Black Cake(91)

“Oh, no, Byron,” Cable says. “Not the helmet.”

“Rather have fun than be toast, my man,” Byron says, pulling the straps of the helmet into place. He stretches, takes a couple of deep breaths, and runs until he hits the water. He and Cable are laughing as they run, but inside, Byron is burning up. He doesn’t know what else to do with all of this anger. It’s as if everything that has been bugging him for years has been piling up inside like tinder, and his mother’s death, and everything else that’s happened in the past couple of months, has just struck a match.

It’s a little dicey out here but he’ll work with the waves until he begins to feel more like his old self again. Because this is who he is. He was born to surf the waves. He was born to listen to the ocean. This, more than anything, is what he has inherited from his mother, this visceral connection to the sea.

There it is, he’s in the zone. Back to the top of the wave and then down. Back and then down. Byron slips into a long, still moment in his head where he sees that whoever else his mother was in her lifetime, no matter her name or address, she has always been part of this world and always will be. And this is the one place where he knows he can always come to find her.





Director





Byron raps on the open door of the new director’s office. The two of them have been colleagues for fifteen years now. Of the two, Byron has the higher qualifications by far, a sounder track record and better people skills, but Marc is very good at political maneuvering, which Byron admits is a necessary skill in this job.

“I need to let you know something, for the record,” Byron begins.

“If you’re here about the failure-to-promote claim,” Marc says, “I already know that you went to see a lawyer.” He jabs a finger at Byron. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Byron?”

“Hey, Marc, it’s nothing personal.”

“Nothing personal?” Marc walks out from behind his desk and comes up to Byron. “Nothing personal? You don’t get to go after a job that I’ve been given and say it’s not personal.”

“I’m sorry you feel this way, Marcus. In fact, I wanted to acknowledge what was happening, out of professional respect, out of appreciation for our years of work together. Why don’t we just carry on, business as usual, and let the bureaucratic process play itself out. Then we’ll see what happens.”

“Fuck you, Byron,” Marc says.

“Whoa! Hold on, there.”

Marc lunges for Byron but someone is rapping on the door. He straightens up and pulls the door open. Byron’s assistant is holding his cellphone in her hand. He must have left it on his desk.

“Sorry, Byron, but someone keeps calling and calling,” she says.

It’s Lynette’s sister, Jackson’s mother.

“Hurry, Byron,” she says. “It’s Lynette. We’re at the hospital.”





Baby





The sound of the baby’s wail cuts through the murmurs in the hospital room. A nurse wheels the infant into the room.

Lynette reaches out her arms. “There you are, little one,” she says.

The baby is still easing out of his peevishness, his mouth turned down in a way that reminds Byron of Benny when she was a newborn. The first time he held his little sister, she twitched and snuffled and latched on to one of his knuckles with her mouth. Then, at the sound of his voice, her mouth pulled to the side in that way that both she and Byron had inherited from their mother.

Byron watches the boy now, his face half-hidden under Lynette’s smock as he feeds.

“Who’s my little one?” Lynette says, nuzzling her face against his head. “Who’s my Baby By?” She says she’s decided to name the baby after Byron. Byron isn’t sure how things will work out between Lynette and him, but when she told him about the baby’s name, Byron felt a click, the unlatching of something small inside, the swinging open of a door.

He watches Lynette and thinks of his ma, of the last words on her recording.

Who I am is your mother. This is the truest part of me.

Byron and Lynette will have to talk some more. Then they’ll see. Lynette calls Byron over and holds the baby up to him. Nothing in his life has quite prepared him for this kind of feeling, not even holding little Benny in his arms when he was nine years old.

“Hey, you,” Byron says. He lifts the baby up to his face and puts his lips against his forehead. His son releases a hiccuppy sound filled with milk. His son! Then Baby By follows his voice with his head, eyes scrunched shut, and a tiny, lopsided mouth, the sight of which causes Byron to catch his breath.





Benny





The bad news is, Benny has been turned down, again, for a bank loan. She won’t risk opening a café without the financing. But she won’t give up, she’ll try another bank. The good news is, she keeps getting commissions for her artwork, and the one she did of Etta Pringle has gone viral. It shows Etta swimming through boiling seas dotted with plastic parts. Not the cheeriest of material, but that was what Etta wanted. And her online followers love it. Well, some of them hate it, actually, but Etta says that’s a good thing, too. Benny’s not really into social media, but Etta says that’ll have to change.