Update on Blog Post #3
It was a dry and hot Tuesday evening when I walked into Sea Wolf Tattoo shop on east 35th and Cedar. I held a piece of scrap paper up with my smudged tattoo idea and said, “I want this done today, can you do it?” 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. The artist looked at me, my drawing, his schedule, then back to me, and said, “Sure. I have an hour.”
He spent most of the time stabbing my arm in silence. He didn’t ask me why or what the avocado meant, and there, lying face down on a sticky black leather cot, I wasn’t sure I knew either. Picking a tattoo parlor that specialized in American Classic designs was an ironic layer that became integral to the avocado's story. I knew somehow the thick lines generally reserved for American sailors were important, but that was as far as meaning went that day. Now, those lines were also mine. It made me feel punk, cool, maybe even a bit subversive.
I am not obsessed with avocado toast, but my college roommates knew when I was awake when they found half an avocado on our dining table. To this day, the best Christmas gift I have gotten was a six-month subscription to the Avocado of the Month Club. Yet, those were not on my mind that day. The image came to me and needed to be permanent on my body. When he wrapped my bloody arm, he made a snide remark about how tattoos were now so mainstream. I tipped him anyway.
In public so many people want to know me, know who I am, where I am from, and why my hair and eyes are so brown. I think about the person on the train who tried to bum a cigarette off me before my stop, how when I told him I didn’t smoke asked why. And when I said I didn’t like the taste then said to me, “Are you Hispanic?” This non sequitur was not new. It was the same hushed whisper asking me if I have “papers.” The elbow jab at a party serving walking tacos. People assuming so much about me before allowing me to speak. The train jolted to a stop, and all I could say was “I don’t...I don’t know.”
In the mirror I turn my full 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? Oh. I knew it.” I never get too comfortable with looking the part of Mexican, because as soon as I do, someone reminds me how their Korean friend and I could be twins. Or the international student I meet at a women's networking event mistakes me for being white. I am more familiar with the sensation of my skin peeling, a thing to be discarded. My body always drifting between seen and unseen, my body another thing I do not own.
My parents are from two small pueblos in Zacatecas, Mexico, one of the first states colonized by the Spanish. When you look at a map of languages spoken in Mexico, the number of indigenous speakers is so small in Zacatecas they don't add up to enough. Ironically the state is named after the indigenous word zacate meaning grass. My last names are further evidence of those who came and destroyed: Acosta, Reyes, Marquez, Luis, Zapata. Though I am proud of the ones given to me, I have learned to question their merit. My parents don’t remember, and my grandparents are starting to forget anyone who came before them. I carry the ghost of my ancestors on my face; I will never know who they are.
There is a language I can only dream in. A language buried underneath my complexion. My tongue feels fat and foreign in my mouth, always saying the wrong thing a little too loud. A tongue baptized in Spanish, then colonized in English. Yet, I will never know the first language.
Laughing, I say “testicles.” Yes, aguacate means testicles, it is one of the few Nahuatl words, like zacate, to have survived the hunger of the Spanish mouth. Though it could be certain I am not of Aztec lineage, given the diverse and expansive indigenous nations of Mexico, it is also certain that it isn’t certain. Aguacate is me reaching and attempting to stitch the distance of a land and language that never felt quite home.
I slice an avocado, holding it in the cup of my hand, turning it over and examining the black ink skin of it. With a knife, 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 and delicious.