Mosquito

by Gayl Jones

  Anyway, the woman Father Raymond’s talking to, she has on a beige business-type suit, but there’s a multicolored silk scarf wrapped around her head. She’s a African-American woman. I don’t know whether the scarf’s wrapped around her head for religious or historical reasons or to make a fashion statement. Seem like I seen her picture somewhere in a magazine, one of them African-American magazines. You know where they publishes the pictures of certain African Americans and tells you what they does. Usually they is the elite type of African Americans, and they wants you to know they accomplishments, so that you won’t think that all African Americans is singers and dancers, on welfare, or the criminal personalities. The minority peoples is always trying to prove they ain’t the stereotype. Seems like they spends so much of they time and energy trying to prove who they ain’t. I spend a lot of time myself wondering who people is. I knows who I thinks people is. But who you thinks people is ain’t always who they is. Sometimes people ain’t even who they thinks theyselves is. I always wonders who us peoples would be if we didn’t have to always prove who us ain’t. Usually in them magazines, though, they is people in the financial world or they’s engineers or scientists or they is in professions that is not traditionally associated with African Americans. They might be in entertainment if they has they own production company or is something like a entertainment lawyer. It’s like they’s got rules for who they puts in they magazines. But I guess all them magazines has got rules for who they puts in the magazines.

  One of them African-American television personalities who usedta be in the soap operas said that when she were in the soap operas she read one of they rules that the central hero or heroine had to always be white. I don’t know how she got a copy of them rules, or maybe she were at one of them production meetings and got a copy of them rules. Seem like the producers of that soap opera would have known not to let her get a copy of them rules. Maybe these days they don’t write that in the rule book. For some of them television shows, though, it is probably just the unwritten rule. Like that movie called Powder, the hero of the high intellect and all them powers had not only to be white but the whitest of the white. They had theyselves a intelligent-seeming African-American doctor, though, and he were a nicer-seeming gentleman than some of them others, but they probably only allowed him to be there because they had the whitest of the white for the superior intelligence and to represent the highest evolution of mankind. He was one of them white albinos. I went to school with a African-American albino, but people treated her like a rather average-seeming girl, and she didn’t have any peoples calling her out of her name; they just treated her like a ordinary-seeming girl. I sees her sometimes when I returns to Covington. All her childrens is brown-skin childrens, ain’t none of them no albinos. And one of them mens told one of them other mens, I didn’t know anybody could be too white for you. Maybe the man in the movie thought he were saying something about racism, but it seem like the point of the movie were just that: that nobody could be too white. ’Cause they give him all the powers and all the intellect and he even had a girl in the movie to call him beautiful. And what else he have? He supposed to represent not only intellect but humanity, ’cause he supposed to be more human than anybody in the movie, and to be able to read people’s thoughts and motives and the thoughts behind the thoughts and the motives beyond the motives. And what else he have? He the whole mythology of the ideal self. But then if he be anybody but the whitest of the white man people be saying the story weren’t credible. Them Kabuki peoples, though, they powders theyselves like that. I seen a Japanese woman once while shopping at the grocery store and she had her face powdered up like that. And they’s African tribes that powders theyselves like that. Delgadina sometimes kinda powders herself like that. She always wears a little lighter powder than her own complexion. I ain’t know who started that tradition amongst them peoples. As for them magazines and they rules, I know the first time I seen Oprah it were in Essence magazine, and that were before she become the Oprah that everybody know. She were still a teenager, but I believe she were the youngest local television personality, that were before she became international. Or maybe she just look like somebody I seen in a magazine. I mean, this woman with the scarf around her head. Or maybe I just imagine I seen her in a magazine, ’cause she look like them peoples that I have seen in magazines. Seem like I seen that woman that wrote that play for colored girls with a scarf just like that on her head in one of them early photographs. Of course this ain’t her. Monkey Bread collects them Essence magazines and have got copies of them from the time we was teenagers. The only Essence magazine I’s got is one with Alice Walker on the cover of it. And I’s got another Alice Walker magazine picture where she sitting up in a tree. I likes to collect them magazine pictures more than I does them magazines. I wants to make a collage with them.

