Mosquito Page 25

  She spritzes her hair and face, then wipes her face with a towel from behind the bar, the same towel she uses to wipe off the bar. Budweiser and cloves, I’m thinking, is her perfume. And then Rita Moreno flashing her eyes at the hero or the villain, when this vato making a play for her come up to the bar, except he ain’t a gringo like in this Rita Moreno movie. And then in this movie the Mexican men they always want to fight the hero or the villain. The cantina woman she always want to love him, and the cantina men they always want to fight him. Maybe that what she mean by all that ontology and cosmology shit. But them gringos they always got the same cosmology. Seem like them gringo movies, even when they on them planets of the aliens, always got the same cosmology.

  She say something in Spanish to this vato that let him know that she ain’t interested, and then she say, Anyway, I finished writing in this one notebook if you wanna take a gander at it. She says we can keep as many notebooks as we wanna. I let you read this one, though, ’cause it’s got my story in it.

  Your story?

  Not my story, a fiction, an imaginary story.

  Oh yeah?

  But that vato he a persistent vato, he back over here trying to make a play for her again. But she’s as resistant as that vato’s persistent. And me I still be wanting to tell her about that Maria hiding in the back of my truck, but I just sips my Bud Light.

  CHAPTER 7

  I’M SITTING IN MY TRUCK READING DELGADINA’S notebook, reading this story about some woman who can turn into a coyote and she turn into a coyote during the Mexican Revolution and travel back and forth across the border helping them revolutionaries, then they’s snippets of barroom conversations, mostly in Spanish, except for that Miguelita and some of that shit that I be saying asking her about whether they’s Carmelite priests, and then they’s another tale about growing up in Houston and always being mistaken for a spliv and how she’s always gotta tell people that she’s Chicana, then they’s a idea for a story, it ain’t the whole story just a summarization of a story about a Mexican coming into this sleepy southern town in the USA and these gringo men wanting to fight him but the gringo women want to love him, that gringo cosmology only it’s reversed, you know, ’cause in them gringo stories the Mexican women and all the world’s women really always be wanting to love him, but they mens they always be wanting to fight him, and then they’s some more of her conversations with Miguelita and Miguelita telling her that shit about the wines and how a real bartender got to know the concordance of wines . . . and then there’s things in Delgadina’s notebook that don’t sound like Delgadina:

  I do not know what he feels, though. He is very careful not to show me what he feels. We cannot find words for each other, though I talk to him. The airy words that fly from lip to lip, flighty demons, and end up saying what they don’t mean.

  It will be different when I meet him this time.

  Sometimes when I’m with him I feel like walking or listening to music. There is no sense of the real or the unreal. Should I be in Latin America? Would I find my true self there? Ah, these are just the spirit’s attempts at self-justification, when one should not try to justify self.

  When I’m with him, sometimes I say things I don’t mean. Words that are just words and have no connection with real meaning, words that are not lying, because that hurts no one else, words geared to . . . what? Let me say what I mean to him, what I want to say, let me speak as I will.

  He is all the men I’ve ever written of—no, I should say dreamed of. He’s all the words I’ve ever looked at, all the sounds that letters make, all the reveries in waking, all the thoughts of a day. And eyes that make me . . . who I am? No, no, no, no. You make yourself who you are.

  But I just loved sitting there, hearing his conversations about what is for me the Old Country, the other America, sitting there, even saying nothing, listening. He knows things. He knows people. He knows who he is. He knows who we are. And each word I did speak, I could feel he knew their intimate meanings. Do I only imagine his mysticism? But we are of a mystical race, though some would say that we are no race at all.

  His office is like a garret, small and windowless on one side, the entrance side. The palm trees wall off the distance and seem as thick as green hedges, not palm trees.

  Take that chair. It’s the only decent one. I appreciated the letter you sent me when I was in Chiapas.

  But in Spanish, in Spanish. I sat in the chair by the window. And his notepad.

