Mosquito Read online

  ALSO BY GAYL JONES

  The Healing

  Eva’s Man

  Corregidora

  White Rat

  Song for Anninho

  Liberating Voices

  Die Vogelfängerin

  (GERMANY)

  THIS BOOK IS FROM THE DAUGHTERS OF NZINGHA ARCHIVES

  Mosquito is the “spiritual descendant” of Kate Hickman, a New World African character invented by Lucille Jones and the strength of one of her novels, Stop Dat Moda (excerpts published in Obsidian, BOP, and Callaloo). Electra Lucilla Martin Wilson Jones (Lucille Jones, the Good Spirit) is the Spiritual Mother of Mosquito. However, Ray’s Aunt Electra is fictional.

  —NZINGHA

  CHAPTER 1

  I WAS ON ONE OF THEM LITTLE BORDER ROADS IN South Texas, you know them little narrow roads that runs along the border between South Texas and northern Mexico. Maybe that Dairy Mart Road, probably that Dairy Mart Road, though all them border roads in them border towns looks alike. On either side of the border. Brownsville, Laredo, Del Rio. All them border towns. I usedta travel into Brownsville in Cameron County a lot because it one of them international seaport towns. That’s when I was transporting electronics, apparel, and transporting for the shrimping industry. This that Dairy Mart Road, though. Your source for superior tanning products, one of them roadside signs say. It’s got them Southern California types in they bikinis showing off they tans. Another roadside sign advertising cactus candy and got a picture of a buffalo and some cactus. I’s got me a teacup I got from a trade show that have got a handle that is in the shape of a cactus and resembles that exact same cactus. I mean the handle of it ain’t a ordinary teacup handle, it’s a cactus, so when you holds the teacup you’s got to hold the cactus. I think that that cactus is the archetypal cactus, ’cause I has seen more cactus like that in them ads than I has in the Southwest itself. I calls it Arizona cactus, but I don’t know its true name. Another sign advertising Brownsville as a tourist attraction. It tells you that Brownsville ain’t just Brownsville, but it got all the amenities for tourism, that tourists don’t got to go to Acapulco or even Tijuana, that they can come to Brownsville. I try to think of the Kiowa word for Brownsville, or maybe it the Kiowa word for Sweetwater I’m trying to think of. Sound like the name of somebody, like the names that they gives people in the South, though, that Kiowa word.

  Am got a few of them cactus plants along Dairy Mart Road, though they ain’t the archetypal cactus, I think it’s Dairy Mart Road, and some of that poverty grass. I guess it called poverty grass, or maybe it pampas grass, ’cause it the Southwest, you know. I’m going to have to find out the names of these grasses and plants and trees, so’s I can tell y’all what they is. I guess that’s what I likes about the Southwest, though, the landscape. Well, I likes the people that I likes (the Perfectability Baptist Church would want me to say more about the likability of peoples and us commandments to love), but when you gets to the Southwest it got it own distinctive landscape, and you knows you’s in a different country. You knows you’s in the Southwest. Them mountains and the ranges and the deserts. Them trees, whatever they names is, starts looking like they’s wearing Afros and then they turns into brush and cactus. I gots to get me a natural history of the Southwest, or at least a natural history of Texas. I be thinking why them native peoples don’t got Afros in the dry tropics, ’cause in the East the leaves of them trees is broad and flat, then as you travels toward the Southwest, them leaves gets stingier, and then they becomes cactus or palms or them trees and brushes that looks kinda like them monkey puzzle trees. They’s got flowering cactus and bushes, though, so’s they’s all kindsa colors in the desert. You’s got the desert-colored desert and then there’s desert flowers that is red and yellow, bright green, and orange-red, and white—I guess that a color—and sage green and bright red. I know there’s what they calls buffalo grass and there’s a weed that got orange flowers that attracts butterflies and there’s a coyote bush. I don’t know if it’s named that ’cause it attracts coyotes. I know they’s a hummingbird bush that supposed to attract hummingbirds, but I don’t know if that the name of that bush. Desert shrubs and bushes and brushes and cactuses, Delgadina could tell you the names of all of them, and even the one she uses to make what she call Navajo Tea. And she knows the names of all the trees of the Southwest. I tells Delgadina she could be a natural historian, that she could write a natural history of the Southwest. But like I said, when you’s in the Southwest you knows you’s in the Southwest. When you’s in the Southwest, you knows where you is.

