Mosquito Read online

Page 22


  You wants to go someplace and have a pizza or something, Nadine?

  I’ll go, but I’ll drink water. I don’t want no pizza. I’m too fat. If I don’t order something, will you feel uncomfortable?

  Go on, order something, Nadine. I got the money. I got me a lot of piano-tuning jobs, so’s I got the money.

  Really? I didn’t know you was getting too many jobs to tune pianos around here. Before you said as soon as you showed up there was a lot of peoples didn’t want you to tune they pianos.

  They’s colored people with pianos, he said. Anyway, I told you I got me a job up at the college now tuning they pianos. You know, for they music students.

  I thought that colored college had just one piano.

  Naw, they’s got more than one piano, Nadine. You know a whole college have got to have more than one piano. And then some of they music students have got they own piano. Thing is when some of them college students sees me timing the pianos, they wants me to play and I got to tell them I tunes but I don’t play.

  You know how to play the piano.

  I know I know, but if I be playing piano for all the fools that wants me to play piano, I wouldn’t be able to tune no pianos. Then there’s them that uses the music room to talk revolution. I was trying to tune the piano and they was in there talking about revolution.

  I ain’t asked him what they said about revolution ’cause the waitress was there. She straightened her apron, took the pen from behind her ear and ask us what we want to order.

  You could tell that she kinda fancied John Henry, ’cause I ain’t known a woman to be in his presence that ain’t. She looking at him as much as she taking the order. ’Cause if I do say so myself that man is a model for the other John Henry, the John Henry of legend. ’Cept he tunes pianos.

  I’ll have some french fries then, and a Big Mac, and a Coca-Cola, a large Coke, and one of them fried apple pies . . .

  This ain’t no McDonald’s, Nadine. What you ordering a Big Mac for? asked John Henry.

  I mean, a hamburger, medium, and some kinda apple pie.

  We’s in the Galileo Club in Covington, which is a African-American-owned restaurant. I ain’t know why they name it the Galileo Club. Us owns a restaurant usselves, like I mighta told y’all, us Johnsons is restaurant owners, but when I dines out I likes to patron other people’s restaurants, though when John Henry were courting Monkey Bread he would sometimes bring her to us restaurant, which ain’t got no fancy name.

  I’ll get it straight in a minute, the waitress says.

  If you want to play something, I got the money, say John Henry.

  Naw. I don’t want to play nothing, John Henry. You’s better than a lot of them on the jukebox. How come you’s just a piano timer?

  I likes to tune pianos, Nadine. Anyway, they’s a lot of folks that plays piano. I likes to tune them. I likes to make them something better. Plus I don’t think I plays better music than the music that is played. Not if you been to Kansas City. I been to Kansas City and heard me some good and true piano playing. I am the man to tune pianos and I’m the best piano timer they is.

  Oh, yeah?

  Yeah, I am. I knows I am. Well, I am the best piano tuner in the Covington region. And I got to tune some of the best piano players’ pianos when I was in Kansas City. I was sitting in one of them clubs watching them having one of them jam sessions, you know, where they begins with just a few people playing and then them other musicians comes and joins in. One of the piano players saw me sitting there and asked me was I a musician, you know, ’cause a lot of musicians comes to that club. He thought maybe I was too shy to join in. Then I tells him I ain’t no musician myself, I’m a piano tuner. Well, come here, boy, I needs a piano tuner. Then them other musicians they stops playing and watches me whilst I’m tuning that piano. Then they starts playing the jam session again and that man say that piano got the best tuning that it’s ever been tuned and even suggests that maybe I should set me up a shop there in Kansas City. And don’t believe my age when I tells him that I’m still a teenager and us is visiting in Kansas City, but I just wanted to come to that club because I have heard about it as being a legendary club. But he tells me whenever I wants to come to Kansas City, there is plenty of musicians there, piano players that’s pianos could use some tuning.

  We can go back to my apartment and listen to some tapes. What you like to hear. You like jazz, don’t you?

  Sure, I likes jazz. Anything you do.

  John Henry got one of them basement rooms. I gots to tell y’all he ain’t no teenager whilst we’s in that apartment, he a grown man. I walks around in the room and he’s got some of his piano tuning instruments on one of them tables, though he mostly just needs him that tuning fork. I picks up that tuning fork but I ain’t know how peoples can tune pianos with just a tuning fork. He ain’t got no piano in that little apartment his ownself, but there’s a club down the street where he can sometimes go to play the piano. He don’t play it for the peoples, though. Sometimes he go there and play it for hisself. Then we sit down and talk. He go back in the bathroom, and then he come back and turn on some jazz, and it that real avant-garde-type jazz, and someone in it seem like they’s reciting poetry. I ain’t remember what that poet say, but it sound something like:

  I’m here and my hereness is now,

  and my nowness is here

  and so

  from your there and your other.

  Kinda surprise me that John Henry be listening to that avant-garde-type jazz, but he say that when he was in Kansas City some of them musicians got his address and some of them still sends him they music when they records it. And even new musicians he ain’t met sometimes sends him they music. One of them say, To the best piano tuner in Kansas City, and he ain’t even in Kansas City, he in Covington, Kentucky.

