Black Cake(35)

All that Covey had left of the island was this box and whatever she could keep closed away in her head and heart. She tried not to think too much about whether she would ever see Pearl or Bunny or Gibbs again. She told herself that, sooner or later, things might change and she would be free to live her life again. But until then, her life was not only hers to live. Covey had ended up here not only because of her father’s foolish ways and Little Man’s cruelty. She was here, too, because of the kindness of others. She owed it to them to stay invisible.

But as the months went by, she found it harder to resist the awareness that Gibbs was out there somewhere, that they were back on the same piece of land. Sometimes Covey would say she was going to the cinema when instead, she rode the bus line up to the university where Gibbs was supposed to be studying, staring out the window as it pulled up in front of the old quadrangle and taking her seat on the bench to search for Gibbs among the students who followed the paths that led toward the green.

Covey came back to the campus several times, and on each occasion, she would scan the crowd for Gibbs. But she also dreaded the possibility of finding him. How could she see him and not call to him? How could she speak to him and not touch him?

True, Gibbs had told her to contact him, but when you came from a small island like theirs, everybody knew somebody. When you came from an island like theirs, you grew up hearing stories of big men around town, like Little Man, who could find other men to hurt the people who had crossed them, even on the far side of the ocean. How much was legend and how much was truth, Covey could not be sure. She only knew that she couldn’t afford to find out.

A young man sat on the bench near Covey and opened a book. She wondered if he could hear the dry churning in her stomach. Finally, she stood up and crossed the street. A bus going back in the other direction came to a stop in front of her. She waited until everyone else had boarded, took one last look at the university green, then stepped into the bus, her hope folding itself up inside her.





B and B, by now you’ve probably understood what I have been trying to tell you, that I am Coventina Lyncook, the girl who ended up living in England as Coventina Brown. Or, at least, I was. That was fifty years ago, another life. And yet everything is connected.

I know, this must be a shock. I’m so sorry. But there is no one else who can explain all of this to you. I could have left it alone, not said anything, left you two to go on with your lives, but then what? You two have a sister. If I don’t tell you the truth now, before I go, the three of you will be lost to each other forever. I spent so much of my life keeping this from you, but I owe this to you. I owe it to you to let you know about my past because this is your story, too.





Byron and Benny





Ma is getting upset, Byron can hear it in her voice. He looks over at Benny and sees that her eyes are shining. Do they want to take a break, Mr. Mitch asks. Byron nods. Byron needs to step away for a moment, he needs to think. Too many names, places, dates. Should he be writing all this down? No, that would feel too strange. He looks back at Mr. Mitch. Of course, Mr. Mitch. He will have taken notes.

What stays with Byron now: His mother was a runaway bride. His mother had another child. His mother may have been a murderer. Or was she? She doesn’t say. But she doesn’t say that she didn’t kill that man, either, does she? How could Ma do this to them? How could she drop this bomb on them and then leave them to deal with it on their own? Byron turns to look at Benny again. She is watching him with those Benny eyes, her brows pulled together, and then just like that, her whole face goes smooth and she stands up, and Byron sees a touch of the Benny that he used to know.

Benny, the thoughtful one. Benny, and that gentle way she has of offering a cup of coffee or tea or a glass of water that makes it sound like an afterthought, like they’re all just hanging out in the living room, chatting comfortably. Like this is just a friendly break, and not an excuse to stay away from that recording for just a bit longer, a way to step back from the confusion that it has unleashed in this house.




Benny knows that doing kitchen things will help to calm her. She moves slowly as she thinks about everything that she has heard. Did her mother kill that man? No, Benny doesn’t believe it. She refuses to believe it. Her mother ran away because she saw an opportunity. But how is it possible that she and Byron lived with Ma all those years and couldn’t tell that she was hiding something?

Benny throws out the used coffee filter, pulls a fresh one out of a box. She listens to the coffee grains falling from the scoop into the paper filter, breathes in the smell of the new coffee, pretends her mother is right there with her as Benny puts some cookies out on a plate. Her ma never called them cookies, always biscuits. Benny pulls open the spice drawer, just to see. She pokes at bottles of allspice, jerk seasoning, caraway, and tarragon. Seasons of the south and north. She walks over to the fridge in her socks and recalls the sound of her mother’s slippers flapping across the floor.

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.