Chapter 3

One of the better things about working as a barista is the apron that keeps hidden my figure and paper bag pants – the type with an elastic waist such that the fabric balloons from underneath for a baggier fit. Furthermore, the apron is in my favorite color: forest green. This apron, however, reflects subservience. At the drive-thru a woman was exchanging payment for a shaken espresso when I couldn’t help but notice the lanyard around her neck in my favorite color – that hunter verdant green. In blocked white letters was written, “IVY LEAGUE SCHOOL…” I asked her what it was all about. What was the context of her claiming to represent one of the 8 preeminent institutions, two of which I had attended. She looked annoyed and in a demeanor that seemed to talk down to me said that she was a teacher at a private school that yielded graduates who were admitted to Ivy League schools. I nonchalantly told her I was an Ivy League degree holder, hence my curiosity, to which she expressed surprise before driving off.

College was not the topic of choice among my fellow colleagues who seemed to spend more time working at the coffeehouse than partaking in mentally stimulating scholarly pursuits. I oftentimes found myself wondering when they found time to study. On the flip side, I saw the customers that flocked the café space studying with an extreme focus that only seemed to strengthen with every sip of their beverage of choice. They had laptops, headphones, smart phones, and a few had abandoned their generational Z technology for a pen and paper. I pined longingly to be one of those customers – to be in high school once more. To have hope and years left to learn and experience, years not confined within societal constructs for age. As many years as it has been post-grad, I knew I had those educational experiences, and no one could take that away from me.

I never anticipated on letting my colleagues in on my curriculum vitae, but felt compelled to set myself a part the best way I knew how – my degrees. So one day, I asked the young woman who I saw sporting a collegiate shirt from the same state of my undergraduate alma mater, Pennsylvania, if she attended that school. She confirmed that she had and asked me where I went to school. I answered matter-of-factly. There was a pause just then. I had a feeling we were mutually wondering what the other person was doing working as a barista instead of pursuing a job that utilizes our educational degrees. We couldn’t converse further. Someone was ordering a blended ice or steamed milk drink just then. We were saved by the bell that rung on our headsets; It cued us when someone had just made an order.

In another instance, one of the baristas, a high school senior, had alerted all the other baristas over headset. “To all of you who went to college,” she prefaced, “how many schools did you apply to and where?” During the shift when my face rests in a grimace and my soul feels deadened, I immediately felt a spark in me and I answered, “one school.” I was the only one who answered one. The college applicant replied that she was being forced to apply to upwards of twenty schools. She asked me where I had applied to, to which I responded, reluctantly. I did not want further questions prying into how I ended up working as a barista. Instead, she just expressed awe and said that I was special. I cowered back into my corner at the drive-thru window, where I was planted for the hour. I felt her gaze fall on me for the rest of my shift and I felt especially self-conscious.

The question for why I was working there eventually came up by yet another barista, eight years my junior, already with three kids of her own, I found out in a roundabout manner. She couldn’t believe I was 32 years old and had my master’s degree already. “So this cannot be your main job, right? I wouldn’t work here if I had my…” she trailed off when I responded that no, this wasn’t my main job. I’m a writer, recently unpublished, and searching for a job, waiting on a paid internship opportunity to pull through for me. What she didn’t know was that this was my only job. I had my stash of index card listing recipes for drinks and notes on the barista craft in my apron pocket. I studied the artistry of being a barista instead of honing my craft of writing. I had given up on pitching, having my pitches never replied to and sometimes rejected only to find that the outlet which had rejected them soon published a story alarmingly similar to the idea I had sent over.

As summer made way for unofficial start of fall, the start of the academic school year, and then the true autumnal equinox, it dawned on me that the café would buzz around 2 pm, around the time of school dismissal. Throngs of kids from a mix of private schools, as evidenced by their plaid uniform, and public schools, made their way inside. They came in groups. Some were cheerleaders and without a backpack in sight. Others had backpacks that remained unopened. They weren’t studying, and instead hanging out. They were detoxing with coffee drinks and again I found myself longing to be one of them, part of their groups, mentally unloading off school and recharging before reloading myself with a barrage of knowledge for an upcoming exam.

The truth was, I never hung out in high school. Instead, I stayed after school for whatever extracurricular I had planned for the day, or came home to attend a Girl Scout meeting, a piano lesson, or a dance rehearsal. My unloading would be when I finally dropped my backpack, or rather, the trending tote bag at home, sitting with my mother and watching a rerun of Gilmore Girls. My recharging would be eating a snack, either hummus and some accoutrements to dip into it, two 100-calorie snack packs that were so popular at the turn of the century, butter crackers and strawberry jam, or a chocolate chip cookie or brownie that my mother made from the boxed mixes.