  Then we’s sitting on the couch together.

  You want some Coca-Cola? he ask. You ain’t afraid of me, is you?

  Naw, John Henry.

  What’s kindsa things you like to talk about? he ask.

  Me and John Henry we talks about all kindsa things, but you know when he ask me what kindsa things I likes to talk about, I ain’t even know.

  All kindsa things, John Henry. I likes to talk about all kindsa things.

  We sits there and holds hands, you know. Then John Henry turn on the TV. We holds hands watching television. Then he say. I thought you wouldn’t want to go with me. I mean, me once being Monkey Bread’s man.

  I ain’t say nothing. Then I say, Monkey Bread don’t play that. I ain’t know why I say that.

  I thinks the whole world of you, Nadine.

  I say nothing.

  Sometimes I feels this anger, you know, Nadine. I just feels it and feels it. Then I gets to tuning them pianos. I don’t know what I’d do with that anger if I didn’t have them pianos to tune. And then when I looks at you I feels.

  I ain’t say nothing. I’m waiting for him to say what he feels, but he just say he feels.

  I thinks I’m in love with you, Nadine. What do you feel about me?

  I feels, I says. To tell y’all the truth he the first grown man ever told me he in love with me. Though when he were a little boy he told Monkey Bread he were in love with her. I once asked Monkey Bread why her and John Henry stopped going together and she say, ’Cause I don’t feel like I’m my natural self with John Henry. I don’t feel like I can be my natural self with John Henry. I mean I could be the kinda woman that John Henry want, but it ain’t the kinda woman I natural am.

  She kept going with him, though, till she decided to go out there to Hollywood and asked him to come with her, and he didn’t want to go to no Hollywood. Say he rather stay in Covington or go out there to Kansas City. Fool Monkey Bread thinking he mean Kansas City, Kansas.

  I don’t mean that Kansas City, Monkey Bread, I means where the musicians is.

  I feels like I’m my natural self when I’m with you, John Henry, I says, and then we cuddles. I know some of y’all wants to kn
ow more about that cuddling, but I don’t play that. And some of y’all might be a little too young to hear me talk about some of the things we was doing or to be doing some of the things we was doing.

  Then I’m imagining I’m in the kitchen with Delgadina and the Welshman, nibbling that cheese and biscuits, and the Welshman say, Lawdy Miss Clawdy, Delgadina, you sho looks fine. And you know ain’t no Welshman going to be talking like that. ’Cept Delgadina wearing a skirt like the woman with the bell, and the Welshman try to raise up her skirt to see if they’s a bell under it. ’Cept Delgadina as proud as the woman with the bell and ain’t let him raise up her skirt. Just to kiss you then, my sweet delight, say the Welshman. Then someone in the other room say, Is y’all going to just read poetry? Where’s the music? Come on, Nadine.

  So that’s how come you was so friendly when I first come in the place. Spying on me, I says, when Delgadina come back from bringing Miguelita her Mexican beer.

  She shrugs. Yeah, spying on you. But you know there’s still one thing about you that makes me suspicious.

  What?

  You never tell me none of your childhood memories. I always tell you about my growing up in Houston and shit, and you even know about me running away to New London.

  I don’t know all about that, I says.

  Well, you know enough about when I ran away.

  When did you come back to the Southwest?

  When I discovered you don’t run away for independence, you make your independence where you are.

  I’m thinking that ain’t true, ’cause there’s plenty of them refugees that has to run away for they independence. They’s others that tries to make they independence where they is, and others got to run away for it. Then I’m thinking about them first Europeans that run to America for they independence, then made they own independence at the expense of other peoples’ independence. Then I be thinking other thoughts about that independence.

  But I never hear any of your childhood memories, say Delgadina. Even some of these drunken vatos I don’t know be telling me about their childhoods. It’s like you sprang grown or something. Like in that mythology, that woman springs grown from the head of Zeus or some shit.

  Ain’t I told you any childhood memories?

  Naw. ’Cept you said that friend of yours in California, that Monkey Bread, you and her been friends since girlhood, but I ain’t heard no childhood memories. And you told me about that old boyfriend of yours, that John Henry that looks like this guy I know from Houston.

  I shrug. Well, we been friends since girlhood, me and Monkey Bread, used to pal around together when we were girls, used to go fishing and shit. Grade school, high school, you know. We used to go up to the college together, ’cause she knew a lot of them college boys. I don’t mean when we was in grade school, I mean when we was in high school. I don’t mean in Covington. One of her boyfriends usedta go to Kentucky State. Then she went with John Henry. ’Cept she usedta go with John Henry when they was childrens, then she went with other boyfriends. Then she runs to Hollywood. Running from one Hollywood to another. Then after she runs to Hollywood I went with John Henry.

  Say what?

  I tell her, or rather remind her, that that John Henry name Hollywood. John Henry Hollywood. Say he the first man who ask my girlfriend to many him, then the next thing I know she want to go to California, to the real Hollywood. I tell her some more about me dating that John Henry Hollywood for a while.

