Kamala looked at herself in the mirror, adjusted her hair, touched up her lipstick and makeup, and said, 'I am here'.
It had been a long time coming for this woman, still youngish although almost sixty, charmed with good looks, a commanding presence, and a certain nobility. 'That I got from my father, she said, a man of rectitude and principle', not some lowrider, which everyone assumed he was when she said she was black, although for the purposes of the election, she preferred that inner city image.
Where would being black get her if it were known that her father had been economic advisor to the President of Jamaica and then a tenured professor of economics at Stanford and as white as can be while still being black? No, for all the love and respect she had for her father, better keep him gold-grilled and street-smart.
As she looked in the mirror, she saw neither her Jamaican father nor Indian mother but Cleopatra, descended from Ptolemaic Greek with traces of Nubia, Ethiopia, and even Berber. Like Cleopatra Kamala's lineage was royal. Her mother carried the genes of the the Aryans of Mohenjo-Daro
Kamala tilted her head back, tossed her hair, and saw the thrones of the great Indian princes, the palaces of maharajas, the gardens of Emirs. She was meant for destiny, a vital, imperial, woman.
She thought of the women around her - Jill Biden, for example, Doctor Biden, a washed-out, bony white woman with the genes of a grocery clerk. Nothing but ordinariness ran in her family. Or Michelle Obama, descended from Ghanian slaves fresh from the banks of the Niger River, still looking very African while she, Kamala, had the grace, beauty, and high-toned looks of Queen Amanirenas of Kush, Nubian princess who ruled the vast region between the Nile and Atbara Rivers.
No, Kamala was a breed apart. The American public was too untutored to appreciate the sophistication and complexity of her lineage, a heady mix of royalty that went back to pre-history, back to the steppes of Asia from which her ancestors rode to the Indian subcontinent, settled and ruled for millennia; and a Caribbean planter heritage on her father's side that went back to Northumberland and the Duke's feudal lands and a Fulani great great grandmother with the same Egyptian bloodline as Cleopatra, a beautiful woman by all accounts, a princess in her own right.
'I am a proud black woman', she always began her stump speeches, swallowing her pride as she thought of Nefertiti and Shakuntala the Aryan demi-goddess who, it was told, mated with the first kings of Mohenjo-Daro. 'I am no more black than the man in the moon', she said to herself as she danced to the beat of the rap music of Playboi Carti and Yeat, hating every minute of this low-brow, shuckin' and jivin' act she had to put on to get the 'hoods of St. Louis and Baltimore to come out and vote for her.
She had tried once to see what the famous 'inner city' was all about, but when she rolled up in her caravan of Cadillac Escalades and stepped out onto Good Hope Road, only a scattering of black people were there to greet her. It was a dismal scene - broken, boarded up windows, syringes and needles, the smell of piss from the gutter, blocks of depressing public housing, cracked pavement, and old tires.
'Get yo' ass up outta here, bitch', shouted a black woman from a tenement window. 'You ain't belong in this neighborhood’, and the visit only went downhill from there. So Kamala hightailed it out, back across the river to the Vice Presidential mansion on upper Mass Ave in the whitest corner of DC.
'God, that was awful', Kamala remarked to her aides and vowed never to set foot there again. Yet, black people were her core constituency and she was running first and foremost as a black woman, so she had to at least acknowledge the place; but from afar and metaphorically, she decided. We are living in a virtual world so I don't actually have to dirty my shoes.
And so it was without ever having to set foot in one of those benighted neighborhoods again, Kamala talked the talk - justice, compensation, entitlement, pride, opportunity, solidarity. Cleaning up the streets was a Republican thing. Let them condemn single motherhood, truancy, drug posses, absent fathers, teenage thugs, and pimps.
We are the party of good news; and so she flapped on about raising the black man to the top of the human pyramid where he belonged, the greatness of African empire, tribal intimacy with the environment, and the purity of forest religions without having to mention a word about 'dysfunction' or 'responsibility'.
It was all very distasteful, but she knew she had to do it, for the goal was worth the effort The first descendant of Aryan and Nubian royalty in the White House! and the decor there would have to change. Get rid of those busts and portraits of Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy and Rosa Parks that Joe had had put up. No, the Oval Office would have to have her stamp, her authority, and her inspiration which was not in these old black men but a heritage far older, more storied, and more significant to human history.
'Let's not put the cart before the horse', she reminded herself. The election is not yet a done deal, but now that we got Joe out of the way, victory seems assured; but I've got to watch myself. Remember how Hillary self-destructed because she thought she was entitled to greatness? No, I will keep my own counsel until I actually get there.
And so she went from town to town, basking in the adoration of millions. 'This is what I was destined for', she said to herself as she waved to the crowds. She stood before them, tall, erect, and proud and waved. She was Cleopatra on her barge floating down the Nile, Nefertiti standing on an Egyptian parapet, the Queen of Sheba in long, silken robes.
'I am here', she said, 'and here for good'.
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