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| Categories | United States |
| Author | Charmaine Wilkerson |
| Publisher | Ballantine Books (November 29, 2022) |
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 416 pages |
| Item Weight | 12.5 ounces |
| Dimensions |
5.19 x 0.84 x 8 inches |
I. Book introduction
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY • Two estranged siblings delve into their mother’s hidden past—and how it all connects to her traditional Caribbean black cake—in this immersive family saga, “a character-driven, multigenerational story that’s meant to be savored” (Time).
“Wilkerson transports you across the decades and around the globe accompanied by complex, wonderfully drawn characters.”—Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Daisy Jones & The Six, and Malibu Rising
In development as a Hulu original series produced by Marissa Jo Cerar, Oprah Winfrey (Harpo Films), and Kapital Entertainment
We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?
In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.
Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right”? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?
Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.
Editorial Reviews
“Black Cake is a character-driven, multigenerational story that’s meant to be savored. . . . Thought-provoking and poignant.”—Time
“A thrilling debut novel about sibling ties and hidden family history.”—Glamour
“As delicious as the titular dessert.”—W Magazine
“Wilkerson explores the nuances of racial identity and betrayal in a powerful novel.”—Vogue (UK)
“Black Cake is a satisfying literary meal, heralding the arrival of a new novelist to watch.”—Associated Press
“A stellar first-time entry from a talented new writer that’s full of food, surfing, and rich patois.”—BET
“Crafted with delicate intention and textured with a blend of perspectives.”—Vulture
“I was instantly taken in by this multigenerational tale of identity, family, and the lifelong push and pull of home. This novel has a tremendous heart at its center, and I felt its beat on every page. What an extraordinary debut.”—Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes
“Exquisite and expansive, Black Cake took ahold of me from the first page and didn’t let go. This is a novel about the formation and reformation of a family, and the many people, places, and events that can shape our inheritances without our knowing. A gripping, poignant debut from an important, new voice.”—Naima Coster, New York Times bestselling author of What’s Mine and Yours
“Black Cake has all the ingredients of the tastiest stories: secrets, romance, danger, and a cast of characters so real you want to scream at them one moment and hug them the next.”—Dawnie Walton, author of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
“So beautifully written I’m struggling to believe it’s a debut . . . The cake is the glue that holds all the layers together and the scenes are so well drawn I could almost taste the cake, feel the warm sea on my skin.”—Nikki May, author of Wahala
“With fantasy-like sensual detail, Wilkerson slips through time and place to explore the emotional weight of family traditions passed down through generations to heirs challenged to find their own emotional truths.”—Lucy Sanna, author of The Cherry Harvest
“Fans of family dramas by Ann Patchett, Brit Bennett, and Karen Joy Fowler should take note. Black Cake marks the launch of a writer to watch, one who masterfully plumbs the unexpected depths of the human heart.”—BookPage (starred review)
“Wilkerson uses one Caribbean American family’s extraordinary tale to probe universal issues of identity and how the lives we live and the choices we make leave ‘a trail of potential consequences’ that pass down through generations.”—Booklist (starred review)
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of February 2022: Perfect for book clubs, Black Cake follows the story of estranged grown siblings who come together after the death of their mother and discover a secret that upends everything they’ve ever known about their family. You will root for these flawed but relatable characters, as they travel from the Caribbean to London to California, in order to reckon with the past. It’s a juicy and satisfying read of secrets and betrayals, race and class, the pain of expectations, the power of love, and yes, a family tradition of Black Cake.
About Charmaine Wilkerson
Charmaine Wilkerson is an American writer who has lived in Jamaica and is based in Italy. A graduate of Barnard College and Stanford University, She is a former journalist and recovered marathon runner whose award-winning short stories can be found in various UK and US anthologies and magazines. Black Cake (2022) will be her first novel.
Her debut novel Black Cake is a New York Times bestseller and a #ReadWithJenna book club pick. A screen series based on the novel is currently under development for Hulu.
II. [Reviews] Black Cake: A Novel by Charmaine Wilkerson
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Here is a summary of the book Review “Black Cake: A Novel by Charmaine Wilkerson“. Helps you have the most overview of the book without searching through time. |
1. LIZ review Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
Like the cake named in the title, this is a book meant to be savored. Benny and Byron were once inseparable as children. But Benny suffered a rift with her family 8 years ago. Now, her mother is dead and she returns home. As their mother’s lawyer thinks “They’ve lost their mother and they can’t seem to find their way back to one another.” The lawyer also has a recording their mother has left, one that speaks to her secret past.
