Cafetera Bialetti

“Bueno, el café es una de las cosas más importantes para los puertorriqueños y el mayor parte del caribe y Suramérica.”

Damn it; I forgot the lecture was going to be in Spanish. Our teacher was in the front preparing coffee - an espresso pot here, a French press there, ground up instant coffee, one of those vessels for Japanese preparation. The name of it is escaping me; I will just wait until she tells the class.

Here’s the thing: I don’t really drink coffee. I was born with an extra wire, to burn, I guess. But the teacher? She drinks about four cups a day, even before bed. Suicide, you ask me. There’s no way to rest your body if you’re hammering caffeine like that. She harps on about it being a cultural thing, somebody “like me” can’t understand. “Understand what?” I respond. “Understand how caffeinated drinks work or being Puerto Rican?”

It’s not a real argument. I don’t think it is, anyway. In our case, we these “fights” - lots of prodding and eye rolling and frustration-ending-in-hugs since we are only getting to know one another now. It’s easier that way, really. Then, we don’t have to acknowledge the adoption or the mode by which we met. We can just pick the last conversation up like new friends in her class: I can tell her what’s new, she can sprinkle some information about our biological family, and we both walk away from each other - a mutual decision, this time.

I was 23 when I started asking questions. It hadn’t bothered me - being adopted - since my family was also brown-skinned. There was none of that weird subterfuge, though. They were always honest: “you’re our child, you just got to us a different way.” For years, that was enough and I lived comfortably in the space where I was loved. My adoptive parents have a philosophy; they decided, before marriage, to care for the children that are already here. They adopted my first sibling when they were in their early twenties. They’re in their sixties now.

You can imagine our house, then, and how many people were in it on a regular basis. I legally have thirteen siblings. And, no, none of us look alike, not really – unless you’re just racist like that and assume all darker skinned people have the same face. Nope, we don’t look alike. Just a big, brown-skinned family filling airplanes and buses and trains with raucous laughter and gospel music and crass jokes about adoption and surrogacy.

I got on a DNA site just because; four of my siblings joined me – Johnny, Nessa, and Lyra. They wanted to confront the missing links in their histories the way I did. I knew a little bit more than them; my adopted parents said my biological parents didn’t want to give me up but couldn’t afford to care for me. Open adoption wasn’t in fashion back then and I don’t think any of my parents would have agreed to it, adoptive or biological. I wanted to see what happened, how the information would make me feel, not challenge their love for me. Since my results came back first, we all piled around the computer to read.

54% West African received a resounding, “duh.”

16% Spaniard fizzled out with more of a “huh.”

30% Taino? It was enough to make all of us fall over.

“That’s why you be speakin’ all that Spanish, girl!” Johnny was over the moon.

“Woah… you’re like… actually native?” Nessa might have been high.

“Oh, Ju-Ju, this sounds like a family trip!” Lyra, our little adventurer.

Their results, though, made them angry, a little bit bitter - it wasn’t just DNA but family members they were able to find. And when she came up, I understood – that bitterness, that anger. It was like something boiled up from the soles of my feet, through my knees and hips, up my spine, and into my mouth.

“I have a fucking sister?”

I didn’t have any other matches. Just her. And now she’s teaching me about coffee. I tried, in vain, to find any other family member to connect with; I didn’t want to speak to this woman who looked so much like me, who had the same ears, who knew how to take care of our hair, who had the names of our parents blocked on her God damned profile.

It was all unfair. She holds all the cards and makes all of the decisions about how we engage. I usually have backup when I go somewhere new. Having siblings that look nothing like you can help that way; I just have them come along, we enter at different times, but we are all able to support one another under the veil of relative anonymity. But not here; it’s her class and she controls registration and having the same last name is a red flag.

“Sorry,” Nessa said, “I tried signing up but no dice. Wait – I was blocked from the class? That can’t be right -”

“Julie, ¿quieres compartir tus pensamientos?”

That’s right, I’m in class and she’s asking us about coffee. Focus.

“No tengo opiniones.”

She did that, too - tried to sneak in a question when she thought I wasn’t looking or listening. She didn’t want my thoughts about the social influence of coffee in the United States and Europe, she just wanted to embarrass me. “It’s funny when you doze off in class; maybe you should drink more coffee.” It was frustrating to play this game: she blocked me from our biological parents. I learned she was born after me – when our parents were more financially stable. They shared a one-bedroom apartment in Queens and my father worked in the Twin Towers. They took the train together and they visited the island together and they celebrated Christmas together.

They drank coffee together.

Her motivations for keeping us apart were unclear. I didn’t really give a damn about her ego or how this might hurt her or them. I just wanted to talk to them, to tell them I’m okay, to say thank you for sending me to my adoptive parents. I wanted a normal relationship with someone who didn’t view me as normal, who couldn’t respond from the standpoint of a healthy biological family to a healthy adoptive one.

She poured small cups of coffee from all the different vessels for everyone else in the class, the ones seating in the front, the people who paid to be there. A class member protested: “don’t they want some coffee?” She chided, “they don’t drink coffee.” Class was ending; she was selling the usual packages of 100% Puerto Rican coffee. She described how this benefited whole communities – ujamaa¸ my mom would say. Cooperative economics. The room empties and I stay behind to help with clean up.

“You don’t have any opinions on the social influence of coffee in Europe? Really?” she began. “Why do you keep coming to this class if you aren’t going to meaningfully engage?” It didn’t seem like she was joking.

“It’s really easy for you to get offended,” I reply, “but I haven’t once complained about hearing the same lecture on repeat for weeks.” I was not joking.

“Rude,” she says. “Make me a cup of coffee.” Not much choice in the matter, I guess. So, I grab the cafetera and the big green bag of Cafe Lareño and get to work. The trick to not making a bomb of her Bialetti is filling the water to just below the small air valve. I pack the cup full of freshly ground coffee beans and seal the canister with the top tightly screwed.

“Do you know why this is so important to you meeting mami and papi?” she almost whispered. She didn’t wait for me to respond. “Every morning, we get up together, drink coffee and talk. For years,” she paused, “all they talked about was you.”

I stopped screwing on the lid and turned to face her head on. She was crying.

“I was so angry, then,” she sniffled, “like why talk about this child you don’t have in front of the child you do, you know?”

The Bialetti quietly landed on the cooktop, and I turned it on. It was difficult to quietly listen. I wanted to scream. I wanted tell her how ridiculous the past six months had been. We don’t owe one another anything, sure – but her parents should be here telling me this themselves – not her.

The cafetera bubbled.

“I gave mami your number and she was so… happy,” she was looking at me now. “I will never know what that’s like.”

Now, I was really pissed.

“So, I’ve been coming here instead of meeting your parents,” I felt my fist tighten, “our parents because you’re jealous?”

The lid on the cafetera rattled. The coffee was ready. I turned off the cooktop and grabbed a cup nearby, adding the cream and sugar I knew she liked because I’d watched her make her own coffee for half a year. I poured the coffee slowly, thinking about what to do or say, thinking about why throwing this coffee pot on the floor or in her face were both bad ideas, thinking about cursing her out, too. She just looked at me, helpless, as I stirred the coffee in her cup. Her phone rang loudly and I passed the cup to her, allowing her to answer.

“Hola, mami, bendición,” she started, “si, si, está aquí conmigo – un momento.”

She extended the phone with one hand and gave me this defeated look. I grabbed the phone and put it to my ear.

“Hello, this is Julie.”