Afterward, before unpacking, Taiye had tasted egusi soup from a pot in the fridge and found it flavourless and void of feeling. She threw it out and made a tomato stew with azu eke, smoked mackerel. She served it with boiled yam to her mother, who devoured the whole thing and licked the plate clean.
Now, walking down the stairs, Taiye was careful not to step on the cat, Coca-Cola; the ancient and volatile black thing slept curled up in the corners where the spiral steps changed directions. The cat moved out of the way and trailed behind Taiye into the kitchen.
“May I be healthy.”
Although it was still a soft whisper, Taiye’s voice filled the high-ceilinged kitchen. She filled a fire-blackened stainless-steel kettle with tap water and placed it on the gas stove. As she sat by the window, she let the cat curl up in her lap, and they waited for the water to boil.
A shrill beep from her phone told her that an email awaited. Even before reading it, Taiye knew she wouldn’t reply.
Subject: I’m Sorry
Banke Martins <[email protected]>
April 23, 2017, 7:43 AM
To <[email protected]>
Taiye, I know it’s been a while, but your phone is still disconnected, and you haven’t answered any of my previous emails. I’m really sorry about the letters, can we please talk? I heard that you had to go home. Something about your mother. How is she? Please write back.
Banke
Taiye rolled her eyes and put her phone down. Banke was a former lover, a flash in the pan. A mistake. The heat of Taiye’s anger had fizzled out, and in its place was utter disinterest.
As a detour from the undesirable path down which her mind wanted to wander, Taiye abruptly decided that she would make a cake to celebrate Kehinde’s homecoming. And jollof rice with smoked fish, curried chicken, and soft-boiled eggs.
“A feast,” Taiye said, and lifted Coca-Cola’s soft body from her lap to the cold tiled floor.
She made a cup of Lipton tea with condensed milk and honey—the first offerings from her beloved hive. She fished a foil-wrapped block of butter out of the overstuffed freezer to let it thaw on the counter by the open window. Then, she listened for the low humming of her bees.
This is how you make a salted caramel chocolate cake for your twin sister whom you haven’t seen in … God, a long time. In hopes that you avoid talking about the things you haven’t been talking about and just eat in silence. For the batter, you will need as much butter as you can manage without leaving your cake too dense and greasy. Taiye would die in pure bliss if she were to drown in a tub of good butter, so she used plenty. You should use a little over two cups of all-purpose flour, three quarters of a cup of unsweetened cocoa powder—preferably fair trade; no need to have the exploited labour of children on your hands just for chocolate—a teaspoon and a half of baking powder, a quarter teaspoon of baking soda, a half teaspoon of salt, and three large eggs. You may add a cup of sugar, but Taiye used a cup of honey instead. And finally, some vanilla extract.
In place of buttercream frosting, Taiye made honey caramel to pour over the cake.
She lit the gas oven and turned the dial to 325 degrees. Some minutes crept by before the pungent odour of burning fish drew Taiye out of a reverie. Like her mother, she was prone to daydreaming and had forgotten a newspaper-lined tray of smoked mackerel in the oven the previous night. In a rush to take it out, she burned her hands on the metal tray and dropped it with a loud clank on the floor tiles, startling Coca-Cola, who jumped and darted out of the kitchen in a blur of black fur. At the sink, she ran cold water over her burned fingers. It wasn’t too bad. Smirking at the memory, she recalled a previous lover who had cooed and treated her like a fragile thing. An anxious woman who was always so concerned for Taiye’s well-being, she’d treated every scrape or bruise like it were life-threatening.
“You know, I think I’ll survive,” Taiye would tease her. “I might just pull through this time.”
She picked up the hot tray, hands now protected by a tattered dishrag, and put it on the counter. Then she wrapped the pieces of dried fish in sheets of old newspaper from the towering stack on the floor beside the fridge, tied it all together in a black plastic bag, and tossed the whole thing in the deep-freeze. She washed the fish smell off her hands and began whisking butter, eggs, honey, and vanilla extract in a large red ceramic bowl. She let Coca-Cola lick some of the sweet mixture off her fingers when the cat slunk back into the kitchen. Taiye poured in the dry ingredients and divided the batter among three springform pans. The smell of burnt fish wafted into her face when she opened the oven door. She supposed the cake would have a bit of a fishy flavour. Fishcake.
For the caramel, Taiye poured dark golden honey, corn syrup, and water into a saucepan before bringing it to a boil. She moved swiftly between the pan of browning caramel and a double boiler fashioned out of a stainless-steel pot and an orange ceramic bowl filled with chunks of milk chocolate. The bowl just barely fit over the pan, so Taiye had to be careful not to burn her hands on the steam shooting out in livid spurts whenever she moved it. She let the caramel cook down to a deep amber that brought to mind baba dudu—burnt sugar and coconut milk sweets their nanny, Sister Bisi, rewarded them for good behaviour when they were small. Taiye poured some condensed milk into the caramel, whisking until the mixture was near silken, and then added the glossy chocolate. She balanced the bowl in the freezer to cool.
WHILE THE CAKES BAKED, TAIYE BATHED. On her way to the bathroom, she tiptoed to her mother’s bedroom door to check on her again. Still asleep.
“Are you my shadow today?” she asked Coca-Cola, who trailed behind her.
She undressed, and the cat promptly lunged atop her clothes and blinked languidly at her. Taiye turned on the hot water, but it trickled out cold, so she let it run until it was tepid—as warm as it was going to get. She let it slowly fill the purple plastic basin, and then entered the tub bottom first, leaving her feet to dangle over the side. She flicked water at the cat, who flinched and widened her eyes before meowing a loud accusation. With a small blue plastic bowl, Taiye poured the lukewarm water from the basin over herself before she remembered the half-full bottle of Dettol sitting on the windowsill next to some liquid black soap that her mother had made. She lifted herself out of the tub, sat on its edge with her back to the cat, and stirred two capfuls of the pungent yellow-brown antiseptic liquid into the basin of water. Then she poured some black soap into her palm and rubbed until the grainy black liquid turned into a slippery white lather. Still seated on the edge of the tub, she rubbed soap into her skin, up her arms and shoulders. She stopped at her chest, her small breasts. Quite suddenly, there was a swell of want in her lower belly.
Perhaps in your life you’ve come across a force that matched and moved you. Maybe it changed you so profoundly that when you look back at the landscape of your life, you are struck by the indelible the mark it left. For Taiye, that force was a woman named Salomé.
Sometimes, though less and less often with the more time that passed between them, Taiye would become overwhelmed by a thorough thirst for Salomé. To be in her presence, to hear her voice, to be touched by her. Taiye touched her own self, firm and slow. She traced light circles around her dark nipples. Let her hands slide over her belly, across her hips. Traced the lines and dots tattooed on her left hip, zodiac constellations marking the birth months of the people she chose to love, spreading like geometric veins growing around her buttock and up her side. She moved her fingers between her legs, with thoughts of Salomé swirling on the brim of her mind. Salomé’s smell, the dark bronze ochre of her skin, her warmth.
Coca-Cola meowed, and Taiye stopped.
“You’re right,” she said.
It was no use, no good. Her memories turned on her. She winced at flashes of Salomé’s crying face and bloodshot eyes, her nose running.
Taiye pulled down her blue net sponge from where it hung