The siblings are about as different as can be. Byron is a media darling, an oceanographer. He reminds me a little of Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Benny, on the other hand, is still trying to find herself at age 37. She’s bisexual, an artist, looking to open a coffeehouse.
The story of the siblings is interspersed with their mother’s story.
This book demands that you pay attention. At the beginning, it can feel confusing. But stick with it, as things do become clear. The sections about her mother’s past also include segments containing others’ thoughts, like Bunny, her father and Gibbs.
The story is about loss, about the decisions we make that we can never take back, the sacrifices we are forced to make. It’s a reminder that sometimes our stubbornness gets in the way of a happy life. But it’s also about being a survivor. It’s a powerful, moving story on a personal level. But it’s also an important story on a universal level as Wilkerson writes about racial identity and what it means to be black in America.
One of the best books I’ve read this year.
My thanks to Netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.
2. LINDA review Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
We are all little bits granulated from far, far bigger bits.
Charmaine Wilkerson creates a tale so far-reaching that we have to almost give pause after each chapter. Wilkerson is a storyteller blessed with the ability to go deep, so deep that we can almost hear the breathlessness of her characters and feel their angst and sorrow as if it were our own.
Black Cake begins with an ending. Eleanor Bennett has passed away in California and her friend and lawyer, Charles Martin, has requested the presence of her children, Byron and Benny. Eleanor has left a video for them to view that contains roadways traveled by Eleanor and unbeknownst even to her own children. She felt it was time. But time had been cruel in so many ways to this family. Decisions made, life choices reached for and condemned by others, and secrets held in dark places.
And the Bennett family lived life in fractured pieces. Benny left a family gathering for Thanksgiving dinner in 2010 with the sharpness of words serrating her heart. She never looked back…..never once to her parents, never once to her brother. And in those times, her father died. No farewell from Benny. Byron continued to stay by his mother’s side. Byron, the successful sea biologist and writer. Benny, the lost wandering soul, searching for her niche in life and never quite finding it.
Wilkerson knows that all stories, great and small, have an origin. The Bennett’s tumultuous story has its beginning on an unnamed island in the West Indies of the Caribbean. It’s the 1960’s and we are introduced to a young girl named Covey. It is Covey’s story that will be at the center of a myriad of concentric circles tipped by the thrust of her stone. As readers, we will be grasping the hardcover of this book with both hands. Wilkerson sets one adventure upon the back of another. She’s relentless in her telling. This island serves as a springboard to London, to California, and a few other spots along the way.
Black Cake is a specialty. It stems from rich ingredients steeped over time in rum and port and served on the best of occasions. Black Cake seems to reflect life somehow. The end result is not often guaranteed, but having an inner appreciation for the differing textures and fragrances of rare ingredients seems to lift the spirit to a higher plane.
I received a copy of this novel through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Random House (Ballantine Books) and to the talented Charmaine Wilkerson for the opportunity.
3. BARBARA review Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
“Sometimes, the stories we don’t tell people about ourselves matter even more than the things we do say.”
So many good quotes in this remarkable novel about identity, loss, family, forgiveness, understanding, expectations, and culture. Well, that’s a few of the topics(ingredients) debut author Charmaine Wilkerson throws into her mixture of a novel. For example, environmental issues get a strong nod in the story. Yes, “Black Cake” is more than a story of a cake. The Black Cake in the story represents history, personal history that carries not only cultural particulars, but the blood sweat and tears of a woman.
Author Wilkerson wants us all to question how well we really know our parents, friends, family. In telling the history of protagonist Eleanor Bennett, there are a wealth of characters who form her story. Wilkerson provides short chapters which are character driven, with multiple narratives and backstories. Although the reader needs to juggle a multiple of characters, they way in which Wilkerson tells her story makes it easy to follow. Even a couple outlier characters are easy to remember because of context. I found this multi-layered story fascinating.
As the story opens, the children of Eleanor Bennett are called home for the funeral of their mother. The children have been estranged from each other. Eleanor’s final wish is that they listen to a recording she made explaining her life. And what a life Eleanor had, unbeknownst to her children. There is subtle humor in here as well. For example, Eleanor towers over 6 feet in height. She’s described as “big boned”, not fat but strong, and an imposing silhouette. I thought of a Serena Williams-like figure. Well, in the 1970’s, she surfed in the rough waves of southern California, in a two-piece orange swimsuit. At the time, only young white people (mostly boys/men) surfed, and a 6 foot athletic black woman hanging 10 was something to be noted. Yes, she bakes black cake and she surfs, and there’s more.
