by Gayl Jones
We’ve got our own private investigators, he said.
I ain’t going to tell y’all what else they’s got of they own, but it sounds like they’s started they own independent government and they own powers and own diplomats and own constitution. I ain’t going to say that that is the true truth. But I knows that Alvarado kept saying what they had of they own, and it sounded like he was talking about a whole independent government.
I’s told y’all the true truth about most of the peoples in this story, although I ain’t told y’all the whole truth about none of the peoples in this story. Or perhaps I’ve told y’all the whole truth without telling y’all the real truth. Like I said, my mama didn’t raise the sorta fool that would tell y’all the whole story, ’cause that would be like if I was a fugitive during the time of the old Underground Railroad I got myself free, then I comes telling everybody all the secrets. I gots to defend the rights and freedoms of them that ain’t got they freedom yet. I’m only telling y’all as much as I am telling y’all because this is supposed to be kept in the archives of the Daughters of Nzingha. The archives keeper is supposed to be truthworthy, but being a hidden agenda conspiracy specialist I have still employed everything that I’ve learned. My first love is the love of language, though, and whilst I defends the rights and privileges of the new Underground Railroad and maintains as much of they secrets that they ain’t revealed they ownselves, I wants to maintain they privacy, conquer my own ignorance, and to tell y’all a story about South Texas.
For y’all who wants to hear more about Miguelita, I prefers not to tell y’all more about Miguelita. There is plenty of people to tell y’all about Miguelita, ’cause like I said, she is the kinda white girl that can cross any borders. She is crazy, so the peoples in the cantina that knows her and that knows she is the wife of Mr. Delgado protects her and don’t allow people to call her out of her name, even though Miguelita ain’t her true name. I will say that I had a longer conversation with her during the time that Delgadina didn’t want to talk to her. That was when Delgadina had discovered that even the gringo that she thought wasn’t a gringo because he wasn’t a part of American history was still a gringo. You know, the Welshman that she thought respected her for her intellect and she discovered that all he saw was a hoochie woman. Or maybe he just thought she resembled a Bond girl. Delgadina ain’t told me whether he tried to kiss her or just revealed his true gringo self in his conversation with her. Anyway, so like I said, Delgadina would just see Miguelita as the gringa and not “our gringa” and said. You go talk to Miguelita. She’d served her some Mexican beer and Miguelita wanted to talk, but Delgadina come and asked me to go talk to the gringa, so I took my Budweiser over to her table and sat down. Now I thought she would be telling me about Sophie or about the consonance of wines or about some general, but she started telling me about herself.
She let me know that she ain’t one of them crazy peoples that thinks they’s sane. I’m schizophrenic, she said, sipping her beer.
I knows, I said, ’cept I told her that I didn’t know exactly what that meant to say about her. Anyway, I knows from them documentaries that there is peoples that says my whole race of peoples is schizophrenic. So I told her that I didn’t know exactly what that mean to say about her.
I usedta have these episodes where I would run away and assume other identities, she said. I didn’t know I was doing it. I mean, when I have these episodes I don’t know I’m doing it, I think I really am the people I say I am.
