Black Cake: A Novel (18 page)

B
ack then, it was easier
to disappear. Back then, you could open a new bank account or get a driver’s license with just part of your birth name and maybe even your nickname. They didn’t fingerprint and face-recognition everyone and digitize your orthotic model and send your blood-test results by email. They didn’t save your shopping preferences and the birthdays of everyone who’d ever received a chocolate-and-cheese gift package from you. They didn’t make money by posting your age and address and so-called
facts
about you on the Web to lure other people into paying for somewhat-true-but-mostly-imprecise information.

Back then, it was easier for a young man, an only son whose parents had already died, to shorten his name and turn himself from Gilbert Bennett Grant into Bert Bennett, slowly change his documents to match, and cut all ties with his past to be with the woman he loved. It was easier then for a young woman to believe that you could build a family of your own in a vacuum because love and loyalty were the only true things in this world. So this is what Bert and Eleanor did.

S
o her father, too, had
lied about his past. Benny doesn’t feel angry so much as sad. The more Benny learns about her mother, in particular, the more she sees that Benny wasn’t the only one in her family who had paid a price for going against other people’s rules.

True, Eleanor Bennett had, in the end, been much more fortunate in her life than many people. She had been reunited with her first love and they had gone on to have two children together. But Benny’s mother would continue to mourn a series of losses so great that not even Benny can begin to imagine. Her first family. Her identity. Her first child.

Benny used to think she’d been a brave soul, insisting on being herself despite the bullying, despite the alienation from her family, despite the loneliness. She was proud that she hadn’t run back home with her tail between her legs just because things hadn’t worked out with Joanie, or with Steve, or with her plans. But lately, Benny has felt a bit ashamed of not having more to show for it all. Her mother, at least, had something to show for what she’d been through.

After all that she had experienced in her early years, why couldn’t Ma imagine what was happening with Benny? Why didn’t she give her advice? Why didn’t Ma do more to hold on to her? And what is Benny supposed to do with these feelings, now that Ma is no longer around?

H
ad Byron’s parents ever told
the truth about anything?

Had they been that good about covering things up? Or had Byron just not wanted to see? The more Byron learns, the more some things begin to make sense. A year ago, his confident, go-get-’em ma had become quieter, even clingy. More touchy-feely than usual, more distracted. He could sense that she was undergoing some kind of internal shift. He could sense that it went beyond losing his dad, or missing Benny. But he didn’t want to go there.

Byron didn’t want to think that whatever was ailing his mother wouldn’t go away on its own, the way it used to when he was a kid and she was feeling down. Byron himself was feeling increasingly restless. Disappointed with the way things had gone at the office. Surprised that they still bothered him as much as they did. Frustrated that Lynette, who was still living with him then, was demanding more of his private time, just as he was trying to get as much mileage as possible out of his public life.

Byron was being selfish, he can see that now. He needed his mother to remain the clear-eyed, positive thinker who had always been there for him, who had always told him to find his center and hold on to it and,
You’ll see, Byron,
things would work out all right. After all, he thought back then, things had worked out all right for his folks, hadn’t they?

E
tta Pringle kicked off her
sandals and stepped onto a wooden platform set in the sand, waving to the crowd as she walked. The applause gave way to the sounds of her childhood. The sea, the palm fronds in the breeze, the memory of her mother’s voice, admonishing her.
A young lady never removes her shoes in public!
her mother would have said. Etta smiled at the thought, then braced herself for the deep tug of nostalgia. At least her mother had lived long enough to see what Etta had accomplished. To see her grandchildren growing up. To believe that all was well with her only daughter.

Etta lifted her face to breathe in the sun and opened her arms. The crowd cheered. Just twenty-four more hours and she’d be on a plane out of here. With her mother gone and her brother in England, Etta had no reason to linger, even though she was the one who had wanted the ceremony to take place here, in her hometown, in this cove where it had all begun. And where so much had gone wrong.

“Etta Pringle isn’t just a local girl who’s made good,” the prime minister was saying. “Etta Pringle is a woman who has conquered the world, one swim at a time, starting with this bay right here.” Someone shouts her childhood nickname and Etta laughs and gives a thumbs-up.

“And now,” the prime minister said, “this homegrown champion rightly nags politicians like me to do more to safeguard the environment, because no sea, not even ours, the most beautiful in the world, is immune to runoff, to the plastics, to the rising water levels, to increasingly severe weather.”

More applause, then a medal, then the naming of this stretch of beach after Etta Pringle. Etta looks out past the waves frothing against the rocks. This was the bay where a much faster, bolder swimmer had led Etta past the seven-mile mark for the first time and made her realize who she was destined to become.

Etta had swum across the Strait of Magellan in Chile, circled New York’s island of Manhattan, crossed the English Channel, and survived the icy waters off the Siberian coast, the first black woman in the world to have made all of these crossings. She had raised two children with another woman at a time when such things were not mentioned. She had spoken to entire stadiums full of people about overcoming obstacles. But there was one obstacle in her own life that Etta had never been able to overcome.