This is the second novel I’ve read in February 2022 by black authors who highlight cultural expectations. Black people don’t surf. Nor do they swim, nor are they scientists (and in the previous novel I read they weren’t concert violinist). I am appreciating authors challenging readers to confront biases.
This is a beautiful story of an unknown family history. I’m sure all families have some hidden gem that someone was too afraid to tell. Genealogy Sites can tell you some fact, it’s the personal stories that can make identity real. Perhaps if we’ve known more of our own ancestors struggles, we as a world could be more empathetic to immigrants. But that’s another subject.
This is a 5 star novel that should not be missed!
Some favored quotes:
“More people’s lives have been shaped by violence than we like to think. And more people’s lives have been shaped by silence than we think.”
“I have lived long enough to see that my life has been determined not only by the meanness of others but also by the kindness of others, and their willingness to listen.”
4. SUNNY610 review Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson – Families are complicated and wondrous
With a dazzling mixture of warmth and emotional truth, Black Cake is a page-turner revealing the both complex and simple fact: families provoke the gamut of emotions, all sometimes true, all sometimes not.
What a joyful, exasperating, truly human family the Bennetts are! Charmaine Wilkerson brings them to life with all their (ultimately explainable) quirks and faults and triumphs. She is a star in the making.
5. JENNIFER review Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
I ordered this book as I’ve just joined a book club and this was the first read.
The story includes numerous participants and the author captures the differing voices and points of view without the slightest confusion. Although I have never visited ‘The Islands’ I thought they were beautifully captured in this narrative. I know myself what it is like to be the child of parents and grandparents who have a strong narrative of ‘home’ that is not my home, and that internal conflict was pretty much the strongest part of the book.
The novel explores issues that are bang up to date such as pollution of the oceans, racism, rape and gender equality. There is a fascinating thread regarding inheritance as the love of the ocean, in particular, lures each generation in a different way.
Finally, and especially welcome for me, there is a cracking good mystery, several in fact, and a cracking good love story, several in fact.
Like many first novels this one should possibly have been two, tighter, books and I’m awaiting the author’s next one eagerly.
6. BUKOLA AKINYEMI review Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
Black Cake By Charmaine Wilkerson
Gripping family saga with an interesting mother at the centre. In the midst of this story about identity, family and survival, I learnt a lot about different races living in the Caribbean Islands especially the Chinese settlers and the impact of different cultures on food.
There are many characters in this book, most well developed with some surprises thrown in.
A run away mother, an alcoholic father, estranged siblings and long lost friends and lovers all come out to make this story a page turner.
The writing is beautiful and engaging with many plot twists.
7. KEZIA DUAH Review Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
In the few or maybe many (I’m really not sure) family drama books I’ve read, complicatedness is usually well done, but so far this one takes the cake. Pun intended.
I was mostly uninterested for a minute when I started, but when Eleanor started to share more about her past, I mysteriously started to pay more attention. This one knew how to grab your heart and mind and make you feel a part of this family. How does a woman hold so many secrets?
I was entranced by how everything came together by the end. The truth sometimes does bring people more together and this book did just that. I connected with the characters individually and even though most of them weren’t perfect, I could understand their actions and feelings. Wilkerson does a great job of being completely open with almost every character’s thoughts.
8. CHERI review Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
Black Cake is a beautiful multi-generational story that covers a broad range of places, the stories of the individual members of the family, and shares how the truth withheld and replaced with lies intended to protect, ends up creating division.
This begins in the 1960’s in the Caribbean, travels to England, to New York City and finally to California where their parents finally settled. Throughout those times, their mother’s Black Cake is one of the things that keeps that bond from dissolving completely for Benny. When they are contacted by their mother’s friend/attorney, they both need to make plans to visit the attorney, together, to listen to a lengthy recording by their mother. Long enough that more than one visit is required in order to hear the story their mother kept secret from them for so long.
They knew little of their mother’s younger years, they were aware that she had been a skilled swimmer, and that she’d grown up in the Caribbean. Benny was taught how to make her mother’s black cake, and that her family considered her somewhat of a disappointment as a daughter. But what they learn from the recording changes everything that they thought that they knew.
The woman they knew, or thought they did, had secrets that they never could have guessed. What little of her life they knew of before they were born left out some rather significant moments. Things that would change the way they saw her, their parents’ marriage, and the shape of their family.
A story of family, of secrets, and struggling to reconcile the lies told with the truth, once it’s revealed.
