Correct Cake

Chapter 33 – Correct Cake

Saturdays smell different if you intend to bake. The flat woke in butter time–air cool enough for patience, warm enough to soften. On the fridge, a note in his mother’s tidy teacher script: Girl coming at ten. Bring apron. Correct cake, not pretty cake. Wipe stove. A smiley, rationed as always.

Aleem lined up what kitchens call nouns: mixing bowls that remembered Hari Raya, the old hand mixer with one paddle slightly louder than the other, a scale that preferred grams, a sieve that had opinions. He set butter out to learn room temperature and cracked the window so wind could act like a fan who knows their place.

A: Lift lobby. Carrying humility + recipe print‑out with margins for auntie edits, her text pinged.

Aleem: Door open. Butter rehearsing. The oven is ready to argue, he typed back, then turned the knob to preheat as if convincing an elder to tell a story.

Aoi entered with the soft thud of a person who knows where the shoe rack is. Linen shirt sleeves rolled, hair tied in the style that promises knives will appear. She held two things: a brown paper bag whose smell announced SCS butter and a notebook with a bulldog clip stuffed with post‑its.

“Morning,” she said. “I come to apply for internship in auntie sciences.”

“Welcome,” he said. “Interview panel assembling.”

His mother emerged with an apron that had negotiated successfully with many Decembers. “Good morning,” she said to Aoi as if greeting a colleague. “We bake correct cake. Not Instagram. Correct.”

“What is ‘correct’?” Aoi asked, already delighted.

“Smell arrives before plate. Crumb holds manners. Top not pretending to be advertisement. Everybody gets two slices without feeling scolded.” She tapped the butter. “We start with good decisions.”

Auntie technique is engineering with fewer patents. Mdm Rahman lined the tin with paper as if dressing a child for school. “Corners must behave,” she said, nicking triangles so the parchment folded without gossip. She weighed flour as if numbers were a friend.

Aoi stood at attention, pencil in hand. “Room temp butter. Sugar is… normal, not fancy. Eggs one by one. Vanilla extract if we trust the bottle.” She looked to Aleem. “We trust?”

“We trust the small bottle with the old label,” he said. “It has lived a life.”

“Correct,” his mother approved, then flicked a speck of shell from a bowl with chopsticks like a magician. “If shell fall in, no drama. We are adults; we remove problem.”

They creamed butter and sugar with the hand mixer that had a favorite octave. The beaters wrote pale ribbons like the handwriting of someone who learned with pen and not keyboard. “We don’t rush air,” Mdm Rahman said. “Air comes if you behave.”

Aoi leaned over to watch the color change. “It looks like… confidence,” she said.

“Confidence is correct,” his mother granted. “Eggs now. One, say hello; then flour says later.”

They worked. An egg plopped wrong and tried to sulk; Aoi laughed at herself without guilt. Aleem held the bowl as she mixed, the quiet duet of people who intend to last. Flour went in through the sieve; a small cloud puffed like a joke nobody minded. Aoi folded with a spatula the way dancers talk when they’re offstage–economy, respect for corners.

“Milk,” his mother commanded. “Not too brave.” She dribbled in a splash that knew its job. “You listen to batter. Don’t scold. Invite.”

The batter chose to shine exactly when invited. Aoi sniffed, eyes closing for a half‑second. “Correct,” she announced, surprising herself with the auntie word.

“Pour,” said the panel. She tipped the bowl; Aleem scraped the last streaks because food deserves loyalty. Mdm Rahman banged the tin once on the counter–the tap that tells bubbles to choose better lives–then drew a buttered knife across the top to prevent mountains from forming out of pride. “Oven,” she decreed. “We don’t open door for twenty minutes. It needs its privacy.”

Waiting is the part of cake that feels like prayer. They made tea–the auntie‑face herbal blend for Aoi, kopi‑o kosong for his mother, mild for Aleem because ovens produce weather.

“Your mother taught you to be furniture,” Aoi said to Aleem, amused. “Your hand just knows where to be.”

“Correct,” Mdm Rahman said, not looking up from her cup. “Furniture supports; furniture does not narrate.” She turned to Aoi with a brightness that had tested many teenagers and frightened none. “You worked in rooms with cameras. How you keep your person safe?”

Aoi set her cup down with the care owed to both ceramics and questions. “We learned… the auntie constitution,” she said, adopting the household dialect. “Public first. Be boring on purpose. Ask, don’t guess. Archive, not feed. If people try wind, don’t become wind.”

His mother’s mouth did a small approving shape. “Correct. You also learned how to be tired safely?”

“I’m learning,” she said, honest. “We made an Affection Charter like a recipe. Yes is specific. No saves futures. Maybe is honorable.”

Mdm Rahman looked at Aleem in a way that measured architecture, not romance. “He keeps museum on a locker door,” she said to Aoi.

“I’ve seen it,” Aoi said. “It keeps us from guessing.”

The timer–actually, Aleem’s phone with a modest chime–announced twenty minutes. Mdm Rahman opened the oven door with the ceremony of a judge unsealing envelopes. The cake had risen like a well‑behaved plan. The top held steady, not posing. She closed the door with minimal drama. “Another fifteen,” she said. “We do not rush history.”

Kitchen comedy arrived in small packets the room could absorb. The sieve declared mid‑life crisis and tried to shed a wire; Aleem tightened it with pliers he kept for precisely unsung reasons. Aoi’s ponytail escaped its clip at a funny angle; his mother handed over the elastic she keeps around the pepper mill. A lemon rolled off the counter and made for the door; Aleem trapped it with a bare foot and returned it to civilization.

“Correct comedy,” Aoi said, wiping a flour fingerprint from her cheek. “No laugh track; just dignity.”

