Mosquito Page 5

  They’s got a rear door to the truckstop restaurant where you can enter just to go to the restrooms. I waits for her and then we comes back, and I peeks to make sure they ain’t none of them patrols. I see something that looks like a patrol, but it ain’t a patrol. It one of them Land-Rovers. Then I motions for her to come and get back in the truck. I helps her up in the truck and be thinking how she get in the truck the first time. I knows somebody musta helped her up in that truck. I don’t keep my truck all latched up like some of them trucks. I means it’s got a latch on it, but the latch itself kinda easy to open. Delgadina asks me why I don’t latch my truck better, ’cause of all them thieves along that route. She saw something on television about them thieves along them truck routes. Or people that might want to sneak rides in my truck. I tells her that I latches it as much as it needs to be latched. Like I told you, there’s a Navajo and a Oklahoma African and a roustabout that I usedta sometimes let ride in the back of my truck, coming back to Albuquerque from they farm work, when I was on that route. I don’t think none of them thieves wants industrial detergents, though, I tells Delgadina, but she still be asking me all them questions about the latch on my truck. I tells her seem like them border patrols is always having me latch and unlatch my truck, so that another reason I ain’t keep it latched up the way some of them trucks is latched up. I tells her I’m watching more for them border patrols than them they says is thieves. What about sneaking rides? she ask. Don’t people sneak rides? I tells her I gives rides to several of the peoples, ’cause I’m independent and don’t got to go by the union rules. ’Cept I ain’t let nobody ride up in my cab with me, they’s got to ride in the back of my truck. I tells her about the Navajo and the Oklahoma African and the roustabout, and she be saying shouldn’t oughta be giving them rides. I tells her that that were just when I were on the New Mexico route. ’Cause they’s too many border patrol in South Texas, and they be thinking I’m smuggling peoples. Then the union got they rules. And she even come out and look at the latch on my truck. I be thinking whether she gots to do a lot of peeing, ’cause I ain’t know when the border patrol be wanting me to latch and unlatch my truck. Least they says them pregnant womens gots to pee for theyself and the baby too. I ain’t never been pregnant myself, but sometimes when you looks at them babies you see wisdom itself.

  She looking surprised, though, when I shines the flashlight on my own face. You woman, her expression be saying. ’Cause she wasn’t expecting no woman to be driving that truck. And maybe no African-American woman neither. I’m one of them deep-voiced womens, but it still surprise me that she surprised I’m a woman. Or maybe she have that image of Andy Griffith herself, ’cause I know they probably show them reruns down there in Mexico. Bueno. And him be sounding like Sancho Panza, ’cept he really a countrified Quijote, and the deputy is Panza. But maybe she more surprised that I’m African American. Or maybe she might even think I’m African, ’cause they’s a lot of Africans in America, I mean true Africans. And I’ve had people to mistake me for African. When I was in Canada, though, not the U.S., I been mistaken for Kenyan and Sudanese, though they got them African Canadians too. You know, a lot of them fugitives that escaped up there to Canada. Them old slave refugitives and them new African refugees. And one of them Portuguese Africans. I been mistaken for one of them Portuguese Africans too. Mozambique. They thought I had immigrated to Canada to escape the civil war or some shit, ’cause they have them a lot of Africans that come to Canada to escape the different civil wars. This man come talking to me in Portuguese, African Portuguese, but that’s another tale. Don’t sound like Brazilian Portuguese and don’t sound like Portuguese Portuguese; it’s its own language. Naw, I ain’t no African immigrant, I says, I’m African American. Went up to Canada, you know, for one of them trade shows. I’m addicted to them trade shows. A lot of them Africans they eats with they hands, just like the true Indians, but in some of them African and Mediterranean countries and in that India, I think it’s that India, that supposed to be the etiquette to eat with your hands, like they is even some countries where people is supposed to slurp they soup and even burp. So that all them etiquette books they writes for the Europeans and the European-minded peoples they’d have to rewrite for the other peoples of the world.

  Buenas Buenas, I says again, shaking that trail mix, and thinking about that Portuguese African, but she don’t want that cattle feed. She kinda burps and puts her hand to her lips. Is that her burping or that baby burping? Seem like somebody said something about when you’s pregnant, you’s a woman carrying two souls. Your own soul and the soul of another person. You ain’t just carrying your own soul, you’s carrying two souls. Or if you’s got twins or something you’s carrying even more souls than that. Least you’s responsible for more souls than your own. I sits down beside her in the back of the truck and nibbles on some of that trail mix myself. I picks out some of the apricots and coconut meat and peanuts but she still don’t want that. Or maybe it’s the baby that don’t want that trail mix. I stands that flashlight up on the floor so’s we can see each other at the same time. I nibbles me some more of that trail mix.

