Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn

Author:Jessica Hagedorn [Hagedorn, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780140149043
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1990-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

The Weeping Bride

THERE IT IS, THE centerpiece on the presidential table: a twelve-tiered, gold and white cake trimmed with silver sugar doves. No. It’s a twelve-tiered, white and silver cake with white sugar doves and gold filling, created especially for the occasion by the Alacran family dentist, Dr. Benita Zamora. Her son is a poet of the underground, and she is not at the wedding. The perennially smiling dentist has been detained by four unsmiling members of the Special Squadron Urban Warfare Unit while on the way to her car after baking the splendid cake. The car, a modest gunmetal-blue Toyota, is still locked and parked in front of the Makati Dental Center’s steel and glass building. A half-eaten ham sandwich lies on the back seat, wrapped in wax paper. There seem to be no witnesses to the sudden event. Dr. Benita Zamora is simply not at the wedding. Her son’s whereabouts are also unknown. According to The Metro Manila Daily, the poet’s mother has been placed under house arrest. Or rather, she was placed under office arrest. The popular, affluent dentist, dentist to the stars, has chosen to spend the rest of her days within the confines of her professional environment. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I only go home to sleep…. I’d rather die in my office,” the dentist reveals under torture. She refuses to disclose her son’s whereabouts.

No. It’s actually a twelve-tiered hallucination, a golden pound cake with white vanilla and rum icing, white marzipan doves with silver candy eyes, sculpted white chocolate bows attached to silver filigree butterflies imported from Spain. No. Actually, the silver filigree butterflies were carefully constructed by sixteen blind nuns from the Convent of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. The silver filigree butterflies are a gift from the First Lady, filigree butterflies suspended by invisible wires, filigree butterflies flying out of the bottom tier of the phenomenal cake.

The dentist is dead. The dentist never existed. The unforgettable wedding cake has actually been designed and baked from scratch by the bride’s glamorous mother, Isabel Alacran. “I never knew she could cook!” the First Lady exclaims, visibly impressed by the intricacies of the edible sculpture. “My wife was trained to be an architect,” Severo Alacran whispers confidentially to the First Lady and the President. The beaming President grunts with admiration. He hardly moves at all, swollen and rooted to his chair. He and his wife are guests of honor at the wedding.

Holding hands under an arc of violet, spun sugar flowers, the bride and groom figurines are balanced on a bed of buttery roses on the top tier of the cake. The First Lady groans with pleasure. She is served the first slice, and takes a healthy bite. The President shakes his head, points to his stomach, and refuses the cake offered to him. The First Lady signals for more. A young waiter with Elvis Presley hair rushes to serve her.

Senator Avila once said: “Food is the center of our ritual celebrations, our baptisms, weddings, funerals.

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