Black Cake(73)

“Byron, there’s something I need to tell you,” she says.

Benny talks. She tells Byron about being bullied in college. She tells him about Steve. How Steve was good with everything, at first, until they ran into a former girlfriend of Benny’s.

“But we’ve already talked about this, Steve,” Benny said, as they argued afterward.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “But I just can’t get used to this.” This, apparently, being Benny, the way Benny was. Confused is what Steve called her, but Benny couldn’t recall the last time she’d felt particularly confused. She could only remember feeling rejected.

They argued. Benny yelled. Steve hit her. Said he was sorry, begged her not to leave.

“We kept trying,” Benny says, now. “I kept seeing Steve, on and off,” Benny says. “But it wasn’t working. And Steve was getting more aggressive.” She bows her head, puts a hand on her forehead. “Byron, Steve was the reason why you didn’t see me at Daddy’s funeral.” She feels Byron take her hand and exhale slowly as she tells him about that night, six years ago.

What Steve said to her that night, before he pushed her against the pine table, was an ugly thing. What he said—before she grabbed at the tablecloth, dragging dishes and silverware and glasses and candles to the ground, before he shoved her face against the floor and into a shard of blue pottery, before she heard the snap of her left arm—was a word she never thought she’d hear from a man who had made love to her.

Because it was love they had made, she was sure of it, and Leonard Cohen was singing on the speakers as she tried to get up from the floor, and they both loved Leonard Cohen and Mary J. Blige and René Pape at the opera, they were both eclectic with music that way, and even though she had explained herself to Steve, over and over again, how she was with him because she wanted to be with him, simple as that, he still freaked, because, once again, they had run into Joanie. What was Benny supposed to do, she asked Steve, if Joanie happened to live in the same neighborhood?

At first, Steve was just irritable. He wouldn’t finish the dinner that Benny had chopped and sautéed for him, he wouldn’t even taste the sweet potato pie. It was her new recipe, she told him. He was supposed to be her taste tester, she said, forcing a smile. But then Steve raised his voice and said that word, and Benny was still trying to recover from the sound of it in his throat when he yanked her by the hair until the clip in her braids popped out.

Then the table.

Then the floor.

Then the blood.

And that was it. Benny decided to end the relationship then and there, only she needed an ambulance to do it. She had just gotten back from spending the night in the ER when Byron called to tell her that their father had died.

“The worst part is,” she tells Byron, “I swore that it would be the last time I’d see Steve, only it wasn’t. I kept thinking, he’ll come around, he just needs time, he’ll accept me for who I am.”

Byron is shaking his head.

“I know, Byron, I know. I should have known better. It was never about me, not really. I did know better, but when you’re in the middle of something, you don’t see it that way, you know? You don’t see what’s obvious to other people.”

Byron is nodding.

“And now, I’m thinking about Ma and everything she went through and how she used to say, What are you willing to do? Remember that, Byron? And what she said in her recording. That sometimes it’s all right to walk away. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to walk away from you all, but I should have closed the door to Steve long before this.”

Byron looks at Benny, nearly six feet tall and thirty-six years old, and sees, in the curve of her mouth and the slope of her shoulders, the little girl who used to follow him everywhere. He wants to lean over and put his arms around her, but something in the tilt of her chin, in the glint of the small scar on her cheek, stops him. Instead, he stands up and reaches out one hand to pull her to her feet.

“Benny, I’m sorry,” he says.

Benny nods, mouth tight.

“I mean it, I’m really sorry, I’ve been a bit of a shit.”

She nods again. She is still holding his hand.

“Me, too,” Benny says.

“Yeah,” Byron says, raising his eyebrows.

And they start to laugh.





Beautiful Girl





Benny is six years old and zigzagging down the supermarket aisle while her mother squints at the food cans. She runs into a nice lady who tells her how cute she is, how sweet she is. And how old is she? And what’s her name? Look at all that beautiful hair, says the lady, patting her curls. Benny feels fuzzy and happy. Until her big brother comes along to get her, saying, there you are, let’s go back to Ma, and the nice lady gives Byron a good, long look up and down his tall, dark frame, and looks back at Benny and makes a flat kind of mouth before turning away. Benny feels the fuzziness going away, that lady doesn’t like her anymore, but no matter, Benny’s brother is holding her hand tight, her small, pale fingers nestled in his long, brown ones, and Benny knows that as long as she’s with Byron, she will always be safe and happy.





Benny





Benny is sitting on her mother’s bed. Her parents’ bed. She should have understood this thing about her parents, her high-achieving, picture-perfect mother and father, who had demanded excellence from their children to the point that it had nearly crushed Benny. She should have realized earlier that their demands and their resistance to her orientation might have been born, in part, out of fear.