Mosquito Page 21

  She look like she want to say Not even yourself? but she don’t. She sip her punch, and then they looks like they’s sipping from the same glass again. Then they listen a little bit to the student poets, then they look at each other.

  I starts to tell them I don’t like that phrase, that peoples should just be good for each other. Be talking about being good for each and ain’t be talking who good enough for whom. I starts to say that about people being good for each other and good to each other.

  Never been to the Southwest before, say the Welshman, then looks at me. Y’all got to remember that this man look almost like the elder James Bond, so y’all can imagine who it like looking at me. I likes James Bond. Course I ain’t no Bond girl. Uh, we met on the east side of the Thames. New London. Galway Square. Delgadina said that would make a great setting for a play, The Chicana in Galway Square. He kinda laugh, one of them rugged, Welshman laugh. I tries to remember another movie I seen James Bond in when he wasn’t playing James Bond. I means Sean Connery.

  I ain’t going to tell y’all that Welshman’s name, though. To tell y’all the truth, while we’s standing there, I’m thinking whether he got all his documentation to say that it okay for him to be in America. They’s probably got special documentation for poets, though, to let them come across different borders to give readings and shit. I’m thinking this man look like a man can cross any borders and ain’t nobody going to ask him for his documentation. Then I’m imagining I’m one of them border patrol, and I’m asking him for his documentation. Instead of handing me his documentation, though, he hand me a book of poetry.

  Somebody else up there reading some poetry that ain’t poetry. I gots to say though that that Welshman’s poetry sound like poetry ’cause it got music in it. Some of that poetry that we listened to on them recordings, and got a lot of repetition in them and a lot of different images and music and even some of them got rhymes. He sound like the kind of poet that when he write poetry he must read it aloud to hisself or have other peoples read it aloud to him. Even his voice kinda sound like poetry, ’cause you know how us Americans is about them voices that sounds like Sean Connery.

  He talking to me, but now he looking at Delgadina again and I’m wondering who this Delgadina, ’cause this a whole other Delgadina. I mean, this the same Delgadina, but I ain’t know she ever been to New London. Delgadina have told me how they came naming the New World for the Old.

  We’d come to hear the American poet. What is his name? I don’t even remember which American poet it was now. But you know, Delgadina, the one who wrote the poem about people who never talk to each other.

  They only talk in their sleep, said Delgadina.

  ‘Yes, I thought that was the most fantastic line I’d ever heard. Oh, I mean it’s quite an ordinary line, but rather fantastic. I like the American language, but I don’t much like modern American poetry. I don’t know if he’d written the poem yet. Had he written the poem yet?

  No, he was telling us about a poem he was writing.

  Yes, I remember. After hearing him, you were wishing that you were a poet. But you were a poet. I’d read your poetry, Delgadina. But then you thought of it only as an avocation I suppose, but when you heard him read you wanted to be a poet. I didn’t know whether it was because you thought he was so good or thought you’d be better. Young poets always have that conceit. When I read some of my poetry now, I see the look I get. From young poets who believe poetry is supposed to be, well, what they’ve been taught poetry is supposed to be. Not about ordinary things and ordinary people.

  Your poetry isn’t about ordinary things and ordinary people.

  Because they’re about my own people, and to you, I suppose, we’re exotic, mystical. I mean, the true Welsh. Our own natural selves. It’s always delightful to see you, Delgadina. And you know. Delgadina wasn’t even one of my students.

  What? I asks. I wants some Budweiser, but they’s just got that punch.

  I thought she was a student because she was always up at the college where I was teaching.

  I worked in a factory in New London, that’s in Connecticut. I ran away from Houston. Actually, I was going to go to New York, but New York seemed too fantastic, and then when I was in New York I overheard some college girls talking about returning to school in New London, so I got on the train with them. I pretended I was older than I was and got a job in a factory, you know. Then I’d go up to the college. All the students were older than me. I used to sit in on different classes, you know. And then she’s talking to him. I always liked your classes best. Everybody else played the gringo with me except you. You treated me like an intellectual equal.

  The Welshman said nothing. I wasn’t sure if Delgadina’s interpretation was the same, though, as his interpretation.

