Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books

Chapter 3 101 Cakes to Bake for Your Family

It was round about her eightieth birthday that Wilma Jean Cummings noticed a change. She was still the same, of course. It was everybody else in the family who’d lost their damn minds. They leaned in so close when they spoke that she could read their breath like a Chick-fil-A menu. Then their voices would go soft and sweet as marshmallow fluff, and they’d avoid any words with more than two syllables. At first, she wondered if they’d been licking the paint. But her children seemed perfectly normal when they talked to one another. Or at least as normal as they’d ever been, which—truth be told—wasn’t saying so much. That’s when Wilma Jean realized it was all for her sake.

“Why are y’all talking to me like I’m some kind of idiot?” she asked her oldest son.

“Aww, Mama,” he’d crooned, bending down to kiss her cheek. “Nobody thinks you’re dumb.” One whiff and she knew he’d had Taco Bell for breakfast—three months and two days after open-heart surgery. And somehow she was the one they all thought was touched.

“Well, look at you!” Her daughter Cissy clapped like a trained seal one evening after Wilma Jean completed a phrase on Wheel of Fortune with only two T’s and an F on the board. Cissy’s expression was the same she’d been wearing the first time her son squeezed out a poop on the potty.

“You know I used to be the district attorney,” Wilma Jean reminded her.

“’Course you did, Mama,” Cissy said.

Wilma Jean had to get up and shuffle back to her home office to make sure she hadn’t dreamed it. But there on the wall were her fancy diplomas and her favorite photo with her least favorite governor. It had been taken just as the governor’s hand cupped her ass—and a millisecond before her stiletto heel broke his toe. The memory, fresh as ever, still brought a smile.

Over the course of her eighty-four years, Wilma Jean had raised six children, buried three husbands, made a fortune as a lawyer, sent hundreds of feral hogs to meet their maker, and brought an infamous serial killer to justice. One might say she knew a thing or two. And if anyone had thought to ask, Wilma Jean could have spilled top-quality dirt on everyone in town. But instead of acknowledging their matriarch as a paragon of wisdom, her family acted like her brains had gone mushy.

“Mama, how would you like to go see that swanky assisted living facility they just put up down on Orchard?” her son Dean had the gall to ask her.

“How would you like to kiss my ass?” she replied.

Dean looked up at his brother and cackled. “Oooh boy, Mama sure is ornery today. You reckon she’s constipated?”

After that, Wilma Jean stopped answering stupid questions. She figured that would teach ’em. Instead they all assumed she’d lost her hearing along with her marbles. Once she’d reputedly gone deaf, the revelations never stopped coming. Her children didn’t think twice about bickering over their inheritance while she was sitting in the same room, trying to enjoy a bowl of butter pecan and catch up on Mindhunter. One night all six of them showed up in a pack and took an unsanctioned tour of the house, divvying up her possessions among them. There was a vicious fight over the antique wardrobe where Wilma Jean’s church dresses were hanging. Later, she listened in while they argued about which broker in town could get the best price for the house. Her goddamned house. The one she’d bought at auction after she’d bankrupted the rich bastard who’d called her daddy trash. The one that had hosted all three wakes for her husbands. The one that had kept the rain off her head for forty years and had borne witness to her heartbreaks and triumphs.

Wilma Jean knew she should have said something, but she didn’t. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost the will to fight.

After the tour, the children began showing up every night to sit watch, worried their siblings might abscond with the butt-ugly china that Wilma Jean’s second mother-in-law had pawned off on her—or shove a pearl necklace down their pants. With all of them crowded into her living room, Wilma Jean was reminded of a video one of the great-grandbabies had shared with her. Filmed in the murky darkness at the bottom of the ocean, it showed hundreds of writhing white creatures feasting on the carcass of a massive whale. The existential horror of the video had haunted Wilma Jean for years. She couldn’t have imagined a less dignified fate. Now she marveled at how limited her imagination had once been.

