The Sleeping Night by Barbara Samuel

cooking and still say no,” Angel said.
    He said nothing, holding the cake in his hands, his appetite gone to dust. He glanced up at Angel. She met his eyes steadily, and for the first time he saw that she was no longer a girl, any more than he was a boy. The weariness of time showed in her eyes, and at the corners of her mouth were the slightest lines.
    She met his eyes steadily, soberly, and tucked a lock of hair round one ear. “Your letters where so full of food I’d have to go have a snack when I finished one.”
    Letters. He still had all of them, every one she’d written, stuffed in a canvas bag tucked in the bottom of his duffle. Sometimes those letters were the only reason he could think of to keep going.
    “Go on and eat, Isaiah,” she said. “I’m gonna go get me some.”
    Hell. The porch was shaded and cool. Isaiah sat down and measured the cake, savoring the scent of it, then took a bite. It was exactly what he had imagined, warm and syrupy and spongy all at once, melting on his tongue before he could taste enough of it. He ladled up another forkful and glanced at Paul, who was watching him as if he were the end product of some experiment. “What you lookin’ at, boy?”
    “You like cake?”
    “Course.”
    “How come you didn’t want no chocolate?”
    Isaiah took another slow bite. “Just partial to pineapple, I guess.”
    “Not me.”
    Angel stepped onto the porch, letting the door slam in place behind her. “That’s what makes horse races, my daddy always said.” She sat in the rocking chair. Isaiah could feel her motions behind him as she shifted, and now he could smell her over the scent of the cake, a simple flowery smell he remembered from childhood. He didn’t turn.
    No one spoke for a minute. They sat in silence, eating. Then Angel said, “You know, I’ve won prizes for my baking. I wonder if I could write a cookbook.”
    Isaiah laughed. Her voice was the same as the younger Angel’s, huskier than it should be, slow enough it hid her sharp mind, and he found himself responded to the memory of her. “You been saying you were going to for a hundred years.”
    “I never had a typewriter.”
    “You could’ve found somebody to loan you one.”
    “I reckon I still could. And I bet people would buy it, too. Everybody likes my cakes.”
    He swallowed a mouthful, able to smile freely as long as his back was turned. He pressed crumbs into his fork. “That’s why you had to make this one, cuz you couldn’t stand to have somebody turn you down.”
    “You’re eatin’ it, aren’t you?”
    He stood and turned to look at her, curled on the couch with her feet tucked up under her. “Ate it,” he corrected. “And it was exactly what I thought it would be. Thank you.” She made him think of a cat, curled so luxuriously and comfortably—a silky cat with long eyes and graceful limbs. His eyes lingered a moment on her mouth with its strange, ripe lips, plump as late grapes. Thought again of waxy red lipstick.
    Swallowing, annoyed with himself, he put his plate carefully on the step and backed away, eyes on the ground. “I’m gonna go finish up now.”
    The legacies Angel’s mother had left her were few. No grandparents; no uncles or aunts or cousins, no stories of her girlhood. Wraith-like, Lona Corey had just appeared one day in Gideon. She had been a fragile, breathtakingly beautiful woman, and some said she had come from the brothels in New Orleans. Not even Parker had been able to extract her story, one that had died with her when Angel came into the world after three days of screaming labor. She left behind a green velvet dress, a pearl necklace, a box of cake recipes, and a single photograph. Nothing else. Lona was formless in Angel’s mind, a vague personage as ethereal as the soft white heads of dandelions gone to seed.
    On Saturday morning, Angel baked another chocolate cake, this one taken from her mother’s box of recipes, for a potluck at the church the following day. It