Mosquito

by Gayl Jones

  What about specifying? he’s asking, but then the phone rings.

  Yes, we’ve got the newspapers. The newspapers? Proceso, El Fu nanciero, La Jornada, San Cristóbal de las Casas. Yes, we sent someone there to interview some of the Zapatistas. Yes, we know, but we told them they didn’t have to give us their true names. I’ve been doing some translating. No, someone else is putting together all the documents, the Declaration of War, you know, the interviews with the rebel leaders. All the moneys are supposed to go to support the Zapatistas. To get the ones out of jail who are in jail, to support the ones who escaped. . . . It’s a controversial book, but we have distributors for controversial books. . . . Well, about the Zapatistas, the Mexican government. Okay, this is as much as I can tell you. They have someone who can provide them with logistical support. Even we have people who can provide logistical support. People have to fight their own rebellions. They don’t want us to fight their rebellion for them. People have to liberate themselves. . . . No, it isn’t just a story, they do help finance revolutions, but they have to know who the revolutionaries are. I told you, it isn’t necessary for them to give their true names. The government knows that if they attract enough support they could possibly defeat the government militarily. But it’s not enough to defeat the government militarily.

  He paused for a moment and looked at me. I thought he wanted me to let him talk on the phone in private, so I got up and started out the door, but he waved for me to stay seated. I sat back down. He listened to what the person on the phone was saying, then he said, The modern guerrillas, they’re not like the classical guerrillas. Well, you can read what they have to say in the book. They’re not like the classical guerrillas. I mean you have the classical guerrilla struggle with military weapons, but that’s only one of a process of struggle. I can send you a copy of the book on liberation theology. Also, there are some documents that we received from the Clandestine Revolutionary Committee that have already been translated. No, they’ve already been interviewed. Juárez? Well, now they want to get their message not to the government, because they know what the government is, but to the people that they refer to as people of civil society. People that they call the people of honor in civil society, you know. I can’t tell you their names. No, and anyway, we haven’t asked them their names. We don’t ask them their names. What do they want? They want what everyone wants. Free and democratic? Well, it always amazes me how people understand freedom for themselves, but when someone else talks freedom, they put these pretenses that they don’t understand what the people mean. The French, for example.

  Indochina or Algeria or Africa, I said, like I was on the phone with them. Ray looked at me but said nothing. Then he was talking to the person on the phone again.

  Everybody understands freedom when it’s themselves. I’m in conference with someone now, but we’ll send you the literature, the documents. The women have their own manifesto. They say this revolution isn’t going to be like the others. They’ve written up something they call “Women’s Law.” Yes, well the guerrillas, at least the ones I know, are listening to what the women have to say. They might not agree with everything. But you have to listen to the women’s voices as well as the men’s or you don’t have a true revolution. No, you can’t just have contempt for a woman’s voice because it’s the voice of a woman. In fact, if you read the documents that’s one of the complaints of the guerrillas themselves, the Zapatistas, one of the reasons they’re saying Enough is Enough! The women have to negotiate power with them. I mean, they’re fighting the same revolution, but the women know that they have to negotiate their own power. I have my own theories of power, but it’s their revolution. No, no, no, no, no the money goes to. . . . Then it’ll be sent to the Liberation Army. Me? I’m involved with another Declaration of War. . . . Dzeh Dibeh-yazzie Dzeh Mosai Than-zie Gah Wol-la-chee . . .