She told the children they were just being paranoid about things getting snatched. Their family had more than its share of morons, but she hadn’t raised any goddamned thieves. The very next morning, Wilma Jean spotted a dark patch on the wall where a frame had been hanging for nearly forty years. Missing was a portrait of Wilma Jean that her second husband had commissioned from a young Alabama artist who’d gone on to great fame and fortune. The night of the tour, two of the children had come to fisticuffs over who deserved it. Neither of them had any intention of passing the portrait down to their offspring. To them, the painting was nothing more than money on the wall. Now one of her heirs had snuck inside during the night and made off with Wilma Jean’s most prized possession. She called upon the piece of her soul that the artist had captured to curse all whose eyes ever gazed upon it. When that didn’t prove satisfying, Wilma Jean called her attorney in Atlanta and secretly changed her will. She wanted every damn cent she had to go straight to saving the whales.

And yet, even after all that, Wilma Jean didn’t have the heart to banish her family entirely. Problem was, it got lonely when no one else was around. Wilma Jean had no friends left to visit. Her three spouses were just ghosts she’d encounter in the rooms they’d once favored. From time to time, she’d try talking to Malcolm, the love of her life. But she never could get his voice quite right and the conversations always felt sad and one-sided. The truth was, he’d abandoned her, along with everyone else she’d picked to be in her life. One at a time, they’d all dropped dead. The only folks she had left were the ones fate had given her. Wilma Jean loved her six children, she really did. But she often wondered what in God’s name she’d done to deserve them.

Three months before Wilma Jean turned eighty-five, she woke up in the middle of the night covered in sweat and filled with dread. For decades her family had gathered at the house on her birthday. And every year, Wilma Jean would bake herself a glorious seven-tier cake. It was meant to be fun. No one was ever obliged to come. On an average year, she handed out cake to two dozen guests. This year she hadn’t even sent out an invite and the RSVPs were already rolling in. She had six children, twenty-four grandchildren, and forty great-grandbabies. It was looking like every last one of them would be paying their respects. Add spouses and that meant upward of one hundred people showing up at her door in May—each and every one determined to brownnose their way into her will.

Come May, Wilma Jean had decided to cancel the whole affair. She was sick to death of her family. It seemed like there wasn’t a single one of them who hadn’t shown their ass at some point over the previous months. Then her grandson’s wife, Britney, rolled up in the drive at nine o’clock on a Thursday and perp-walked their teenage daughter up Wilma Jean’s front steps and through the front door. Britney looked angry and flustered, but the girl appeared perfectly composed. It wasn’t easy to keep track of forty great-grandbabies who never stopped growing, but Wilma Jean recognized this one straightaway. Bella’s face was always showing up in the local paper. It was a particularly attractive face, with a perky nose, long lashes, and perfectly rouged cheeks. Head of the cheerleading squad and prom queen, Bella was small-town royalty. Wilma Jean immediately suspected a plot. The girl was there for her money.

“Hey, Meemaw!” Britney yelled across the room. “I’d come in and say hi, but I’m in a rush. You mind if Bella stays here with you while I head to the hairdresser? She’s been suspended from school, and her daddy doesn’t want her home by herself.”

The girl rolled her eyes. “Grandma can hear you. You don’t have to shout,” she said.

Wilma Jean did a double take and Bella winked at her. She wished the girl would tell Britney she hated being called Meemaw as well.

“Come again, missy?” Britney turned on her daughter. “I’d mind your manners, if I was you. You’re in trouble enough already.”

Wilma Jean fixed her gaze on Bella. What’d you do, princess? She hadn’t been in the mood for company, but now she was dying to know.

“Fine,” she said. “Bella can stay.”

Britney pressed her palms together and thanked the Lord. Wilma Jean didn’t blame her. Those grays really did need a touch-up. “I appreciate it, Meemaw. By the way, your birthday’s just round the corner. You up for making your famous cake again this year?” The smile on her face froze while she waited. “Meemaw?”

Wilma Jean’s mind was already occupied with far more interesting thoughts. Bella didn’t strike her as a junkie or a brawler. Probably hadn’t thrown a punch in her life. Petty theft, Wilma Jean figured. She’d prosecuted a few sticky-fingered beauty queens back in the day.

“Meemaw?”

“What?” Wilma Jean snapped.

“I was just gonna say, if you’re not up for making your birthday cake, just give me the recipe and I’ll be happy to bake it.”

