Los Cocos
By Noelle V. Dor
Coconut water is the plant world’s egg white. Aside from providing essential nutrients to the developing fruit, it’s useful for people, too. And I don’t just mean your typical tropical tourists relishing in a nifty native swig. Dubbed as “Nature’s Gatorade,” it’s loaded with those recently popularized electrolytes. Add a light tongue-tickling sweetness and some fiber to keep things flowing, and you’ve got a nice thirst quencher should you find yourself in the rainforest a few hours longer than expected.
Lotico and I, however, found a less practical use for the baby head-sized globes that occasionally tumbled from the trees around our cabin. That is, we discovered that coconut water is a damn good mixer for coconut rum.
With the right proportions, the alcohol was rendered completely imperceptible, a mere mocktail to anyone who hadn’t witnessed its preparation. It took no more than fifteen minutes for the stuff to disappear. By sundown—which happened consistently around six-thirty—I was sufficiently buzzed.
Yummy endosperm.
And because some deficiency of mine is always miraculously cured by liquor, I began spewing Spanish like it was my native tongue. Granted, it had always been one of my best subjects in school, but excellence in the cool and clean arena of academia doesn’t necessarily translate to proficiency in down-and-dirty practice. I had already spent two weeks in Costa Rica and probably only uttered a handful of words, conveniently forgetting everything I knew as Lotico stepped up to the plate with an ultra-American accent and botched sentences.
That night, though, pumped with drug-induced cheer, I dazzled Lotico with my effortlessly rolling R’s and conjured Latina attitude. ¿Dónde está la camisa roja que dice ‘Guaro’? became my mantra, even long after said red shirt had been found.
Why Lotico owned a T-shirt bearing the name of Costa Rica’s national sugarcane vodka is another matter.
What footing I gained in verbal acrobatics, I lost in basic proprioception. I zigzagged up the single road leading out of the valley, dust and pebbles spraying in the wake of my happy delirium, while Lotico wooed me with talk of Pachamama. Black vultures soared high on thermals, sweeping large circles, searching for opportunity. Time and space faded into the lush green of the surrounding mountains, leaving serenity as a parting gift—that is, until my bladder lurched and begged for release.
We were midway between the cabin and our predestined goal, too far from either, too long to hold it. Lotico told me to go behind some bushes. No one would see.
We have read about the bushmasters, have already had close encounters with terciopelos. Sometimes, they lie inconspicuously coiled amidst tall grasses or plants. A bushmaster’s fangs can pierce right through rubber boots. In my slip-on sandals and dainty skirt, I bounded off into the brush, squatted, and opened the floodgate. I stumbled standing up and fell into a bush of thorns. Pain surged at the edge of my consciousness as I gathered myself. There were three thin tracks of blood at the back of my left leg, perfectly parallel, like claw marks. There was nothing to clean the cuts. Lotico and I continued walking in crooked lines.
“All the men in the town were talking about you last night.”
That’s because there had been dancing. I still don’t know what the town was celebrating, but there was food, bullfighting, music—y baile. And, well, get me deep enough under the influence and I’m as inexhaustible as a whirling dervish. It was the closest thing to “nightlife” that Lotico and I were going to get. Unlike American clubs, where guys attach themselves to a girl’s rear like horned leeches, the Costa Rican men kept their distance. Perhaps that wasn’t so much a matter of etiquette, however, as of the fact that Lotico remained my faithful shadow the entire night. Still, their eyes watched from afar, hungry scavengers, as they settled for sideline commentary.
I was a face they had never seen before, but more importantly, I was different. A colored girl with twisted hair who’d kicked off her sandals so she could dance barefoot. They wondered if I was from the local whorehouse. This, Lotico told me as well the following day, accompanied by some dark glimmer in his eyes. I suppose I should have been offended, but my body reacted of its own volition with a half-incredulous-half-flattered smile.
At least someone had noticed me.
Lotico liked to hide beers in an undisclosed spot outside the cabin. At night, as we sat on the deck in idle conversation, Lotico would simply walk out into the blackness and return some seconds later with a fresh can.
“Where did that come from?”
“From the beer tree.”
There was one rule about drinking: only two beers a day. It was more than reasonable, too generous really, but Lotico respectfully followed this rule. Except when night fell with an extra few pounds of boredom. Then, we would have a party at the pulperia, or local mini-mart, which Lotico always mistakenly called something akin to “potpourria.” We would call the younger hip locals to join us and everyone would get loose as liquor slithered down our throats. Lotico would teach me how to dance cumbia, hopping from one foot to the next in a succession too quick for my anemic blood. But I would push to keep up because I was the appointed dance queen. Salsa, meringue, bachata, and now cumbia to add to my repertoire. My natural talent kept Lotico perpetually impressed—fuel to the small flame of my ego.
Sometimes, we turned off all the lights, lit candles on the deck, and made music. Lotico had two guitars, a banjo, a harmonica, and a tin can. We sang Bob Marley, The Beatles, and country tunes I’d never heard before. And the night sang with us, frogs and other chirping things, that dear heifer in distress, the nearby stream, midnight rain. And I would get quiet inside, calm, reflective, like a vernal pool, watching the flame of a candle flicker and pause, sway and still, as it seduced moths and singed their flimsy wings.
Lotico told me the moths mistake the earthly light for the moon, which they use to orient themselves during flight. Trapped in the misconception, they fly in dizzying circles, dangerously close, hoping to find their way. For most, it’s a death course. The end is sudden and swift. In the morning, their shriveled little bodies litter the floor before being swept into the forest.
Humble pie for los cocos.
——
Noelle V. Dor is a college graduate, word-lover, and wild woman living in Queens, NY.
Photograph used in conjunction with Flickr’s Creative Commons Agreement. It can be found, in its original form, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mckaysavage/.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 2:00 am and is filed under Non-Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
