By five, she had already been working two hours.
Coffee brewing.
Pastries set out.
Small things moved until they looked right.
Her supervisor stopped by to check on her.
There was nothing to check.
Every trip, every morning,
I come down for the family’s coffee.
Four lattes, at least.
Two vanilla. Two caramel.
Oat milk in every one.
She knows the order by now.
Four lattes take a while.
So I ask her something,
and she gives me the whole story.
Where she is from.
How her brother is doing at Bella.
Her whole week, start to finish.
Then she sets all four on a plate,
lids and all,
so I can get them back to the family
without a spill.
She paints.
She sings.
She dances.
I have seen the paintings.
But most mornings her canvas is a coffee station,
finished before the rest of us
are awake enough to see it.
Six days a week.
Sometimes seven.
When she gets a day off,
she cooks and cleans
and calls her family back in Tepoztlán.
She has learned more languages than I ever will.
Someday she will be somewhere else,
making something entirely her own.
I hope so.
But this morning,
while it was yet night in Cabo,
the coffee was hot,
the pastries were out,
and the small things had been moved
until they looked right.
Nobody asked her to.
The first thing I ever asked her,
three years ago,
was how to say her name.
“Any,” she said.
“Like Orphan Annie.”
She has been answering ever since.
Boutwell Jones
Red Clay Gospel