  She looking at that stun gun I got. She still got that meek look but it mixed with inquisitiveness. She run her hand through the top of her hair and it kinda stick up like one of them hoopoe birds. Then I got a picture of them Mexican womens in the revolution, ’cept they’s holding stun guns. And one of them’s a general. Us got us a woman general in our own history, I start to tell her, though I know she don’t see that picture in my head. Ain’t it Harriet Tubman they call the General. Or that “Ain’t I a woman?” woman, Sojourner Truth. Naw, Harriet Tubman, that’s the General. And I’m even picturing her with a stun gun. Some of them fools don’t want to continue north but wants to go back to the plantation, and she just aim that stun gun at ’em, and they gets to steppin’ towards freedom. Or what they thinks is freedom. Land of Canaan. The Promised Land. Course they’s many steppin’ south now, say they’s been in the Deep North too long. Continuing south to Brazil though or Mexico.

  This a stun gun, I says, and then puts it in my belt. I picks up the flashlight but keeps it catercornered to her face.

  She sucking on that beef jerky and just a-looking at me. Maybe she wondering whether I’m to be trusted. Least that’s how I interprets that look. When you’s African American—there’s them that says they don’t wanna be no hyphenated American, so I says don’t hyphenate it then; but I yam who I yam and claims who I’d like to be—you gets good at that sorta interpretation, and when you’s a woman too you’s even better, ’cause you ain’t just colonized you’s precolonized and recolonized. I’m wondering if they’s got them them stun guns in Mexico, made in Mexico or imported from the USA, then I’m thinking of that Frito Bandito with a stun gun. But Delgadina, she say that a stereotype. That Frito Bandito. And that Juan Valdez too. She say they protested that Frito Bandito, ’cause he a more obvious stereotype. How come that Juan Valdez gotta have a donkey and only the cowboys gets the horses? And reading to me about them stereotypes. That mean I ain’t supposed to say them? I asks. “I’m a hongry outlaw, where’s breakfast?” they be asking on this television show with Peter Coyote. And then Delgadina changed the channel to one of them National Geographic gorilla documentaries and Delgadina asking, I wonder what them gorillas are thinking? Then on another channel they be talking about the urban gorilla population. And on another channel be teaching them gorillas language. But then Delgadina’s got books on them other types of guerrillas. She got that book by el Ché called Guerrilla Warfare, and she got another book, I think it a work of fiction called The Guerrilla’s Notebook. I know I have seen a copy of The Guerrilla’s Notebook and must be Delgadina’s.

  Sanctuary? she asks again.

  And then she just sucking on that beef jerky. That bottle water, that beef jerky, them thermos, they the best invention. I got me one of them newfangled thermos I seen at this automobile show in Memphis, actually this trade show. One of them space-a
ge thermos. I always shops at them trade shows, ’cause they’s always got them newfangled inventions. And it’s kinda like a circus or a carnival, except it’s got all these inventions. They’s got miniaturized spy satellites, quartz halogen flashlights, and computerized language teachers. Talking about that science fiction, a lot of them things you read about in that science fiction, they’s got at them trade shows. People talks about that science fiction, but science fiction is now. If I were to go back in one of them time machines, bring the General, Harriet Tubman, to one of them trade shows with me—now, that would be science fiction.

  I be thinking maybe she wouldn’t have no use for none of them newfangled inventions, but she be saying, That miniaturized spy satellite, we can use that; I don’t know about them quartz halogen flashlights, ’cause we’s got to train usselves to see in the dark and by the light of the moon and the Northern star, I’m curious about them language teachers, but what else they got to help us to freedom now? ’Cause she means then, but she saying it like time all the same. And behaving like she don’t even know she in science fiction. ’Cause she the General, you know. Then she notices one of the mens at the trade show. Who dat? I don’t know, I says. She thinks ’cause I travels back and forth in the time machine that I must know everybody. Kinda look kinda like Frederick, don’t he? That what you new Negroes call a Afro? Like I said, all time’s the same to her. I tells her I don’t know, ’cause I’m a Ethiopianist myself.

  Sanctuary, I says, and nods at her, that Mexican woman, though I knows she means more than some place to hide.