Published: 01 Feb 2022
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine, Ballantine Books
9. BRANDICE review Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
Wow, Black Cake was great! Estranged Bennett siblings Byron and Benny meet at home after their mother’s death to receive instructions from her lawyer. Eleanor Bennett left behind a black cake in the freezer, with a note to share it when the time is right, and an audio recording for her children to listen to together.
The story Eleanor shares is long and detailed, filled with obstacles and tragedy — Covey, a child who grew up on an island and loved to swim, whose mother left her too soon, whose father made numerous questionable decisions. Covey was forced into circumstances unwillingly and fought for her freedom from these constraints in life, numerous times. It wasn’t easy and she was required to make hard choices.
This book shifts between the present day, where Byron and Benny absorb the story and process their tense relationship with each other, and the past, shared through Eleanor’s recording. I liked the Bennett family and I felt for these characters! I can’t imagine learning so much that has been left unsaid for so long, or being someone who felt they had no choice but to stay quiet.
”This is the thing about people, Benny thinks. You can look at person and truly have no idea what they are holding inside.”
Black Cake offers a lot to think about — There are multiple “what would I have done?” moments. Aspects of this one reminded me of The Girl With the Louding Voice yet it’s still a distinct, worthy story itself — 4.5 stars (rounded up)
Thank you to Ballantine Books and Netgalley providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
10. JUDY review Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
Such a captivating, awesome debut novel! I was so engrossed in this story I literally had to pry myself away from it to take care of other things I had to do when all I wanted was to read more. The story is set in several places: the Caribbean, Great Britain, and America.
The story begins at the end. Eleanor Bennett died in California and her attorney asked Eleanor’s two children, Byron and Benny to come to his office. Eleanor had left an audio recording for her children to listen to in the presence of the attorney. Byron had stayed close to his mother, but due to an earlier rift in the family, Benny had been estranged from her family for eight years and had not even shown up for her father’s funeral! But she did show up this time to listen to the recording.
The book moves back and forth between present and past as Eleanor tells the story of her life, things her children never even suspected. So many secrets revealed – some shocking and heartbreaking. Yet Eleanor kept a positive attitude and she and her husband brought the children up well – wanting only the best for them and providing them with strong values and an excellent education. The black cake is something from Eleanor’s childhood that her mother made and Eleanor had carried the recipe with her throughout her life and shared making this special cake first with her mother, then with another woman who took care of her as a child, then later with her daughter. It was very special and was almost revered.
The characters are well formed and flawed. I would describe the story as deeply introspective. Charmaine Wilkerson has a gift for writing and storytelling.
I loved this book! Thanks to Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine through Netgalley for an advance copy. This book will be published on February 1, 2022.
III. [Quote] Black Cake: A Novel by Charmaine Wilkerson
The best book quotes from Black Cake: A Novel by Charmaine Wilkerson
“I hope that you won’t be afraid to make the same kind of choice again, if you feel that this is what you need to do to survive. Question yourself, yes, but don’t doubt yourself. There’s a difference.”
“You were never just you, and you owed it to the people you cared about to remember that. Because the people you loved were part of your identity, too. Perhaps the biggest part.”
“And what about a person’s life? How do you make a map of that? The borders people draw between themselves. The scars left along the ground of one’s heart.”
“Of how untold stories shape people’s lives both when they are withheld & when they are revealed.”
“Question yourself, yes, but don’t doubt yourself. There’s a difference.”
“I have lived long enough to see that my life has been determined not only by the meanness of others but also by the kindness of others, and their willingness to listen.”
“More people’s lives have been shaped by violence than we like to think. And more people’s lives have been shaped by silence than we think.”
“The beauty of a thing justified its plunder.
And nothing was more beautiful than a girl who was fearless.”“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.”
“If we really mean to respect people in their maturity, then we must acknowledge them as fully formed individuals with long histories; we must be prepared to see them as they are, to recognize that a shit is a shit, young or old.”
“But most times, whenever he was approached or pulled over by an officer, he slid down into that space between one heartbeat and the next where he could hear his blood crashing through his body, a waterfall carrying centuries of history with it, threatening to wipe out the ground on which he stood.”
“Because the world needed decent, even more than it needed brilliant.”
“The people who love us the most have the power to hurt us the most too.”
“She said that you had to love the sea more than you feared it. You had to love the swimming so much that you would do anything to keep on going.” His mother looked out the car window. “Just like life, you know?”
