Black Cake(95)
No one would even realize, at first, that it had been a glass of champagne to bring an end to Little Man’s life. When a police officer finally sniffed at the broken flute and uttered the word poison, some of the wedding guests would think of their own secret wishes, their own deep resentment toward the dead man. Toward the kind of man who drew satisfaction from the coercion of others. They would hope that the person who had done this would never be caught. So many people had been in and out of the kitchen that day, it could have been any number of them.
Back then, it was easier to commit murder. You only had to concentrate, know where your loyalties lay, and not think of the consequences.
“Isn’t there some kind of law against digging up bodies?”
“But it’s our father.”
“Would it be different because they’re ashes?”
“Let’s ask Charles. He’ll know.”
It has taken a while, but Byron and Benny have finally grown accustomed to calling Mr. Mitch by his first name. Charles is, after all, someone their mother cared for deeply. And he knows more about their lives than most people ever will. Plus, his nose turned pink the first time Benny called him Charles. That alone made it worth the switch, Byron said that day, laughing.
Yes, Charles tells them, they will need a license, but there are services that can help. They’re not the first to make this kind of decision. Eventually, Byron and Benny get permission to exhume their father’s remains.
One year after Eleanor Bennett’s death, Marble and Etta fly in together from London. The next day, Benny and Marble chop scallion and garlic and stir coconut milk into a pot of rice and beans. Byron fires up the barbecue and Etta makes a sweet rum punch that goes down a bit too easily, while Lynette dances with their baby on the deck at their beachside place. It is the kind of lunch that gathers people as the hours go on, Charles and one of his daughters, Cable and his wife and kids, plus the neighbors from across the way.
The old house, the bungalow where Byron and Benny grew up, belongs to another family now, a young couple with small children who have put in new plumbing. It seems a fitting role for the old Bennett house, to grow a new family, and the thought makes Byron smile. Still, he tries not to drive down that street if he can help it.
When Etta is sufficiently tipsy, Eleanor’s children extract a promise from her. Yes, she says, she will take them all to the island someday. They can work on a plan. They, their partners and children, even Charles, if he wants to. Surely, enough time has passed between now and then, they say, though none of them is certain.
But first, this.
Eleanor’s children are taking her ashes, now mingled with those of Byron and Benny’s father, out to sea. Etta swims out ahead of the boat, her neon-colored cap the same orange as the inflatable buoy strapped to her body. Once they’ve gone three miles off the coast, they drop the ladder and pull Etta out of the water, throwing a towel around her. They stand there for a moment, listening to the creak of the boat against the waves before they nod at one another and scatter the ashes overboard. Then Marble, Byron, and Benny take what’s left of their mother’s last black cake, crumble it, and let it fall into the water.
Author’s Note
Not everyone sits down to write a book but everyone is a storyteller, in one form or other. As I wrote this novel, a lifetime of anecdotes and fleeting impressions shared by the Caribbean members of my multicultural family helped me to develop some of the fictional characters and scenarios from the 1950s and 1960s. The scenes from the unnamed island in the Caribbean reflect some of the geography and history of Jamaica, where my parents and other relatives lived before emigrating to the United Kingdom and the United States. The fictional town where members of the book’s older generation grew up is inspired by the northeast coast of that island and uses a mix of actual and invented locations.
Most of the characters in Black Cake are people who do not quite fit into the boxes that others have set up for them. They struggle against stereotypes and the gulf between their interests and ambitions and the lives that other people expect them to lead, based on gender, culture, or class. Their difficulties are both universal and specific to the times and places in which they live.
In the process of writing, I read articles and historical accounts from journalists, scholars, and online archives such as those from the National Library of Jamaica and the National Archives and the British Library in the UK. I found interesting online posts by people who identify with Caribbean and British culture, and discussions of the Chinese diaspora by institutions like the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles. I have peered at countless photographs, videos, maps, and recipes.
The backdrop for the older generation in the story includes reference to inter-ethnic tensions involving Chinese immigrants and their families in Jamaica in the 1960s. It also takes into account some of the difficulties faced by Caribbean immigrants identified as black or “colored” in the UK during the same period. I found the research process eye-opening.
I was aware, for example, that many Chinese immigrants who came to the Caribbean as indentured servants from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s had faced harsh labor conditions and significant poverty before greatly improving their economic circumstances. I did not realize, however, that despite representing only a tiny fraction of the population in Jamaica in the mid-1960s, Chinese or Chinese-Jamaican businesspeople had come to own a majority of the shops and other businesses in that country. This relative prosperity burgeoned at a time of increasing disillusionment among other Jamaicans, most of whom were of African descent and many of whom were feeling the weight of job shortages, class distinctions, and colorism in their postcolonial society. The novel’s depictions of violence and riots targeting Chinese-owned businesses were fictional but inspired by real-life conflict from that period.