by Remy Lai
I screwed up my face like I’d eaten one of those sour plums Ah-po gave us after we had to take bitter medicine. How old did Papa think I was?
“Jingwen,” Papa continued, sounding very serious.
Of course, by the time Papa and I made the last cake we’d ever bake together, chocolate raspberry torte, I’d tucked what he said in a locked suitcase in a corner of my brain, and I called all the cakes he made cheap cakes, even his Pie in the Sky cakes.
I never told him that I was sorry and that I didn’t mean it. I don’t even remember the last thing I said to him. Was it something nice? Did I make up for all the times I was a foolish kid and bad son?
I flip Cakes and More Cakes to the next page and search the dictionary for “double-boiler.”
Mama peeks into the room. “Jingwen? What are you doing? Why don’t you play with Yanghao and Sarah?”
I say nothing, and she sits next to me.
“Remember when you and Yanghao and I made that cake at Barker Bakes?”
I nod. I won’t forget the chocolate raspberry torte I put together alone.
“Well, Heather found the cake in the fridge. And she loved it! She gave me a promotion. I’m now in charge of finishing two of Barker Bakes’s cakes instead of just prep work.”
“That’s good news, Mama,” I say without looking up.
“What are you reading? A cookbook? An English one?”
Uh-oh. “I borrowed it from the library.”
“When did you go to the library? Did you attend your tutoring?”
“I went after. With Yanghao.”
“So tutoring didn’t go overtime?”
“Only a little overtime. Like five minutes.”
“Being a pastry chef is very hard work, Jingwen. You work with hot ovens and at odd hours. Life’s better with a steady nine-to-five job in an office.”
“I’m just reading for fun, Mama.”
“Neapolitan mousse cake, huh? Let’s see … What’s this ingredient?” She points.
“Almonds.”
She raises her eyebrows at me, but if I look into the mirror, I’ll probably see my own eyebrows are raised, too. I know almonds? Since when? Mama points at another word. “What about this?”
“Cinnamon.” Oh boy! Have I become a genius?
“And this?”
“Double-boiler. Used for melting chocolate.” I’m Einstein! Okay, I just looked up “double-boiler” a minute ago, but normally I’d have forgotten it. My brain remembers everything to do with cakes. Every subject in school should be taught in terms of cakes. Describe the life cycle of a cake. Write an essay on Neapolitan mousse cake.
“I do wish you’d borrow storybooks instead.”
“But these cookbooks are in English, so it’s the same. They taught me ‘almonds,’ ‘cinnamon,’ ‘double-boiler.’” Before she can be stubborn and tell me to return the cookbooks for storybooks, I get her to drop the subject by adding, “The cakes remind me of Papa.”
Mama’s lips squash together. It’s evil of me to use Papa this way, but I really need the cookbooks. Cakes will fix everything, including my terrible English, and Mama will be happy about that.
She gets up. My evil tactic works. “I’m happy you’re learning English, Jingwen.” She goes to the door. “But these baking terms aren’t very useful in everyday life or school.”
And I’m alone again.
I lock the bedroom door and drag the suitcase from under my bed to check the leftover ingredients inside. Maybe some of them can be used for the Neapolitan mousse cake. I have flour, vegetable oil, granulated sugar, icing sugar, cocoa powder, eggs, almonds—
There’s something stuck under the box of almonds.
The letter from the principal.
I’ve forgotten all about it.
I peel open the envelope.
I flip the dictionary so fast I get a thousand paper cuts. Turns out, my teachers think I’m not doing well in fifth grade at all, what with failing my homework and daydreaming during class. They figure it’s all because my English is poor, so I should be given a better chance to catch up. The principal suggests that next term, which is in a month’s time, I do not continue fifth grade but move down to fourth grade.
Fourth grade. The same as Yanghao. With my luck, I’ll end up in the same class as him. With my nine-year-old brother. And his best friend, Sarah.