“Benny stands there in front of the refrigerator, letting the cool air fall on her toes, and thinks of the last cake her mother ever baked. She knows it’s sitting in the freezer but she can’t bear to look in there right now. Instead, she leans her forehead against the upper door of the fridge. This is your heritage, her mother used to say when they were making black cake, and Benny thought she knew what her
mother meant. But she sees now that she didn’t know the half of it.”“Are you going to let someone else’s view of who you should be, and what you should do, hold you back?”
“What you need to do is know who you are, and where you are at all times. This is about you finding and keeping your center. This is how you can take on a wave. Then you might find that you need to practice more, or there’s a storm swell coming in, or the wave is simply too much for you. You might even decide that you’re just not cut out for the surfing and that’s all right, too. But you cannot know which of these is true unless you go out there with your head in the right place.”
“Her second mistake was to think that she could explain herself in a handwritten note, not only because there was so much to say, but also because some things were too ugly to be written down.”
“but everyone agreed you couldn’t go around poisoning people unless you made sure you could get away with it.”
“Benny had become this person who didn’t leave room for dialogue. Either you were with her or you were against her.”
“When she fled the island, her mother lost everything but she carried this recipe in her head wherever she went. Every time his mother made a black cake, it must have been like reciting and incantation, calling up a line from her true past, taking herself back to the island”
“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 lide to be part of the sea, to be a blip of armes and legs, a small carver 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.”
“When people didn’t understand something, they often felt threatened. And when people felt threatened, they often turned to violence.”
“This, too, is one of the laws of human nature. If you are visible, you become a target.”
“He should have known it would come to this. He should have known the day that hak gwai wife of his ran away from home. Should have known the day he saw his daughter swimming in the bay as a storm bore down on her. Should have known when his parents dragged him to this island and changed their names. He stood at the water’s edge, now, watching the waves crash white against the rocks, waiting for his daughter’s body to wash ashore.”
“lives. Etta could say to herself that she has raised two kind and useful children, that she has already done the most important thing a person could do, but”
“tradition has sometimes told us that only certain kinds of people should study certain subjects, or engage in certain sports, or play in an orchestra, or what have you, but tradition is only about what people have or have not done; it’s not about what they are capable of doing. And it’s not about what they will be doing in the future.”
“The oceans are a challenge, Mr. Mitch thinks. And what about a person’s life? How do you make a map of that? The borders people draw between themselves. The scars left along the ground of one’s heart.”
“you couldn’t ask them to bear all of your burdens, couldn’t risk letting them see all of who you were. No one really wanted to know another person that well. Unless, of course,”
“And what about a person’s life? How do you make a map of that? The borders people draw between themselves.”
“Are you going to let someone else’s view of who you are and what you should do hold you back?”
“she has spent most of her adult life yearning to return home, only now that she’s finally back here, she feels that nothing was ever the way she thought it was.”
“her that the greater your capacity to love, the better you could be as a person.”
“Because the people you loved were part of your identity, too. Perhaps the biggest part.”
Book excerpts: Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
Now
2018
She’s here.
Byron hears the elevator doors peel open. His first instinct is to rush toward his sister and embrace her. But when Benny leans in to hug him, Byron pushes her away, then turns to knock on the door to the attorney’s office. He feels Benny put a hand on his arm. He shakes it free. Benny stands there, her mouth open, but says nothing. And what right does she have to say anything? Byron hasn’t seen Benny in eight years. And, now, their ma is gone for good.
What does Benny expect? She took a family argument and turned it into a cold war. Never mind all that talk about societal rejection and discrimination and whatnot. It seems to Byron that whatever kind of problem you have in this world, you can find someone to show you understanding. And times are changing. There’s even been a study in the news recently about people like Benny.
People like Benny.
The study says it can be a lonely road for people like her. But she won’t be getting any sympathy from Byron, no. Benedetta Bennett gave up that luxury years ago when she turned her back on her family, even though she claims it was the other way around. At least she showed up this time. Six years ago, Byron and his mother sat in the church across from his father’s coffin up in L.A. County, waiting for Benny to arrive, but no Benny. Later, Byron thought he saw his sister skirting the burial grounds in the back of a car. She’d be there any minute, he thought. But, still, no Benny. Only a text from her later, saying I’m sorry. Then silence. For months at a time. Then years.
As each year went by, he was less certain that Benny had been there that day or that he’d ever had a sister to begin with.
That he’d ever had a chubby, squiggle-headed baby girl following him around the house.
That she’d ever cheered him on at the national meets.
That he’d ever heard her voice sailing across the auditorium as he closed his hand around his doctoral diploma.
