Black Cake: A Novel (28 page)

B
enny waits until she’s alone
in the kitchen to look through the junk drawer. She has to jiggle the kitchen drawer at the end of the counter while pulling at the same time. It’s the only way to get the thing to open, one thing that hasn’t changed around here.

This is where her mother kept dented pencils, ink-clotted ballpoint pens, freebie notepads from the pharmacy and the drain-cleaning service, confetti-colored paper clips and tiny plastic devices whose original purposes most people had long forgotten but which Benny could always figure out.

Ma would hand something to her from the junk drawer and say,
What’s this?
And Benny would squint at a pointed or twisted or curled-up object, turning it over in her hand, holding it close to her face and picturing its intended life. Benny runs her fingers now along the side of the drawer. There it is, where it has always been, a piece of folded, lined notepaper where her mother had scribbled down the recipe for her black cake.

Benny unfolds the paper and runs her finger down the list of ingredients.
Rum, sugar, vanilla.
And the occasional verb.
Cream, rub, mix.
It is only now that Benny realizes that the recipe has no numbers, no quantities at all. Wait, was it always this way? It’s the same one from her childhood, she’s sure of it. Benny sees, now, that her mother’s
recipe was never so much a list of firm quantities and instructions as a series of hints for how to proceed.

What Benny learned from her mother had been handed down through demonstration, conversation, and proximity. What Benny learned from her mother was to rely on her own instincts and go on from there.

B
yron’s phone is ringing. It’s
Lynette. She didn’t come to his mother’s memorial service after all. He wonders. He thinks of what happened to Benny all those years ago, about her reasons for not being at their dad’s funeral. He can’t get over the fact that he and his mother had no clue. You never really know what a person could be going through.

When Byron answers, Lynette is sobbing. He can hardly understand her.

“A what?” he asks.

“A busted taillight, Byron,” Lynette says. “Jackson was just trying to get his wallet, get his ID, and the officer pulled a gun on us. I thought we were going to die.”

“Jackson? Jesus, is he all right?” Jackson, Lynette’s nephew. Great guy. It’s made Byron proud to see Jackson make his way into the professional world. A young scientist growing his confidence, a young black man opening doors.

“He was just trying to get me to the doctor, you know?”

“Doctor? What, are you sick? What happened?”

“No, Byron, I’m not sick. I just, I wasn’t feeling well. I’ll explain later. We still were hoping to get to your ma’s funeral but then they took Jackson into custody.”

“What?”

“I’m serious. They put handcuffs on him, Byron. And for what? We
don’t know because they eventually released him. No charges or anything, but it was terrible. There we were, sitting in the car, and it was like everything just stopped, you know? It’s like, there was this one, long second where I just…”

Byron hears a sharp breath on the other end of the line. He thinks of Lynette, sitting there, right next to Jackson. Anything could have happened. He tries not to think about it, everything that might have gone wrong. But trying to undo the worry is like trying to undo his blackness.

“I know, Lynette. I know. Are you going to be okay?”

“I think so, thanks, Byron,” Lynette says, but he hears her voice breaking again.

“I’m coming over,” he says. “Can I come over?”

“Mmm-hmm,” she says. She’s crying again.

After he hangs up with Lynette, Byron checks the news on his laptop. Jackson has gone viral. There’s a video online.

What was the kid supposed to do if he was asked to show his driver’s license?

How is a person supposed to reach for their wallet?

Are black people in America not allowed to have hands?

Byron wants to believe that this epidemic of mistreatment, this bullying of unarmed black men is just that, an outbreak, though prolonged, that can be brought under control. He wants to keep believing in law enforcement officers, to respect the risky work that they do, knowing that every day they step into unknown territory. He wants to know that he can still pick up the phone and call the cops if he ever needs to. There’s a lot of anger out there. A lot of hurt. Where are they all gonna end up—black, white, whoever—if things don’t get any better? What would his father say, if he knew that things were still this way in America in 2018? He has a fleeting thought, a blasphemous thought, that maybe it’s just as well his dad isn’t around anymore to see the way things are.