I gots to tell y’all that although Sophie a blonde she ain’t got that silk-type blond hair of Monkey Bread’s star, she got that real kinky type of blond hair. She got thick and kinky type of blond hair. And she one of those types of women that you can’t tell her age. Sometimes I think she younger than me and Delgadina, sometimes I think she us age, other times I think she one of them old white women that just looks like she young. You know the kind that poses in Playboy when they middle-age but still got them girlie figures. I be wanting to know myself how they keep them girlie figures. I be wanting to know they secrets of beauty myself. I prefer to read they secrets of beauty in something like Cosmopolitan, though. Delgadina has started subscribing to the blew Yorker, ’cause she seen an article about her ex-husband’s sculpture in one of them. I don’t read the New Yorker myself, though, ’cause I prefers the types of magazines that has articles on beauty in them. I don’t subscribe to all them people’s notions of beauty, but I would like to know how them womens keep they girlie figures. I prefers not to read them types of magazines that fabricates too much of the truth or insults people’s intellect. Some people can tell stories that insults your intellect, though, and they is still interesting stories. I know that whenever I meets Cayenne Goodling at the Perfectability Baptist Church, the one in Memphis, that she can insult my intelligence telling me all kindsa stories about Elvis and the Church of Elvis, and although I can’t claim to be the true fan of Elvis that Cayenne Goodling is or them who describes him as looking like a Greek god, nevertheless Cayenne Goodling is such a good storyteller that sometimes I goes to Memphis just to have her insult my intelligence, ’cause it seem like Cayenne Goodling is not only a good storyteller but has created a whole new genre to insult people’s intelligence. I don’t mean that the subject matter of Elvis is a insult to people’s intelligence—cause I knows how Elvis fans is—I means the way that Cayenne Goodling recontextualizes the subject matter of Elvis to create a new storytelling form whose express purpose it seems is to insult the intelligence. I don’t just go to Memphis to have my intelligence insulted, ’cause I don’t have to go all the way to Memphis for that. I also goes to attend the Perfectability Baptist Church, ’cause they ain’t got no Perfectability Baptist Church in the Southwest. Monkey Bread says that if I wants a Perfectability Baptist Church in the Southwest I oughta form one myself.
Like when you was in Paris pretending to be Sophie? I asks. I’m talking about Miguelita. Y’all know I told y’all about Miguelita.
She sip her Mexican beer and then look at me. No. Sophie’s a real woman. When I was in Paris I was sane. Sophie only knows me as sane. When she writes letters to me from Paris, she is always writing to me as if I’m sane. She usedta be my roommate when I was in Paris. She’s a real woman. I thought she was Algerian when I first met her, though, because the room that we rented is in an immigrant neighborhood of Paris, and she prefers the immigrant neighborhoods of Paris. She has dark hair and a dark complexion and I thought she was Algerian, but she’s a Frenchwoman. She still thinks I’m the same woman that she met when I was her roommate in Paris. You know how you meet people you hope to resemble. That’s what Sophie’s like. She’s the ideal sort that you hope to resemble. Most of her friends are immigrants. I remember Sophie introduced me to one of the immigrants and he said, America, that’s my dream. Sometimes we’d sit in the cafés with the intellectual types. They didn’t like America or Americanism. And some of them considered me a white devil, but they respect and admire Sophie so much. But every time America would do something that got into the newspapers, the intellectuals would always want me to defend America. Then once America did something and I said, How can I defend that, that’s indefensible? They liked me more, but they could never adore me as much as they adored Sophie. And how could they adore Sophie more? Sophie’s a Frenchwoman. And look at how the French behave? How could they adore Sophie more than me? How could he adore Sophie more than me?
Who adore her more? The immigrant who called America his dream? Mr. Delgado? Who adore her more?
She won’t tell me which who she means. She sips her Mexican beer, then she says. She knows the rules of the game, though. Sophie, I mean. But she has her own stratagems. Sophie is real. Sophie is not a product of my imagination or who I pretend to be.
She reaches into her jeans pockets and hands me a letter. I open it and read, but it’s in French. It’s postmarked Paris and it’s signed Sophie. But I don’t know what the French in it says. She puts it back in her pants pocket.
It wasn’t until I returned to America that I started having these episodes, schizophrenic episodes where I’d run away and assume another person’s identity but actually believe it was my own. I went to Mexico and became someone. I was in Canada and became someone else. My father would hire different detectives who would find me, and they’d put me in an asylum for a while, and then I’d realize my true identity and they’d free me again. Then I’d have another schizophrenic episode and run away and become someone else. I wanted to tell Delgadina who I am.
Well, Delgadina don’t want to know who no gringo or gringa is right now. She don’t care who the shit y’all is. She don’t want to know none of y’all ’cause she thinks she knows y’all’s true selves. She believes she knows who you are now, and she doesn’t want to know any of you. None of you have anything to say that she even wants to hear. She says that I can talk to you, but she don’t want to talk to you.
