Black Cake(66)

“You are a fan of the money I make,” Marble said, raising an eyebrow.

“Money that allows you to do the shows that you want,” George said.

“Oh, now you’re just being mean.”

“And you are just being a diva.”

They both laughed. “No, George, really, I’m not sure what you expect me to do. Are you censoring me?”

“Oh, I don’t even know what I expect you to do. No, I don’t want to censor you, but perhaps you could think about the wording a bit more next time? Sure, we need to take a hard look at history, but we don’t want to have our viewers feel sheepish about using a spoonful of sugar.”

“Ah,” Marble said, nodding slowly.

“You know we’re aiming to sell distribution rights to international markets.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Marble said. She stood up, leaned over, and pecked George on the cheek.

“How’s Jenny?”

“She’s good. Misses the kids. Why don’t you come around sometime? It’s easier for her at the end of the day. Lunch is always a stretch.”

“I’ll do that. I’ll call her.” Marble wasn’t angry at George, but she was irritated about that phone call. She went back to her desk and clicked on a web link to the sugar episode.

I don’t believe that we can fully lay claim to a tradition if we are not willing to recognize what we have taken from other cultures over time, for better or worse.

Sitting there, watching herself on the screen, Marble realized what the subject of her next book was going to be. She would take a 180-degree turn. She picked up a pencil and wrote SUGAR.





Wanda





She had always been a lovely child, studious and charming, just mischievous enough to be entertaining, never getting herself into any real trouble. But later, Wanda Martin’s daughter was dealt a rough hand. She struggled to bring her pregnancy to term after her husband’s sudden death. Wanda and her husband pleaded with Mabel to stay in London full time, but Mabel insisted on going back to Italy with the baby. And she was still there, sixteen years later, even though their grandson spent much of the year in a boarding school here in the UK.

Thank goodness Mabel’s work brought her home from time to time. Wanda was happiest when she had her daughter nearby. She loved how ordinary this felt, being able to ride her bicycle over to her daughter’s flat, being able to sit down with her for a cup of tea, being able to add a few drops of water to Mabel’s orchids while Mabel squinted at her laptop. Just a few more minutes and Wanda would be on her way home, but first she leaned her hip against her daughter’s back and read a few lines on the computer screen.

“No, Mummy,” Mabel said, putting her hands up in front of the screen. Wanda loved it that her daughter, almost fifty years old now, still called her Mummy. She leaned in again to peek.

Sugar cane. A grass with stalks as thick as bamboo, squeezed to produce a sweet liquid that, ultimately, changed the world.

“I really don’t want anyone reading this right now, Mummy.”

“What’s it for, dear?”

Without looking up, her daughter said, “I’m thinking of writing another book. These are just notes I’m making for when I get back home.”

Did Mabel say home? Or did she say to Rome? No, she didn’t say home. Because this was her home, near them, here in London. This was the center of everything that their daughter and grandson needed in life, wasn’t it? Wanda and her husband had dedicated their lives to making it so. Because, more than anything, this was who they were. They were Mabel’s mum and dad.





Because money talks, a sallow infant girl born in the winter of 1969 to an unwed secretary from the West Indies was not given up for adoption through the official channels but was transferred instead directly into the hands of a well-off London couple who had paid the home for unwed mothers handsomely for the privilege. Wanda and Ronald Martin did not think of it as buying a baby. They thought of it as speeding up the process. They had filled in the applications. They had done the interviews. They had waited and waited. They had held out hope. They had nearly lost hope.

By the time the girl reached adolescence her adoptive parents, who were both white, could see that their daughter was likely what some would call a child of mixed race, but they pretended not to notice. Wasn’t race an outdated concept, anyway? But it was true that their daughter looked very different from them. Darker, taller, thickset. They told her she resembled one of her grandfather’s people. They told themselves that she had always been theirs. They told themselves that she was their baby girl and that nothing and no one would ever change that.





Height





It was only when Mabel Martin’s body had fully bloomed into adolescence that she had begun to worry about the fact that she did not resemble her parents. It was sometime after that gamey-smelling American boy at school had groped her and called her brown sugar but before her growing discomfort with her bust and height had evolved into a more specific agitation over the fact that she was taller than the Randall boy, who lived two houses down and with whom she had fallen, suddenly and desperately, in love.

By age seventeen, Mabel was also taller and softer than both of her parents. Her mother pointed out that she had gotten her heft and nose from her maternal grandfather, whom she had never known and who could only be seen in a pockmarked, browned portrait on her mother’s dresser drawer. See? Mabel’s mother said, smiling. No, Mabel did not see, but she, too, smiled and nodded.