52
Cakes have made life better for everyone. Mama got her promotion, and Yanghao got new friends. I don’t know how he became friends with Sarah, but he is pals with Anna only because he gives her cake. Things have gotten better for me too: I met Ben, even if he turned out to be evil, and my English has improved a little. But Mama and Yanghao are sprinting to the finish line, where the banner says “HAPPINESS.” Meanwhile, I’m crawling. Now that I’ve stopped making cakes, I’m crawling backward. Crawling all the way back to another grade.
It’s so unfair, and I don’t care if that makes me sound like Yanghao.
Mama said it’s easier for Yanghao to grasp English-that-sounds-like Martian because he’s younger. But this, Mama and Yanghao sprinting while I crawl, can’t have anything to do with age, since Mama’s older than me and Yanghao’s younger. What, then?
I gasp like I’ve been dunked into freezing water.
My crawling backward has everything to do with this: I was horrible to Papa.
Only I carry seashells filled with guilt in my pocket, and they’re so heavy I can only crawl.
I don’t know if I want to move on from Papa like Mama has done, but I know I’m sick of feeling like I’m feeling now.
After Papa was buried, I overheard Ah-gong, Ah-po, and Mama talking.
“I beg you,” I heard her say. “I beg you…”
What I did next, I shouldn’t have.
I never saw Mama cry again. I never heard Yanghao cry himself to sleep again. But even though my nose often burns, and sometimes my eyes, I never cried the way they did. Maybe I can’t allow myself. The tears contain every memory I have of Papa, and if I cry them all out, what’s left?
If I make all the cakes in Pie in the Sky, Papa will know I didn’t forget him. He’ll forgive everything I said and did. The seashells of guilt weighing me down will be gone from my pockets. My English will be perfect, I’ll do okay in school, I’ll have friends.
Only four more cakes left.
When will I get to make the next one, Neapolitan mousse cake? I decide: tonight.
53
Our bedtime is nine thirty. I have to keep myself awake while pretending to be asleep for about an hour, until Mama leaves for work.
Once I hear the front door click shut, I toss my blanket aside and jump out of bed. “Wake up, Yanghao! Mousse time!”
“It’s still dark,” Yanghao mumbles from his bed.
I shake him. “Mama’s gone to work. We can make cakes now.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Zzzzz?” I ask. “What’s that? A bee?”
“A sound in English that you make when you’re sleeping. Zzzzz.”
This calls for a better tactic. I tickle the soles of his feet.
He tucks his legs under him, but my fingers follow his feet until he bursts out laughing. “Okay, okay! Let’s make a cake.”
The first night, we make Neapolitan mousse cake.
The second night, we make red velvet crepe cake. Well, mostly me.
Wednesday night, I make pear tarte tatin.
One last cake. Then all the Pie in the Sky cakes will be made. After tomorrow, after I’ve made the apple mille-feuille, I can finally be happy again.
54
“By the skin of your teeth, Jingwen,” Mr. Fart says when I run into class two steps ahead of him. I think he’s scolding me, but he’s not my dentist, so I don’t know.
This morning, Yanghao and I slept through the alarm clock, but we made it through the school gates just as the bell rang. Since the midnight cake making began, I’ve been nodding off in all my classes. I bet my teachers tattle to t
he principal, too. But I have no choice until all the cakes are made.
Mr. Fart makes me read. It’s a short, easy question, and I know all the words. But snorts and giggles—most are muffled, but some aren’t—come from my classmates-not-friends. The loudest ones are probably Joe and Max. I plop back onto my seat, my mind racing to figure out what it was about me that everyone found so funny.
Oh no. I’ve read “mouse” as “mousse” and “desert” as “dessert.”
I wish I were a lone mouse in a vast desert, where I didn’t have to utter a word of anything, much less English.
* * *
During math, Miss Scrappell has us work in our project groups again. Ben has brought a big, thick board, which I guess is for a display. Once again, he works without saying a word.