Miguelita don’t say nothing. She looks into her Mexican beer, then she drinks it. Then she looks around the cantina. Then she drinks more of her Mexican beer, then she looks at me. What about you? she asks. I gots to tell y’all she didn’t ask it in English, she asked it in French, but I knew that’s what she was asking even though I ain’t know what the French say. Who do you think I am?
I knows you’s a gringa, but it seems like every other time you’s ready to talk about anything except yourself. Now that you’s ready to talk about yourself I wants to hear what you’s got to say. Delgadina thinks you gringos are all guilty of war crimes anyway. And she thinks all of y’all oughta be tried as war criminals for what y’all not only have done but is doing to the colored peoples of the world. She was making an exception of you, and maybe Jimmy Carter because of his work amongst the Africans and other different colonized peoples, and even the poor whites that don’t know that they’s colonized, she knows they’s gringos, but they’s still fools that don’t know they’s colonized, and maybe a few others, whose names she ain’t revealed to me, but that were while she still had some conceits about y’all. She just come back from protesting something at the University of Texas anyway and she don’t want to talk to no gringo.
I protested that myself, said Miguelita.
Well, I don’t know what y’all was there protesting, only thing I knows is Delgadina usedta think you was a rare breed of gringa. But she is in her nonnegotiable mode right now. In fact, I wanted to watch Jane Eyre with her on television and she wouldn’t even watch Jane Eyre with me and Jane Eyre is her favorite Jane, especially when Jane Eyre say that she is not a bitch, she is Jane Eyre. She was writing up something to say at the protest. You know if she is in the mode not to even want to know who Jane Eyre is, and would prefer to write up something to protest about than to watch Jane Eyre, then she is not in the mode to want to know who any other gringa is. Then after that even though Jane Eyre was still on, she read E. D. Santos rather than watch the movie. She wanted to know if I was coming to the protest, but I told her I had some industrial detergents to take to Galveston. So I just watched Jane Eyre myself and then come back to my own apartment, made me some hot chocolate, ate some of them chocolate pretzels, watched the news on television. I think there was a little something about that protest that Delgadina were talking about. I kinda thought that maybe I should go protest. But I know Delgadina be there protesting, and I didn’t think that protest would get these industrial detergents to Galveston. Plus, I had a prior commitment to take some industrial detergents to Galveston. I gots as much race pride as Delgadina, though. Course being a member of the Perfectability Baptist Church, I has got to temper my pride with wisdom. We is who we is, we does what we do, and we knows who we is capable of becoming. We don’t submit to us own ignorance nor do we submit to the ignorance of other people. There’s more to the Perfectability Baptist Church. I don’t know everything about Perfectability Baptism, but I does try to know more and learn more. I wants to know more about you and Mr. Delgado, though. I knows that he is a secretive man.
He’s the one who helped me decide who I want to be, said Miguelita. Sometimes I think I’m going to run off again and become someone else, and then I just go to Delgado and then I know who I am and who I want to be and where I am and where I should be.
You sounds almost like you’s a Perfectability Baptist, ’cept we just allows colored people in us church and them that claims they’s colored. And we always says we, excuse my French. We says we a lot, but we has the independence of us ownselves. But what you says about Mr. Delgado, that’s how I feels about. . . . I starts to tell her Ray’s name, but I ain’t. I wants to tell her Ray’s name. But I knows I can’t be telling her Ray’s name. That’s how I feels about the man I feels that way about. Except I knows who I am and decides who I wants to be. I knows where I am and where I should be.
I ain’t sure how much I’m telling her is from what I’ve learned being a member of the Perfectability Baptist Church and how much I’ve learned working with Ray’s people and how much I’ve just learned being Mosquito, transporting my industrial detergents, going to trade shows and being who I think I am.