  I see you’ve read your Guerrilla’s Manual Learned a lot about how things are done.

  Yeah, hut not to do them. How does an artist become a revolutionary? Or a revolutionary an artist? Everyone can’t he a guerrilla.

  We must leave the plantation. That’s what one of my African-American friends says. Leave the plantation, Delgadina.

  But suppose one of our own people owns the plantation?

  Leave the plantation, Delgadina.

  Intellectually I know what to do. Ah, I just keep thinking about us in the early years, you know. When we were children.

  Before you ran off to see the country, and discovered it wasn’t your country.

  But it is my country. Because they see you another way doesn’t mean that’s the way you have to see yourself.

  You have a beautiful character. Your letters. The things you think.

  You’re always so far away, and then when I get your letters, you’re so close that I can touch you.

  Touch me now.

  Our eyes are always moving, from our faces, back again, to each other’s eyes, catching gestures, thoughts, and resting silently moments. But never really resting until they find an unuttered word.

  You oughta come see the other America. Who you are stays the same. Only your impressions change.

  No, he didn’t say that. I can recall the words, but he didn’t say them. They were the words he meant. I was there when we said things and when we said nothing. But even saying nothing had itself an intimate meaning. We reveled in each other.

  I read and I think too much. You can’t be a revolutionary and just think.

  He showed me a manuscript, notes that he keeps, and said I should keep a notebook. He must have felt it too. The mystical. The tranquil. Does he come here to this other America to be tranquil? Which is his America? Which is his true America? He won’t tell me who he is.

  On his shelves, books about faraway places. Not just the Americas.

  I crystallize experiences, thoughts. Things that impress me reverberate in story form. Therefore, this notebook of my impressions is not how things happened, or even why, hut it is a word, or a moment, or a gesture, range of thoughts and feeling, that reverberate as a story.

  My feelings for words are unexplainable, even when writing in a language that I feel is not my own. Things impress me creatively rather than analytically. That’s not true. If I say that they’ll think I’m a stereotype. I can analyze. For years now I’ve been puzzled by that purely conscious logic that breaks structures down into fragments. But I analyze by writing stories. I see a whole book in a word. These are building structures. I analyze creatively. Does Mosquito catch me brooding?

  I am exiled in this America.

  Except for Mosquito and some few others, I find myself more often searching out ways to be alone. Eating alone, being in my apartment alone, getting up earlier than the other apartment dwellers, being alone. Now there are night noises, the sound of a clock, the steady hum of all the sounds the night takes on. Voices, music, a rap, a ring. Bedroom noises. Love and kisses. Restless noises. Street sounds.

  But him? Where in the other America is he now? Sometimes I imagine he’s coming into the cantina, and when he does come, is it really him? Do all vatos look alike? Glimpses of him sometimes. I think it’s him. It’s that I feel so who I am around him, so relaxed around him. Does he come here to feel that way with me? And could we be that way in the other America? The other Americas. I feel that I don’t need to say anything to be understood.

  He
watches me as I look from one corner of the garret to the next, from the shelves of old books, mostly in Spanish, some in Quechua. The sloping ceiling, his notepad, returning to the old books, to the window, to the palm trees. His eyes seem to express a whole world of thoughts. That time he told me his dream about the old gods waking up, the gods before the conquerors. He wondered whether all over the world the native gods were waking up again. And then he read a poem, he said, and someone else had the same dream. Another native. He wondered whether I had had a dream such as that one. Were other natives, in other places, having the same dream?

  What are you writing, Delgadina?

