23 “I Woke Up” by Jarod Valencia-Cheng

The first time that I remember my dad offering me a taste of his coffee, I regretted it almost instantly. It was beyond bitter, a sudden black fire spreading across the length of my tongue and scorching it. It was that oil alight in that Burger King cup that served as my dad’s fuel for the morning, allowing him to drive to DC every morning against the competition known as the Capital Beltway. He wasn’t going to work that day; I think it was the weekend. But still, he enjoyed drinking it. I think that he laughed a little at my complaining that the coffee was so bitter—he only drank it black, he said, not like my mom and her sugar and cream that was so sweet it wasn’t even coffee anymore. Black coffee is the way to go if you wanted to work hard. That’s all my parents ever really seemed to do when it wasn’t the weekend; I didn’t have the luxury of parents who came home before school or stayed there like some of the kids my age. It was from then on that I would disavow coffee.

***

My mom and her tía, who we also called Tía growing up, used to tease me that if I couldn’t stomach coffee nor tea that I was quite strange for a child who spoke fluent Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. Not that there was something wrong with me, but why does my younger brother seem to enjoy coffee so much more than I? They would laugh, but I didn’t really understand it either. I mean, coffee tastes bad, right? Tea wasn’t much better. It never bothered me; I was happy with my rice milk and carried on like any typical American child might. Except, I wasn’t that. I was lactose intolerant. I was a product of two immigrants that came at a young age whose parents were worked day-in and day-out to make ends meet to achieve that American dream, the dream that my parents somehow achieved and kept them and myself dreaming about the quintessential American lifestyle that I thought we were leading. I didn’t realize that American parents typically didn’t take their kids to third-world countries and into impoverished areas to truly visit “home,” that they didn’t eat plates on plates of chicken feet or beef tripe or turnip cake in dim sum style to celebrate anything. I didn’t realize that I was Colored for a long time. I didn’t realize, nor did my parents even dream of, that my hair would grow so long as I got older and taller that I would look over my shoulder when a police car passed me by.

***

Nowadays, I take a cup of coffee almost once every week or every two weeks to enjoy the warmth and smell. I take after my dad, not really being able to get any kind of buzz going unless I’m on an empty stomach—I take my coffee, though, more like my mom. Tea is usually reserved for traditional occasions, your birthdays and Lunar New Years and family get-togethers. When did I change? It could very well have been those half-price Dunkin’ lattes after school my senior year of high school, or being surrounded by the whitest people that I’ve ever encountered during my college years, or even just getting myself woke. You know how people say to be dramatic that “everything changed in a single moment?” I really don’t know when that was. All I know is that I woke up between one day and the next, I thought to myself that I wasn’t that typical American child anymore. Where he went, I’m not sure; the one that looked in the mirror that day was the one that thought they could use a cup of coffee.