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Chocolate
Cake
It's
always the taste of chocolate cake that brings the memory back to
her. Chocolate: that sensual substance so hyper-linked like code to
sex, to seductive submission, to estrogen, to womanhood.
She
always wondered why her mother, who'd hated desserts all her life,
calling them "sweets" instead, had chosen on that day of
all days to make, to bake,
her daughter a chocolate cake. What was she thinking?
She
imagines her mother coming home from work with a bag of groceries
clutched tightly to her chest, her encircling arms crushing the
contents. She kicks the laundry room door, slamming it closed,
announcing her arrival a few brief moments before her excited voice
zooms through the house and up the stairs:
"Kids!
I'm home!"
Does
her daughter dash downstairs or is she anticipatorily already at
the kitchen table, eyes on the clock, ever ready to perform
whatever task is hurriedly requested?
On
this evening, do her shoulders relax ever so slightly at the tone of
her mother's voice, or does its excitement scare her? She can't
recall. Surely, if she'd known what was coming, what was in that
grocery bag, she'd have tied herself in a few extra knots, one deep
in the pit of her stomach.
Now,
she can't imagine her mother actually putting on the brown and orange
flowered apron which hung, dingy from disuse, on the back of the
pantry door. She can't imagine her reaching underneath the range,
pulling out two cake pans, coating them with Pam (never Crisco or
butter), although she knows that she, in fact, did. Did she use the
canned frosting? She must have, because she never to this day
remembers her mother knowing how to make it herself. But then,
there's a lot she doesn't remember anymore.
She
wonders if her mother did this to her on purpose: the linking of
chocolate to womanhood, forever ruining its silky texture and
seductive taste for her. Was it this or was it just dumb luck? She
assumes that it wasn't luck. Nothing was. But she knows better.
She
recalls how the cake looked. It was round, painfully homemade, and in
the reflected glow of the thirteen white candles, her mother's
excitement - or was it pride - shone in her eyes. And then, she
recalls, the smile. Her mother not only smiled at her, but to her
horror, at her father and brother, sharing this moment equally with
them and forever shaming the flow of womanhood for her so that with
each month of her reproductive life, she would recall this moment,
and the taste of chocolate.
-
Nikki Monacelli
Wednesday
workshop, Spring 07
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