfather is on his deathbed and wants
Speaker 2: to meet you before he goes. David's confused. His grandfather,
Speaker 2: Jack Writ's father ed Wheeler's father. He asks his mom who,
Speaker 2: and she replies, simply, your grandfather.
Speaker 3: She had stayed in touch with Max, but also with
Speaker 3: Jaladine Accessister, her best friend growing up. Jaldine is a
Speaker 3: little bit in the Faladay family. She was a little
Speaker 3: bit the repel, the one who would sort of push
Speaker 3: against these family more's And at that point, when I
Speaker 3: meet Max, one of the things I come to understand
Speaker 3: is that the faladays don't know about me. This is
Speaker 3: my understanding with Todd. I learned that that's not true,
Speaker 3: but at that point, the Faladays don't know about me.
Speaker 3: Max has kept it a big secret, and so I
Speaker 3: know that he's got this distinguished family in Dajome, but
Speaker 3: he's not acknowledging me to people in Adis. So it
Speaker 3: makes complete sense to me that that his family doesn't know.
Speaker 3: And his older sister is this really distinguished psychoanalyst. She
Speaker 3: had first been a pediatrician, the protege of this important
Speaker 3: French pioneer im pedetitician, and then she moved from pediatrics
Speaker 3: to psychoanalysis and she was Jacqulaicans protege. So I knew
Speaker 3: she existed. She distinguished person, just like Max was distinguished.
Speaker 3: But all those people don't know about me. So when
Speaker 3: my mom calls me, she's like, your grandfather knows. I'm
Speaker 3: just like, it doesn't make sense that that would be
Speaker 3: the grandfather she's talking about, and how does he know?
Speaker 3: But she's like, he's dying, he's in his nineties. He
Speaker 3: wants to meet you. So I'm told that I need
Speaker 3: to go to Paris. From London that I'm going to
Speaker 3: meet Solange, who's Jacqualicanz Protege, and that she's going to
Speaker 3: arrange this trip. By this time, max is retired from
Speaker 3: the UN and lives in what's been in now what
Speaker 3: had been Dajo May. So I go to Paris. I
Speaker 3: meet Solange. She's great, she's super warm. I feel really
Speaker 3: welcomed by her, embraced, and I take this trip to
Speaker 3: being in to see my father for the second time,
Speaker 3: but then also to meet the rest of the family.
Speaker 2: What is it like to be welcomed by a family
Speaker 2: that was never your family. It's this whole other world
Speaker 2: that has been you know something, even in all of
Speaker 2: the insider outsiderness of your history up until that point,
Speaker 2: you had never encountered anything like this.
Speaker 3: Nothing, nothing, So I think it's it's hard to pinpoint,
Speaker 3: but I think it's sometime between when I go to
Speaker 3: Ethiopia and my grandfather. I know that Maxi's father is
Speaker 3: the son of a king. What that means I don't know,
Speaker 3: but it turns out what I learned over that period
Speaker 3: of time is that the kings of Dahomey and the
Speaker 3: Kings of Dahomey had been slave traders. So that part
Speaker 3: of West Africa, you know, there was what it's still
Speaker 3: called the avery Coast, and next to it is gone,
Speaker 3: but it was called the gold Coast, and next to
Speaker 3: the gold coast was called the slave coast. And that's
Speaker 3: where being In, being In and Togo and part of
Speaker 3: my Geria still are. But the dominant kingdom for about
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty years during the period of the
Speaker 3: slave trade was the Kingdom of Dahomey and the Kings
Speaker 3: of Dahomey. Then the last king of Dahomey was a
Speaker 3: man named king named Bejanzen Bealzen. I don't know how
Speaker 3: you pronounced it in English, but my grandfather was his son.
Speaker 3: So I find out that I've descended from the slave
Speaker 3: trading kings of Dahomey. And I don't know a whole
Speaker 3: lot more than that, but I have a sense of it.
Speaker 3: So when I meet so Luge in Paris, I ask
Speaker 3: her some and she begins explaining it. So I don't
Speaker 3: arrive there with absolutely no knowledge, but not a lot.