On a piece of colored paper, he writes: 0.38 = 3/10
Which is wrong. I slide the piece of colored paper toward me and write in pencil:
0.38 = 38/100 = 19/50
I push the paper back to him. He takes another piece of colored paper and writes out what I wrote but in pen.
But still he doesn’t say anything. Not even when I take out an English cookbook.
Ben’s cake looked like the one in Cakes and More Cakes. It was similar to the one in Mama’s cookbook, save for the filling.
My heart goes THUMP!
I quickly key “apple confit” into the electronic dictionary. I’ve looked up so many words on this gadget, especially during Miss Scrappell’s after-school help, that I should receive the Guinness World Record for fastest typist on an electronic dictionary. I have to look up six more words to finally get the meaning, but it’s still a lot faster than using a dinosaur-age dictionary. Aha! Apple confit is made from thin layers of apples being stacked together and baked with sugar.
It has to be more than a coincidence that the last cake on the menu of Pie in the Sky is the same cake I’ve lost my friend over. It’s the deities and the universe, and Ah-gong, telling me it’s good to let things go. Ben might have been mean, but who knows if Joe somehow forced him to say it? And it was only that one time, which is nothing if I think about the many other times he was nice to me.
Once I’ve made this cake tonight, I’ll keep a few slices and give them to Ben tomorrow. I won’t have to say anything. He’ll understand I’m saying sorry.
The cake will fix everything.
55
I bolt awake. The clock says one o’clock in the morning. How long was that nap I just took? Ten minutes earlier, I placed the apple confit in the fridge to cool and the puff pastry into the oven before joining Yanghao for a nap at the dining table.
“What’s that?” Yanghao clasps his ears. “Make it stop!”
“It’s the smoke alarm,” I say, my voice as steady as an overbaked, hard-as-rock cookie, even though my heart is wobbly like a T-rex-is-stomping-closer jelly.
I quickly turn off the oven and open it. There’s a slight smoky smell, but luckily, no dark clouds of smoke billow out. No fire. I’m so relieved I want to sink onto the floor like a cake taken out of the oven too soon. But Yanghao’s still yelling for me to make the beeping stop.
I press a clean tea towel against his temple. “Hold it there.”
He does as told but cries even louder at the same time. I dance around the living room like I’ve gone to the beach on a very warm day and the sand is scorching. Should I call an ambulance? What should I say? Would I even know all the right English words?
my little brother
pain
fell (but he didn’t fall)
chair
crying
not dead
Maybe I should call Mama. She can speak English to the police and have the ambulance sent here.
But before I can pick up the phone, I hear keys jingling, and then the front door is thrown open.
Anna sees Yanghao and the bloody gash and spits out, “Fudge!” From her tone, she’s clearly using that delicious sweet treat as a swear word, so I must have heard wrongly. And that is all I can think about, helpless as Yanghao continues wailing and Anna makes a phone call. “May I speak with Meixin, please? Hi, it’s Anna. Now, don’t be—”
I don’t catch anything else she says to Mama after that, but Mama rushes into the apartment five minutes later, and a second later Mama jostles Yanghao out of the house.
56
Anna tells me to go to bed. She actually looks a bit sorry for me. She’s probably thinking about the horrible sentence Mama will hand down to me later.
I go to my room, but of course I can’t fall asleep. Ten seconds later Anna’s snores thrum through the apartment. I don’t want to think, so I find something to do.
I assemble the apple mille-feuille, making as little noise as I can, though I could have banged pots and pans, and it still wouldn’t have been louder than Anna’s snores.
I set aside two slices for Ben.
I eat three slices.
The rest of the apple mille-feuille, I leave it on the table. Yanghao surely must have spilled everything to Mama at the hospital, so there’s no need for me to follow Rules for Making Cakes and get rid of the evidence.