  You know. Nothing.

  when I see her scurrying along the street with this shawl with them Aztec designs on it—Maria, not Delgadina or Miguelita—and then she standing in the window of this dry goods store where they sells wholesale dry goods, you know, and then she go in there and buy some different-color material and I’m stalking her ’cause I think that her but I don’t want to look like no fool and embarrass myself. And all that nonsense about all Mexicans looking alike, you know, so I don’t want to ask if she Maria. Might be Maria, but another Maria. And she be saying, Yes, I’m Maria, like that fool asking me if I’m Nadine and I’m saying, Yes, I’m Nadine. And she be saying, Yes, I’m Maria, who are you? Soy Maria, ¿y Usted? So I’m standing at the door window of the dry goods store watching. And the store owner he cut off yards of different color material for her. And I watch her haggling over the price of that material. And the dry goods man he looking at her like she speaking Greek or Hottentot and he look kinda like a Greek himself the owner of the dry goods store. I ain’t sure that Maria. And then when she come out she catch my eye and she say, Mujer buena, and I thinks maybe she mistaking me for somebody else, and then she say, Mosquito, and then she laugh and say, Buenas buenas.

  Maria Barriga, I says. I still can’t say all them trills, but that supposed to distinguish the natural Spanish speaker, the ability to say all them trills.

  And she say, That right, you remember mi nombre. You remember my name. She say that Mosquito on the tip of her tongue, you know, like the natural Spanish way of saying that Mosquito. I think that the natural Spanish or the natural Mexican way of saying that Mosquito, though Delgadina say that Mosquito like any American from Houston, though when she be talking in Spanish she be having them trills. She ask me if I’m still driving that truck, that camión. That Maria Barriga. Yeah, I says as we scurrying along that street and she holding the bundle of material like it a baby too. But she ain’t pregnant now, though, but she still got some of that plumpness, like women who’ve had babies. And she tells me how she done already had her little baby, he a boy baby, un hombrecito, but she done name him after me. And then she say something in Spanish. Something sound like coyote, but now I know she saying something ’bout calle, telling me which street is her street. She still wearing them guaraches, but she dressed more American in dungarees and a sweatshirt. She still wearing her braid and got one of the barrettes with a little koala bear on it.

  Mosquito? I asks ’cause I thinks she name him after my nickname, ’cause that the only one of my names you could rightfully call a boy, though I guess a boy could be name Sojourner too.

  No, no Mosquito, she say. I name him you true name. I name him Journal. I name him Sanctuary too. I name him Sanctuary Journal Ramirez.

  Ramírez? I thought you name Barriga.

  She laugh. She punch my arm a little bit. I no give my true name, Mosquito. You know I no give you my true name. In Spanish, barriga that mean belly. I call myself Maria Belly, ’cause I no know if it good to tell you my true name. But then I learn you to be trusted, so I give my true name. She spy up at me, see if I’m angry ’cause she lie about her name. That little koala bear looks like it’s winking at me. I think of that new girlfriend of my social psychologist friend with her koala bear eyes. That’s cool, I says. You a real jokester.

  Next thing I know we turning in the gate of this little house. Neighborhood they calls the barrio. A lot of them barrios they got names, just like them barrios in Mexico, they names them barrios in Mexico, but I don’t ask her the name of that barrio. You want to come in? she ask.

  This your house? I ask.

  Sí, sí, mi amiga.

  It a little house, but got a big porch. Porch look almost big as the house. Reminds me of one of them southern porches. I seen a porch like that in New Orleans once and they got porches like that in Covington, too, them long porches with them swing on them. I hold the screen while she open the door. This the kinda porch you could put a swing on, but ain’t no swing on it, and ain’t no hammock on it either, though I don’t know if Mexicans puts hammocks on they porches, or maybe that’s Brazil, ’cause I remember in one of them magazines seeing a hammock on one of them Latin American porches; where Americans would put a swing they had them a hammock. I think that Brazil where they got them hammocks. I don’t know if it the Native Brazilians, them Indians that got them hammocks or other Brazilians have them hammocks. And Maria, she ain’t wearing no Mexican clothes, like I said, she wearing blue jeans and a sweatshirt. But maybe blue jeans and a sweatshirt is as much Mexican clothes as American clothes. And that long braid of hers swings when she walks. That koala bear barrette looks like a little girl’s barrette, not a grown woman’s barrette, though, but I guess grown women can wear barrettes like that.

