Let It Rain Coffee

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Praise for Let It Rain Coffee

“There are interludes reminiscent of García Márquez…and others that reveal Cruz’s own distinctive narrative gifts.”

—Mark Schone, The New York Times

“Cruz is adept at weaving the distinct personalities into the disconcerting fabric of the immigrant nightmare…. With such a sharp ear for voice and a knack for characterization, Cruz is on the cusp of master storytelling.”

—El Paso Times

“Cruz’s unvarnished, sympathetic account of immigrant struggles suggests she is a writer worth watching.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Cruz handles this sad tale with dignity devoid of melodrama. She demonstrates enormous affection for her characters without sentimentalizing their naïveté or ignorance.”

—Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Soledad

“[P]oignant and…a surreal reading experience tempered by the fine lines created between dream and reality. Tinted with the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, Cruz’s first novel is that of man and woman, selective amnesia and persistent memories, redemption and survival.”

—The Boston Globe

“A vivid, breathing cityscape teeming with raw beauty, danger, and magic…Cruz shows much promise as a writer.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“Cruz has created a compelling heroine…nobody’s ever really given us such a revealing look at New York’s Dominican population before, with its mix of working-class solidity and irritability from living on America’s margins…. Cruz, in this determinedly real yet often magical novel, offers canny insights into family life.”

—Los Angeles Times

“Angie Cruz is a revelation. She writes with confidence and compassion. She cleaves through the evasions and silences that obscure so much of what we call the ‘immigrant experience.’”

—Junot Diaz, author of Drown

“Angie Cruz is the real thing. She writes with rare combination of fierce passion and tender compassion for her unforgettable world.”

—Cristina García, author of Dreaming in Cuban and The Agüero Sisters

Also by Angie Cruz

Soledad

SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS

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New York, NY 10020

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2005 by Angie Cruz

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Cruz, Angie.

Let it rain coffee: a novel / Angie Cruz.

p. cm.

1. Washington Heights (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. 2. Dominican Americans—Fiction. 3. Immigrants—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3603.R89L47 2005

813’.6—dc22 2004065329

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-3513-3
ISBN-10: 1-4165-3513-6

The author and the publisher gratefully acknowledge permission from the following source: From “Guantanamera”; musical adaptation by Pete Seeger and Julian Orbon. Lyric adaptation by Julian Orbon, based on a poem by José Martí. Lyric editor: Hector Angulo. Original music and lyrics by José Fernandez Diaz. Copyright © 1963 (renewed) by Fall River Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Visit us on the World Wide Web:

http://www.SimonSays.com

For the men, women, and children who died in the struggle against imperialism during the U.S. occupation in Dominican Republic in the early 1900s and in 1965.

En la lucha siempre, pa’lante.

When it’s truly alive, memory doesn’t contemplate history, it invites us to make it. More than in museums, where its poor old soul gets bored, memory is the air we breathe, and from the air, it breathes us.

—EDUARDO GALEANO, UPSIDE DOWN

Author’s Note

The title of this book, Let It Rain Coffee, was inspired by the song “Ojalá que llueva café,” by Juan Luis Guerra.

Los Llanos

1991

Don Chan Lee Colón de Juan Dolio ignored the stench that wafted through the valleys of Los Llanos. From the outside of his humble wooden house nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The passion fruit and mango trees were lush, shaking their leaves with the mildest of sea breezes, gossiping stories to the birds about Don Chan’s strange old-man ways. The pigeons lifted their beaks, concerned that Doña Caridad hadn’t left rice for them to feast on. It had been three days. No rice. No Doña Caridad. Only the strange smell from the small house where the Colón family had lived for three generations.

The house sat in an abandoned landscape. Its faded rose-colored paint peeled off. The train stocked with cane stalks woke the lazy goats in the yard where they lay, as if to guard the aging couple who refused to leave Los Llanos. The hungry pigs roaming his land turned their noses away. Many from the valley had taken off to live in the developing cities in search of jobs, but Don Chan and Doña Caridad stayed behind.

—I can’t close my eyes without the city coming back and spitting on me, he said to the younger folk who accused him of being afraid of change.