  I nibbles me some more of that trail mix, then I starts out of the truck. I can smell them border patrol even when I don’t see them, so I don’t open the door of the truck all the way. And I tucks that stun gun in my pocket, then puts it back in my belt, ’cause they might think it a real gun. They take a gander at the truck and I think they gonna stop and inspect it, but they don’t, they just keeps heading north. But I can smell them border patrol, like it hunting season. And seem like they can always smell me, like it hunting season too. And always looking at me like I’m some kinda conspirator. Confidence woman or some shit.

  What’s your name? I ask the woman, calling toward the back through the little vent. And then I remembers another Spanish word. Nombre. Your nombre? I asks. And pretty good Spanglish, ain’t it?

  Maria, she says, sounding like she the Keeper of Names or something. Maria Barriga.

  That Spanish got that trill in it. She trill them r’s. I can’t do that trill like that, so I just says Maria.

  I’m Sojourner, I says. Sojourner Jane Nadine Johnson. But they calls me Mosquito.

  Them that don’t calls me Mosquito calls me Nadine. Don’t many peoples calls me Sojourner, though they’s a few that calls me ’Journer. Ain’t nobody calls me Jane, though. I ain’t favored the name Jane myself till I seen that movie ’bout Miss Jane, y’all know, Miss Jane, and read the book too. ’Cause the only Jane I knew before Miss Jane were Dick’s Jane. But after I read about Ernest’s Jane—don’t that even sound better than Dick’s Jane—then I began to favor my name, though I still don’t use it. Them names is something, though. I know somebody went to Africa and come back with the name Uthlakanyana. Now I know what Jane mean. But I don’t know what that Uthlakanyana mean. And the fool didn’t neither. Just know it African. Now I don’t mind the people taking they new names. But you’s got to know what your new name mean.

  Mosquito, she repeat, sounding as if the word the same in anybody’s language. But she say it more on the tip of her tongue than I says it. Mosquito. You don’t say it like them Spanish say it, ’cause them Mexicans got they own Spanish. And then she try to say my first name but it come out sounding like Journal. She don’t attempt to say that Jane or that Nadine. Juanita, that Spanish for Jane. They’s plenty Juanitas in Texas City. Ain’t all Mexican though. Even I been called a Juanita, though I was being mistaken for some other gal. I been even call by my true name and mistake for other peoples too.

  I’m still thinking them border patrol circle back and inspect my truck, but they don’t. I parks the truck beside the road and wait while the Mexican woman relieve herself. She keep darting her head around looking and pulling that bodacious hair out her eyes and looking like she think I’m gonna pull the truck off. I see one of them prairie foxes in the road—look like it guarding the highway. I guess they calls them prairie foxes. Then she scurry back into the back of the truck, the woman not the prairie fox. That prairie fox it scurry off the road. The woman she grab herself a handful of that wild mustard. I think it wild mustard. Then she put a little of that wild mustard in her mouth and start chewing. Maybe it the baby want that wild mustard. They knows what’s good.

  CHAPTER 2

  YOU LOOKS LIKE YOU’S BEEN SWIMMING IN THE Rio Grande, I says, yawning.

  We done both slept in the back of that truck. That bird and bat guano still on them guaraches, but it dry and caked. I take one of them whisk brooms I keep in the back of that truck and whisks some of that guano off the floor of that truck. We both sleeping against one of them drums of detergents. She’s slept in her poncho, and I’ve slept using my horse blanket for a pillow. That horse blanket kinda look like her poncho, though, with them Aztec-looking geometric-type designs on it, except but it a blanket. One of them multicolored woolen blanket. I think it a Mexican horse blanket or a Native American horse blanket ’cause I bought that blanket at a thrift shop in one of them border towns. Mighta been made in China, though and relabeled Mexico. But a lot of them Mexican and Native American geometric designs is similar. And a lot of them geometric designs on them horse blankets ain’t just geometric designs they also supposed to be a language, so even though me and her don’t speak the same language her poncho and my horse blanket be speaking the same language. ’Cept I don’t think she know what that language mean any more than I do. So them blankets they just be speaking to each other. This the New World? Yeah, Bo. Old World to me, though.

  Sanctuary, she repeat, but say it almost so it sound like Thank you.

  I returns to the cab. When we gets to the next truckstop, I parks, then climbs in back.

