Black Cake: A Novel (31 page)

I
n 1715, a hurricane plowing
through the Caribbean sank two Spanish ships and smashed eight others into the shallows off the coast of Florida. Later that year, a pair of pirate ships set out from the island and returned home loaded with treasures, most of which the Spanish had already pulled up from the shipwrecks. Back in Port Royal, the raiders unloaded bullion, dyestuffs, tobacco, and other valuable items, some of which were not listed anywhere on the manifests of the ruined fleet and which promised to fetch a good sum on the black market.

Twenty years later, a runaway slave emerged from the bush in the interior of the island and sneaked onto the plantation from which he had fled four months earlier. Under the cover of night, he ran off with his woman, whose stomach had grown thick with child. She left with only the clothes on her back, two guavas in her apron pocket, and a large hair comb belonging to the mistress of the house. The mistress, on the occasion of her marriage to the master of the estate years before, had received the comb along with a case of gold medallions and other gifts from a high official who, it was said, had sent his men to Florida to loot goods recovered from the shipwrecked Spanish fleet. It was an assertion that he had always denied.

The enslaved woman had been waiting to reclaim her freedom. She had been listening for a signal every night for four moons but, as in all such things, she repeatedly steeled herself for disappointment. She
knew that her man might never make it back. When the time finally came, she had only minutes to escape. She was already running across a rain-soaked field, holding fast to her man’s hand, when she realized that the comb was still wedged into the waist of her skirt. She would have washed the comb and put it on the mistress’s dressing table that evening, had she had the time, had she not been slipping in the mud and stumbling over tree roots in her quest for freedom.

The mistress had usually treated her kindly. For a slave. The master, not so kindly. More than once, in fact, he had treated the young woman
not so kindly
. But the child inside her would be hers, not his. This child would grow up free in the hills with the others who had escaped and who were teaching their children the old ways. She threw the comb into the field as she ran. It sank into the mud, where it would be washed clear to the bottom of the garden by a heavy rain, then tucked farther into the earth by one of the men’s shovels. She thought of the coins that she had taken from the master’s house, one at a time, and buried in the dirt down the way. There was no time to retrieve them. There was only time to survive.

More than two hundred years would pass before an orphan girl named Elly, raised at a children’s home on the site of the former sugar cane plantation, found a dirt-encrusted hair comb in the garden, along with cockle shells from a prehistoric era and one well-fed garden snake, the latter of which she quickly tossed aside. She washed the comb in the tub where she was given her afternoon bath and later squirreled it away in her personal tin of treasures. Inside the tin were four gold coins which she’d found near the potato plants the year before.

S
cientists have come up with
new ways to map the deepest parts of the ocean. At one time, many imagined that the seafloor was a dark, sandy plain dotted with unseeing fish or cartilaginous giants and, perhaps, a few clumps of coral that could survive without light. But technology has come to confirm what Etta Pringle had always sensed, that the seafloor is a universe of underwater crests and valleys and rivers, of mineral deposits and jewels, of entire continents of life. The blues, the greens, the yellows, the blacks.

When Etta learned that the most remote corners of the seafloor were going to be unveiled, she had confirmation of why she had been put on this earth to swim. She was meant to spend the rest of her life doing her part to remind people that Earth was not so much land as water, that this planet was a living thing to be cared for and protected and used with care, not to be drained and littered to the point of extinction.

Machines are sophisticated but they cannot read love. They cannot tell researchers what it feels like to be part of the sea, to be a blip of arms and legs, a small cavern of a mouth, skimming the briny surfaces of the world. Some people wonder what it would be like to fly. Etta already knows. So she keeps flying through the water and she will keep on fighting to protect it.

Etta travels around the world to speak in public and meet with
politicians and plead the case of the world’s oceans and seas, the last remaining barrier between life on Earth and oblivion. She reminds intergovernmental assemblies that even creatures from ten thousand meters below the marine surface have been found with plastic fibers in their insides. What, she asks, does that tell us about what can happen to our own children?

And now this mapping business.

Etta knows that only a small fraction of the seafloor has been mapped. She knows that this can be dangerous. Look at the submarine that ran into an underwater mountain some years back. She knows that people need more information and more resources. But not only. People have always wanted more, period. This is one of the laws of human nature. What’s to stop those maps from becoming a mere tool for exploitation?