I wants to ask Miguelita if she in the new Underground Railroad, but I don’t. To tell y’all the truth I’m thinking they’s all Nicodemuses. I ain’t no private investigator or private detective neither, but this what I thinks: I thinks that Leonora Valdez, the reservation Native American, is the first one that thought I might be useful. She the one seen me get out of my truck and come into the pueblo-style McDonald’s, started talking to me and telling me she were a student at the University of New Mexico and on her way to Albuquerque, you know the one that say she don’t let nobody photograph her. She mighta told Ray and his people about me or maybe she told Delgadina about me and Delgadina say she already knew me but didn’t think I were the kinda person that would want to be in anything like the new Underground Railroad, that’s why she ain’t tried to recruit me for it herself, ’cause I’m too much of a independent type of person, and she mighta even specified me and saying that the only community I’m responsible to is the community of me myself and I, ’cause Delgadina liking me don’t mean she don’t acknowledge my flaws of character, plus she don’t even believe I’m a member of the Perfectibility Baptist Church, or maybe she thought I was too much of a fool to be in the new Underground Railroad and would be telling everybody about it. Then they decided to test me with Maria, you know to test whether I were a person to be trusted or whether I was like them slaves that were always running to the master to tell them everything the other slaves was doing. And because I ain’t told even Delgadina about Maria, and I tells Delgadina almost everything, they be thinking maybe I’m to be trusted. They musta known more about my psychology than I know myself, ’cause how they know I would even ask about the Sanctuary movement once I discovered Maria in my truck. I coulda just drove her to the immigration people and turned her in as a illegal alien. How they know I would go to the nun and ask her about the Sanctuary movement. I guess they knew my route and knew that I knows about that mission school. Or maybe they know that Maria would be able to convince me not to take her to immigration. Well, I don’t know all they stratagems. Maybe if they had seen me trying to take Maria to immigration, they woulda stopped my truck, pretended they was immigration police, then got Maria free. But since I proved that I weren’t that type of fool, they decided to learn more about me. So they still wants to find out more about me, so after I introduces myself to Ray and has Ray to show Maria to the secret rooms in they cathedral, they has Ray interview me whilst the woman who originally scouted me, Leonora Valdez was listening on that radio that weren’t a real radio, and then she handed Ray her assessment of me in that newspaper that was a real newspaper but had her coded assessment of me, and because I didn’t even tell Ray that I knew Leonora Valdez or that she even looked like somebody I thought I knew, they figured I were a little more truthworthy and then they decided that I were truthworthy enough to transport them refugees, and truthworthy enough to become a hidden a
genda conspiracy specialist and to memorize documents, but not truthworthy enough to be one of the peoples that helps to form the strategies, ’cause they still don’t allow me into none of they strategy meetings.
And Miguelita I think she a Nicodemus that were recruited because she one of them type of white girls that can cross anybody’s border and they ain’t question her, ’cause I was even telling Ray that myself, and because she crazy she can kinda endear herself to peoples and camouflages even the fact that she a gringa. ’Cept I gots to tell y’all that although I likes Miguelita I don’t fully trust her and think that she might also be a spy for one of them secret government organizations like them secret-type government organizations that they portrays on television and that decided they would recruit the John Brown in her—cause there is always a John Brown type in every colored story—even though she’s a mujer, they would recruit the John Brown in her to work for them, ’cause they’s people that says that John Brown were supposed to be crazy, ’cause whilst they don’t mind the mainstream Sanctuary movement they had started hearing about some new type of new Underground Railroad that colored people themselves was the leaders in and decided to recruit their most endearing white crazy woman and have her infiltrate Delgado’s cantina. Or maybe she ain’t even know that she is working for this secret-type government organization and just think that she is being Miguelita.
Y’all can decide who Miguelita is for y’allselves. I don’t want to study Miguelita, but y’all that wants to study her can come to Delgado’s cantina in South Texas. There’s a lot of vatos there to protect her, though, and she is the revered wife of Mr. Delgado, so y’all had better not get too inquisitive about her identity.