Etta scanned the crowd. There they were. A couple of the Henry boys. There was always someone from the Henry family hanging about, waiting for someone to slip up, waiting to offer their unique brand of assistance at terms that could never be repaid. There was a whole new generation of Henrys now, people who lived to exploit other people. People who enjoyed holding a grudge. Which was why Etta needed to get away from this island.

W
hile Etta Pringle was being
honored on the island, Eleanor Bennett was at home in California, nearly three thousand miles away, looking at her laptop. She noted with satisfaction that Pringle was trending on social media. Eleanor’s husband Bert, rest his soul, would have gotten a kick out of that. He and Eleanor had been proud to see a woman from the islands, a black distance swimmer, become so famous. But in the five years since Bert’s passing, Pringle had become even more popular, known to the younger generations for her motivational speaking.

And now, Etta Pringle had a beach named after her.
Imagine that, Bert,
Eleanor thought. Seeing the video of the dedication ceremony on the Internet brought the sting of salt water to Eleanor’s eyes. It left Eleanor with a longing to be surrounded by folks from the islands, a need to remember what she used to be like before she and Bert started going out of their way to stay away from other West Indians, trying to avoid people who might know people who might remember them.
Caribbeans,
her son kept reminding her to say. It was more politically correct to say that. Wasn’t that funny, how her child was telling her what to call her own home?

Even after all these years, it wasn’t so common to hear a voice from the islands in Eleanor’s neighborhood, so she got into her car and drove north to Los Angeles, the sudden change of plans being one of the perks of retirement. There was a place in the Crenshaw district where
Eleanor would go to pick up some of her favorite island foods. A bunch of plantains, a can of ackee, a jar of smoked herring paste, a bottle of hot pepper sauce. A place where she could also find Chinese egg noodles and a head of baby bok choy and didn’t have to explain to anyone what
suey mein
was. Didn’t have to explain that it wasn’t so much Chinese food as island food.

A little over an hour later, Eleanor was walking along the aisles of the store, running her fingertips along the jars and burlap sacks, watching mostly brown faces leaning in to read the labels, listening to chatter in different accents and languages. Near the baking supplies, a soft-armed saleswoman in a purple skirt and yellow top was giving an in-store demonstration.

“When it comes to black cake,” the woman was telling a small group, “a base of marzipan, or almond paste, is essential to successful icing.” As she spoke, she dusted a cloth-covered board in front of her with confectioner’s sugar.

“Once you have the cake ready, you want to cover it in a layer of marzipan before applying the icing. Otherwise, all that rum and other good stuff that makes your cake so special will cause the icing to go runny.” She nodded and pointed. “Has that happened to you? Yes?”

The saleswoman dumped a wad of almond paste onto the sugar-dusted surface while people asked questions. Then she patted it down and picked up a rolling pin.

“Any of you here ever watch that English woman on YouTube? The one who’s always talking about different ethnic foods? You know the one I mean, right? She does some interesting shows on local traditions around the world.
She
claims that black cake is not an authentic Caribbean recipe.”

She tips her head to the side and raises an eyebrow. Laughter bubbles up from the crowd.

“She says we wouldn’t have black cake without the Europeans dem coming over to this part of the world and bringing certain foods over here. She says the recipe comes from a mixing of different cultures. Different cultures? Well, what does she think the Caribbean is,
anyhow?” Someone kissed their teeth and a buzz of comments went around the group of onlookers.

Eleanor breathed in the almond smell, remembering the kitchen in her childhood home, the marzipan spread out on the kitchen table, Mummy and Pearl gossiping and tittering. Eleanor tried not to think back to those days too often, to the days when she was still Covey, to the days before her mother went away. But on this day, she let herself imagine what it might be like to go back to the island today.

What if she could wander through her hometown unseen, past the old school grounds, past the swim club, toward the house where she grew up, with its white cement walls and corrugated tin roof and red hibiscus blooming at the corner? What if she could stop to pluck a naseberry from a neighbor’s yard, stop to snap and strip a frond from a dwarf coconut tree? What if she could step into the backyard where her father used to play dominoes with the men and stand just behind him, and simply be his daughter again, before his weaknesses had gotten the best of him?

What if her mummy were still there?

What if Eleanor could return without having to explain where she had been all these years? Then, yes, she would go back, she would gather tamarind pods from the floor of the backyard and sit on the concrete steps of the veranda near the orange spikes of the bird of paradise. She would show her children how to crack open the pods, pull off the strings, and roll the pulp in a bowl of sugar. She would take them down to the cove to swim in the sea.

But you didn’t just disappear for five decades and then go back as if nothing had happened. She wouldn’t try to go back, anyway, if she couldn’t take all three of her children with her. And after fifty years, Eleanor still had no idea where one of them was.