Becoming

Barack Obama is late on his very first day of work. Michelle, a first-year lawyer, is busy working on various memos and documents. Michelle has started to feel frustrated in her job, as it doesn’t involve much interaction with clients. She spends seventy hours a week in her office, from which she can see the South Side in the distance. The neighborhood has recently become “desolate,” ravaged by the crack epidemic and gangs, while families continue to move out.

Michelle makes good money, and she saves money by living in the apartment where she grew up. Her mother and father moved down into Robbie and Terry’s old space after Robbie passed away and left her apartment to them. Michelle pays her share of the utilities, which they insist is plenty. Despite the fact that she has her own entrance to her apartment, she checks in with her parents daily.

In the office, Michelle grows frustrated with Barack’s lateness, seeing it as a sign of hubris. Barack has already created a stir in the firm: word has gotten around that he is an exceptional law student (only after finishing his first year at Harvard), but Michelle is skeptical of his hype. When Barack arrives, he sheepishly apologizes for being late. Michelle is surprised by his appearance: taller and thinner, with a deeper voice than she imagined, and seemingly unaware of his “whiz-kid reputation.” She gives him a tour before introducing him to his supervisor. Later, she takes him to lunch. As his advisor, she is meant to be a “social conduit” for him at the firm.

Michelle quickly realizes Barack will need very little of her advice. He is three years older than she is and worked for several years after finishing college at Columbia. He is very assured of his direction in life, despite the fact that he had a very unusual upbringing. He is the son of a black Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas who had had a short-lived marriage. He was born and raised in Honolulu but spent four years in Indonesia in his childhood. After high school, he spent two years at Occidental College before transferring to Columbia. Michelle describes him as “breezy in his manner but powerful in his mind.”

Michelle is also surprised with how well Barack knows Chicago. Before starting at Harvard, he worked in Chicago for three years as a community organizer, trying to help rebuild neighborhoods and bring back jobs. It was difficult, but he’d won some small victories there. He started law school in order to put himself in the position to make more sweeping societal change. Despite her initial skepticism, Michelle admires him.

Over the next few weeks, Michelle and Barack start to become friendly. They chat in the afternoons, sharing easy banter and similar mind-sets. Barack also has a growing reputation at the firm. He is quickly asked to sit in on high-level meetings and give input. He also writes instantly legendary memos, notorious because they are so thorough and cogent.

Michelle and Barack share a weekly lunch and they learn more and more about each other. She learns that his father died in a car crash, that he spends all his money on books, and that he’d had plenty of girlfriends in the past, but didn’t have one now. Michelle tries to fix this situation by setting him up with a few different friends, but she quickly realizes that he’s a little too “cerebral” for most people.

Barack is unlike most people Michelle knows. While they are concerned with their own upward mobility and wealth, Barack is more concerned about “hope and the potential for mobility” in a broader way that goes beyond his own success. He is on “some sort of quest,” Michelle understands.

Michelle explains that, as a kid, her parents were habitual smokers, even though they knew that it was bad for them. It bothered her and Craig so much that they would try to hide or destroy their cigarettes. Barack smokes the same way that her parents did, prompting Michelle to ask him, “Why would someone as smart as you do something as dumb as that?” He shrugs; there’s no logic to his smoking.

Things start to change between Michelle and Barack, as she starts to realize that she has developed some latent feelings for him. She tries to ignore them, however, to avoid drama at the firm. Barack on the other hand, doesn’t. He pointedly asks her out, saying that they’re compatible, available, and no one at the firm would care if they dated. Michelle brushes the idea off with a laugh.

Later in the summer, the firm organizes an outing to Les Misérables, and Michelle and Barack both go and sit next two each other. Neither of them enjoys the show, and at intermission Barack suggests that they go to a bar. They slip out of the theater, and as they walk—Michelle in front and Barack behind— Michelle slows her pace to talk to him. She writes how she is interested in him, but is worried that he might upset the balance of her life: he is “like a wind that threaten[s] to unsettle everything.”

A few days later, Michelle and Barack drive together to another firm social event, a barbecue at a partner’s home. She watches him play a pick-up basketball game, observing how he is friendly with everyone around him. She recognizes that he’s a good person. As Michelle and Barack drive home, she is saddened knowing that Barack will soon be leaving to return to Harvard for the fall. When they stop in front of his building, he suggests getting some ice cream together. As they sit on the curb in the heat, Michelle decides to stop thinking about her concerns and “just live.” He asks to kiss her, and Michelle leans in to kiss him back.