* * *
I don’t know what time it is when Mama and Yanghao come home, but it’s still dark outside. Mama and Anna talk in hushed voices, then Mama comes into my bedroom, carrying Yanghao. She lays him down on his bed. In the dark, I make out a long dark line crisscrossed with little ones across his temple. Since he doesn’t have to stay in the hospital, it shouldn’t be as bad as the time he had a bruise on his brain.
Mama tucks his hands under his blanket and kisses him on the forehead. When she turns, I shut my eyes. And wait.
It’s silent for a while, like she’s standing still. Then I hear her footsteps as she walks away. She didn’t kiss me or make sure my hands aren’t cold.
Then there’s nothing to do but think.
Cakes bring smiles. Cakes are magic. Cakes fix everything. So why did a cake break Yanghao? I must have done something wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have made smaller cakes, but the same-sized ones Papa and I made. Maybe I had to use the same exact recipes Papa and I used, which are the ones in Mama’s cookbooks. Not the recipes from the library cookbooks. I thought it’d be okay. Papa and I were just practicing.
Maybe I was wrong. Or it’s just too little too late. I’ll never be forgiven.
57
I wake up before the alarm clock rings. Yanghao is surely staying home from school today, but I’m not sure if I have to go. I don’t know which I’d prefer. In case Mama wants me to go to school, I get up and creep into the kitchen. On the dining table are one bowl of congee and one glass of milk. That means I have to go to school.
* * *
I give the apple mille-feuille to Ben.
He looks surprised, then he says, “Thank you.”
When Mr. Fart calls on me, Ben helps me with the word “chrysalis.”
Cakes are fixing things again. Which makes me very, very confused.
* * *
But Ben doesn’t write me any notes. At recess, he doesn’t ask me to go to lunch with him. After last bell, he doesn’t say bye.
He must have said “thank you” and “chrysalis” just because he’s a nice person, even if he was mean that one time, not because he’s a friend.
When I get home, I’ll say sorry to Mama and explain to her that I didn’t go behind her back and make cakes and lie and accidentally hurt Yanghao because I was naughty and had to have my way. It was because they were not just any cakes, but Pie in the Sky ones, and I made them for Papa. Then at least she won’t be so mad at me. I hope.
58
But before any words can make their way through my lips, Mama’s spatula makes its swift, hard way onto my left palm.
It’s the very same spatula I used to commit my baking crime. Mama interrogates me, even though when I got home, Yanghao gave me his best-ever puppy-dog eyes and whispered, “I broke rule number one.”
I give up everything:
blowing our pocket money on ingredients, the burn on the kitchen table, the midnight cake making, and that we’ve made twelve cakes in total. Well, I give up almost everything. I don’t tell her about my theft from the emergency stash. She’s so angry she can’t do math and doesn’t realize how much those twelve cakes cost to make. If she asks, I’ll confess. If she doesn’t, I can’t. She’ll hate me.
She moves on to scolding me.
That’s when I start to get mad.
Half of my brain knows the secret cake making is wrong, but a quarter of my brain says the accident with Yanghao wasn’t actually caused by a hot cake-making oven. The last quarter is angry at Mama for dragging me to Mars. And for being happy while I’m the opposite of that.
I don’t apologize.
I don’t tell her about Rules for Making Cakes.
I don’t tell her about Pie in the Sky.
* * *
When Mama finally gets tired of lecturing me, she makes me do my homework. Even when angry, all she can think about is my grades and my English. If only I’d thrown my dictionary into the oven and let it burn to a crisp. I slip the notepad with Rules for Making Cakes under my homework book just as Mama walks down the hallway and into the kitchen, wheeling my suitcase behind her.
She opens the suitcase and tosses the packet of flour, bag of sugar, bottle of vanilla extract, and everything else into the garbage, until there’s only one item left in the suitcase: an envelope. The envelope.
My hands tremble as she reads the letter from the principal.
She asks, without looking up, “Why didn’t you give this to me?”