The Making Of An American President

by
Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh

August 4, 1961

“John Hardy and Travis Britt were beaten by whites when they brought blacks to a Mississippi courthouse to register to vote.”

The Kapi’olani Hospital’s black and white television continues to blare troubling news.

“Beaten just cause they want to vote,” Benford Lee III mumbles.

“Sir?” his assistant, Walter, asks.

He flashes on Car Car, her gap toothed smiling, brown face.

Caroline Johnson had several names. To her boss and other whites, she was “girl.” To others, she was Miss Sugar. To Benford, she was Car Car.

When Benford’s mother tired of his endless questions and loud presence (she wanted a cat more than a son) would lock him in the closet, it was Car Car who would let him out.

“Brought out of the dark by a darkie!” he would think with glee.

One day, he was stumbling over some homework reading at the kitchen table, and he asked Car Car to help him.

She kept doing the dishes and kept saying, “Go on with that, Bennie! Just, go on!”

His sister, Flora, kicked him under the table and whispered, “Stop being so mean, Bennie. You shamin’ her! You know Car Car doesn’t have any learning!”

He was surprised and puzzled, because Car Car taught him all about the Bible and doing the laundry and being nicer to his sister and all sorts of things. She was the smartest person he knew. How could she have no learning?

He couldn’t reconcile what he had just heard to what he knew of Car Car, but he did not ask another question about his school work, because he was horrified at the idea of shaming her any further.

“I want to start a scholarship for colored people… at my old stomping grounds… Columbia and Harvard Law school. I want–” Benford loses consciousness.

Twenty one and back home from overseas, Benford was still drunk from the previous night and early morning.

His father came to his room and looked at Benford with disgust and bemusement. He told him it was time he got up and went to the registrar to register to vote. His father was running for mayor and was telling everyone the same message. This time, however, he had the authority to enforce this suggestion. Benford’s father loved his authority.

Benford buried himself under his covers as his father closed the door.

A soft knock pierced Benford’s fuzzy headedness.

“Bennie, I think you should get up and register like your father said to,” Car Car suggested.

“Why don’t you go register if it’s so damn important?”

“Bennie, you know Negroes aren’t allowed to vote. I…never mind… you’re too young and wild.”

“Never mind what?”

“Well, the other night I had a vision… that we could vote and one day…we would have a Negro president. You don’t know what you have, Bennie. You don’t know what you have.”

“Get me the name of the first, colored baby born today at this hospital. I want it to have the first scholarships. I want to help.”

Walter finds the information and brings it to Benford.

“Ms. Durham had a baby boy just an hour ago.”

“Make up the paperwork!”

“Car Car, wait for me…”

January 20, 2009

“My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.”

Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh earned her BA in English Literature from the University of Virginia but is more proud of the friendships she earned through her social justice work in Charlottesville, Virginia.  She has been in several anthologies online and in print.  Her main blog is Charlottesville Winter at cvillewinter.wordpress.org. 

The Blackbird Of Happiness

by

Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh

“Ravens are the birds I'll miss most when I die. If only the darkness into which we must look were composed of the black light of their limber intelligence. If only we did not have to die at all. Instead, become ravens.” 

Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

“Why should I return, Mother?”

“To be a thing of beauty, my love.”

“But they don't appreciate beauty there. They refuse to see.”

“Even more reason for you to go back.”

She is not a common raven. She is small and glossy and cunning.

She alights onto pale, parched ground feeling somewhere between goddess and raven and woman.

She releases her night feathers, the lightness of flight, the movement between airs.

And, the earth enshrouds her in opaque, rough black cloths. They flow almost weightless as she enters our ethers.

“Did ever raven sing so like a lark,
That gives sweet tidings of the sun's uprise?”

William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus

She tilts like spring flowers toward the rising sun soaking its heat and becomes real.

A dying man visiting North Africa sees her emergence from her swirling unkindness. His eyes at the end of a long life now see her and are almost blinded by her exquisiteness. Her unblemished, tight, white skin, her tallness, her curves, her way of staring fearlessly into his mind and heart and right through him.

She needs to feed and takes his failing heart.

He takes her photo and passes away before developing his last, departing shot.

His busy, responsible daughter no longer interested in trying to get her siblings to help organize and tired of sorting through his hoarded things takes boxes and boxes of unexamined junk to the Goodwill.

Weeks later, a couple who adores antique cameras finds a cheap, vintage Hasselblad. To their surprise, they find it still has film.