  I thought Delgadina would explain what she had said, but she ain’t. I tried to imagine Delgadina the intellectual equal of a Welsh poet when she a teenager and he twenty years or so older than her. I was thinking maybe she mean something other than intellectual equal but just say intellectual equal.

  They told me you were a townie. That’s a marvelous American expression, isn’t it? He looked at me. Do you know what townie means?

  Yes, I said. Them college towns. Everybody that ain’t college people they calls them townies.

  Yes, said the Welshman. I think that’s a rather marvelous expression.

  It’s not meant to be marvelous, said Delgadina.

  I thought you were one of the students there. I knew you weren’t like any of my students, but I thought you were a student. Then when you told me you weren’t a student . . . What would you like, Nadine?

  Uh, talking to me? They got any Bud Light?

  Let’s go in the kitchen.

  I follows them in the kitchen, though I ain’t sure whether he just want to be with Delgadina. Maybe he ask if I wanted anything so’s I’d go over to the table and get me some punch and he could be talking to just Delgadina. Yeah, that probably why he be asking me that. I starts to stay in there and listen to that poetry, but most of it don’t sound like no poetry to me. But we’s in the kitchen and he’s looking in the refrigerator for Bud Light, and they’s Bud Light in there. I’m thinking they ain’t gonna be no Bud Light in there, and then I can let just him and Delgadina be in there, but they’s Bud Light in there. I should say he ain’t exactly acting like her old lover or nothing. But he is kinda acting like he her old lover or something, or maybe somebody who wanted to be her lover, or maybe wants to be her lover now that she’s older than a teenager. But now I’m drinking my Bud Light and leaning against the counter and Delgadina, she and that Welsh poet sitting at the table talking.

  Mark and Galway were the subjects of the evening. You brought up the name of LeRoi Jones. He was LeRoi Jones then, wasn’t he?

  Yes, he hadn’t yet changed his name. It’s just that everybody was acting like such gringos except for you. Maybe it’s just I’m not your history. But you were the only gringo I ever met that didn’t treat me like gringos treat me. I think there’s something about me that just brings out the gringo in a gringo.

  They thought you were black, said the Welshman. You wouldn’t let me explain to them that you weren’t.

  Why should you? And anyway, I felt like LeRoi Jones was my poet too. I would have brought up a Chicano poet if I’d known any Chicano poets in those days. I didn’t know any Chicano poets. If it was now I’d’ve said Alurista. So I mentioned LeRoi Jones, ’cause they were talking like poetry was just themselves. When I mentioned him, you were the only one who said, Yes, let’s talk of him. The others acted like they didn’t even hear me. I wanted to be the Chicana poet. I didn’t call myself Chicana then, but I wanted to write about growing up in barrios in Houston.

  Delgadina didn’t exactly grow up in no barrio ’cause she had all kindsa people in the neighborhood she grew up in. But I ain’t say nothing. Or maybe she did grow up in a barrio before she moved into the neighborhood with other Chicanos, blacks, Asians, Native America
ns, whites.

  I could relate to your poetry, but that’s because you’re Welsh, I guess, you know, growing up in those mining towns. Working-class Welsh. I mean, you write classical poetry, it’s got a classical sound to it, but you know what I mean.

  She sat on the edge of the table. Did I tell y’all he got me my Bud Light. I’m standing near the counter drinking it and he’s standing near Delgadina.

  Yeah.

  And you didn’t play the gringo with me. And you didn’t shit me. You didn’t shit me.

  Why didn’t you let me tell them you weren’t black? he asked.

  Delgadina didn’t answer. She got up and reached for my Bud Light, sipped some, then gave it back to me. She sat back on the edge of the table. He towered near her. She was looking real pretty and made me think of one of them Bond girls. ’Cept the one that she kinda looks like played the villain. Anyway, they’s talking about her poetry, though. About when she was a teenager pretending she was older working in that factory and sitting in on classes and trying to experiment with poetry and even writing redondillas and trying to write about the Chicana experience in America and trying not to write poetry that just shitted people and trying to write poetry that didn’t have no category. You know, they’s having one of them kinda conversations. I’m mostly drinking my Bud Light till Delgadina says, Somebody asked me whether I wrote as a black woman.

  I tried to tell him you weren’t black, said the Welshman.