“Correct,” said the panel.

In the pause between oven checks, his mother washed bowls with the economical rhythm of a person who has timed buses to dishes. “I ask you one thing,” she said to Aoi, not sudden, not soft. “You like my son in rooms that make him better?”

Aoi did not breathe for half a beat, then did. “Yes,” she said. “If I cannot, I will go before the room breaks.”

“Good,” his mother said. “No drama. I will keep him even if you go. He will keep you as a good person even if he must let you go. That is adult.”

Aoi bowed her head, receiving the rule like a recipe. “Understood.”

The oven offered up a smell that had decided to be cake and not merely ingredients. He checked the skewer his mother handed him, the same one that had lived in a drawer since some Chinese New Year. Clean. He turned the oven off and opened the door a finger’s width to let pride reduce to flavor.

Unmolding correct cake is stagecraft. Parchment lifted like a playscript. The loaf sat on the rack patient as a citizen. Steam rose in small declarations. His mother tapped the bottom, listening for the note that means mathematics succeeded. “Correct,” she said, then cut the sacramental heel–the baker’s piece–and slid it to Aoi.

Aoi blew twice, learned the temperature with her lips, and bit. When her eyes closed it was not a performance; it was a room becoming kind. “The moral lesson is butter,” she said. “And waiting.”

“Both correct,” Mdm Rahman said, carving two slices for the mere mortals.

They ate standing like thieves because some rules are allowed to be broken in the presence of cake. Then they sat, because cake likes chairs.

“Tell me a story of his small,” Aoi asked politely after two bites, having earned it.

His mother looked at the window because memory prefers a horizon. “Once,” she said, “this boy at five took a chair to the sink to wash cup. I said, ‘Later, you will break.’ He said, ‘If I break, I will call you.’” She smiled at herself. “He broke. He called me. We cleaned. We ate kueh for victory. Since then, he breaks correctly. Not in public.”

“Correct break,” Aoi said, storing the phrase like a tool.

“And you?” his mother asked, gentle. “Your small?”

Aoi considered the cake, then the rack. “Once, my grandmother kept a drawer for handkerchiefs and also sentences,” she said. “She said, ‘We fold both when we are done crying.’ I learned to fold very nicely.” She laughed at herself before anyone else could. “Now I am learning to unfold.”

“You unfold correctly,” his mother said, a blessing.

They wrapped half the cake for Auntie Lila because aunties are a courier service with their own religion. The other half went into a tin that had survived three moves. Aoi labeled it with tape in tidy lowercase–correct cake / two days / moister tomorrow. She held up the marker. “May I leave a note on the museum?”

“In pencil,” his mother said, pretending to be stern.

Aleem brought the stack from his room because rituals travel sometimes. Aoi wrote on a square freshly cut from the corner of a calendar that had retired into usefulness:

Cake is a document.
Butter = patience.

She handed him the square. He slid it under Feed people first and above Choose together. The paper sighed the way kitchens do when provided with proper nouns.

His phone chimed once.

Nadiah (finance): I’m outside with lemongrass. Your mother said to come and smell victory.

“Guest,” his mother announced, then to Aoi, aside: “She is excellent. She brings receipts and herbs.”

Nadiah entered like a breeze that pays rent. “SCS,” she said, sniffing. “Correct. I brought lemongrass because I believe in the church of boiling things.” She set the stalks down and accepted a slice as tithe. “Hello Aoi,” she added, not making it an event. “I am the friend who shouts at spreadsheets.”

“Hello,” Aoi said. “I am the person learning auntie sciences.”

“Excellent field,” Nadiah said. “Tenure achievable.” She chewed, nodded formally at the crumb. “Approved.”

After Nadiah left with two slices and a sermon about utility bills, they washed dishes as if congress had mandated it. Aoi wiped the stove without admitting to it; he dried the rack because he had been properly trained. His mother wrote ngoh hiang test soon on a shopping list and pretended not to smile.

At the door, shoes waited like punctuation. Aoi lifted her palm–flat–two taps; one hold; three light taps. “Here,” she said. “Stay. Air.”

“Here,” he said. “Stay. Air.” He touched his own cheekbone with two fingers–the signal. “Request?”

She smiled with the calm of someone possessing policy. “Later,” she said, pressing his hand–later–and then leaned forward to kiss his cheek where flour had very possibly lived. “Correct,” she added, teasing.

“Correct,” he agreed, learning.

They bowed–earned, finite, adult. She left carrying a small parcel of cake and the promise to return the tin with something layered inside.

He put the last plate into the cupboard because leaving a single soldier out is how you lose wars. Then he opened the locker door’s paper museum and added two more squares.

Auntie techniques are engineering.
Waiting is part of the recipe.

He slid them under Rest is allowed and above Hold the room steady. The stack arranged itself without complaint.

His phone chimed once.

A: Home. Correct cake passed neighborhood audit. Thank you for internship acceptance. Your mother is Department Chair; I will do the reading.

Aleem: Home. Museum updated. Next lab: ngoh hiang. Prerequisite: brave bitter gourd. We proceed by invitation.

A: Proceed. I will bring sesame oil and humility.

He set the phone face down. The fan rehearsed rain for another evening. The tin on the counter made the specific silence baked goods make when they are planning to taste better tomorrow.

Two in, hold, three out. Not magic. Structure.

Respect. Distance. Gratitude.

Outside, a neighbor texted a cousin about butter brands, an auntie passed along a secret for cake that wasn’t really a secret–fold gently, wait–and in a flat where ovens learned manners, a boy and his mother and a girl who knew how to be furniture had made something correct enough to be shared.