WELCOME IN — Part Two

by Cat Kerr

This is the second of three parts in a series of memoirs about the year I spent working in a matcha café.

Part 2: Fleeting Moments

During a closing shift at the matcha café, I waited until there was a lull in the rush of customers. Then I made my announcement.

“I brought treats to share!” I told my coworkers Nhi and Johnny, as I pulled a plastic grocery bag out of the commercial fridge. On my way over, I had popped into one of Little Saigon’s supermarkets in pursuit of an ephemeral treasure, and victoriously I had found it: juicy, bright red lychees at the peak of their short season.

“Oooooh, lychees?!” Nhi reached into the bag to select a fruit, careful not to puncture it with her long, polished nails. “Refrigerated, too! So refreshing!” She peeled the lychee and popped it into her mouth. I picked one out and did the same.

“I will make you guys a drink with these, okay?” Johnny said, plucking tools and ingredients from the kitchen’s stainless steel shelves. Within minutes, we were all blissfully sipping on Johnny’s creation of the day: iced wulong sweetened with fresh lychee purée. We used thick boba straws to slurp up the fruit from the bottom of our glasses.

Nhi and Johnny had arrived at the café by very different pathways, but they were both striving for a better future in their own ways — representing the intersection of idealism and pragmatism that Gen Z’ers are known for. Sharing these moments with them was fun, but even more so, working alongside them was inspiring. 

Nhi was born in the coastal city of Vũng Tàu, Vietnam. When she was 3, her parents brought her and her older brother to start a new life in Florida, but their migration was far from the beginning of the story.

Nhi’s mom came from a large family: She was one of 12 siblings. Their ages ranged from childhood to young adulthood during the Vietnam War (which many Vietnamese call the American War). There was a day during the war when two of the older siblings went off to work in the morning and never returned home. The family doesn’t know exactly what happened but assumes they were killed — victims of a real-life nightmare when being in the wrong place at the wrong time could cost someone their life. 

The oldest brother of the remaining ten siblings decided to try to flee Vietnam with his wife. Along with other young families taking the same calculated risk, they got on a tiny boat and set out to sea, hoping to encounter a ship from a Western country whose crew could rescue them, but knowing that any number of things could go terribly wrong — there were stories of starvation, dehydration, and assaults by pirates from those who had gone before them. But these refugees were fortunate that their plan worked, and they ended up in California.

It was difficult for Nhi’s aunt and uncle to find work opportunities in California, competing with countless other refugees and immigrants for low-wage jobs that didn’t require full English proficiency. So they moved to Florida, where they heard there were better options. They worked in nail salons, eventually opened their own, and in 2002 — more than 15 years after arriving in Florida — had the means and stability to sponsor the immigration of all the siblings who remained in Vietnam, plus spouses and children. After a painstaking wait that had started long before she was born, Nhi and her family had a ticket to America.

For the first year they were here, Nhi, her brother, and her parents all shared one bed in a house full of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Nhi’s parents eventually saved up enough money from work at the nail salon to rent their own apartment (which Nhi described as “dingy, the kind with dark green carpet”), and they bought a rickety used car. After one year in that apartment, they packed up and moved again, this time seeking better opportunities an hour away in Orlando.

When they arrived in Orlando, Nhi was 5, and her brother was 8. They had to take care of themselves and watch out for each other while their parents worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week.

“My parents had no choice,” Nhi told me matter-of-factly, not holding it against them.

The work paid off. Nhi’s parents were able to buy a house, then open their own nail salon. When Nhi was in high school, they opened a second salon, which was the turning point that allowed the family to become “more than comfortable,” financially, as Nhi describes it. Nhi received a full scholarship to cover her university tuition, and her parents were able to pay for her housing, food, and other necessities while she was working on her degree. They had made it. 

So Nhi had never worked a job before the matcha café and still didn’t really need to, but it was her choice to take a few shifts a week to earn a little bit of money on her own so she wouldn’t have to rely on her parents for everything. Whenever we had a shift with an unusually high number of mishaps, she’d say to me, “The vibes are off today, Cat. Do you feel it?” But the job was low-stakes for her. Once she clocked out and took off her apron, she moved onto the next thing in no time. 

——

Johnny, though, seemed to live at the café. He worked double shifts, even overtime, to survive.

His interests were eclectic, constantly shifting, and sometimes seemingly contradictory. He loved world history, anime, high fashion, and guinea pigs. He connected with some parts of the Catholic faith, but he’d also sit in the back of the café with tarot cards spread out on a table, desperately trying to interpret what they said about his future. He found European classical music deeply moving, but he also idolised Taylor Swift. The hour of cleaning after closing often turned into a Taylor Swift karaoke session; people walking by outside could probably hear us belting “SHAKE IT OFF! SHAKE IT OFF!” as we danced around the shop with our brooms and towels.

