How to Peel an Avocado by Kori E. Frazier
This is the way my mother showed me: Start with a paring knife, position the avocado on the cutting board, hot dog style, top to bottom. Sliding the blade just under the skin, cut it lengthwise until the skin curls and falls. Rotate and repeat. Done just right, you soon won't have to cut it at all; you can pull it right off with your fingers, revealing the pear shaped meat inside, the perforations of the skin imprinted on its rounded surface, like mint sherbet fallen from an ice cream scoop.
My mother loved to cook with avocados. She fashioned her own recipe for a spinach guacamole dip, with a dash of tomato and red chili pepper. She said avocados tasted better on sandwiches than meat, and made them with nine grain bread and melt-in-your-mouth Muenster cheese. I'd stand next to the counter, my eyes barely level with the knife, watching peels land like little capsized boats. Sometimes she'd peel a leftover avocado, and give it to me to eat all by myself. For a moment, I'd struggle as it slipped around my hand, trying to balance it between two fingers like an apple. Then, equilibrium established, I'd bite in, my mouth filled with the lime flesh's oily slime. I'd shave off little pieces with my front teeth, then swallow, feeling it slip down my throat.
"Watch out for the pit," my mother warned. "Don't want to break your teeth."
Eventually, I'd discover the giant seed hidden in the middle, thick and hard like an overgrown buckeye. This was always my favorite part—my mother would help me wash the pit in the sink, and then I'd run outside, my bare feet roasting on the pavement, and toss it up into the air, watch it fall, catch it, feeling it smack into my palm. And then, I'd hurl it across the yard to land in the earthy topsoil of the vegetable garden, wondering how long it be before an orchard grew. I didn't know avocados didn't grow in Ohio.
My father worked the late shift in a tire factory, disappearing just after dinner and magically emerging at the breakfast table the next day. After he kissed her goodbye and left for work, my mother and I would go flying into the living room with cups of Swiss Miss hot cocoa and little dishes of Tapioca pudding. We'd watch TV—if it was Saturday, I Dream of Jeannie; if it was Monday, Family Affair, and we'd cuddle up in my favorite fleece blanket, my blue eyed, bespeckled Mrs. Beasley doll tucked between us, draped with my mother's long blonde hair, which smelled like fresh soil, summer rain.
My mother wore flowers in her hair, and long skirts made of bandanas, with bells that jingled on a leather belt around her waist. She never wore shoes. Sometimes she'd take me to the park on Sunday afternoons, dressing me in clothes she sewed herself from worn bedsheets patterned with pink roses, or old red and white gingham tablecloths. She would meet friends there, who carried daisies and smoked something that smelled like dewey grass and the sage she'd sprinkle in spaghetti sauce. I'd sit on the swings, kicking my feet in the dirt as words I didn't know wafted overhead like dandelion seeds. Tet Offensive. Ben Tre. Nixon. Détente. My mother would bring spicy spring rolls that curled your tongue, mixed with slippery avocado.
On days when she cleaned the house, my mother would play records from the leaning tower of '45s next to the TV. They dated back to when she was in high school, a girl I remember only from two or three pictures, with pigtails, grinning into the camera, tongue sticking out, or wearing a frothy dress dusted with stars, her shoulder length hair curled into a flip, a buzzcutted, athletic young man with his hands around her tiny waist. I'm not sure where that girl went, but I wondered sometimes as I watched my mother whirl around the kitchen, swaying to "Cowgirl in the Sand." Or sometimes she'd put on one of those old records, the ones that belonged to that girl in the old photos, and I'd notice her feet under the folds of her peasant skirt, doing a subdued Mashed Potato to "Judy's Turn to Cry." When she finished, she'd carry me into the living room and put on a scratched, worn down record of "Palisades Park," with its red and white gingham "Swan" label, ethereal organ drone, bouncing saxophone. We'd spin in circles to the music, my mother's skirt fanning out like the red dresses of ballroom dancers, laughing, laughing, laughing…
One Monday night, we had pizza because my mother was too tired to cook. My father left for work at the tire factory after barely eating, and with no sack lunch for the night shift. She took my hand and led me into the living room, walking delicately, eyes straight ahead, her mind somewhere else. We sat together on the couch; she took me into her lap, her palms sticky against my arms. She told me she was sick. A few years later, I learned that she'd found a lump in her breast, a thick, round mass buried deep in her flesh, a sinister growing bulb.
I don't remember much of the next several months. Maybe it's in the part of my mind where the bad things go, like that picture of the napalmed children. Some pictures survive for me, too: my father home at night after he quit his job. Records gathering dust next to the TV. My mother crying in the bathroom, clutching a limp clump of long blonde hair in her fist. The impression of her body in the mattress, the room around it undisturbed.