That he’d ever not felt the way he does right now. Orphaned and pissed as hell.
Benny
Her mother’s attorney opens the door and Benny looks past him, half expecting to see her ma sitting in the room. But it’s only Benny and Byron now, and Byron won’t even look at her.
The lawyer is saying something about a message from their mother but Benny can’t concentrate, she’s still looking at Byron, at the bits of gray in his hair that didn’t use to be there. What’s with the pushing, anyway? The man is forty-five years old, not ten. In all these years, her big brother has never shoved her, never hit her, not even when she was little and tended to pounce and bite like a puppy.
Benny’s first memory of Byron: They are sitting on the couch, she is settled under her brother’s arm, and Byron is reciting adventure stories to her from a book. His feet can already touch the floor. Byron stops to fluff Benny’s hair with his fingers, to pull on her earlobes, to pinch her nostrils shut, to tickle her until she is breathless with laughter, until she is dying of happiness.
The Message
Their mother has left them a message, the lawyer says. The lawyer’s name is Mr. Mitch. He’s talking to Byron and Benny as though he’s known them all their lives, though Byron can only recall meeting him one other time, when his ma needed help getting around town after her accident last winter, the one his friend Cable insisted wasn’t an accident. Byron walked his mother up to Mr. Mitch’s office, then went back outside to wait for her in the car. He was sitting there watching some kids skateboard down the broad, buff-toned sidewalks between one high-end chain store and the next, when a police officer rapped on his side window.
This kind of thing had happened to Byron so often over the course of his adult life that sometimes he forgot to be nervous. But most times, whenever he was approached or pulled over by an officer, he slid down into that space between one heartbeat and the next where he could hear his blood crashing through his body, a waterfall carrying centuries of history with it, threatening to wipe out the ground on which he stood. His research, his books and social media following, the speaking engagements, the scholarship he wanted to fund, all of it, could be gone in a split second of misunderstanding.
Only later, after the officer had opened the trunk of his patrol car and come back with a copy of Byron’s latest book (Could he have an autograph?), did it occur to Byron that a grown man of any color, sitting alone in a car watching pre-adolescents skateboard up and down the sidewalk, could elicit a reasonable degree of suspicion. All right, he could see that, it wasn’t always about him being a black man. Though, mostly, it was.
“Let me just warn you,” Mr. Mitch is saying now. “About your mother. You need to be prepared.”
Prepared?
Prepared for what? Their mother is already gone.
His ma.
He doesn’t see how anything after that is going to make much of a difference.
B and B
There’s an entire file box labeled Estate of Eleanor Bennett. Mr. Mitch pulls out a brown paper envelope with their mother’s handwriting on it and puts it on the desk in front of Byron. Benny shifts her seat closer to Byron’s and leans in to look. Byron removes his hand but leaves the packet where Benny can see it. Their ma has addressed the envelope to B and B, the moniker she liked to use whenever she wrote or spoke to them together.
B-and-B notes were usually pinned to the fridge door with a magnet. B and B, there’s some rice and peas on the stove. B and B, I hope you left your sandy shoes at the door. B and B, I love my new earrings, thank you!
Ma only called them Byron or Benny when she was speaking with one sibling or the other, and she only called Benny Benedetta when she was upset.
Benedetta, what about this report card? Benedetta, don’t talk to your father that way. Benedetta, I need to talk to you.
Benedetta, please come home.
Their mother left a letter, Mr. Mitch says, but most of their mother’s last message is contained in an audio file that took her more than eight hours, over four days, to record.
“Go ahead,” Mr. Mitch says, nodding at the packet.
Byron cuts open the envelope and shakes out its contents, a USB drive and a handwritten note. He reads the note out loud. It’s so typically Ma.
B and B, there’s a small black cake in the freezer for you. Don’t throw it out.
Black cake. Byron catches himself smiling. Ma and Dad used to share a slice of cake every year to mark their anniversary. It wasn’t the original wedding cake, they said, not anymore. Ma would make a new one every five years or so, one layer only, and put it in the freezer. Still, she insisted that any black cake, steeped as it was in rum and port, could have lasted the full length of their marriage.
I want you to sit down together and share the cake when the time is right. You’ll know when.
Benny covers her mouth with one hand.
Love, Ma.
Benny starts to cry.
….
Note: Above are quotes and excerpts from the book “Black Cake: A Novel by Charmaine Wilkerson”. If you find it interesting and useful, don’t forget to buy paper books to support the Author and Publisher!
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