Speaker 3: And when I arrive my grandfather, who's in his ninety
Speaker 3: so this was inwty seven, but he had been born
Speaker 3: in eighteen ninety four, and so he had had this
Speaker 3: really crazy life. But this incredible life, you know, descended
Speaker 3: from the king. Right when the king is defeated, is
Speaker 3: when you know his mother might what would be my
Speaker 3: great grandmother was pregnant with my grandfather. So when the
Speaker 3: king is exiled to Martinique, she stays in Dahomey, but
Speaker 3: my grandfather has to be in hiding as a child.
Speaker 3: And he has this really complicated backstory, and he also
Speaker 3: has a really complicated relationship to his legacy, to his roots.
Speaker 3: He doesn't take the name Baylzen, even though all the
Speaker 3: beals as it now knows that he's one of the
Speaker 3: sons of the king, but the man who more or
Speaker 3: less adopted him, who was named Fala Day, he takes
Speaker 3: his name. He has this really just complicated relationship to
Speaker 3: his paternity. And I don't know that as I land,
Speaker 3: but that's what I learned as I meet him. I mean,
Speaker 3: he's very he's on his deathbed and he's bent. He's
Speaker 3: very frail looking. I mean he's on his deathbed figuratively
Speaker 3: because he would sit in his chair. He moved very difficultly,
Speaker 3: but he would sit in his chair in the front room,
Speaker 3: and I was staying with him. So I've in another
Speaker 3: developing country that I've never been. It's not like the
Speaker 3: OPN eighty five, but you know, it's a Marxist lenon estate,
Speaker 3: very restrictive. I have my visa, I get there and
Speaker 3: I'm living in my grandfather's house where he has electricity,
Speaker 3: but there's no running water. And it's him and then
Speaker 3: these two African workers who work for him, who are great,
Speaker 3: very friendly, but they're workers, you know. So it's me
Speaker 3: and him sitting in his room all day and he
Speaker 3: were just talking. And you know, I was there for
Speaker 3: three weeks and I spent most of them with him.
Speaker 3: For as frail as he was physically, he is incredibly lucid,
Speaker 3: but also this really strong personality. And I'm again twenty two,
Speaker 3: twenty three year old me, So I'm just asking him
Speaker 3: questions very frankly about bayon Zen, about his upbringing. You know,
Speaker 3: about my father when he was a kid, and my grandfather.
Speaker 3: You know the way that family works in Africa. You know,
Speaker 3: the head of the family is king for lack of
Speaker 3: a better word, and so there was a certain deference
Speaker 3: that everybody had to when people would come and visit us.
Speaker 3: But there was all this deference that wasn't just sort
Speaker 3: of like, you know, my parents and I'm going to
Speaker 3: be respectful. There was this real deference and so yeah,
Speaker 3: I had this really incredible experience with him. My expectation
Speaker 3: wasn't to be embraced. I don't know what my expectation
Speaker 3: was again, because he sought me out, but he completely
Speaker 3: embraced me. I thought he was very religious during his upbringing,
Speaker 3: his father's exile, and then his father dies and he's
Speaker 3: his surrogate father sends him to the missionaries for an education,
Speaker 3: and he ends up with this man named Father Opier,
Speaker 3: who ends up being this really important missionary. So I mean,
Speaker 3: it's conflicted, right, the missionary presence in West Africa. But
Speaker 3: this man was really had this anthropological interest in Daljomey
Speaker 3: and he took my grandfather his wing and was a
Speaker 3: father figure, another father figure of my grandfather. So my
Speaker 3: grandfather sort of caught between native culture and tradition and
Speaker 3: this important priest who takes him under his wing. At
Speaker 3: this point, dajome is the stereotype of African savagery, you know,
Speaker 3: because they're slave traders, you know, and the slave trade
Speaker 3: was brutal in all aspects, but the kings of Dahomey
Speaker 3: were particularly brutal in their way of affecting the slave trade.
Speaker 3: They had a professional military, and they would slaughter people
Speaker 3: as a way to dominate neighboring villages and stuff. He's
Speaker 3: caught between that sort of image of Dahomey and this
Speaker 3: sort of culture thing that he's being educated into. He
Speaker 3: has become a journalist, an anti colonial activist. He's disappeared
Speaker 3: by the French during the war, and in fact he
Speaker 3: sent us to death. The father Opier intervenes and other
Speaker 3: people intervened, and he ends up being But he's just
Speaker 3: had this tumultuous life and he's telling me all these stories.
Speaker 3: And at one point when I'm there, he invites his
Speaker 3: priest because he can't go to church anymore because it
Speaker 3: was a condition. But he invites the priest to his house.