Wilma Jean had stolen the recipe off the back of a box of Betty Crocker cake mix back in 1972, but everyone in the family was convinced she was a culinary genius. “No,” she said. “I’m baking the damn cake like I always do.”

Britney was in too big a rush to argue. “Alright then! Well, y’all watch out for each other today. Bella, I’m warning you. You better be on your best behavior.”

The door slammed and Wilma Jean and her great-granddaughter were suddenly alone. Most of the other great-grandchildren were timid in Wilma Jean’s presence. They’d read all the fairy tales about old ladies who poisoned apples and gnawed on little-kid bones. Wilma Jean wondered if the tales had been invented by old ladies who’d already raised their own damn children and just wanted to live the rest of their lives in peace. But this girl wasn’t intimidated.

“So I was right. You can hear,” she said, coming closer. She held a thick book against her chest.

“How’d you know?” Wilma Jean asked.

The girl shrugged. “Just a hunch. I wish I could ignore our family, too.”

“I pretend to be deaf, Bella. I still have to hear them.”

“At least they don’t expect a response.” The girl plopped down in a plush chair across from the sofa. “By the way, I’m thinking of changing my name to Lilith.”

Wilma Jean lifted an eyebrow. “Is that right?”

“It’s fine if you want to stick with Bella. The preacher told Mama that Lilith’s a demon and I might be a Satanist. She’s convinced I have 666 tattooed somewhere on my body.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Wilma Jean scoffed. “Maybe your mother should do her own research instead of swallowing everything she’s told.”

“I offered to let her read my book,” the girl said. “There’s a whole section on Lilith, but Mama told me she didn’t have time.”

The girl held up the book she’d brought, and Wilma Jean recognized it at once. The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette. The cover showed three blond girls in dainty white dresses sipping afternoon tea. In the fifties, all the rich girls in town had owned a copy. Back then, Wilma Jean’s family had been too poor to give a damn about books, tea, or etiquette. She’d perused the handbook once or twice and couldn’t recall a section on Lilith. She wondered what on earth The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette had to say about a two-thousand-year-old feminist icon who’d been written out of the Bible.

“Your mother has time to check you for Satan’s mark, but she can’t be bothered to read a damn book.” Wilma Jean sighed. “Sounds about right. Welp, you’re in my house now. And here, we all get to be who we want to be. So how ’bout this? I’ll call you Lilith today if you swear you won’t call me Meemaw.”

Bella seemed thrilled by the victory. “Easy-peasy. What do you want to be called?”

No one had ever asked her that before. Not once in her entire life had Wilma Jean Cummings been given the option to choose her own name. She took a second to think it over. “How ’bout Wilma?” She’d never much cared for the Jean.

Bella reached across to shake her great-grandmother’s hand. “Deal,” she said.

“I was just fixing to make some coffee. Would you care to join me?” Wilma hadn’t asked anyone to have coffee in twenty years.

“Sure!” Bella said, so Wilma led her back to the kitchen, where the girl slid into the breakfast nook. The second Wilma was occupied with the coffee, Bella immediately tucked back into The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette like it was the greatest book ever written.

“In case you were wondering, there is an upside to spending time with old ladies.” Wilma tried to catch a glimpse of the text as she set a plate down in front of her great-granddaughter, but Bella closed the book. “We buy people’s love with pie.”

“Then you’re going to have a hard time getting rid of me.” The girl took a bite and closed her eyes as she savored the strawberry rhubarb. “This is great. I’m so glad Mama’s not baking the cake for your birthday. I look forward to yours every year.”

Wilma brought their coffee over and took a seat. “I was thinking I might do something different this time,” she confessed. “People seem to think I’ve gone daffy. I need to prove that my brain is still functioning.”

Bella’s smile slipped away. She set down her fork and touched her napkin to the corner of her mouth like a perfectly trained Southern belle. “That’s a good idea. I was going to tell you before I left today. Mom says they’re planning to put you in a home. Your children are going to convince a judge that you can’t care for yourself anymore.”

