I am Not a Baker

Margot Schiller

When I turned five years old, my dad made me a strawberry shortcake. There’s a picture of me somewhere lining the strawberries on top of the cake so that not an inch of white poked through the red. I liked that time. I liked that cake. It wasn’t indulgent. I didn’t need double chocolate covered in sprinkles and Oreos. I didn’t need to lick the bowl and stir the ingredients all by myself and hear the cracking of the eggs as pieces inevitably fell into the mix. I was happy to have my father do all of that. For me to be the little girl stacking strawberries.

But somewhere along the way, cake got complicated. Maybe it was on my thirteenth birthday when my best friend refused to eat her slice.

“Thirteen is when things go wrong for girls” my mom once said as an anecdote within a longer story, as if it was a matter of fact and not a disturbing statement worth dwelling over.

I suppose she was right. Thirteen is, after all, when the friend stopped eating the cake. She claimed that she’d never liked vanilla, but that was BS. She had an eating disorder, and quite frankly, we all did by that point—or were at least on our way to one.

Mine was special in that it got bad fast. The summer following that June birthday, I went from a healthy, playful girl to a corpse-like figure within weeks, and all the while I thought I looked lovely.

As a result, I developed an obsession with baking. I can’t recall most of what I made– everything was a malnourished blur—but I’ve seemed to hold on to an image of these apple tartlets I baked especially often.  I’d estimate the ingredients in the dough, sometimes replacing milk with oil. And then I’d form the dough into balls and shove them against the buttered edges of cupcake tins. I’d add my mixture of unpeeled apples chopped and covered in cinnamon sugar to the dough cups, and I’d sell the tartlets to elderly neighbors, who thought I was talented and adorable and certainly not troubled.

        My dad didn't want to believe that I had a problem either. Every morning, while I stressed to complete my various orders of baked goods, he’d beg me to drink a banana smoothie. I’d refuse.

“I’m just too busy,” I’d say.

And he would agree: “You’re just like me. You get so busy that you forget to eat.”

As soon as I got better—and it wasn’t soon, it took years—most events from that time grew humiliating and uncomfortable for me to relive. I didn’t want to think about an apple tartlet ever again. In fact, I didn’t want to bake at all. And yet there was always someone from my past to remind me.

“Oh, but you love to bake,” my grandmother would repeat.

Or, “What happened to that business?” a neighbor would ask.

Any mention of this made me grow flush with embarrassment. I wasn’t that person anymore. I chose to believe that maybe I wasn’t that person in the past either. Maybe she didn't exist. I wasn’t a baker. I never had been. I just had the type of unconventional illness that presents itself in pies.

But baking, at times, is unavoidable.

During one of those boring and too-long college summer breaks, for example, I found myself having weekly sex with a boy I didn’t care for at all. It was one of those things that maybe I shouldn’t have done, being that the memory of how his brown eyes would widen before a kiss still makes me squirm. And yet there were fond moments. Like the naughty sensation of sneaking into a friend’s empty room. Or how he’d lie over me and bite me on my shoulder. Or how I’d sit on his lap watching political debates and he’d slide his hands down my underwear.

        One night, as soon as he came over, he told me that he was hungry.

“Why,” I rolled my eyes, and he provided a vague explanation about some new med he was on.

I brought him down to my sparse pantry and presented to him different quick fixes—strawberry Pop-Tarts, frozen hash browns, pieces of toast with a special grass-fed butter that comes in green wrapping. He refused all. He was a man, he explained, he needed protein—a meal. And so, I pulled one of those single-serve chicken pot pies out from deep in the freezer and nodded in his direction as if to say “Okay, do your thing”. But he didn’t seem to want to do it himself. So, he sat on the stool, watching with his big brown eyes as I preheated the oven and peeled the plastic lining off the pie and poked holes in the cold dough with a fork. We watched TV together for the next forty-five minutes, and I would get up every now and then to open the oven and check on his meal, like a good 1950s housewife. I hated baking already, but I especially hated baking for him.

When the pie was ready, we sat across from one another at my dining table. I sipped at a homemade martini—pickle juice and vodka in an Ikea glass with ice pebbles—while he dug in, shoving gooey chunks of chicken and peas into his already disgusting mouth. The closer he came to finishing the pie, the grosser it got, as the once brown and crisp top disappeared, and the soft carrots mashed into the soupy bottom of the tinfoil. I continued to sip my drink, and he poked fun at my concoction as we struggled to form conversation beyond what was right in front of us.