  El centro. The detention camp. Concentration camp I call them. Didn’t your cousin write a book about her? the woman look like one of them magazine pictures say.

  It wasn’t about her, said Ray. It was about someone like her. At least she claims it’s a work of fiction, but you know my cousin. I never can tell whether she’s writing true fiction or fictional truth. Anyway, she’s not the only guerrilla woman in Latin America. Now she’s writing romance novels. My cousin, I mean. Rather witty satires of the romance genre. But maybe that’s because I know my cousin. The reviewers review them as real romances. Or maybe they are real romances.

  And still a great beauty. I mean, the guerrilla woman. She’s our age.

  Yeah, said Ray. Come over here. Ray spots me standing near the wall, drinking Coke from one of them plastic cups, and motions for me to come over. Well, I won’t introduce you, but you should be able to know each other when you see each other.

  How are you? the woman said to me and I stood with them. Ray wasn’t wearing his priest’s robes but had on blue jeans and a sweatshirt. ’Cept the way the woman talking to him you know she know he a priest.

  We were classmates, actually, the woman said. Oh, everybody knew she was from one of those little Latin American countries somewhere, but you know. And that they were having some sort of revolution. We had our own Revolution, or so we thought. I always wonder now what she thought about us and our so-called revolution . . . I didn’t actually know she’d been a guerrilla, Ray, but I knew they were having their revolution. And then your cousin wrote that book and I knew it couldn’t be anyone else but her, because of her going to school in America and then returning to her country to fight in their revolution. I remember she and I and your cousin and one of the other girls were sitting in the cafeteria, and then she got up and then this other girl says, She’s got as much booty in her as us. You know, on account of she got to play white at that school, even though she’s got as much of Africa in her as most of us. I don’t think she was playing white myself. Maybe the whites were treating her white ’cause of her Spanish accent. ’Cause she ain’t a part of their own history of oppression. I mean, we were in New England. And what does New England have to do with Mexico? If we were here in South Texas, she couldn’t’ve played white. I’m not as dumb as I look, she joked. Am I as dumb as I look? she asked me. Do you think I’m as dumb as I look?

  You don’t look dumb at all to me, I says. I starts to tell her that she looks like the types of African-American womens I see in the magazines, I mean the African-American magazines.

  Don’t let my garb fool you, she joked.

  I didn’t ask the woman’s story. Probably she’s got a story like most African Americans, where the people’s thinks they’s the stereotype. I remember Delgadina was reading this book about the history of American literature or something about American literature by some famous essayist in American literature or American literary history, so Delgadina stopped reading the book, and then I asked her why she ain’t continued reading that history, and then she say it ’cause he mentions some stereotypical African-American student in that book. That’s all she said. He mentions some stereotyp
ical African American. I think it be something about the Chicanos, but it ain’t. Maybe when they ain’t no Chicanos in them books, she identifies with us. ’Cause everybody got to have a space somewhere for they identity, so I guess she figure the same ideas they be having about African Americans they be having about her Chicano peoples, so’s they’s gotta spend most of they time proving they ain’t as dumb as the stereotype. I figured she must have her a story like that. Delgadina got a story like that. She say she almost wanted to become a schoolteacher. But then she was in one of them classes. She sat in on a class being taught by a Chicana, and one of them gringo bitches asked this Chicana what her qualifications were for teaching that class. They never ask them gringo teachers that, you know, but she thinks ’cause this is a Chicana, she can just ask her right in her class what her qualifications are. I could see myself trying to teach some of those bitches if I was a teacher, and every semester I’d be trying to prove I ain’t as dumb as they think I am. That Chicana professor she told the gringa bitch her qualifications, but me I woulda told the bitch who she herself was.

