Origins

I wake up at 5:30 to open the shop by 7:00 a.m.—a personal attack. After turning on the lights, I scoop two cups of house roast into a liner and set it to brew. I immediately prepare another liner with Community Coffee; Tim will come in later, like always, wanting a cup of both. Under the sound of a constant drip, I shape the grounds into an anthill. The scent is earthy, like burning wood or dry grass—everything about this clings. The color has already stained my clothes. I go home with tiny beige islands floating on my linen top.

I think I like being a barista, or at least how adequate I am at making a latte. I can admire the meditation of drink preparation: stamp the grounds, froth the milk, dilute the espresso to an optimal shade of brown. I’ve learned to at least accept the job. My coworkers are a lot younger, more spirited and talkative, so I’m never bored. Esther commends me on the amount of people who seem to recognize me. “You’re just so friendly,” she offers, as an explanation. “Maybe,” I say, “but I’m also the first brown person they see every morning.” I stick out the way a young Mexican woman in southern Louisiana does. She giggles, then makes a cappuccino.

To some, I’m Rosa, or even Rosa Maria. I tell customers my name, and they instantly change it in front of me, like an option off our menu. When I take their order, they ask if I know Spanish. They’re disappointed when I say, “Un poquito.” I ask what kind of milk they prefer, and they ask where I’m from. They push, “No. Where are you from really? You are Hispanic, right?” They smile when they’re right. They tip better when they’re right. I grab a medium-sized cup and ask myself, “Who am I?” They observe my every move.

So I appreciate it when my boss asks if I’d like to learn how to roast, a solitary job in a room in the back, past the restrooms and storage room. The roasting room is hotter than the front. It’s dim, and the walls are lined with large plastic bins, labeled in Sharpie: Ethiopia, Guatemala, Sumatra. The smell is sharper, too. Something between earth and metal, or dust and fire. The roasting machine itself is huge, round-bodied like a furnace. It stares at you when you walk in. Difference is, I stare back. I wiggle my fingers inside a bin, and something resembling tiny rocks kisses my hand. My boss explains that these are what beans look like before they’ve been roasted: white, almost green, smaller, more dense. They’re foreign, and yet, I love them.

“Once they’re roasted,” she says, “they’ll shed the silver skin and darken.” She points to a large map of Central and South America pinned to the farthest wall. “Circles are where we get our beans. Customers love the Guatemalan light roast,” she says. “But ask them where Guatemala is, and they panic. People are nuts.” She moves around the room, speaking airflow and chemical reactions. I’m halfway buried in beans, half listening. I dig my arms deeper into the bins; I swim in them. First, in Mexico. Then, Guatemala. Nicaragua. Farther south. The beans feel like home, or small hugs from people I don’t know but know me. I watch my boss roast one batch, and then it’s my turn.

My shoulders fall as I pour the beans into the drum. I listen to them hit metal and control the stream of hot air with a small, touchy knob. The beans ripple in a fountain of movement. I watch them darken by degrees. The beans pop—once, then twice. They sound like a name mispronounced, said and said again. I think of the places these beans have come from, the hands that picked them. How we label them. How we praise their richness, asking, “Where were you grown?” and “What was the soil like?” But the beans don’t answer. They just darken, deepen, become more themselves. I want to do the same.