Benny hadn’t been very good at relationships but she knew how to make a cake work.
Photo number one: the jar of fruits sitting next to a group of eggs. One day, Benny would develop an eggless version of this recipe, because times had changed and food was going to have to change with them, but that would take some experimentation and, probably, leave her mother appalled.
Snap.
Photo number two: the blacking of the sugar. Smoke rising gently out of the pot, the fire turned off just in time, the wooden spoon sticking out of the saucepan. Snap.
Photo number three: two cake tins filled with batter, each tin sitting in a pan of water in the oven. Snap.
“This is the only thing that I had left when I lost my family,” Benny’s mother once told her, tapping a finger on the side of her head. “I carried it all in here. The black cake recipe, my schooling, my pride.”
Photo number four: a closeup of one black cake cooling on the counter. The color of moist earth, the smell of heaven. Snap.
Preparing the icing would take another full day’s work, after which Benny would take a photo of her signature decoration, the one large hibiscus flower, orangey red and couched in deep green leaves on a simple white base. She was willing to bet her ma had never seen anything like that. She’d be proud of Benny. On those rare occasions when her mother telephoned Benny, there was usually a specific reason, like a birthday, but one day, Ma simply called and talked into Benny’s voicemail.
“Remember our baking?” her mother said. “Used to drive your father and Byron mad whenever we blocked off the kitchen.” Benny could hear her ma smiling. Then her mother fell silent for a moment before saying that Byron was doing well, often traveling, always on TV. Her mother left these messages on Benny’s mobile phone in the middle of the night, East Coast time, when she must have known that Benny would have had the phone turned off. It’s as if her mother had wanted to reach out, only not all the way.
Her ma always called from home. Benny assumed her mother had some kind of cellphone by now, but Benny had no idea what the number was.
In her most recent message, her ma said, “I’ve been doing some reading and thinking. About people like you. People with complicated relationships.” Benny’s mother still couldn’t bring herself to name Benny’s differences, but she was trying. She suspected that her ma would have come around long before, if it hadn’t been for her father’s resistance. Her ma had always done things her way. Except when it came to Benny’s dad.
And this was something that Ma had passed down to Byron, that unquestioning loyalty to Bert Bennett. Benny had loved her father and admired him and she, too, had been loyal to him, until the day that he stopped being loyal to her. He was the one who had drawn the line in the sand.
Wasn’t he?
Ma was right about one thing. It was true that Benny’s relationships had been complicated. People had a tendency to relate to only one thing or another, not to people like her, not to in-betweeners, not to neither-nors. This had been true in politics, it had been true in religion, it had been true in culture, and it sure as hell was true when it came to the laws of attraction.
Benny had to watch herself, she was overmixing the batter. She was getting agitated. She was thinking of how she had been called a flake, called confused, called insincere. In trying to live with an open heart, Benny had set herself up to be perpetually mistrusted. Thank goodness times had changed since her difficult college days. But there was still a lot of misunderstanding to go around.
And when people didn’t understand something, they often felt threatened.
And when people felt threatened, they often turned to violence.
Benny Writes
The cake-baking photos were ready and tucked into a padded envelope. Benny pulled a stool over to the kitchen counter and picked up a pen.
Dear Ma, Benny began.
Benny’s first mistake was to write the note by hand. She’d always been a slow writer. Her second mistake was to think that she could explain herself in a handwritten note, not only because there was so much to say, but also because some things were too ugly to be written down. Still, she wanted to try, even though five years had gone by since her father’s death.
I know it’s been a long time since we’ve talked. I heard your messages. I just wanted you to know that I appreciated them and I think about you all the time. I’m really sorry about Dad’s funeral. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. Actually, I was there that day, I just didn’t let you know it. I saw you in that peach-colored dress that Dad always loved and I am so glad you wore that instead of the conventional black. I could just imagine a couple of those ladies （you know who I mean） seeing the widow of the esteemed Bert Bennett wearing such a bright dress at her husband’s funeral! Daddy would have found that funny.