Speaker 3: And in the moment, I thought, okay, it's just a
Speaker 3: priest coming by to, you know, do whatever ritual thing happens.
Speaker 3: I learned and after the fact that it was super
Speaker 3: important that he was sort of presenting me as his
Speaker 3: only son's eldest son to the church. But then even
Speaker 3: more significantly, he organizes this trip, and again, being at
Speaker 3: right now is in a very different state, but in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty seven, it's really a developing world. Like the
Speaker 3: roads are really rough. A lot of times they're not paved.
Speaker 3: It's just really rough. But he organizes this trip to
Speaker 3: the village he was raised in by the Vala days,
Speaker 3: and he's going to introduce me to the family. So
Speaker 3: it's not just sort of like he embraces me like hey,
Speaker 3: you're my grandson and a clap on the back. He
Speaker 3: formally introduces me to the family and to that society
Speaker 3: as his grandson. So it was, yeah, it was super flattering,
Speaker 3: completely shocking, very unsettling in that again, I'm sort of
Speaker 3: James Baldwin wannabee me played football, a very Unbaldwin thing,
Speaker 3: played football in Paris, and then suddenly I'm part of
Speaker 3: this big African family that is very distinguished in the society,
Speaker 3: but also that hascended up these slave trading kings.
Speaker 2: It's just a stunning nott of identity. And David's grandfather
Speaker 2: doesn't only want to introduce him to his living family,
Speaker 2: he wants to introduce him to his ancestors as well.
Speaker 2: Disrespect for and worship of ancestors being central to his culture.
Speaker 2: David finds himself in a group of people speaking in Yureba,
Speaker 2: a circle of elders, including Max, and here David is
Speaker 2: being introduced as a Falladay in a very transparent way.
Speaker 2: It's the opposite of the way Max had treated him
Speaker 2: when he was last in Oddis. He says, this is
Speaker 2: the eldest son of my eldest son. He is the
Speaker 2: product of a black person and a white person. And
Speaker 2: then the village blacksmith arrives.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that in the moment it's explained to
Speaker 3: me when the blacksmith is coming, because I'm I'm asking
Speaker 3: you know why the blacksmith. And the first thing they
Speaker 3: tell me is that the blacksmith is descended from slaves.
Speaker 3: So this blacksmith that was like a caste position and
Speaker 3: in dalha Mann society, so there are slaves that they
Speaker 3: sent into the slave trade, but they also had slaves themselves,
Speaker 3: and it was more cast position, and the blacksmith was
Speaker 3: this thing that was passed from father to son. So
Speaker 3: the blacksmith that arrives, I'm told he's the descendant of slaves.
Speaker 3: I'm imagining a younger man but he's very old, and
Speaker 3: it's explained to me that as someone who works metal,
Speaker 3: who transforms metal, they know secrets, right, and so he
Speaker 3: is exactly as you explained that he is in a
Speaker 3: sort of priest role for this ceremony that's going to
Speaker 3: take place. And on the right there in the car,
Speaker 3: my grandfather and my father were soul and the driver.
Speaker 3: There was a certain solemnity, so I knew it was
Speaker 3: more than just sort of visiting family. But then as
Speaker 3: we're going through all these sort of you know, like
Speaker 3: where you're welcomed and people come out and we're sitting
Speaker 3: on a porch and we exchange drinks. But then when
Speaker 3: the blacksmith comes, they go into this room and I
Speaker 3: see the room and there's an altar in there, a
Speaker 3: voodoo altra, and it's I mean, if somebody had explained
Speaker 3: to me that that we call it voo doo, it's
Speaker 3: Vouduan's it's a religion, but it's also a way of
Speaker 3: understanding of the world. And so to communicate with the
Speaker 3: ancestors through the intermediary of this blacksmith, they go before
Speaker 3: this altar. Again, if somebody doesn't explain it, I don't
Speaker 3: know what I'm looking at. But it was just I remember,
Speaker 3: like bird feathers and a few chicken bones and a
Speaker 3: mask maybe, But the site was holy. And my grandfather
Speaker 3: and the other elder representative maybe a couple of elder
Speaker 3: representatives of the Faladas who lived there, and the blacksmith
Speaker 3: go in the room. My father and I are in
Speaker 3: the threshold of the room. We weren't prohibited. I was
Speaker 3: just following cues, so my father stayed out, Max stayed out.
