Mosquito Read online

  And don’t I know it, ’cause I’m one big woman. And he a pretty big man himself. And don’t look like nobody’s priest. Thanks, Mosquito, he say, and we shaking hands.

  He got them big-man hands. And don’t got them manicured fingernails neither. Got them scraggly fingernails. And him looking at me like I’m Sojourner but calling me Mosquito. Mosquito, he repeat my name, but still looking at me like I’m that Sojourner, or just might be that Sojourner. Even that John Henry Hollywood be looking at Nadine.

  I climbs in the truck and he waves his hand and that old-fashioned flashlight helping me to back outta that alley. In them dungarees, like I says, he don’t look like nobody’s priest. Leastwise not to me. Don’t look like nobody’s priest or monk or friar neither.

  CHAPTER 5

  DELGADINA TAKES THE MAN’S ORDER AND HE whispers something to her. I guess they be talking to each other in Spanish. Yeah, I can kinda hear they Spanish. I know when she talking Spanish. I always know when Delgadina talking Spanish, ’cause they’s even certain vatos she only talk Spanish to, and almost talk it like it a language of love. Or like it they own communion language. Like when they’s having communion together they talks Spanish. Otherwise they talks English. I ain’t know whether Delgadina consider English or Spanish her first language, but I know she consider Spanish her sacred language. I ain’t been with her to mass, but I knows she probably say them prayers in Spanish. I can repeat a lot of them Spanish words but I ain’t know what they all mean. I know I hear her refer to him as Chico. He ain’t the one she call Cheech, though. He a handsome man with a large mustache and one of them valentine-shape faces and longish, tapered nose. He wearing cowboy clothes, or I should say them vaquero clothes, ’cause Delgadina be saying them cowboy clothes is originally vaquero clothes ’cept them cowboys claimed them for they own. Peoples always likes to say that they is the originators of this and that. Like they is them that don’t like Elvis, ’cause he ain’t the originator of his own music. People can’t originate everything they has. They just has to make it they own. I ain’t know a culture that have originated everything it has. But what determine the strength of a culture is when it make what it have its own. Like that jazz. It a original and originating music and it make every musical influence it own. He kinda remind me of that Frito Bandito in the commercials, though, but I always tries to see beyond that Frito Bandito. I think they banned that Frito Bandito, ain’t they? And that Juan Valdez. You know, the Juan Valdez in that commercial. They got that Juan Valdez, though he ain’t a bandito. But every time the gringo in the commercial sees that Juan Valdez he standing with his donkey. He Colombian, though, not Mexican, but it the same Juan Valdez everywhere. You know, like Delgadina says about them stereotypes. Probably gringos who come in this cantina they just see that Frito Bandito or Juan Valdez or them other stereotypes. They don’t see the real Mexicans and the real Mexican Americans. And they sure don’t see the true Mosquito. Every time we see that Juan Valdez, though, Delgadina starts talking to the television screen in Spanish, or whenever there’s a Latino drug lord or Latina whore or other stereotype on television, she starts talking to the television screen in Spanish. Even though there’s Latino drug lords and Latina whores she say that’s still a stereotype when that’s all you see on television is drug lords and whores. And probably them people see Delgadina talking to that television screen, they still just see the stereotype, ’cause that the nature of the stereotype itself. ’Cause even the people that ain’t it is it, ’cause that’s the only way them others has of perceiving the people is via the stereotype, like in that novel Invisible Man. That still my favorite book. And Delgadina got that in her library. I guess she be saying some of them scatological words, but in Spanish. She shakes her head and says something to him in Spanish, the handsome man with the mustache. She be saying that there’s a lot of Chicanos that just see theyselves as the stereotype themselves, and if you ain’t that stereotype they got of theyselves, like she ain’t the stereotype of the Chicana, they be saying you ain’t a real Chicano or Chicana. She be saying that’s how the dominant culture enforce that stereotype by having the people see themselves as the stereotype. Not just the dominant culture seeing them as the stereotype, but having them see themselves and each other as the stereotype. And even when they ain’t see themselves as the stereotype, see each other as the stereotype. That’s what she say is dominant culture control.

  Like the way you talk, Mosquito. All the people hear is the stereotype. You know, the southern Negro. To tell you the truth, sometimes when I’m listening to you, it’s sorta like when I was taking this course in African-American literature and we had to read slave narratives by women who were slaves in the Old South, and sometimes when I’m listening to you it’s kinda like those old slave women might sound, if you hear them talking. You even resemble some of those old photographs. I remembers seeing an old photograph of a slave woman, big like you, and wearing a bandanna like you like to wear when you’re not wearing your braids, and she was working in the cotton fields. It’s like when I’m somewhere and people look at me like they think I’m supposed to start dancing the fandango. I know sometimes when we’re shopping or that time when we were at the art gallery and you started talking to me, the people that didn’t know you were looking at you like you were the stereotype rather than who you are. I wanted to say to them, This is Mosquito, she’s not who you imagine she is. But maybe I was thinking I didn’t want them to think I was with the stereotype, you know. I wanted them to know that you were more than they imagined you to be. I started seeing you as they saw you, you know, not as I imagined they saw you, but I know those people, I know what they see when they look at you, ’cause I know what they see when they look at me. I don’t give a shit what they see when they look at me, ’cause I know who I am. Or like when we were at Marineland and you started asking that man all those questions. And I saw the way he was looking at you. I coulda answered those questions for you, ’cause I usedta want to be a marine biologist. So you can ask me anything you want to know about marine animals. The reason I didn’t become one is I couldn’t imagine going out on those marine expeditions with all those gringos. I started taking an oceanography class but then they started talking about going on these expeditions and I didn’t want to go on expeditions with just these gringos. Nothing but gringos in that class, and they were treating each other like comrades. You know, when you see them on those expeditions, they’re like comrades. They’re like comrades. So I just went and bought all the books for the class and would study them, you know. You didn’t have to be asking that gringo all those questions. You coulda asked me.