I subsisted off of breakfast only during high school. I wouldn’t eat throughout the day. Back then my breakfasts consisted of either a packaged confection like marshmallow pie, coffee cake, cupcake, fudge round, or the discontinued package of hard-as-a-rock coconut cookies, a chocolate, blueberry, or glazed donut from the local franchise, or a toasted bagel slathered in butter from the corner deli at the bus stand. Throughout the day I would participate in physical education activities that included running track, and performing aerobic and abdominal exercises. I would walk up countless flights of stairs in my high school that was built up, like all the other New York City schools that had to account for lack of space. I toted around pounds of textbooks, binders, notebooks, calculator, and writing equipment on my person at all times. The amount of energy I expended throughout the day was somehow sustained by my early morning meal.

Upon walking home from the bus stop, I would smell the strong aromas of food wafting from my house. My mother would be home from her job by then and know to cook for her daughter with a seemingly voracious appetite. I ate seconds and thirds if my first serving wasn’t large enough. I sometimes finished the majority of food before my dad arrived and sat down to dinner. I did not compare the quantity I ate to that of anyone else and found my appetite completely warranted. I thought that I had deserved the fruits of my labor, namely, starvation throughout the day. Sometimes I ate so much that I would unintentionally vomit, but I would fight tooth and nail to keep the contents down. My main method of doing so was by walking. My dad would escort me around the block in the evening until the nausea subsided. He knew, even back then, that I did not eat during the day. He knew my stomach couldn’t handle the influx of food. He knew his daughter was too competitive for her own good.

In my freshman year of college, I lost enough weight to lose my period and was told by my then pediatrician that if I kept losing weight, I would have to undergo treatment for anorexia and leave school. I made everyone believe that I had lost my appetite due to homesickness. My father reasoned that perhaps being active and running on the treadmill would cause me to be hungry. I tried it, believing this to be true as well. It didn’t work. In fact, I believe it stressed my body even more so. I still wasn’t eating and the extra activity only depleted whatever energy stores I had left. The next time I went to the campus gym was my senior year. I saw an acquaintance that I admittedly felt threatened by, running effortlessly on the treadmill, her naturally silky straight tresses pulled back into a neat ponytail that nonchalantly swung from side to side with every stride she took. I started running alongside her, all the while feeling fatigued and unable to go on, but I had vowed to keep running so long as she stayed on the treadmill. I ended up stepping off immediately after she had gone from my sight. The competitiveness cost me weeks of dancing before my dance team’s annual recital. I ended up spraining my foot while running.

I never cared for running. I remember my first experience formally running and not just playing TAG. I attended a high school known for its rigorous physical education program. We had to run track-and-field. Sometimes a mile, sometimes more than two, and always timed. The first time, I was winded. I remember coming home and crying while lying down on my mother’s lap, my knees still throbbing.

Years later, one morning, before dawn, I heard “basement door open,” chirped by the house security alarm detector. My father had gone down to the basement, our makeshift gym, and was lifting heavy weights and riding the stationary bike. Off and on he would go. The rhythmic panting and weights hitting the ground were so audible that it pulsated in my ear. I was in bed. I weighed 65 pounds. I resented that he had the will, the energy, the ability, and the permission to exercise. I shot out of bed and began running on the second floor of the house so he wouldn’t hear me. I lost my footing and fell face first onto the landing before the stairs. My nose shattered and a pool of blood surrounded me. He heard the loud thud and ran up the stairs to find me. Again, I was reminded why I never enjoyed running.

My therapist believes that I am currently in competition with my mother and maybe even my father. My father believes so as well. I’m less certain. It’s not a matter of who is eating less or more or who is moving is less or more. Instead, it’s the premise for my mother choosing to engage in formal forms of movement, like walking on a treadmill or performing crunches on a yoga mat. It’s my mother choosing to purchase a treadmill whilst I was suffering physically from anorexia due to my excessive walking and starvation that has me resenting her – resentment that is confused for competition. This scenario played out when I saw those high school students enter the café in the late afternoon after they had been dismissed. I resented them. I wanted to be them not because I was vying for attention or particularly wanted to go through the gamut of studying for exams and proving myself once more. Both my mother and those kids have something in common: a purpose. They both have a way to preoccupy their time. They are both goal-oriented with actual, attainable goals that they have control over.