Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds (9 page)

Irette says the inspiration for “True
Calling” comes from her mother. “My mom does not bake,” Irette
writes. “She doesn’t even keep butter in her refrigerator. Once a
year, though, she breaks out her hand mixer and makes my dad a
birthday cake with homemade lemon filling and fluffy frosting. I
can’t help but think that the effort she puts into making that
once-a-year cake involves a lot of magic.”

True Calling

Irette Y. Patterson

Cat waited for a moment as she stepped into
the bakery, the bell dangling from the door announcing her arrival.
Trays of baked goods surrounded her. Silver trays with goodies
packed to the edge—baklava, chocolate sponge cake layers held by
ganache and lemon cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, the lemon
filling betrayed by the dollop of neon-yellow filling on the center
right on top. In front of her were the clear glass display cases of
more yums available for sale. Sample cakes were displayed at a
slant on the wall behind the cashier.

No. This was no place where you sauntered in.
You gave it its proper reverence. The bakery sat there on that
strip of a road having been there before the area devolved into
strip clubs and all-night pancake places. It had history. And
family. And presence.

The fact that she could get a baklava with
its honey oozing against her finger and sticking to the sides of
her mouth would have been reason enough to choose this bakery for
the event.

The real reason, though, was that it felt
right
. She wasn’t from the Path side of the family so she
couldn’t read another person’s thoughts. She wasn’t an engineering
whiz like the Freeman girls. And life would have been so much
easier as an aura-seeing Bow. As a Hart she specialized in the
heart of the home and family. And this place was filled with love
and family.

“Move it, Chick,” a voice came behind her
pushing her aside.

Cat sighed and moved so that her friend could
step in. “Really?” she said.

“Look. We got to get back to work. The board
is meeting today and you don’t know when they’re gonna need us to
run some numbers or something.” Her friend Kesha brushed past her
to the cashier, “So. Let’s see this cake that you’re getting for a
man who doesn’t know you exist.”

“We are not getting into this right now.”

“Uh-huh. I don’t know why you just don’t make
the doggone cake anyway. You make everything else.”

Kesha was, well, Kesha; she never met a wig
she didn’t like and it sometimes overpowered her tiny frame.
Sometimes Cat thought that they looked like frick and frack. Kesha
had the figure of a model. Cat had the figure of someone who was,
well what she was, short plump and with, she thought, curves in all
the right places. She liked her shape and knew that if she got too
thin, Auntie would probably reign down terror on her for not being
the “appropriate” shape. She truly believed that your shape and
size could impact the amount of power like a singer who needed to
be a big girl in order to blow those notes.

Cat loved her aunt, but the woman did go
overboard regarding things. Everything she said wasn’t true. Like
the whole baking thing. You could bake but you didn’t bake for just
anybody, and you certainly didn’t bake for a guy friend. You just
never knew what would happen.

Uh-huh. Yeah. Auntie could be a bit on the
paranoid side.

“Are you listening?” Kesha snapped her
fingers in front of her. “He’s going to break your heart, boo.”

“We’re just friends,” Cat said.

“‘Uh-huh,” she said.

Cat smiled as the lady came from out back.
She wore a white blouse and black slacks with her long, black curly
hair pulled away from her face.

Maybe she should have gone to Publix. But no,
this was special. Everything else was ready for the party. The cake
was the last thing, and she even had little helpers to help her set
everything up. This was it.

Cat walked up to the counter. “I’m here to
pick up the Falcons cake.”

But the response was what concerned her;
there was none of that immediate reaction or recognition.

Cat kept smiling. “The cake that has the
Falcons jersey on it. I’m supposed to pick it up today.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, did you have an order for
this?”

“Yes,” Cat said, she dug in her purse for the
order form and for the receipt of the deposit. “Here it is. I even
sketched out what I would like.”

The lady looked at it and rubbed her chin,
all the while the bell rang announcing the entrance of another
customer. “This doesn’t look familiar at all. We don’t have a cake
that looks like that back there.”