  As he was talking that strange language, he handed me some folders. He didn’t exactly say what he wanted me to do with the folders. But whenever peoples gives you folders like that they wants you to put them in alphabetical order, so I puts them in alphabetical order:

  Ant

  Bear

  Cat

  Deer

  Elk

  Fox

  Goat

  Horse

  Jackass

  Kid

  Lamb

  Mouse

  Owl

  Pig

  Rabbit

  Sheep

  Turkey

  Ute

  Victor

  Weasel

  Yucca

  Zinc

  I don’t get to put everything in alphabetical order before Ray reaches for them folders. I ain’t know why them folders has got the names of mostly animals on them. First I’m thinking they all has the names of animals on them and then they’s Victor and Yucca and Zinc, which ain’t animals. I supposes that Ute is a animal, though I has heard womens with the name Ute. I wonders if them is the nicknames of the peoples that works with Ray. I ain’t opened them folders to see what in them, I just puts them in alphabetical order. I be thinking they be a mosquito on one of them folders but they ain’t. I be thinking who the peoples they has nicknamed Jackass and Weasel, though, or maybe them peoples has called theyselves Jackass and Weasel. Or maybe they is just codes that ain’t the names of peoples.

  Fight the power

  Fight the power

  Fight the power

  Fight the power

  Fight the power

  I’m walking in the woods with my mother.

  Red bird, Mommy.

  Yes, I see it.

  It was talking to me, Mommy. It said Fight the power, Mommy.

  No, it didn’t, Sojourner.

  That’s not a talking bird. There are talking birds in the world. But that’s not a talking bird. That little bird’s not a talking bird.

  Yes, Mommy, it was talking to me, Mommy. Fight the power. It was talking to me, Mommy.

  That little bird didn’t tell you that. You’ve got to fight the power. But that little bird didn’t tell you that.

  A little bird told me.

  Years later I would see that little red bird again. It would turn into a white dove and then back into a red bird. A talking bird and with the powers of transformation. And I would see it again, riding on the back of a horse made of steel.

  He put the phone down and then he say, Specifying? I be thinking after talking all that about true revolution and liberation and declarations of war he forget what we’s talking about, but he ain’t.

  I knows what it says, but I don’t know what it means, I says. I means, I knows specifying when I hears it. But I can’t tell you what it means.

  He looking at me like he still thinking about Deznel or Denzel. Like even after talking about revolution and liberation and declarations of war, he still even thinking about what us said about Deznel or Denzel. Explain to me about specifying, he says.

  Well, when Delgadina specifies she takes peoples to they origins and then some. She has specified me and even Miguelita when we does something she don’t like. So you know that she specifies everybody else. Some of them mens that comes in that cantina thinking she who she ain’t gets specified. She takes them to they origins and tells them things about theyselves they don’t need or want to know. I knows every flaw they is in my character and every flaw in my character’s character, because she have taken me to my origins and told me all my flaws.

  What does she consider your flaws?

  I think he going to say something about Deznel or Denzel, but he don’t.

  Well, she say for one thing that I subdues myself in the presence of men.

  Subdue?

  You know, that I subdues myself in the presence of men. She give what she call the political and social interpretation of who I am. And say that I don’t want none of y’all mens, especially y’all mens of color to confuse me with no matriarch, so I subdues myself rather than to be my true self.

  Do you? he ask.


  I ain’t even know what no matriarch were till she told me that who I ain’t, or that ain’t who I wants y’all mens to confuse me with. Well, I did know that a matriarch were sorta like them African-American womens that usedta play in them movies and that the wife of Kingfish were considered to be a matriarch, but I didn’t know what a true matriarch. I told her that I subdues myself in the presence of love, which is true, ’cause the Perfectability Baptist Church of which I belongs says that you is supposed to subdue yourself in the presence of love. Or if they don’t say it, it sounds like something they would say, or at least that the way I interprets something that they have said.

  Is he still thinking about Deznel or Denzel? He looking in his notebook. Then he’s looking in some of them folders that have the written interviews of them documented peoples.

  I subdues myself in the presence of love, but the Perfectability Baptists says that mens and womens is supposed to do that. I tells Delgadina I can specify myself, but she’s a specifying woman so she likes to specify everybody. She have specified Miguelita and if you’ll specify a crazy woman then you’ll specify anybody. I have seen her to subdue herself when she don’t want nobody to think she a hoochie woman, ’cause when we went to Marineland she didn’t ask the marine guide no questions. She subdued herself in the presence of our marine guide. I bet she knew more answers to them questions about them marine animals than that marine guide. She subdued herself so’s he wouldn’t think she were a hoochie woman, and he thought she were a hoochie woman anyway. But when I subdues myself that’s a flaw.

