Mosquito

by Gayl Jones

  Green cards? Now, you’ve got to tell them what their rights are, because if you give them any kind of packet, anything written down, the officials just confiscate it, you know. Because they don’t want them to know what the immigration law is. Knowledge is power. Well, they’ll tell you it’s political propaganda. Like when Ray and Al were deported. I think Ray’s the only American I know to be deported from Mexico. Most Americans don’t even know what their own immigration laws are. They break their own immigration law every day. The Refugee Act of 1980. . . .

  Then he’s talking about somebody from the U.N. “If they’re criminals, then what’s their crime?” he asks the person on the other end of the telephone.

  Yeah, she’s the new one. Name? You know I’m not gonna tell you her name. . . . Like your friend says, What’s a sanctuary but people, people themselves? Because a bunch of them come in with this coyote that led ’em right to the INS. From El Quiche, I think. Say, someone said you speak Quiche, do you speak Quiche? Well, Al probably speaks Quiche. You don’t know which coyotes to trust and which not to trust. Yeah, she’s one of our scouts. . . . Naw, you wouldn’t know her. A friend of Ray’s. Peck Canyon? We’re trying to get some more legal representatives. Well, you can convert your garage, can’t you? Naw, that’s her whole thing—she just counsels refugees. . . . I can’t be talking to you and get these free papers. . . .

  Well, I didn’t knowingly harbor an illegal, that’s the point. So that’s why I decided if the sons-of-bitches was going to bring charges against me for unknowingly harboring an undocumented worker, I’d start knowingly harboring them, or at least using my talents to create free papers for them. That’s what you call real art.

  He put up the telephone and then that woman they call the Grand Panjandrum, I think it the one called the Grand Panjandrum, though any of them women could be the Grand Panjandrum talking to him. I know some of y’all wants me to describe her, but if I describes her some of y’all authorities and government-type peoples and officials might know who she is. Course some of y’all might already know who she is. Just might be more concerned now about what them Chinese is doing. I mean, the peoples in power. Them others, they’s patrolling the border. Some of them is patrolling the music. But some of that music, some of them lyrics, maybe they needs to be patrolled. Do true musicians patrol theyselves? Like Delgadina say, freedom don’t got to mean decadence. Course they’s people see everybody else culture as decadence and ain’t they own.

  Then that woman with the briefcase and the one denying that she’s a guerrilla lawyer, the one they call the Grand Panjandrum, comes over where Koshoo is. So what have we? she asked.

  One of the refugees recognized her, so people thought a war would break out here. Different sides in the same revolution, you know. They’re in a new country, but they can’t erase their own history. . . . We oughta charge fines ourselves for shit like that . . .

  What’s your fine?

  Two hundred and fifty dollars.

  The charge?

  Being a co-conspirator to bring in illegal aliens. . . . My ideal world, where people can enter and reside in any country’s against the law. It ain’t practical. But no Utopia’s practical. Civil disobedience is. . . .

  The elite do it all the time. What about the deportation papers?

  They tricked them into signing voluntary deportation papers. I speak their language but I don’t write it. You’re supposed to write it in their language and then translate it into English. Cathy’s faxing me Form I-274. Told me a lot of shit. They should call it INS brutality. Of course they’re not going to call it INS brutality because they’re aliens after all. Cathy’s still calling the detention camps concentration camps. We’re putting these scrambler devices on all our telephones . . .

  They can unscramble anything these days. They know who we are. . . . You make sure Cathy’s faxing you the right Form I-274. Sometimes they change the forms on us, you know, so they detect whether or not it’s false documentation.

  Anyway. Cathy’s at their deportation hearing. Political asylum they’re trying for. Coercive sons-of-bitches, though. It’s de facto coercion. She’s filing an asylum petition.

  Well, the important thing is to get them outta the corral.

  Concentration camp. . . . You know the one they gave political asylum?

  Who?

  The one usedta be a soldier in Guatemala, part of the regime. . . . Hey, greenling, you wanna Coke? Give the greenling a Coke, somebody . . .

  Coke? That’s fucking Yankee imperialism, eh? . . . Who’s got the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees’ Handbook?

  . . . Every nation violates international law when they don’t think that international law is in their national interests. Anyway, so Cathy’s documenting the human rights violations at the refugee camps. . . .

  . . . We’ve already bonded him out from the detention center. . . . You know anybody speaks Quechua? I thought Al spoke Quechua but he says he doesn’t.

  No.

  Do you speak Quiche?

  No, I says.

  We’re waiting for Al, so he can translate. . . . We need us a peacemaker . . .

