The woman who says she was a blunt talker as a sex educator of college students is far less direct when she now assesses how her ex-husband treated her, often reaching for the affirmative language of self-help tracts.
Marion Barry, says Effi, "became distracted with other activities" and "made some poor decisions about his personal conduct." She regrets that "we shared the experience at different levels." She says, "I didn't know Marion as a user of drugs," just alcohol.
Effi Barry has re-teamed with her ex-husband, who recently won the Democratic primary for a Ward 8 seat on the D.C. Council, to help his resurgent political career.
(Bill O'Leary -- The Washington Post)
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Asked what she would do over in their life, if she could, she leans onto the table and rests her chin in her hand. "I think," she says, "if I were able to wave a magic wand -- and if I had been able to keep all of the negative people and the temptations away from him, it would be a different world, and a different city."
Here is the story she tells to describe her bond with her son.
"When we welcomed the pope" -- John Paul II -- "in 1979, the helicopter descends. It lands on the Mall. The door opens. He has a flowing white robe, this aura, his was the brilliance of a thousand stars. And I started shaking. Damn! I said, that's the Pope! I gave him the key to the city. He touched my hand. He said, 'God bless you and your family.' And I said to myself, 'Wow, Marion and I are blessed for life.' "
But she felt nauseated all that week, and when she went to the doctor, he told her she was pregnant. She was shocked. "We were specifically not trying," she said. "So I say he is my blessed child. He thrives on faith. All the negativity he has endured to [be able to] extract some sort of strength, and hopefully he will be empowered to achieve his greatness."
Christopher was 9 when his father was arrested Jan. 18, 1990, and television crews descended on their home. The day of the arraignment, a friend carried him out of the house with a coat over his head, to shield him from publicity. When Effi left her marriage later that year, she took her son with her to Hampton, but, she says, he found it "too country." An urban child, he wanted to be back in Washington, she says, so he went to live with Barry and his new wife. Effi taught health and sex education at her alma mater, Hampton University. When Christopher was a senior at Wilson High School, she returned to Washington for a year. "It was significant for me to be there," is all she says. "I don't know whether it was significant for him or not."
Now, at 24, after a stint at Hampton, he is studying business and finance at UDC, his mother says -- "this week" at least. She hopes he will graduate soon. "They never finish in four years anymore," she says.
Asked if she worries that Christopher might be influenced by some of the unsavory characters who have gravitated toward Marion Barry over the years, she narrows her eyes. Then she laughs. "He is like his mother," she says, much more skeptical of people's motives than her ex-husband. Her message to Christopher is "No, your father is not perfect. Yes, he has made mistakes. But he is to be honored, now that you are a young man. You have a legacy, of which you can be proud."
To her, the council race is bound up in securing this legacy and her personal peace with a man who always will define her. A year ago, when Barry told her he was thinking about running for office, "I said, 'For what?' " Effi told a reporter last month. "He said, 'You ride around this city and ride around Ward 8 and you come back and tell me why.' "
At lunch, she expands: "When I went around with him, everyone had a story to tell him. He represents hope -- no matter what the situation has been, he's been able to resurrect himself."
And for herself, her spirituality has "taught me to forgive. If I carry around with me the hurt and the pain, then I'm stuck. If I'm harboring heartache, I can't grow." They won't get back together, she predicts.
"My relationship with him now is totally different from a wife who felt used and neglected, from that bewildered person who felt she was free-falling into a black hole, to a person who says, I'm still here. I'm a survivor," says Effi Barry, and she splays her hands in front of her, then brings them together, carefully matching flame-red fingertip to flame-red fingertip.
Still, here she is, back in the Barry orbit.
She nods slightly and smiles. Is there a hint of surrender in that smile, or is it apology? She knows him so well, well enough to know that "in the 30 years I've known him, he hasn't changed."
And yet?
"And I like Marion," she continues. "There's a certain quality that just kind of grows on you."
Staff writer Yolanda Woodlee contributed to this report.
