The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Magnolia Cake

M's officially been birthday'ed.

I made him the vanilla cake he'd requested, and mixed it gently with a wire whisk, so as not to overmix and make it dry. It smelled delectable, and when I pulled it out of the oven, the entire house smelled like vanilla and autumn. I let them sit for a while in the pans, just until they would be cool enough to remove without fear of them falling apart, and I tidied the kitchen, readying the cream cheese, butter and sugar which would become the frosting. I then extricated them from the pans, and left them to finish cooling on a wire rack, before heading upstairs to my computer to confirm my icing recipe and to check my email. I was proud of the cake, so far, knowing it would be M's idea of perfect.

Ten minutes later, as I started to get ready to go back downstairs, a very severe looking three-year-old moved silently into the room clutching her teddy bear 'Sissy'. Mom, she said quietly, I did a bad thing. Before she told me what, I knew, because a mother usually senses these things. I was very hungry and...her lip quivered...and I ate some cake. The thing is, I thought about the possibility of her doing this, and dismissed it before going upstairs. She's generally trustworthy, but the kid has trouble with her impulses on occasion. In May, she ate the centres of every apple muffin I had baked that afternoon, and a month after that, M. caught her with her little chair propped against the counter, with her hand inside the potato chip bag he'd bought earlier. Both times she was punished by being sent to her room. Today, when I ran downstairs to assess the damage, I was amazed by what I was seeing. It looked as though a band of savage squirrels had been in the kitchen, the entire perimeter of the cake chomped on like a cob of corn, crumbs all over the counter, with the exception of about four inches which she'd probably thought about eating, but wondered if she might be able to get away with it if she left it. When I ran upstairs to confront her, she'd already locked herself in her room and was hiding next to her bookshelf. She knew she'd done wrong, so why did she do it?

I had a stern conversation with her, telling her about my disappointment and how hurtful her selfishness was to her father as it was his birthday, not hers, and that I wondered how she'd feel is someone did that to a cake that was meant for her. She admitted that she'd be very angry, although at her age, it's likely she didn't know what I was actually talking about. I left her in her room to 'think about it', and eventually she fell asleep while I tried to spackle the cake and make it look edible.

She did not get dessert tonight, and she did a great job of making me feel guilty about it. Kids can be devious little idiots when they put their minds to it.

When I was small, my greedy impulses were just as alive as hers seem to be, but I was smart enough to sneak one piece of chocolate, or a sip of my mother's Coca Cola from her glass when she looked the other way. I never savaged an entire cake. That's for amateurs. One night, I snuck out of my room and took a bottle of cola out of the refrigerator before hiding under the kitchen table and guzzling half the bottle. My dad had heard the noise, but when he came to see what had caused it, I was invisible to him, and all I could see was his tan and brown robe and two skinny legs as he walked around the house looking for burglars. Satisfied that all was well, he returned to his room while I put the half-empty bottle back and silently got back into bed. I was older than three, sure, but I still felt a little pride in being able to fool my father, who usually figured out what we were up to.

Another time, I gobbled three Nutchos that were in a box in my grandparent's room. My grandfather asked me if I'd touched them, and I outright lied and said no (and felt guilty about it for years). I'm sure he knew I was lying, and the guilt of it kept me from ever doing it again.

