Mosquito Read online

  Is that your church? ask Delgadina.

  Well, I tells peoples it’s mine. And I does believe in perfectability. Though I ain’t sure if Perfectability baptism is superior to traditional baptism. And I didn’t get Perfectability as a child. As a child I were a traditional Baptist. I didn’t become a Perfectability Baptist till I become a adult. They don’t allow no womens to preach. The reverend, though, say that if they did allow womens to preach that I am the long and preachy type of womens that they might allow. He says that us womens can preach as much as we wants and become as perfectable as we wants, they just ain’t going to allow us in no pulpit.

  I wanted to become a nun, said Delgadina. But what I really wanted to be was a priestess.

  I don’t say nothing. I sips my Budweiser, then I thinks about them thinking that social psychiatrist immigration.

  I never heard that expression monkeys and men, though, say Delgadina. Then she be saying something about her Catholic priest not being so colorful in his metaphors as Baptist preachers; she says her Catholic priest tends more towards intellectual abstractions than metaphors. I went to Catholic school and was taught by nuns. I still sometimes visit a nun who was one of my teachers. I used to think that I would become a nun, like I said, then, I knew it wasn’t a nun I wanted to be but a priestess. I told the nun who used to be my teacher and she says it’s only, you know, because I wanted to have power in the church, and I didn’t think that nuns had any real power in a masculine church. Then she starts talking about the difference between worldly power and spiritual powers, that the lowliest nun can have spiritual powers. Then she say that expression again about monkeys and men, then she write something in her notebook.

  At least to anybody in that cantina they the same thing, I don’t mean monkeys and men, I mean, social worker, social psychiatrist and immigration department. I don’t know if them social workers is spies for the immigration department, though, even them that claims they’s independent social workers. And Delgadina look like somebody them immigration be spying on. The blouse she wearing got one of them mandarin collars she got in a thrift shop. She got them thick eyebrows that always look like she comb them up, but she be saying her eyebrows seem like they grow that way. She say when she a little girl, though, she be having them real delicate eyebrows. I give her one of them patients’ rights brochure and she stick it in the pocket of her skirt. She fixing somebody one of them margaritas and her specialty is margaritas with mandarin oranges. You know, they even got salsa made with them mandarin oranges.

  But I also wanted to be a lady rancher, said Delgadina. I remember once when we left Houston and went to this ranch, I was a little girl, and saw this lady rancher, she was a gringa, though, but then I dreamt of owning my own ranch, not some little apartment in a place like Texas City. I’d have my own ranch, my own Spanish mustangs, saddle horses, cow ponies, wild stallions, mixed breed, all kinds of horses. Longhorn cattle. She was a gringa that owned that ranch and I didn’t know why we went out there to that gringa’s ranch, except maybe my father was looking for work there or something, but I remember liking that ranch better than the city of Houston. Most of the men that worked on that ranch weren’t family-type men like my father. They was mostly single men that worked for her taming horses and taking care of the Longhorn cattle and mending fences, you know. We had this Ford automobile. My daddy went up and talked to the lady rancher and then came back and got in the Ford automobile and drove us all back to Houston. I don’t know why we ever went to that ranch. And she didn’t even have a typical ranch style house, she had one of them ornate type of styles of architecture, you know. I was used to them dog-trot houses in Houston, well, they’ve got classical houses in Houston, but when you see your first really ornate architecture, every other type of house is, well I won’t call people’s houses dog-trot houses, but that was the first time I saw a house with all these gables and spindlework and different colors and textures and painted siding and patterned shingles and chimneys and porches and bay windows.

  That sounds like you’s describing a plantation, I says.