  I motions for her to take off them guaraches so’s I can whisk that bat guano off them, ’cause I don’t want to be whisking them with her wearing them, but she won’t take off them guaraches, so I just whisks the other bat guano out the back of the truck, peeks around to make sure there ain’t no spies (don’t have to be just border patrol to be spies), then grabs my purse and heads for the truckstop restaurant. This another truckstop, but they all resembles. I climbs back in the back of the truck with a thermos full of hot chocolate and omelet sandwiches from the truck stop restaurant. We can see each other more clearly through the crack of light from the door. I’ve park kinda catercorner to the other trucks at the truckstop, so’s they can’t spy in the back of my truck, and you don’t know which of them truckers is spies for immigration anyhow, ’cause I know a lot of them truckers they’s probably just pretending they’s truckers but they’s spies for immigration, or maybe they’s real truckers and spies for immigration. Border patrols for free. Course them real border patrol they stop any truck they want to, don’t seem like they would need extra spies.

  First I gives her some of them Handi Wipes that I’ve done dampened with water and a little bit of that liquid soap, so’s she can wash her face and hands from that Rio Grande. They got the best liquid soap in that little truckstop restaurant. The waitress she say it ain’t nothing but dishwashing liquid but won’t tell me the secret of which dishwashing liquid, ’cause I be asking her what kinda liquid soap that is ’cause I be wanting to buy me some liquid soap like that. Honey, that ain’t nothing but dishwashing liquid. I can’t tell you which dishwashing liquid ’cause I don’t know myself. I know she just want to keep the secret of that dishwashing liquid. And then she be in there telling me she trying to train this Vietnamese woman immigrant to work in the truckstop restaurant. I thought them Asians was smart people, she be saying
. You’d think she’s a Mexican. Except she don’t use the word Mexican, she use one of them border town words for Mexican. Use the word greaser, I think, ’cause spic is New York. Maybe the woman is smart and just don’t understand her type of English, I be thinking. ’Cause when you’s in a foreign country, you can be smart and just ain’t know the people’s language. The waitress she be telling me the man who own the truckstop restaurant usedta be in Nam hisself and so that’s probably why he hired her. I thought it was a doxy when she first come in here. A prostitute, you know. Plenty of doxies around here. They oughta learn English before they seek legitimate employment, the waitress be saying. She got all her legal papers, though, her working papers, her green card. Naw, she ain’t none of them boat people, I don’t know what kinda people she is. Think she was a refugee in Hong Kong. Naw, I don’t know how she got over here. He was in the war, though, and now he’s acting like a conchy. One of them conscientious objectors, but I calls them conchies. If it was me, I only be giving green cards to people what could speak English like a native myself, good English. Gotta speak good English to be in this country. She speak Vietnamese and some of that French, though. Them French never shoulda brought us into their Indochinese war. She speak a little English. Boss know what she’s saying anyhow, even in Vietnamese, ’cause he was in Nam, like I said. We had us a Cajun in here th’other day from down there in Louisiana that knowed what she’s saying in French anyhow, say she speak French like natural French woman, say she was raised in one of them French convent schools over there in Nam, so she can’t be too dumb. French convent school my arse. Still I don’t think them French shoulda got us into their war. I ain’t never been to France myself, but I heard they don’t even like Americans, I mean true Americans. And we saved their asses in two wars. We whipped the Germans’ ass for ’em. Whipped the Japanese ass, though it was the Germans occupying their ass. We even saved some of the collaborators’ asses, ’cause some of them escaped to America after the war. Shoulda let the Namies whip the Frenchies’ ass, though. Course they’ll tell you we were over there to save democracy’s ass, but I ain’t no moon calf. Boss asked me to show her the ropes, though, so I’m showing her the ropes. Maybe she just pretending to be a dolt. You’d think we was playing charades. And I ain’t good at charades. But these Namies even speak a different language playing charades. I call ’em Namies ’cause the boss don’t want me to call ’em gooks, ya know. Thinks he’s a conchy now. The Vietnamese woman’s dusting off the counter while I’m pouring chocolate in my thermos. You can tell she ain’t wholly Vietnamese though, but one of them Amerasian-type women and don’t look doltish to me. In fact, she looking like she understand everything the waitress saying, like she understand the language, but just don’t speak it. The waitress motions for her to get my sandwiches and she get my sandwiches and hand them to me. Thanks, I says. Say yousa welcome, say the waitress. Yousa welcome, say the woman. Then she say something in French that must be yousa welcome in French. And I says, Merci beaucoup. Sometimes she be talking to herself in that Vietnamese. I hope he ain’t hired him none of them crazies. What they oughta do before they allow peoples into this country is to check they sanity, give them a psychiatric examination. Of course some of the things these people do that is custom in they country seems crazy to us. But at least they can learn them to speak clear English. I don’t even think we’s got any gook psychiatrists over here. Some of these countries don’t even have psychiatrists. ’Cause I don’t think you can get psychoanalyzed playing charades.