  Ray look like he still ain’t sure what I means by specifying. They is a lot of peoples like that. They is developed when it comes to everything else, but they has to be taught specification. I’m thinking how would Delgadina specify Ray and starts to invite him to us cantina. But I wouldn’t want Delgadina to specify Ray in front of me. She could specify him to hisself. I be thinking what she would say of Ray. I know she would want to paint him with a little more humor, little more playfulness, ’cause she know the whole history of humor and playfulness in the African-American traditions. But that her idea of Ray. Me I’m just in awe of his perfectability.

  He look like he start to say something and then the phone ring. He see someone in the hall and call Ray! I think he calling hisself, but know you can’t be sitting in no chair, see yourself in the hallway, and call yourself, not if you’s no natural man. Then I realize it the other Ray he calling. The other Ray come in and answer the telephone, and Ray hisself he starts reading documents.

  I’m still thinking about him, my Ray, and Maria and Maria baby and thinking if he the kinda man that baby babies, whether he talk baby talk or talk man talk to them babies, then I goes back downstairs and them gals is singing the same song. Might be singing ’bout me. While they’s talking, though, I’m thinking about Maria and Maria baby and Ray.

  Then I goes downstairs and they’s singing the same song.

  I think she’s a spy for the State Department. . . .

  You think everyone’s a spy. . . .

  You know those old spies gotta have jobs, now with the Soviet Union. . . .

  They’re looking towards China now, girlfriend.

  When they starts talking about China, I comes back over to where they is again.

  Talking about that jazz musician. Years later when I ain’t no greenling no more and am running my restaurant in Cuba, New Mexico, them women of the new Underground Railroad comes into my restaurant orders some Mexican beer and some Spanish-style paella and they’s still having the same conversation.

  Anyway, she’s working with some Refugee Policy Group in Washington. You know, the ecologist. I don’t know what that has to do with ecology though, unless it’s human ecology. She calls herself an ethnoecologist. You know, the old chestnut about joining the system to change it. I don’t believe that bullshit. The people I know who join the system become the system. Think she’s trying to develop some sorta medicines from cactus. . . .

  Now, though, I’m thinking ’bout Ray and Maria and Maria baby, and Ray asking Maria to translate them tapes. How he know she know that Indian language? I’m thinking. That Quechua. That the same as quiche? Ain’t I hear somebody say quiche? Quechua? Ain’t somebody say that Alvarado know Quechua? If Alvarado know Quechua he ain’t have to have Maria translate that Quechua. Seem like he know them people be saying the same thing over and over again. You ask them who they name? They say the same thing. You ask them where they born? They say the same thing. You ask them why they want to come America? They say the same thing. You ask them is they documented or undocumented? They say the same thing. You ask them to fill in the blanks, they say the same thing. He know they saying the same thing. He just not know the same thing they be saying. So he go to Maria’s he say, Somebody say you know Quechua? Who that somebody? Koshoo? Alvarado? The other Ray? Then he meet Maria baby.

  Yeah, didn’t we all say we wasn’t going to join the system? I know, when they were having those Summer Jobs Programs to keep the kids off the street, she got a job with the Police Department, the Detective Bureau. . . .

  Really? I asks. I’m sitting down at the table with them, drinking one of them Mexican beers that our restaurant imports from Mexico. I ain’t going to tell y’all too much of that story.

  He meet Maria baby. He baby Maria baby, but he talk man talk, he don’t talk baby talk. Who else I hear say that about babying baby. I didn’t baby y’all when y’all was babies and I ain’t going to baby y’all now. That woman standing at that bus stop. Her little girl want to be babied and she say that. I didn’t baby you when you was a baby and I ain’t going to baby you now. But he say it okay for Maria to baby her baby, but he be talking man talk. He let Journal hear man talk.