  I said nothing. I sipped my Budweiser. I wiped my mouth on one of them cantina napkins that got a cactus on it.

  And then I didn’t feel free.

  What do you mean?

  You know. I didn’t feel their kinda freedom just to go out on a expedition and study marine animals. Like I know this, actually she’s an African American, she’s a botanist and environmentalist, but she didn’t feel free to be a botanist and environmentalist until she could connect it with liberation, you know. Environmental racism and also trying to do something about the desertification of Africa, you know. Now she calls herself an ethnobotanist and ethnoenvironmentalist, you know. I’ve got one of her books on ethnobotany. Like if I could connect being an oceanographer with Chicano liberation, you know. I didn’t think of them as comrades either. They were just free to go out and study marine animals, but I was sorta like that botanist. I guess I envy that gringo freedom. But it’s kinda like during a war. You wouldn’t just study botany during a war unless you could connect it with the war effort. Like all those scientists they weren’t just doing their independent research during the war, they were working for the war effort. When people usedta use the war analogy I usedta think it wasn’t exactly like a war, but it is like a war. Like I can’t even go out and collect my wildflowers without some border patrol wanting to see my identification. Those people who think it�
�s not a war, and that America’s not a war zone, just don’t know who they’re dealing with . . . And I know who you are. They don’t hear what you’re saying. Sometimes I don’t hear what you saying myself. I don’t hear all that you’re saying myself.

  I know you don’t mean that, Delgadina. I don’t mean about the war, ’cause I believes you when you says that. I knows America. And I knows that some of them patrols ain’t even official patrols. They is just ordinary gringos who has decided that they is going to control they own borders, like they thinks that y’all ain’t human beings but prairie foxes. The real border and the border as a metaphor. Even the cultural border. I knows that there is plenty of metaphorical and cultural borders and they patrols them. And I patrols my own borders. There is a border I allows you to cross, Delgadina, but I don’t allow that Miguelita. I likes Miguelita, crazy gringa, but they is borders I wouldn’t allow her to cross. I knows that I’s got to take that right myself, because I knows that I has rights that the United States is not bound to protect. I knows that from elementary history that they made that famous decision in the middle of the nineteenth century and is still making it. I forgot all about that decision, but then when you was taking that course in the politics of race, I was reading one of them books of yours and read again about that decision. It is the same America. So I has to protect my own borders. That’s why I am ambivalent about the border, but I knows about the war. They is people who thinks I don’t know about the war ’cause I don’t all the time talk racism and I likes watermelon. But I knows about the war. I knows America like I knows myself. I knows if the colored peoples of the world writes they view of history it is a different history. Even when I reads the Native Peoples’ view of history in them books that you has yourself, Delgadina, the whites is all liars and rogues, and the ones that ain’t is the exceptions and not the rule. Of course they claims that they’s is the objective history and us history is us subjective view. But I knows them Native Peoples in them books of yours is speaking the truth and more than the truth. They’s this Oklahoma African I knows and that’s his favorite expression. I speak more than the truth, Nadine. I usedta think that you couldn’t speak more than the truth. But when I reads them Native Peoples speaking, they sounds like they is speaking more than the truth. I means about not hearing all I’m saying.

  Naw, I don’t mean that. I hear what you say, Mosquito. But you know what I mean. When I talk with more of a Chicana flavor to my accent, all the people hear is a stereotype. The stereotypical Chicana, not just that I’m speaking English with my own flavor, my own innovations, my own accent. I can sound just like a gringa when I want to. And I can sound just like you. Not exactly like you, but I can sound like you if you were from Houston. I mean, I can sound like the African Americans from Houston. I can sound like almost any kinda people. But then there are people who when they look at me, and not just gringos, think I’m just supposed to sound like Rosie Perez, you know. I can talk like Rosie Perez, but that’s when I want to talk like Rosie Perez, but it’s not just because some people think I’m supposed to talk like Rosie Perez. I like the way Rosie Perez talks, but that doesn’t mean we all have to sound like Rosie Perez. And a lot of people just hear her as a comedian, they don’t hear what she’s saying. So she only gets to play certain roles. I guess that’s what I don’t like, just having to play certain kinds of roles. Either roles controlled by my own people or roles controlled by the gringo. Sometimes I think you’re the only one who knows who I am. But even you don’t know who I am. ’Cause sometimes when I start sounding like a gringa, or how people think only gringas are supposed to sound, or start sounding like an African American from Houston, you start looking at me like you don’t know who I am. Sorta like when Sancho starts sounding like Don Quijote. I remember when we were reading that book for one of my classes, and some of the students said that Cervantes was inconsistent, and I was the only one in the class that knew that he was deliberately making Sancho to sound like Don Quijote and even Don Quijote like Sancho. I don’t have to just be Sancho, or Sancha. Or if you study the different women in that book. I could play the roles of all the women in that book.

