Amina Brown

Not for me.

I bake that cake and take a little corner off to taste it, and yes, tastes exactly like my childhood.

And she tells me an older woman in the church told her, use the cake mix, but make your frosting from scratch.

That's how you'll fool them.

And she did.

The whole family did.

So after this meal, after we feast, we sit around soaking her in, asking her all the questions we can think to ask,

So I say, grandma, who was the deal with the shoebox and the fried chicken and the cake?

Why'd you do that?

She said, oh, I did that because it's what my parents did for me during segregation.

In case we took a trip somewhere and there wasn't a safe place to stop, we made food to keep our family safe.

She said, I did it for my children during Jim Crow.

In case we took a trip and there wasn't a safe place to stop, I made that food to keep our family safe.

She said, I did it for you grandchildren because I want you to get home safe too.

And then I thought, there's my grandma making magic again, taking injustice, taking a painful history and pouring love in all the places she could get it.

Which is why when it's time for my cousins to leave, when they say they got to leave early, they got to head back to work.

I mean, I got to keep the tradition going.

I got to take that cake, slice it, wrap it in wax paper, tape it closed.

I gotta hope that cake and wax paper can somehow be a prayer that my cousins will get home safe too.

And all these years later, I still got my KitchenAid mixer.