  And the fool telling everybody about it, and there was folks said she was a spy then. . . . I knew she wasn’t a spy, because a spy wouldn’t be telling everybody she spent the summer working at the Police Department, Detective Bureau, and wouldn’t be no botanist. . . . But you know they were giving a lot of kids those kinds of jobs. . . . Keep them from rioting. . . . ’Cept a lot of them they was giving them jobs wasn’t the rioting type anyway. . . .

  You talk that shit when you’re in school, then you join the system.

  He let Journal hear man talk. I knock on the door and Maria say come in and I open it and Ray in there lifting up Journal and talking to him man talk. And Maria sitting at the table listening to them tapes.

  What are they saying? Ray ask.

  They’re saying the same thing over and over again, Ray.

  What exactly? Ray ask, and he holding Journal and talking to him man talk.

  Some people manage to stay free, I says, reaching for them chocolate pretzels that I puts on every table.

  But I see a lot of women my age with children, and I don’t have that responsibility, says the comedian, who still playing them little comedy clubs in South Texas though sometimes she comes out to New Mexico. But to them I suppose I’m selfish. You still hear that. That women who don’t have kids are selfish. Or if you can’t have kids yourself, adopt them. I guess you’s gotta have the revolutionaries and then you’s gotta have the types of people that. . . . That guerrilla woman ain’t got no children, does she? But we can’t all be guerrilla women.

  Still talking about that guerrilla woman, though I think she in Canada now.

  The refugees are still my children, I says. I mean, they ain’t all children. But y’all know what I mean. I know y’all know what I mean? she asking me.

  Yeah, they says.

  Other people’s children can be us children, I said. And I starts to tell them about Maria and her baby, but I don’t trust these gals with Maria’s story.

  Cathy she’s still trying to have kids, I hear, say the one that still won’t tell me whether she’s a guerrilla lawyer, though I know who she claims she is and still wearing that silk headscarf, looking like a glorified Aunt Jemima, I don’t mean the stereotyped Aunt Jemima, I mean the recla
imed Aunt Jemima. She’s in one of those fertility experiments. She’s got this Chinese doctor, though. Ern thinks she’s enough kid for him, though. Call the fools by name. They ain’t in our group. Bourgeois bastards. Cathy pretends she ain’t bourgeois. Cathy’s descended from those free blacks. Slave-holding blacks. Pretends they was abolitionists.

  One group of them was slave-holding free blacks and another group abolitionists, ’cause you did have a lot of free blacks that was in the abolitionist movement. It wasn’t just a white people’s movement. There’re trying to rewrite the history of the Civil Rights movement. Seen on TV where they’s supposed to have another movie like that, some white woman in the South fighting for colored people’s rights. . . . And you wanna make a movie about colored people, I mean African people fighting for their own rights. . . .

  Maybe that’s why Cathy’s so ambivalent. Cathy and her little group of cosmopolitan Negroes. What’s that Hughes usedta call them. The Niggerati? Negro Litterati. Negro internationalists.

  We should be international. Not just provincial. We shouldn’t just be a provincial people. That’s what they want, just to keep us thinking we’re a provincial people, and they’re the universalists. That their perspective is the universal perspective. They claim for their provincial perspective universality. We’re a universal people. We’re more universal. ’Cause we don’t think everybody’s supposed to be like us.

  Ray and Maria and Journal. And Maria saying she’d like to do more for the Sanctuary movement, the new Underground Railroad, and then Ray saying that Journal needs to be babied and she’s got those dolls and he be telling her how magnificent her dolls are. He be telling her how magnificent her dolls are. But she be knowing he Father Raymond. She know he Father Raymond. What’s that word they have? Sacerdote. She be knowing he a priest.

  We just think we’re supposed to be like them, joked the other woman. You know what I mean.

  Yeah, but you know what I mean. ’Cept Ern is sweet. He’s really sweet.

  Who’s Em? I ask. They’s always talking about Cathy and Ern and other peoples I don’t know.