What's something everyone around you knows you're obsessed with and why?
Avocado means "survival"
I walked into Sea Wolf Tattoo shop on east 35th and Cedar. I held the scrap paper, with my smudged tattoo idea up and said, “I want this done today, can you do it?” The artist looked at me, my drawing, his schedule, then back to me, and said, “Sure. I have an hour.” The image was of a misshapen sliced avocado; one half held the seed. The other half, hollowed, was hiding behind the piece with the pit in it.
Had the tattoo artist asked me what the avocado meant to me, instead of complaining about how tattoos are now “mainstream,” I would have said “survival.”
I am not obsessed with avocado toast, (as most news sources think any 23-year-old would be) and yes, the best Christmas gift I have gotten to date was a six-month subscription the Avocado of the Month Club. But the best part of the avocado is not the taste, its versatility or the color. But rather how it’s original name, aguacate, has survived in Mexico.
In public so many people want to know me, know who I am, where I am from, and why my hair and eyes are brunneous. I used to entertain them with my captivating exotic look, and say Xicana.* Now my answer is simple: I don’t know.
In the mirror I turn my full and angled nose, examine my large brown eyes, and the different lines of my face, finding traces of more questions of the game people play. “Arab? Indian? Italian? Greek? Wait, are you Latina? Mexican? I knew it.”
My parents are from two small pueblos in Zacatecas, Mexico. This state was one of the first lands colonized by the Spanish. No matter how much I pry my parents about our families, I can only uncover our connection to Spain. I carry the ghost of my ancestors on my face; I don’t think I’ll ever know them.
When I slice an avocado, I hold it in the cup of my hand, turning it over and examining the black ink skin of it. Laughing, I say “testicles.” Yes, aguacate means testicles, it is one of the few Nahuatl words to have survived the hunger of the Spanish mouth. People say it looks like one, and to be fair, I have only seen a few pairs in my life. Perhaps they are right? I hold it in my hand as I slice and scoop the flesh into a blue plate. The green fades from dark to light yellow in the center, and I devour something unknown.