if there was ever any doubt as to whether or not i am my father's daughter (um...as if my schnoz and my sarcasm weren't enough) tonight for book club i made this. yep, i'm all his!
but since i was baking (i even used my kitchen aide dough hook for the first time! i don't know what i was waiting for!) i decided it's time to post this...i wrote it for my class and then rewrote it like four or five times. we were supposed to write about our soul food...
We sit together at the vinyl tablecloth. It’s green, with eggshell white and cornflower blue butterflies and birds, and has a flannel underside so that it doesn’t get stuck to the surface beneath it. It covers her heavy, round kitchen table that has traveled from house to house along with her family and her photographs in mismatched silver frames. She polishes them on Wednesday mornings before her friends come over to play Pan, betting only the left over change at the bottom of their purses. We roll up our sleeves and she reaches over to push mine up above my elbows so that they stay put. She pulls me over to the sink and stretches my arms so that the hot water hits my hands as she scrubs them with lava soap, leaving the valleys between my fingers drier than before she wet them.
She takes the supplies out of the cabinet that is too high for me to reach, even when I stand on my tiptoes, even when I stand on stool. Powdered sugar, vanilla, canola oil, a packet of chocolate pudding mix and fudge cake mix too. From the white refrigerator covered with pictures of us and a calendar from the City of Hope and small butterfly magnets painted in orange and yellow and blue, she takes out butter and eggs. She switches on the coffee maker as she walks by me and whispers in my ear, “we’ll need that later,” and I feel her lips lightly brush my cheek, sticky, leaving her candy-apple red lipstick behind as if branding me as hers.
I stand on my stool; my feet flat now, steady, dumping into the mixing bowl whatever she places in front of me. I know enough to not question her order or the amount that she has so carefully and expertly measured. I know enough to know she is doing it right.
We pour the batter that we have prepared into the bunt pan together. I hold the green ceramic bowl in both of my small hands, still greasy from the butter, and she places hers over mine and helps to guide the chocolate, smoothly into place. She uses a rubber spatula to scrape the bowl, going over the same round sides again and again until a large glob of chocolate has collected, where once there was almost nothing; and she hits it hard against the side of the metal pan. Once she is satisfied she lifts the bunt pan merely a centimeter off the tile counter top and slams it back down, once, twice, three times. I look at her trying to comprehend her methods, but instead I cover my ears to block the noise. She smiles as she places the cake in the oven. She glances casually at the clock to note the time, but does not set a reminder.
Together we sit back down at the kitchen table. We have placed the measuring cups in the sink and placed the now empty cardboard boxes into the trash. I sit on the chair on my knees, the lacquered cushion squishing flat underneath me. I lean directly into the cake batter bowl that she has placed in front of me and as I stick my wet fingers deep down, catching the left over chocolate, too scarce for her to capture before, I look up and see her licking the spatula.
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