  What?

  The refugee community. It’s like any minority community, you know. You know, you’ve got to keep the people from destructive behavior. Well, I’ve mastered the psychopathology of refugees. Rumor, gossip, aggression, mania, hyperactivity, you know. Paranoia.

  Everybody thinks you’re a refugee.

  I am a refugee. What supplies we need?

  Corn, wheat, beans, sugar, cacao. . . . And we need someone who understands this other Brazilian dialect.

  She’s the greenling . . .

  No, I don’t mean her, I mean the Brazilian . . . She was jailed when this group of workers took over some beach in Rio, I think. Well, they didn’t really take over the beach, they just came onto the beach. And you know when a group of the poor come onto the wealthy people’s beaches. Well, she keeps saying Secuta aqui. Yeah, Al figured out that she’s says Ecuta aqui. Listen. She thinks we all understand her. She calls me Chiol. I think that’s senhor. Not señor. Whatever the Portuguese is. Isn’t it senhor? I know Spanish is señor. They say she’s the leader, playing this little wooden flute. Afofie, they call it, leading the other workers onto the beach. No, they speak their own special dialect of Portuguese, sorta like African Portuguese. Mozambique, you know. Anyway, no one can make hide nor hair of it. She got as far as Acapulco on her own. Sure. No, I thought she was one of the Haitians at first . . . Estou fugitiva . . . Name’s Almeida Bastiao . . . Sounds like bastard, don’t it?

  The rich don’t have borders, all the borders are open for them. Do you think the rich are respectors of borders? The rich don’t have borders. They talk that patriotism shit for the common man so’s they can keep him in their control. That’s what the very rich do anyhow, like this play by the Molettes, Noah’s Ark, where they say, The people who are really in power have no allegiance to any country. . . . They are above the law of any one country. There is no such thing as that, not when you’re talking about people, I mean, it’s all a question of power. . . .

  You know they just keeps talking them polemics, which I knows ain’t interesting conversation. I gets me one of them Coca-Colas and drinks it. Course that woman talking about Noah’s Ark kinda glances at me and looks like she wants to build some polemics around Coca-Cola. But them people ain’t different from Freud. They say that Freud turned a hat into a sexual symbol. So I guess if Freud can turn a hat into a sexual symbol, peoples can turn Coca-Cola into politics.

  CHAPTER 10

  I COMES UP FROM THE BASEMENT OF THAT OLD house, it a big farmhouse in pueblo style with one of them long flat roofs, you know that pueblo style, and I’m thinking about Noah’s Ark. I ain’t going to describe that farm too much for y’all. Course there’s a lot of farmhouses in that pueblo style, and even if y’all goes to Koshoo’s farm, it might not be the same farm. I think they just calls that farm Koshoo’s farm. I think they’s talking ab
out a play named Noah’s Ark, though, ain’t the biblical Noah’s ark. I go over and stands by my truck. I wants me a Bud Light, but I can’t be drinking no Bud Light. Them Coca-Colas might not be politics, but they ain’t as satisfying to me as that Bud Light. After I gets through transporting these Chito Chitons, then I gots to transport my industrial detergents, then maybe I can get to the cantina, get me some of them pretzels and that salsa. Delgadina got some of them new chocolate pretzels. I might get me some of them. Order me my Bud Light. If Delgadina is busy with her customers, I might read me one of Nefertiti Johnson’s new romance novels. Delgadina don’t think much of them, but I likes them myself. I think they oughta make movies out of them. Them whites mens and womens is always romancing each other. Somebody say that supposed to be a pen name for one of them African-American women writers that writes Literature, but when she writes them romances she writes under the pen name of Nefertiti Johnson. Ain’t none of us Johnsons, though. Monkey Bread writes her fan letters. Every time she read a new Nefertiti Johnson novel she writes her them fan letters. I ain’t no drunk, I just likes me my Bud Light. Some people says I gets that from my uncle Buddy. His real name Buddy Johnson, but they would call him Bud on account of his name and on account of him liking that Budweiser. I usedta see him when I was a little girl growing up. He the one John Henry usedta think he the sorta man he’d like to grow up to be, you know. Least that what he told me one time when he found out that Uncle Bud were my uncle. He fought in the Second World War, Uncle Bud, stayed in Paris for a while, come back to the States, stayed in Kentucky for a while, then went up north, went up there to New York, then went up there to New Jersey. Rumor is he returned to Paris, but I ain’t know that for a fact. I know he usedta tell a tale about a Unicom Woman he seen once at a carnival. Some peoples said it were a tale he would just tell the childrens, other peoples said it were a real Unicom Woman and even a colored “Unicom Woman” which were the name we were referred to in them years, others said he was a drunk and a nut—I know for a fact he weren’t no drunk, although he liked him his Budweiser—and others like John Henry, who were nothing but a little boy, considered him to be the ideal type of a man. ’Cause there were something about him that would make you know he were his own man even in them segregation days in the South. I usedta wonder myself why he never told us no segregation stories, ’bout being segregated over there in the Army, or even about when he usedta travel throughout the South, and even in Memphis, looking for that Unicom Woman he’d seen at a carnival once and which became his ideal for a woman. I ain’t know whether it were a true fiction, a fictional truth, or a plain lie myself. But I does know I would like to go over there to Douglass Park and listen to them tales he would tell, every time he would come back from one of his journeys to try to find the Unicom Woman. Then somebody said he started hunting up a real woman that he’d met over there in Memphis. But he were a curious man. Big, gingerbread-colored man. I ain’t going to say he were my ideal for a man, ’cause he were my uncle. Then he went up north and ain’t nobody know his whereabouts. Us got a few letters from him postmarked New Jersey for a while. Even I got some letters from him, but when he wrote to me he’d pretend he weren’t a true man and would sign his letters New Jersey Woolly Rabbit, and pretend like he were a New Jersey Woolly Rabbit writing to me, and he would always have some little proverb about the rabbit for me. Like he’d say, Never pick up a rabbit by the ears. When I was a little girl I usedta imagine I’d grow up and go searching for him my ownself, you know, become my own private investigator and go searching the world looking for my uncle Bud. Then I just grew up and developed a preference for Bud. Least that’s what peoples says.

