Mosquito Read online

  I was traveling through France with an English woman, Jane, and she kept pointing out the quaint and cute little French villages, just like we do our Mexican villages. And when you see English movies about France they seem to always be set in these quaint little French villages and the French behave just like our Mexicans behave, though to most Americans we think of the French as aristocratic and intellectuals, except of course for the French in America, the Cajuns. But to the English, certainly Jane, the French are sort of like our Cajuns or the way the French in Quebec are to the English Canadians. It’s all social status, Mosquito. France is England’s Mexico. I can go into Mexico and they don’t give me any trouble crossing the borders. I can go back and forth across the Mexican border whenever I want. We think of the English as Europeans, but they don’t think of themselves as Europeans, they think of themselves as English. As Anglo-Saxons.

  Delgadina come and take the couple’s order. She give them a menu. I ain’t see her give others menus, ’cause most of the vatos know what on the order. Then she tell them they must want the restaurant and not the cantina, then they takes the menu with them into the restaurant.

  When I was in France, I learned all the wines, you know, of the different regions, red and white wines of Bourgogne, wines of the Southwest, I mean, the French Southwest. I really bowled them over when I first came back to the States, you know. I spent some time in northern New Mexico before I came to South Texas, one of those university towns. Then I was at the University of New Mexico because of the pueblo architecture.

  Does you know somebody named Leonora Valdez? She at the University of New Mexico. She a Native American woman, though, and don’t like to be photographed. I met her when I usedta have me a route in New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada. A reservation Native American, you know, from Arizona.

  But Miguelita, she just continue with her conversation. We had a wine identification contest and all I identified was a Vosnes Romance 1979, but that was better than even this professional wine taster. Sophie’s really bright, but I always tell her you can’t be French and not know your wines, Sophie. They don’t serve wines earlier than 1975 in some circles, you know. I got to work on Savoie and then the Cotes du Rhone wines. When I was in France, I worked with this master wine taster. I drank the Tokay and the fool kissed me and he could tell right away it was the Coteaux Champenois Blanc and not the Coteaux Chapernois Bouzy Rouge, and he couldn’t tell by the color either, because he didn’t even look at my mouth when he kissed me, but don’t tell Mr. Delgado I told you about that kiss. It was all by taste . . . You know, my friend Sophie, even when she was a child men used to find her sensual. They used to want to cuddle her. She’s got these almond eyes that slant a bit upward, you know, almost like Asian eyes, but a nose that turns a bit toward her mouth. She looks a little like me, actually, except she’s French, and she’s got sensitive lips, slightly irregular, you know, like what’s that movie star? But that makes them all the more interesting, and she’s always wearing different-color lipsticks, you know, turning her lips into peaches, apples, plums, tangerines, strawberries. She used to run from men who wanted to cuddle her until she turned eighteen, and then she started running toward some of them, but only the ones she wanted. She’s the sort of woman who can be everything, I mean the men can see whatever they want to, you know, whatever they want to see in her. But don’t tell Mr. Delgado I told you so.

  The couple return from the restaurant and sit in the cantina. Then Delgadina comes and takes their order. Then she give them another menu, ’cause they forgot the menu they took with them into the restaurant.

  He kinda reminds me of that general. . . .

  What general?

  I think she talking about the man in the couple, ’cause she be looking towards them, like she talking to them.

  I was at this villa in France, some of my friends own this villa in the South of France, and they’re very cosmopolitan, you know, they’re like royalty actually they’re so wealthy, so there was this general or something from one of those Latin American countries, I think he was in exile or something, anyway he was sitting there looking like a general, but I didn’t know anything about the fool, so I went over and said, You sitting there looking like a general, and he said, I am a general. Well, I was embarrassed to say the least, and now of course I’m always seeing his pictures in the magazines. And I was thinking he looks just like Mr. Delgado or Mr. Delgado looks just like him. I didn’t see him at all before, but all Latin American generals look the same to me. Just like Mr. Delgado. They’d had their revolution and so he was in exile, not Mr. Delgado, not Señor Delgado, but the general. He was trying to get a job as a consultant with the French military. He tried to get a job with the German military, and then he was trying the French military . . . If you could live anyplace in the world where would it be, chica?

