Dad, Redefined

In one way, this wasn't bad: He lives about a mile from Children's Hospital, where McDaniel went for her checkups, and he could walk to the appointments. He was there when Zyhir was born: "He had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck." There's a picture on the mantel in the living room, Wagoner in his white scrubs, holding his son after the birth.

But is being there enough? Wagoner has struggled to provide himself with a steady job, a place of his own or even a car. He drives around in his mom's Chevy Tahoe.

Now he has to provide for two: "When you have a kid, you can't go around putting yourself first anymore," he says. Right now, he says, his son is the most important thing in his life.

He wants to make changes. He describes his life from 19 to 25 as "a whole lot of nothing."

"My motivation was all messed up," he says. "I had everything backward. I hated school, so I wouldn't go, which only made it take longer, and then I stopped. I went to Job Corps, and messed that up. I was supposed to be helping myself, but I was just living for the moment. . . . I had all that attitude. I'd just wake up and say, 'Ah, I don't want to go to work today.' "

He knows firsthand the pain of a father who doesn't follow through.

"I didn't see my father much. I didn't really care. I didn't think about it much. I didn't have that much to do with him. . . . He'd call about Christmas: 'You want A, B, C?' You'd say something, then not get anything. It was like that. So he'd call, I'd give answers, but I already knew the story."

Now it's his turn as Dad. When he met with the Project Empowerment staff, he agreed to the deal without even asking what the pay was. "I didn't even know. It didn't even matter. I just really got to get that GED, get a good job."

He minds the front desk at the teen center, making sure kids sign in, then watching sitcoms. Six hours of this, twice a week. Two other days a week, he's in a GED class with a half-dozen other adults in the basement of a government building on H Street NE. His most recent paycheck was $260 for a week.

Today, he's in class and the subject is math. He's worn down by a killer headache and it's hard to concentrate. It's also depressing, being confounded by equations that teenagers are doing. He's head-down on his desk, forehead tucked into folded arms.

"What's wrong with you?" the teacher asks.

Wagoner looks up, shakes his head, no. He blinks.

Chatter from the other students:

"He need him some Excedrin."

"Some what?"

"Give him some Aleve."

"You got Aleve?"

"They say in this one you supposed to put down the least common multiple."

The girl across the way flips open a pink cellphone, takes a call.

Wagoner tries to focus. If he's going to turn things around, provide for himself and Zyhir, this is where it starts. He has connections at Metro, an uncle who could get him a janitorial job to start, then work his way up. Got to get that GED to qualify.

It's payday, but there's a problem: His check isn't here. He has bills; he and McDaniel split the $50 per week they pay his sister to babysit. He wants to buy a '95 DeVille he's had his eye on -- $3,800 -- a step toward independence from his mom.

But now something so simple, this little check, his first one in the program, can't be found.

"How you not know where my money's at?" he hisses under his breath. "I don't work for free. That's why I quit those other jobs. You work, they can't find your check. It don't take but one time for me. I'm starting all over with this job. I need this money."

Calls go back and forth. The check, it turns out, is waiting over at the teen center. He rolls his eyes, walks out to his car.

"People think all this is a lot easier than it is," he grouses.

One day, when Zyhir is with McDaniel, Wagoner has time to kill. He steps out on the porch to take in the air. A guy from across the street stops by. They watch three kids playing football in the street.

The guy works at Target, where Wagoner used to work as a cart assistant. Wagoner quit because they only had two people to round up carts across the entire parking lot, and man, you had to be kidding. So now the guy is telling him about a co-worker who walked off the job after this female manager talked down to him.

"You can't talk to people any kinda way," Wagoner says.

"My man just left the cart key," the guy says.

"You just can't talk like that."

"Not having that, no kinda way."

The talk turns to the new shoes coming out Saturday, the new Jordans, the new LeBrons.

"Cold Case Files" blares again from the living room.

It's not quite noon, the day spinning out, nothing to do, all day to get it done.