  I wouldn’t’ve told the bitch my qualifications, said Delgadina. I started to ask the Chicana teacher how come she told that bitch her qualifications when she probably didn’t ask none of her white teachers that. She ain’t reply, she just started saying how she was glad I was in her class. ’Cause you keep me civilized, she said. I thought it was strange her telling me that, that I was the one in her class that kept her civilized. I think she meant civil.

  Naw, I think she know what she meant, I said.

  I wanted Delgadina to tell me more about her Chicana professor, but she didn’t. She said some other things about the gringa bitch for asking that question that she wouldn’t’ve asked to any gringo professors, and it sounding like she was specifying, you know. If y’all don’t know what specifying is, y’all’s got to read Zora Neale Hurston and about that woman she call Big Sweet. Monkey Bread say when she first read about Big Sweet, she thought about me, ’cept I don’t specify people like Big Sweet and I ain’t like Big Sweet, except perhaps that Big Sweet a Amazon type of woman. Anyway, I wanted to know the woman’s name, I mean the new Underground Railroad woman, but of course I knew that was against the rules. I liked her ’cause she was wearing a scarf like me and didn’t care if nobody thought she was Aunt Jemima. Maybe a glorified Aunt Jemima, but still Aunt Jemima.

  Anyway, these peoples at the new Underground Railroad they’s talking revolution. I mean, Ray and the woman with the scarf. She still talking about that guerrilla woman. I goes and gets me another plastic cup of Coca-Cola and then comes back and listens to them.

  Everybody talking about the revolution and they were having their own revolution . . . One of those little Latin American countries . . . I mean, that’s how a lot of Americans thought of them, like they were all the same country . . . Like Latin America was just one big revolution.

  Then they’s talking some more of what Delgadina call polemics, which is something like politics. I guess somebody’s got to talk that kind of talk. Delgadina talks that talk all the time, ’cept she says when she’s writing stories, she tries to find something else for her characters to talk about, ’cause she says in stories political and polemical talk ain’t as interesting as other types of talk. What if you’s got characters who’s political and polemical peoples? I asks. Ain’t it being true to them to have them talk the kind of talk they would most naturally talk. Seem like you wouldn’t be true to them types of characters if they ain’t talk that politics and polemics. You can have them talk a little politics, little polemics, she says, then you’s got to get on with the stories. It’s like stories about intellectuals, she says. You can have them be true to themselves, but at the same time you’ve got to put them into an interesting story. They’ve got to be interesting people as well as intellectuals. In fact, I’ve written stories about intellectuals that readers don’t even know are intellectuals, ’cause they never say anything intellectual. I usedta know somebody like that when I worked in this little college town. The only way I knew she was an intellectual was because everybody said she was an intellectual, she was supposed to be this woman of a superior intellect, but I never heard her say anything intellectual. Or maybe that’s just because she was talking to me. Well, she had all these books on intellectual subjects.

  I try reading the Germans and the French, but if I wrote stories like that, even like Hoffmann, no one would find them credible. Then it would just be imitation German or French intellectualism. Russian intellectualism is different because the stories themselves are so interesting, the characters. In fact, this intellectual I was talking about, her favorite authors were the Russians. And the Spanish mystics. Spanish mysticism, the Spanish mystical writers. And Cervantes, you know. I’ve been reading a book that imagines what Cervantes’ novel would have been like if Sancho had told the story rather than its being written from a third-person perspective. You know, if it was Sancho’s story and Sancho is telling us about himself and Don Quijote. But that’s the archetypal relationship of the novel.

  I know she was here legally as a student, says the woman in the scarf. I guess she coulda gotten legal status if she’d stayed in America then, but not now, as a subversive . . . They act like they think she’ll come to America and start a revolution. Where’s el centro?

  California. I’ve got a map of where it is. I can give you the map. Also, I’ll give you the name of the Latino group out there.