  I didn’t want to play that, said Delgadina. Well, if it was South Texas, it wouldn’t have made any difference. ’Cause we’re niggers in South Texas ourselves, but I saw how the other Latinas there played it, and I didn’t want to play it like that. I preferred them to think I was black than play it like that. I can put on any accent I want.

  They said nothing. Then they were talking about some black girl who had worked as a junior diplomat at the U.N. and had gone to that school and had a nervous breakdown. I don’t know who they was talking about. I guess she was supposed to have been somebody real intelligent, educated in Europe and shit, then returned to America and discovered she was just a nigger. They ain’t used that word, but that’s what they was talking about.

  She was always preoccupied with people treating her like an intellectual equal, said Delgadina, as if she ain’t just said that about herself. She went to schools in Germany and shit and was supposed to be top in her classes, and those German schools aren’t supposed to be bullshit schools. So she didn’t really know what America was. So she wanted to go to college in America. It was during the so-called Revolution, so she thought she ought to return to America. She thought she knew America most from the newspapers and books, but then she discovered the true America. She supposed to be in and out of asylums even now. My ex-husband knows her, actually. Because they sometimes exhibit in the same galleries in New Mexico. I haven’t seen her myself since college though. We were sorta friends, but then she had her nervous breakdown and transferred to another school.

  In Europe, I mean in Germany? I asked.

  Somewhere else in America. I think she tried to start her own personal revolution. That was the first time they put her in an asylum. And like I said, she’s been in and out of asylums. She has this magnificent protector of a husband, though, because she still does her art. I hear rumors, though, but I don’t want to talk about all that. Imagine being her, I mean the top schools in Germany and shit, then coming to America and all people see is nigger. I guess it would make you crazy. Naw, I wouldn’t play that. They wanted me to play their game.

  Let’s see what they’ve got in here, says the Welsh poet, getting up and going to the refrigerator again. Ham, potato chips and celery. No salad. Potato chips in the refrigerator? Rolls. No butter. We can have some hot, unbuttered rolls.

  She’s got a microwave, said Delgadina.

  No, we’ve got to heat these properly, my dear.

  He start taking things outta the refrigerator. And putting them rolls in a pan so’s to heat them in a regular oven. I’m still leaning against the counter, sipping the Bud Light and wanting to hear more of their story. The kitchen’s a low-ceilinged room, though the rest of the rooms in the house, least the front room, got high ceilings and look like a house maybe built back in one of them other centuries and in the style of them Spanish who come to the New World. A fat gray cat comes in the kitchen and look like it sleeping, then it springs up and runs back in the living room. You can hear the sounds of poetry from the living room, or what them peoples thinks is poetry. A teenage-looking girl peeks in the kitchen. African-American girl with braids in her hair, but she don’t come in the kitchen.

  You said your purpose would be to create mediums, to write neither poetry nor prose.

  Yeah.

  But that black girl, when did she have her first nervous breakdown? I asked.

  At that party. You know, the reception for the poet. We were talking about that. I brought up the name of LeRoi Jones. But she was there seeming like she was having some kinda nervous breakdown even then, listening to those gringos.

  I was thinking that she was having a nervous breakdown. She kept talking to herself. I had to go back to New York and then I was on my way to London, and then to my own country. But I remember she kept saying she wouldn’t let the man get by with it. When he asked you whether you wrote as a black woman? She didn’t attack him, but she looked as if . . . He called her paranoid.

  She was making all the gringos nervous, you know. Except for you. But then you, it’s not your country. It’s not your history. And some of them were pretending they didn’t even notice her, you know. Like she was invisible. And kept talking about poetry.

  And what did she do? I mean, when I had to go back to New York? Did she have a nervous breakdown then?

  Yes, of course. I don’t think people really knew she’d had a nervous breakdown, though. She spotted her religion teacher. She started to major in Religion, you know. I’m not sure what she was majoring in. It wasn’t Art, either. She wanted to be a sculptor, but she wasn’t majoring in Art. Was it Chinese? Sociology? I know it wasn’t Sociology, because her interest was the intellectual subjects. And the languages, she took a lot of language classes. She already knew a lot of languages, though. Not just German. And she went over and said, “You’ve grown a mustache.” And he said, “I’ve been with Brahman.” I think that’s what he said. Something like that. And then she started talking about sculpture. And she and her religion teacher talked about sculpture. A dark-haired man who sort of reminded me of Freud. But a young Freud. And they talked about Africa. And she was doing some really nice stuff, really avant-garde. She was much older than me. Like I said, she went to another school and tried to start a revolution. Now I sometimes see interviews with her, you know, where people interview her for the art magazines and she says. Revolution yourselves, or something like that. She’s start telling people to revolution themselves. I’ve heard rumors, though, about her. Not her insanity. But that she and her husband actually finance revolutions.

