Redefining Realness by Janet Mock Page B

they made the demure secretary I had said I wanted to be in the second grade look like a caricature. They elevated my possibilitiesof being someone more powerful. They were pleasure-seeking, resourceful, sexy, rhythmic, nurturing, fly, happy, stylish, rambunctious, gossipy, feeling, hurt, unapologetic women. They were the kind of women I wanted to be.
    With my hands properly sticky and my cake in the oven, I walked into the living room and began to chant, “Wait till you taste my cake! Wait till you taste my cake! You’re gonna love my cake. Wait till you taste my cake!” Legend says I punctuated this freestyle rap with the Cabbage Patch dance. I adamantly deny ever doing the Cabbage Patch.
    Twenty minutes later, the smell of something burning cut the air. I heard the oven slam and Grandma grunt, “Sheeeiiit!” I ran into the kitchen and saw my charred cake in Grandma’s oven-mitted hands. She had set the oven on broil rather than bake.
    Dad, who seemed to have ignored my cooking (partly because the Cowboys were on, partly because he didn’t want to berate me for baking), came into the kitchen. He saw the burnt cake and my head bowed and—like anyone with impeccable comedic timing and an insatiable appetite to be the center of attention—sang, “Wait till you taste my cake . . . You’re gonna love my cake . . . Wait till you taste my cake.” He mocked my rap by improvising the Cabbage Patch. My cousins soon joined in. They were the chorus that created the “Wait Till You Taste My Cake” family legend.
    I was sensitive and easily wounded in the presence of Grandma and my aunts. I tearfully ran into the guest bedroom, the one where we stayed during our first few months in Dallas, while Dad cleaned himself up. I sank my face in the nearly flat pillows and cursed him. Seeing him do that song and dance of my own creation made me reflect on myself. I had seen my eerie similarities with my father. He was proud and selfish and wanted to be the center of attention. I was also those things, half formed. I yearned to be seen and appreciatedbut had done nothing notable. Being chosen to help with the cake had made me feel special, and I wanted everyone to see that I mattered. The chaos came to a halt when Aunty Wee Wee spoke.
    “Toosie,” Aunty Wee Wee said, using Dad’s nickname (he was Grandpa Charlie’s namesake, the second Charlie in the Mock family, hence Two C, or Toosie). “Leave him be.”
    When she came in the room, Aunty Wee Wee said we could buy another cake and do it right this time. She offered the kind of coddling I craved. She let me be soft and never forced me to be anything other than who I was. My aunts and grandmother were the iridescent cellophane I needed, another layer of protection and care that complemented Dad’s shiny foil—the kind of protection that often cut.
    A few Sundays later, we left Grandma’s house and began spending our nights at Cindy’s, which was across the hall from Auntie Linda Gail’s. Cindy was rail-thin but no one could stop her from flaunting her size-zero frame and stick legs in cutoff shorts and miniskirts. Her boys were just as frail, with matching buckteeth. Two of them regularly peed the bed, even though they were around our age. What disturbed me wasn’t that they peed the bed but the fact that their family grew accustomed to the urine smell. I remember getting my head smacked for pointing the stench out to Dad our first night there. Fortunately, Chad and I couldn’t sleep in the crowded urine room, so we gladly shared the plastic-covered living room sofa, sleeping foot to head during our time there.
    I settled into fourth grade in Dallas at the first of many uninspiring schools there. We were enrolled and transferred according to Dad’s love life. Cindy was the first in a long line of girlfriends we shacked up with in Dallas. Dad went after women with children, single moms who felt lucky to call Toosie theirs, even though he had no job, was raising two