The last time he and I ever had sex was the worst. There was no passion remaining of the little bit that was once there, and I fought to avoid tears until they did in fact appear, which I tried my best to hide from him. “What am I doing to my body?” I thought to myself. I must not care for it very much.

Following my college years, I started working as a nanny for a friend of a friend as a quick cash grab. I despised the job, although it was easy and well-paid. And although everyone told me that I just wasn’t used to working, I always sensed that there was something more to the equation than me being a spoiled girl. It felt as though something was wrong in the household itself– it was too sterile, too empty, too simplistic. Both parents always seemed satisfied with the bland life they’d made for themselves, and I never understood why.

The child suffered from this. Although he did well in school and the parents were kind enough to let him watch TV and eat pizza and have the normal childhood that some neurotics these days would prohibit, they never pushed him to do anything more—to make new friends, to write stupid songs, to explore the outdoors. His world was small, and I suppose that’s how it should be during childhood, but as I watched him grow up and move to new grades of school, his world didn’t seem to grow much with him.

One night, when I arrived at their house around six pm, his parents had laid out an array of ingredients on the kitchen counter: flour and eggs and measuring cups. The child was thrilled. He ran over in his dinosaur pajamas and explained that we’d be making a cake together. The mother winked at me. Together, of course, meant that I would be making a cake myself.

It wasn’t even my relationship with baking that bothered me in this scenario. It was more my laziness when it came to the job. But I did as I was told, and when the cake was out and cooled, the child frosted it himself, adding to the top center a pool of strawberry jam. For a moment, he reminded me of myself. 

        We brought our two plates over to the couch and he turned on the TV. He devoured his first slice, covering his mouth and hands with the jam, and then cleaned everything off—even the table—before walking over to the kitchen counter and taking another. I was unsure at what point I should stop him. The parents hadn’t said anything about that, and yet I’d hate to see him sick; that couldn’t be a good look for me as the nanny. When he got up a second time to take a third slice, I still didn’t have it in me to say a word. Maybe, in this moment, a glimpse of my suppressed anorexic past came over me and I couldn’t fathom the notion of telling someone so young not to eat.

        At 9 pm, when the kid fell asleep, I pulled open my book on the couch and the cat crawled onto my lap. I was the only person the cat seemed to like—even the parents had commented on it—and while an optimist would take this to mean that they have a magic touch with animals, I, a pessimist, took it to further prove that there was something wrong with the family itself. That they couldn’t get a cat they fed every day and had rescued as a kitten to like them while all it took me was a couple of hours with her. It must be that they’re too strict, I figured. They pick her up as they please and don’t let her drink from their water cups and scream when she scratches at the edge of the couch. Cats are not like dogs, I’d fantasized lecturing them. They can’t be controlled. Yes, you technically own them and yes, they are small and cute, but it’s best to submit to them, to let them do as they please, to only touch them when they want to be touched. Some might find this relationship strange, unfair, impractical. But I find it hopeful. How beautiful it is to make the active choice to treat something so much smaller and less powerful with respect.

        The father came home first that night—another strange attribute of the family: both the mother and father were always gone but never gone together.

“She really loves you the most,” he greeted me and the cat, and I smiled:

“Just luck.”

He was a big man, both in length and width. I imagined that he wished to lose weight but never put in the effort. His chin wasn’t as defined from his neck as I’m sure it once was, but the scruff of his beard made it palatable. I liked him, in all honesty. I didn’t like his home or the family he’d created or his relationship with the cat, but something about a confident man who listens with intention when you speak is hard to hate.

“How did the cake go,” he asked me.

“Great. Really, really delicious,” I replied, as if it had been a wonderful endeavor for myself as well, not just the child.

A couple of the remaining half-eaten cake plates sat on the table in the living room in front of me. I had a sudden fear that I should have cleaned them up.

“Here,” I said, standing up with the plates in hand, “have our leftovers.”

“Oh awesome,” he chuckled, “I’m starving.”

And so, the father sat down at the dining room table, and I carried the plates over and set them in front of him.  I collected my belongings one at a time, taking breaks to ask him about his night and describe to him vague aspects of my post-graduate life. 

“Wow, this is amazing,” he said, digging the side of his fork into the dense chocolate and licking the sticky strawberry off of his lips, “Do you bake often?”

“No.” I replied.

“You never have?”

“Never.”

“Well, you’re good at it.”