Byron turns to Mr. Mitch and Benny.

“Look,” he says, holding out his cellphone for them to see the
images. “That’s my…,” Byron says. He doesn’t want to say
girlfriend
but he doesn’t want to say
ex,
either. “That’s my friend’s nephew in the car.”

Benny takes his phone, looks at it for a moment, then starts swiping away at her own phone.

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” Byron says. “I have to go right now.”

M
ost people around Byron are
holding their smartphones above their heads, one arm stretched high and waving softly, as if in worship. Others have small candle holders in their hands, the light glowing under their chins, the cloying smell of melting wax turning Byron’s stomach. Byron is just standing there in the crowd, hands at his sides. Byron doesn’t do street protests and Lynette knows this.

Byron believes the best path to activism is to gain status, accumulate wealth, exert your influence in the centers of power. But Lynette says this is not so much a protest as a vigil, for all those people who weren’t as fortunate as Jackson. For all those people who didn’t survive a traffic stop gone wrong. For all those people who are still in mourning.
Including us,
Lynette says.
We need to allow ourselves to grieve, clear our heads,
she says,
so that we can go back into the city halls and courtrooms and boardrooms and classrooms and work for change.

Jackson is up in front with his attorney and parents. Mr. Mitch is up there too. He knows the organizers of the vigil. Mr. Mitch seems to know everyone, like Byron’s dad did. There are people speaking into the microphone, politicians and activists and even that famous actor. Finally, a group walks up front to sing. Lynette says Jackson didn’t want all this attention, but he does want police to set the record straight, he wants the police to acknowledge that he was wronged. Byron looks over at Benny. Her eyes are closed and she’s singing with the crowd.

Byron is trying to think about Jackson but he keeps looking down
at Lynette’s stomach, pushing out against her coat. Lynette hasn’t said anything to him but it’s evident she’s pregnant and she’s been that way for a good while now. She hasn’t mentioned another man. There hasn’t been time to talk about anything but what happened to Jackson. What happened to Lynette, too. Lynette was still shaking when Byron got to her house, hours after the police incident.

I need to talk to you about something,
Lynette said on the phone before his mother’s memorial service. Was this what she wanted to talk about? So much else is happening right now, Byron will have to wait to find out.

All he can do, for now, is try his best not to stare.

T
hey are sitting across from
each other in a back room at Lynette’s house as Lynette tells Byron about her pregnancy. Lynette says she’s due in three months. She says Byron can ask for a DNA test if he wants, but she has no doubt the baby is his. Still, she insists, the baby will always be hers first. Byron needn’t feel obligated. She says they can meet again to talk, if he’s really and truly interested in being part of the boy’s life.

He needn’t feel obligated? What kind of comment is that?

Byron doesn’t mean to leave things the way he does. He doesn’t intend to raise his voice at Lynette that way. He doesn’t mean to slam the door on the way out of her house. But why is she treating him this way? The baby is hers? More than his? She was the one who left Byron. She was the one who didn’t tell him about the pregnancy back then. She was the one who didn’t give him a chance to participate from the get-go.

If Byron’s mother were here right now, she’d probably say Lynette is right, she’s the one giving birth to the baby. Byron’s father, on the other hand, would surely agree with Byron, would say that Lynette should have told Byron that she was pregnant. But this doesn’t change the fact that Byron is standing alone at his kitchen counter, tonight, wondering if the boy that Lynette is expecting will look anything like him. Wondering at what moment, exactly, Lynette decided that she
could live her life without Byron. Wishing he could go back to that moment and somehow change it.