  Little girl sitting in flowered chair holding the baby. Well, maybe a teenage girl. Look like little girl to me, though. She more Native American looking, though, than Maria. She look sort of Mayan with them Mayan features and Mayan eyes, and she wear her hair in a braid just like Maria. And Maria got one of them Jesus on her mantelpiece, except her Jesus look Mexican, and her mantelpiece kinda remind me of this mantelpiece I seen in one of them Cheech and Chong movies. When Maria come in she say hi to the little girl, then she dump the materials she done bought at that wholesale dry goods store on the table that got other cloth and sewing stuff and yam and needles and handmade dolls on it and she take the baby from the little girl and say something in Spanish or Mexican and then the little girl say something to her in Spanish or Mexican and then go out the door. Maria she say the little girl from Chiapas and don’t speak English. They’s handmade dolls all lining the walls too and got little dresses on the girl dolls and shirts and trousers on the boy dolls, the hombrecitos. Men and women dolls. Mexican dolls and gringo dolls—gabacho dolls—and even African-looking dolls here and there.

  She look out for him while I shop, she say. This you namesake. This S.J. She lift up the baby and hold the baby up for me to kiss. I take the baby. I always been kinda awkward with babies, and ain’t had no children myself, but this a pretty baby. But like the little Mayan girl, he too look more Native American than Maria. And maybe even African too, but I don’t say so, ’cause after reading that Delgadina notebook, about not wanting people to mistake her for no African American, I be thinking Maria not want me to say her little baby remind me of a lot of little African-American babies with his reddish-brown complexion and curly hair.

  This a pretty baby, I says.

  Muchas gracias.

  Of course I don’t tell her that my name ain’t Journal, either, it’s Sojourner. But if she hear the word journal that’s okay. Then she take the baby from me and put him in his crib. She got all these whirligigs dangling above the crib ’cause they say shit like that help to make intelligent babies. Padre Raimundo gave me these for a present, she says, as if reading my thoughts. He says they make intelligent baby. He a real good baby. Muy bueno. And he a smart baby too. He already a smart baby. Eh, baby? ¿Eh, hombrecito? ¿Eres indio, verdad? Y muy inteligente. Bueno e inteligente. Yo sé lo que es y lo que puede ser.

  Of course I didn’t know what them Spanish words meant in them days. And I don’t know whether she calling him intelligent and good ’cause she think he already intelligent and good or she want him to become intelligent and good. Then she sit down at the table and show me her patterns. Th
ey’s patterns for making dolls and patterns for making doll clothes. I makes dolls, she say, and show me one of her little Mexican dolls. Some of them are doll dolls and others are puppet dolls. She lift up one of them puppet dolls and show me how it dances in the air, just like a real store-bought puppet. I be thinking of them Sambo dolls when she be showing them puppet dolls. But she got puppet dolls of all races too, like them doll dolls. She give me one of the doll dolls and say I can keep it in my truck. Thanks, you really good. You very talented. You really learned English really quick too.

  I learn English from reading the muñecos. I make the muñecos and I read the muñecos. Muñeco, it mean doll. Muñeco, it mean comics. She show me her collection of comic books. Got all kinda comic books, Superman, Dick Tracy, Nancy, and lot of them kinda comic books. Even got them Mexican comic books and I be wondering if I could learn that Spanish from them comic books the same as she learn that English. Lotta them comic books look like collector’s items, ’cause a lot of them comic books is collector’s items nowadays. I don’t know if she know they’s collector’s items, though. Maybe a lot of her Mexican friends and her trade them comic books around and learn English from them. I sit for a while watching her make the muñecos, cutting out the patterns and then sewing the material.

  You got a real cottage industry. I says.

  Say what? she ask.

  Say what?

  That I no learn from the muñecos. That I learn from Mosquito. Would you like something to drink? Would you like Coca-Cola? I have hot chocolate. You like hot chocolate?