Tears And Flapdoodle, A Holiday Party, And Crying In The Eggnog Over Donald Trump

Veronica Peoples had given more to the black man than most white liberals - she had been the Dean of the Philosophy Department at _____, a black land-grant college.  She had gotten tenure at the school during the days of Martin Luther King, the heady years of black-white cooperation, the Summer of Love, and the promises of racial integration, had stayed in place despite the growing demand for black 'totality', she had been a tireless supporter of the black cause.  

Now in her approaching old age and a bit at sixes and sevens since her career of doing the right thing was over but liberal juices still ran in her veins, she turned to pottery and volunteering.  For the first she had no talent, but like everything else she did, she invested a huge amount of energy and commitment.  The rack of cups, pots, and bowls she put on display in her modest suburban home should have been an embarrassment; but her friends, all of the same can-do liberal enthusiasm, saw latent talent there. 

'Now that is a marvelous piece', said one, pointing to a misfired vase in which Veronica had placed a spring of holiday holly. 

'Oh, that's nothing', said Veronica smiling and inwardly delighted at the comment.  Pottery meant so much to her as memories of her deanship faded, and as her love for her students became part of a warm, comforting past.  She smiled at thoughts of the high cackle of LaShonda and Demetria in the lunchroom; the pimp-walking Pharoah and Na'Richter Evans, and the open-mouth stare of her pet project, Letitia Brown, an intellectually challenged student invited to attend the university to round out its diversity profile but who turned out to be a perfectly sweet, angel of a girl. 

'I've had a good life', Veronica said. 

Volunteering was another anodyne to her sadness and feeling of emptiness; and now that Donald Trump was in office, the need for organized opposition was never more urgent.  The man was a moral reprobate, a misogynist, racist, and fool - a running dog as Maoist Chinese politburo used to call American capitalists - and every day he added to the misery he heaped on the poor, the black, and the disadvantaged.  

 

Veronica had known nothing but liberalism since her earliest days.  Secure and insulated in the liberal colleges of her school years, professor at one of these same institutions, and finally administrator at ______, she cannot be faulted for her innocent and very passionately felt progressivism.  Yet at the same time, it was surprising for such a mature and not unintelligent woman to have the most reflexive sympathy for any and all liberal causes and the most horrendous antipathy to anything right of Samuel Gompers and Al Sharpton. 

So, the Christmas open house she hosted was to be much more than a time for holiday cheer.  It was to be a gathering of the willing - academics, non-profit retirees, community organizers, and members of the Peace, Women's, Gay, and Environmental movements of the nation's capital.  It would be a heady affair, a closely-knit brother- and sisterhood of the committed, a jamboree of likeminded assurance and validation of long years of reformist struggle. 

Veronica made special quince tarts, Swedish canapes, hummus minibites, and garnished the smoked salmon with beluga caviar.  She knew that the salmon-and-caviar might send the wrong message - a bit plutocratic - but it was so good that she could hardly keep herself from devouring all of it before her guests arrived. 

 

Of course there were no Christmas decorations in the house - the invitees included Jews, Muslims, and nonbelievers - and the music playing in the background was one of Bach's decidedly non-religious pieces, but 'festiveness is as festiveness does', Veronica always said, and the guests themselves would generate the holiday spirit. 

After an hour or so when all the guests had arrived, Veronica tinkled her dinner bell for attention and said, 'I think it would be fitting to remember those who have suffered in this year of misery, and I have asked Fenwick Lent to read from his latest collection of poetry - one we all hope will be published by Scribner's in the coming year.  Fenwick, if you please...'  

The clink of classes and silverware quieted, Fenwick straightened his collar, brushed a stray thread from his jacket, cleared his throat and began: 

Mercy me, said the little black girl by the well 

Tumult and misery abound in the fell

The light in the vale, cherished but pale

Is the way to promise, from hill to dale...

 

That was the only beginning, and Fenwick went on for what seemed an eternity reading his treacly, rhyming elegy to the suffering and the destitute.  The one or two outliers - Sunday football husbands getting drunk on Lambrusco - thought it was a joke. The guy couldn't be serious, but the more he read, the more Veronica's guests nodded in approval.  When he finally finished, they surrounded him and gave him hugs.  'No one could have said it better', said one. 

Fenwick's poem opened the floodgates of political sentiment.  Somehow the images of the poor and hungry that Donald Trump had tossed in the trash like 'the crusts of stale bread' invoked by the poet, brought up the bile, the intemperate hatred, and the venomous acrimony felt by each and every one of the guests nibbling the last crumbs of Veronica's quince tarts - except for one football husband, soggy with sweet wine who startled his neighbor when, through a mouthful of rice crackers and brie, he said, 'Bullshit'. 

The white people at the gathering made a big fuss over a busty black woman in an Easter hat who had done something noteworthy or other.  They had so few occasions to socialize with black people, that this could go on their unwritten resumes.  She didn't give them the time of day, preferring to squirrel herself in a corner with a sister and talk 'black shit' as the football husband remarked after catching a snippet. 

Veronica was delighted at the turnout, the appreciation at her table, the poem, the camaraderie, and the good cheer.  'I must do this again next year', she thought, although at her age next year was only a supposition not a guarantee.