  At first I didn’t know whether I should date him, you know. So I writes to Monkey Bread and she writes back and says, Girl, I don’t play that. ’Cause you know how some women is, when they stops dating a man, they still considers him to be theirs. I know when I was in this club, I met this jazz musician and she told me about her ex-husband’s ex-wife. Say after she divorced this man, his ex-wife, who had divorced him herself comes in the club and tells her she’s gonna kick her ass for divorcing the man that she herself had divorced. They’s some fools in this world. Didn’t come after her when she married her ex-husband, but after she divorced him she say she going to kick her ass. Say she is still running from that woman. I ain’t know what kinda possession that is. Say the woman follows her from gig to gig. Say she can’t understand it herself. Monkey Bread don’t play shit like that.

  That still you as a grown woman, she say. You ain’t even told me about any childhood boyfriends. I’ve told you about plenty of my boyfriends when I was a girl.

  I never had any childhood boyfriends ’cause I’ve always been sorta big and the boys all like those little girls, you know. I was always taller than all the boys, you know. Monkey Bread, though, usedta have a lot of boyfriends when we was growing up, though. One of those cute little women that the boys like. But I think even John Henry Hollywood she consider her first real boyfriend, though. But I was shy too, tall and shy, so you know how boys are.

  I think you just sprang grown, Mosquito. I mean, even all the books I read, the fictions, there’re chapters where people tell their childhood stories. If you were a book, there’d be no childhood stories. I think you just sprang grown, Mosquito. Either that or you’re a spy they forgot to give your dossier with your childhood memories, she joke. But I guess if you were a real spy you’d make up some childhood memories. They always have spies memorize their whole histories.

  When Delgadina say that I be thinking what Delgadina told me her ideal type of novel. It would be a novel where you could read any chapter when you wanted to and where you wanted to read it. After you read the first chapter and got introduced to the principal characters, you didn’t have to read the novel chapter by chapter. Ideally, you didn’t even have to start reading the beginning first. For her that the ideal novel, the ideal way of telling a tale. Course when you’s listening to a tale it ain’t as simple as reading it. ’Cept if you got you one of them tape recorders, you can listen to the tale anyplace in the tape, especially them newfangled tape recorders. When you’s talking to people, though, you can tell them anywhere in the tale you wants to tell them, and you don’t even have to tell them all of the tale. And then they can ask you questions and have you clarify.

  I start to tell her again about that Maria, then I tell her about my folks who own a restaurant in Covington, Kentucky, and how I usedta wash dishes in that restaurant when I was a girl but was always too shy to come out of the kitchen. It my shyness give me the reputation at school of a loner, and even when I stop being shy I still have the reputation of a loner. Like me and my friend Monkey Bread be sitting on the bank of that Kentucky River fishing and be watching them riverboats and them houseboats and she be asking. Mosquito, how come you such a loner?

  And I be giggling ’cause here I am sitting on the riverbank fishing with the fool and she be asking, Mosquito, how come you such a loner? And then I tell her, that Delgadina, I mean, about them miniaturized spy satellites I seen at this trade show, ’cause her talking about spy be reminding me of them spy satellites. You know, they like spy satellites except but they for everyday people, you know. You oughta see all the new surveillance technology they got.

  She get a bag of pretzels from underneath the counter and pour more pretzels in my bowl, gazing at the restaurant-cantina, almost like she wondering who a spy, then at Miguelita, sipping her Mexican beer, like she wondering if she a spy, then take her another order. Her breath smell like cloves. She a bartender woman, like I said. And then I be thinking that I heard or read somewhere that bartending Mexican-American women supposed to be a stereotype. Or maybe it bartending Mexican women supposed to be a stereotype. But then they be plenty of bartending gringa women but they ain’t supposed to be a stereotype.

  Bartending Chicano women, that supposed to be a stereotype, I says, ’cause I remember when I first heard or read it I be wondering if that Delgadina know she supposed to be a stereotype. I don’t think no truck-driving African-American woman supposed to be a stereotype except that stereotype that supposed to make a African-American woman not have no femininity, and I know I got femininit
y and womaninity too.

  She prefer Chicana to Mexican American, though, that Delgadina, like I said. Chicana, I think that supposed to be more political or more politically correct, like they be saying now. I don’t know what she say Chicana supposed to be. But anytime anyone call her Hispanic she correct them and say Chicana and anytime anyone call her Mexican American she correct them and say Chicana. She even be correcting Mexican Americans that be referring to themselves as Hispanic instead of Chicano or Chicana. Like when we was watching this Chicano comic on television who kept saying Hispanic she kept saying to the television screen, Chicano. Every time he say Hispanic she be saying to that television screen Chicano. He one of her favorite comic, so she say Chicano more sweet than if he somebody else be saying Hispanic when they should be saying Chicano. She even wrote that fool a letter explaining why he should be saying Chicano and not Hispanic, ’cause the next time I seen his comedy act he be saying Chicano. And he even say Hispanic and then correct himself and say Chicano. She say it important to know who you are and to also know who you want to be.