  Anyway, I’m standing over there by my truck thinking ’bout Bud Light and Uncle Bud, the New Jersey Woolly Rabbit, when a African-American woman—I think she African American—wearing a kerchief, a flannel shirt and hiking knickerbockers comes out of the new farmhouse and introduces herself as Chito Chiton, then I opens the back of the truck and she lead the people into the basement of that farmhouse, another one of them hacienda-style farmhouses, maybe built in the nineteenth century or even eighteenth century. She the complexion of Delgadina with them high cheekbones. Then I’m thinking maybe she one of them modern-type of Muslim women I seen once at a rest stop. I got out of my truck and seen these Muslim women. They was wearing they traditional Muslim scarfs on they heads, you know. But instead of wearing them long robes they was wearing long-sleeve shirts, ’cause they’s got to cover up they arms, long blue jeans and them sneakers. They keeps themselves covered up with the modesty of the Moslem woman, but they’s got on them modern-type clothes, and they’s putting food out on one of them picnic tables. Funny thing is they glances at me and I’m dressed up looking just like ’em. I know they ain’t think I’m a Moslem woman, getting out of that truck, but I am dressed up to look just like them. People says part of us ancestry supposed to be Moroccan, though. So maybe it ain’t just my name Sojourner that make me sometimes dress the way I does. In the New World, though, we’s Catholics and Methodists and Baptists, Witnesses for Jehovah, and even some Christian Scientists amongst us. I think the New York Johnsons has even got a few Buddhists, Muslims, and Ethiopianists (or whatever they call themselves).

  Seem like the only time I’m asked my religion is when I’m amongst people of the older generation, my uncle Buddy’s generation. They always asks you what church you’s affiliated with, and you’s got to be affiliated with somebody’s church, otherwise you’s a heathen.

  What church you’s affiliated with, Nadine?

  I used to tell them none till I realized I was embarrassing my own people. And them Elders would look at you. You know how them Elders looks at you. ’Cause being affiliated with somebody church is fundamental. Now I tells them the Perfectability Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. Which is the true church that my uncle Buddy Johnson usedta go to whenever he were in Memphis, which might be a true fiction but it ain’t no fictional truth.

  Who the pastor out there? I mean the Perfectability Baptist Church in Memphis. I been to Memphis but I ain’t never heard of no Perfectability Baptist Church.

  Reverend Wolf.

  And I knows that for a fact. ’Cause Uncle Buddy usedta say they had at least three Reverend Wolfs in Memphis, and even usedta tell a confabulatory story about all them Reverend Wolfs, so I know he’s got to be pastoring somebody’s church.

