Cake
Patience. That’s the secret ingredient.
My grandmother, who we all call Mama, and all of her sisters don’t come into the kitchen without it. And all of my aunts, even the one on my father’s side of the family, learned how to cook with it, too. I’ve been in the kitchen enough to witness a dash of it being added to all of their dishes.
Being patient sometimes means you have to start again, especially when you burn something to a crisp, says Mama.
When you take cornbread out of the oven too soon, you’ve got to have patience when you put it back in, Aunt Dee says.
I don’t care what’s in there, warns Aunt Jada. Don’t keep opening and closing the oven. First off, you need to be patient. Second, you’re just letting out all the heat.
With Cheyenne it’s different. For one, my mother is a lot of things, least of which is patient. Mama says that’s one of few things that can be taught. Then, she remembers which daughter she’s talking about. The other thing is, my mother wasn’t born with the cooking gene. Mama says this, too, can be taught but not if a person lacks good instinct. So everytime it comes up, which is often, Cheyenne makes it a point to remind us that God decided to skip right over her just like with all other good things. It’s unfair that her sisters, Jada and Dee, have toned legs and what my mother refers to as slim knees. Meanwhile, hers are just plain old chunky. And she barely squeaked by in high school but that’s another thing that came easy to them. Whenever she goes on and on about it, we ignore the two fat elephants in the room. No one points out the obvious. My oldest aunt was an athlete and Jada followed her lead. And if Cheyenne hadn’t given birth to me during freshman year, high school might have been a breeze. No, we don’t say anything. We only think it.
Now my mother, and her dark brown skin, is waltzing into the kitchen wearing flowy, orange pants, a matching oversized top and Curve, her signature perfume. It’s a floral scent that usually arrives well before she does. As soon as I get a whiff, I close my composition book without bothering to finish the sentence.
We couldn’t be more different. I’m still in mismatched pajamas, purple hearts splashed across my bottoms, tiny stars in a night sky on my top. Comfy. My mother, she’s standing here, in a cramped, stuffy kitchen, dressed from head to toe. No matter that it’s way hotter than it is outside or that it’s barely eleven o'clock on a Saturday morning.
That Cheetos orange outfit. She wore it on one of the hottest days last summer. Her and Mama were in the kitchen, near the back of the house on Aberdeen Street. Every window in the house was up, the front door propped open. From where we sat on the front porch, two rooms and a screen door separated us, but me and Cousin Kairi heard every word of their disagreement.
“Where have you been, Cheyenne?! You haven’t seen your daughter in almost two weeks!”
There was silence.
“Mama, I’m grown, I don’t have to explain myself.”
My grandmother laughed a laugh that echoed as far as the porch. “Grown? Give me a break, that’s the last thing you’ve been since Lo’—”
“Give me a break, Mama. You and Jada and Dee throw that in my face every chance y’all get. She’s still my child and none of y’all can take that from me!”
Mama let out a loud sigh. “We’re family and all we’re trying to do is help. When will you get that through your thick head?”
Cheyenne matched Mama’s laugh from moments before, only hers sounded even crazier, like maybe she’d lost her mind. Then, the back door slammed and Kairi said nothing. She just stared, giving her wave of sadness permission to crash into me. It was awhile before we saw Cheyenne again.
“Hello! Earth to Loren!” A sea of orange is in my face, waving. “I said, it’s cute right?” My mother spins in a circle, giving me a better view. “I haven’t worn it since last summer. It was at the bottom of that last box, the one I opened last week.”
For the first time in my twelve years, me and Cheyenne are in the kitchen. Alone together, which is different. Being around me when no one else is around is rare for my mother. Though somehow neither of my aunts find it that hard to do. And God knows it comes easy to Mama.
Before my grandmother left to run errands, she mentioned something about Cheyenne maybe coming around and wanting to do something with me. Mama didn’t say what that something might be but it didn’t matter. Jada was the only one who took it seriously. When her sister came through the door about an hour ago, Jada didn’t even let it close all the way before she ran through it.
“Loren, what is wrong with you today?” Cheyenne asks, swinging the refrigerator door open. “Don’t you hear me talking to you? Here, put this stuff on the table.”