“Are you sure? The lady who I spoke to—”

The lady peered closely at the receipt so
that the paper almost met her nose and then put it back, “Ah,
that’s the problem. Dolores took your order. She’s gone now. Well,
we had to fire her.” She shook her head, “Precisely for reasons
like this.”

“You wouldn’t happen to be able to whip up a
cake out back, would you?”

“No,” she looked past Cat to the couple of
women—a mother and daughter—that were behind her. Cat looked at the
daughter’s hand. There was the engagement ring, but no wedding
band. Then she looked at the shop. She had thought it would be a
good idea to get the cake here because they made groom’s cakes and
wedding cakes, and groom’s cakes in the South could be just about
anything because it was supposed to represent the groom. Usually it
was chocolate, which worked with Brad just fine because that was
his favorite.

“Excuse me,” the lady said, “I have an
appointment.” She gave the paper back to Cat. “I’m sorry about
that. Maybe next time you’ll keep us in mind.” She opened up the
cash register. “Here’s your refund.” She squeezed Cat’s shoulder.
“I’m really sorry about this.”

“Sorry.” Cat looked at the cash wadded in her
hand. It looked alien there along with the laughter of the two
women with the baker.

Kesha entered her view. Eyebrow raised.

Cat held up her hand. “Don’t. All right? I
can just pick up a cake after work.”

“You? You’re just going to pick up any ole
cake? From any ole bakery? You won’t eat mall chocolate chip
cookies.”

“I can make them better at home. It’s a
waste.” The pat answer slipped out before she could take the words
back. She shook her head. “Look. Don’t worry about it. Just show up
tonight. Everything will be fine.”

“Uh-huh.”

Thankfully there were no emergencies at work.
She was out the door on time at 4 p.m. and made it to her car and
out to the interstate headed home in record time. Just like the
Waffle House, Atlanta had grocery stores with bakeries on just
about every corner.
If
she could just go to any old bakery.
Which she couldn’t. Because Kesha was right.

Dang it.

Hmmm. Berry’s Food City on Mt. Zion had good
cakes. She’d attended a wedding where they made the wedding cake.
Serviceable and on the way home. Just what she needed so that she
would still have time to go home and start the cuteification
process. Because she was going to prove to Brad that she was wife
material and then everything would be all right.

The bakery was located to the right of the
store entrance, past the display of cards and the ready-to-eat
section. It was empty with one lone man in glasses and a plastic
hair net staring from behind the counter. The instrumental version
of Culture Club’s
Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?
taunted her
from overhead.

“Excuse me,” she said. “You wouldn’t happen
to have a cake, would you? I’m looking for a quarter sheet cake
that is, uh, manly?”

“Do you have a particular design that you’re
interested in?” he asked.

“Not really. This is just a last ditch effort
because of something that was a mistake. I kinda need it for
tonight.”

“Well, that would mean that you would need to
look at what we already have here.

They looked at the ready-made cakes. All of
the themes were way too feminine for a rugby player. Barbie. Pink
and purple “Happy Birthday” on a quarter sheet cake. And then there
was the round cake with yellow roses. Brad liked lemon, but—she
shook her head. No, no this wasn’t going to work and every second
that she spent here she was wasting time.

She smiled. “Thank you,” she said and left.
She glanced at her watch; it was the digital one that she used to
work out. She only had about two hours of leeway. He didn’t
necessarily need a cake. There was going to be plenty of food
there. His roommate had already started setting up the decorations.
He’d been very helpful planning the surprise party along with
Brad’s friend Joe.

She had this idea of how it would all play
out in her mind. She would have some cheesy ’80s music playing
because that’s what he loved, and when he was used to everyone
saying surprise she would come out of the kitchen with her hair
pulled back from her face, in a cute top that hugged her curves,
fitted jeans and high heels. You definitely had to have the hooker
heels and the hooker red lipstick. Because she was going after him.
It wasn’t going to be just a cake, it was going to be a
declaration.