And so, Etta fights then swims then grieves then trudges back onshore to fight. She speaks out for the seas that grew her, that gave her friendship, that taught her to love. She doesn’t do the distances she used to, but she still holds a couple of world records. People come to see her presentations, they want autographs, they want selfies, but she wonders, how many of them are listening to what she has to say? Some people call her ugly names in public, rather than engage in real dialogue. This, too, is one of the laws of human nature. If you are visible, you become a target.

Though, mostly, Etta feels the love.

One day, when Etta is all talked out and wondering how she can sneak out in advance of the reception that’s been organized just for her, she looks up to find herself face-to-face with a younger man, maybe forty, forty-five, who looks very familiar. He looks like someone she hasn’t seen in decades.

He looks like Gibbs Grant.

The man is talking to her. He works on seafloor mapping. He says they should talk about that sometime. But Etta is distracted by those eyes and by something else, his smile, a grin that pulls sharply to the
left. There’s no mistaking it, that is Covey’s mouth. The man puts out his hand to shake hers and Etta is pulled back into the sea of her girlhood.

Trembling, she takes the man’s hand in both of hers. Then two women step out of the dispersing crowd and stand on either side of the man, both of them the color of straw. One of them looks like a pale photocopy of her long-lost friend, Covey.

Benedetta “Bunny” Pringle takes a step back. She looks around, her chest filling with anticipation. Covey. Where is she? They had made a plan to meet here in Los Angeles tonight, just outside the auditorium.

The last time she saw Covey, Covey had whispered hurriedly in her ear. “I found him, Bunny. I found Gibbs. We changed our names. We had children. We live here.” There was no time for anything else. Etta gave Covey her business card and thought she’d hear from her again, but she didn’t, so Etta asked one of her assistants to locate a Mrs. Eleanor Bennett somewhere in the Anaheim area. In the fall of 2018, she called the number she’d been given.

“This is Etta Pringle,” Etta had said, taking care to keep her tone steady and professional. “I am looking for Mrs. Eleanor Bennett.”

“Oh, Bunny,” the woman on the other end of the line said, and she knew it was Covey.

“Mrs. Bennett, I have another date coming up at the convention center where we met.”

“Eleanor. Please call me Eleanor.”

“Eleanor, do you think you could make it? We could work out a way to meet after that for a proper chat. I could leave you two passes, for you and your husband, or more, if you’d like.” It was then that Covey told her that Gibbs had died. They were both quiet for a while, then ended the call agreeing to meet on this date. There was no need to say
no more phone calls, no emails, no letters.
They had found each other again. But they would have to be discreet.

Bunny stands before Covey’s children now, turning this way and that, looking for Covey. The young woman who looks just like Gibbs shakes her head.

“Our ma,” she says. “She got sick.” Her eyes start to tear up.

Bunny looks at the other woman for a moment until what she is telling her finally registers.

Covey is gone.

She covers her mouth with one hand. Then she spreads her arms and embraces all three of her friend’s children.

B
yron has the same face,
the same deep tone, same broad shoulders as his father, only he is thicker than Gibbs Grant was, at least the last time Etta saw Gibbs. He was barely twenty years old when he left the island and Etta never did see him again. Though not for lack of trying. She tried to contact Gibbs sometime after she and Patsy had moved to London, after the birth of her baby, but Gibbs seemed to have disappeared. Now Etta knows why.

Gibbs and Covey’s son, now well into his forties, hands Etta an envelope. Etta tears it at one end and pulls out a sheet of paper. She feels her face grow warm at the sight of her old friend’s handwriting.

My dearest Bunny,

I am writing to you now because I don’t think I will be able to see you again. I’m so sorry. We had a plan, I know, but my health is failing me. I didn’t want to upset you by telling you. I thought I’d be well enough to make our little rendezvous. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to lay eyes on you again at the convention center, after so many years. I have always followed you in the news, Bunny, every single one of your swims, and I am so proud of what you have accomplished. You don’t know how many times I wanted to get in touch before this year but, well, we both knew the situation. Finally, I took a risk and went to see you that day and I am so glad.

