Baby Shower Essay, Unfinished

This, from an unfinished essay on a baby shower:

The rain begins slowly, easily, not yet changing the temperature of the air. The kind of rain that will either let up, or rain on and on all day. I uncrumple the directions, written on the back of a credit card application envelope, “Cab to Pier 25.” I’m carrying a box, inside are two Scripture Cakes that I baked earlier that morning. Scripture Cake, an easy recipe, requires that you recite Biblical verse as you add each ingredient−cream the butter while mouthing Judges 5:25: He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish. I figured that it would make a nice addition; New Yorkers like anything they deem to be home-spun. People will assume that since I’ve brought it, and I am originally from Tennessee, it must be a old-fashioned Southern recipe. But the cake actually originated in New England some time in the late 1920’s. The box is still warm on the bottom, and the rain begins to darken the cardboard top, one tiny spot at a time.