Byron is still standing at the counter when the night sky gives way to a morning gray. There’s no time to sleep. Charles Mitch is due back at the house in two hours to finish playing his mother’s recording. But first, Byron needs to talk to Lynette. Though he isn’t sure what to say. How does he get her to understand how much he wants to see her again? How much he wants to watch this child of his grow up, to keep him safe in these times. How he needs her to spell it out for him, tell him what to do, tell him what she really wants.

How he realizes he’s been getting it wrong for years, not quite knowing how to be there for the people he loves.

Once he’s cleaned and dressed, Byron dials Lynette’s number. Her phone rings and rings. He calls again but she still doesn’t answer. Heart hammering, Byron grabs his car keys and pulls open the back door, but Mr. Mitch is already here, coming up the driveway.

B and B, I don’t know how you will feel after hearing everything that I’ve had to say. I ran away, I changed my name, I invented a past. Until now, you children didn’t really know where I had come from or how I had lived before coming to the United States. You had no idea that you had an older sister. You may be upset about this, I can see that. You may be asking yourself if you can ever really know who I am, if you can believe anything that I say. When your father died, I, too, had my moments where I thought, who am I? What’s left of me? But then I came to realize that the answer had been there all along, right in front of me. And this is what I need you two to understand: You have always known who I am. Who I am is your mother. This is the truest part of me.

W
hen Marble gets the message
from Eleanor Bennett’s lawyer, she is leaning her head back under a stream of warm water while the hairdresser rinses fake-pineapple suds from her hair. She’s in one of those salons that specializes in hair extensions for African women in Rome, the term
africana,
in this case, not referring to the continent but a wide range of clients from any number of countries in Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

Marble isn’t the only non-
africana
who comes to this shop. There are always a couple of women who know they can get a good deal on quality hair extensions, or people who, like Marble, are relieved to have found a
parrucchiere
who actually knows how to work with their thick, springy hair. Marble loves her slovenly hours at the beauty shop, chair-dancing to the music on the audio system and trading quips with the chatty mix of black and brown and parchment-colored women who form this small, multilingual community.

Marble feels the buzz of her mobile phone through her purse. Once her hair is wrapped in a towel, she reaches into the mouth of her handbag and taps the screen of the phone. She reads the email a couple of times. The subject heading is
Estate of Eleanor Bennett.
The lawyer would like to schedule a telephone call to speak with her about a confidential matter of relevance to Marble regarding this Bennett woman. From the wording of the email, Marble might not have guessed right away. Had she been petite and blond, like her mummy, she might not
have guessed right away. Had she not been living with a growing sense of unease about her identity, she might not have guessed right away.

She sets up a call with the American lawyer for the next day, and afterward she just sits there, trembling. She must fight the urge to call her mother in London. Her mum is the first person Marble thinks of whenever she needs to talk. It has always been this way, even when her husband was still alive. But this is not the kind of news that a daughter can share with her mother by telephone. This is not the kind of anger a daughter should express by telephone. She swipes at the phone’s screen and starts looking up flights. She needs to go to London tonight.

W
anda and Ronald Martin are
just sitting down to supper in their London townhouse when they hear someone wiping their shoes on the doormat outside. It’s Marble. They recognize the weight and drag of those feet. They recognize the way she presses her finger against the doorbell.

“I didn’t know she was in London.”

“Nor did I.”

“Why doesn’t she let herself in?”

“Maybe she left her keys in Rome.”

Wanda pulls open the front door, her chest swelling with the feeling that the arrival of her daughter always brings, but when she sees Marble’s face, everything falls inward. She knows, instantly, why her daughter is here unannounced.

Fifty years.

Their daughter is almost fifty years old.

Wanda had hoped that after five decades, they’d be safe.

Wanda had hoped that she and Ronald would never need to have this conversation with Marble, this talk about another woman, a young, unwed mother from the Caribbean. Their daughter’s birth mother. Wanda’s true life began when she took little Mabel into her arms all those years ago. Now, looking at her daughter’s face, Wanda fears that the charmed life that she and Ronald and their child have lived all these years is about to crumble.