Momma raced home and without a moment to waste, was cutting every rose in our yard as well as a few from the Simpleton’s next door. When I got home from school, the roses were dutifully arranged in a green glass vase my mother swore was made in Italy. I had tried to tell her that Italian glass didn’t have seams down the side and FTD stamped on the bottom, but she was unconvinced. When she explained the roses were for Miss Edna, and I would soon be on my way delivering them in the hope of obtaining her famous coconut cake recipe, I just laughed. Then I figured out that she was serious. Stevie, my brother and the laziest human alive, was sitting on the porch swing where he’d been for the last five years, just sneering at me. He knew I couldn’t get that recipe.
Miss Edna’s cake was just about the best cake anyone had ever eaten. It was the three-time winner of the Yazoo County Fair, and always the first cake chosen at the harvest carnival cakewalk. It was the only reason my Uncle Bud made his yearly pilgrimage to church; the preacher always requested that Miss Edna make four cakes to serve at the Sunday dinner on the ground. She respectfully declined ever to part with that recipe, even though most ladies in town thought that was downright selfish. She was very secretive about the mixture. She drove all the way to Jackson, an hour away, to buy the ingredients after she caught my Aunt Pat, Uncle Bud’s better half, following her around the Jitney Jungle. Aunt Pat said she knew it had sour cream in it, because she saw her hiding it in her cart. But that was about as much as anyone knew.
Momma would not take “no” for an answer.
“How am I supposed to make her part with it?”
“I don’t know, but you’re a smart girl, Sadie Small, and I’m sure you’ll think of something on your walk over…and these roses can’t hurt.”
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