  The farmhouse look like it been freshly painted, and I be wondering if it that paint made with jalapeños Maria be telling me about, but naw, that barnacle paint, for the hulls of them ships. Maria she be talking about that barnacle paint they paint the hulls of ships with, supposed to be more ecological than that chemical paint. Jalapeños and some other-type pepper. And suppose them barnacles starts to liking the taste of them jalapeños? How does they paint the hulls of ships, though? I guess they must have them scuba divers. They can turn them little ships upside down and paint the hulls, but what about them big ships? That African I met in Canada come over to the New World on a ship, and he told me when he were traveling on that ship he had him a dream about them early captured Africans making that voyage across the ocean to the New World, but him he a free African. Of course weren’t all them Africans in the New World captured Africans; you always hear them tales about them captured Africans, but they’s a lot of them free Africans in the New World, and not all of them abolitionists neither, some of them they be owning they own slaves, but you don’t hear many tales about them free Africans in the New World. And they be saying even today they’s plenty places in the world where that slavery ain’t abolished, and they’s even supposed to be the equivalent of slavery in the New World and including America. Delgadina be saying when she were in Houston she worked in this women’s shelter and she be saying they’s a lot of the equivalent of slavery with a lot of them womens, and they even be womens who’s got to escape just like them refugee slaves and them rebel slaves. And some of them mens they even be keeping them women prisoners or the equi
valent of prisoners, and they be all kindsa races and classes, and not just them low-class women but them middle-class womens and even some of them wealthy socialite types. But in his dream he said he were one of them early Africans. He say it a lot different coming to the New World as a free African and coming in chains. But he be saying them refugees smuggled to the New World probably be riding in them ships just like them captured Africans. He say, though, when he were invited to eat at the captain’s table, he couldn’t bring himself to sit at that captain’s table, ’cause he kept thinking of the slave ship captain he seen in that dream. I’m thinking about that African I met in Canada, when somebody open the door of the other side of the truck and I’m thinking it’s him, I must be daydreaming it him, that African, when I turns around it’s Father Raymond climbing inside. Except I guess I’m supposed to call him Chito Chiton, so I says. Hello, Chito Chiton. And he says. You can call me Ray.

  Ray, I mean Father Ray. But then he take the collar off and he say he ain’t no real padre. Didn’t I tell you he don’t look like nobody padre to me? Him and that mustache. And me be telling him about that costuming priest. You know, I be telling him about that priest at that costume party, or rather that ordinary man come to the costume party disguised as a priest. And I be saying how I couldn’t imagine no woman coming to a costume party disguised as a nun. Maybe he be thinking I’m signifying and shit or be suspecting he ain’t no real priest. Y’all heard that tale about the signifying monkey.

  I knows I has told y’all I don’t let nobody ride in the cab of my truck, but that don’t apply to Father Ray. I mean I ain’t about to tell Father Ray he can’t ride in the cab of my truck. Well, I don’t tell Father Ray he can’t ride in the cab of my truck.

  He take his priest collar off and open his shirt collar and say he riding back to Texas City with me. He scratches at the stubble on his chin. He got one of them strong-type chin. He scratches he mustache. He done trimmed he mustache a little, but it still look like that Santana mustache. I turn on my radio trying to find some of that Santana-type music, but the radio playing rap. I likes me that rap too, but I don’t play it loud like it supposed to be played. Course I don’t always understand what that be saying, though. That man be saying he can’t decode that jazz; I can’t decode that rap. Unless it like what Delgadina be saying about that metaphysics. I might not know what that rap say, but I know what it mean. Which I guess better than them folks that don’t know what it say or what it mean. Of course like jazz, they’s different kinds of rap. Probably they even got that metaphysical rap, and then they got that rap with them dirty lyrics. I heard somebody be calling them type of lyrics ghetto expressionism, but ain’t everybody in the ghetto be talking that dirty-type language ’cause a lot of them so-called high-class types they be using a lot of them expletives in they language. They always associates them expletives with the common people, though. Lot of them people they be saying they don’t understand the lyrics of that rap, but then they be understanding the dirty lyrics. When the lyrics is dirty, they be understanding it ’cause they be talking about wanting to censor that rap. So how come they be understanding the dirty rap lyrics and ain’t understand the ordinary rap? Or even the metaphysical rap, if they’s such a thing as metaphysical rap. And I be listening to that rap and ain’t understand most of them lyrics whether they’s dirty or ordinary or metaphysical but be asking how come when the lyrics dirty, them that wants to censor them lyrics be understanding the rap then or understand it well enough to want to ban it. But then them other lyrics, they be saying, I don’t understand that rap. I don’t understand if them lyrics talking dirty or not, and then I be wondering whether I should be playing that rap, but then he ain’t no priest. And then I be wondering whether you can have them dirty lyrics in rap and still be metaphysical or whether metaphysics just supposed to use a certain type of language.