By Shanqo

“And grande iced latté with a dopio and whipped cream and a slice of marble cake, please.” She chanted mechanically at rapid fire at the abesha girl taking the orders at the Starbucks. This was the last place I wanted to be, so I just kept my head low and kept quiet. Ordering at Starbucks has always felt like an exercise in making up for all those menial jobs by commandingly spewing forth foreign-sounding words at a random person who just might know more about coffee than Pablo Escobar did about coca leaves.

“Antes? Min tifeligaleh?” She turned and looked at me.

“Hm? No, I’m fine, Beza. Nothing for me.” I kept my head down and mumbled.

“He’ll have a grande caramel frapuccino, and can you wrap a napkin around his cup? Ijochu they get numb really quickly. Tenkiw.” She smiled at the girl behind the register, while walking out of the way for the people in line behind us. Her footsteps echoed annoyingly as her heels clacked away at the hardwood floor.

Oh, and she paid.

She stepped up, took our drinks and headed to the seats by the window. As I turned to follow her, I heard the dreaded “m’Ts” coming from behind the register. Yup, she had recognized me. And she let me know it. I ignored it and walked on towards where Beza was already sitting by the window, furtively draining her cup of iced latte.

“Eshi …?” she began, an obvious attempt at making small talk. She failed miserably. I quietly started drinking my cup of iced frappuccino that was delicately wrapped with layers of napkin. Any minute now, I expected every single thing to go awry. Evolution is supposed to naturally gear itself towards more and more entropy right? Yeah, well, just watch …

“It’s only been two years, you know. It’s not like we are married, anyway. This should be easy to get over,” she said coldly. It was her idea that we break up. I continued sipping the hell out of my drink till the veins in my neck complained of frostbite.

“Aymeslihim?”

“Hm? Yeah, yeah, you’re quite right. Can we go now?” My irritation at being here could not have been more obvious. She giggled calculatingly, her eyes roaming the place and landing on the girl that had taken our order. “No, let’s stay a while. It’s nice in here,” she said, her eyes planted on the girl.

“Yet new shint-betu izih?” I looked around for a sign that would hopefully direct me to a place of refuge that reeked of antiseptic, disinfectant, and caffeinated urine. I stood up and left Beza hunched over her drink. A “m’Ts” from her as she watched me dash for the restroom, then I heard the screechy slurp. She had finished her drink … loudly.

* * * *

Breathe, Yohannes. Breathe! I kept telling myself, leaning over the sink in the restrooms. Why in the hell are they obsessively in control? Leave me the bloody hell alone, you freaks! I quickly straightened up, splashed some water on my face, dried up, and stormed out of the smelly cubicle of white tiles.

“M’Ts. Lemehonu tsegurihin mechE new reggae yaregkew?” She was right there. Outside. Waiting for my stupid ass to walk right into her. So much for my melodramatic self-confidence. In the face of confrontation, I was so nervous the backs of my hands began perspiring madly.

“Eh? What do you mean?” I mumbled, trying to look her in the face, as she wiped her hands on the green apron. She slowly quickly untied it behind her back, took it off, and hung it next the other aprons in a little niche in the wall.

“Your hair, Yohannes. Meche new reggae yaregkew?” She reached out and shuffled the nappy mess that I had recently salvaged into an even messier conglomerate of dreadlocks.

“Ay semonun new.” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, cracking my thumbs agitatedly.

“M’Ts. Demo sew’m selam atil. Yalawekuh mesloh new? Beqa ewnet new mallet new. Inezih rasta minamintewochin geTmehala … m’Ts.” She scoffed. It was my first visit to Virginia in three years. It’d been even longer since I had seen any family members in the area.

What do I say to that? I just stood and chewed on my tongue until I lost all sensation. She kept staring at me.

“Yiqirta, Liliye, I gotta go.” I ran past her and towards Beza. She was already waiting outside by the door, impatiently playing with her key ring. My unfinished drink was no longer on the table. She must’ve trashed it. Damn it!

* * * *

“So, what did she say to you?” Beza was relentless.

“What did who say?”

“Your sister.”

“My sister?” I tried to remain calm and unaffected by her query.

“Yeah, I know she must’ve talked to you. You couldn’t have been in the bathroom for that long. What did she say?”

“Ay, minim. Just said hi.”

“Just hi, huh?”

“Yeah. Just hi.”

We were waiting for the metro at Pentagon City, right below the Starbucks. If the metro sped in defeaningly right this minute so I can comfortably block out Beza’s inquisitive banter, it would be proof enough for me that God does exist.

Silence.

Nope, no metro.

“So she said nothing about your hair? I know she did. She must have. InEn indezih kabegeneN I’m sure she’d have something to say about it too. Aydelem indE?”

“Didn’t we break up this morning?” I had to shut her up.

“M’Ts.” And she was quiet. Seconds later, the metro train rumbled in.

* * * *

2am at Adams Morgan: a cacophony of noises and the funk of alcohol, cigarettes, sweat, and weed. People walked around aimlessly, aiming to have fun. Joining this mass aimlessness was not hard work. I carelessly walked South, down 18th Street, by myself. I still had to encounter one familiar face. Besides, the ones I had thought were familiar had walked on by, so I was not counting on anything.

“Selaaaam to you, my Ethiopian brotha!” exclaimed a man behind me, as I walked past Florida Avenue. I stopped and turned around. “Yeah, mannnnnn. I’m talkin’ to you!” He was assertive, yet humorous. Middle-aged African-American with a graying beard and a balding head with a short, unkempt, nappy afro. In his tattered clothes, he quickly walked towards me. “Care to spare some change?”

“M’Ts. Ayiiii, jemerew degmo … ahun sira bifelig minalebet?” muttered a lady walking by, snuggle up under the arms of the man she was with.

“What for?” I asked, looking him dead in the eye.

“Food, ya know. Help a brotha out. I’m hungry and sick. I could use a good meal, you know.”

A moment of silence as my hand fished around in my pocket and started playing around with the loose change that jingled within. Oddly, I decided not to take out my hand just yet.

“You always out here, man?”

He had seen my hand fishing around in my pocket and now looked at it anxiously.

“Huh? Yeah, yeah. Been homeless for twenty-two years, man. HIV for nine.”

“Well, you have me beat by seven,” I muttered, not consciously. My hand stopped playing around with dimes and quarters. I wasn’t sure if he had heard me or not.

He stared back at me in scrutiny, heaving a sigh then gulping audibly.

“M’Ts,” he said, with a wry smile, sardonically imitating the lady that had just walked by.