On the day we buried my mother, I stood with my father at the edge of the grave long after the minister and our friends were gone. I took off my shoes, squishing my toes into the fresh dirt. Above us, the grey clouds had begun to peel back, revealing a hazy trace of green sky. I imagined my mother holding hands with her friends in the park, dancing with flowers in her hair, a cowgirl in the sand.
My mother loved to cook with avocados. She fashioned her own recipe for a spinach guacamole dip, with a dash of tomato and red chili pepper. She said avocados tasted better on sandwiches than meat, and made them with nine grain bread and melt-in-your-mouth Muenster cheese. I'd stand next to the counter, my eyes barely level with the knife, watching peels land like little capsized boats. Sometimes she'd peel a leftover avocado, and give it to me to eat all by myself. For a moment, I'd struggle as it slipped around my hand, trying to balance it between two fingers like an apple. Then, equilibrium established, I'd bite in, my mouth filled with the lime flesh's oily slime. I'd shave off little pieces with my front teeth, then swallow, feeling it slip down my throat.
"Watch out for the pit," my mother warned. "Don't want to break your teeth."
Eventually, I'd discover the giant seed hidden in the middle, thick and hard like an overgrown buckeye. This was always my favorite part—my mother would help me wash the pit in the sink, and then I'd run outside, my bare feet roasting on the pavement, and toss it up into the air, watch it fall, catch it, feeling it smack into my palm. And then, I'd hurl it across the yard to land in the earthy topsoil of the vegetable garden, wondering how long it be before an orchard grew. I didn't know avocados didn't grow in Ohio.
My father worked the late shift in a tire factory, disappearing just after dinner and magically emerging at the breakfast table the next day. After he kissed her goodbye and left for work, my mother and I would go flying into the living room with cups of Swiss Miss hot cocoa and little dishes of Tapioca pudding. We'd watch TV—if it was Saturday, I Dream of Jeannie; if it was Monday, Family Affair, and we'd cuddle up in my favorite fleece blanket, my blue eyed, bespeckled Mrs. Beasley doll tucked between us, draped with my mother's long blonde hair, which smelled like fresh soil, summer rain.
My mother wore flowers in her hair, and long skirts made of bandanas, with bells that jingled on a leather belt around her waist. She never wore shoes. Sometimes she'd take me to the park on Sunday afternoons, dressing me in clothes she sewed herself from worn bedsheets patterned with pink roses, or old red and white gingham tablecloths. She would meet friends there, who carried daisies and smoked something that smelled like dewey grass and the sage she'd sprinkle in spaghetti sauce. I'd sit on the swings, kicking my feet in the dirt as words I didn't know wafted overhead like dandelion seeds. Tet Offensive. Ben Tre. Nixon. Détente. My mother would bring spicy spring rolls that curled your tongue, mixed with slippery avocado.
On days when she cleaned the house, my mother would play records from the leaning tower of '45s next to the TV. They dated back to when she was in high school, a girl I remember only from two or three pictures, with pigtails, grinning into the camera, tongue sticking out, or wearing a frothy dress dusted with stars, her shoulder length hair curled into a flip, a buzzcutted, athletic young man with his hands around her tiny waist. I'm not sure where that girl went, but I wondered sometimes as I watched my mother whirl around the kitchen, swaying to "Cowgirl in the Sand." Or sometimes she'd put on one of those old records, the ones that belonged to that girl in the old photos, and I'd notice her feet under the folds of her peasant skirt, doing a subdued Mashed Potato to "Judy's Turn to Cry." When she finished, she'd carry me into the living room and put on a scratched, worn down record of "Palisades Park," with its red and white gingham "Swan" label, ethereal organ drone, bouncing saxophone. We'd spin in circles to the music, my mother's skirt fanning out like the red dresses of ballroom dancers, laughing, laughing, laughing…
One Monday night, we had pizza because my mother was too tired to cook. My father left for work at the tire factory after barely eating, and with no sack lunch for the night shift. She took my hand and led me into the living room, walking delicately, eyes straight ahead, her mind somewhere else. We sat together on the couch; she took me into her lap, her palms sticky against my arms. She told me she was sick. A few years later, I learned that she'd found a lump in her breast, a thick, round mass buried deep in her flesh, a sinister growing bulb.
I don't remember much of the next several months. Maybe it's in the part of my mind where the bad things go, like that picture of the napalmed children. Some pictures survive for me, too: my father home at night after he quit his job. Records gathering dust next to the TV. My mother crying in the bathroom, clutching a limp clump of long blonde hair in her fist. The impression of her body in the mattress, the room around it undisturbed.
On the day we buried my mother, I stood with my father at the edge of the grave long after the minister and our friends were gone. I took off my shoes, squishing my toes into the fresh dirt. Above us, the grey clouds had begun to peel back, revealing a hazy trace of green sky. I imagined my mother holding hands with her friends in the park, dancing with flowers in her hair, a cowgirl in the sand.