  Does it? Well, it was a ranch. Except for the house. But it was a working ranch, though, so maybe my daddy was trying to get a job on that ranch, and then she saw all his family with him and explained that she didn’t hire family-type men. I don’t know if that’s why we went there at all, that’s just what I imagine. All I know is Daddy drove us to that ranch in his Ford automobile, went and talked to that lady rancher, and then drove us back to Houston. So for a while I wanted to be a lady rancher. And the thing about those ranches, Nadine, a lot of those ranches you’ve got everything on those ranches. A lot of those ranches have got their own stores, their own barber shops, their own stables, well, of course they’ve got their own stables, and women that work on them that do nothing but the laundry. Men have to go into town if they want liquor though, ’cause you can’t buy liquor on those ranches, at least the one I worked on in the laundry. The one I worked on didn’t have a lady rancher, though. But I’m not going to tell you that story. Well, there was this group of Comanches, you know, they sorta reminded me of the wandering bands of Comanches that you read about, except these are modern Comanches, you know. I’d formed allegiances among them. I wasn’t lovers with any of them, I’d just formed allegiances. I had more friendships among them than with any of the women on the ranch, and so people started rumors about me. I don’t know if it was one of the other women who worked in the laundry, or the ranch owner’s wife. I had this idea that I’d work in the laundry, doing the women’s work, you know, but at the same time to learn all about ranches and about the horses, and these Comanches they knew more about ranching and horse breeding than anybody else on the ranch. I liked them the best as people, but they were also the best ones on that ranch for me to learn from. But I guess the other women on the ranch just saw me as a woman, you know, I mean you know what I’m talking about, I am a woman, but as a woman I wasn’t supposed to be spending all of my time with these Comanches, and at first even they weren’t convinced of me until we started developing friendships, you know, allegiances. I hadn’t told anyone my real age either, I pretended I was older than I was. That was before I went east, so I was still a teenager, but they thought I was in my twenties, maybe my early twenties, ’cause I always looked and acted older than my age, I mean I looked my age, but I was the sort that could tell people I was older than my age, and they’d believe me, they’d just say you look young for your age. The Comanches knew my age, so none of them took advantage of me, they didn’t make a Lolita out of me or anything, you know. But then the rancher’s wife told me if I was to stay on the ranch, I couldn’t keep my allegiances with the Comanches. She didn’t express it like that, because she thought that they had made a Lolita of me. So I decided not to stay on the ranch, because I wouldn’t give up my allegiances with the Comanches. I didn’t learn all about ranching that I wanted to learn, but I do know how to ride a wild Spanish mustang. Not any wild Spanish mustang. But they had this wild Spanish mustang on the ranch, and it wouldn’t allow anybody to ride it but the Comanches or me. The white men or women couldn’t get on that mustang. No one but the Comanches or me. And there’s Comanches that said that horse could understand human language. It didn’t talk human language, but it understood human language, except it only understood Comanche. If you said something to it in Comanche, it knew what you were saying. Maybe it knew what you would say to it in English, but it would only acknowledge Comanche. I don’t know if it was true or not, but I’d see some of them Comanches talking to that horse and he’d nod sometimes and shake his head other times, and when those Comanches wasn’t sure if that horse would let me ride it they talked to that horse and he let me ride. Maybe those Comanches talked to that horse and told it not to let any white people ride it, or maybe that horse decide who it would let ride for itself. I remember once them Comanches teased me with that horse. They brought that horse over to me and said something to the horse in Comanche and the horse nodded an
d the Comanches laughed. They said something else about me to that horse in Comanche, the horse shook its head and the Comanches laughed. I didn’t know what they was asking that horse, but then later they explained to me that that was their initiation with Comanches that came to work there. I wasn’t a Comanche, but they would ask things like, Is he as dumb as he looks? and the horse would nod yes, things like that, as a kind of joke among themselves. So they were asking the horse those kinds of questions about me. ’Cept I didn’t know none of their Comanche. Didn’t none of them try to Lolita me, though. And we had an allegiance. There were others that tried to Lolita me when I was on that ranch, but it wasn’t the Comanches. ’Cept the ones that tried to Lolita me didn’t know my age. That wild Spanish mustang came to my rescue when one of them was trying to Lolita me, and that’s when the rumors started. They kept the wild mustang on the ranch, though. ’Cause of them Comanches. And they was supposed to have the best horses on that ranch, on account of that Comanche knowledge. You know, the Comanche knowledge of horses.