It was a blast to work with him. We’d joke around and laugh so hard, I’d be frantically wiping the tears off my cheeks when I saw a customer coming up the sidewalk toward our front door. But I knew there was more to Johnny than his fun approach to life and outrageous sense of humor — I just had to wait until he felt like it was the right time to tell me what else was there.

One rainy weeknight, business was slow and the two of us found ourselves alone in the café. I brewed a pot of jasmine silver needle and poured it into two glass mugs. We leaned on the counter at the front of the shop, quietly sipping our tea and watching the rain come down outside. In the dark, the colorful neon signs of Little Saigon’s restaurants and shops reflected on the wet pavement. The conditions were right, and Johnny decided he was ready to tell me his story.

After a divorce, Johnny’s mom was single-handedly responsible for the care of her four children. She ran a clothing kiosk at a market in Saigon and made enough money to stay afloat, but she still dreamed of a better life for herself and her children. So when Johnny was 13, his mom arranged a marriage for herself to a man in America she barely knew and secured the documents that would allow the family to immigrate to the United States.

There was some kind of problem with Johnny’s documents, though, and he didn’t get legal approval to enter the US with his mom and siblings. He stayed in Vietnam, thinking he would be able to join them soon in California. But bureaucracy and red tape kept him stuck there, living in the family’s old house with only occasional support from relatives, and the hope of “soon” dissipated. He lived alone in Saigon for almost four more years.

Instead of starting high school with his peers, he had to focus his energy on mere survival. His mom had turned over her market kiosk to someone else, and Johnny was able to work as that man’s employee, earning the equivalent of about $5 per day. Costs of living are low in Vietnam, so the wage was enough to cover his basic needs, but nowhere near enough to save up for anything meaningful. So he took on a second job at night, supervising a computer gaming centre. Between the two jobs, he worked about 12 hours a day while his peers focused on academics.

During those lonely coming-of-age years without his family, Johnny was also discovering that he was gay — a concept so taboo in the traditional Vietnamese value system that it is not even validated with any word to directly and respectfully name it in the Vietnamese language. When I knew him, Johnny was in his mid-twenties and still had not found the right time or words to tell his mom about his sexuality. It would be a difficult conversation for anyone, but because of the specific cultural circumstances, he feared devastating consequences.

Finally, when Johnny was 17, he passed his immigration interview and was reunited with his mom and siblings in California. Four years older than his classmates, he entered an American high school as a first-year student. Between his classes and homework, he had to use his free time to make money for himself and his family, working at a donut shop, then a boba shop, then a pizza restaurant, then a matcha café — always chasing better hours and better tips.

A few years after Johnny graduated from high school, his older brother decided to move to Orlando and open a boba shop, and the whole family went with him. Because of a series of issues with permits and construction, it took a long time for the boba shop to open. In the meantime, Johnny’s siblings worked in nail salons, and he worked at our matcha café. 

The two of us had almost nothing in common besides our love for good tea, and there were times I needed a break from his energy — we all joked about him being “extra”. But when we turned up the music at night and Johnny sang along to Taylor Swift, I joined in too. Not because I loved Taylor Swift (I didn’t), but because I loved Johnny. After everything he had gone through, I wanted him to know he was loved. 

——

Five months after our grand opening, Nhi graduated, and I knew her remaining days at the café were probably limited. She quit soon after to take the next steps towards becoming an optometrist, her dream career. Johnny stayed at the café for just over a year, but then returned to California to move in with his boyfriend and go back to school. During my last shift with each of them, I sent them off with words of encouragement. They optimistically assured me we’d stay in touch, but tears blurred my vision as I drove home. We’d send each other messages, or maybe even see each other once in a while, but I knew it wouldn’t be the same.

From its neighbourhood, to its staff, to many of its menu items, our café was markedly Vietnamese. Still, the signature ingredient — pure matcha powder from Uji — was fully Japanese and gave the café its identity. So I don’t think it’s too far off to borrow a concept from sadō, the Japanese tea ceremony, to explain my experience of working there.

Ichigo ichie: One chance, one meeting. One chance in a lifetime. For more than 500 years, tea master Sen no Rikyū’s famous four-character idiom has reminded us that each time we drink tea with someone, it’s a fleeting opportunity that will never happen exactly the same way again, so we’d better cherish it.

In the year I spent as a barista at a modern American matcha café, I worked more than 100 shifts, and each was one chance in a lifetime. Of course, the shop was always changing: There were new specials on the menu; new decor in the space. But much more importantly, each time I worked, I noticed those of us in green aprons, stationed behind the counter, were evolving too. Inevitably, sometimes that meant having to say goodbye, and good luck.