Ingredients

Chocolate cake from the box is easy.  If you have a mom.

Dad had already laid out the pan, the box laying on its side so that the instructions were visible.  Add eggs and oil, grease the pan, put the cake in the oven at a moderate temperature for twenty minutes.  Simple.  

I could hear my older brother and Dad in the living room, chatting merrily away.  Daniel Apple owned his own bakery, “The Core”. Home of the town-famous Apple Cake.

I ripped open the top of the box, pulling out the plastic bag of chocolate mix.  I reached for a bowl and a flimsy metal whisk. I poured the mix into the bowl, getting a preview of the taste of some of it wafted up to my mouth.

I wasn’t jealous at all that Mom had taught David how to bake when he was five.  How they had come up with an cake that was apple-flavored, just like our family last name.  They had started baking when he and Mom made boxed chocolate cake. He used that experience to guide his entire life.  A picture of Mom was hung up on one of the walls of his bakery.

I measured half a cup of oil out, dumped it into the bowl, and began to mindlessly whisk.

David and I were eight years apart in age.  We loved each other, but I always felt that my jealously tainted our relationship in the way that grape juice stains carpet.  You can clean it up, but one close look is all it takes to rediscover the past. I couldn’t help myself, no matter how hard I tried.  He got to bring Mom to his school’s cheesy Mother’s Day parties. I got to go with my Grandma.

I cracked two eggs into the bowl, scowling as I retreated to the sink to wash the egg goo from my hands.  More mixing lied ahead.

Being born in a jail cell was always on my mind on my birthday.  Dad getting the call that faithful day 17 years ago that his wife had given birth to a little girl two months earlier than expected.  Surprisingly, they found that women who smuggled drugs over state borders and robbed houses for the funds to do it shouldn’t be granted legal rights to their children.

Seizing the cooking spray, I sprayed the edges of the banged up cake tin.  I poured the bowl of slightly lumpy batter in, watching as it spread to the far corners.  

I never got to visit Mom in prison.  Dad used to take David once every six months, leaving me with Aunt Tina.  It was fine there. She had a box of legos for me to play with. We would walk into town and get ice cream.  I always wondered if people thought she was my real mom.

I realized that I never preheated the oven.  I turned it on, waiting impatiently for the dang thing to heat up.

Mom sends me a card for my birthday every year.  This years is sitting on the kitchen table, next to a small black box from my brother, and a larger one from my Dad encased in gold wrapping paper.  I never opened Mom’s card in front of them. That was for later, when I could be alone. I never met her, but I was smart enough to know that this card was nothing but plastic words.  

I shoved the cake into the oven, the steam billowing onto my face.  I set the timer on my phone. 

My birthday had always been strange for everyone.  Like wearing a white shirt with a small blood stain.  

It had been better when I was younger, when I believed that Mom had been lied to, and that she loved me.  As I grew, it became more and more apparent that she had chosen trafficking and theft over me. In defense, she said she hadn’t known she was pregnant.  But she knew.  

She knew.

I wandered into the living room, trying to join in on the conversation casually.  

David was telling Dad about how he was considering adding a new pumpkin bunt cake to the menu for the fall, but wasn’t sure that he had the recipe down yet.

“Hey Pip!” Dad interrupted, sliding over on the couch to make room.  He used to have a clean, shaven chin. After Mom was locked up, the hair on his head seemed to melt down to his chin, forming his strong hipster beard.  He’d fit in better in Portland than in Salem.  

It almost makes it seem ironic that it wasn’t just weed my mom smuggled.  

The next twenty minutes slid away from me, nothing notable happening.  Simple mhms can make it easy to slip through conversation.

The timer on my phone goes off, telling me to leap up from the couch and pull the cake from the oven,  freeing me. The aroma pulls me through the hall, overwhelming my nose with bitter sweet chocolate. I pull the cake from the oven, and proceed to dramatically stab a metal butter knife through the center.  It comes out clean. The cake is done.

I was halfway down the hall when I doubled back to turn the oven off.  As I approached the door frame to the living room, I could hear David and Dad talking in slightly hushed voices.  Somehow, after all the years, they never figured out that I listened to every conversation.

Turning seventeen also marks the day I really broke down for the first time about my mom.  I had been nine, at school like any other day. I had been talking to my at the time best friend, Zoey Aghert.  Until then, at 12:24, I hadn’t really thought about my mother. I had no reason. She had simply made a mistake.  

It was lunchtime, I had been telling Zoey about how my mom was going to stay in jail for a little longer.  It didn’t occur to me that I was given this information every other year. That she loved and cared about me, and that she was really a good person.  I couldn’t see that could people don’t keep having their sentences extended for more than poor conduct.

“If she loves you, then why doesn’t she just, you know, escape?” Zoey had said.  We were both dumb and naive, thinking that she could waltz on out to see her own daughter.  

We were released to recess a few minutes later.  I pulled off alone by the swing sets, collapsing onto the sharp bark chips.  I pulled my pants up a little at the bottom, then grabbing a pointy chip. I ran it back and forth across my leg, watching the small blood drops form and race down my leg.  

I did that everyday for the rest of the school year.  Considering it was February, I did it over a hundred times.  David found the scars when we were play wrestling on the couch over that summer.  

“Is the cake ready?” David shouted, pulling me from my trance.  

“Ya!”

. . .

We all sat around the dining room table, a piece of cake now sitting on each of our plates.  The song had been sung. I was now officially seventeen. David and Dad laugh as we all start the consumption process.  David gives me fake compliments. I should have just let him make one of those dang Apple Cakes.

Mine is kind of dry.