I'm not much of a thief. I've never so much as stolen a package of gum from a convenience store, and on a couple of occasions I have been left alone in a store while the clerk was doing whatever he/she was doing outside, and I waited patiently at the counter until they finally came back. I just don't think it's decent to steal, pure and simple, and have always looked down on people who do. I'm not talking about someone who is starving or who has a starving family. That I get. The majority of thieves whom I've known, however, have not been starving or homeless. Most have done it for the thrill, or because they think they have the right to have what they want and don't see why it's fair to have to pay. Some have done it because they think it makes them look audacious or subversive, or they're dealing with a serious Robin Hood complex. My ex-boyfriend Paul was the kind of guy who did it because he liked to. In fact, for my eighteenth birthday he gave me a Siouxsie and the Banshees tape that still had the security tags on it. Once, when he and I went shopping, he shoplifted a Skinny Puppy vinyl from a store that had signs that warned about bodily harm if someone should be caught stealing. He concealed it under a bag he had, and showed it to me with a laugh when we were about a block away from the store. I was outraged and panicked, looking behind me to make sure I wasn't going to get a beating from a psycho-peddler in Docs. It went on like that, with him filling a tool box with actual tools and trying to get through the checkout of a friend of mine without her opening it. When she did, she saw what he'd put inside and her eyes came to rest on me, thinking I was involved somehow. He laughed and tried to get her to look the other way, which made her even more angry, until I told him off in front of her and asked her to void the entire transaction and take back all of the merchandise. I apologized for him and stormed out, at which time he ran after me and told me I had no sense of humour. I called him a kleptomaniac, and he raised his hand to hit me. I told him if he did, I'd be the last girl he'd ever hit, and that I'd beat the living crap out of him, and if I couldn't do it, I'd make sure someone did. It wouldn't have been first time, you see, and he knew it. I wasn't afraid of him, I was sickened by him, and the relationship came to an end. Last I heard, he was a police officer. This is not amusing.

The drug addicts who used to come in to my old store to steal did not get any sympathy from me. I don't have any sort of real compassion for addicts, mostly because it's a problem one brings on themself. They would come in, weaving into walls, with lesioned skin in some cases, or big pregnant bellies in others. Those were the worst for me, that addict-mothers-to-be. I wanted to hit them, to smack their faces, to chain them to a chair until the baby was ready to come so they would not poison them more. I confronted one addict with a polo shirt under coat after chasing her to the street. I was seven months pregnant at the time, and it did not occur to me then that this act was as stupid in some ways as shooting up. She was wordless, though, and she blankly handed the shirt back over, at which time I lectured her about straightening out and actually contributing to society in some way. I huffed back into my store, where I was soundly lectured by my boss who could not believe I was so upset over a polo shirt.

It was never about the shirt, you see. I just can't stand people who always give in to their weaknesses, and have to take shortcuts to satisfy them. I don't want to hear their sad stories because everyone has one, and most of us find a way to get around the shortcuts. We all suffer temptation at one time or another, but a smart person takes a look at the bigger picture and makes their choice from there. You see, it is all about choice, pure and simple.

The strangest thing I ever encountered while working in retail was the bizarre epidemic of rich, socialite women who would steal. It never made sense to me, though it does a little now, how these women who could barely lift a hand for the diamonds on their fingers, would risk their reputations by stealing things they didn't want or need. The oddest situation was the woman who was attempting to steal a pair of jeans when security was called. She had concealed them in her bag, and was arrested. It was upon her arrest that it was realized that she was the wife of the mayor of the city. The story leaked out, and all kinds of excuses were made, but it astounded me that she would risk everything for a pair of jeans when her husband was a millionaire. I learned later that there were some major psychological issues there, so I did feel a little sorry for her, but I still thought that arresting her was the right thing. It shouldn't matter who you are when break the law, and to me it doesn't.

The savaged cake really disappointed me, though I took a step back and realized that my child is just that, a child. She's operating on a three-year-old's logic at this point, and even though what she did was wrong, she admitted it to me and seemed to feel legitimate remorse. I didn't get too dramatic about the situation, I just didn't let her have any more cake. That's enough, I think.

My sister K. called me earlier and was complaining about feeling tired. Then she said her stomach was bothering her, and I said 'you're pregnant'. She said, no, and changed the subject. She talked about other things and complained about something else, and I said 'you're pregnant', and she said 'No!'. Later on, she yawned and talked about next year and her plans to go here and there and I said 'You're pregnant!!!!', in an exasperated and demanding tone, and she said 'Yeah. How'd you know?'

*sigh*

Things could be so much simpler, I think. Call me an idealist, but I feel that people should eat the cake when it's served, and they should tell the truth the first time. It's not that hard, right?

But, I'm going to be an auntie again. That's exciting.

I tend to babble when I'm tired, as you can probably tell.

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