  I don’t know. I’ve got this friend out in Hollywood who wants me to come to Hollywood. Her name’s Monkey Bread. That’s her nickname, though, not her real name. I kinda like Texas City, though.

  Texas City’s a dump. Well, it isn’t exactly a dump. But Cougar, British Columbia, that’s supposed to be the most beautiful place in the world. I’ve got an old boyfriend from Cougar, British Columbia. Don’t tell Mr. Delgado. Sophie, of course, thinks Paris is the most beautiful place in the world, but with Paris it’s the beautiful things . . . You know, there are people who know.

  Know what?

  There are always a circle of people who know. And know they know. And they are not us, Nadine. They are conspirators. And they are not us, Nadine. They are not like us, Nadine, or Delgadina, or Monkey Bread or Leonora Valdez. Or even Jane, even though she’s an English woman of privilege, she’s not true privilege. Sophie, I know Sophie is Sophie. But even Sophie can’t imagine those people who really know and know that they are the people who know.

  Say what?

  Can you imagine? There’s the rest of us, and then there’s this circle of people who know. I wonder what it would be like to be among the people who know. And know they know. The people of privilege, real privilege. The people of real privilege, nobody knows who they are. And if they know them, they don’t know who they really are. Can you imagine? They are the people who know. They are the people in power, real power, Nadine. And not people who we imagine are in power. I think I met one of them once. But I didn’t know he was one of them. No one else would know either. They’d just think they were meeting an ordinary man. Sophie thinks I called her a whore. I can’t imagine calling another woman a whore. I don’t think women call other women whores.

  Yes they do.

  Do they? I only thought men called women whores, I mean the women they can’t control. Whenever a man can’t control a woman, she’s either a whore or a bitch. But I can’t imagine calling another woman a whore. Delgadina says you can’t be a Mexican without saying puta, but they’ve got another word for puta, chinga something.

  She sip on her Mexican beer. Like I said, she don’t drink nothing but them Mexican beers. Or sometimes that pulque. That cactus juice. I guess you can call it cactus juice, ’cause supposed to be the fermented juice from some type of cactus. Or sometimes them margaritas.

  The couple order themselves margaritas, then they gets up and take the menu with them. Maybe they just likes them menus, ’cause they’s got South Texas plants and trees and flowers on them. Delgadina paint them menus herself and sometimes even draws little maps of South Texas on them, so’s peoples knows exactly where the cantina is, you know, so’s to advertise the cantina, and maybe they is tourists and thinks that they makes good souvenirs of South Texas and us cantina.

  CHAPTER 6

  HE KIND A SOUND LIKE THAT MAN THAT PLAY JAMES Bond. I mean the first James Bond. Kinda look like him too. I mean the elder James Bond. I don’t mean the young James Bond, but the elder James Bond. Delgadina have showed me a book of his poetry with his photograph on it, and also she got a recording of him reading poems. We ain’t gone there in my truck, but in a Land-Rover
that she sometimes rents when she ain’t want to ride around in my truck. I ask her why she don’t buy that Land-Rover, but she say she prefer to rent it.

  That’s ’cause he’s Welsh, she say, as we climb out of the Land-Rover. That Land-Rover looks like the kind that peoples rides in when they’s in Africa on safari. Whenever I gets in and out of Delgadina’s rented Land-Rover I feel like I’m supposed to be in Africa on safari. In fact, the khaki trousers and blouse that Delgadina is wearing do kinda make her look like she on safari. She even got her a khaki-colored safari hat, but she leave that in the Land-Rover.

