Buttercream

As a child, I take silky white icing on my spreader and press it onto a yellow round of cake. I dig into the surface, dragging the smooth topping into it, shredding it to granules. The cake crumbles with white, growing milky and dirtier. The spreader's wounds edge deeper as I try to fix the mess.

My mother asks for the spreader and, with strong arms, moves the icing over the crumbs like a foamy sea tide caught in time over the surf, stilled. The crisp white waves of the icing emulate this flowing. They hide the jagged marks and chunks I've carved.

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It's all about the buttercream. It's the 10x sugar and the whipped butter cut smooth into each other's bodies until they are one flesh, melting on tongues and slipping down throats. Heavy cream bathes them, seeping in like a secret remedy or an old wives' tale. One tablespoon of Mexican vanilla swishes, two times the natural strength. Buttercream is sweet and not too sweet. Creamy and light. Edible in spoonfuls.

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The Wal-mart cake supplies hide behind the party favors and greeting cards. I'm aching, so it's the first place a stop in the store. I go over the tools in my mind. The piping paper. The mouths of the icing tips, ridged in different designs. They do not have the the flower nail my mother blooms roses on. Its top is smooth and round like a half dollar; the bottom is a thick pin. She grows them from the inside, overlaying pink cream petals. She scrapes them, gently, from the half dollar and places them on the cake.

She acts like God did in Eden, churning up nature's matter, pure and soft, and piping the garden out as icing. He laid buttercream in the fields: sweet and plump, the blooms of spring.