Cheyenne’s bent down with her head stuck all the way in the fridge, right arm on the door, the other stretching towards me, holding a carton of eggs.
Loow-raan. Maybe that’s how she meant for it to be pronounced when she put it on my birth certificate because she’s the only one who says it like that, all drawn out. That feels wrong. It is wrong. I’m Lo’ to anybody that’s close to me and those who aren’t as close have enough about them to gently roll my name off their lips, like it’s one word.
I put the eggs and vegetable oil on the kitchen table. It's mahogany, decorated with nicks and gashes that reveal its age. Mama’s table, the one she’s kept up with since she was my age. That’s when her own mother passed away and she and her sisters had to go live with their aunt. It was her mother’s table. That’s why she doesn’t care that we’re sardines whenever we all try to fit or that a tiny piece of folded up newspaper is lodged underneath one of the legs to keep it still. It’s the only table I’ve ever known, nevermind that it's in rough shape or that it doesn’t match anything else in the kitchen.
Cheyenne crams the other stuff we need on the shabby table that her mother calls vintage. “I don’t know why Mama won’t get rid of this thing,” she says, barely catching the box of cake mix before it hits the tile floor. “I mean, I know why but that doesn’t mean she can’t get a bigger one and put this one somewhere else.”
I fiddle with the oven knob to get it to 350 degrees. Like her, my face, which is way less round, betrays what I’m thinking. So since it's twisted and my eyes keep rolling, I spend more time on the knob than needed. Where else would you put a kitchen table other than in the kitchen?
Experience, not always my own, teaches me that trying to convince my mother of anything, even something as small as this, would prove useless. So I keep my mouth shut. It’s something I picked up from watching her when she’s with my aunts. Aunt Dee says she gave up on giving Cheyenne advice a long time ago. Apparently, my mother never lets her get a word in edgewise. And even though Jada can get a few more words in, my mother doesn’t listen all the same.
Cheyenne spreads margarine along the bottom and sides of a metal cake pan. When she thinks she’s done, I open a bag of flour to sprinkle in the pan. “So the cake won’t stick,” I say.
“Mama cracked up when I told her I wanted us to bake a cake,” Cheyenne says, cracking the eggs against the edge of the table without paying attention. Yolks, whites and a few shells go straight into the red bowl where I already poured the cake mix. I put in the rest of the ingredients. “She said it was random.”
That’s because it is.
“It’s not random though,” she says, grabbing a whisk from the drawer instead of Mama’s hand mixer. “You’re my child. And anyway, I don’t need a reason or an excuse to hang out with you.”
So that’s what this is? Now that I’m getting older, she wants to hang out. Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? Textbook Cheyenne, flipping everything on its head.
I stand up to get a good look at the batter while she’s working it. After a few minutes, it’s still thick and dry and lumpy.
She hands me the whisk. “Mix it until it looks like it’s ready,” she says, sitting down for the first time.
It’s quiet. I feel her watching me like I watch Mama, only when I do it I’m either admiring or trying to learn something from someone who is older than me. There’s nothing Cheyenne can learn from me though, so I focus on whisking.
“There’s something I want to talk to you about,” she says.
This can’t end well. “Okay,” I say, straightening my back. “What is it?”
Cheyenne pours the batter into a pan and puts it into the oven on the top rack, without setting a timer. She is still standing, not far from the oven. I turn to face her and cross my arms and legs.
Cheyenne’s eyes flitter from side to side. “I’m moving out.”
“Okay?” I say, resisting the urge to shake my head.
“And it’s a two bedroom.” Her eyes stop dancing. “So you’re coming with me.”
I uncross my legs. “Hmm.”
“Hmm, what?!”
My foot starts tapping like Mama’s does when someone gets on her nerves or when she’s fed up and trying hard not to go off. Where is this coming from? My home is with my grandmother. That’s the way it has always been, whether Cheyenne chose to stay with us for however long or not. I’m about as used to her not being here as I am my father. Only difference is he’s upfront with his. Cheyenne likes to put on whenever she sees fit. No matter how many times my emotions betray me or how many times I have to borrow my aunts or my friend’s parents, my plan has always been to live with Mama. That is, until me and her come up with something different.