  Who amongst y’all knows the name of every tree? I might not know the names of them trees, but if you shows me a tree, I can tell you what part of the natural country it is from. I can tell you whether it from the East, the West, the Southwest, the South Central, the Midwest, the Southeast, the Pacific Southwest, the Northeast, or wherever you asks me. I might not know the names of them trees, but I knows them by better than they names. I even knows trees that is originally from the Pacific Southwest when they’s in South Florida. Now if you tries to play me for a fool and tell me that that tree you’s planted is a South Florida tree, I knows that you might have planted it in South Florida, but that its origins is the Pacific Southwest or even South Central. I might not know the names of them trees, but you can’t play me for a fool about they origins. And them desert ain’t like the desert sands in them Arabian lands, the Southwest desert is dotted with brush everywhere, little trees and bushes, like I said, or it the ranch country with broad ranges, ponds for the cattle and bales of hay. The Southwest is a landscape full of power.

  I knows the Southwest. Traveling through some of them mountainous type regions in Texas and Arizona (when you’s in Arizona you know why they calls it the redlands—I ain’t signifying on the native peoples I’m talking about the color of the land itself; some people say the land that color ’cause of all the iron ore it got in it; them’s the scientific peoples), though, you’d think you was still out East, I mean when you’s up in them mountains, traveling them mountain roads, I don’t mean them dry boulder mountains of Nevada up around the Hoover Dam, traveling they truck route, I mean them temperate mountains, ’cause they’s got natural forests, of cypress and alligator juniper, of spruce, and fir trees, and white pine trees, I knows them ’cause they’s similar to northeastern trees, ’cept they’s southwest white pine trees not northeast white pine trees, then when you come out of them natural forests you’s in the sparse landscape again, the flat country, the deserts, the ranges, them adobe-type houses with them flat roofs, the Southwest’s own architecture. They’s got pyramidal-roofed houses in the Southwest, but them flat-roofed houses is the Southwest’s own architecture. Them adobe-type houses that dots the landscape, and what I’ve heard people call them dog-trot houses, ’cause they ain’t them elaborate-type houses. I guess they calls them dog-trot houses, ’cause they’s just big enough for a dog to trot in them. I ain’t like to call them dog-trot houses myself ’cause they’s human beings in them houses. Ain’t got no balustrades and bay windows and art deco and arcades-type architecture. Most of them is clay-colored, that clay mixed with straw adobe. Few of them got them red tile roofs. They is just Four Square houses. They is some native peoples that considers that Four a sacred number. That that supposed to have something to do with they cosmology. I ain’t know if that why they makes them Four Square houses. I was in this desert I calls the Chihuahua desert, though it was some other desert, traveling for ’bout eight mile and all I seen was them Four Square house. Nothing but them Four Square house. Some of them had things to distinguish them from the other Four Square house to show the personality of the owners of them houses. One might have a red tile roof, another a green tile roof, another might have a more elaborate-looking door, another might
even have a arch above the door, one might have a little bay window, one might suggest more the Moorish, another more the Spanish, another even look like a little Hawaiian house, but they’s all Four Square house.

  Am got every kind of architecture in the Southwest, prairie styles and classical and colonial and renaissance and Victorian, and art deco-type modernity, but there’s also the kind of architecture that people says, This the Southwest. McDonald’s might be everywhere, but it ain’t everywhere the same aesthetic. Here there’s even McDonald’s that shaped like them adobe’s architecture, and not the McDonald’s architecture that in the East or Middle America or them south-central and southeastern states. And some little towns and villages all the houses that same adobe color or that same adobe architecture. You know, that pueblo architecture. I guess that the Mexican influence, or the Native American aesthetic, it ain’t neoclassicism. Though I guess them cowboys claims it like they claims the Southwest for theyself. There’s them real cowboys that rides the ranges and tends the cattle and sheep and mends the fences and carries them bales of hay and keeps the land irrigated, Mexicans and Navajos and Zunis and Cherokees among the whites and “Oklahoma Africans” I calls the others, ’cause the first black cowboys I seen was in Oklahoma, and then there’s them pretend cowboys that waves to the tourists soon’s they enters them western towns. There’s always a pretend cowboy on his saddle horse who doffs his cowboy hat and waves to me when I’m coming into Albuquerque. I don’t travel that route through New Mexico now, though. I mostly travels just the route along the Texas border, along the Rio Grande. I likes to say that, though some of them roads don’t exactly travel along the Rio Grande.