  What the name of that horse? I asks.

  What you mean what the name of that horse?

  You know, like horses got names. Copper Bottom, Harry Bluff, Big Nance, Tomoleon, Sir Archy?

  Uh, I don’t know the name of the horse. Uh, yeah, I remember, because I thought they were talking to the horse, even when they were saying his name. I mean, they were saying his name, but it sounded like talk. Tai-hai-ya-tai. I don’t think it’s Comanche. It might be Comanche. But that’s what they named that horse. Before they said anything to it, they’d say Tai-hai-ya-tai. I remember that there was one woman there, one woman that the Comanches respected. I won’t say that they respected me, because they knew my age. She was not the rancher’s wife, but it was the woman who wrote the names of people who came to work there. Otherwise she kept to herself and seemed sort of a hermit. But when new people came to work, she sat at this table, and she did this when I came to work there. She asked merely this question: What is your name, or what is the name you want to give? That was the only question she ever asked and the only thing she ever said to anyone. I remember that, because I had never been asked that by anyone. I am told that among certain guerrilla groups that is the question they ask everyone. But I’d never been asked that question. Anyone who asked me my name always asked me my name to learn my true name. But to have someone tell me that I had the choice of telling them my true name or only the name I wanted to give.

  What name did you give? I asked.

  My true name. But besides the Comanches and the wild Spanish mustang, I most remember being asked the question of my name. She did not join the other women in making me leave that ranch. . . . Well, first the ranch owner’s wife gave me a little envelope with the moneys that were owed me, and when I wanted to see the ledger with the amount of the moneys that were owed me, we went up to the table and the woman handed her a ledger which said the amount of the moneys that were owed me. I thought the ledger would confirm the amount that the ranch owner gave me, but instead, it made her have to give me additional money. The woman at the table herself said nothing, for she was asking new hired people questions.

  What is your name? asked the woman when the ranch owner’s wife was standing near the table. Or the name you wish to give, she added, when the ranch owner’s wife was out of hearing, or was at a distance where she could pretend not to hear.

  We just date each other for a little while, though, me and this social worker psychiatrist psychologist, and I never did get to see any of his amateur inventions or understand his theory of the sociology of identity. He ain’t invited me to his apartment like some mens do. They invites you to they apartments and even cooks meals for womens. Usually we eats out or goes to the movies or dances, ’cept he talks, even though he looks like he’d be a good dancer. He talk to me about them different kinds of human rights abuses, ’cause he preoccupied with his profession, at least in his conversations with me, and he talk about how the people disguises they human rights abuses under different disguises. He don’t act like he trying to recruit me to join no organization, though. Then seem like everything he say to me, I be using the same expression, Just peeing on your head an’ telling you it’s rain. I be explaining that that from the Devil in a Blue Dress. Or I be saying, You can’t tell monkeys from men. I be explaining that that from the Perfectability Baptists. Or I be saying some kinda proverb or expression like that. Some of them proverbs I ain’t know they origin, though. Or I be saying, You is right to become your own independent man. That ain’t no proverb, though.

  Sometimes we would even go to them trade shows together, ’cause we has got the same addiction. He say whenever he ain’t being a expert witness or a consultant in social psychiatry or working on his research in social identity that he likes to go to them trade shows. Or if he ain’t doing that he working on his own inventions. Reason we stopped dating, though, ’cause he be start telling me how I shouldn’t be driving no truck and shit like that. I lets him ride up in the cab of my truck when we goes to one of them trade shows, and I even tells him that he the first person I have allowed to ride in the cab of my truck. I be thinking he going to say something good about that, but then he say, You know, Nadine, I don’t think you oughta be driving a truck. He be telling me I’m a remarkable woman. He be telling me how he like my personality. And about how I should be more ambitious and shit. Whenever a man be telling a woman she should be more ambitious, for some reason, I always hears the bitch in that word, like I said. You shouldn’t be driving no truck, he be saying. You should be more ambitious.