“Did you talk to Mama about it?”
“I’m 26 years old, Loren.” She bends down to peek through the stained oven door. “I don’t have to run things by my mother.”
“Okay.” But it’s not okay. And I hate that part of me that kind of wants to give it a chance, the part that wonders what it would be like.
“Okay,” Cheyenne says, tossing the mixing bowl into the sink with more force than necessary. She glances at the kitchen clock, the one she didn’t bother to look at when she put the cake into the oven. Then, she hesitates before deciding to take it out and shrugs. “It looks done.”
A ball of confusion is what I am. But there’s no reason to press her. I don’t need to know the details to know I’m not leaving my school or Mama or Jada anytime soon because we’ve only been here a few months. When my grandmother gets wind of this, she’ll have to put my mother in her place. But since it’s not my place to tell Mama, I just leave it at “Okay.” Besides, if it was that easy to raise a pre-teen or to live on her own for real, Cheyenne would’ve done it by now, right?
When she decides the cake is cool enough, she gets two forks and sticks one right into the middle of the cake. It’s mushy and pale and nearly all liquid. My mother hands me the other fork. “We can eat around it.”
I place my fork on the table. “I’m not eating that,” I say, opening my notebook. She must have lost her mind for the second time today.
Cheyenne stops chewing on the part of the cake that she thinks is done. “You know what?” she says, staring right through me. “You’re a little brat. Since you know so much, I pray to God you know that!”
It takes a lot longer than I expected but my mother finally storms out of the kitchen, leaving it smelling like lilies and peonies and underbaked cake.
Where did she get the idea to bake a cake anyway? And why was she dead set on doing it with me? Everyone knows Cheyenne likes to do her own thing. Whenever she’s not punching the clock at the nursing home, it’s hard to catch up to her because her favorite pastime is running the streets. Her other favorite thing is making sure the time she does spend with family ends with some version of this.
In one swoop, the afternoon’s disaster is in the trash and my grandmother’s table, the one that may someday be all mine, is just about clear.
Keys jiggle near the front door, which is down a short, narrow hallway. It slams shut and two locks click in place. My hand is on my forehead when Mama strolls into the kitchen. She throws her keys onto the container next to the wanna-be cake. Then, she’s at the sink, washing her hands over dirty dishes and shaking her loose curls from side to side. Without turning around, she says, “Are there any more eggs? Any oil left?”
My grandmother turns the radio to 102.7 and starts bouncing around the kitchen, listening to dusties and gathering ingredients. I take the last box of Funfetti cake mix out of the pantry. Then, I’m back at the table, waiting patiently. Mama’s somehow cracking eggs and catching the beat at the same time without a broken eggshell in sight.
“Mama?”
She stops mid-dance. “Yeah, Lo’?”
“Don’t forget to–”
“Girl you think I don’t know that you like to eat the leftover cake batter?” She sighs and goes back to dancing. “I’ll pass you the bowl and the mixer blades when I’m done with them.”
She’s a sight to see in the kitchen. Thank God for Mama.
I pick up my notebook, eager to finish my thoughts from before. Mama peeks over my shoulder, smiles and nods. Then, she’s back to baking the cake, something she can probably do in her sleep.
Maybe one day, Cheyenne will learn from Mama how to be patient and not only in the kitchen. Perhaps if I pray long and hard enough, she’ll be blessed with some instinct, too. With practice, she might even be as good as Aunt Dee or Mama. That would be something.
I’ll watch her move about the kitchen to see if I can learn a thing or two. Maybe it’ll even be worthy of adding to the list of tidbits learned from the other women in my family. After she works her magic, perhaps we’ll sit down together, just us two without a buffer, like real mothers and daughters do. We’ll eat and talk about everything and nothing because by then, we’ll both be mature enough to be friends. Whatever she cooks might taste better than good. And she’ll know it, too, because my plate will be empty. Mama says that’s the best compliment you can give someone who spends their precious time in the kitchen putting love into a plate of food.