Down, down, down, deeper and down, into the maelstrom where only Kamala dwells. The void.

 

Two Kamalas, three. The sing-song of her mother’s voice. The gruff patois of her father. Oakland as a child, the filth and music of the street. She stands and spits. She has learned this lesson early and well.

“Which one do you want?” her father asks before the rack of candy.

“All of them!” she says.

“You cannot have them all, my child,” he says.

“All. I want them all!”

“No, you must choose!”

“ALL!”

Her father shatters, reforms, fades.

—

College in the fall. None of them really think she is black. A few pointed questions. “What are you?” When she tells them her mother is Indian one boy with glasses begins whooping like an Italian actor in an old Western.

She dies inside and pulls on a suit of armor.

—

“Leave her, Willie. Leave her and be with me,” she says.

“I can’t. She knows too much. She’s got all the files and the money trail. She’d get me buried under the jail. That’s why we been ‘separated’ for 15 years.”

She rolled his limp penis in her hands, rubbing her palms back and forth.

“Use your tongue, girl. Really get up under that tip skin.”

“No, I want to have a baby, I want you to put a baby in me.”

“I’m going to be mayor. I can’t have a pregnant district attorney bastard baby. I already get made fun of too much because of my hat.”

“Give me a baby,” she said. “Drench me, drown me, coat me in it.”

“I’m 60, little girl. I’d be lucky to get out dust.”

Willie dipped his tiny spoon in the cocaine and sniffed loudly.

“Goddamn!” he said. “I love the 1970s!”

Kamala slapped his dead penis and said, “It’s 1996!”

—

Power, power, power, she has her dead womb pulled out like a rotten tooth.

—

“I want to be President!” she screams and knocks over a table of crudités.

“You’ll be Vice President,” Hillary says.

“I. want. to. be. President!” Kamala says through clenched teeth.

Hillary points out to Joe tottering over to shake hands and tongue-kiss babies.

“Look at him,” she says. “Look at his frail body and pudding mind. He’ll be dead by Inauguration Day. You’ll be President when there is still snow on the ground.”

“President of a diseased nation of idiots,” Kamala says.

“That’s the job. Besides, a few days after the election is over, we’ll have Pfizer announce their vaccine is ready. You’ll look like you’re healing the nation. All you have to do is smile and make nice and you will be the President that saved America.”

The void inside her screams.

“Why they having you tell me all this?” Kamala asks.

Hillary smiles showing her black gums.

“Because we are so alike,” she says.

Deeper, deeper, then nothing.