  Me I’m pulled to the side of the road ’bout a hundred or so yards from the truckstop, de moda running, reading me some of my mail—letter from a friend of mine out in California, a brochure on Citizen’s Rights, another brochure wants me to join the Republic of Texas which say it ain’t the same as Texas itself, ’cause Texas it consider to be a independent and sovereign nation, not a state of the United States, but they is proclaiming they independence: “When you become a citizen of the Republic of Texas, you are still an American but you are no longer a citizen of the corporate United States: therefore, you are a free Texan; the annexation of Texas to the United States isn’t legal.” I guess I can quote from that brochure; it ain’t no confabulatory brochure neither; then it say something about the history of Texans fighting for they freedom and independence from imperial Mexico, got some photographs of neoclassical architecture, a lot of white people wearing the flag of the Republic of Texas; and them that ain’t draped in the Republic of Texas flag is wearing bandannas made out of the Confederate flag. Maybe I’m being a little confabulatory, but I’m thinking how I got on they mailing list—a coupon for a free pizza, and this book I just bought at this flea market near the Galveston Bay. If any y’all been to Tijuana, y’all know the area. That’s when I heard me this commotion in the back of my truck. Sounded like a coyote or something, or maybe one of them prairie foxes. I think they call them prairie foxes, don’t ya? A lot of them prairie animals they just stick a prairie on the front of they name and they got the animal. They even got prairie oysters, though I don’t know how they can have a oyster of the prairie. There’s a band from the Southwest, I think, that calls theyselves the Prairie Oysters. I wonder if they’s aphrodisiacs like them other oysters. That’s named after the Greek goddess of love and beauty, you know. I don’t mean them prairie oysters, I mean them aphrodisiacs. That Aphrodite. Sound like the name of some African goddess, though, don’t it? Wonder if them Africans got they own goddesses of love and beauty. Only gods and goddesses you hear about though is them Greeks. Or if it ain’t the Greeks, it’s the Romans. I heard of that Krishna though. He supposed to be the ideal perfect man amongst the true Indians. I wonder if them Africans got that ideal of the perfect man. Course the man’s ideal of the perfect man and the woman’s ideal might not be the same man. Same for the women. Course I’ve also heard them say that religion started in Africa, and that even them Greek gods and goddesses is really Africans disguised as Greeks. But everybody claims religion started with theyselves. The Perfectability Baptists even claims that they started perfectability. I prefer not to talk to y’all about Perfectability baptism, ’cause I’m only a member of the church and ain’t no specialist in perfectability. The Perfectability Baptists, though, believes that the only true baptism is Perfectability baptism.

  I ain’t much of a natural historian myself, like I said, or a mythologist neither, but I do likes to watch them National Geographic specials, I mean for natural history, especially when they talks about the more exotic-type animals or make the ordinary beasts of the wilds seem extraordinary. They’s even got a Animal Planet on cable, where the peoples learns that the planet belongs to animals as well as humankind. I know it ain’t every race of peoples that thinks they’s supposed to have dominion over everything, or absolute and arbitrary power. That Citizen’s Rights brochure said something like that. I’m thinking how they got my name on they mailing list, ’cause I ain’t on the Citizen’s Committee.

  And I just seen one of them shows on my pocket TV, which says animals can be as neurotic as human beings. Ain’t saying I’m neurotic, or crazy neither, just that I found that interesting. And they says that them animals has dreams, has dreams the same as human beings. If y’all is amongst the people that wants to think it the dream what make us human, then you be saying that them animal dreams is less complex than human’s dreaming. And they’s got psychic ability, them animals and more developed than most human beings. Course that don’t mean them psychic animals is superior to humankind. That don’t mean them psychic animals has the superior intellect.