“You don’t say?” It didn’t surprise Wilma one bit. She could have seen that news coming a mile away. And now that it was finally here, she wanted to beat it to death with a lead pipe. “Then I guess I’ll just have to show those traitors what I can do.”

Bella clearly approved of the plan. “I know you won’t need my help, but I’m happy to give it.”

“Thank you, Lilith. I’ll keep that in mind.” Wilma sipped her coffee and studied the creature across the table. Just when you thought you’d seen it all, life could still surprise you. She’d known there were a few good genes in the Cummings DNA, but until that moment, she wasn’t sure where they’d gone. “Now, Lilith. I don’t mean to pry but—”

“You want to know why I was suspended.”

“I’ll admit, I’m awful curious.”

Bella leaned in as if sharing a scandalous secret. “I wore a tank top to school on Monday.”

Wilma blinked. “That’s it? That’s why you’re under house arrest? Were your lady bits exposed or something?”

“Nope. All my lady bits were perfectly covered. But the dress code says girls can’t show their shoulders, so they sent me home. I went back Tuesday wearing a top with spaghetti straps, and they sent me home again. Then I showed up yesterday in leggings, which are strictly forbidden. The high school has a three-strikes policy, so I finally got suspended.”

“And that’s what you wanted?”

“I figured it was the least I could do to show my support. A girl in tenth grade got sent home last week for wearing a tank top. There was a boy in her class wearing the very same shirt, but he got to stay. The girls were confused, so I looked up the dress code and found out it only applies to us.”

It had been the same when Wilma attended the local high school seven decades earlier. She felt a hot blast of shame remembering the day she was sent home after a shirt she’d worn without comment at twelve was deemed pornographic by a male teacher shortly after she turned thirteen. Wilma recalled her mother frantically scrounging to come up with money to buy clothes that disguised Wilma’s growing breasts. Seventy goddamned years later, and absolutely nothing had changed.

“So you decided to protest the dress code?”

“Not right away,” Bella told her. “First I went to see the principal to tell him the code was old-fashioned and unfair. He said dress codes are necessary because if girls are allowed to wear what we want, the boys won’t be able to focus. I said why not let the girls dress comfortably and send the boys home until they can show self-control?”

“That’s an excellent argument.” The girl should go to law school, Wilma thought. “What was the principal’s response?”

“He said it’s easier for girls to dress modestly than for boys to behave. And so I told him I wasn’t interested in following rules that make life harder for girls so it can be easier for boys. Until the rules change, they’ll just have to make do without their head cheerleader.”

“What’s in it for you?” Wilma asked.

“Justice,” Bella said as if it was the only reason that mattered.

Damn. Wilma knew that feeling. That burning desire to balance the scales had sent her to law school all those years back. The need to fight injustice, right wrongs, kick ass, and prevent the strong from screwing the weak.

“Most girls in our family have gone to that school. You’re the first to stand up and challenge those stupid rules. I’m impressed.”

“I got the idea from this book.” Once again, Bella held up The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette.

“May I see that?”

Bella passed the book across the table, and Wilma opened it up to a random page and found herself confronted by a jewel-colored illustration of female genitalia. Convinced she couldn’t be seeing things right, Wilma squinted and brought the book close to her face. She’d been alive for eighty-four years. She’d had three husbands and six children. And yet until that very moment, Wilma had been laboring under the misconception that her urethral opening was in a different spot. She was suddenly jealous of the rich girls who’d owned copies of The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette. What else had they known that she didn’t? Then a light went on in Wilma’s brain. She closed the book and opened it back up at the title page. Someone had slipped the dust cover of The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette over A Girl’s Guide to the Revolution.

Wilma was familiar with that title, too. She’d seen it in the paper on the town’s list of banned books.

“Where did you say you found this?” she asked her great-granddaughter.

“Lula Dean’s little library,” Bella said, without mentioning a word about Lindsay.

Wilma wouldn’t have thought Lula had it in her. “Hop up,” she ordered her great-granddaughter. “You and I are going for a walk.”

“Where are we going? You’re not mad about the library, are you?”

“Hell no, child. We’re going to your school,” Wilma said. “You ever hear of Title IX?”