Bunny, you have been a true friend. You did more for me than I could ever repay. So please forgive me for asking you to do me this favor. It’s about my children. This won’t be easy for them. Can you help them? Charles
Mitch, my lawyer and close friend, will tell you more about what I am asking you to do. He will tell you more about what has been happening in our lives.

There’s so much I wanted to tell you in person but I’m afraid that, unless there is some kind of miracle, I will have to say my farewells here. But only farewell, Bunny, not goodbye. I won’t go far, I promise. I’ll be there in the water with you, every single time. I always have been.

Take care, dear friend, and watch out for those naughty jellies.

Yours always,

C.

Etta holds the letter against her chest, stands there for a while, eyes closed. Then she folds the paper back into the envelope, tucks it into her jacket pocket, and nods at Eleanor’s children.

“Okay,” says Etta, “I need to see Charles Mitch. Can you take me to see him?”

T
he thing about the island
where Pearl grew up is, a lot of people end up leaving. They may go looking for work, or follow their grown children overseas, as did Pearl. Either way, many of them carry something from the island deep inside, a story or memory that, for one reason or another, they never share with others. The same is true for Pearl. That’s why it always does her a world of good when Bunny Pringle comes to town.

Bunny knows more about Pearl than most. Bunny understands that Covey’s mother wasn’t just her employer. Mathilda had become her friend and Pearl tried to take care of Covey after her mother left but it wasn’t enough. She watched Covey grow from a bighearted little rascal to a tough and driven young woman, knowing that underneath the girl’s bravado was a well of dejection as deep as the sea.

Bunny comes to visit whenever she passes through this part of Florida. Bunny is a grandmother now. Hard to believe it, even though Pearl herself is a great-grandmother. It’s just that the children will always be children, no matter how old they get. Bunny must be seventy-three years old, now, maybe seventy-four, and she’s still doing her crazy swimming. All those years ago, her coach told people Bunny would be a champion someday and, sure enough, look at her now.

Over the years, Pearl has seen Bunny on the television and even on her cellphone. She remembers watching on the television when they named a cove back home after Bunny. Seeing the pictures of Bunny’s
seaside ceremony on the Internet left Pearl feeling proud of Bunny and sad at the same time. Covey should have been alive to see that, too.

There’s Bunny now, getting out of a car at the bottom of Pearl’s driveway. Three other people are getting out of the car with her, a man and two women. Pearl nearly has a heart attack when she gets a good look at them. She only needs ten more seconds to be certain of what she is seeing, to understand that something impossible has happened, something marvelous, praise God. Bunny told her she’d be bringing some people with her but Pearl would never have guessed. What a story Bunny is telling her now. What a story.

Pearl is standing in her backyard, flanked by Covey’s children, and trying to act normal-like. She stands at the edge of the canal, pointing out the mangrove and the birds and fish. Why is it, Pearl jokes, that the only fish you can ever see in there, the ones who jump all the way out of the brackish water and flip themselves back in, are the homely-looking ones, so quick to show themselves off?

Covey’s children all laugh, low, bubbly laughs, just like Mister Lin. Imagine that.

Covey’s son and one of the daughters look like Gibbs, though the girl has Mister Lin’s complexion. But it is the other child, the oldest, that Pearl can’t stop looking at. This white woman is Covey through and through, down to the way she shows all her teeth when she tips her head back and smiles. To think that all these years, Covey was alive and raising a family with Gibbs.

After Gibbs Grant went to England and never came back, people took to saying that maybe he’d become too big for his britches, couldn’t be bothered to stay in touch with his own uncle. Or maybe something had happened to him, Pearl thought. But, no, all this time, Gibbs was with Covey in California. The Lord works in strange ways, indeed.

If only,
Pearl thinks. If only Mathilda could see this. Her daughter’s children. Which makes Pearl wonder for the millionth time, whatever happened to Mathilda? Another person who had simply disappeared. That, too, is part of Pearl’s untold story, how Mathilda managed to run away from home. She used part of the black cake money she’d saved
up, and left the rest of her share to Pearl for Covey. Mister Lin had no idea how much a woman could make baking a proper cake for a wedding. He never did take women’s kitchen work too seriously. Which was a good thing. Otherwise, he might have found the money and gambled it all away.