  We was riding in the cab of my truck coming back from a trade show near Galveston. You know I thought I had found somebody to go to them trade shows with. And he a intelligent man that know more about them trade shows than the trade show people theyselves. And know more about them trade shows than me myself. I’m a ignorant woman in a lot of things, but I knows about them trade shows and I knows about driving my truck.

  I guess for him the idea be for me to be a secretary or a schoolteacher or maybe work in a bank, pushing them papers. Course I gots to work with different kinds of invoices, you know. I knows about them invoices and I knows how to entrepreneur. But he don’t consider that as ambition. And he say he ain’t like a lot of men that tries to sabotage ambitious women.

  I’m not trying to sabotage you, Nadine, he say. I tells him to reach into my glove compartment and get me some of my beef jerky. He get some forme and some for hisself. ’Cause there’s a lot of men, he says, chewing on that beef jerky, that don’t like ambitious women. But he ain’t one of them type of men. Least at first he talk about that ambition. About how he likes ambitious women and especially ambitious African-American women. And then he be saying that don’t none of us need to be acting like that Madonna to show usselves ambitious, that we can be civilized and decent women and still be ambitious. He say Madonna can be wild, but in a African-American woman that kinda wildness is just thought barbarous and just confirms the stereotype.

  That’s what I like about you, Nadine, he saying, chewing that beef jerky. You’re a decent woman, and you’re ambitious to learn.

  I hope I ain’t the biggest bitch you know.

  Say what? he asks, chewing that beef jerky.

  When peoples say ambition I always hears the word bitch. Then I thinking about Delgadina. She say when she was going to school in Houston that she was in love with this boy, this young man, this vato, and somebody went and told him that she was in love with him, you know, so this vato says, Delgadina? I wouldn’t be going with Delgadina. She’s the biggest bitch in the school. And she said there was also a group of people in the school who usedta call her agringada, you know, ’cause sometimes she likes to talk like a gringa, you know, their idea of a gringa, when she wants people to know how intelligent she is and not to treat her like no hoochie woman. So whenever anybody says ambitious I think bitch. You know Delgadina, the bartender at the cantina where us had our first date.

  He lookin
g like he trying to remember who Delgadina, then he nod, then he look like he thinking he thought she were a hoochie woman, then he say how the African-American woman have got to tread proudly in the universe, and that people can’t identify freedom with license or decadence. I ain’t know whether he say that ’cause he think Delgadina a licentious-type woman and he ain’t want me to pattern myself on Delgadina.

  Freedom is responsibility, he say.

  I ain’t dispute that, I say. You’s right. I know I’s got to be more responsible.

  Freedom ain’t just responsibility for yourself. You’ve gotta be responsible to and for others too. Especially our people. You remember that old song “Respect Yourself.” When we respect ourselves we’re respecting each other as well.

  I ain’t dispute that.

  Then he tells me some more of them abuse stories and each time he tell one of them stories I be saying. Peeing on your head and telling you it’s rain.

  They tried to get me to write one of their official reports he said. That’s when I decided I just wouldn’t participate in the system anymore. ’Cause I knew the official report was a lie.

  Trying to pee on your head and tell you it was rain, ain’t they? Or trying to get you to pee on other people’s heads and tell them it rain. You’s right not to participate in that. If I peed on anybody’s head myself, I’d tell them it was pee, I wouldn’t tell them it was rain.

  But you wouldn’t pee on anybody’s head in the first place, Nadine, he says.

  I think everybody pees on somebody’s head. It’s just whether you tells them it’s pee or tells them it’s rain. I would like to think that I’m perfectable enough not to pee on nobody’s head. Course there’s them that pees on people’s head and ain’t know they’s peeing on they head. Like that Miguelita that you thought was some crazy woman that you thought you knew, if Miguelita was to pee on somebody’s head, she would think it was rain her ownself. So if she told you it was rain, you would have to explain to her that it was pee and ain’t rain. And then if you told her it was pee and ain’t rain, she might stop peeing on you. Least that’s the Miguelita us in the cantina thinks she is.