They discover a photo of black birds circling an empty desert.

The wife finds it eery and depressing. One of her early childhood memories was watching a crow eat road kill at the side of long, dirt road. Her brother had told her lies about death and black birds and bad luck. She remembered knowing she would get out of that town and away from death if she just ran away along that road kicking up dust and never looking back.

The husband thinks he sees long black tresses that remind him of Jessica with whom he has been having an affair. For a moment, he thinks of telling her everything. Instead, he gathers his keys and wallet and mutters something about getting a beer.

Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh earned her BA in English Literature from the University of Virginia but is more proud of the friendships she earned through her social justice work in Charlottesville, Virginia.  She has been in several anthologies online and in print.  Her main blog is Charlottesville Winter at cvillewinter.wordpress.org. 

Judith's Last Song

by

Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh

“My Ma’s dead.”

He waits to hear more.

“She’s a vet. And, they gave me her–”
And, all of a sudden I am there. I am sitting in the folding chair borrowed from the V.A. in my borrowed, ill-fitting suit smelling of trash bags. Every time someone squeezed me in a hug a waft of Hefty would make me want to itch and throw up.

The chaplain kneels, tells me the flag is on behalf of a grateful nation, and holds up the red and white triangle for me to take.

I just want to punch the flag out of his hand and run away.

Just run till I get to a place where my Ma is alive frying Spam and eggs with too much soy sauce.

Just run till the pain moves from my heart to my lungs.

Instead, I just sit there, and he places her on my lap.

First Featured at http://blognostics.net/blognostics-an-innovative-experience-in-literature-poetry-and-art/2014/05/24/judiths-last-song-by-veronica-haunani-fitzhugh/

Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh earned her BA in English Literature from the University of Virginia but is more proud of the friendships she earned through her social justice work in Charlottesville, Virginia.  She has been in several anthologies online and in print.  Her main blog is Charlottesville Winter at cvillewinter.wordpress.org.

His Name Was Javier

by
Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh


It’s not your problem.
You’re not responsible.
It’s not your fault.
You’re not liable.

my son is dead.

Everyone makes their own choices of action.

It is not systemic.
There is no pattern.

my son is dead.

he never told me about the constant messages of hate.
he never told me how alone he must have felt.
he never told me how i could help.

where did my happy little boy go?
where is the man he was supposed to become?

my son is dead.

And, the rest is deafening silence.

Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh earned her BA in English Literature from the University of Virginia but is more proud of the friendships she earned through her social justice work in Charlottesville, Virginia.  She has been in several anthologies online and in print.  Her main blog is Charlottesville Winter at cvillewinter.wordpress.org.

Another Story

by
Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh

Electrifying bullets fly–fatal and fast.
A veiled woman falls.
Footsteps do not slow
even as the baby squirms in her arms
trying to breathe free from her
tightening, dying clutches.

They both lie in the mid-morning heat.
Overturned carts and abandoned bicycles
litter the lifeless street.

The square is silent and smells of a red brown
trickle rust across the ground.

Her name meant Grace.
His name was Noah.

They fly to the pearly gates only to find further cages.

Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh earned her BA in English Literature from the University of Virginia but is more proud of the friendships she earned through her social justice work in Charlottesville, Virginia.  She has been in several anthologies online and in print.  Her main blog is Charlottesville Winter at cvillewinter.wordpress.org.

"Auntie ______"

by

Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh

“Where is your father?”

Out with his other woman.

I wait for the commercial break to answer hoping she would distracted forget her question. I turn to her when the ad for our local exterminater flashes across the screen. The bugs make me more uncomfortable than meeting her demanding stare.

“I don’t know…”

My father's other woman makes me call her Auntie ______ when he takes me to visit her pink duplex on that half street no good girls know about. I know about it. I no longer am good. I fear ending up on a half street like Auntie ____.

She buys me a navy blue satin dress with a baby pink bow for my silence and buys my father a suitcase for what I can only guess and fear.

I think I am too old for such a dress, and my father does not move except to work, to her, and then home.

I go through my father's things when he is not home. I smell his slightly starched shirts. I count his socks, all white, in perfect rows in the top drawer that if I am careless will go off its tracks and become stuck. I find the suitcase underneath the bed. Each time, I take it out I find it locked and heavier.

I think my mother knows about Auntie _______ and the suitcase. I am afraid to ask her.

Auntie ____ talks to me about things I don’t understand, but I pretend I do.