  Delgadina ain’t no licensed Indian trader, but sometimes she put upon the bar pictures of things that you can buy from Indian traders. I be thinking why she got that upon her bar, ’cause it a cantina, but whiles I’m talking she straightening them pictures of silver and turquoise jewelry, Navajo rugs, sand paintings, Kachina dolls, different arts and crafts, turquoise, coral, Navajo pottery, concho belts—I thinks they’s concho belts. Somebody send her them pictures and sometimes she puts them on the bar. You can order right from them pictures ’cause they’s got the order forms. Perhaps she or Delgado gets a commission when they sells some of them things that is on them pictures. I know you can sound like me. ’Cause I know you hear everything I’m saying. I hears everything people say and sometimes I hears what they don’t say. Sometimes I am even like them peoples that calls theyselves remote hearers. I ain’t got the gift for remote viewing without a telescope, but I has got remote hearing. And sometimes I can hear what peoples don’t even know that they is saying. I can hear what peoples mean. Sometimes I knows what peoples is meaning even when they is speaking foreign. Or speaking what is foreign to me but familiar to them. I knows the language of love in anybody’s language. And I knows when people is using language for sacred possibilities and for healing purposes. I knows the language of warfare and the language of profanity. I knows the language of profanity even when it ain’t profane. I knows the language of discipline and self-control. I knows the language of African women talking power when it ain’t even in a language that I know. Well. I was watching a documentary and these African womens were talking power in a language I didn’t even know, and then when the African woman told us what it meant in English I already knew: She said that they was talking about power from within, and how you can have power with people rather than power over them. Most people wants power over people. But these womens was defining their own ideal of power and Africans working together to solve the problems of Africa. I likes that ideal of power myself, but it seems that that would only work in the African world amongst the African theyselves, and maybe only amongst the African womens theyselves, for I’ve been almost everywhere in America and I knows power. I ain’t been amongst the European powers, but my daddy has when he fought in the war and so has my uncle Bud. I knows that the European ideal of power is having power over peoples. They is the conquering types of people and it is conquering that they celebrates as virtue. And mens theyselves forms they own conquering race and celebrates its virtue, Yes, there is some powers that you has to fight, like they say, fight them powers. They is powers that only understands power as power over people, so you can’t fight they definition of power with your definition of power, ’cause they ain’t comprehend your definition of power, and everybody comprehend they definition of power. Power is power, though. And then they is the Pacific powers. That is why they wants to make China into they new enemy, and everybody talking about China, and I has even had people to ask me what I know of China, because they ain’t want to be conquered by that new power. I conquers myself, and disciplines them that rides in my truck, and them that rides in my truck has got to work together with me or I works together with them. They has got to stay out of my cab. Perhaps that is the flaw of my character that needs perfecting. But I draws power from within and from my peoples and from the perfectability in Perfectability Baptism. I can’t point to anyone I’ve conquered but plenty I’ve disciplined. Unless they’s other people’s children. Or them I learns discipline from my ownself. I wouldn’t be talking to you if I didn’t think you heard everything I’m saying. And even if you don’t hear everything I’m saying, ’cause I don’t know if any natural person can hear everything somebody’s saying to them, at least you know I’m talking to you, and you don’t even have to say I hear you like that man on TV ’cause I know you hear me. Now that African-American woman on there don’t say t
hat, ’cause she knows peoples knows she hears them. Monkey Bread say she is in South Africa now, though, and the Daughters of Nzingha is celebrating her for leaving the plantation. Might be a plantation there in South Africa, though. And you know us can run plantations. There is plenty of us usselves who knows how to run plantations. The white plantation owner claims that his the more efficient plantation, though.

  Delgadina says nothing, then scratches her elbow.

  Say what? What I’m saying, Mosquito, is that when people meet you who don’t know you, probably to them you just seem to confirm the stereotype. You ain’t exactly no invisible woman, but you know what I mean. I’m sure I see as much of the you that I want you to be as the you that you are.

  She straightens a photograph of a concho belt, you know them pictures on the bar.

  My natural self.

  She straightens a photograph of a Kachina doll. Then Delgadina she say something in Spanish, and maybe it the same as saying natural self in Spanish. Then she say something about Langston Hughes. She say I kinda reminds her of people she’s read about in Langston Hughes. Then she say something about a man who call hisself Simple. A vato comes in, she says Hola vato and goes and serves him some beer and then comes back to stand behind the bar. She asks me whether I wants another Budweiser. I says Naw, thanks. She wipes her forehead with her apron and leans on the bar.