Byron and Benny nod. They have privately agreed that they cannot bring themselves to call Mr. Mitch Charles. Maybe one day. Or maybe they’ll call him Mitch without the Mister but, for now, they prefer to think of him as their mother’s lawyer, not her boyfriend.
They agree to give Marble some space but after two days, they begin to worry. They go to the hotel and find that Marble has checked out. When they finally receive an email at the end of the week, Marble confirms that she is back in the UK.
“I believe I need some time to process this,” Marble writes. “Thank you for everything. All best.”
All best? Byron and Benny go out to a restaurant and drink two beers each but never get around to touching their food. All best? And what about the black cake their mother left them?
“Okay, enough of this, it’s time,” Byron says. “Ma wanted us to share the black cake with Marble? Well, she had her chance and she’s not here. Let’s just do it.”
“I don’t know,” Benny says.
Back at the house, they walk into the kitchen together, open the freezer door, and stare at the foil-covered cake. After about ten seconds, they look at each other, then close the door again. Benny leans against the counter, running her hand along the avocado green surface. It’s so seventies, so Ma.
After a week, Benny goes back to New York and Byron goes to a conference. They plan to meet up again soon to start clearing out their mother’s house, but there’s still no word from Marble. Byron says they’ve lived their entire lives without Marble and they may just have to keep on doing so. But just in case, they’ll leave the cake where it is for now.
Cake
Back in New York, Benny has made her best black cake yet. She has poured and folded and stirred and channeled the memories of being with Ma in the kitchen. She has worked out her frustration over Marble’s continued silence. She has told herself that for a couple of hours there, back in California, she and Marble really did make a connection. If they hadn’t, she wouldn’t be doing this right now.
Benny and Marble chuckled over their shared interest in food that day in Ma’s kitchen. What a coincidence, Marble said, and Benny said, It’s no coincidence, it’s in our blood. What if Benny had actually seen a video or photo of Marble before knowing about her mother’s hidden past? It would have been a shock. It was a shock as it was, to see a white woman with her mother’s face, with her mother’s voice, walking into her childhood home, standing in her mother’s kitchen.
As it turns out, Benny and Marble don’t really look at culinary tradition in the same way, but when they spent that hour or so chatting in Ma’s kitchen, Marble offered Benny some excellent advice for her next visit to the bank.
So here she is. Benny wraps the black cake now in wax paper, closes it in a tin, and takes it to the bank. Benny tells the bank guy that she knows the city doesn’t need another coffee shop, per se, but it needs a place like hers. She tells him that her concept café will highlight the diaspora of food, the migration of cultures to this country through recipes, the mix of traditions that feeds into contemporary America. It will be a place to learn and reflect. It will be a place for people to be together.
Benny explains that she is working on a lesson plan for children with local educators. She won’t share the black cake with the children because of the alcohol content, but she will take a sample for them to see and smell and she will tell them about the flawed narratives that have always aimed to draw clear boundaries around cultures and people’s identities.
There are Italian restaurants and Chinese restaurants and Ethiopian restaurants and Polish delis and what-have-you, but her menu will feature recipes from different cultures that could only have come about through a mixing of traditions, a mixing of fates, a mixing of stories. Plus, her mother has left her enough money to help fund daily operations for two years, after which she expects to be able to make a profit, so, given her changed circumstances, would the bank reconsider her previous application for a business loan?
About Love
How it begins: In a parking lot at the shopping center in the suburbs.
“I don’t get it, what are you?” says a man, who is taking a pamphlet from Benny.
“I’m Manny the Meerkat,” says Benny, lowering her voice into character. Manny the Meerkat is one of her weekend gigs, one of the assortment of jobs she will continue to juggle until she has confirmation of financing for her café.
“Meerkat?”
“Meerkat.”