Auntie _____ lets me put powder on my freckles and toilet water behind my ears.

My mother does not let me wear make up.

My mother does not let my father do what he wants either.

One day he leaves with Auntie _____ and the suitcase.

I rip all the dress' stitches with the box cutter my father left behind.

My mother takes away the box cutter.

She tries to hold me.

I turn away.

She leaves.

I hold the dark silkiness to my face staining it with missing my father.

Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh earned her BA in English Literature from the University of Virginia but is more proud of the friendships she earned through her social justice work in Charlottesville, Virginia.  She has been in several anthologies online and in print.  Her main blog is Charlottesville Winter at cvillewinter.wordpress.org.

Points Of Origin

by

Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh

“Where the hell did you come from?” he demanded holding my documents with just his fingertips fearing contamination.

“From your blind spot.”

“From your complacency.”

“From your Other.”

“I have been here all the time waking, warbling, waiting for you to see all of me.”

“I burst forth swaddled in my Daddy’s disappointments and dry humor.”

“A small tobacco plantation in Spotsylvania County, Virginia where the Fitz and the Hugh slaves became Fitzhugh slaves.”

“My Momma and her Momma and her Momma.”

“Africa, Germany, Philippines, Hawaii, New Jersey, Virginia, Florida, then Virginia again.”

“The Navy, the Army, the National Guard, the US Federal Government, Walmart, and Kmart.”

“Soul gardens where the sweetest fruits are still bitter skinned.”

“Mouths of rivers still running muddy and dangerous.”

“From the time when I slammed on the brake instead of the gas choosing to no longer kill myself.”

“From a November naked dance around a park bonfire, cameras, lovers, strangers, and police.”

“From that startling moment when you realize the dream is about to be a nightmare.”

Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh earned her BA in English Literature from the University of Virginia but is more proud of the friendships she earned through her social justice work in Charlottesville, Virginia.  She has been in several anthologies online and in print.  Her main blog is Charlottesville Winter at cvillewinter.wordpress.org.

On Dying Slowly

by
Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh

The desolate room misses babe and me.
Her gloved palm of flower and fruit held mine.
His masked face frowned as my womb then empty
grew garnet and crimson, not a safe sign.
Alone, I sadly come to her unplanned.
Her kind brown eyes try to smile confidently,
calmly. I see truth behind the ocean’s sand.
I remove my hand and cry silently.
The salty sadness of numbness not pain.
At eighteen, my choice convenience blushing.
Vacuumed out clean, I try to remain sane,
hearing nothing but the cool air rushing.
Once swollen with rose and morning glory.
Hurt too fresh for touching allegory.

Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh earned her BA in English Literature from the University of Virginia but is more proud of the friendships she earned through her social justice work in Charlottesville, Virginia.  She has been in several anthologies online and in print.  Her main blog is Charlottesville Winter at cvillewinter.wordpress.org. 

This Continent Had To Be Won

by
Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh

I.

The furious whirling rainbows of dance end with the first shot but are incomplete.

Mama. Mama!

She does not hear the booms of what she cannot know as gun fire.

She yelps thrusting her arms out and away hoping to grab hold. She finds nothing and no one.

Her new being splits her bud lips into soundless, mouthed wailing.

Her new lessons stretch her taut.

As she is about to tear, she is lifted and held close to a new back.

She lays her fevered cheek against the rough, pink shawls of another.

A stranger, an elder from another tribe.

Her dark, long hair smells of the smoke of an unknown fire, of another stripped bare.

She closes her eyes with brown fingers laced in her new woman.

II.

Mama. Mama!

Who are they?

They are the end.

Mama. Mama!

What are you doing?

Making marriage soup to save...

What is save?

Allowing your tomorrows to come and go.

What are these?

Tears, my love, tears.

When will they end?

As you open your mouth and sip the soup.

They barge in, again breaking her bowl. The blood earns title to the soil. No purpose left.

The dry land drinks the mixing soup of sobs and veins and dies in its thirst for more.

III.

Their ghosts shadow a scar across the cheeks of a new people.

Creating other bowls filled with broth where bitter meets sweet.

Moving but are not lost.

Stopping pipelines.

Mama. Mama!

What is that?

The dance continues.

Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh earned her BA in English Literature from the University of Virginia but is more proud of the friendships she earned through her social justice work in Charlottesville, Virginia.  She has been in several anthologies online and in print.  Her main blog is Charlottesville Winter at cvillewinter.wordpress.org.