  Ray kinda combs his fingers through his hair. He got a lot of that thick, kinky, wavy hair I told y’all about. I wants to comb my own fingers through that thick hair of his, but you know I ain’t gonna do that.

  Where’ve you been, Ray? ask the woman, looking at him like she’s noticing him for the first time. You look like shit. Well, you still look good. Is it okay to tell a priest he looks good? I ain’t Catholic, so I guess I can say so. Even when you look like shit you look good. Don’t he?

  Yeah, I say, though I don’t feel like it really my conversation. I think that woman just wants to talk to Ray his ownself, but Ray look like he want me to stay standing there. We’s in the basement of somebody’s house, somebody on the new Underground Railroad, I think.

  I was down in Mexico with this group. We got deported, say Ray. He comb his fingers through his hair again and then scratch the top of his head.

  Some shit! What?

  Yeah, the other Ray, Ray Mendoza, Al, and me. They knew I was an American citizen, but the other Ray and Al they thought had falsified documents, so they didn’t want to deport them back, so we all had to insist even on being deported back to America. Even when we proved Al was an American citizen, they still tried to keep Al in Mexico.

  I ain’t gonna describe it all to y’all, but the way Ray was describing it it was like something out of Cheech and Chong, you know one of those Cheech and Chong movies, but without the marijuana. I mean, the way he was describing the whole scene at Mexican immigration, and the woman he was talking to she was laughing like it was supposed to be some comic story, though I don’t believe the truth of it were a comic story. They were with some group of refugees or trying to work with some group of refugees and got deported back to the USA. I mean Ray, the other Ray and Al and the others. I don’t know them myself, but I’ve heard people talk about them. Or maybe I’ve met them and just ain’t been introduced to them. The woman tells Ray he oughta write a story about that, ’cause the only stories you hear are about Mexicans getting deported from here. I think Cheech did a movie where he got deported back to the States, but you know what I mean. What was interesting about that story, though, were he didn’t make them Mexicans sound like the fools and fool’s fool, like a lot of them people that tells they Mexico stories, but you be thinking that Ray and Cheech Ray Mendoza and Chong Al the fools, which I know for a fact they ain’t.

  I’m sure there are a lot of American fools that go down there and get deported, said the woman. Not that you and Al and the other Ray are fools. Didn’t Cheech
Marin make a movie like that?

  You know, I’m thinking all that but I ain’t want to tell Ray he sound like he telling a Cheech and Chong movie, but that woman she mention Cheech Marin.

  Koshoo’s converting his bam for some of the refugees, so we were down there trying to negotiate with the government, explained Ray. You know, the real government, not the one everybody thinks is in power. Anyway these were supposed to be a special group of refugees, so we couldn’t just smuggle them here. Well, we didn’t have anyone to smuggle them. And then the borders are getting tighter. So we wanted to negotiate them out of Mexico.

  I know what you mean, said the woman. You was negotiating with the real people.

  Yeah, Ray said. And then we found out that even they didn’t have the right to negotiate with us.

  I know what you mean, said the woman. Somebody else in power down there that we don’t know about. What do you know about it? the woman asked me.

  She doesn’t know anything about it, said Ray. She’s not involved with us in all that. Don’t ask her about that. I know what he means, ’cause he ain’t involved me in crossing them borders and trying to prove to them peoples that I’m a true American. I know I be down there acting like I’m in a comic movie myself. Then he said to the woman, So they didn’t want any Americans down there, any American citizens, I mean independent of the American government negotiating, so they deported all of us back to America. You want a Coke or something? he asked the woman. Then he asked me if I wanted another Coke.

  Naw, thanks, I said. No thank you. Since when has Koshoo become a gentleman farmer? You said you wanted to bring them to Koshoo’s farm.

  He’s always had a farm.

  I didn’t know that. I ain’t seen Koshoo in years. I know we usedta correspond and he was talking about us owning farms then. That we oughta be using our money to buy farms. Specially us splivs from the USA still talking about our forty acres and a mule and wanting reparations and shit. . . .