Cracking the Coconut

One of my students had her mother bring me back a coconut from El Salvador.

She told me that they are the sweetest coconuts, that they bring her back to her childhood.

I awoke Monday morning dreaming of coconuts, a craving deep in my psyche, spreading to my stomach. I wanted sweet coconut milk!

I had my coconut ready to open, but when I took it out of the bag, I noticed it was a bit moist and cracked from when I dropped it on the ground Friday as I was leaving school.

But this crack could work in my favor. I had tried to get my student to open it for me. She had talked me through opening the coconut when she first told me she had ordered her mother to bring me back a coconut. I had tried to convince her to bring it to me straw ready. No such luck. Apparently, she didn’t have time that morning.

So there I sat, cracked coconut and knife in hand. But try as I might, I could not cut that coconut. They are harder than they look. I brought out the hammer and screwdriver. I admit, I worried about rust diseases, so I sterilized the metal with alcohol and told myself penicillin is made from mold, so a little mold never hurt anyone.

My neighbors must have thought construction was going on next door because I was hammering away for quite some time. Appreciative and loved as I felt that my student had brought me a coconut, I wondered why she didn’t bring a single, white woman the coconut already cut in Tupperware. Where were my native roots? I remember eating coconuts as a child, but it seemed like we had special tools to open them with and that Grandpa did the dirty work. Determined not to need a man, I was determined to open this coconut on my own. If I could close escrow as a single woman, I should be able to crack a coconut open.

Those coconuts have a lot of milk. I filled up two mugs with that sweet juice. I kept at it with the hammer, prying at the crack until at long last I had split the coconut in two.

The juice was all the sweeter, being from El Salvador, a gift from one of my top students, traveling all this way. I felt like Ginger from Gilligan’s Island. As I was telling the story to a friend that night, she said there were probably coconut opening instructions on YouTube. Next time.