  Sean get up and reach in the oven and get out the hot rolls and put some on a plate for me and some for himself and Delgadina and get us some ham and cheese.

  Delgadina got up and went to the bathroom, and her Welsh poet looked up at me.

  The last time I saw Delgadina, she thought I’d forgotten her. But you don’t forget Delgadina.

  I stood at the counter and nibbled cheese and rolls and looked at Sean till Delgadina came back from the bathroom.

  I can’t say how you delight me, he said. You’re poetry itself.

  I thought Delgadina would glow in his compliment, but she looked at him with amusement. She had toilet paper stuck on her shoes. ’Cept she didn’t show embarrassment like most people with toilet paper stuck on her shoes. Delgadina got that toilet paper off, put it in the trash can, then she spotted a metal lady sitting on the windowsill with her hands on her hips. She picked her up. There was a bell underneath her skirt that went ding.

  She’s a bell, said
Delgadina. She’s a bell. I thought this was just some kinda doll. But she’s a bell. Then she started singing that rap song that say, Ain’t nobody’s hero, but I wanna be heard.

  Would you like to have a bell under your skirt? I asked.

  Naw, said Delgadina. But she looks proud enough to be a bell.

  They’s looking like they just wants to talk to each other, or I imagines it, and I takes my Bud Light and goes into the front room. There’s some space on the couch, so I sits on the couch and listens to that poetry till they almost convinces me it is poetry. I musta gone to sleep, though, ’cause Delgadina call my name and I wakes up.

  Nadine, come on, she say.

  I gets up and starts toward the kitchen ’cause I thinks it polite to say something to her Welsh poet.

  Come on. Nadine, say Delgadina.

  What?

  They’s still reading poetry.

  Come on.

  When we get out near the cactus that they makes candy out of she say, A gringo’s a gringo.

  She still ain’t told me what happened with her Welsh poet, so I can’t tell y’all why she say A gringo’s a gringo. But to tell y’all the truth I didn’t believe that tale about intellectual equality myself.

  He try to kiss you? I asks, when we gets near the Land-Rover.

  She don’t say nothing. We gets in the Land-Rover. I wants to ask her all kindsa questions about that Welshman. I do know for several days she ain’t even say nothing to Miguelita. Then she start talking to Miguelita again. I wants to tell Delgadina she ain’t the only woman to think a man respect her for her mind and find out the truth. Course I ain’t speaking for myself, I just means other womens that I’s heard about. When a gringo gets mixed in with intellectual equality, even a non-American gringo, it makes for a different story.

  I ain’t got no tale about no Welshman, but I do wants to tell y’all more about John Henry. That night, though, when we got back to Texas City, some strange African-American woman knocks on Delgadina’s door. I’m thinking that that’s that crazy woman she were telling the Welshman about. The woman got some sort of papers that look like some kinda government-type forms. I think I seen her somewhere before, but then after she bring the papers, Delgadina say she want to go out to dinner, so I’m thinking maybe we’ll go to some Mexican restaurant but instead she go to some Italian restaurant, and I orders a pizza and she orders a side order of french fries, lettuce and tomato salad, oil and vinegar dressing, tuna salad sandwich, a large Coke, a glass of water with no ice. Anyway, Delgadina go to the bathroom and then she come back. And I’m thinking I ain’t never seen her with a glass of water with no ice in it. And then after a while she gets up and goes to the bathroom again, and I’m thinking maybe it that punch that she drank at that gathering, ’cause she come back to the table and then go to the bathroom again, and I’m sitting there playing with the selection meter on the jukebox ’cause they got one of them jukeboxes on the table, and I ain’t thinking about Delgadina I’m thinking about one of my old boyfriends. John Henry Hollywood.