I hated myself for how much I loved to hear him say this. It was a compliment I’d never wanted and, yet, coming from him, it invigorated me. I wished to sit at the table across from him. To watch him finish the cake as elegantly as he had started it and then for me to carry the plate away like a good housewife would. Instead, I laced up my Doc Martens and wished him a good night. When he Venmoed my check the next day, the message underneath it jokingly read “cake”. I thought back to my little business as a child, to the image my mother once took—my skin colorless, my bony fingers gripping a Ziplock bag filled with cash from the miniature tartlets and various other baked goods. My business had brought me far more spending money than most kids my age, and I couldn’t bring myself to care. Maybe that’s what I really hated about baking: the fact that it always seems to be something you do when there’s nothing else going on.

The longer I spent working for the kid, the duller my own life became. It wasn’t a tragic thing, really. I still had fun on the weekends and maintained old college relationships that uplifted me. In the grand scheme of things, it was an unspectacular rut—nothing that could ruin a life. But as a result, I developed a new habit which involved smoking weed at a random time between 6 pm and midnight and baking myself something inedible. The recipes started out simple—sugar cookies without eggs, mug-cakes with too much flour, greek yogurt bagels. But then they began to involve frostings and lemon juices and chocolate melted over the stovetop. I tried to create cinnamon rolls without yeast and candies in ice cube trays. I always made a mess that took hours to clean up, and never consumed more than a few bites of my concoctions—they were all too disgusting. I was a good baker—yes—but I had no interest in using the correct ingredients in the right amounts. I only desired to create, to watch the chalky powdered sugar turn gooey with a spoonful of water, for the squishy doughs to be transformed hard by the oven. The process temporarily filled a shallow hole within me—it gave me something to do.

Getting out of the rut of course meant that the baking stopped, as did my time spent with the child. Instead, I found myself a job as a bartender at a recently renovated black-tie establishment. There, I made a name for myself. I bonded with the redhead who worked beside me, I came to know and network with the older and well-connected customers, I used the black outfit dress code as an opportunity to showcase a different costume of sorts each night. I’d shove my breasts into tank tops with tight built-in bras. Or zip myself into short high heels that made my legs look thin. Or clip on a long necklace that always got caught in things. I enjoyed the discomfort of professionality. It felt that I was in a place where things were happening, that I was a part of the commotion, that the world was growing with me. And, also, that I could create something without it being for nothing. There was power in the twenty-dollar price tag associated with every little drink I created, with the shaking of ice and the plink and plop of olives and orange slices.

One day, the father from that previous babysitting job stopped by the restaurant. I’d suggested it to both parents as an olive branch, being that I did quit in a hurry, and yet I’d expected it to never happen or for there to be at least some warning. He thumped in on an early Thursday night, greeted me like we long time best friends, and ordered an IPA. I carried it over to him, the froth on the top of the glass settling, and I placed the cup right in his hands. He seemed to have gained a bit more weight since our last goodbye, but he still looked fine. He asked me about my life, told me how much the child missed me, and I tried my best not to let him guilt me into coming back. I wondered if that’s why he’d made an appearance.

“But you seem really happy here,” the father continued as he took nervous sips of the beer, “I didn’t mean to intrude. I, just, was in the area and…”

“No, I’m glad to see you,” I interjected, “it’s really slow here at this time of day.”

There was a moment of silence. He sipped a bunch more.

“You know,” he said finally, “I never forgot that cake you made. Maybe they should give you a promotion here, have you help out with the pastries in the back room.”

This suggestion felt offensive. Perhaps it was the word “promotion”, or “help out”, or the simple fact that he was attempting to give me life advice at all.

“I told you this before. I’m not a baker.”

He didn’t respond. He just took more sips.

“I just like it here,” I continued.

“Well, then I’m happy for you.”

He left soon after that.

I reflected quite a bit, following his departure. It was, after all, a slow Thursday and his appearance had jarred me. I thought of that original night with the jammy cake. I wondered how the cat was doing without me. And then my mind drifted to the guy from college and then to the inedible pastries and then of course the anorexia and the tartlets which haunted me more than any of the rest, even all these years later. I could never have to bake again, I thought to myself, shoving potato chips from behind the counter into my mouth. This could be my new life: drinks and fascinating faces and constant excitement. I would never again be in a position where I needed to cook for anyone else. I am not a baker, I repeated to myself, I am not a baker, I am not a baker. It was a simple moment of clarity. But of course, these moments don’t last long.

It was 11 pm on that same Thursday night and I exited the restaurant into the darkness of the streets. My hoop earrings bounced against my AirPods as I walked. There was warmth in the air. I was happy. And then, all of a sudden, I was struck by an image I’d forgotten, throughout my evening of recollection: it was the image of myself as a child, stacking strawberries. I paused for a moment on the street and let myself mourn that moment in time. I mourned the sensation of being not a baker and also not, not a baker. I mourned when my world was small.