Miraluz Altagracia Natera asked the driver to park far enough away from the house so as to not jolt Don Chan. There was a stillness in Los Llanos that crept under her skin. The young man with a cleft lip who assisted Don Chan and tended to the land rich with mangoes, plátanos, cacao, and lechosas had called Miraluz weeks before.

—I don’t think it’s right for the old lady to be so far away from a doctor, the caretaker had said. —By the time anyone gets help, it’ll be too late to save her. I don’t mean to disrespect, but nothing anyone says to the old man sinks into that hard head of his.

—I’ll do my best, Miraluz said, knowing very well that she was the daughter Don Chan had always wanted, the woman he had hoped his son, Santo, would marry. It had been a few months since she’d last taken a trip to Los Llanos. She often called or sent word to Don Chan, but the trip from San Pedro de Macorís to Los Llanos was long enough for her to keep postponing it.

Miraluz held her breath and pounded on the makeshift door. The flamboyan tree, rich with yellow flowers, bent over the porch and shaded the house from the harsh midday sun. The sky, a brilliant blue, made the cane fields iridescent.

—Anyone home? she yelled, contemplating whether she should pull the door open or wait.

—Open the door. It’s me, Miraluz. She pushed against the latch. She had hired the driver for two hours and didn’t have time for Don Chan’s stubbornness. As she marched inside the little house, it trembled from her haste. That damn house, over seventy years old, the only one in the area to survive numerous hurricanes, revolutions, dictatorships, and wars.

—Don’t fall apart on me now.

The house was in complete order: the cement floors freshly mopped, the wood for the kitchen stove piled up neatly into a small pyramid, the cans of water filled to the brim; the furniture propped against the walls, leaving the room spare, as if waiting for a gathering. Not much had changed in the eight years since she’d moved to the city. If it hadn’t been for the strange odor that permeated every room, she would’ve thought it was 1965 and that any minute, Santo would burst through the door with some news about the Yanquis, or Doña Caridad would have piled up the víveres in the kitchen, freshly plucked from Los Llanos’s communal garden, filling up the bellies of anyone who entered the Colón household. And Don Chan would be smoking his cigar, sitting alone somewhere, close enough to look over everyone, but far enough to gather courage for the battle.

Miraluz noticed the photographs she had sent Don Chan of her children, taped on the walls next to la Virgen de Altagracia. The door to the old couple’s bedroom was partly opened. Miraluz caught a glimpse of Doña Caridad on her bed, behind the mosquito net. She covered her nose with her hands and her throat swelled from holding back tears.

Don Chan watched over Doña Caridad, who lay peacefully on worn yellow sheets, her brown skin turned ashen, her full lips dry and cracked. The relentless sun poured in through the window over her. The small wooden cross over the bed tipped over. His cigars rested beside a small glass of rum and a red candle lit to keep them company. A cassava shell filled with water and a yucca root placed on her nightstand for her journey.

—She said it was her time. Don Chan’s voice cracked from disuse.

Miraluz put her hand on his bony shoulders. If she let go of him, Don Chan would fall apart, he was sure of it. He had spent hours sitting by the bed, watching over his wife. He tended to the house, returning to her side, tucking her arms over and under the sheets, changing the dial of the small radio, opening and closing the shutters, batting away the flies that sat on her face.

Miraluz pressed herself against his back, and bent down to kiss his head. Her hands were warm on his neck. How long had it been since someone had touched him? Her touch awakened his body. He hadn’t died with his wife. He had waited for Doña Caridad to say something to make sense of her departure. Seventy years with his old lady, and she took part of his mind with her. Don’t, he wanted to tell Miraluz, whose fingers lifted away from him. Don’t move. I can’t bear the absence.

Miraluz let go of Don Chan and saw his body fold over. She listened to his soft exhale, and walked away to allow him privacy. She asked the driver to take her to the nearest phone to call Don Chan’s son, Santo, who had moved to the United States almost a decade ago. He would know what to do. She hoped that his wife, Esperanza, wouldn’t pick up the phone.

1

Boarding, Sto. Dgo. to NYC

1991

Months after his wife passed away, Don Chan found himself at Las Américas Airport in the city of Santo Domingo. He didn‘t trust manmade machines, but he boarded the airplane to New York City anyway. And for most of the trip, he pretended that he wasn‘t afraid of it crashing. He closed his eyes and leaned back. Periodically, he checked his shirt pocket for his passport, pen, and visa. Every few minutes he shifted in his seat in fear of numbness.