  The hills around the house are covered with palm trees and cactus plants. It looks more like a part of Arizona, though, than Texas. Beyond the house they’s a full moon and hills that looks like sculptures or stone cathedrals or fortresses. Sorta like the scenery in them cowboy movies that they makes in Arizona for the landscape. I’m climbing out of the Land-Rover feeling like I’m on African safari, stepping into an Arizona landscape, which ain’t Arizona but Texas. Them is them edible types of cactus plants that people uses to make cactus candy.

  The grass is buffalo grass, the kind of grass you ain’t have to mow. The house also got a little garden of wildflowers, a red bird of paradise and some butterfly weeds. Orange-red and orange flowers. Them type of cactus with the bright red flowers. Red and golden columbines. Some of them Navajo tea shrubs—I think they’s called Navajo tea shrubs—and desert marigolds. Other types of Texas prairie wildflowers.

  What’s that type of cactus? I asks Delgadina.

  Claret cup cactus, say Delgadina. Those are my favorite cactus. Their pods are sweet and edible. I think they’re the most beautiful cactus. Their bright red flowers.

  Delgadina lead me into the garden of wildflowers, telling me the names of some of them other wildflowers and different prairie bushes. She know all they names. Coyote bush the name of one of them bushes. Yucca and jojoba, wild hyacinth and chocolate flowers.

  Chocolate flowers?

  Smell them.

  They smells just like chocolate, although they’s yellow. ’Cept the centers is brown. Maybe they gets the chocolate aroma from the brown centers.

  I call that the hummingbird plant. I don’t know it’s name myself. That’s sage. She’s got herbs mixed in with the wildflowers. You should know these plants, though, because I’ve got some of them in my container garden. Wildflowers don’t belong in containers, though. If I had me a ranch, I’d have me a garden like this. Free all my wildflowers from their containers. That’s buffalo grass.

  I know.

  How you know?

  I just knows it’s buffalo grass. I ain’t know how I know. I just knows it’s buffalo grass.

  I like her receptions, say Delgadina as we leaves the garden and goes up the stone walk to the adobe ranch house. This ain’t really a ranch, but the house in ranch style. All you can eat, I hear someone say behind us, then, I thought I knew you. Then when we’s inside, there’s someone else reading a poem. It ain’t the Welsh poet but some student poet. Delgadina say that student poets gets to read they poems there. Say the student poet, And this poem is entitled “Pennsylvania Dutch.” It ain’t sound like no poetry, though. It sound like the poet reading prose.

  Yesterday, we went up the hill to the store,

  and you asked me if I’d seen Pennsylvania Dutch before,

  and I said no,

  and so we went inside, and

  there were pumpkins,

  with cartoon characters painted on them.

  The woman who owns the place has an artist son,

  you said.

  And then farther back, there are plaques

  made of iron,

  and little skillets,

  and big iron keys.

  You ask me if there’s anything I like.

  When I say no, you buy me anyway a plaque that reads,

  The hurrieder I go, the behinder I get.

  I buy you two candy sticks, a lemon and a wintergreen.

  Our window clouds when it rains.

  Your hands are on the table.

  There are hints of reconciliation.

  Nothing big.

  A few words over a cup of tea.

  Bravo, say the Welsh poet. There is people sitting around on the floor and on the chairs and couch. The couch is made of that beige velvet. In fact, a lot of the furniture is that beige type of velvet, and it really don’t look like no ranch house-type of furniture. There’s a few vases that look like they’s imitations of them Ming vases from China, a sculpture that looks Mayan, another sculpture that look like it African, but it got what look like braids draped on it, and then there’s some of that modern-type sculpture. The carpet is one of them thick beige carpets that match the couch. I look around to see which one her Community Center teacher, ’cause she don’t come and introduce herself. They all looks like teachers, except for them that looks like students. Except they’s them modern-style educated people that wears blue jeans and tries to look like peasants. ’Cept there’s a few true working-type people, ’cause that Community Center caters to everybody in the community, and it’s a multiracial group of peoples; it ain’t just one type of peoples. Delgadina don’t introduce me to nobody but the Welsh poet, though, and to tell y’all the truth she behave like he the only one that there. She kinda wave at some of them other peoples that sitting around on the floor listening to the poetry, but she don’t go sit on the floor to listen to no poetry. We stands near the door talking to the Welsh poet while a few people is commenting and asking questions about the poem. I remembers all them questions but they don’t seem like they’s got nothing to do with poetry.