Speaker 3: I stayed out, or at least at the threshold of it.
Speaker 3: And they're speaking in Yuruba. And it's not a formal
Speaker 3: ceremony per se. It's nothing that I recognize as a ceremony.
Speaker 3: But it's like talking and maybe again pouring some liquid,
Speaker 3: some exchange of something. It was nothing like you might
Speaker 3: see in a movie where there's like dance and this
Speaker 3: and that was very quiet, but it was super solemn,
Speaker 3: and I understood the gravity of it.
Speaker 2: During this trip. In his embrace of David, his grandfather
Speaker 2: gives him a new name in their native language of Urreba.
Speaker 3: My grandfather and is acceptance of me, named me in
Speaker 3: Uruba Omole. The child has returned home. I think that's
Speaker 3: what it is. But then also in font again he's stuck.
Speaker 3: He's not stuck, but he's sort of split between these
Speaker 3: two traditions, the Yuruba one and the font the balzan
Speaker 3: one font is the king Bale's inside. And that name
Speaker 3: was erro no and pronounced erro and it means compute,
Speaker 3: traveling companion. And he explained it to me. He said,
Speaker 3: my father his son to France to get an education,
Speaker 3: and he came back with a traveling companion. So I
Speaker 3: have the two days.
Speaker 2: It just took a while.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, you're right.
Speaker 2: I was a grown man now past wanting or needing
Speaker 2: a father. So where did this land with you?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: And where does it land with you now? And also
Speaker 2: I'm curious you took Falada as part.
Speaker 3: Of your name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at what point in this journey did you do that?
Speaker 3: Max? And I with time, especially after that, it was
Speaker 3: not immediate. It took years, and I ended up living
Speaker 3: in France, and we see each other in France. We
Speaker 3: became very close, and at one point he asked me
Speaker 3: to take the name and I agreed to, but I
Speaker 3: said that I would not drive right. Dotty was dead
Speaker 3: at that point. But it felt even if Dotty wasn't
Speaker 3: always the most responsible father, he was a father, you know,
Speaker 3: especially as I learned that he had probably known the
Speaker 3: fact that he never made a difference, even though he
Speaker 3: probably knew, that just seemed disrespectful and not possible. So
Speaker 3: I told Max that I would add falla day, and
Speaker 3: that didn't sit well with him, so he didn't say
Speaker 3: yes or no, but he didn't pursue it. So I
Speaker 3: remained David Wright, but that was always there between us,
Speaker 3: and I was actively part of the family. I'm living
Speaker 3: in a place that he owned in Paris, and I'm
Speaker 3: still playing football in France. But I'm close with so Lane,
Speaker 3: my aunt and all the rest of the family, and
Speaker 3: I'm going regularly to be an ad to visit. But
Speaker 3: then as he got older, so this was much more recently.
Speaker 3: That was the nineties at early yes, But then he
Speaker 3: ended up having Alzheimer's, and as he was sick and
Speaker 3: could no longer work, and my mom was sick too,
Speaker 3: and Dottie was long dead before he lost the capacity
Speaker 3: to understand, it felt important to me to acknowledge to
Speaker 3: him that I accepted the name, and so I told
Speaker 3: him I was accepting the name. We talked about it,
Speaker 3: and you know, he seemed happy, but it's still you know,
Speaker 3: in the public world, I'm just still David, right. I mean,
Speaker 3: at that point, I'm in my whatever that was, I'm
Speaker 3: in my fifties and I'm just David. Right.
Speaker 2: It's during this time, with a new book on the
Speaker 2: horizon that David begins to explore his personal history head
Speaker 2: on and begins signing his name Faladay as well.
Speaker 3: You know, this is the other piece. It also felt
Speaker 3: really respectful of my mom, My mom, her whole life.
Speaker 3: It's not just this love and this unrequited love and
Speaker 3: whatever their complicated relationship was, but she was invested in
Speaker 3: me being a Faladae, and it felt respectful to her
Speaker 3: wishes to take the name.
Speaker 2: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zacour is
Speaker 2: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 2: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 2: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 2: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 2: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 2: find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder and if you'd
Speaker 2: like to know more, about the story that inspired this podcast.
Speaker 2: Check out my memoir Inheritance.
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