Coffee

When I was eleven, I'd ask my mom if I could have coffee. “Certainly not,” she’d reply. “That’s for grown-ups.” But when she slipped out of the room, I’d take a sip and, if there was time, a drag from the cigarette she’d left burning in the ashtray. It was the coffee I wanted most, though. She always whitened it with Milnot canned milk instead of cream. When she went to tend to the washing machine or answer the door, I’d strike, taking two generous slurps, then adding a shot of Milnot to make up the difference. I wondered how I could get more.

I also wanted to earn money to buy a moped. I’d been bugging Mom to let me have a paper route, but she kept saying no. One morning I agreed to help Tommy Hendricks deliver newspapers on his route. He greeted me with a deepfried doughnut and a steaming cup of coffee.

As I snapped rubber bands around copies of the Muskogee Phoenix, I was in heaven.

Now I wanted a paper route not only for the moped but for the freedom to drink coffee. I continued helping Tommy without pay, hoping my dedication would convince my mother to let me have my own route.

While the rest of the town slept, Tommy and I drank our coffee and dreamed out loud of fast motor scooters, pellet guns, and girls. After we’d delivered the papers, we’d go to the truck stop and have even more coffee. The first time we ordered it, the waitress scowled at us. “Do your mamas let you drink that stuff at home?”

“I’ve had it since I was five,” Tommy said. “So has ol’ Randy here.”

Tommy always left a nickel tip, a lot considering he earned only sixty dollars a month. Once, old bachelor Biddle, the sixth-grade math-and-science teacher, drifted by our table and stared disapprovingly at our coffee cups. “Don’t you know that stuff will stunt your growth?” he said. We didn’t care. If he wanted to scare us, he should have told us it would shrink our peckers.

One morning Mom drove up at the truck stop and caught me having a cup of coffee, a cigarette, and a doughnut. She shouted for me to come home right after school that afternoon. For the rest of the day, I braced myself for her rage. When I got home, Mom was at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee in front of her.

“Do you want a cup?” she asked.

While I drank it, she lit a cigarette and lectured me on the evils of smoking.

Randy Pruitt
Wichita Falls, Texas

My fourteen-year-old daughter, Anna, attends a private girls’ school a thirty-minute drive from our house, and each morning I rush to get her to school and myself to work on time. I hope that the all-girl environment will help her heal from her father’s abuse. My new husband, William, is a caring man who begins every morning with an hour of meditation, but Anna is distrustful of men in general and has been reluctant to accept him.

One busy morning I ask William to drive Anna to school. I worry that this will be awkward for both of them, but they find they have a lot in common. The next day Anna asks him to drive her again, and again the day after that.

William starts waking up an hour early so he’ll have time to meditate before taking Anna to school. Though he’s tired from lack of sleep, he’s happy to have found a way to get to know his stepdaughter. One chilly morning William tells me Anna asked him to feel how cold her hands were, and she reached over and placed her hand in his. They held hands in silence for the remainder of the trip. It seems that something shifts in Anna after that. She becomes less angry and depressed.

During exam week Anna stays up late to study and is tired the next morning, so she and William stop for coffee on the way to school. This becomes their regular routine, which means they must leave even earlier every day, to allow time to stop. I worry how this will affect William’s meditation practice, so I buy a coffee maker and two travel cups to help them save time. When I bring my purchases home, I see a look of desperation in Anna’s eyes. William catches it too and announces that I should return the coffee maker. Anna visibly brightens. The two of them continue to set off early each morning for the neighborhood coffee shop. My once-frightened child is growing into a confident young woman.

I ask William, an experienced father with three grown children, for his thoughts on her transformation. He responds casually, “Oh, it’s mostly the coffee.” But I know better. He offers her the constant, dependable love she needs from a man — from a father.

Kathleen C.
Columbia, Maryland

It always began with a phone call. My mother would cup her hand over the receiver and order me to start a pot of coffee. I knew then that someone in the family was ill, or in trouble, or dead.

While my younger siblings and cousins were sent to the bedroom to play, I poured coffee, set out cream and sugar, and emptied ashtrays. My aunts and uncles arrived, and the adults all gathered around the kitchen table. My grandmother reigned over the proceedings. She had the final say before the doctor was called or the police notified.

When the adults wanted more coffee, they would simply raise their mugs in the air, which meant: “Fill it up, girl.” I learned our family history while refilling their cups. I found out about my uncle’s brain cancer, one cousin’s DUI, and another’s adultery.

One time the conversation grew unusually hushed. A cousin of mine had died suddenly in the convent. Jack Daniels was added to the coffee, and I heard the whispered word “suicide.” My aunt cried, and my uncle pounded his fist on the table. I remember the smell of strong coffee and cigarette smoke. I was told to leave the room.

After each family meeting, I would ask my mother what certain words meant: divorce, cancer, abortion, suicide. She always answered: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Carole U.
Franklin, Tennessee

My father's Italian-immigrant family didn’t take to my mother. Maybe it was because she was as feisty as they were, or because she was from the West Side of Manhattan and they lived on the East Side, or because she was such a stunningly beautiful woman. Whatever the reason, my grandparents didn’t ring our bell, though they would often visit my father’s brother and his family nine doors down. Once, I heard my mother ask my dad, “Does our house have the plague?”

Then one Friday night my mother opened the door to find my paternal grandfather standing on our porch, a five-inch stogie dangling from his lips. My sisters and I gathered around, afraid something bad had happened, but his smiling eyes calmed our fears. “Caffè?” he asked, using the Italian for “coffee.” My mother explained, in her limited Italian, that my father was still at work. My grandfather just repeated, “Caffè?” She invited him in.

Mom made my grandfather espresso in a silver coffee maker that my dad had bought in Little Italy. When it was ready, she poured two inches of black liquid into a yellow demitasse cup with a matching saucer and a slice of lemon on the side. We watched my grandfather heap three spoons of sugar into the tiny cup, which disappeared into his giant hands. After his first sip, he said, “Good. Thank you very much.”

Though retired, my grandfather came to Brooklyn every weekend to help my uncle in the family bakery, and he began to stop by our house afterward. Grandpa didn’t speak much English — and Dad was never home to translate when his father came by — but we managed to communicate.

My siblings and I showed him our school projects and artwork, which he praised as if they’d been painted by Michelangelo. He often brought us pieces of dough from the bakery, and we made silly shapes with it and baked it after he was gone.

One day Grandpa brought my mother a tiny espresso maker. It was so small, I thought it was a toy for my sisters and me. Through gestures and a word of English here and there, he explained that my mother should use this coffee maker when he came to visit, because ours was for eight, and this one was for two.

When I moved out of my parents’ house, I asked my mom for the little espresso maker. I tucked it away in a cabinet, where it has remained ever since. Recently Mom was helping me pack for a move and came across the tiny silver appliance. She held it delicately in her hands for a while. “Papa,” she said.

Michele Boccia
Albuquerque, New Mexico

A Good Deal. A Great Gift. Give The Sun as a holiday gift and save up to 30%.

PRINT

E-MAIL

SHARE

PDF

WRITE TO THE EDITOR

SUBSCRIBE