  What is the symbolism of the iron and the pumpkins and the cartoon characters? somebody ask.

  Are you trying to say something about art or love?

  I think it would be a better poem if you had a different title.

  I wants to tell the student poet that that poem don’t sound like no poetry ’cause it ain’t got no rhymes in it, or at least don’t sound as musical as I think poetry supposed to sound, and thinks maybe it might make a better story than a poem, and how I would like to know a little bit more about them peoples in that poem, but the Welsh poet who a poet and must know poetry have already say Bravo, and them peoples is already asking questions and making comments about it as if it is poetry, so I ain’t say that sound more like prose than poetry. Like that man say in one of them books that Delgadina got, what ain’t poetry is prose and what ain’t prose is poetry. And I also wants to comment on the title, but I believes it a good title, ’cause it make us think how come that the title and ain’t got no different title, and then the student poet smile shyly, you know one of them shy student poet-type smiles, and the shy student poet answer them questions, and the Welsh poet think it a poem and seem like everybody think it a poem and ain’t nobody question that maybe it ain’t no poem, and then the Welsh poet he heads toward the buffet table, fills up two glasses with punch from the punch bowls. Brings them to Delgadina and me. I shake my head no, but Delgadina takes hers, and he drinks the other one. But they’s acting like they’s known each other a long time, and they’s drinking at the same time. They’s drinking from different glasses but acting like they’s drinking from the same glass.

  When will you be back to America? ask Delgadina. That’s the only reason I came here, because of you. I didn’t bring any poetry to read.

  I don’t know. You know, my wallet was stolen in New York. Right now I’m nameless. I guess.

  He got a lot of thick dark hair and look like he maybe twenty years older than Delgadina. He kinda one of them distinguished-looking mens, but they seem like they’s a kind of wildness to him, like he’s distinguished looking but ain’t exactly tame. Seem like he can be real humorous and playful when he want to be and distinguished when he want to be.

  You couldn’t be nameless, she say.

  How’ve you been? he ask. He come real close to her when he talk and seem like he ain’t noticed me.
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  Okay. Delgadina kinda step back from him and point toward me. This is Nadine. I want you to meet Nadine.

  How’re you, Nadine?

  Okay.

  Then he start talking to Delgadina again and stand real close to her. I didn’t know you’d be the student, he said. She said she had a student at the Community Center she wanted me to meet. I didn’t know you’d be the student. When you came in she said it was you. Well, I should have known there’s only one Delgadina. But she said another name.

  I’m still looking around to see who the teacher. A few of the poetry peoples is looking in the direction of us, but most is listening to the new poets that’s reading and asking them questions. I ain’t going to quote y’all no more of that poetry ’cause it ain’t sound like poetry to me. Ain’t none of it got no rhymes in it. I knows it’s modern poetry, but seem like a poem if it ain’t got no rhymes in it, it’s got to have music. I know they’s Navajo poetry that ain’t got no rhymes in it, and everybody’s poetry ain’t got no rhymes, but the poetry that ain’t got no rhymes in it have got music.

  Juarez. My husband’s name. I mean, my ex-husband’s name. I still use my ex-husband’s name.

  Did you get married?

  Yes.

  Whoever he was he wasn’t good enough for you. Delgadina.

  Delgadina said nothing. She sipped her punch, then she said. I wasn’t good enough for him. Then she looked at me, then she said. I don’t think we were good enough for each other. He’s got a new wife now. Someone named Eden. Which is the perfect name. I call her Eden Pride, but it’s really Eden Prine. Eden Juárez now, though. He’s a sculptor.

  Oh, yeah? the Welsh poet say and then he look like he want to ask more about her ex-husband but he don’t. Well, I can’t imagine anybody being good enough for you.