Blossom Shower

Whenever it rained in February, he remembered his father, who died waiting for the blossom shower.
He remembered his father’s frail body, hanging from a dainty branch of the guava tree in their backyard, his eyes staring at the cloudless sky, his feet almost touching the earth that failed him. He remembered the indignation on his mother’s face and the clueless wonder on his little brother’s. When the night bled into the pale morning, he had grown from a fifteen-year-old into an adult, running from pillar to post to make the funeral money, for his father had left behind only debts.
Whenever it rained in February, he remembered the withered blossoms of his father’s coffee plants. The rain had been erratic for the past few years.
“Just one shower, let the coffee plants blossom,” his father pleaded with the crisp blue sky speckled with white, cotton-candy clouds. But the sky didn’t budge.
“Seasons are so unpredictable now. Sell your land, settle the debt and open a shop. Otherwise, you’ll lose your house too,” people advised his father.
“I am a farmer and I’ll die a farmer,” his father retorted.
On the day of his father’s funeral, the sun blazed with vengeance, and the sky gleamed as if to mock them. The creditors prowled through the crowd, sharpening their claws. The coffee plants shed their scorched buds, as if a last offering to their beloved master.
Whenever there was a thunderstorm, he remembered that stormy night a week after his father’s death. The untimely blossom shower drenched them on their first homeless night, as they lay curled up on the veranda of a decrepit shop, covered in a frayed blanket.
Whenever the rain battered against the frosted glass windows of his shop, he remembered the rough ocean. The ship rolled and swayed; he and the others, illegal immigrants to Dubai, sat clutching their stomachs and their lives. He remembered his days under the scorching sun, working on a construction site, his skin peeling off in dry flakes. He thought he would die in that desert, but coffee saved him.
Whenever it rained in February, he remembered how people flocked to his snack cart. “Your coffee is so good,” they would say. Little did they know about his relationship with coffee. As a child, he played under the cool shade of the coffee plants. When he grew older, his father taught him everything about coffee: how to select the finest beans, how to roast them, and how to make a perfect brew.
With each new shop in a new city and country, his bitter relationship with coffee deepened. When customers lined up in front of his coffee shops, when his overpriced, ridiculous coffee flavors became a fad, he tasted sweet vengeance. But, no matter how rich coffee made him, it always remained bitter for him.
Whenever it rained in February, he remembered his father, whose debt could’ve been repaid with a week’s profit from his shops. But, like the blossom shower, he too was late— not by a few weeks, but by years, far too many.