  Anyhow, I heard this commotion in the back of my truck, so I keeps de moda running, takes my flashlight and my stun gun outta the glove compartment and goes back there to look. I opens the back of the truck real careful like, shines the light in there, and then climbs up in the back of the truck. Y’all wants me to describe my truck? I prefers not to describe my truck. I’ll explain to y’all why when I comes to why. Of course y’all will probably say it ain’t logical, ’cause I’s described myself and I’s described everything but my truck—at least what to me is description—and y’all that don’t already know me would know me anyhow. Still there might be somebody else on this route in the Southwest that resembles me. But I acknowledges y’all’s question regarding the description of my truck. I knows that there is no doubt spies and informants amongst y’all that will go around to the truckstops anyway or ask some of the peoples in the union whether they knows me and has they seen my truck. How big is it, how many axles it got, how many tons is it, what color is it? I gots to tell y’all that the roof of my truck ain’t the same color as the rest of my truck. So those of y’all that thinks y’all knows my truck to be one color don’t know the fullness of my truck.

  In describing my truck, I prefers not to describe my truck, which I sometimes calls my moda, after a book I reads. ’Cept moda my personal name for my truck. I ain’t tell most peoples I calls my truck my moda, ’cause truck is most people’s name for truck, so I calls it my truck. That don’t mean that I ain’t proud of my truck. I’m proud of my truck and I’m proud that I owns it. I’m proud that I’m an independent even though the peoples in the union knows me. I’m proud of how big my truck is. I’m proud of how many axles it got. I’m proud of how many tons it is. I’m proud of what color it is. I’m proud even that the roof ain’t the same color as the rest of my truck, ’cause I got up on the roof and painted the roof of my truck myself. I ain’t too proud of my truck, though, and I gots to tell y’all that I ain’t too proud of it, ’cause the Perfectability Baptists believes that you can’t be too proud of material things, and you’s got to rise above that. The Perfectability Baptists combines traditional baptism with ideals of perfectability. They believes that the true nature of man and woman is to be perfect, or at least perfectable. But like I said I ain’t n
o specialist in perfectability baptism, and don’t claim to be no perfect Perfectability Baptist, and even my reasons for joining the Perfectability Baptist Church ain’t perfect, and although I wants y’all to know all about my truck, I prefers not to describe it. I can describe everything but my truck, except for what I prefers not to describe. I knows that there is rumormongers amongst y’all that will probably go and tell the Perfectability Baptists that the reason I won’t describe my truck is because I’m too proud of it to describe it. I still ain’t going to describe my truck. And even if I do tell y’all the color of my truck, don’t mean it’s got to stay the same color. When I first got my truck I would sometimes repaint it different colors. Once I painted my truck a bright red and it were the most visible truck, then another time I painted my truck a dark gray. When I painted my truck a dark gray, you could see it sometimes at dawn and it look like it made out of steel. I even had some peoples that was calling my truck the Steel Truck, ’cause when they would see it at dawn it would look just like it were made of steel. Or I might mix them colors. I might paint the cab of my truck a bright red and the other of my truck steel, and then the roof of my truck I might paint even another color. But I can describe everything but my truck. Sometimes birds is attracted to my truck. Once they was a red-tailed hawk perched on my truck. I went into this truckstop and when I come out there was this red-tailed hawk perched on the cab of my truck. Another time one of them prairie falcon, another time a golden eagle, another time one of them vermilion-colored flycatcher birds. A lot of red birds likes to perch on the cab of my truck. The cab of my truck attracts other color birds—golden, blue, green, yellow and brown birds—but seems like it attracts more of them red birds or red-tailed birds and it ain’t just when I paints my cab a bright red.

  The birds they has got they own language. Anyhow, I think I hears this scuffling sound, but might just be me scraping my knees climbing and scrambling up the back of that truck, trying to hold on to both that flashlight and that stun gun at the same time. They needs to attach a flashlight onto them stun guns or a stun gun onto them flashlights, less they thinks everybody got the dextrosity, I means dexterity, of them circus jugglers. Or what them other circus creatures? Not them acrobats. Them contortionists. They think everybody got the dextrosity and dexterity of them contortionists. Well, I guess them contortionists they supposed to be acrobats too, but they seem more extraordinary than them ordinary acrobats. Or like them that do that yoga. Like my friend Delgadina she do that yoga. She say that that yoga ain’t just exercise, it a whole philosophy. Be saying there’s different types of yoga. Not that yogurt, ’cause that yoga and that yogurt do got the same sound to them and a lot of the peoples that does that yoga eats that yogurt. Ain’t just the countercultural neither, like it usedta be. That yoga and that yogurt is mainstream today. Them yoga postures only makes you look like you’s a contortionist, but you ain’t a true contortionist.