But all that took preparation. And time.
Which she did not have. She could spend the next hour or so
calling, hoping and praying and then winding up with who knows
what. Or she could do what she knew she needed to do.

In ten minutes, she was home and had turned
on the oven. She made sure that her oven thermometer sat on the
middle rack. Baking was a science. That was something that she and
her cousins definitely knew and one thing that you learned quickly.
It was basic and it was simple.

Most people had a sweet tooth and would eat
something sweet put in front of them. An easy way to spread
goodwill whether you happened to be a hearth witch or not (Auntie
would say that they were not witches being Christian and all. But
you could say all kinds of things when you owned the church the
family attended and paid the preacher’s salary.)

She pulled the half-apron made from cupcake
fabric from where it hung on the door of the pantry and tied it
around her waist. She turned the radio to the R&B station.
Luther Vandross was crooning a song that was one big pickup line.
Perfect. It was the same steps she always took when baking. The
ritual was comforting and anything done time after time could build
the magic, which is what she was looking for.

Then came the eggs and butter to be brought
to room temperature.

She looked at her pantry. She had originally
wanted a chocolate cake but she didn’t think that was going to
work. You had to use what you had. That’s something that she
believed in. Any self-respecting hearth witch would have lemon in
her refrigerator. It was absolutely amazing what lemon could do.
You could use it to season, to clean. And now that she thought
about it, she knew what cake she was going to make. It was
simple—just one step up from a box cake, which she had to admit
were pretty doggone good. The problem was that a box cake was a box
cake.

She stopped as she felt the eggs. They had
lost the chill of the refrigerator, but still not there yet.

This was not supposed to be a special cake.
She didn’t know if she could stop herself from infusing anything
into it. She’d used that mixer plenty of times to bring cookies to
co-workers and for special occasions when she had intentionally
wanted to do something—when she was trying to throw in a heap of
happiness, as Auntie would say.

But she didn’t know about this one. It was a
birthday cake. It wouldn’t matter this one time. There weren’t
really dictates, they were just suggestions, right? She thought
that as she took out the flour. Besides, no matter what Auntie
said, something that she could not tolerate was a box cake no
matter how delicious.

You need to make things with love
, she
would say. Baking is very serious business and so was her heritage,
her birthright.

She looked on and worked. Once she knew what
she was going to make, it was simple. She’d done it many times
before. She carefully measured the flour. Whipped the butter and
decided to add just a bit of lemon juice in the batter while she
was making the lemon filling. Brad liked lemon so he would like
that. Since she was making it from scratch, she decided to pull out
an old favorite—coconut cake with lemon filling and fluffy
frosting.

It was intensive, but worth it and way better
than something she could buy.

Yes, in more ways than one
, a voice
popped into her head. She squashed it as she squeezed the lemon for
the filling.

This would be fine. It was just a plain
birthday cake and who knows what would happen? It would probably be
a blessing for the whole company. And if he did like it, what was
the harm in that? Everyone knew that you had to prove yourself to
men these days, and the most valuable wife was someone who was
skilled at the arts of the hearth, who knew how to make a house a
home.

She looked down at her apron dusted with
flour. This was love. Her cousins may have loved their sewing
machines. Others, the garden, but she loved to be in the kitchen,
with flour flying everywhere.

Three layers should do it. Women would be
invited and they would probably want to share a piece because it
was so thick. Maybe a separate cake? No, she had doubled the recipe
so she would have enough for cupcakes. Like the ones at the
bakery.

She stopped. Why hadn’t she thought of that
before? They would be easy to transport and—no that would be an
experiment for another time. She knew what she needed to do and how
much time she had. The cake would be cutting it close as it was.
She would have enough time to get the thing cooled down and
frosted.

She placed the batter-filled pans in the oven
and when that was done, set out to make the filling and the fluffy
frosting. She was humming along as the kitchen grew cozy as she
liked to think of it when something was baking.