Addressing the Issues

Since a conference devoted to black fatherhood at Morehouse College a decade ago, black men have helped create hundreds of fatherhood programs across the country. The D.C. Health Department just won a $10 million, five-year grant for programs designed to help fathers with the basics of supporting their children. In church basements, community halls and conference rooms, black men are reaching out to one another.

Almost all of the programs involve helping troubled dads with education, jobs, stable housing, sobriety, counseling, or rebuilding commitment to their families. There is little empirical evidence to suggest how these efforts are working. Jeffrey M. Johnson, president of the National Partnership for Community Leadership, a Washington-based nonprofit that promotes black fatherhood, says that 9 out of 10 "fatherhood" programs are informal mentoring and offer little life-changing help.

The key misunderstanding about "absentee black fathers," activists say, is the idea that they are divorced from their children's lives. They are involved, to varying degrees, and there are ties to build on, they say, regardless of how it appears to the outside world.

"A lot of the time, [the fathers] are right there in the waiting room when the child is born," says Johnson. "These couples struggle to stay together. But in three years or less, the fathers are usually gone. A lot of them become serial dads. They can't take care of themselves properly, they didn't finish school, can't hold a steady job. They just bounce around."

The District has 35,355 child support cases, 90 percent of which are in arrears, according to the D.C. Child Support Enforcement Division. A total of $393 million is owed. Officials do not break out their caseload based on race, but say most of it is black families.

The No. 1 problem, administrators say, is finding the fathers.

But Joi Yeldell, director of D.C.'s fatherhood programs, says raw numbers do not necessarily carry emotional truth, at least for the 2,000 fathers who have come through the city's workshops: "A lot of people think most African American males in this city don't want to do the right thing for their kids. We're finding, at least for the ones who come through these programs, that they really do."

Jerome Lee, a 38-year-old D.C. school counselor, missed nearly all of his son's youth, locked up in prison for armed robbery. He taught himself to read in prison. Since his release eight years ago he has earned two college degrees, married and renewed his ties to his son.

"None of my friends growing up had their dads around," he says, "and a lot of guys my age just wanted that bling bling, the immediate gratification. I can't make up for the time I missed with my son. But I did make sure he was there at my graduations, seeing his father doing something with his life, and I'm proud that's what he's doing, too."

So much is unresolved. Johnson has worked with thousands of absentee black fathers, their children, the mothers of their children, for more than two decades.

Here's how he sums up a generation:

"There's just so much anger. A lot of them don't even know they're angry, and it's not just fathers and boys. There's a lot of young girls who are angry that their fathers weren't there. . . . I think there's just a lot of repressed anger and we deal with it in homicides, suicides, all sorts of illness and disease, because most people don't explode. They implode.

"The thing I'm left with is the pain. The pain of it all is just excruciating."

Parting Ways

What does a daddy do?

On a windy night in November, Tim Wagoner gets his sister to help bundle up sleeping Zyhir, zipping him into a blue jumper, then tucks him into a portable car seat. He keeps the driver's seat kicked way back for the drive to McDaniel and her mom's.

He carries the quiet car seat up the three flights of stairs, her mom opens the door, and he ducks into Donné's room. She's in loose sweat pants, a shirt, sitting on her bed.

Her face lights up when Zyhir wakes up, gurgling. She has a teenage girl's room: a clutter of clothes in the corner, a lot of DVDs, a nice-size bathroom, a vanity mirror, a television.

Wagoner sits on the edge of the bed and watches a BET special about Prince. McDaniel flops on her back, holding Zyhir aloft. "AhbahbahbahBOOH!" she says. And, "Hey! You're slobbering on my shirt!" Giggles.

She and Wagoner don't say much.

He's gone a few minutes later. He has class in the morning.

"I'll call you," he says.

The bass thumps on the stereo as he rattles back into the District, back toward home, back to the house that holds his family and his memories, but not his son.

Life in late November, the chill settling in.