Part 2 of 17 · 2 minThe Coffee

It was very good coffee.

That is the part everyone forgets when they tell it later. The decoction was right. The froth was right. She poured it back and forth between two tumblers from a height, the way she had done ten thousand times, and not one drop went on the floor, and her hands did not shake at all.

She had put salt in it instead of sugar.

Nanna took the first mouthful because Nanna always took the first mouthful. He went very still. Then he swallowed it, which took him some seconds, and put the tumbler down and said, "Very nice."

Amma tried hers. Her eyes came up over the rim and met his.

Bujji, who was seven, took a big enthusiastic gulp and sprayed it across the table in a fine brown mist and shouted, "AAAGH."

There was a silence of about one second.

Then Ammamma laughed.

She laughed so hard she had to hold the doorframe. She had no idea what she had done wrong, none at all, but Bujji's face had been extremely funny and she was not going to miss a good thing just because she did not know the reason for it, and she laughed until she wheezed, and Bujji started laughing, and then Chinnu, and then Amma, and then — last, and shortest — Nanna.

"Salt, Amma," said Amma gently. "You put salt."

"I put salt?"

"You put salt."

"Chi," said Ammamma, delighted with herself. "Who does that."

And she took all four tumblers to the sink and washed them, humming, and everybody let her, because she was happy and the rule had been in force for two and a half hours.

Chinnu wrote it in her notebook that night. *Ammamma made SALT COFFEE.* She underlined SALT twice.

She meant it kindly. She was ten. At ten a thing can be the funniest event of the week and you do not yet think about whether it belongs to you to tell.

That was the first one. There would be a great many.