—Desea café? the young flight attendant asked with a big smile.

—No, gracias, he replied. While the coffee could‘ve settled his nerves, he didn‘t want to experience the awkwardness of finding the bathroom, only to obsess over the possibility that his waste would be spat into the sky. He knew the world was built in such a way that some got to piss in toilets high above everyone else while the less privileged sat at home thinking the piss was rain. He‘d rather wait until his arrival. His son, Santo, had insisted he come to New York. And while Don Chan resisted at first, the invitation came as a blessing. Now that his wife had passed, their small house in Los Llanos felt too large for him, and the coffee he made for himself was always bitter.

—Let me go, Viejo. It‘s my time, were Doña Caridad‘s last words. They rattled around Don Chan‘s head like pennies in a tin cup. Was she trying to tell him that there is a better time to die? Is that why she died so peacefully? What if he didn‘t recognize his time? What if his life was taken from him? Would his restless soul torture the living until he found peace? The end was near for Don Chan. He knew that much. But to think that he would have to walk into death at any moment without resistance preoccupied him.

When the wheels of the plane touched the ground, the passengers burst into applause. He felt relief in the pit of his stomach. He took a deep breath. He focused on seeing his son, Santo, and his grandchildren, one of whom had been born American and he had yet to meet. He tried to imagine what he would find outside that plane. He touched the woolen fabric of the seat in front of him to assure himself that it was real.

In the immigration line, he pretended to understand English, nodding when the woman directed him to the longer line filled with anxious passengers. Don Chan looked over to the other line, for U.S. citizens, and sucked his teeth over the way the passengers with blue passports rushed through; a little girl, sunburned, head full of tiny braids, waved at him.

Don Chan walked up to the immigration desk.

—What were you doing in the Dominican Republic? the officer asked with a question mark on his brow line. He repeated himself in broken Spanish. His cheeks were pink, like the tops of his ears.

—I was born there.

The officer eyed him.

For the first time in a long time, Don Chan caught a glimpse of his own reflection. He never cared to look into a mirror back home, but from the quick look he caught of himself in the officer‘s eyes, Don Chan realized that his Chinese face was confusing the officer holding the Dominican passport.

—I can tell you a story, Don Chan said.

—Excuse me?

—My wife found me on the beach when she was four years old. And as if I was some kind of alien, she poked at my hair and said…—Who are you? And I said, —Chan Lee, yo soy Chan Lee. I couldn‘t remember anything but my name. It was 1916. I was six years old, washed up on the shores of Juan Dolio. If my wife were alive, she could prove it to you.

The officer behind the desk took Don Chan‘s passport and left him waiting. After he went through the trouble of getting his papers straight, Don Chan didn‘t understand why all the inquiry. He searched the line, noticing the worried, anxious, wound-up faces of the other passengers who were about to embark on a new life. It saddened him to think that after living almost his entire life on that small island, there was no one in that room who could explain to the officer who he was. The officer returned. He carefully checked the photograph and pecked at the computer. Don Chan wanted nothing more than to return home where no one scrutinized him.

—Are you here for business or pleasure?

—I‘m here to see my son.

—Welcome to the United States, the officer said as he waved over the next person in line.

Don Chan‘s suitcases were already waiting for him at the baggage claim. To his surprise, the customs officer allowed him to exit the airport without asking for a tip for his hospitality. He hesitantly walked out of the airport into a cold that exposed a decaying sky and made his balls shrink. He didn‘t see Santo anywhere. He waited on the curb by the taxi stand.

—Taxi, you need a taxi. Men hovered around him showing him their business cards. —Thirty dollar. Forty dollar. Taxi. Taxi.

His bare ankles found no refuge. He pretended the cold didn‘t bother him and that he had been in an airport many times, that the snow piled by the curb was not a novelty. He stood against a wall for protection and felt himself contract into something small and hard. He held his bag near his legs, regretting the trip to New York City, wondering why no one was at the airport to pick him up. Crossing guards whistled so that cars could hurry along. Buses yielding, airplanes landing and taking off. Luggage crashing against the ground. Everything was so loud, he didn‘t hear Esperanza.