Black Cake

In the weeks following Marble’s abrupt return to London, Benny and Byron struggle with the implications of their mother’s revelations. Benny, partly inspired by her chat with her new half-sister, recommits to finding a bank loan to help open a café with a bakery that specializes in foods that cross ethnic boundaries, foods that testify to the “immigration of culture” (321). This time she takes to the bank a black cake she makes to impress the loan officer. While she awaits word of the bank’s decision, she returns to her dreary job—dressing up in a meerkat costume and walking a parking lot promoting an electronics store.

When Marble returns to Southern California some weeks later, Benny quickly flies to LA, and the three offspring of Eleanor/Covey finally sit down and together share the black cake, stored in their mother’s freezer, that she made for them shortly before her death. The time, at last, is right. When they cut into the cake, they find a cache of precious trinkets baked into the cake by their mother: a photograph of Covey and Bunny (now Etta Pringle), seashells, and antique jewelry that Byron immediately sees is valuable.