Bella nodded. “There’s a chapter about it in my book, but I haven’t gotten to it yet.”

“Title IX is a federal law that forbids sex-based discrimination in schools. That means your school can’t have one set of rules for girls and another for boys. The dress code as it’s written is illegal.”

“That’s right!” Bella exclaimed. “Mama said you used to be a lawyer.”

“I’m still a goddamned lawyer,” Wilma told her.

It had been ages since Wilma had taken a stroll through town. It wasn’t that she was feeble, like her family assumed. She’d simply lost interest in life. Maybe that was what her children had picked up on. Her body had been functioning, but her heart wasn’t in it. The woman who’d broken the governor’s toe had slipped away. That’s why they’d treated her like she was half dead. For all intents and purposes she had been.

On the way to the school, Wilma and Bella stopped in front of the Dean house. A post rose above the white pickets of Lula’s fence. Fixed to the top was a wooden hutch in the shape of a house, its walls lavender and decorated with hand-painted flowers. The cabinet’s door was a glass window through which three shelves of titles could be browsed.

“You sure this is where you got the book?”

“That’s it,” Bella confirmed.

The remaining books seemed ridiculous. Wilma spotted Chicken Soup for the Soul and Buffy Halliday Goes to Europe!

“Look, here’s one for you!” Bella opened the library and pulled out a copy of 101 Cakes to Bake for Your Family and handed it to her great-grandmother. “Didn’t you say you wanted to try something new for the party?”

Wilma opened it and staggered back a step before recovering. Bella let out a whoop.

“Yep,” Wilma said, snapping the book shut. “You were right, sweetie. This one will do perfectly.”

Later in May, the entire Cummings family gathered in the backyard at Wilma’s house. Once again, Wilma had baked herself a giant birthday cake. Unlike previous years, this cake remained carefully concealed behind a folding screen until everyone who’d RSVP’d had arrived.

The hidden cake was the cause for much speculation—most of which Wilma, still presumed to be hard of hearing, was able to enjoy. The screen hid a disaster, the guests had concluded. She simply couldn’t have pulled it off again this year. This would almost certainly be the last celebration of this sort, they said. The old girl didn’t have it in her anymore.

When the time came, Bella (who’d decided to stick with her given name) was the one who got everyone’s attention.

“Wilma wants me to thank you for coming! She made this year’s birthday cake from scratch and she’d like to dedicate it to all y’all. But before we get started, I’ll need all the great-grandchildren to follow me inside for a special surprise!”

Once the kids were safe in the house, Wilma stepped forward and opened the screen. Behind it stood a four-foot-tall penis cake rising from a base of two hairy balls.

Cissy looked like she might faint.

“We really should get this on camera for court,” Dean muttered.

“Poor thing has lost her mind,” one of his daughters whispered.

“I’ve lost my mind, have I?” Wilma demanded, demonstrating her excellent hearing. “I think it expresses my feelings perfectly. Y’all have been a bunch of pricks lately. By the way, I’d like you to meet my representative, Ms. Dorinda James from the Atlanta firm James, Jackson and Monroe.”

Ms. James stepped up. She was a six-foot-two Amazon with a degree from Yale and a Ms. Olympia title.

“Now, Ms. James, some members of my family have been questioning my mental fitness, so I figured this cake might settle things. It’s a red velvet cake with beige buttercream icing. I used dowels to ensure the structure stayed nice and rigid. The testicles are chocolate cake baked in a hemisphere cake pan and covered with fondant and coconut shavings. They’re not just beautiful. They’re functional, too.”

Wilma hit a switch and whipped cream sprayed out the top of the cake and fell like snow on the crowd. Some of the family froze in horror, unable to pull their eyes away from the eruption. A few ran for the house to avoid getting stains on their clothes. The ones she’d always liked best stayed put and stuck out their tongues.

“Y’all seen enough or should I show you what else it can do?” Wilma lifted up the table skirt to reveal a motor underneath.

Struggling to keep a straight face, Ms. James spoke for the crowd. “I think we’ve seen more than enough, Ms. Cummings.”

“Then let me make something clear to my family, once and for all. I ain’t dead, I ain’t demented, and I want my goddamned picture back.”